Whoever said “Time Is Money” got it backwards. Anyone who still believes this is now moving backwards in economic time.
Reality is simple: Money is time.
We pay to extend our live, we pay to have a good time, we wonder what time it is, we share time, we exchange time, we invest time. Everybody has a limited amount of time on Earth and everybody is competing for a slice of someone else’s time. Money is just the scorecard in a game of time.
Time is limited for everyone on Earth.
Sure, we often trade our time for money, but we also trade our time for many things; our children, families, travels, experiences, sleep, and consuming products and services. There is no other factor to which our behavior is more determined than time. Everyone does whatever they know to make the best use of their time.
How on Earth can the Whole Wide World go bankrupt?
Easy. The interest on money increases with time. When the total amount of money in existence is less than the sum of the principal plus the interest due, the World is bankrupt. We have long passed this point so what happens next is anyone’s guess, but be assured, something will happen.
Here is my guess, Money and Time will swap places. “Time is Money”, becomes “Money is Time”. The principal will inflate away while the “interest” will continue to changes with time – but it will be pegged to “people” who also change with time. As such, People and their knowledge become the medium of storage, exchange, and trade. Knowledge is contained between their ears as social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital.
Social Media Happens
Social Media saves time and people’s interaction with each other on social media is affecting the nature of money.
Google saves time, Wikipedia saves time, Amazon.com saves time, Facebook saves time, Linkedin save time. Foursquare and Gowalla increase the value of social time because going local saves time. Mashable and Tech Crunch save people time. Bloggers, educators, entertainers, and recreation increases the quality of time related to the intentions of the consumer. Trust, engagement, reputation, conversation, relationships, and tribes save time. Social Innovation saves time.
The Time Paradigm and the next generation of social applications
The next economic paradigm will be time based (as the scarce resource) and will probably look very similar to the one we know and understand today. The difference is that everyone will interact with the clock instead of the dollar.
In the next generation of social media applications we see that value will be derived from time saved or punished for time squandered. People will behave in a manner dependent on how much their time is worth.
The new business models will compete against time, rather than price. Quality will be measurable by anyone. Precision and accuracy will be rewarded and manipulation will be punished. At the end of the day, Money is Time and the quality of time is the quality of money.
The Future of Money is the future of Time:
It’s hard to imagine any product or service that wastes people’s time surviving past the next decade. It is hard to image any future innovation that does not save time over whatever it replaces. It is hard to imagine the basis of any currency without a time value.
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As we build the Next Economic Paradigm we seek to define the quality of conversations.
