Can we PAY people to live a healthier, more sustainable, community focused life?
Im certain there's a paradigm shift here but Im not smart enough to know exactly how it could work. Hopefully someone has already thought about it and if not, Im here to start the conversation rolling. Im not well versed in technicalities so instead Im just going to explain how this idea has come about for me and what I am dreaming of!
Inspiration 1: Field of Vision
The picture above is a field in England that has belonged to my family for many years and has mostly been used for local community events and camping. Now there is a new vision evolving. Recently my sister has returned home from her adventures as a ranger with the national trust where she learned plenty of skills in wild maintenance, permaculture, forest management, sustainability and volunteer herding! Now she wants to turn this field in to a permaculture farm running sustainable gardening education for volunteers and student groups while providing organic vegetables for the wider community. Its a lovely vision and one that we all support, but being the crypto-freak of the family, I have begun to develop some wild ideas about how this farm could utilise a decentralised economy.
Inspiration 2: Passive Income
I only recently dipped in to Decentralised Finance with the start of CUB DeFi and it has been a revelation for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't really understand how it works or how sustainable it is, but the fact that I can earn about $100 per week from a $5000 stake has completely blown my mind and started giving me visions of a liberated existence in which I could let go of all the stressful contractual obligation of this massively competitive and woefully wasteful capitalist system.
Inspiration 3: DAO - Decentralised Autonomous Organisations
Then I heard about these (whatever the hell they are!) which I have loosely assimilated in to my delusional imagination world as some kind of new super awesome, community led company structure where the members of the company get to democratically and trustlessly steer its trajectory through voting and where the money doesn't all just float to the top but is spread like a beautiful community-approved blanket bringing peace and harmony and justice and equality and all the good things to everyone involved, and maybe others besides? Please feel free to correct me if Im already way off the planet here....
Inspiration 1 + 2 + 3 = MIND EXPLODED
So here was the moment where my mind exploded:
My sister and I were talking to someone else who ran a community farm that used a subscription model to deliver boxes of seasonal vegetables to its customers. It went VERY well the first year and lots of people bought subscriptions and got lots of delicious fresh produce. Unfortunately the next year, the weather was unpredictable and the harvest was not so good, meaning that customers got a slightly less awesome product and subscriptions began to dwindle.
WAIT!
... I thought.
What if we just had a huge community bank of crypto being farmed for enough interest that we could cover the costs of the business? Which frankly shouln't be very high anyway. Most of the people on community farm projects volunteer in return for food or sometimes just because they love gardening and social time..... so, I thought, why don't we pay them as well?
AND THEN
We could PAY people to come and TAKE THE VEGETABLES!!!!!!!!
ARE YOU FEELING WHAT IM FEELING?
or am I just completely insane?
We could literally be TIPPING people to choose our food instead of the pesticide ridden, plastic covered, conglomerate veg of the supermarkets!
FREE FOOD, FREE MONEY, PAID 'VOLUNTEERS', HAPPY FARMERS, HAPPY CUSTOMERS, HAPPY EVERYONE!
Imagine how popular it would be?
Imagine how many volunteers we could have?
Imagine how many angel investors would love what we were doing and throw a bit of cash in to the community pot?
Imagine how appealing it would be for other community projects to take on a model like this?
Am I just completely delusional?
Back down to Earth
Lets be honest. I have no idea what Im talking about. Which is why Im hoping this awesome community might be able to set me straight a bit. I may be misunderstanding something, or perhaps even a lot of things, but assuming this concept isnt completely outside the realms of possibility, Im going to try and imagine what this would actually require in order to function. Please feel free to smash me down in the comments, or to provide some insight, inspiration or just another angle on any of these ideas:
Requirement 1: Clever Investment
Im not an investment banker, I dont understand the graphs and I doubt I have a particularly good intuition. Hell Ive been in the crypto space since summer 2017 and Ive only amassed about $10,000. I should probably be a trillionaire by now and then I could just pay everyone for fun, but investment was never my game.
HOWEVER, with the help of an awesome online investment community (wink wink) perhaps it wouldn't be so outrageous to think that a community investment couldn't be fairly well placed. Bearing in mind of course that all money would be freely DONATED with absolutely no obligation to see any returns on it, so there would be nothing contractual outside of just a strong expectation that it will be used positively by the decentralised community as far as is possible.
