White paper · The concept
MANA is an energy — the energy of given time. TempoSystem quantifies it. A first accounting of what truly matters, without ever turning it into money.
Version 1.1 — July 2026 · English edition
A shared document of the MANA universe
ManaTimeBank × TempoSystem
ManaTimeBank — the international concept · TempoSystem — the inscription · Under the digital Constitution of the MANA Alliance
Contents
Two signatures, one idea
ManaTimeBank carries the concept — the why, the energy of given time, its reading. TempoSystem carries the inscription — the how, the faithful measure, its guardians. This white paper is their common ground. The contemplative manifesto lives elsewhere (The European Source, temposystem.eu); the technical doctrine, in the internal logbook.
01 — In brief
For the reader in a hurry — or the sceptic — here is the whole argument, in plain words, before any image.
The rest of the document unfolds each of these lines — and shows why it is serious, feasible, and already under way.
02 — The starting point
Every day, millions of gestures hold the world up: sitting with an ageing parent, listening to a neighbour, passing on a skill, accompanying, consoling. None of it appears in a nation's accounts. We measure what is easy to count, not what makes a life worth living.
This is no technical detail: it is a blind spot at the heart of how our societies see themselves. And it was known from the very start.
Simon Kuznets, the architect of modern national accounting, warned in his 1934 report to the U.S. Congress: "the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income." The father of GDP cautioned against using it as a compass for well-being. We ignored him for ninety years. — Kuznets, National Income, 1929-1932, U.S. Senate, Document No. 124, 73rd Congress, 1934.
The most human part of the economy is the least counted. According to the International Labour Organization, unpaid care work amounts to about 9% of global GDP — nearly US$11 trillion — and up to 10 to 39% of GDP depending on the country. Women perform 76.2% of it. Marilyn Waring showed it back in 1988: what the accounts do not inscribe, society ceases to see. — ILO, Care work and care jobs, 2018; M. Waring, If Women Counted, 1988.
The question of this white paper is simple: what if we finally learned to inscribe what matters?
03 — The legacy
A sound intuition already exists. In the 1980s, the American jurist Edgar Cahn invented time banking: what if everyone's time were worth as much as anyone else's? An hour given is worth an hour — whatever the task, whoever the giver. — E. Cahn & J. Rowe, "Time Dollars", 1992.
An idea of equal dignity, and a beautiful one: almost everyone has something the community needs. It nourished the "core economy" — the economy of bonds — and co-production: turning beneficiaries into contributors.
The reported effects are real: well-being, a sense of usefulness, social capital, inclusion. In fairness, it must also be said: this evidence base remains fragile — mostly qualitative, with few objective measures and little follow-up over time. The promise is beautiful; its demonstration is still to be consolidated. — Systematic reviews on time currencies & public health, 2018-2025.
Time banks keep a unit that betrays them: the hour-cheque. You give an hour, you hold a one-hour claim. That is credit — a complementary currency in disguise. And that logic carries its own well-documented limits:
| Limit | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Hyper-locality | Small circles, few members → few services → hard to grow. |
| Double coincidence of wants | Supply must meet exactly the need, at the right moment. |
| Dependence on stewardship | Administrative costs, a need for a broker and for funding. |
| Distortion | Time-credit can recreate market effects (scarcity, queues) that pure giving ignores. |
Our turning point
We keep the intuition — time as value, the equal dignity of the hour — and we break the unit. Given time will not be a claim to spend, but an energy to inscribe.
04 — The heart of the concept
MANA is not a currency. MANA is an energy — the energy of given time. Just as solar energy is born of fusion and radiates while expecting nothing in return, the energy of MANA is born of the gift: care, presence, mutual aid. A human energy, real, that circulates from one person to another.
To treat given time as an energy is not a metaphor: it is a modelling choice — the one that finally makes it measurable. Heat existed before the thermometer; yet it remained impossible to compare or track, as long as no unit inscribed it.
The division of labour
MANA is the energy; TempoSystem is its measure. One is the substance, the other the instrument. MANA is to energy what TempoSystem is to the thermometer: without it, the warmth of the gift would stay invisible, incomparable, forgotten.
And this measure has a precise nature — it is a trace, not a claim:
Turned toward the future: "I am owed." A balance to spend. Its value is what I keep. The logic of the hour-cheque and of money.
Turned toward the past: "this happened, this mattered." A testimony. Its value is what I gave. The record is a memory, not a wallet.
To make care visible (it exists in the record), lasting (it does not fade) and transmissible (it can be passed on): this is the grammar common to all the worlds of MANA. There remains the most delicate question — if the inscribed energy is not a claim, what does it grant? The answer holds in two celestial bodies.
05 — The diptych
Two gestures, two bodies. The sun tells how the energy is given. The moon tells how it is read. Neither accumulates — and that is precisely why this is not a currency.
"The sun gives, gives, gives — and never sends an invoice."
☀️
The sun keeps no ledger of debts against you: it radiates. The gift does not engrave a claim, it engraves a radiance. It creates no debt — it creates a bond and a place. Knowing how to give is the reward: not a credit to cash in, but the capacity to give, and a person who grows.
🌙
We read no balance; we read phases. Like the moon, the state of giving waxes, wanes, returns. In mana.bzh, we do not look at a number: we look at where the light stands. A moon does not accumulate: the number stays a tool of the gesture, never a mirror of the person.
The honest objection — what about black holes?
