Last Updated: Friday, 31 May 2019 12:48 | Published: Friday, 24 May 2019 00:00 | Print |

Altruism First

The economic system you have always wanted, that the world desperately needs and can be implemented easily. So let's do it!

World held up by all

Overview

Altruism First is a project to create an economic system that supports all participating individuals inclusively by putting the focus on community and social benefit first before other concerns. Within this new economic system currency is created by performing tasks that are collectively decided to be community serving. Once this currency is created, it can then be exchanged in the pursuit of more self-interested concerns. In this way the system puts altruism first. Personal self-interest is still maintained within the system, however, with the change of focus, we bias away from selfish behaviours that are harmful to individuals and the community as a whole.

The Altruism First concept is created as a response and solution to a growing animosity towards economic systems that produce social inequity, unemployment, recessions, poverty, homelessness, greed, capital hoarding, asset hoarding, unfair hierarchical structures and social injustice.

The main parts of the system can be summarised by the following diagram and explanation.

Altruism First - Financial Ecosystem

Overall governance using the Politify.org direct democracy platform which includes a system for posting suggestions, debate tools, reasoning assistance tools and a system for challenging suggestions.
Community Job Board where members of the community can post their needs and their wishes for products and services.
Tasks posted to the community job board get separated out into Community Serving Tasks and Self-Interested Tasks.
Money is brought into existence as people perform Community Serving Tasks. This can be thought of like mining for gold. We exchange effort and time for currency.
Once the money is created, it can be used to pay for Self-Interested Tasks that are either posted on the job board or in free trade markets outside of the community job board system.
Individuals earn money as a primary concern by claiming jobs from the community job board. As a secondary concern, they can also earn money outside of the community job board system by participating in free market trade with individuals and community member businesses.
Goods created through the application of effort and in response to a posted wish, have an effort count applied to them. To claim the good you have to pay for the effort.
Goods created and/or sold outside of the job board system are traded at negotiated values.
Payment for tasks that aren't performed correctly can be challenged. If they are challenged payment goes into arbitration.
Where a person is unable to work or participate in this system to earn currency, perhaps due to illness, injury or disability, helping them can be made into community serving tasks. They are also helped through an award from the social dividend that is accumulated and distributed as people apply effort to goods and as goods are then purchased from the system.

Background

Underlying assumptions behind the creation of the Altruism First economic system include:

No human being is truly ever alone.
We all must interact with others socially at some level.
All interactions between individuals can be measured on a scale from helpful to harmful.
There is benefit brought to an individual by their participating in a community that shares goods and effort.
Where interactions concern the exchange of goods and effort, the current best technology developed to facilitate their free exchange is money.
For all within our world to be taken care of, we need a fair monetary exchange system that will bias towards the mutual benefit of all individuals exchanging goods and effort for money or money for effort and goods.
There are many forms of money and many systems governing its use and exchange but there has emerged a global economy that aligns with common rules and methods.
The common rules and methods of the global economy include:
- The use of tokens such as paper/plastic notes and their equivalent counted using virtual or computational forms which all can be described as a currency.
- The negotiation of value built into each unit of currency as measured against other units of currency. Negotiated in modern times through a complex system of currency trading.
- The negotiation of value where goods and services are exchanged for money.
- The negotiation of value where money is exchanged for goods and services.
- Individuals are mostly free to exchange goods and services for money and money for goods and services.
- The value of a currency to purchase goods and services and vice-versa within a country is typically determined by competition between interested purchasing parties and can be summarised within discussions about supply and demand for a good or service.
- Value gets negotiated across a number of markets as people aim to buy and sell to get the things they need and want.
- The value of a currency as traded internationally is typically connected with a measure of overall production occuring within that country.
- Countries attempt to control the creation and disposal of currency in order to level out anomalies in the relative value of their currency.
We can summarise these common rules and methods with the term "the economic system we currently have."

Learning From Cryptocurrency

The recent invention of cryptocurrency was made popular in part by utopian aspirations that were connected with the idea of it being decentralised, unregulated by government and hence a more free and democratic currency. Despite these utopian aspirations, cryptocurrency quickly became a trading and investment tool where people would speculate on its relative value as they bought and sold it using other currencies. Early attempts to build a trading community that only used Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency failed to gain much of a following. Use as a trading tool is possible and does occur but goods and services trading makes up a very small percentage of current cryptocurrency activity. Instead, a multitude of cryptocurrencies have emerged as speculative currency trading tools with each wanting to be the next Bitcoin.

