In local society, people and neighbors help each other to do ordinary and simple things. Local inhabitants all know each other’s, they are communicating with each other every day. Having a friendly conversation with your friend in the evening while drinking a glass of beer seems a simple thing but quitting this habit could easily uncover how social creatures we are. Martin McDonagh illustrates it in The Banshees of Inisherin; when fiddle player Colm (Brendan Gleeson) tells Padraic (Colin Farrell) their friendship is over, Padraic is horrified. Colm adores Mozart and wants to concentrate on composing music that will last the test of time. He’s got no room in his life for a pal who’s “too nice”. Padraic fails to take the hint. It’s too hard for Padraic to accept their friendship is over, he feels worthless, a person who is thrown away.
Local society and relations between family and friends are important. When a problem arises in the neighborhood people know which of them can solve it or help to solve that problem. In modern neighbors where people live in apartments, they barely know each other because it’s not a long time since they’re lived in that apartment and usually don’t have any plans to stay there for a long time. Therefore, they don’t have enough time to get familiar with their neighbors. They are used to take advantage of online city services and other private companies which offer payable social services.
In modern life, most things and services can be bought. But is it possible to buy everything? How much you must pay to receive love from your mother when you are born? How much you must pay to make someone truly loves you? And how much you must pay to have children or friends who love you and take care of you when you are old?
These are tough questions that the market economy can’t easily respond to. On this note, I want to propose an idea for an app that is not mine; years ago professor Edgar S. Cahn, the father of Time Banking suggested it.
Cahn invented a tax-exempt currency called Time Dollars, which is designed to validate and reward the work of the disenfranchised in rebuilding their communities and fighting for social justice. He believes that when we think about economics, we are looking at only part of the map. All economic planning omits at least a third of the map, he says. The overlooked part is the one you go home to each night and that’s called home, family, neighborhood, community, and civil society; some economists call it the Core Economy in contrast with the Market Economy.
Why doesn’t the market economy care about the core institutions? Simply because there is no money in it. With Time Dollars, Professor Cahn found a solution to create an economy based on core parts of the society that had been ignored in the market economy. Despite the market economy, in the core economy what you do in one hour, is equal to everybody’s one hour of work, no matter how hard it is. Because in this economy we don’t sell or buy goods, we share love, kindness, and humanity, to care for each other. In this kind of cooperation, no one will feel weak, they’re no more throwaway people. Even a disabled person or an old man by doing just a tiny thing in one hour can cooperate in society and gain value equal to a for example young talented person.
To implement Time Banking System and manage Time Dollars, Professor Edgar Cahn proposed these rules for the system:
Isn’t it a good idea for creating an app? I think it would be a novel social app if programmers created it by cooperating with social activists. In such a social network everybody would feel useful and can think of him/herself as a person that has value for his/her society. People don’t just need to be fed, they don’t need just money to feel happiness. Happiness is real when shared also people need to be important and useful not throw away people.
