For any living community, how chores are distributed/performed is a source of friction. After many years of experimentation, we have arrived at the task auction.
Each Monday, a reverse auction for chores begins. The resident who bids the least amount of points for a chore wins the chore, and must complete it before the following Monday in order to be awarded the points.
Here is how a bidding round might go like this, with Gary as the winner:
The task auction may be conducted on a panel in a public area, using paper pockets and slips of paper.
It is also possible to implement it as a website/mobile app. This version seems to be more lively.
There is only one criticism we've ever heard, which is that the Task Auction is a market-based solution, and capitalists like that sort of thing. Capitalists also like refrigerators, but that's not a reason to stop using refrigerators. The only people who have made this criticism were people who were reluctant to do chores under any system. What they wanted was opacity.
We have tried several systems and the task auction has the following advantages over all of them:
In any living group, there are people who are more industrious and those who are less so. The industrious think of the others as free-loaders and the less industrious think of the others as fascists.
Regardless of which view is right, the outcome is the same: a two class system of those who serve and those are served. The Task Auction doesn't change that. It only makes it transparent. The Wahlbörse changes that.