In my view, the utopian aspirations that made cryptocurrency popular must now be separated from the currency itself. It has been demonstrated conclusively that the new currency by itself cannot bring on the lofty utopian benefits associated with social freedom, decentralisation and democracy because as a currency, it still has a negotiated value that attracts the same social inequities. This is in part because the only way to participate in the world of cryptocurrency is to buy into it using a pre-existing form of currency leaving it out of reach for those without a lot of pre-existing capital to invest. As a technological innovation, it also requires a relatively high degree of technical ability and technical equipment to extract the benefits from its use leaving it out of the reach of those who are technologically challenged. Because of its limitations, it does not provide any viable, ongoing solution to the social inequities of earlier economic systems and instead has largely been swallowed up as just another speculative currency to be traded one against the other.

It could be argued that cryptocurrency as a tool still holds a great amount of potential for use in the creation of social benefit, but other initiatives would be needed to truly fill in the gaps of social inequity that are maintained within the glabal economic system we currently have.

The blockchain has emerged as a tool for decentralising the accounting of social action such as currency trading and voting. Utopian supporters of cryptocurrency often transfer their utopian hopes onto the blockchain when the limitations of the currency are revealed, however, the blockchain by itself, also does do not necesarily produce social benefit. The blockchain is a technological tool and also needs to be separated from utopian aspirations.

Cryptocurrency has emerged to remind us that money is an invention, a product of the human mind, a product of agreement between the many individuals within a community and we can change the rules on those agreements.

Stating The Problem

Within the economic system we currently have (as summarised within the Background section above):

Social, cultural, ideological, regulatory and other injustices can be imposed onto the negotiation of value and the exchange of currency will then often transmit and compound social problems.
Money has been assigned a negotiated value that no longer has a good correlation to the value an indivdual might place on the goods and work being exchanged.
- This can be summarised to say that many believe our current economic system is unfair; perhaps as a result of power and trade wars and a history of empire building and greed, there exists huge value and power imbalances between socio-economic groups, economic classes and differences in perceived worth between genders, education levels, backgrounds and countries; there exist many value related and production related injustices.
A person's effort does not necesarily get rewarded.
A person's earning capacity is not necesarily connected with a person's working capacity.
With the earning of money as a societal focus, many struggle to find what they describe as their purpose. They are instead forced to work for money as an analogy for working to survive.
Homelessness and poverty exist.
Our economic system relies on the imposition of hierarchical structures that regularly create a struggle between the workers and the owners within business. A competition that has created an adversarial political system designed to umpire this struggle for power with only limited success.
The economic system can be used in ways that can be measured on a scale from helpful to harmful when considering the community as a whole or when considering individuals and groups within it.
The economic system we currently have does not have a measure for social good vs social harm.
While mechanisms like tarrifs, taxes, fines and punishments can act as a deterrent to some social harms, there are many socially harmful behaviours, practices and industries which are encouraged within the economic system we currently have.
We have no reliable system/method for restraining social harm that is profitable.
We are not all able to contribute work equally and it acts as a perceived cost to society when an individual is unable to contribute to the making of profit.
There is no reliable way to reconcile the value of contributions that are not perceived as profitable.
The centralisation of power under a majority rules platform prevents groups that are smaller than the majority from having their needs and wants met.
The centralisation of power by the imposition of a single political ideology prevents those with a different perspective from having their views heard and their needs and wants met.
This difference in political power (different systems in different countries producing similar minority group disadvantage), typically translates into a difference in economic power also meaning that minority groups are not helped by either the public sector of government or by the private sector of business unless there is a concerted effort to identify disadvantage and to provide a bandage style remedy.

Worshipping an ATM

Proposed Solution

In forming a solution, the following is considered:

Satisfying self-interest is key to the motivation of the individual and so it cannot be removed from an economic system or else the economic system simply won't work. Individuals still need to feel like they can work in order to have their self-interests be satisfied.
Choice, personal autonomy and privacy are highly valued by individuals and past attempts to impose social systems that erode these values have resulted in animosity towards governing authorities, social upheval and system collapse.

A subjective measure of individual satisfaction can be used as a partial measure of the success of any governing system and can be used as a tool to guide action towards continual improvement. There are other measures that may be consulted to guide improvement.