"If giving grants no right, who receives? What prevents the free rider?" In the universe too there are black holes — which absorb energy without radiating it. Where does it go? It is not lost: it is conserved, transformed, sometimes returned. Four sober answers: (1) the record inscribes reality — a black hole is visible, nothing is hidden; (2) the sun does not go out because a dark body absorbs it: generosity does not depend on the receiver's reciprocity; (3) there is no balance to loot — you cannot steal a claim that does not exist; (4) status is earned by giving: a black hole accrues no prestige, it stays dark. The free rider is not a flaw — it is a phase. And the absorbed energy may, one day, shine out again.
06 — One ground, many meanings
The inscribed time is a neutral, true fact: this person gave so much time, on such a day, to that other. On this single ground, each world of MANA grows a different meaning. One record, many ways to honour it.
| The world | Its reading of the inscribed energy |
|---|---|
| ManaTimeBank the international concept | The model: the value of given time, stated for all, exportable beyond any one country. |
| MANA France the civic world | Recognition that circulates: generosity and civic bond; you are not your balance. |
| Mana Family the family circles | Presence & memory: who took care, what keeps a family alive and what makes it last. |
| TempoSystem the inscription | The record itself: faithful, legible, durable — the ground the others interpret. |
Why the classic time bank could not do this
Because it locks time into a single reading — the claim. By separating the fact (the inscription) from its meaning (the interpretation), MANA frees given time from one sole use. The same gesture can be generosity here, memory there, a model elsewhere.
07 — The horizon
If the energy of given time is inscribed, we can at last read a society by what it cares for — not by what it produces. Here is the simplest demonstration: two territories with the same GDP can be opposite worlds.
Poor and connected
Little monetary output, but a dense fabric of care. GDP calls it poor; reality knows it rich in bonds. Life holds.
Flourishing ✦
Prosperity and bonds. The goal: material wealth that has not sacrificed care.
Fragile
Double jeopardy: neither resources nor human safety net. The absolute priority for support.
Rich and alone
GDP applauds; isolation grows, the bond frays. Prosperity that protects from nothing.
GDP cannot tell "Rich and alone" from "Flourishing": same figure, opposite societies. TempoSystem reveals the vertical axis GDP is blind to: mutual aid.
Every "beyond GDP" index — HDI (1990), the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission (2009), the OECD Better Life Index (2011), the Doughnut (Raworth), Bhutan's Gross National Happiness — shares one temptation: to produce a new number to maximise. But "the GDP of care" would recreate the trap. Our way out is the diptych: the sun inscribes faithfully, the moon is read in phases — without becoming a ranking. We count to remember; we give to read to understand. — HDI: UNDP/ul-Haq, Sen's capabilities. SSF: 2009. Doughnut: Raworth, 2012/2017.
08 — Proof by the real
A philosophy is worth only what it becomes. Here is how an hour is inscribed, where the project stands, and why it is feasible.
One person offers time to another — helping, listening, passing on. Both acknowledge it. The exchange joins the record: who, when, how much, acknowledged by whom. From then on, each world of MANA reads it in its own way. Nothing heavier than a database and a community.
This is no concept on paper. The ecosystem exists, in a pilot phase: a live application (mana.bzh), a civic world (manafrance.org), an assistant, a digital Constitution signed on arrival, and first "basins" in Brittany — the laboratory. The concept is tested in the field, not only on the page.
To evolve without betraying its principles, TempoSystem relies on a Council of the Bridge: permanent functions — sometimes held by artificial intelligences — that illuminate decisions; a person always decides. AI augments human judgement, it does not replace it. Every structural decision leaves a trace.
Free, on principle — and feasible, by sobriety
MANA costs nothing. Free for people, free for associations. The model levies no toll on people's time: you never pay to give, nor to be recognised — value first, always. And it is feasible because light: software, a record, a community. Near-zero marginal cost per member. What limits it is not the technology — it is trust, built territory by territory.
09 — The course
Free, light, already begun: adoption meets no toll. Here is the course — the heading, not a contract — and the order of magnitude of what even modest adoption would make visible.
mana.bzh online, first basins, the assistant, the Constitution. We test the language and the practices in the field.
Open to other territories and associations; the shared record; the first local readings of how care circulates.
Interconnecting the basins; first territorial maps of care, presented alongside GDP figures.
The concept as an open standard, adoptable everywhere, free. The English edition and international opening.
| Scale | Population (≈) | If 1% join | If 5% join |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local basin | 50,000 | 500 | 2,500 |
| Brittany | 3.5 M | 35,000 | 175,000 |
| France | 69 M | 690,000 | 3.45 M |
| European Union | 450 M | 4.5 M | 22.5 M |
| World | 8.2 bn | 82 M | 410 M |
10 — The call
At heart, this document describes a gesture of civilisation: learning to inscribe what matters. Taking the most human thing — time given to others — and granting it, at last, a lasting existence, without corrupting it into money.
Time banks had seen the value of time, but locked it into a claim. GDP had given the world an accounting, yet blind to what holds it together. Between the two lay an empty place: that of an accounting of what truly matters, which is neither a credit nor a score.
That place, ManaTimeBank names and TempoSystem engraves. MANA is the energy; TempoSystem the measure. The sun gives, the moon is read. And because it is free, light and already begun, only one thing is missing: hands to give, and eyes to look differently.
Joining is simple, and it is free. Just begin to give.
References
Every quantified claim in this document is traceable. Main references:
Method note
The adoption rates (1%, 5%) are illustrative hypotheses, never forecasts. Every quantified claim has been traced to a primary or institutional source (Kuznets 1934, ILO 2018, INSEE/Eurostat/UN); the one unverifiable attribution (a prediction said to be "by F. Fisher") has been removed. The full sourcing dossier accompanies this document.