Cohousing-L Mailing List: [no subject]

[olevy (olevy]

What about using a different monetary system?

There have been some successful experiments where groups of people have set up 
their own monetary system to run in parallel with the "official" one.  The idea 
is this: people exchange goods or services but they don't use money, instead 
they add or subtract "credits" from their accounts.  For example, say I have 
someone babysit for me and we have agreed on a payment of 50 "credits". I would 
write a check to the babysitter which would subtract 50 "credits" from my 
account and put it in the babysitters account.

So what does this have to do with community work requirements?  Instead of 
charging people extra money, you could instead charge them "credits".  Every 
month cohousing members would have two different bills, one would be a monetary 
bill, and the other would be a "credit" bill to handle community work 
requirements.

What is the advantage of this system? Flexibility.  Many of the cohousing 
groups in the Seattle area use a scheduled chore system. This works because it 
is simple, but it has some serious flaws.  In my case I tend to travel a fair 
bit, and I would end up missing many of the chore dates. The fixed chore system 
limits my community input to the assigned list of chores. Also it assumes that 
only community members will do community work.

The credit system addresses all of these limits.  For example, I can choose to 
pay off my credit balance by fixing someone's computer or by tutoring their 
kids with their math homework.  If I find myself with more money than time, I 
can choose to buy some "credits" with money from someone who is willing to sell 
them.  If someone in the apartment next door wants tutoring for their kid, I 
can do it for, say, 50 credits.  If that person loves gardening, they can turn 
around and pay off their credit debt by doing some landscaping work for my 
cohousing community.

What if some chores don't get done?  There will always be some chores that are 
less popular than others (cleaning toilets, perhaps).  If the community notices 
that it is harder to get some jobs filled rather than others they can simply 
raise the going "credit" payment for that particular job.  If you raise the 
rate high enough the job will get snapped up rather quickly.  For example, if 
cleaning the common toilets just once a month meant that you covered your 
monthly credit charge, I imagine the job would turn out to be quite popular.

All accounts would be public, so it would become quickly obvious which families 
were not pulling their weight.  The credit system would require some 
book-keeping, but there are some strange people (like me) who would actually 
enjoy this.

This may seem like a radical idea, but there are a number of groups who have 
done something just like this and made it work.  I do not know of any cohousing 
groups that have adopted this system, but it seems like it would be a good fit. 
 What do you think?

Odysseus Levy
Seattle Cohousing
(The bulldozers have just started their work on our land -- very exciting!)