Time economics

An Economic Paradigm Shift in our Political Economy

"Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself"

At the end of our lives, the biggest thing people regret is not spending more time with the people they love. Our time is the most important scarce resource we have in life. This is the purpose of Time Economics, to maximize the value of the scarce resources we have.

When Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, wealth was measured by the amount of gold and silver one had. That was the goal of Mercantilism. Smith argued that real wealth was measured by the amount of exchange a nation has because that meant there was a higher division of labor. (Before the industrial revolution, people mainly worked for themselves, making their own food/shelter/clothes). With people able to specialize into more niche jobs, they could become more productive by increasing their skills in that area. Plus, money doesn't mean anything if you never spend it. So today, we measure national wealth through GDP, or the amount we produce/consume in the market. 

In the developed world, we've reached a point where the biggest constraint of consumption is on the demand side instead of the supply side. Increasing consumption has diminishing marginal utility, so we should start to measure what consumption is ultimately for - to increase our Quality of Time. By solely measuring economic success by exchange, we completely ignore the most important scarce resource we have in life, which is time. 

Total Freedom Time (TFT): A new metric for national wealth

Our time matters, but not to neoliberal economists. Total Freedom Time is a new national metric for economists to strive for beyond GDP. The Freedom Graph shows the relationship between consumption (GDP) and our free time (TFT). For example, automation allows us to increase our consumption and increase our free time. Unfortunately, since our time has been completely disregarded by the field of economics, we have seen few gains in increasing our free time (except for the end of our lives, which arguably is not the most productive time to enjoy our lives). 

By focusing on our time instead of our consumption, we can justify cutting segments of our economy that destroy our natural environment. Time is especially useful for measuring our environment since all of our time, including future generation's time, should be seen as equal. So, we can stop valuing the environment through price and selfishly discounting the future environment to its present value. 

Purpose of Time Economics

Economics is the study of how society uses scarce resources, Time Economics focuses on the most important scarce resource of all, our time. The fields of economics that revolve around money have resulted in a discounting of our future environment, massive inequality, and substantial inefficiencies such as planned obsolescence and the broken window fallacy. These issues are addressed by not discounting the time of the future, measuring everyone equally, and focusing on human time instead of a medium of exchange. 

Time Economics can also help shape our built environment to serve us, instead of increasing GDP. We spend large portions of our lives getting around in dangerous and expensive vehicles that require massive infrastructure spending. This has negatively affected the time it takes to get from point a to point b while increasing the time we have to spend working to maintain it. Which is all justified and encouraged for "economic growth". 

Freedomomics (Efficiency-Effect Economics)

We need your help to develop Time Economics!

The concept of Time Economics was created by Alex Thompson, the founder of the Just Markets Institute, in 2024 to provide an economic justification for the major problems of our time. We must move away from conflating the economy with GDP, and towards the ultimate value we all share, time. Please email alex@justmarkets.institute to help build the revolutionary new field of Time Economics!

Free Time and Essential Time

We don't consume goods and services for consumptions sake, yet we define economic success through consumption (GDP). Time Economics seeks to solve this fundamental problem of economics by redefining economic success as measure of human time. Just as value is subjective when consuming, the value of time is also subjective. We measure the subjective value of consumption through price. Time Economics measures the subjective value of time through a binary mindset, Essential Time versus Free Time. Essential Time can include work and chores you have to do to maintain your level of consumption. While Free Time includes how you want to spend your time, like with friends/family, on hobbies, and on work you find fulfilling. This binary benchmark is akin to the measure of value through price, as we face a binary choice to purchase or not purchase, and cannot measure the marginal subjective value beyond the price point. Similarly, it would be impossible to measure the marginal subjective value differences of time, even though they exist. 

The key assumptions are everyone matters equally, value is subjective and people understand reality.