ARE YOU TIRED OF BANKS, CREDIT CARDS AND DEBT? CONSIDER A SYSTEM OF TRADING TIME INSTEAD OF MONEY
Ron: The title of this article promises much but fails to deliver in that it assumes a continuing need for “money” in society.
Arguably, the money meme is the central mind control mechanism used to enslave humanity mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It creates artificial distinctions between sovereign fragments of the ONE Creator. It SEPARATES us from each other, isolating us psychologically from others and spiritually from Creation. That psychic isolation is in our faces all the time because it results in physical separation in all aspects of life as well as spiritual estrangement.
Money is an illusion within a wider illusion - the holographic universe in which we seem to move and have our being. Money is an idea vivified by human consciousness; human group think. It is therefore possible to unthink it. But why would humanity want to do that?
Well, we are told that money is a needed societal tool for exchange of goods and services, but it isn’t. It is actually a socially engineered mechanism for enslavement. Humans have been programmed from cradle to grave to equate money with personal identity and self worth. It isn't. Sooo, in order for humanity to live free and BE healthy that social engineering must be reversed.
Arguably, trading human labour time instead of money is more egalitarian and hence more real than our current fiat debt money-meme centric economic model which pretends that debt tokens are real and constitute a viable societal economic system because it enables humans to exchange goods and services. But it isn’t real or necessary and it demeans our spiritual heritage. Debt tokens are not money and even reducing human economic intercourse to the level of physical transfers of labour time or real wealth, rather exchange of debt tokens, demeans our human status as sovereign fragments of the Creator.
The problem seems to be that most humans cannot seem to grasp the possibility of living without money or at least marginalizing the need for money which must be achieved in order to create a REAL (ie a loving) community. A real community is typified by the family structure. Is it not absurd to argue that mothers, fathers, children, grand parents and extended family et al should only provide goods and services to each other for money? And if they did, would such families expect to pay income taxes etc on such transactions to the IRS or equivalent? If we do not expect to subject family activities to the money meme, why do we automatically expect that local communities should subject their members to the tyranny imposed by the money meme?
Arguably the main reason most modern societies have lost any real sense of community is that their members have totally embraced the money meme. That situation can only be addressed by closely examining the nature and effects of that meme and seeking to modify or eliminate it. In my opinion the first requirement for undoing the mind lock imposed on people by acceptance of a money based society and economy would be to have each relevant community come together to abolish usury and to create a mechanism whereby a locally appointed, supervised and transparently controlled community organization is directly and transparently responsible to the community - not to private corporations or corporate governments which is the situation now in the US, Canada Australia and most other countries.
In my opinion time banks as discussed in this article are merely tinkering at the edges of the problem. What needs to be tackled head on is the entire edifice erected on the money meme that has produced private bankster controlled fiat money (debt token) creation and its usurious distribution globally. The actual creation, supply and setting of interest rates (usury) for 'money' is in the hands of yet other private (for profit) corporations that have been given monopoly licences to create money (debt tokens) out of thin air and to charge, AND VARY, interest on those fictional debt tokens at whim, and totally without genuine community audit or scrutiny. What could be more absurd?!
It is the refusal of most people to contemplate, let alone seek to deal with these matters that has led humanity to its current crisis situation. Sooo, the choice is: make the mental and emotional effort to understand the money meme and then to reject or radically modify it; OR continue to exist in a growing 'shower of shit' created by the banksters AND justified by their bought and paid for governments, corporations and mainstream media FAKE NEWS corporations; and their commentariat minions and henchmen whose comfortable lives depend upon maintaining the illusion that money is necessary for civilised life when it isn’t.
Those who think they cannot live without money; and are unable or unwilling to even make the effort to force their governments and corporate bank debt token creators and suppliers to be responsible for what they do, are slaves and will remain so.
Those who cling to the old money paradigm need to realise that at the core of our so-called Capitalist global economic system are two mechanisms. First, the usurious monetary mechanism. Second, and symbiotically co-dependent with that money mechanism, is the labour for income mechanism. The global economic system is based on human beings selling their labour as a commodity in the open market so that they can then buy and consume the production of that market.
That system is broken. The rapid uptake of mechanisation, automation, computerisation and electronics (robotics) in human workplaces in the last century is causing a steady decline in available paid employment. That heralds the end of the fictional fiat debt token (money) creation and usurious fractional reserve banking systems that have held humanity in thrall and enslavement to the matrix controllers for centuries.
If people do not have the option to work for a living because paid employment is unavailable, then the monetary system as we know it, is finished, and the so-called capitalist economic system based on it must implode also. No one can buy goods if they don’t earn money or get given money by the welfare state. Similarly, companies and businesses cannot afford to produce goods and services if consumers have no purchasing power to buy them. Lastly, governments will cease to be able to collect income, sales and other taxes and charges sufficient to continue the Welfare State if only a minority of people are working, earning money, paying taxes and consuming.
As the need for workers declines below the “tipping point” at which 'the state' ceases to be able to take enough money from those in paid employment to provide adequate “welfare” payments to the unemployed and their dependents, the money meme system breaks down. As that happens those who control the corporations that own the robots and machines will decide who lives and who dies and whether the process will be quick or not.
The inertia and cognitive dissonance experienced by many people (especially those currently living comfortably off the current system) confronted by this prospect, is the single biggest impediment to humanity making the leap to higher consciousness needed to enter the new 'Golden Age'. It isn’t the banksters that are holding us back Pilgrims, it is us! Our own inertia, insecurity and fear of change.
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ARTICLE
We live in a capitalistic society. Banks are everywhere, and it often seems like cash and credit are required to live. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing. And it can sometimes seem like economic inequality is ubiquitous.