Addressing the concerns detailed in the above sections, we propose the forming of an economic system that incorporates the following elements:

We will create a member based economic system that can be used as an alternative to the economic system we currently have.
This new economic system will be open for anyone to become a member.
The new economic system will be designed to grow with use. As it grows, it is intended that it will compete with and perhaps even replace alternative economic systems.
Instead of tracking the intangible, subjective and unreliable measure of "value," the new economic system will track the tangible and objective measure of an expenditure of effort over time.
Goods can be classed as either:
1. The product of an unconscious, natural or automated process. This could be summarised with the term "raw ingedients."
2. The product of a consciously applied, human effort. Raw ingredients with one or more human level services applied.
Goods are treated differently depending on which of the above two categories they are in.
The Altruism First Contribution Coin (AFC) will be the unit of currency that is used to measure the exchange of goods and effort.
AFC Coins hold the numerical value of 1 point per minute of effort regardless of the amount of effort, expertise or social positioning involved. Typically calculated and distributed in 15 minute blocks.
Money is created as individuals put effort into tasks that are classed as a socially beneficial activity.
We will use the Politify.org governance system to allow any member of this new economic system to propose suggestions for activities that can be classed as a socially beneficial activity.
Using the Politify.org governance system, any member can lodge a challenge against a proposed activity if they can argue that it causes a social harm.
The debate systems of Politify.org can be used to resolve issues of classification with regards social benefit vs social harm; solutions to problems can be suggested, approved and then implemented.
Experts and skilled individuals are rewarded by work done to become an expert or to develop a skill. They are then further rewarded through the optimisation of satisfaction whereby their expertise and skill gives them the privilege to do work they enjoy.
Work that is socially beneficial but determined to be undesirable/unpopular for any reason can be given a coin loading which would be worked out by a subjective polling. Measures such as difficulty, danger, disgust, discomfort, dislike etc. all could have measures assigned to them to encourage and reward the performing of these socially beneficial activities.
It is open to anyone to lodge a suggestion for a socially beneficial action or to lodge a challenge and they can be paid for their time to propose successful suggestions and challenges.
To allow everyone equal opportunity for work, work opportunities can be farmed out using a freelance model, however, more permanent positions can be created to cater for ongoing needs. If there is more than one candidate for a role, selection can be made against a community decided list of criteria. The community may also decide to use selection methods such as fair competition or randomised selection. If the role requires expertise, the role can be open to those who already have the expertise but also training can occur to qualify more people and those people can be rewarded for the effort involved in their training.
All raw ingredients that exist within nature or that are not produced by conscious human effort are assumed to be community assets and cannot be owned by an individual. This includes plants, fruit, vegetables, herbs, soil, animals, rain, rivers, lakes, sunlight, atmosphere, minerals etc. but might also include things such as discarded garbage which accumulates as a byproduct of conscious human effort and could be used as a resource. It could also include abstract concepts such as numbers, letters, binary ones and zeroes and the elements of computer code.
Your body and your mind are considered exceptions to the community asset concept above. Although it can be argued that your body and your mind are not necesarily brought into existence entirely by a conscious human effort, in order to maintain the integrity of free-will and personal autonomy, you are considered to be in complete ownership of yourself.
Rights to use and rights to control raw materials and other community assets may be granted to individuals where it is cooperatively decided to be beneficial to do so. This may include a reworking of concepts of property ownership and inheritance in order to bring a focus onto the social benefit of providing these rights.
Any effort that is made to collect a raw ingredient that is needed/desired by members of the community can be considered as a community serving activity. The aim should be to collect an abundance/surplus of raw ingredients so there are no shortages in supply.
If a raw ingredient is considered to be harmful, then its use cannot be considered as a community serving act. If a raw ingredient has some beneficial uses and some harmful uses then its collection can be restricted to a quota that is enough to satisfy the beneficial uses. Exceeding the quota means that its collection is no longer considered to be socially beneficial. Payment delay terms or community storage systems could be negotiated to prevent workers from being disadvantaged by quota management issues. These arrangements can be further detailed and worked out on the Politify.org platform.
Quotas can be worked out for raw materials in order to prevent an oversupply of items that can spoil or that cannot easily be stored. It stops being a community serving activity to collect/produce raw materials once a quota has been reached.
Activities to further process raw ingredients into products that are needed and wanted by the community can be considered to be community serving activities.
The community can work to build need and wish lists that can help to guide where people will focus their efforts.
We use a system of social job creation where members of the community post their wish for product or service. These are filtered out into jobs that are either community serving or self interested. Ideally, each day a person would check the community job board, they would search for jobs they can do and want to do, they would claim them and then record their efforts as the tasks are performed. The job might be divided into milestones or broken down into smaller tasks that are further farmed out as needed. Once a result is produced through the application of effort, the result is detailed. If the intended result was not produced, the individuals monitoring that performance (anyone in the case of a community serving job or an individual in the case of a self-interested job) can lodge a challenge. The job would then enter a stage of arbitration. A percentage of the effort recorded may be rewarded, the person doing the job may be given the chance to do more work to fix something or the job may be reassigned to another. Effort still needs to be counted as the person doing the job has gained experience from the work and gaining experience is a socially beneficial action but they should not get the full reward if their effort is not producing a desirable outcome.
Rather than the goods themselves being exchanged using an elaborate system of negotiated value, each product provided up the chain of social benefit simply has an effort count attached to it. Once you have acted for social benefit and collected the contribution coins, you can then exchange these coins to acquire goods for your personal self-interest. Here the individual pays their contribution coins to the Altruism First system itself. The coins are then redistributed to all individuals within the system as a social dividend.
To balance the system between the collection and supply of product and the amount of available capital that each individual is expected to be able to earn on average, all involved must work to the following ambition:
- Work to create an abundance/surplus of raw ingredients except where a maximum quota is applied.
- Work to increase the efficiency of production in order to create the abundance/surplus or to meet an applied minimum quota.
- Work to improve social satisfaction in oneself and in the community as a whole.
- Apply oneself to the perfection of skills and talents in order to contribute to the community sense of satisfaction which is measured at each transaction.
