There is a new report out called The Shape of Jobs to Come. It has been produced by an organisation called Fast Future in a project funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Twenty ‘top’ future jobs are described and there as future job number 18 is ‘Time Broker / Trader’. “Wow, that’s amazing”, I thought and downloaded the full report, expecting a really interesting read. It was interesting - but not for the reasons I expected.
They’ve taken Edgar’s idea of using time as a currency but developed it into the opposite of what we believe. They imagine a future where people decide to become Brokers to make a profit - in time credits - by charging people for arranging exchanges. I say ‘exchanges’ but this is only about buying and selling time for profit. They miss that society does this already - it is called having a paid job. They also imagine Time Traders acting like Stock Brokers but making money out of buying and selling other people’s time. That sounds familiar; it sounds like a Slave Trader… Weird.
Instead of using time as an alternative to money with all the wonderful effects that has, they manage to make it almost exactly he same as the paper stuff. Not a lot imagination or innovation there.
They model time banking like a business and time bank Brokers like a bunch of Merchant Bankers. Their idea of a Broker would never dream of trying to bring people together to create new social networks and make strangers into friends - because then they couldn’t make a profit!
In the time banking world, an hour of ironing is of equal value to an hour running Fast Future – or even the country. In their world Brokers decide what somebody’s skills are worth and it is clear they think some people’s time is worth more than that of the rest of us. We redefine work to include what is usually unpaid but is essential for society to function. We treat everyone as having the ability to make their communities better. I doubt they could think like us without changing the way the think the world ‘is’ or should be.
It is a funny thing to do. Nobody - except the very greedy – would bother to write about what a Social Enterprise would be like if it were a private business and profits went to shareholders intead of being invested in the community or shared among the workers. Nobody writes about how much nicer it would be if a Volunteer Manager dealt with employees instead of volunteers. So, why try and adapt timebankng to fit the market? I don’t know. Maybe they haven’t put a lot of thought into it. Maybe they think we’re the weird ones!
Quite frankly I think they outline a vision of time banking that could have been redesigned by a bunch of extreme right-wing economists that want EVERYTHING priced and controlled by the market. Instead of community, co-operation, co-production and reciprocity we get something just about personal profit and greed. Maybe it is simply that they think that’s the way all people behave to each other. My old Economics professor was like that and we eventually agreed to disagee. That view of ‘human nature’ doesn’t involve a lot of imagination, innovation - or understanding – either…
Right on.
Would be great if you could copy a quote from that paper Peter, and post it here?
The full report is available as a PDF at:
http://fastfuture.com/?p=129
The description of how a future private sector time bank Broker might operate – if you remove everything that’s unique about time banking – appears on page 39:
QUOTE
18. Time Broker / Time Bank Trader
Alternative currencies will evolve their own markets – for example time banking already exists. Time Banks are community exchanges that enable individuals to earn time credits for performing services for the community and spend those credits on buying services from other community members.
Emergence as a Profession: 2010 – A Day in the Life
Most members of a time banking community will simply seek to earn time credit for performing services e.g. washing someone‘s car. They will then spend the credits earned on purchasing services from other time bank members – e.g. having someone paint your home. Others may seek to become Time Brokers and profit by running a time banking exchange and providing the matching service between providers and users of services. So for example, a buyer may pay ten time credits for someone to walk their dog, the dog walker in turn receives nine time credits, with the time bank broker taking one credit as profit. Their accumulated profits can then be used to purchase services within the community.
The time broker‘s day would be spent arranging transactions, suggesting a value to put on new services, vetting potential new members of the time exchange and resolving disputes between buyers and sellers. The community element of time banks will require a strong focus on encouraging dialogue between members and profiling case examples of the kinds of time exchanges taking place.
A time bank trader may operate within a time banking community, buying and selling time credits – possibly for hard currency. A notional exchange rate would be established so, for example, a time credit could be brought for one pound and sold for 95 pence. Buyers might be willing to purchase time credits for hard currency if they think that services can be purchased more cheaply that way. If the going rate to have your lawn mowed is ten pounds and the service is on offer for eight time credits, it would be worth your while buying credits from a time broker. The time broker will make their profits on the differences between the buying and selling price for time credits.
UNQUOTE
I did have a chuckle reading this report (whilst simultaneously holding my head in my hands)
How they came to their conclusions in this informative piece of literature is classified as “desk research” (making it up?!) and in response to us asking them if they’d talked to anyone about timebanking, their reply was: “we did this as a piece of secondary research and the brief did not require us to talk to anyone in the relevant professions”
Errrm, does that not sound a bit odd? Adding to the argument that they must have spent all the money the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills gave them to produce this on doughnuts and then hurridly churned out this at 4.30 on a Friday.
I didn’t know it was possible to stuff a doughnut up your nose.
Forget my suggestion that this could have been designed by a bunch of right-wing economists. Any Economist would have heard of alternative currencies. I imagine a great many Economists actually know all about time banking and that time credits can never be a complementary currency. Any Anthropologist would know all about Reciprocity. There are bound to be many other fields that overlap.
You are quite right that this looks like an example of desk research – but however it was done it was clearly by people who have very little knowledge of the area they’re ‘researching’.
They should have asked some children. Just as all children understand Fairtrade in about 10 seconds; all children understand Tit for Tat, Give and Take, Fairness, etc.