Requirement 2: Trustless System
I don't know anything about having shared wallets in the cryptospace but Im assuming people are managing it one way or another out there right? Presumably making a withdrawal from a community account would require authentication from multiple people and be witnessable by the community etc. so that some crazy pirate can't run off with all the cash. I imagine that this would be some sort of regular occurence in which a portion of the harvested interest would be withdrawn and distributed to peoples wallets and/or turned in to FIAT money in order to tip all the un-crypto folk who don't understand it but like receiving free vegetables and a 50 pence piece : )
Requirement 3: Shedloads of donated cash
I don't know how much would be required to start this off but its fair to say its probably a significant pile, and the more the merrier obviously if we want to create a thriving community of eco-veg-legends who work with a smile on their face as they hand out beautiful food and cold hard cash to everyone who stops by!
This means we would need to fundraise and I guess Im wondering how best to incentivise the donations.
The obvious one, which Im not too keen on, is to make donation a prerequisite for being part of the community. That way we pull in lots of small donations and also determine who has priority to come and work at the farm or receive the bountiful fruits of the project. It sounds a bit pay-to-win to me and smacks of the usual middle-class members only club. I would love it if ANYONE felt they could benefit regardless of investment.... but maybe Im too much of an idealist.
The best one, which is perhaps more unlikely, is to have benevolent wealthy folk donate largish chunks of capital purely because it looks like an awesome experiment and everything is well in place for it to be a success. Obviously there may be some vegetable benefits on the side.... This would be great but we probably need to offer more to these angel investors if we want to entice them. Im imagining maybe some kind of VIP statuses for special events, general love and thanks on social media etc. and maybe even some passive income.... but any suggestions would be much appreciated.
An additional income stream could be paid events and education although again, Id rather work towards being an idyllic paradise where no-one has to spend money for anything and in fact they get paid to participate but hey, Im prepared to consider the options. And there is plenty of those when it comes to event holding and education. We already host various camps on the field behind (we even have a creativity themed camp called LEO camp - nothing to do with finance im afraid!) and we are planning to build an indoor/outdoor classroom for hosting educational permaculture classes and courses. We have also hosted small scale music festivals so we have a good reputation in the local community for providing cool social events. Anyway, you get the gist.... we could have fundraising events if we really wanted to make the poor people poorer.....
And seriously, thats what it feels like doesnt it? The 1% of humanity exist in a world of riches beyond our imagination while the rest of us have to charge each other everything we've earned just to keep our own communities alive. WHY!? Why should we keep willingly enslaving ourselves to the yoke of robbing each other when we know well enough that there is plenty of wealth to go round in this world.
CryptoCurrency is CHANGING THINGS!!!!
ahem sorry for that outburst. Im normally so reserved....
Anyway, as I was reading back, I realised that of course the community fund could be used to offset all the costs at first, making things somewhat cheaper than they would be, and slowly working towards my vision of Free Produce and a tip. But somehow I feel like that tip would be the gimmick that would put us on the map. You know, like a seminal project that gets everyones attention, makes the newspapers, gives people a hint of what crypto can really do for the world if its utilised right. Right?
Im sure there's loads more I should say but my brain is starting to run out of braincells and they were pretty scant to begin with so its time to go eat food and meditate in this miracle existence we seem to be residing in.
Please don't hold back. Tell me everything. Make me look stupid. It wont be hard. Even the tiniest thoughts will be absorbed gratefully. Maybe this is brilliant and it will change my life and even the world! or maybe I can just forget it and go back to sleep...either one sounds pretty great right now.
Big love to you all x x
DEEPEST ACCEPTANCE. EFFORTLESS FURTHERANCE!
Basil
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I admire your enthusiasm and I'm sure at least part of your dream could be fulfilled. You have some wonderful ideas.
Maybe the trick would be to start with the easiest bit and then develop step by step and start to include crypto as you progress.
Most of the projects here don't start with an overarching business plan but develop and iterate as they go.
I'm not keen on the paying people to take away the food bit but then I'm feeling a little jaded after experiencing what's gone on locally with our community food bank.
I like the idea of people being paid in food though, especially for those who love to garden. How far away is the land from a city? Is it close enough to attract people who have no gardens of their own?