To balance the system between the collection and supply of product and the amount of available capital that each individual needs in order to buy the food, shelter, clothing and other basics, the social dividend that is cycled back across the community can be adjusted up or down. The aim with this is to make sure the people always have enough coin to purchase the basics but ideally, the community as a whole will be so proficient that an abundance of coin also exists so people are free to spend it on their self-interests. The social dividend loading will be transparently communicated and adjusted by strict adherence to socially scrutinised criteria.
Raw ingredients can be collected outside of a system that rewards for their collection. The ingerdients collected in this way can then be sold to individuals as a part of a self-interested act and at a negotiated value. This is possible and allows personal autonomy to exist around the collection of raw materials but it is discouraged by being largely unsustainable as an ongoing concern. If this practice is ever found to be socially harmful, it can be regulated through the legal and justice system that is deployed congruently.
Effort can still be applied to raw ingredients outside of a system that rewards for this effort and the resulting goods can then be sold in a personal, self-interested exchange. This is considered to be a moral and healthy practice because the person/group supplying the self-interested product is still earning currency that has been created doing work that is community serving.
Effort can still be applied as a service outside of a system that rewards for this effort with the service sold in a personal, self-interested exchange. This is considered to be a moral and healthy practice because the person/group supplying the self-interested service is still earning currency that has been created doing work that is community serving.
Individuals are still free to perform community service activities for the love of doing so and without claiming any reward.
Goods that are created through the community system are monitored from raw ingredients through to their development into effort applied products. They are distributed first on a community need basis as checked against the community need and wish list. Any surplus that is not to be kept for a future community need, can be sold to any individual or group of individuals (such as a business). In this way, individuals can purchase community produced products which they can use as they wish. Typically they will apply an effort to add value to the item. They can then sell these value added products in self-interested echanges at a negotiated value.
Although we shift the focus from production onto the effort required to produce, in order to encourage production, we can reward people with production bonuses. For example, a farmer is rewarded for the effort of farming but if they do a good job and apply their expertise well, we may consider rewarding them for a high yield.
Intellectual property rights do not exist under this system. Instead creative acts are first rewarded through a counting of the effort required to produce and share the creative works. They can be rewarded for their popularity as a production bonus.
It is acknowledged that not everyone can contribute effort equally. Here we consider both mental effort and physical effort. This is mitigated first by a qualification system whereby people gain knowledge and expertise and demonstrate physical abilities to be able to unlock jobs they would find more satisfying. In doing so, they disqualify themselves from taking lesser qualified jobs away from others. This is done to maintain a distribution of opportunity that is as equitable as it possibly can be. Secondly, where there are individuals with special needs who are unable to participate fully in the provision of effort, assisting them becomes a community serving task. Changes in health and age can reduce a person's ability to participate and so they can downgrade their physical or mental qualifications in order to take on jobs at a lower qualification level. Here we optimise for job satisfaction whereby people train to do the jobs they want to do, they get rewarded for that training and then they can do the work required.
A minimum value will be calculated for daily survival. People who have not earned above this amount will be automatically flagged as someone in need. Firstly it will be someone's job to contact them and to make sure they are OK. If they need help then this can be arranged. Food and clothing can be assigned from social surplus reserves. Where a person is disabled or unwell, it will be someone's community serving job to take care of them. Taking care can include the raw material collection and food production they need. To give them a degree of autonomy over and above this, they benefit from the receipt of the social dividend.
Actions that are taken outside of the system, where a person knows in their gut, their heart and their mind that their efforts are socially beneficial, can apply after the fact to have their actions rewarded.
Groups of cooperating people can get together to serve commonly occuring needs/desires. They don't need to form any kind of marketing persona to win jobs such as currently occurs within capitalistic businesses, they simply act together by selecting complimentary jobs/roles. They may also create a number of job suggestions that allow them to work cooperatively.
Leadership and hierarchical structures can be formed but these will be expertise and skill based appointments rather than ownership, inheritance, fame, wealth or corruption based appointments.
Individuals that demonstrate a talent for making good work suggestions and individuals that demonstrate a talent for spotting suggestions that would bring a degree of social harm and should be challenged, can apply to hold an administrative role. Their appointment and continued holding of the role would be a community guided reward connected to a demonstration of performance. These roles would be created so that individuals can be rewarded for the time it takes to get good at the job of administration and so we develop experts who monitor and maintain the system. The system can run without these appointments but it is expected that the community will benefit from their attention as the system grows with use.
The creation, acquisition and use of tools can be coordinated to increase productivity and hence can be considered as a community serving action.
In order to optimise for community satisfaction, raw ingredients and products that have a quality value associated with them, can be separated out into grades and then distributed equitably. Receipt of the best quality will be on a first come, first served basis. Where there are community serving tasks that require the use of a minimum quality of raw material, control of quality distribution can be discussed and debated on the Politify.org platform.
There is no age limit on working and earning and instead developmental progress is used to unlock opportunities. For example, children that are very young may only qualify for the job of learning. As they grow and achieve certain developmental goals, they may qualify to take on tasks such as gardenning, making deliveries on their bike, apprenticing, participating in community events etc. They can volunteer for these tasks which must be completed over and above their learning responsibilities. Tasks that are appropriate for the stage of development can be debated and decided by the community. With this approach, children are introduced to social responsibility early but also social reward. They participate in their social development, guided and protected by their parents who make sure their basic needs are met. If their income is not used by the family then they will accumulate a pool of social contribution coins that can be spent later in their life.
The exchange of goods and services can occur between individuals outside of the systems that rewards for social benefit. These transactions are private and at an individual's personal discretion and occur at negotiated values.
A single software interface can be created that ties into the Politify.org system to allow job creation, job acceptance, raw material monitoring and the monitoring of the social dividend.
While the system itself biases away from the most common, currency promoted social harms, further restriction of social harms are a matter for the legal and justice system that is deployed congruently.

