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I haven't ever used an Ithaca Hour, but I'm aware of them. I've heard through folks I know who have been more involved with it that the main problem with Hours is that they all end up collecting at the few stores who accept them. I guess Greenstar has tons of hours but can't really get rid of them. I don't think they're very common, even among the folks most likely to use them.
I think the Ithaca hours idea is awesome. Anything that treats people's services equally, fosters barter, gets us closer to living locally in community -- i'm all for it.
In fact, I put myself into the Ithaca Hours directory a year before moving to Ithaca, joining and receiving ithaca hours for joining... Those Ithaca Hours are now in my wallet. I usually forget to ask when I go into a new store whether or not Ithaca Hours are accepted; however, I'm determined to use them. As well as accept them in exchange for editing/translating services...
Ithaca Hours faded away after the founder moved to Philadelphia.
If you live in Ithaca, you probably won't see an Hour, unless you're deeply embedded in the hippie/crunchy scene. I'm not taking about shopping at Greenstar and driving a Prius. From what I've seen, the last holdouts tend to be alternative health and spirituality practitioners, old time "hippie handymen", backyard farmers, and the like, who use Hours in a closed loop of sorts. Basically, a shaman will use hours to get their chakra realigned, the chakra realigner will use their hours to buy some black market raw milk, etc. Even then, it's pretty much on life support.
Ithaca Dollars seem to be the successor to Hours. It's a new system, and the people and businesses that accept it are on the crunchy side. Whether you can use Ithaca Dollars for more than yoga classes or CSA shares remains to be seen. I'll be sold on the idea when I can use Ithaca Dollars at Gimme' Coffee or Agway.
>Are stores and customers forced to accept Ithaca Hours in transactions?
No. I think the only exception would be getting "change" if you'd paid in Hours in the first place at one of the small number of places that accepts them.
Anything that values all peoples time equally like the original hours is economically worse than our current system. I don't want to imagine a future where a surgeon trading a 4 hour heart surgery for his patient re-caulking the bathrooms in his home for 4hours....
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Ithaca hours in my wallet
