Voz is a mutual credit unit used to account for time, learning, and creative work in the Hitchhiker Economy. It is not designed to be scarce, to appreciate, or to be traded against external currencies. The supply is elastic because Voz is created as members spend into negative balance and extinguished as they contribute work back to the community.
The key mechanism is the Credit Limit. Members can hold negative Voz up to a limit set by their pledged service, reputation, and community trust. This allows the system to finance real collaboration without requiring speculative markets or outside capital. The ledger remains balanced because the network’s total positive and total negative positions net out over time.
Voz can be denominated in hours, but it does not have to be simplistic. Different categories of work can use multipliers, and the system can keep both a simple “time” view and a more expressive “value” view. The essential point is that Voz is a language of obligation and contribution, not an investment contract.
A mutual credit currency becomes ethical only when it is governable. Credit policy, dispute handling, and anti-sybil design matter more than token mechanics. In the Hitchhiker framing, Voz is the opposite of Vogon money: it measures responsibility rather than power.