"The Perfect Merging of Socially Beneficial Incentives and Self-Serving Free Markets."

Note: There is a concept that is commonly spoken of when discussing socialist style systems and their comparison to capitalistic and other systems and that term is "the means of production." This term is a summary term whose expanded details include people, acting as a group, to take raw materials and apply their effort, using tools (sometimes elaborate tools like workshops, manufacturing plants or a mine etc.), in order to produce goods and services. In debates about these systems, the relative pro and con of who owns the means of production is discussed to an often fruitless end. Here with the Altruism First concept we are instead discussing individual effort, its application and its reward. As a result we bypass these fruitless discussions about who owns the means of production. With Altruism First, if an individual or a group owns a tool such as a workshop, an orchard of trees, a mine or even a piece of land and they want to participate in the beneficial exchange of effort and reward and the community driven exchange of goods and services and they want to be supported within that system when their tool breaks or gets old, their tool needs an upgrade or their tool loses its purpose, then they can offer that tool for use by the Altruism First community without fear. It will be the responsibility of the Altruism First community to supply what is needed to maintain the tool and to leave it in a similar condition to how they received it or to somehow replace it so that the community can continue to receive the benefit of that tool. Ideally, when that tool is used by the community in order to have the community be prosperous, the continuation of the community should provide any reward that ownership in a capitalistic system would otherwise have brought. In other words, property owned and whose use is donated to the Altruism First community should come at no overall cost to the individual or group who donated it.

Altruism First, System Benefits

We remove the cost from an individual who is providing social benefit.
We remove the cost from social development projects.
We spread the benefit of individual effort around to all members of the community and individuals benefit from the efforts of others.
The need for charity becomes obsolete because helping people is the primary focus of the system instead of being an after thought.
The need for social welfare becomes obsolete because there is always work to be done, you can create your own work and you have a say over how your community uses your effort.
If you have trouble accessing capital by doing work, then it is the community's obligation to make sure you are provided for without it costing them and without you being a burden. You also get the bonus of the social dividend.
The need for taxes is removed. There is no centralised government body needing to pay a self-interested entity to get a job done so we have no need for tax collection.
The need for credit, interest rates and payments is made obsolete. The biggest thing most individuals will need to build is a home. Since everyone needs shelter, providing housing can be considered a community development exercise. Transport might be another personal requirement that can also be arranged for community benefit.
People can go to work with a sense of purpose and a positive sense of community connection.
Monetary value is no longer a subjective, perception based ideology that can be manipulated for the benefit of some and at the cost of others.
People have guaranteed work. If everybody's needs are taken care of and there isn't enough work, community service can shift to things like the provision of entertainment, art, astronomy, space exploration, technological advancement and other tasks that are valued by individuals within the community.
We eliminate the need for theft and corruption. If an indvidual has a need or a want, they post it and then the community works out how to serve that need/desire.
Everybody helps. Everybody benefits from that help. Everybody wins and there are NO losers.

