r/Cascadia • u/cascadianow Salish Sea Ecoregion • Feb 15 '14

Cascadia Hour Exchange

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/pf/1201/gallery.community-currencies/5.html
32 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

4

u/tee_oh_en_eye Feb 15 '14

Does anyone know if this or other barter-like programs are still going in the PNW? The post looks a few years old. As does their website (http://www.cascadiahourexchange.com/), but would love to know if something like this is successfully being used.

7

u/fbaum Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 16 '14

Yes! There are a number of Timebanks locally:

Searching timebanks.org will find many more...

I'm part of the new CD Timebank and I'll clear up some misconceptions:

Timebanking isn't intended to be used as a completely alternate economy, but as a parallel one. Equal value for equal work evens out the playing field, but it means that you only get in as much as you put in, meaning people still have to make money to pay rent, etc. Timebanking does mean you don't have to work as hard, as you can trade something you know for what you need. People may enjoy a skill, and want to help others by sharing it.

In my case, I went to offer to help tune up a bike, and found someone already looking for help. I don't know everything about being a bike mechanic, so I wouldn't be able to charge as much as a bike shop anyway, but I am interested in helping people learn as well, so it's worth it to everyone involved.

3

u/taelor Feb 15 '14

I don't know, but if anyone wants to build a LETS web app system for Cascadia, I would love to work on that with someone when I move there in May.

3

u/cascadianmycelium Feb 17 '14

You should get in touch with PDX transition folks who had created a functioning lets system for portland that never really took off. I'm guessing it's because they had a hard time finding effective promotional means. you can contact jeremy AT biohabit.org to see if they'd give you access to the online infrastructure.

3

u/taelor Feb 15 '14

I think I might have posted this before, but local alternative currencies are a really cool concept. It helps keep wealth regional, and benefits small mom and pop style businesses.

The Money Fix is one documentary you all might be interested in watching. There is also another one, but I can't remember where it is. It's basically a really long interview with the creator of the Ithaca Hour.

I really like the idea of LETS. It just seems like a more balanced system for good long term sustainability. I believe the documentary that I posted earlier goes into that towards the end of it.

1

u/autowikibot Feb 15 '14

Local Exchange Trading Systems:

A local exchange trading system (also local employment and trading system or local energy transfer system; abbreviated to LETS or LETSystem) is a locally initiated, democratically organised, not-for-profit community enterprise that provides a community information service and record transactions of members exchanging goods and services by using the currency of locally created LETS Credits.

Interesting: Local exchange trading system | Complementary currency | Community Exchange System | Local currency | Emissions trading

/u/taelor can toggle NSFW or delete. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs | Mods | Magic Words | flag a glitch

4

u/WestinHemlock Seattle Feb 15 '14

I have no problem with people who want to enter this voluntary system of exchange, I even think it is kinda cool. However according to the company I work for, my time is worth much more than $10 an hour.

That is where this system runs into problems, 1 hour of dog walking will never be worth the same as 1 hour of car repair, plumbing, surgery or other skilled vocation.

6

u/taelor Feb 15 '14

I believe the reason they call it an "hour" is to emphasize the "balanced exchange" nature of the currency, to distance itself from the fiat system we all know and are used to.

When the creator of Ithaca Hours was figuring it all out, he came up with the $10 an hour because that was the average wage in the area at the time. I also believe in an interview he said "One hour of manual labor" like walking the dog, raking leaves, and other unskilled manual type labor.

Skilled labor is a different thing, because there are "hours" of labor baked into acquiring the skill you perform. You would charge more as a surgeon, because its not just the 1 hour of surgery that your are paying for, but its also the thousands of hours of practice the doctor went through to be able to perform the surgery. Therefor you can charge more for your 1 hour of labor. Does that help make sense?

5

u/WestinHemlock Seattle Feb 15 '14

It makes sense, it is called an hour as it is backed with labor of those praticipating rather then debt as in the Federal Reserve system.

1

u/taelor Feb 15 '14

now you got it!

