Just-In Time

"Time is Money." That phrase has been repeated as long as I can remember and even in 1748, Benjamin Franklin new the correlation was of utmost importance. Fast forward 263 years. The film "In Time" hit theaters. The big attention grabber was its star, a former N'Syncer, Justin Timberlake. While I admit my interest in the film was solely for that fact, it opened my eyes to a much deeper concept. The films premise centers around a time in the future where money is replaced by time as the only form of currency. When people turn 25, they are genetically engineered to stop aging and then a countdown clock is permanently running on their forearm. They get a year to start and they have to work to earn more time. When the clock reached zero, that person dies automatically.  Justin Timberlake's character, Will is poor and constantly working to try and gain more time but always seems to be living in that 'paycheck-to-paycheck' mode. After he saves a man from getting his time stolen, Will is gifted the equivalent of 116 years of time. He goes to share it with his mother, played by Olivia Wilde, but the clock literally runs out on her as she sees him and she dies. Reeling from grief, Will turns into a robin hood archetype and starts stealing from the rich to benefit the poor with his hostage/love interest, Sylvia. 

At first glance, this could be seen as a sci-fi action film, and an easy money grab for the studio with Timberlake as its lead. Looking a bit deeper, it has clear Marxist messaging in both its blatant separation of class and use of currency. Life is determined by wages/time and without working, you don't earn more time, therefore leading to death. It's a vicious cycle for the poor but for those who are wealthy, they don't have to work because the time they have accumulated is already enough for several lifetimes over. They just get to enjoy the life they have, forever. It's within this structure that is created that those who are poor live life only to keep their clocks from running out. A question could be, what quality of life is that if all you do is work? There is no getting ahead or "saving up." It's truly just working to live. Even for the most productive and hardest workers, there is no raise or promotion. It's just delaying the inevitable and providing temporary continuation to repeat the cycle of working for someone else. 

Time is protected by the wealthy more than money because it is given more value. This appears to increase crime because of the Minutemen, aka time robbers - running around stealing time from everyone. The police, aka Timekeepers, don't stop theft. They want to stop redistribution to keep the population low. They're not for justice but instead for preserving ownership of time. There are also established zones where it divides people up by how much time they have. The wealthy live in a highly secure area so the chance of crime is little to none, allowing the rich to stay in power and the poor to never have the opportunity to benefit. Then, you add in the scarcity mindset. The rich don't want to give time away because of its value. What is $20 dollars to donate in today's age in the grand scheme of things? Change that to the equivalent of hours of your life, that makes a difference. It's with that creation of a system that keeps the wealthy from being philanthropic. In the same way inflation impacts our current economic structure, the same applies to this theory. There is a scene where Will goes to clock out for a day at work and he is shorted on time. When he asks why, the worker tells him the quota went up and basically he's out of luck. Just as prices rise, the value of time is determined to control the population and its resources.

An underlying concept outside of time is the feeling of safety. For those who have mere hours to live, the feeling of being unsafe is heightened. It isn't like those in today's age who may try to find joy in limited time if they know it is coming. It is a sense of panic as the clock winds down. Fear as a motivator. The interesting note here is that people aren't dying because they are lazy or unmotivated. They die because that is the way the rich have designed the system to keep them in power and the population down.