Anti-Greed

Transitioning

The majority of the world currently operates using a capitalist system. Even in communist countries and countries using other social models, capitalism and free trade are at the heart of their trade of goods and services. Transitioning from a capitalist/free-trade economic system to the Altruism First economic system will present a few challenges and will require some features which are considered temporary but necesary for the transition to occur.

Early Stages

In the early stages of development, the following assumptions are made which shape the transitioning approach:

There are many currencies that currently exist within the world.
Individuals may already own some or a lot of currency and they may own more than one type of currency.
Altruism First community members are assumed to have some existing currrency responsibilities (debts and bills) and needs that must be met in order to allow them to participate fully in the Altruism First ecosystem.
The aim is to grow the Altruism First financial ecosystem to one that can fully support an individual without their having a need to directly engage with an external currency but this won't be instant.
When the system has low numbers, the need to provide effort may exceed an individual's ability to have their needs and wants served by spending their earned currency. In other words there will be few products and services available to satisfy an individual's needs and wants.
The Altuism First organisation will need to be formed to exist as an entity within existing legal and government frameworks.
The community as a whole and the organisational/legal entities that bind them within existing legal frameworks, will attract some needs that can only be paid for using an existing currency.
The currency can be traded at a negotiated value with other external currencies.

Early Stage Transitioning Solutions

Our intention is to remove an individual's need to use other currencies and to instead make it a choice. This means that there is no restriction on members and members are free to use both AF Contribution Coins and other currencies to meet their personal needs and wants. Here it is expected that they will use other currencies until the Altruism First community is evolved enough to allow members to make a full transition.

In order to take care of financial concerns that the Altruism First organisation encounters, we propose the addition of an external currency interface layer. This interface layer allows the trading of currency into and out of the Altruism First organisation and consists of both a goods and services trading platform and a currency trading platform.

Goods and services provided as a surplus or provided as a conscious application of effort, can be traded for other external currencies. This will give the Altruism First organisation an amount of working capital. Where there is a surplus of working external capital, some could be held in reserve for future use but a percentage could be distributed amongst the Altruism First community as a part of the social dividend in order to help them to pay for their external currency obligations.
A currency exchange run as a part of the external currency interface layer will manage both the community money exchange but also allow any individual to exchange their AF Contribution Coins for external currency at the going market value.

Altruism First - Interface Layer

Outside of this External Interface Layer is the world consisting of people that are not yet members, capitalistic businesses, existing governments, existing currencies, existing trade methods, existing currency exchange methods and the wider world.

Membership Induction

The Altruism First, economic system will be open for anyone to become a member. An individual can become a member of the Altruism First community simply by registering as a member. However, in order to be an active participant in the financial ecosystem, individuals can participate in the following ways:

By devoting a percentage of their available time to work on Altruism First tasks. First a person will enter information that will help to determine their skills, education and expertise etc. This information will be used to unlock tasks that are complimentary to an individual's capacity to work and is a part of the equitable distribution of work. After this an individual can go to the community job board, claim a job that is available to them that they would like to do and start working.
An individual can trade a good or service for AF Contribution Coins in a community serving transaction and at a negotiated value. Here the community trades a percentage of the social dividend.
An individual can trade a good or service for AF Contribution Coins in a private, self-interested transaction and at a negotiated value.
An individual can trade an external currency for AF Contribution Coins in a community serving transaction and at a negotiated value. Here the community trades a percentage of the social dividend.
An individual can trade an external currency for AF Contribution Coins in a private, self-interested transaction and at a negotiated value.

System Vulnerabilities and Criticism

While the system is being designed to solve many social problems, it is understood that no system will be perfect. All systems that involve human beings will have the full extent of the human condition to contend with. This human condition incorporates the capacity for both positive and negative forces. It would be considered naive to not try to account for some of the most likely forms of system exploitation, abuse and corruption and to try to minimise any harm that would come from it.

The following vulnerabilities and criticisms are expected to be revealed. Together with the identified issue is its suggested harm minimisation strategy.

