Time Use as Product, Time Use as Wealth

Society could really use a leap of faith, in order to turn focused time use into highly liquid - thus easily tradable goods. People have been willing to concede that economic value is a component of time use, but not in an aggregate sense. This is one reason, why few recognize the inherent value of monetary representation from aggregate time use.

It is also why groups, communities, regions, states and nations are now engaged in campaigns to keep others out of their territory who either don't have the necessary "goods", or are perceived as somehow "taking" skills goods away from the "in" group. And yet, specific population numbers, demographics or other group association factors  are not the problem.  So long as aggregate wealth capacity in time use is viewed as negative (too many "takers"), the same perception would hold true at any population level.

However, this unfortunate perception could be dramatically shifted in the coming decades, for there is much hidden wealth potential just under the surface. A leap of faith in skills capacity would expose the wealth in our own midst - hidden as it is by crony interests everywhere one looks. Since the Great Recession, people have been repeatedly told that the knowledge capacity and skills sets they sought to acquire by whatever means, are "inadequate" for present day circumstance.

Yet when governments realized more education wouldn't actually guarantee success, they basically began to tell the public it was time to scale back on dreams of growth and continued prosperity. At this point, people were starting to realize that many self improvement efforts could end up squandered. What - then - of the rationale that was abandoned?

How can any government or business explain what is at stake, i.e. the exterior definitions of value which have taken away the liquidity of our primary wealth. It's definitely not in their interests to do so. Just the same, it is in the interests of citizens to take back their right to produce services. Granted, few have held that right for quite some time. Still, without the right to produce or otherwise offer individualized services, too many citizens would remain in the hapless position they now hold - one where many are defined as "takers". That's an unfortunate role which never should have materialized.

Context is everything: perceived value - or not - on whose terms?? There's been little chance to find out, since everyone took for granted for nearly a century that business and government were supposed to "call" on people to help out as needed, rather than people calling on one another to help out, as before. Were we to look - once again - at service skills capacity on individual and local terms, everyone would quickly find skills sets in their portfolios which are useful to others. No one would have to be "lazy" (whatever that means) unless they simply want their investments to do the heavy lifting for them.

None of this is about wishful barter or sharing economies at the margins. It's about a growing understanding, how local economies could coordinate knowledge use in lieu of government and sometimes exclusionary businesses or professional associations, where there are clear societal benefits in doing so. What's more, becoming an entrepreneur in a knowledge marketplace, means skills arbitrage in equal time use settings. That's the same framework (minimal reliance on externalized time control) that people utilized to get most things done, for thousands of years.

With unique applications in local settings, time arbitrage systems could also make it possible to measure time value which in many cases had been taken for granted, hence perceived as impossible to measure or compensate. The algorithm of equal time coordination, is also a framework which makes it possible to show knowledge use as a growth trajectory within community settings. For understandable reasons, many present day forms of knowledge use were generated in recent centuries by tightly controlled profit and not for profit formations. Only recently has it become possible to locally and broadly internalize the same methods and structures, through more flexible means.

The primary problem of automation as (completely) replacing labor, is that we miss the reality of what we want from mental capacity in our economic environments. Indeed, some have wondered whether the most important faculties of life experience even need to be measured. Just the same, it's not a good idea to leave out measurement capacity for the work of the mind. What might happen, if records of this most human component no longer existed in substantial quantities? Not only might it be difficult to remember what transpires in this regard, it could also be difficult to replicate the components which matter most. Even though the internet captures some aspects of our knowledge histories, it is not yet built to sort according to societal value.

That is why it would be worth the effort, to translate economic activity which has been inadequately compensated as production residuals, into direct time use. There is much to gain, from measuring and compensating the activities in which we also experience the life of the mind. By doing so, knowledge use can become the true component of human capital which it always had the capacity, to represent.