Social counter – thinking outside the money box
Hi,
I found this forum just couple days ago and I was delighted of many interesting discussions. I'm extremely excited about an idea concerning economics of mankind and I want to share it (shortly) hoping that you can react to it despite of its primitive state. I'm researcher (PhD student) from Finland (University of Joensuu). I have background of human-technology interaction, future of information society and social media. I’m very much amateur in economics, but I like to think that as strength as it enables fresh approaches to topic in hand.
I'm very keen to create visions for future and I came up idea of "social counter". I believe that this "Social counter" can offer better solutions for co-operation, democracy, decision making, fairness, participation, payments for non-rival goods etc. then money alone.
Main points of "Social counter"
- SC is virtual, it don't have physical form
- Use of SC is not controlled by any authority (there are no rules to govern SC-economy)
- SC transactions are always public
- SC is not suitable to use as payment for rival goods
- Anyone can create SC and creating is limitless
- Creating SC is to publish SC creator and target
- Every SC is unique (SC record consist for example creator, target, creation time)
- value of SC is subjective and relative
- SC doesn't have owner (only creator and target)
- SC are common (they belong to everyone)
I have seen SC as parallel instrument to money, it doesn’t replace money (or open money) and its task is not to act as medium of exchange.
I believe that humans mutual interactions need moneylike instrument (money and hopefully open money in future) and other instrument to medium value (SC or similar). These instruments complete each other and have deviating functions. No good solution is not possible to achieve just having either one, both are necessary and also advanced interface between them. Money concentrates rival goods trading and one-to-one services and SC concentrates non-rival goods (immaterial goods/commons) and one/many-to-many services.
SC’s role is to mediate human values and this way be fluid/bond to fuel communities efficiency and communal activities. Money/open money has disadvantages like (need for certain goods/service to be traded, trading has to take place in certain time, agreement of terms is needed, structure of trading promotes one-to-one transaction etc.) which are impossible or hopelessly difficult to nullify by altering the characteristics of money without same time demolishing functioning features of money.
I have used more time to theoritical pondering then operationalising SC. however I believe that operationalising of SC could be very easy and selfaccelerating process. Modern social web platforms have already all the basic elements to found databases of SC creators, targets and other records and also interfaces for web users to easily create and handle SCs.
Y.Benkler wrote about the wealth of networks and i see SCs as "the currency of networks", because it continues Benkler's ideas in the same spirit. I think that preliminary model of SC is extremely potential, but still i haven't found anything similar models so far. I would be very glad of any feedback, pointers, comments, hints etc. I probably described SC not clearly enough to enable easy commenting, because of my primitive english writing skills or/and unfinished state of whole SC model. So in this state biggest help for me could be information about models/cases where economy consists of moneylike instrument and some value mediator instrument (some kind of credits?).
I have already found these relations:
Regenorosity: this has very same spirit as SC
Whuffie: many similarities, but whuffies are used in trading also
P2P social currency: some similarities, but only one instrument if I got it right?
Attention economy: is closely related to SC
Peer money: SC would be main instrument in p2p-economies
submission for acknowledgment perhaps relation to SC, i didn’t understand fully what this sfa is?
I found this forum just couple days ago and I was delighted of many interesting discussions. I'm extremely excited about an idea concerning economics of mankind and I want to share it (shortly) hoping that you can react to it despite of its primitive state. I'm researcher (PhD student) from Finland (University of Joensuu). I have background of human-technology interaction, future of information society and social media. I’m very much amateur in economics, but I like to think that as strength as it enables fresh approaches to topic in hand.
I'm very keen to create visions for future and I came up idea of "social counter". I believe that this "Social counter" can offer better solutions for co-operation, democracy, decision making, fairness, participation, payments for non-rival goods etc. then money alone.
Main points of "Social counter"
- SC is virtual, it don't have physical form
- Use of SC is not controlled by any authority (there are no rules to govern SC-economy)
- SC transactions are always public
- SC is not suitable to use as payment for rival goods
- Anyone can create SC and creating is limitless
- Creating SC is to publish SC creator and target
- Every SC is unique (SC record consist for example creator, target, creation time)
- value of SC is subjective and relative
- SC doesn't have owner (only creator and target)
- SC are common (they belong to everyone)
I have seen SC as parallel instrument to money, it doesn’t replace money (or open money) and its task is not to act as medium of exchange.
I believe that humans mutual interactions need moneylike instrument (money and hopefully open money in future) and other instrument to medium value (SC or similar). These instruments complete each other and have deviating functions. No good solution is not possible to achieve just having either one, both are necessary and also advanced interface between them. Money concentrates rival goods trading and one-to-one services and SC concentrates non-rival goods (immaterial goods/commons) and one/many-to-many services.
SC’s role is to mediate human values and this way be fluid/bond to fuel communities efficiency and communal activities. Money/open money has disadvantages like (need for certain goods/service to be traded, trading has to take place in certain time, agreement of terms is needed, structure of trading promotes one-to-one transaction etc.) which are impossible or hopelessly difficult to nullify by altering the characteristics of money without same time demolishing functioning features of money.
I have used more time to theoritical pondering then operationalising SC. however I believe that operationalising of SC could be very easy and selfaccelerating process. Modern social web platforms have already all the basic elements to found databases of SC creators, targets and other records and also interfaces for web users to easily create and handle SCs.
Y.Benkler wrote about the wealth of networks and i see SCs as "the currency of networks", because it continues Benkler's ideas in the same spirit. I think that preliminary model of SC is extremely potential, but still i haven't found anything similar models so far. I would be very glad of any feedback, pointers, comments, hints etc. I probably described SC not clearly enough to enable easy commenting, because of my primitive english writing skills or/and unfinished state of whole SC model. So in this state biggest help for me could be information about models/cases where economy consists of moneylike instrument and some value mediator instrument (some kind of credits?).
I have already found these relations:
Regenorosity: this has very same spirit as SC
Whuffie: many similarities, but whuffies are used in trading also
P2P social currency: some similarities, but only one instrument if I got it right?
Attention economy: is closely related to SC
Peer money: SC would be main instrument in p2p-economies
submission for acknowledgment perhaps relation to SC, i didn’t understand fully what this sfa is?
About
© 2009 Created by Eric Harris-Braun on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