Theft of product and service is possible within the system at the following points of exchange:
- Theft of raw materials. - Since raw materials are not technically owned by an individual they can't technically be stolen unless they are first identified as a community asset. However, if a raw material is identified as a community need/want and hence considered a community asset, the raw materials could be taken contrary to social benefit. This can be mitigated through the legal and justice system that is run congruently.
- Failure to perform a task properly but still claiming reward. - Here the system is largely protected by the job distribution system that requires workers to log the results of their effort. This effort is then reviewed either by anyone in the case of a community service activity or by an individual in the case of a self-service transaction. So long as people post work through the community job board, individuals and the community are protected. Self-serving transactions outside of this job board at an individual's own risk but a complaint could still be raised with the community.
- Failure to report the full size of a yeild. - If farming, mining or other raw material collection activities are actioned through the system then yields should be predictable. Anything that is grown, mined or collected outside of that is either a self-interested transaction of no consequence or it is a legal and justice issue.
Theft of product and service is possible from the community as a whole and sold to earn external currency. The community must be vigilent to prevent this. The close monitoring of raw materials and the application of effort will be an evidence collection method that can be used to track where and when items have gone missing and who was likely to have been involved. It then becomes a legal and justice system issue.
It is possible to collect a raw material before it has been identified by the community as a community need/want. If it is taken by an Altruism First member then they can be paid for their effort after that effort has been expended, however, the individual may have other plans and may demand a negotiated value. This is an unlikely scenario but it may simply be necesary for the community as a whole to pay a negotiated value to the individual and to subtract the paid amount from the social dividend.
Raw materials identified as a need/want may already be controlled by an entity external to the Altruism First community. - The community as a whole must negotiate for its purchase using the trade of goods and services at its disposal. Goods and services may be traded to external entities willing to pay for it using an external currency that can be used in the purchase negotiation. If the goods and services and associated external currency value are not considered enough, the community may need to do without that resource until such time as the community is further developed.
Frivilous and self-serving jobs could be suggested as community service actions. - This is largely protected against by the fact that any member of the community can lodge a challenge against the task. Using the reasoning assistance tools built into the Politify.org platform, any task that does not meet the criteria of the community service purpose can be logically invalidated. If the proposed task contains an element of likely social harm, this too can be dealt with using the challenge and debate systems.
Using the Altruism First system, it is expected that people will transition from an existing career path, to a work style that embraces the freelancer model as its primary work distribution method. While some may jump at this as a part of all their dreams come true, as this happens, a person's existing career connected identity may cause them a sense of existential angst. - This could be addressed by identifying councillors, psychologists, philosophers, personal development experts and educators who can assist with introductions to the community and with the ongoing psychological needs of the internal community. Mental health and life management being an important, community serving task.
In the early stages, the negotiable value of the currency compared with external currencies will be low. This may prevent the community from being able to buy the raw materials and products they need to progress. - The transitioning currency interface layer is designed to maintain a good value for the currency. As a starting point for any negotiation, the community as a whole should be pricing their external supply of goods and services at external market values. The external currency value can then be tied to an average sale price in the same way as currencies are currently valued relative to each other.
The system is designed to create AF Contribution Coins and to never have them be destroyed. Wouldn't this cause the currency to be less valuable over time compared with other currencies? - The transitioning, currency interface layer is designed to maintain a good value for the currency by limiting the supply of available AF Contribution Coins. This is done first by holding a reserve of coins, as paid to the system through sale of products produced by community serving systems that count social contribution effort. The community as a whole only releases this reserve as it is needed to buy products and services that the community needs/wants. Secondly, this reserve can be increased or decreased in size by modulation of the social dividend. Here the community as a whole can decide to sacrifice the receipt of social dividend in order to maintain the external value of their currency. Thirdly, when looking at the community as a whole and considering private, self-interested trade, the amount of currency only increases as community members apply effort. In this way there can never be a run-away creation of capital. It is instead tied to overall community production capacity. Because of this, while the overall amount of currency increases, the availability of that currency for external, negotiated spending would not fluctuate by a great amount hence the value of the currency would not fluctuate much.
It should be noted that over time, individuals will be encouraged to trade within the system and the power of the Altruism First community to control the use of raw materials will increase and the communities ability to produce items will increase. As a result, the external value of the currency will be increasingly irrelevant.
A person with a large amount of existing external currency can buy up a large pool of AF Contribution Coins and hence gain instant power within the system. - The only reason this might be perceived as a bad thing, is that in this transaction we have no control over how this individual earned their external currency. While it is possible for an individual to have acquired their wealth through a process that has caused a degree of social harm, it is seen as a moral and acceptable practice because they are buying into and supporting a community that puts altruism first.
An external agent could use the buying and selling of the AF Contribution Coins as a tool to launder external currency. - Laundering is only possible in unregulated currency markets where transactions cannot be traced and where the reason for the transaction can be hidden or misrepresented. Firstly the Altruism First system is regulated and scrutinised by a direct democracy community who are guided to value social benefit and to seek out social harm. Any harmful transactions that are tracked through the effort tracking system can be challenged. Laundering activites that occur through the private, self-interested transaction can be investigated through the legal and justice system that is deployed congruently.
People who have earned a lot of external currency and who own things by ownership structures outside of the Altruism First definitions of ownership, won't want to give up what they have. - As time goes by and the community grows, it is intended that there will come a time when a country can safely switch from one currency to another. Along the way, programs can be created to buy up remaining currency and to convert it to AF Contribution Coins. Programs of compensation can be provided to encourage families to give up assets where it is beneficial to society that they do so. Otherwise, existing ownership structures could be converted to a socially beneficial agreement by cooperation with interested parties. Always, social benefit and transactional satisfaction will be measures to be optimised.
What's to stop people just adding numbers to their pool of currency and then spending it on what they want? - At first this system could be implemented using old school, paper and pen style ledgers. In this scenario, it would be up to the community to use an accountability method that they all can trust. Later the system can be monitored on computerised systems. A number of accountability technologies can be used to ensure the integrity of the count and the security of the system. From encryption systems through to blockchain systems. Each method of implementing has its own vulnerability to this form of dishonesty but it is a problem that currency managers around the world have been dealing with since the invention of currency. Rather than eliminating this threat to the system, the aim should be to minimise the harm caused by it. Within the system that counts the social benefit effort, proof of work can be used as a proof of earning.
People in disconnected parts of the community may not be able to see the benefit their effort provides. - Payment acts as the primary motivation for applying effort but a person's sense of purpose can be satisfied for some by taking on local task requests. Politify has the parts to segment out to location allowing for location specific jobs to be targetted. Alternatively, some people have their sense of purpose satisfied by the idea that they are helping lots of people at the same time. Here they may enjoy taking on tasks from a wider pool of regions, from the state, the country or even the international level.

