Tuits-How Do They Work?

A tuit is an hour of honest labor made visible, and more than just visible, beautiful.
I do an hour of work in the public interest and then I make a beautiful artful token in celebration of that labor. That token, when it is associated with an hour of labor, becomes a tuit. That tuit is traded to someone for something, kept to signify personal social capital, or given away to enrich the social capital of  others. Sometimes I just make tokens to give away to people doing community service labor so they can make them into tuits.

If someone decides to keep a tuit because their friend made it, or it is just too beautiful to spend, or for any other reason that's fine. Both hoarding and giving away tuits encourage participants to make more by doing more work to help the community in order to have tuits to trade.

Participants in the network exchange goods and services for tuits completely at their own discretion. People are encouraged to be as generous as their situation allows, in order to generate the most social capital for all participants in the transaction.

It is acknowledged that people will make their own additions and modifications to the tuit lore. Play with it. Tell others what you come up with.

What are Tuits?

Tuits are a non-monetary currency system consisting of tokens which represent one hour of honest labor. The system is completely open and on the honor system, meaning that anyone is welcome to participate in the creation or exchange of tuits and there is no central mint or mathematical accounting system.

Participants who make tuits are encouraged to make their tuits works of art in order to increase their value as social capital. Participants who do labor to create the value of tuits are encouraged to do the best job they can in order to support the positive reputation of tuits.Participants who provide goods, services, or their own labor in exchange for tuits are encouraged to be as generous with the quality of their participation as their situation allows. All participants are encouraged to see their participation as part of a larger gift to the community that the system of tuits represents.

Square tuits are meant to be exchangeable only for basic goods and services needed to sustain life. Round tuits can be used for anything. Designating whether a tuit shall be created as round or square is solely up to the discretion of the maker of that tuit. Deciding just what a basic good or service is or is not is decided by the participants in that exchange and no other.

While tuits may be created in any size, one possibility is to make them of a suitable size to wear as personal adornment, such as necklace or earrings. With that in mind, it could be helpful to create tuits with holes in them for stringing or hanging, and even make some that are buttons or beads. Durability is encouraged, but not required. That is again up to the discretion of the maker.

Participants in the world of tuits are encouraged to communicate about it, in person, in writing, however you can get the word out there about your experience with tuits.