Of time as a universal basis for social solidarity
This is a proposal for a social solidarity system, which would be robust enough to be applicable among communities whose economies vary widely.
There are many instances of such communities. For instance, in the European Union (EU), many economic parameters change across regions. The EU gathers places where the cost of living is very high (e.g., Paris, France) and other places with much cheaper living (e.g., Medias, Romania). Among other examples worth mentioning are the USA, and the World.
Varying costs of living and income make it hard to phrase solidarity principles that are the same for everybody. A universal minimal revenue, for instance, would either not be enough for some who live in places with high cost of living, or unreasonably high for others who live in cheaper places.
Another issue is the varying money redistribution policies. Some local governments are generous with compensations (retirement, unemployment, health, etc.), while others are conservative. In our EU example, one way of having all Europeans being treated the same way would be by making all countries equally generous. This is impossible, because the people of different countries have been used to different norms, and norms are notoriously hard to change.
Basic Idea
Whoever we are, wherever we live, there is truly only one resource we have at our disposal: time. Life choices and opportunities make that we sometimes convert this time to money, and often to realizations. Granted, when considering entire life spans, we’re not equal, some dying younger than others. However, when a person starts a week, the chances that they will live to the end of the week are practically certain. Based on that, it’s fair to say that every week, everybody has a week’s worth of time ahead of them.
The proposal of this article is a social solidarity system in which every participant contributes the same amount of time. Let X be the number of hours per week to be contributed. Those who convert time into money spend X hours working (or collecting rent or dividends) for the solidarity system, which gets funded by the proceeds of this work. Those who don’t convert time into money also contribute X hours, and get compensated for it.
To proceed with our EU example, let’s assume that X represents 10% of a week’s work time. An Italian worker making 750 Euros for a week of 40 hours would contribute 75 Euros a week. An unemployed person in Hungary would work 4 hours a week and receive coverage from the system.
Characterization
Here I’ll try to define our system by comparing it to what we know. Social solidarity is also a big topic of debate across the existing political spectrum, which raises a natural first question: is this a left-wing or a right-wing system ?
Main difference with existing systems
The most striking difference to me is that all participants contribute the same thing, making it a real solidarity system. Existing systems, such as the ones we see for unemployment or retirement by redistribution, are based on charity. The word charity may sound strong and perhaps negative, but it isn’t. It describes a situation where people who have money now give it to other people who don’t, and in exchange they feel good about helping their fellows out. Note that the proposed solidarity system could easily coexist with local or global charity systems as needed.
Political orientation
At a first glance, the idea presented here is reminiscent of time banking, an idea partially associated with anarchism and communism [1], in which work is paid in “time money” representing the amount of time worked. With time banking, time money can be spent to receive time in the form of help from other fellows. The similarity is nevertheless remote, since time contributions aren’t given back to their contributor, but to society.
At a superficial level, a system where everybody works for the community sounds reminiscent of communism. A major difference here is that the system I propose works best if the amount of work contributed by everyone is a portion of their time.
On the other hand, this proposal addresses a criticism against solidarity systems that is popular amongst conservatives: the idea that some people take advantage of the system by only taking free money and have no intent to ever give anything back to society. Hence the concept by itself isn’t particularly oriented towards left or right.
However, the proposed system can definitely be applied in various degrees of liberalism or conservatism. Main factors that influence this are the generosity of compensations, and how time is allocated. I will develop on these briefly in the next section.
Implementation
Many choices can be made about how such a system could be implemented. Here I’m painting with a broad brush, unavoidably missing some possibilities.
Time allocation
As examples of time contributions (called missions here in short), a participant could work for an association, fulfill a mission for the government, or support a local business in distress. What sounds desirable is that time gets used to address some of the needs of the society that compensates it, within the limits of the time contributors’ skills. Priority among these needs is usually a matter of politics (whether they rely or not on the honest interpretation of data).
Compensation
Compensation may be the most interesting topic in this proposal, because a bad compensation system has the ability to turn a fair system (where everybody contributes the same) into an unfair one. So this needs to be carefully thought through. Here I’m contributing thoughts about a base system, which everybody in the system would need to support. Local governments would have the ability to add to this, depending on their needs, resources and politics.
Clearly, the compensation should be commensurate with cost of living in the compensated person’s locality. One way to go about is is to define a base level of material comfort that would be provided as a compensation.
A partial solution to this, which I find attractive, is given in the article by Paul Ares, “Eloge de la Gratuité” (“A plea for free stuff”)[2]. Since the article is only available in French and German, I’ll summarize — and, unfortunately, vulgarize — it here. Instead of compensating people with money, some of the compensation will be in terms of free services or products. For instance, some of the compensation could be to take care of the person’s electricity, gas, child care, school supplies, etc. Another advantage of this idea is that it may preclude some ways of abusing the system by cumulating several statuses that give right to monetary compensation, possibly by cheating. Here, the opportunity to cheat seems lower.
The question of how to deal with varying rents, debt, and other day-to-day expenses remains to be answered. In particular, which principles should we follow to make it fair among its beneficiaries ?
Optionally, the level of compensation could also be tiered, with more comfortable compensations being tied to longer mission times.
Granularity
An interesting aspect of the proposed system is that the political orientation of its implementation can be defined at a local level (while today’s systems are usually defined at the state level). This addresses the fact that different localities have different needs, but also different means, and can afford to be more or less generous in their compensation.
While some missions can only be performed locally, others — like for instance building an app or a website, or planting trees to increase the world’s oxygen level — can be done globally. This is one of the motivations for a global system.
Another motivation is that in our globalized world, economies of different localities are tied together. A straightforward case can be made to consumers of a system that buying from companies who contribute to the same system directly reduces their X.
The more economically active localities will contribute more money into the system. However, they will also know that consumers of all localities in the system have a concrete incentive to consume products or services from them, as opposed to out-of-system competitors.
Overhead
While money can likely be managed by existing fiscal entities, putting this system in practice will require allocating people to manage the missions. Arguably, a system of reputation for mission contributors and beneficiaries could prevent some abuses. This is also best moderated by a third-party.
It is clear that we will need some people’s time to run the system itself. It is reasonable to use some mission time for it. However, continuity has value and some key personnel need to be long-term employees. I think that the financial overhead of the system will be mainly these long-term employees salaries. Whether these employees should be part of the government or charter corporations is up to the local government to decide.
Valid range for X
Obviously, someone who converts their time into money needs the rest of their income to live, which sets a maximum value for X.
Conversely, X could become so small that no useful amount of work can be done in X hours. In this case, hours can be pooled by month, or even larger periods of time.
Human perspective
Another important effect of the proposed system that it keeps participants included in a system in which they keep participating, fighting exclusion and one’s impression to be a burden on society. Also, a raise in unemployment becomes less of an issue, since it translates into an increase in society-managed activity, which benefits everybody.
Conclusion
It is crucial for a social solidarity system to be fair. Obviously, fairness should improve the way people actually buy into the system. More pragmatically, a system can more easily be taken advantage of if it has givers on one side and takers on the other. Here we propose a system where everybody is a giver, and everybody makes the same fundamental contribution. Finally, an economic recession in this system directly translates into a richer social fabric.
References
[1] Wikipedia contributors. (2019, January 23). “Time-based currency.” In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:57, February 10, 2019, from “https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time-based_currency&oldid=879836192”
[2] Paul Aries. “Eloge de la Gratuité.” In Le Monde Diplomatique, Nov 2018 issue, from “https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2018/11/ARIES/59231”
