Time Arbitrage as Direct Ownership Reciprocity

How might time value - as an operational unit of economic wealth - function in a different context from for profit and not for profit institutions?  Even though time arbitrage would hold less monetary value than minimum wage, this seeming drawback is offset by the fact time value would serve as direct ownership reciprocity. It's the direct negotiation capacity that time arbitrage could lend to local environments (including real money/time wage effects), which would gradually build up the economic viability of time aggregates in relation to monetary aggregates.

Consider why this is important. While now existing forms of corporate ownership are quite functional, they mostly serve as indirect means of ownership reciprocity. For instance: If corporations don't appear to have a lot of social responsibility, shareholders also mostly lack real responsibility to the corporation, for that matter. Still, this form of ownership is so flexible, that it's standard for average citizens to have corporate earnings as part of their retirement accounts.

What's also needed, are flexible ownership arrangements which include a more direct form of reciprocity. This would allow participants the economic option of being directly accountable to each another in local settings. It's clearly not an approach that would suit everyone, yet it could provide tremendous benefits in terms of newly created ownership capacity. Such options are particularly important, if non tradable sector activity is to become more viable in terms of ownership and production opportunities for lower income levels.

Indirect forms of ownership such as shareholding, are particularly logical when corporations can benefit from increasing gains from scale. Increasing gains of scale are not only important for long term growth, but for the discretionary social options of not for profit institutions - given their secondary market status. Importantly, when markets are increasingly shaped by special interests protecting product that doesn't scale, the lack of overall scale potential can mean less general equilibrium revenue is still available for non profit operations over time.

I felt the need to reflect on these basic aspects of capitalism and ownership, after coming across some articles in which the authors expressed solidarity with the rationale that capitalism "can't last forever". They may as well have said "good riddance"! Nevertheless: Again, how would we propose to rid ourselves of these reliable constructs, without carefully thought through institutional replacements - particularly those capable of taking the (presently negative) service sector effect on scale into account? Of course I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but could we instead build new institutional structures which also provide scaffolding for the wealth creation we already have in place?

Bryan Caplan emphasized something recently which also encouraged me to write this post:

Perfect competition is socially optimal in industries with constant returns to scale.

It's difficult to recall when I've come across a quote which so simply expresses the rational for time arbitrage, in terms of time based product. When monopolies are formed in markets which generally exhibit constant returns to scale (such as time based product), over time the initial error will compound, as societies bear more more of the burdens for quality product costs. In the process, knowledge dispersal and resource efficiency can be compromised as well.

Since time based product features constant returns to scale (automation changes product structure and is a different matter), we need options in which time arbitrage can function as small forms of competitive equilibrium. This would allow individuals to negotiate preferred time options in direct relations to others. Perhaps one might refer to this form of organizational capacity as time profits, in contrast with for profit or not for profit institutions. Unlike time profit activity, most for profit and not for profit organizations will likely always function in a close relation to the total resource capacity of general equilibrium conditions. Indeed, their organizational structures are often more similar than is sometimes acknowledged.

This subject matter deserves a lot more elaboration than I'm able to provide today. However, I will return to these thoughts as soon as I'm able to wrap up work which covers the earlier phase of this project. Presently the first book of the upcoming series is demanding my full attention. Some of what I touched on in this post, will be further developed in the third book of the series.