11:20am | Alternative currencies are nothing new,1 and yet in Long Beach they’re not exactly well established. But the Long Beach Time Exchange has just logged one year in the process of changing that. And it’s time to celebrate.
On Sunday, one and all are invited to join in that celebration, as 2nd City Council Art Gallery will host a free event that (according to the event press release) “will showcase time-bank members’ skills and talents and will include food, live music, and information about time banking — a system where community members give and receive services through the exchange of time rather than money.”
The idea isn’t complicated: a member who provides one hour’s worth of service to another member receives a credit of one “time dollar” in his or her time-banking account, which can be redeemed for an hour’s worth of service provided by another member. “From dog-walking to graphic design, community organizing to tutoring, cooking lessons to massage therapy,” explains the LBTE Website, “everyone’s time is valued equally.”
A question that might be asked by any of us accustomed to a capitalist system where the price of a service is determined by whatever you can get for it — or in the jargon of economics, “whatever the market will bear” — is: Why should all services be valued equally, with the amount of time spent being the only value distinction?
As LBTE co-founder Christine Petit explains it, “Time banking recognizes that everybody does have something to give, and that our time is inherently valuable. Time banking is not necessarily to replace the market economy — we’re not living outside of that reality — but it’s also recognizing that not everything that has value in our communities and society is valued in a market economy.”
According to Tony Damico, LBTE’s other co-founder, during the last year the LBTE’s over 200 members have exchanged more than 2,600 time dollars.
“The Long Beach Time Exchange is such a positive addition to our community because it recognizes that everyone has something to give, and we’re stronger together,” says LBTE Steering Committee member Vanessa Acosta.
Sunday’s event is meant to bring that point home.
2nd City Council Art Gallery is located at 435 Alamitos Ave. The Long Beach Time Exchange’s one-year anniversary celebration takes place Sunday, September 18, from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.
1 For an overview of the concept, read Long Beach resident and UC Irvine Anthropology Department Chair Bill Maurer’s outstanding book, Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason.