Commoncy Notes

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= proposed currency for Time-Based Economics, an expression of the movement for a Polytopia


Description

"A Commoncy note is an electronic device which keeps track of tasks to which you've accepted & delegated. As well, it keeps a constant tally of your influence exerted and capacity remaining.

Time will be the new Money. More accurately, your time, and other peoples time, are a new form of currency. We all have the same amount, every day. Whether we are rich or poor in dollars, we are all equal in time. This is an incorruptible constant onto which a currency can scaffold it's security and stability. This scaffolding for a new system will be called the Ecommony, and it's measurement will be Commoncy. It will measure what you can do, and what you need done. Everything becomes shared, except our own personal time which will be the basis of the new Ecommony. Commoncy will measure how individuals spend their time to contribute to the commons of human progress. Ecommonics will be the study of how people contribute most meaningfully to this commons." (http://spacecollective.org/AlanSmith/4436/Commoncy-Ecommonies-The-Future-of-Money)


How It Works

There are a few key items in regards to how to measure and trade one's personal time.

1) Social Influence

2) Personal Capacity

3) Ecommony Task Index


Social Influence

"Reputation is built out of the work you've done for others and how you treat people. The better reputation you have, the greater your influence. People will be more likely to accept task requests from you, and you'd be able to ask more of others, having already proved yourself useful. This type of inflation is actually sustainable! As it expands and contracts it matches the needs of the system. You've been recognized by a distributed body of people as having put more work into the collective, which frees up time for others, which you then have a say in where that time is spent. This is "Social Influence", and it is finite for all individuals."


Personal Capacity

"Abilities of individuals to get work done is the measurement of their personal capacity. Your personal capacity is finite due to the amount of time in a day, but grows as you become more efficient. This efficiency increases your reputation. This expanding of the pool of human capacity, opens up room for more to get done. As a reward you have the say in deciding where that surplus is spent by putting the request out there."


Ecommony Task Index

"Requests are made by coupling your bill with the bill of the person with whom you are trading. Alternatively, through a network transfer point which links you to tasks on the distributed Common Market (ecommony task index)

If this sounds like it's a barter economy, its not. Barter is limited to person to person trades. This is about individual and collective resource management. One who has what you need may not be the person who needs what you have! This is a key limit in barter economics. In the ecommony, skills are allocated naturally to the people who can handle them by adding degrees of separation to person to person trading. This transfer of value from object to representation is one key advantage monetary systems gave us and is worth building on. However, there are finite boundaries to what individuals can deliver and request due to the simple capacity and influence structures. Influence and capacity cannot grow to power-law level of difference the way money can. This protects the system from intense aggregation of power. It's natural systemic tendency is to decentralize power with smaller peaks and valleys which proportionately represent contribution." (http://spacecollective.org/AlanSmith/4436/Commoncy-Ecommonies-The-Future-of-Money)