Skyline.

Among other things, the Program Managers are responsible for managing the volunteer credits. These are barter credits, but they still flow and move like a currency. They have no official cash value, meaning that they are not pegged to the US dollar. CityTaskers may transfer their credits to other CityTaskers in any mutually agreeable exchange, so an unofficial exchange rate would naturally emerge and “float”.

Observing the movement of this natural exchange rate would give valuable information as to the trends in the micro-economy. The anticipated exchange rate would float near minimum wage. Large increases or decreases in the exchange rate would indicate a problem. The goal is to keep the value as stable as possible without interfering with the function of the market.

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The exact numbers should be reviewed by expert economists, but here are some tentative numbers to consider when managing the currency:

The availability of CityTasks jobs available should remain roughly 25% higher than the number of CityTask jobs performed. This ensures that any CityDorm resident who wants to earn rent has the ability to do so. The knowledge that a CityTask job will probably, but not definitely, be completed will also help prevent CityTask jobs from being used to replace workers paid in US currency. To ensure this balance, the Program Managers take actions to encourage or discourage the posting of CityTasks.

The rate at which volunteer credits are earned/created should remain slightly higher that the rate at which volunteer credits are spent/extinguished. If there are not enough CityDorms available to rent, people will stop doing CityTasks because the currency is useless. Conversely, if there are too many CityDorms rented out, hardworking people will get evicted for lack of employment, which will crash confidence in the currency. A certain percentage of credits will be "lost", in that they are earned but never spent. When balancing the system, the bias should be towards an excess of credits rather than a shortage.

Subsets of the micro-economy might be out of balance even if the overall micro-economy appears balanced. For example, if all of the CityDorms are on the south end and all the CityTasks are on the north end, this creates problems. Similar problems exist if 50% of CityTaskers cannot lift more than 20 pounds, but 80% of the CityTasks require heavy lifting. Some of these problems will be resolved by members through trade networks, but this will become impractical if the system goes too far out of balance.