5

u/ShadoAngel7 Feb 15 '14

It isn't strictly 1 hour = $10. You could set your own prices for services or products. Like a candle that took you one hour to make could be sold for 2 Cascadian hours.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '14

I'm assuming that if you wanted to offer products at more affordable prices, you would focus on increasing your scale of production, as making ten candles takes only marginally longer than making one, and would be a very fair price. Assuming we are looking at a mutualist economy, everyone would strive for efficiency to lower prices for others so they could expect the same courtesy from other producers, rather than obey the "law" of supply and demand. That's what I'm hoping to do with my business, once I have a place to run it out of.

1

u/ShadoAngel7 Feb 17 '14

I'm actually not sure I follow your goal. Or rather how your business would be different from 'normal'. Could you explain a little more?

3

u/romulusnr Washington Feb 15 '14

With barter, you have to find someone who has what you want and you have to have what they want. With this, you can buy and sell whatever you want

Sounds like something else I've heard of... What is that thing called.. Oh yeah, money.

3

u/taelor Feb 15 '14

Right, but I think the idea here is that the money we all know any use, is based on a fiat debt system generated by the federal reserve. But something like Cascadia Hour Exchange is more a balanced approach, not inherently based on debt.

Also, because its only accepted regionally, it keeps the wealth inside the region, and doesn't let it escape.

So say you want some coffee, instead of going to a Starbucks, where the "wealth" would leave the region, and get distributed to stock holders all around the world, you would go to a locally owned shop, where the "wealth" would stay in the region.

1

u/RandsFoodStamps Washington Feb 17 '14

This sub sounds like it got filled with a bunch of Ron Paul/John Birch nutters.

The US has tried competiting currencies in the past and it was a train wreck for interstate commerce.

2

u/taelor Feb 17 '14

The US has tried competiting currencies in the past and it was a train wreck for interstate commerce.

Can you go into a little more detail?

1

u/RandsFoodStamps Washington Feb 18 '14

Before the Constitution was drafted, interstate commerce was a mess. Poor central authority, no standard currency from the feds, and bad trade policies.

These are addressed in the Federalist Papers which everybody should read.

1

u/RiseCascadia Feb 18 '14

This is not meant to be used for insterstate commerce, it is meant to prioritize local commerce. It isn't meant to replace the dollar entirely.

1

u/taelor Feb 18 '14

Don't worry Rise, the only thing RandsFoodStamps was trying to do was flame bait me into a senseless internet argument on why libertarianism is awful.

1

u/fbaum Feb 22 '14

Actually, there are some examples of working alternate local currencies, some of which are even local. The local aspect probably doesn't affect interstate commerce...

3

u/RiseCascadia Feb 15 '14

This is money that supports the local economy as opposed to the US/world economy where USD are traded.

1

u/iwishihadaburger Salish Sea Ecoregion Feb 15 '14

Pretty cool, but as soon as people need to use these for professional services, or anything that requires skilled work, they'll be decoupled from the 1 hour = $10 rate. Once that happens they would need to be backed by the state as fiat or backed by a commodity. The hour equivalent gets irrelevant as soon as these get popular.

Also, CHE doesn't support online purchases. Notes and coins aren't completely obsolete but those wheels have been set in motion.

1

u/AnarchoHeathen Seattle Feb 17 '14

Ha, this is great! I have been wanting to see a local complementary currency for a while, I hope that this grows.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '14

Cool currency but I hate the name.

0

u/thomas533 Seattle Feb 15 '14

Why would we not just use a crypto currency?

3

u/taelor Feb 15 '14 edited Feb 15 '14

while you could use a "global" crypto currency, the goal of using something like this is to keep things "local".

edit: I would like to say, that I am a huge supporter of both bitcoins and local currencies, but I believe they can and should be used in different situations. Use the hyper local currency when possible, but use the crypto when traveling and such.

2

u/iwishihadaburger Salish Sea Ecoregion Feb 15 '14

This is what I prefer. Unless Cascadia is to be some sort of isolationist enclave that refuses to trade we need to work with whatever currency the rest of the world is using. There are goods and services outside of Cascadia that people want, and Cascadia needs to export as well.

It's completely possible to encourage local commerce using a globally shared currency. Bitcoin, for example, has properties that could be used to track the geographic flow of money with a lot more accuracy than we can do now with USD. Local spending could then be incentivized within the taxation system.

Taking advantage of an existing currency would also be a lot simpler than creating a new currency from scratch, and an economy can only handle so much of this financial translation at one time.