If there is something that has been missed, if you think that an element of the system is not working to its best potential or if there is a social harm being created that is system based, this can be addressed by using the suggestion, champion, challenge and debate systems built into the Politify.org platform.

Implementation

You have seen the idea, you have seen how most of the details have been worked out in theory, so what now?

This system can be implemented using existing manual systems, existing accounting software, existing cryptocurrency software and/or other existing tools. It could be started tomorrow with a team of dedicated people who want to get started with it. Each person earning AF Contribution Coins as they go and with this being recorded in a way that is trusted by the members of that community. So if you are keen, register for an account with Politify.org, then send us an email and we'll put you on a list of interested people.

Ideally in the very near future, a single software interface could be built to allow anyone with a computer or a smart phone to work with the system no matter where they live. Some of it can tie into the Politify.org platform already being created but much of the job management and currency exchange software will need to be developed as a separate concern. The BusinessActionComplete.com software could be modified to manage this and aren't you lucky that the founder of Politify, Cameron Gibbs, is also the inventor of the Business Action Complete, Action Station software. So it should be a short path to the development of the necesary software. The only issue to deal with is that Business Action Complete was developed as a for profit business. Until the Altruism First community is developed enough to support the founder, he will need to be supported financially by another mechanism. If you want to help to get the software developed for the Altruism First purpose, buy a Politify.org bumper sticker, contribute to the Politify Patreon page, buy from one of our advertised sponsors/affiliates, purchase the Business Action Complete, Action Station software for your business or donate directly on our Sponsors and Affiliates page.

Disclaimer: Politify is a neutral platform created to allow anyone to share their ideas and to debate those ideas. Views expressed by Employees, Directors, Volunteers, Authors, Sponsors and/or Affiliates of Politify are their own views shared with equal opportunity using the Politify network. The veiws expressed are in no way indicative of any official policy of Politify as an organisation.

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Altruism First

The economic system you have always wanted, that the world desperately needs and can be implemented easily. So let's do it!

Overview

Background

Learning From Cryptocurrency

Stating The Problem

Proposed Solution

"The Perfect Merging of Socially Beneficial Incentives and Self-Serving Free Markets."

Altruism First, System Benefits

Transitioning

Early Stages

Early Stage Transitioning Solutions

Membership Induction

System Vulnerabilities and Criticism

Implementation

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Political Topic Review and Community Project Workshop

Monthly Perth Meetings - Currently Suspended Pending a Format Review

If you are in the city of Perth in Western Australia, please join us for our monthly meeting.

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