Good day , good people of the world

I was in my room making my bed, and I had recently delivered a message (as a favour) from one house mate to another house mate, which got me to thinking...while making my bed.... how neat it is that humans have evolved a very unspoken "favour" system by which to get things done. Its not quite altruism, which implies a greater sacrifice, it's rather like an efficient time swapping system.

Think about it, "hey man, can I get a lift to the L.C. with you?" in an unspoken sense there is a truly "free" labour movement with a the characteristic of being controlled by the relationships bond. A favour system between a wife and husband can be quite intricate and involve almost any task. However, amongst co-workers the functionality of the "favour" is distinctly different, however again we see a time component. A co-worker of many years is more likely then a new hire to honour both more favours and well as more elaborate favours of longer lengths.

If a statistician and a scientific survey were used we would be able shed some light on just how much we as humans contribute to the "favour" system. I would be interested to find out how wide spread this system is from culture to culture and also whether or not this amount of favours can be tied to overall productivity, happiness, crime etc.

It also occurs to me that money is the point at which favours get quantified, and how interesting a break that can be from an innate sense of fairness, rather then make a decision on whether or not to help a neighbour by giving him some of your crop for example, or your time to mend a fence, instead that very service has been deemed many times to a role usually associated with a per hour fee. A simple fee. But what have we lost in the creation of fees for favours? The good news is family, and relationships of this type involving large amounts of interaction such as room mates, co workers, friends, lovers, team-mates and many more I am sure to miss have still maintained a large FREE exchange of time.

I can see how perfectly logical a dollar equivalent is to most services and goods, given the enormity of what we assume to be important (a.k.a bigger planes, bigger bridges, bigger buildings)  but in the end your left with a system where everything can eventually be equated to a price. A price to help, a price to hurt. A price to kill. It really is tragic to see how so many dollars, danirs or yen can tear apart large sections of humanity.

Now more then ever before it is important for us to pay attention to favours, understand what they mean and act more to maintain this meaningful exhange if it has real value. Imagine, if in the end the whole key to our happiness together was a simple realization of how we can all innately sense fairnesss.

Never again will we need a dollar to tell us our worth.