hOURS – helluva Organized United Reciprocation System
Why I created it (by Fred Kittelmann)
The point of hOURS is to be
an alternative economic system, in opposition to the competitive, monetized,
capitalist, “free market” we’ve already got.
hOURS is by no means
intended as an ideal form of economic relations, but rather as a step along the
way to unraveling all the nastiness.
hOURS is of course also
quite puny in scope compared to the dominant system, but others are doing similar
things, and there is incredible room and potential for growth. We have to start somewhere and this is a
good direction in which to proceed.
One more caveat, before I
get comfortable on the soapbox. I’m
amazed at how universal the appeal of hOURS has been. I’ve gotten near unanimous enthusiasm from a wide variety of
folks. I don’t want to risk narrowing
that appeal by emphasizing my own personal motivations, which are likely to be
different from those of many of you. I
would ask that you judge hOURS based on what it is: a system of reciprocation
where people… Don’t judge it based on
what I, think it is. In
the long run that doesn’t matter.
The main means by which
hOURS challenges the dominant system is by providing the opportunity to boycott
the almighty dollar, indeed money in general.
To replace dollars with another unit of currency, of our own creation,
as other LETS’s do, would be to seriously weaken its potential. Presently, most people value money, a
fictional construct, over real-life concerns such as working conditions,
interpersonal relations and the environment.
In conflicts between the above, people generally make decisions based on
the “bottom line”. hOURS devalues
money, making it less of a necessity in people’s lives. Thus it begins to tip the balance toward the
“real” concerns, improving people’s quality of life.
You might ask, isn’t
money good for people though? It
depends on what’s meant by “people”. To
think money can bring an improved standard of living is a narrow
viewpoint. It helps whoever gets it,
but only at the expense of others: either whoever gave it up, or in the case of
more having been printed, everyone’s money becomes a little less valuable. Economic growth in general worsens
the standard of living of the human race as a whole through effects like
increased monetization, increased dependency on others, the destruction of
non-exchange type means of providing for ourselves, and
counterproductivity. Cars are a good
example of the latter. If only a few
people have them, the technology can enhance their quality of life by making
transportation easier. But when
everyone has a car it’s gridlock and no one goes anywhere. (To be fair, economic growth might not be 100%
bad if the business enterprise created thereby, produces a product or service
useful to the human species as a whole, and does so at a sensible level – But
who has a job like that?!) hOURS is
anti-growth and anti-money. By
participating, people achieve a degree of autonomy from the big institutions
which control the bulk of the money. If
we can boycott money, we can boycott the Federal Reserve System, Wall Street,
and big corporations. We won’t have to
put up with any sort of moneylords, like bankers, that earn their living
parasitically, presiding over transactions and skimming off the top. Even the government and professions like law
and medicine would eventually be effected.
Taken to its logical conclusion, a situation where everyone satisfies
their material needs through hOURS rather than the current economy, such
institutions lose all their power and surrender their ability to impact public
policy and decide what sorts of activities people will engage in. Three cheers for that!!!
Financial empire, perhaps
even hierarchy in general, is impossible under hOURS. We all have the same net worth (24/7) to spend as we see
fit. The highest standards of living
are possible, but fortune as a means of being able to dominate others is
not. There’s little room for surplus
value, or exploitation of any kind. One
particular form of domination, made possible through the manipulability of an
abstract concept like money, but impossible with the non-manipulability of
units of time, is the wide discrepancy in how the work people do is
valued. It’s not right that executives
make thousands and thousands of times as much money as Wal-mart clerks do. (Especially when the latter actually do
something useful by telling you what aisle such and such is in, but the former
set policies that destroy the environment and make decisions like “let’s build
bombs instead of bicycles”.) No wage
discrepancies are legitimate. Even the
neurosurgeon who saves someone’s life should not earn more than the clerk, for
the former is not possible without the latter.
No one can practice neurosurgery without a slew of others providing for
their more mundane needs. Perhaps this
is clearer if one considers a farmer rather than a clerk. If no one will grow enough food to feed
others as well as themselves, we all have to be farmers. There can be no division of labor. The division of labor is a group effort in
which everyone plays an equal part.
Therefore everyone should be compensated equally. Neurosurgeons ought to be happy with the
prestige and honor that comes with a special skill, and not feel the need to
economically crush everyone else under their heel to boot. Turning back the clock a bit we can see an
even better example than the farmer.
What about the surgeon’s wife who cooks and cleans and so forth, whom he
couldn’t do without? The dominant
economy has, and continues to, define many people as not just worth less,
but worthless. The homeless
people on the street can’t even get that minimum wage clerk job. Full employment, according to the Federal
Reserve Board, is actually 4% unemployment, a level they roughly maintain
through manipulation of the money supply.
True full employment would lead to a breakdown of workplace authority as
the consequences of losing a job dwindle to next to nothing. hOURS rejects all that crap. In an hOURS world, everyone is welcome. Everyone is useful. And there’s no Fed to say otherwise.
Not that hOURS would be a
utopia. It’s still a market type
system, which has many problems. One is
the matter of collective goods. Markets
have no incentive to create any, and tend to destroy those inherent to the
aboriginal human condition, like clean air.
If pollution is a side effect of a business, no incentive to rethink
things will naturally ensue, for it doesn’t show up on the bottom line, whereas
dealing with it would. Exchanges are
dissociated from their social context.