It's a shame you have no other comments yet. I'd be interested to hear from people who understand the crypto stuff more than we do. 😁
Maybe switch out some of your tags to get more eyes on it.
Proofofbrain is a good one at the moment. And there must be gardening communities. There used to be a homesteading one but not sure if it moved to Hive. Having said that you've got some good tags there already. 😂
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hehe. Thanks Gillian! I never have been much good at tags.... didnt even know you could switch them out!
We're a 40 minute drive from Norwich which is our nearest city so a bit far perhaps. What happened with your local food bank?
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Nothing very exciting. The community centre set it up a few months ago for people struggling as a result of Covid but 95% of people in the queue are clearly not struggling going by their standard of dress and the expensive backpacks etc. they bring along to take away the food. Not to mention the branded coffee many of them are clutching. 😂
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I suppose that could be frustrating if you're specifically wanting to help only the very poor and homeless etc. But ideally I think it is helpful to suspend our judgement, especially in these times, but also on a long term scale. Although I have tagged this post as charity, I don't see it that way, I see it as incentivised community and I don't think it matters who you are or what your social status, if something can encourage you to partake in your community and improve your quality of your life experience and the experience of others, then Im all for it!
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!ENGAGE 10
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ENGAGEtokens.Well I think its great that they can get paid for their efforts and educating them would be great. I think people just pooling in their money and interest is great. But it would depend on whether or not there is enough value and sound investments. For example, if you deposit the stable coins in Blockfi and they go under, do you still get back your money? It still has risk but it would far more sound.
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I feel like it definitely comes with that risk, which is why I would treat all the money as 'donations' like a charity where you don't expect to receive anything back... in fact this is a good reason not to give angel investors any passive income because they would be expectant like shareholders and it might foster the wrong dynamic. Really all of the harvested interest should be spread amongst those who actively involve themselves in the community project, whether thats farming, marketing, teaching, learning, playing, receiving produce, the whole lot! Hell even relaxing in a community hammock is worth a few pennies in my book! I want to see people enjoying life in our society, so why not incentivise it?
Back to your question.... it would definitely require some intelligent investment strategy Im sure, especially as this is such a young space that is constantly evolving. We have to be alert to changes all the time, and spreading the investment across multiple platforms would probably make sense, and all the clever things that investors do to limit potential disasters. HOWEVER, have faith! Its been a long term thing on the hive/steem blockchain: 'Came for the Money, Stayed for the community'
By incentivising positive activity, we can actually encourage joyful interaction, which then rewires our behaviours to become more openly compassionate. I felt it happen in myself in the early days of steemit and I think its had a profound effect on my life. Imagine if it was REALised in to our offline community interactions!!?? Sure, when a crash comes around and the money disappears, you would lose a few people naturally, no judgement, but Im certain that many would rally around and put their beautiful hiveminds together to keep this wonderful flame of community alive. Might not work, but hey, if we don't try we'll never know!
In short - the money people put in, they have to accept is a philanthropic donation to an experimental project. No guarantees
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It is a wonderful thought track that you are on.
We can apply tokenomics in many different ways. The old charity model is going to be destroyed much in the same way the present economic/financial model in general is being torn down.
So we have to experiment, map our, and think of our we want to approach some of these problems. There is the potential to create a completely new system of providing the resources that people need. To do this, we need to monetize things since we still operate, for now, in a monetary world.
How can crypto, defi, proof of brain, etc... be used to achieve the end you seek? That is where innovation with tokenomics enters the picture.
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Tokenized time / food bank?
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yes my understanding of tokenomics is pretty slim. Are you suggesting that a coin would need to be minted to make this sort of thing work instead of just trying to use the profits from pre-existing projects? I suppose I imagine that this project would be too local and small scale to be worth minting a coin for.... unless there is some sort of coin out there already that is being prepped for these sort of community projects?
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You did pretty well for an instant over the head idea 😀
It can be seen you put a lot of passion and thoughts into it.
More later...
Reblogged!
@tipu curate
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Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 11/22) Liquid rewards.
hehe. It certainly goes over my head!
I look forward to hearing your thoughts :)
Very educative and encouraging and am glad to read this post. Nice one @basilmarples
glad it brought some cheer to your day!
Can you imagine this sort of thing happening in your local area?
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