Could Time Arbitrage Stabilize Medium Term Growth?

Many have spoken of the need to build new growth and employment strategies, for even our medium term economic reality is somewhat uncertain. I remain convinced that time arbitrage could ultimately contribute to economic stability, in part due to its advantages as a continuum for local services generation.

Symmetric alignment for the time based coordination of local communities, could add to wealth in the here and now. What's more, locally generated time arbitrage would gradually reduce the need for the future fiscal obligations so many services now require. Since decentralized markets for time value would evolve as direct sources of wealth, they could create positive long term effects in terms of total factor productivity gains. 

In particular, time arbitrage may prove advantageous for medium term gains by stabilizing workplace participation for those who engage in person to person service offerings. As things currently stand, technology is beginning to replace the digital tasks which many came to rely on during the pandemic. And while pandemic circumstance initially led to losses in lower income employment (due to social distancing), continuing technology gains will ultimately result in losses of higher wage work, also. Recently, Bryan Walsh of Axios noted that software bots are "learning" to perform tasks previously assigned to office workers. He adds: 

Bots can make digital work more efficient by taking on onerous and repetitive white-collar tasks, but the better they get, the more competition they pose to skilled workers who might have thought themselves exempt from the job-disrupting effects of automation.

What's at stake in this development are continued efficiency gains, and why they are often deemed not just desirable but necessary. Granted, the efficiencies of earlier automation tended to be more closely associated with tradable sector activity. Over the decades - as these processes unfolded - the wealth gains of automation meant that "excess" tradable sector workers could subsequently find work in areas of non tradable sector activity. All the more so, due to additional wealth in circulation via exponential levels of tradable sector output.  

Nevertheless, eventually there would be no escape from the sectoral wealth shifts which eventually transpired. As the overall balance of GDP representation shifted from tradable sectors to non tradable sectors, it gradually became more difficult for tradable sector redistribution to support non tradable activity, given the compensatory claims the latter tended to require - especially when its organizational patterns were hierarchical in nature. 

Even so, much of today's non tradable sector endeavour is just as important for productive economic complexity, as what occurs in tradable sector activity. Unfortunately, many nations no longer have the full range of monetary flexibility they once had, for preserving the applied knowledge which modern economies need. Consequently, the challenge is to recreate more of this vital work on direct and reciprocal terms which are less hierarchical or costly to sustain. Time arbitrage is one way in which we might eventually make this possible. 

Increased efficiencies will always be a necessary component of getting things effectively done. And there is much efficiency to be gained through symmetric alignment which balances human capital inputs and outputs for time based service product. With symmetric time alignment, societies will eventually face fewer financial burdens which stem from the excess input requirements of human capital, in relation to time based services output. Time will always be our most scarce and precious resource. We can all realize productivity gains, by aligning our time with others in ways which make it simpler to meet markets for supply and demand in time based services generation.