A conversation with Dr. Edgar Cahn
www.nesta.org.uk/event/conversation-dr-edgar-cahn/
www.nesta.org.uk/event/conversation-dr-edgar-cahn/
Dr. Edgar Cahn, creator of Time Dollars and one of the founding fathers of Time Banking visited Nesta for an afternoon seminar on May 10th 2011. Edgar Cahn is a civil rights activist and a social innovator. He developed a radical new framework for social welfare and social justice that turns recipients of service into co-producers of change.
Edgar's argument is that civil society is vastly undervalued. While markets are a great way of determining commodity prices, they are unable to put a true value on the unseen economy of mutual help and collaboration which we take for granted.
These support systems form the bedrock of our society: they raise families, form strong communities, maintain safe neighbourhoods, and care for our elderly. And yet because there is an abundance of these resources, they are devalued.
The challenge now is to introduce a new way of measuring and exchanging value which doesn't use money.
In 1986 Time Banking was created to try and answer this challenge, and since then it has since spread across the globe.
The godfather of Time Banking, and self-styled government troublemaker, sums up why Time Banking works, why humans are wired differently, and what the future will look like in 2050.