Contrary to working by consensus, who the costs and benefits of
economic activity get assigned to means everything. If making widgets in a certain way saves the company $10, but the
side effect is that half the world gets cancer, it’s still rational from a
business perspective; even more so if the company also makes cancer
medications. By the way, it’s not
necessary to believe business leaders would have to be monsters to act that
way. Psychological mechanisms like
denial and ego defense bypass that hurdle, allowing “the system” to operate
according to its own logic. Then again,
some such people really are monsters.
One federal official, several years ago, lauded the destruction of the
ozone layer as good for the economy because it would increase sales of sunscreen
and sunglasses. And you know what, he’s
right. (Bet you didn’t expect me to say
that.) Here’s the critical leap to
make: If the economy is a thing which makes destruction of the ozone layer ok,
we need to get rid of it. We need
the ozone layer. We need it bad. We don’t need the economy. (What, that’s crazy.) Here’s the critical observation to help make
the leap: The word “economy” has a mystifying effect. It means both the bottom line concerns of sunscreen manufacturers
(and other big businesses). And it also
means the way we provide for ourselves.
Having the word mean both helps narrow, private interest masquerade as
the public interest. Believe it or not,
we can provide for our material needs without destroying the ozone layer. One thing that makes me want to puke is all
the exhortations to travel and fly, and all the corporate welfare being doled
out to airlines in the wake of the terrorist attack. Believe it or not, we can provide for our material needs without
flinging ourselves great distances through the air. In fact, our standard of living need not suffer at all because of
it. Don’t let the two senses of the
word muddle your head. In the one
sense, the economy is a nasty thing that’s been kicking our asses daily. If we bring it down, how do we maintain an
economy in the other sense? hOURS.
All right, returning from
that slight tangent, another problem with market economies is that they
radically increase the amount of competition in human relations and the general
ill will that breeds. We see people
getting attached to their niches in the marketplace. When people’s livelihoods become attached to their niches it
generates a downright demented consequence: economic activity becomes about creating
needs rather than satisfying them. The
significance (size) of ones niche (economic territory) becomes more important
to ones success than how well that role is fulfilled. My house has a very old furnace built so well it will probably
outlast me. Good job satisfying needs,
but bad for business – no repeat customers.
Making crappy products designed to break down is rewarded under the
market system. You get to sell
replacements. This problem is also
apparent in the efforts of professions to drive up the need for their services.
Though hOURS is
such a market type system, there are a few reasons why it can mitigate problems
like these nonetheless. 1) We don’t
actually have a free market economy. We
have corporate socialism, which is even worse.
While a marketplace works to the advantage of the strong, (The New York
Times gets more out of “the marketplace of ideas” than I do. Big business gets more out of a market
economy than I do. The market is a
fictitious claim of “level playing field” to help justify inequities.) on rare
occasions it can fail to serve the interests of the powerful. When this happens though, the truth comes
out; as such results are not allowed to stand.
In other words, when Chrysler fails, it doesn’t. Add this to rampant corporate welfare and
it’s clear we have a system of corporate socialism designed to serve
monstrosities like Chrysler. An actual
free market would be a step up. 2)
Under hOURS, people won’t be motivated by scarcity. Scarcity makes people freak out.
The supply of money is tightly controlled. hOURS can be generated by anyone at any time. Without the need to compete for a scarce
resource, people are less driven to act unethically. With an hour being an hour, it greatly reduces people’s ability
to increase the value of their wares through mean-spirited anti-social
mechanisms (e.g. pillaging the water supply or other collective goods,
propaganda and intellectual hocus-pocus making ones skills seem more desirable,
etc.) 3) Another consequence of an hour
being an hour is that people can shift market niches without a loss of
value. Suppose people, under hOURS, got
so good at promoting holistic health that people rarely got sick anymore. Loss of livelihood? Not so.
They can earn just as many hours at their new bike building
business. There will be no need to
defend their original business by say, promulgating advertising to dupe people
who don’t need their services into thinking they do need them, or doing
a crappy job to encourage repeat business.
But when someone moves from an area they have expertise to one where
they don’t, isn’t this an overall loss for society as a whole? No, because that’s smaller than the overall
improvement in social welfare associated with the health services being less
needed. It’s just plain old moving on.
An ideal economy would
have true reciprocity with concern for all.
This is seen in primitive societies where mutual aid is so much the norm
that saying “thank you” is frowned upon.
(There’s an implication one didn’t expect the thankee to be so generous,
and it makes you look like a rude miserly type who keeps careful track of debts
and obligations instead of mellowing out.)
hOURS clearly isn’t that, but we can use it to start cleaning up the
mess. I’m optimistic about its chances
for success because it’s an example of a paradigm of activism I developed
called “activism from superiority”. The
key feature is that “doing the right thing” is the better way to live; meaning
that benefits naturally accrue to those involved, in this case the building of
a supportive community, not having to pay taxes, and other advantages of relief
from the crushing grip of moneylords.
Such a framework is more conducive to building a mass movement than
traditional efforts which need to acquire resources and work on motivations
like guilt and sympathy. The “force of
example” to others is stronger, and you get a sort of natural selection as the
flow of resources, relatively speaking, favors those who participate over those
who don’t. By utilizing the value in
what people have to offer that our society considers “throwaway”, and building
a community of resistance that withdraws support from the system and grows
stronger because of it, we can make great change.