But around the world, people are using a system of exchange that requires something everyone is, for the most part, given equally, every day: Time.
How do you trade or exchange time? Through a time bank. At its most basic, you spend an hour doing something for someone in your time banking community, and you then receive a time banking credit of one hour to spend on something you need. For example, if you spend an hour raking your neighbor’s yard, you then have an hour to spend, for example, on childcare or car repair. It’s an hour for an hour. The idea is simple, and it’s growing.
Take, for instance, Rushey Green Time Bank, based in South East London. It’s a connected group of 535 people, with offshoot projects that include the Wild Cat Wilderness community garden of another 400-plus people, and the FoodCycle Lewisham project with another 100.
The Rushey Green Time Bank was very small when it started almost 20 years ago, explains its director, Philippe Granger, when a doctor wanted to offer something else to his patients beyond prescription drugs—especially for those suffering from isolation, bereavement and loss of work. “Normally, a doctor prescribes pills,” in those cases, says Granger. “But what he thought would be better would be to integrate the patients into the community.”
Rushey Green Time Bank started in a health center, in a part of London with more buildings than green space. It’s an area of high unemployment, single parents and pensioners.
“What we’ve experienced in the past six to seven years is a rise in mental health issues. I think everywhere on the planet, mental health is coming up because life is becoming very stressful,” says Granger, explaining that people in their mid-30s through 40s often have depression, but that’s used as an “umbrella word.”
“We’re not healers. We’re not doctors. We don’t promise if your body is broken we can fix it. But we can help manage your condition. You have a community around you and you have support. If you have a broken leg, and you’re alone, that’s tough. But if you’re in a group, you have support. In that way, it slows down the ill effects.”
“I love to see people in the gutter being made well,” he adds.
In the case of a broken leg, that time banking community can help with things like errands, walking your dog, or cleaning the house. You, in turn, might make phone calls for a local organization, or teach someone how to read.
Mashi Blech, director of the ArchCare Time Bank in New York City, agrees. ArchCare is a part of the Archdiocese of New York, and the time bank is sponsored by its health care ministry. Blech has been working on time banking for 30 years, and ArchCare Time Bank now has more than 1,500 individual members and more than 80 member organizations, with 40 different languages spoken.
“Here in New York, life can be quite stressful,” says Blech. “People can feel quite isolated and lonely.”
“Social isolation is a top cause for early death and a higher indicator for early death than cigarette smoking,” says Kim Hodge, founder of the Michigan Alliance of Timebanks and the Pontiac SUN Time Bank. People need to feel needed, she says, and time banking lets them give and receive in a healthy way.
ArchCare launched an initiative that noted while many of their clients were getting good medical care, they were still depressed and losing sense of belonging to a community, often as a result of aging. Blech reports that according to their evaluations, people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who use the time bank are reporting improvements in their physical and mental health. “That’s pretty exciting,” she says, noting that at that age, to show improvement is huge.
Granger says time banking is looked at differently around the world. In Greece, for example, with their economic crises, people have been time banking and exchanging out of economic necessity. In Detroit, it functions the same way, whereas in other parts of Michigan, it is beginning to be integrated more into support networks for the elderly and disabled, and those leaving local hospitals. There’s a massive time bank in Russia, Granger says, with 2,500 members, where, “It’s not political, it’s caring for the elderly.” In Spain, time banks are smaller groups of people working to be more resilient. And in Finland, the time bank charges people a small tax in time credits that are then transferred to an “ethical economic actor of choice in the Helsinki Timebank"—a food cooperative, for example.
And in the U.S., he says, some time banks are thriving, yet each is different. In Long Beach and Los Angeles, he describes them as “more arty,” and “filled with people who want to turn the system upside down.”
“You do your work according to the context. I think they are all valid systems, so it’s not about financial poverty. It’s more emotional, social poverty.”
Rushey Green doesn’t exchange time credits for goods. Rather, it stresses exchanging time and connections with people: social interaction and helping each other out. “It’s about community resilience. Helping each other out doesn’t have a financial equivalent. It’s not just survival. Survival in a way is negative, and it implies life is hopeless. Time banking brings life and happiness and fun. It’s not survival. It’s about living.”
And time banking does make living easier. In ArchCare, 69 percent of its time bank members earn below $25,000 a year, in New York City, where the cost of living is high.
“We know the capitalist system isn’t working, and we’re all trying to find a way out of it. Time banking is another way of doing things,” Granger adds. But to get, for example, an electric company to accept time banking credits would be a revolution.
Until then, Granger recommends managing and benefiting from both systems. You can live in multiple systems, he says, “without being an awful rich bastard.”
He cautions against looking to time banking as a solution to all of capitalism’s ills. “This is part of the relationship breakdown in life. We can exert power over the other person and destroy them for the sake of our idea. We’ve got to be careful how we go about it.”
He also points out that many of Rushey Green's members, who are elderly, “couldn’t care less about capitalism. They have a few years left. They just want to have a good time.”
Rushey Green Time Bank is also involved in a neighborhood discount card, with 3,000 members, that local time bank members and others receive, which enables them to get a discount from 160 local businesses. It encourages people to shop locally and support their community. “We’re trying to revive and help small [businesses] to keep going.”
Still, 75 percent of time banks that start don’t exist after a few years, according to Hodge, due to volunteer organizers getting burned out. “You need a skilled organizer type to raise funds,” to hire a paid staffer to keep it going.
“It won’t happen on its own,” she adds.
Granger says time banking is a part of a greater global shift. “Time banking is part of a rich tapestry of doing life differently, and fostering mutual aid. That in itself will reach out to a number of people and thus play a part in transforming our world. It sure needs it.”