The Talent Exchange is not just about Talents. The recording of transactions involving the crediting and debiting of Talents is just one of several exchange methods offered by the CES online platform.

Others exchange methods are:

Swapping/exchanging: This is the exchange of one explicit service or good for another. Examples are: doing the accounting for ongoing medical visits, books for books, music for music, skateboard for surfboard.

Bartering: This is the offering of a specific something for an unspecific other thing, such as compost for whatever the other side can offer (this could plants, assistance, tools etc, even spread over time). The ‘price’ of one thing is always in terms of the other thing.

Sharing: These are offerings where a group of people gets together and assists each other in turn. For example, there could be a ‘painting party’ where the team goes around and paints each others houses, or a ‘gardening group’ that goes around to each of the participants’ houses and tidies their gardens. Sharing, in this way, is a form of exchange.

Time trading: This records on a ‘private ledger’ time you give and receive with another member. For example, you might give the neighbour’s kids a lift to school each morning and record this as time, which the other side returns by doing a variety of tasks for you. This way you can keep balance with the neighbour to prevent feelings of being exploited.

There are as well the options of gifting, Talents-only, mixed transactions with part Talents and part fiat currency (Rands) and the Virtual-Rand virtual ‘currency’.

The four options mentioned above involve exchanges that are not recorded – ‘off the books’ as it were. There is no need to record every transaction on the Talent Exchange. We are not trying to create another ‘economy’ here, just make it easier for people to exchange what they have and can do for what others have and can do.

The Rand is the State’s exchange system, which attempts to be a monopoly in the zone where it circulates. It does not recognise alternative exchange methods (calls them the ‘black market’, ‘dark economy’, ‘shadow economy’, ‘underground economy’, ‘illegal economy’ etc!) and tries to force all exchange through its one method: money. This results in the monetization of life, where all social relationships are reduced to the economic ones of producers and consumers. This traps us all in the ‘money prison’, where we become money-seeking ‘slaves’. This domain, where everyone is actively pursuing a single end – making money – is called “the economy”.

The Talent Exchange is an attempt to break out of this ‘prison’ by giving us a noconomy! Here we can freely exchange what we have and can do in as many ways as possible, where there is no need to record everything and aggregate all trade into a single metric (such as GNP). This way we can create a happier zone where we can satisfy our life needs without the greed, corruption, usury, competition, poverty, speculation, manipulation, instability, unsustainability … of “the economy”.