After Capitalism: Building an Economy Where Time Is Wealth

Toward a Regenerative Time Economy: A Viable Alternative in the Age of Collapse

Humanity stands at a pivotal crossroads. The climate crisis, driven by unsustainable economic systems and extractive industrial practices, is no longer a distant threat but a lived reality. From rising sea levels to intensifying droughts, collapsing biodiversity to global resource imbalances, the cascade of climate impacts has begun to destabilize both ecosystems and human societies. As traditional capitalist systems struggle to adapt, and as the wealth gap widens and infrastructure ages, we must ask: what will come next?

This essay proposes a radical but attainable alternative: a regenerative economy based not on money, but on time. Grounded in reciprocity, equity, and ecological balance, this system would value every human equally, recognizing that while wealth can be hoarded, time cannot. By realigning how we measure labor, value, and contribution, a time-based economy has the potential to slow destructive overproduction, prioritize human well-being, and become a stabilizing force in a rapidly destabilizing world.

The Problem: Economic Fragility in the Face of Climate Chaos

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming must be capped at 1.5°C to avoid catastrophic and irreversible damage. To do this, emissions must peak before 2025 and drop nearly in half by 2030 (IPCC AR6, 2023). But climate change is not the only system under stress. The Pentagon and global development institutions warn of converging crises: freshwater demand is set to exceed supply by 40% by 2030 (The Guardian, 2023); food systems are under siege from heatwaves, flooding, and soil degradation (FAO, 2022); and up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050 due to climate-related disasters (Zurich Insurance Group, 2022).

As resources grow scarcer and systems falter, markets respond with volatility, not stability. The capitalist economy’s reliance on speed, growth, and competition incentivizes behaviors that worsen ecological overshoot, while leaving the most vulnerable behind. In this context, economic collapse is not a question of "if" but "how soon," and recovery will not come from within the logic that created the crisis.

The Proposal: A Regenerative Time-Based Economy

At the heart of the proposed alternative is a deceptively simple idea: what if time, not money, were our core unit of exchange? Every human has the same number of hours in a day, creating a foundational equality. Instead of pricing work based on scarcity or profit potential, tasks are valued according to the time, care, attention, and regenerative benefit they contribute to society.

In such a system, slow, careful, and community-centered labor is more highly valued than rapid extraction or speculation. Tending a food forest, mentoring youth, restoring a wetland, or caring for elders accrues more "time credits" than manufacturing plastic or engaging in financial speculation. These credits can be exchanged for essential needs: housing, food, education, healthcare, and more.

Unlike monetary wealth, time credits expire or cycle. This discourages hoarding and emphasizes continual contribution. Reputation systems and community validation add depth, enabling individuals to build meaningful legacies not through accumulation, but through care, craftsmanship, and wisdom.

Complications and Considerations

A time-based economy must grapple with complex questions. How do we support individuals who are unable to contribute productively due to age, illness, or disability—especially those without families? The answer lies in designing collective care networks and guaranteed baseline time allocations. Community stewards, rotational caregiving circles, and commons-owned institutions would ensure that everyone has access to dignity, rest, and belonging.

Conversion between time credits and traditional currency must be carefully regulated. A federated system might allow some conversion for essential goods from outside the time commons, but only for regenerative labor and not for destructive or speculative work. The potential for elite co-option, exploitation, or technological inequality also demands governance safeguards, digital transparency, and regenerative value assessments.

Timeline of Urgency: Aligning with Collapse Trajectories

Scientific and military analyses converge on a sobering timeline. The window for meaningful emissions reductions closes between 2025 and 2030 (IPCC AR6, 2023). Between 2030 and 2040, we will likely witness accelerating food and water scarcity, large-scale climate migration, and infrastructure failure in vulnerable regions (U.S. Department of Defense, 2021). By 2050, entire regions may become uninhabitable without artificial cooling, and global GDP could shrink by up to 20% from climate impacts alone.

Any viable alternative economy must be operational before systems fully unravel. We must act now to seed, prototype, and scale regenerative systems that will be adopted not because they win in a marketplace, but because they work when others fail.

Political Context: How U.S. Dynamics May Shape the Transition

The political landscape of the United States—long a global economic and cultural force—is fracturing in ways that could both hinder and catalyze the emergence of new systems. Federal governance is increasingly paralyzed by polarization and declining public trust. As institutional legitimacy wanes, state and local governments are asserting more autonomy. In some regions, this enables experimentation with regenerative models; in others, it emboldens authoritarian and extractive regimes.

Authoritarian tendencies, along with growing surveillance and corporate data monopolies, threaten to suppress grassroots alternatives—particularly if these models challenge concentrated power. Conversely, cultural and youth movements in the U.S. continue to generate powerful new narratives centered on mutual aid, labor solidarity, and ecological stewardship. These movements, if aligned with bioregional and time-based economic principles, could offer crucial early adoption zones, especially in progressive strongholds.

Globally, the waning of U.S. hegemony is accelerating a shift to a multipolar world. This fragmentation of global power opens new opportunities for post-capitalist experiments to take root where traditional governance is faltering. As such, the success of regenerative time economies may depend less on national policy than on the cultural vitality, legal resilience, and technological sovereignty of local communities and federated networks.

The Transition Strategy

Phase one (2025–2028) focuses on pilot projects: small, functioning models that demonstrate time-based labor exchange for housing, food, and care. These must be tied to real land, water, and people. Digital platforms for time credits must be built, governance tested, and communities trained in mutual aid and deliberative decision-making.

Phase two (2028–2033) emphasizes federation: linking pilot projects into bioregional networks that share resources, mentorship, and crisis response protocols. These networks must be resilient, decentralized, and capable of rapid scaling as traditional systems falter.

Phase three (2033–2042) becomes about replacement. As economic collapse accelerates, the Time Commons model steps in to fill critical provisioning gaps: feeding displaced people, organizing mobile care teams, and stewarding land. It is at this point that time-based economies may become widespread not as experiments, but as lifelines.

Phase four (2042–2050) offers a chance to rebuild with care as the central value. Time credits could be enshrined in constitutions, replacing GDP with Gross Regenerative Product (GRP), and universal time pensions could ensure dignity in old age. What began as a workaround becomes a foundation.

A Hopeful Conclusion: It's Already Happening

This vision is not a fantasy. It draws inspiration from time banking systems in Japan (Fureai Kippu) (The Economist, 2010), the U.S. (TimeBanks USA) (timebanks.org), and Spain; from mutual credit systems like Sardex in Italy (Sardex.net); and from the long-standing cooperative economy of Mondragón (mondragon-corporation.com). Community currencies in Kenya (Grassroots Economics), Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness framework (Gross National Happiness Centre), and the emergence of federated digital commons all point toward a new economic direction.

We are not starting from scratch. We are returning to ancestral principles of reciprocity and care, updating them with the best of modern tools, and planting them in fertile soil before the coming storm. The question is not whether we can make this transition, but whether we will act fast and bravely enough to begin it now. The clock is ticking—but time, at last, is on our side.