Time Centric Economic Development

Economic time value as a parallel component (alongside money) for societal coordination, could make it simpler for economies to remain in dynamic patterns. For instance, the incremental ownership aspect of time arbitrage, in which one "owns" knowledge to the extent they incrementally use it, could also add much needed velocity to GDP. Time centric economic development, would generate new knowledge use patterns which provide institutional options to the knowledge which inadvertently ends up caught in the passive revenue flows of domestic assets.

Time centric economic development could eventually help us break out of what have become static roles for knowledge use. Limits to knowledge use now contribute to economic stagnation, since productive agglomeration has become closely tied to specific geographic locations. The potential of the digital realm to bring dynamic knowledge use to all corners of the globe, only highlights the current breakdown in knowledge use patterns which has instead taken place.

Since there are hard limits on the groups which can work in areas where knowledge wealth accumulates (via valuable real estate), the potential of long term economic growth remains at stake. It would be far better for all concerned, if knowledge benefits could also accrue to the purposeful activity of informally defined groups. Personal time value as a wealth building commodity, would allow knowledge to function - once again - as ongoing informal activity. Indeed, knowledge wealth accumulated for millennia on similar terms, before knowledge use processes were circumvented by extensive 20th century limitations for economic participation.

Meanwhile, the combined efforts of many groups for the coordination of knowledge, are accumulating like so much sediment at the end of today's major knowledge use arteries. As different groups continue to separate from one another by skill level, it only becomes more difficult to coordinate for total skill capacity across groups. Kevin Bryan explains how path stickiness has occurred, in today's major cities:

Much of the developed world has, over the past forty years, pursued development policies that are very favorable to existing landowners. This has led to stickiness which makes path dependence more important, and reallocation toward more productive uses less likely, both because cities cannot shift their geographic nature and because people can't move to cities that become more productive.

By way of example, the recent concern that society may be "running out of ideas" goes back to the fact that too much resource capacity is caught in institutional formats which are no longer able to make room for the knowledge based aspirations and challenges of individuals who lack advanced degrees. When knowledge use becomes mostly professional activity made possible by graduate level degrees, the results tend to be either skill access struggles (healthcare), or constantly debated professional opinions (formal education), much of which resembles a Winchester Mystery House, in which knowledge fills halls, stairways and rooms, but otherwise has few viable places to go in which it is capable of benefiting anyone.

Knowledge use now faces these unexpected limits, in large part because of its external dependence on other existing revenue. Unfortunately, when money becomes the only means by which a society can coordinate economic patterns, too much revenue eventually pools into the passive asset holdings of location bound real estate. Time centric economic development, in which time becomes a unit of commodity wealth alongside money, could help to prevent these losses in economic velocity. Since time arbitrage would also be asset backed (via flexible building components and infrastructure), new productive agglomeration could occur with a mere fraction of the infrastructure that is presently necessary.

Time centric economic development could allow groups to maintain the use of knowledge via the coordination of multiple skill levels across group participants. This process would allow knowledge to continue dispersing so as to activate further activity, through the "vehicle" of time as commodity based wealth.

We need better institutional means by which cumulative knowledge has a chance to remain accessible to all who find it useful, practical, and beneficial. Knowledge use systems could be designed in ways that should one group become unable to maintain the use of knowledge in certain specific settings, the knowledge at stake could readily be absorbed by other groups which operate within the same systemic design.