Some ramblings about a system of work.

[chess]

You wake up in the morning, and you call up a list of the jobs that are available to you this morning. Usually, you select one near the top of the list. It's sorted by a few simple rules; your most usual areas of work come higher, and so do jobs that you are qualified for and few people are, and so are jobs which haven't been in much demand lately, especially those which are beginning to need doing badly, and hence have extra credits attached. Sometimes you'll pick an afternoon job instead of a morning one; maybe you'll even pick a night one, which carry double credits due to the inconvenience, and then you won't have to work the next day. If you're feeling particularly industrious, you might pick a morning and an afternoon job at once, saving up credits for a holiday later on.

Maybe you wake up in the morning feeling ill. A quick call to the doctors - the night shift is still on at this time - and a few simple self-administered tests reveal you do indeed have a virus. You can stay home today, safe in the knowledge you still earnt the one credit you need to maintain your reasonable standard of living. (If you don't want to work at all, you don't have to, but you can't expect to have nice things, merely barely adequate ones.) Or maybe you're just feeling lazy today; you have the choice to wait until the afternoon, at which point there may not be any jobs left - if that's the case, you get your credit for nothing. Then again, you might get landed with *the* job that nobody else wants to do. Your call. (After all, you could always take a night job if one looks better.)

If you've got something useful to say, you've got another option; you can teach. Just register your course in the morning, attaching details of whatever qualifications it's leading up to if any, and it'll be listed ready for taking in the afternoon - or several days hence, if you want to maximise your chances of getting a class together, though you'll still have to earn a credit somehow today in that case. Get enough people interested - the precise number depends on the demand for your services elsewhere - and you get yourself an appropriate room to teach in, plus a credit. Of course, your students can then rate you, which will be shown to any future classes you might take; ratings expire with time, so don't panic if you get a miserable class that just don't like you - the stain will go away.

You might like to browse the classes list and see if there's anything interesting for this afternoon, or even this morning, if you feel so inclined. You can get credits for learning the right thing (the course being by a well-rated teacher helps too), although it gets more difficult if you're already well-qualified - after all, you can always learn in your free slot, if the community doesn't desperately need you to have those skills. Most qualification is still by examination, but taking the exam costs nothing but your time (which is, after all, your most valuable commodity), and you can take it again whenever it is offered. Setting exams is a job you can volunteer to do much like teaching, although there are also regular times at which the job and hence the exam is available, especially for the most common qualifications. Those qualifications not based on examination are based on experience at a certain job - the more you return to a certain job, the more you're allowed to take supervisory and work-assignment posts in that area - or some kind of distributed rating system.

There are other reasons why you might not be looking at the job list, of course. Maybe you're the carer of a child - each child is allowed one full-time carer, right up until they're 16 if they still want one, although they can start working in their own right pretty much as soon as they like, building up credits for later years when they'll be spending them - they're encouraged to build up qualifications instead, but it's up to them. Maybe you're the carer of an older person who's registered as unable to care for themselves. Maybe you've found a partner who's willing to do both shifts for you to stay home for some reason of your own. Maybe you're a well-rated artist (a term covering all manner of self-employment which others appreciate), and hence are deemed enough of a social good in your own right to devote all your time to your art instead of just half. Maybe you have some kind of permanent certified disability, although if you're not under permanent care there's probably still something you could do from home, so you should have a look.

One credit per day entitles you to pretty much anything that isn't an absolute, profligate waste of resources. One or two things that burn up massively more resources than the community can handle on a regular basis will cost more; you can earn more than one credit a day by working both slots, working nights, or working jobs that nobody wanted and are becoming increasingly desperate. The amount of stuff you can have varies directly with the amount of stuff the community can produce. The only adjustment in 'pay' for different types of job is the 'nobody qualified will take me and I really need to be done' bonus, which is applied to jobs which need doing and which pass whole morning-afternoon-night cycles without getting done. ((Unfortunately, this will probably end up scaling back into the supply-and-demand pay scales of normal jobs; there isn't a lot to be done about this, and hopefully the system will at least smooth this out a little by allowing variety, easy gaining of qualifications, and a level playing field for most, plus disagreeable jobs being paid more.))

One issue here is skill cartels. People with a certain qualification can try and hoarde the knowledge of how to obtain it, and use their skill exclusivity to drive up the job pay to whatever they like, or even demand reductions in service for everyone else so that their newfound wealth is more meaningful. I haven't thought up a way around this particular type of system breakdown yet.

I'd appreciate some critiquing of this general idea; I know it needs an awful lot more work and fleshing-out, it's just something I've been thinking about for a while and never actually putting into words. (The original inspiration came from a SF book titled Salt, which featured an anarchist nation (the Alsists) working along vaguely similar lines.)