Making the big labor credits

I live in a world that is slightly inconceivable to most people.  I do a lot of work, almost all of it stuff I am super pleased to do.  And I don’t get paid for it.  Instead the communities I live in (Twin Oaks and Acorn) cover most of the costs of my living: Food, shelter, clothes, education, entertainment, medical insurance, dental insurance, and most of my travel.

Instead of getting paid in money, besides the services listed above,  I accrue labor credits.  For each hour I work, I get one labor credit.  My labor obligation is 42 hours a week.  It makes little sense, however, to compare this work quota to most people’s straight jobs.  On the rare cases when I commute (like to a college speaking gig or a craft show) I get “paid” for my time traveling.  I get labor credits for voting and going to the doctor, and some small fraction of the time I spend taking care of my son Willow is labor creditable.  All the time I spend with Willow on home schooling, including the prep is labor creditable.  When I clean our collective dishes, I get labor credits.  If I were to cook for more than 7 people (which I never do) it would be also be creditable.

Working with Tofu at Twin Oaks

Some of the stuff I do is hard.  I do mediation between people who are furious with each other.  I work to stop nuclear power plants.  I am trying to start income sharing communities in NYC, where couples committed to each other for life find it easier to not share income.  I help find consensus when there is sharp disagreement.  With some regularity people thank me and appreciate the difficulty of this work.  When I am feeling clever or exhausted by my efforts I say, “That is why I make the big labor credits”, a silly knock off on the phrase “That is why I make the big bucks.”

Silly, because all labor credits are exactly the same size.  One hour is one credit.  It does not matter how hard I work in an hour to the accounting system (though other members certainly appreciate and celebrate anyone’s hard work).  The labor credit I get for an hour of preparing space for a party is the exact same size as the one I get for hour I spend getting a drunk and belligerent guest out of the party.  The labor credit I get for folding mail in the sun while talking with charming visitors is the same size as the one I get for counseling and talking down a manic or suicidal member.

Working in the Gardens at Acorn

I don’t need to get a bigger labor credit for the harder work.  Turns out when my basic needs are met, I am pretty well off.  The communities are poor.  The people who live there have legitimately calculated taxable income below the poverty line (or at least in the case of Twin Oaks–Acorn is higher but still below the national average income).  What this radical sharing we deploy does is to permit us to live like kings (or at least like the upper middle class), while we live in technical poverty.

If you are thinking to yourself “Wait why doesn’t everyone do this?  We could eliminate the awful effects of living in poverty without having to make any more money,” you would be on to something.  Besides stopping climate change, we would be saving millions of lives from the sharp edge of poverty.

What stops us is we don’t trust each other enough to share what we have, almost all of which is sitting idle almost all the time.

Post Script:  I should clarify this thing about traveling, since it has sparked a bunch of questions.  Perhaps half of these trips are paid for by the communities i live in.  These include craft fairs trips with Hawina, college speaking gigs,  hammocks sales trips and almost monthly trips to DC/Baltimore and NYC for the Point A Project, With the possible exception of Ira from Acorn, no one at either Twin Oaks or Acorn travels even close to this much.  And i travel more than this.

I visit my mother at least two or three times a year, often in Florida, and she pays for this travel completely.  I also travel with the Star family (my family of choice) and i pay for this out of money i earn outside of the community.  I am also fortunate to have romantic intimates who pay for me to come and see them in all manner of curious or exotic locations.