Bartering is okay on small level

It is an elegantly beautiful idea, and on the basis of giving back when you have nothing else, it's wonderful. It's just painfully primitive. FILE PHOTO

THERE'S something painfully New Age about Time Banking.

The "father of Time Banking", Professor Edgar Cahn, spoke to a large audience in Masterton yesterday on the concept, which involves working to build up a credit of hours, which can be used to "buy" services from those on the same network.

It is an elegantly beautiful idea, and on the basis of giving back when you have nothing else, it's wonderful. It's just painfully primitive.

A close community is not adverse to the idea of "swapsies", of bartering or exchanging items rather than using money. Go to any art fair or craft show and I can guarantee you artists, generally not the highest earners in New Zealand, will be doing swaps between each other for items they'd love, but can't afford in terms of straight cash. The "cashless economy" concept operates with Bartercard, a system started in the early 90s. And when the recession hit, bartering became more acceptable.

Humans find a way to survive in adversity and one of those ways is the exchange of a product or service, through honest endeavour, for another product or service.

It's something we'll do because we have to. People can't generate money out of thin air. Paying jobs aren't always around. But there always exists the combination of time, labour and skill. You can trade your efforts and abilities.

This works within a network, a mini-society, with similar needs. I don't think it could expand to a larger sector of society that well. We've now evolved to carrying money as a mutually agreed "promise" of payment, because it is universal and, more simply, a lot easier to keep track of and carry around. Its value is not fixed, but subject to government and banking manipulation, international market forces and inflation, and there have certainly been some extreme monetary failures in history. But at a local level, day to day, it's consistent.

Time-banking is a great idea for a small group, but I believe people are inherently resistant to "stepping back" in terms of commerce. We're certainly not all equal under a monetary system, but money is designed to handle complexities such as loans and social welfare benefits - in other words, looking after those who would otherwise be denied the means to live.