Marcel van Marrewijk's Blog, page 159
May 12, 2016
Duurzame Dinsdag: Geef jouw idee een podium in politiek Den Haag!
Geef jouw idee een podium in politiek Den Haag!
De afgelopen jaren zijn steeds meer mensen met een duurzaam idee opgestaan. Al die ideeën verdienen een podium. Dat podium biedt Duurzame Dinsdag. Ideeën op het gebied van energie, mobiliteit of techniek bijvoorbeeld, maar ook op het gebied van voedsel, sociale innovatie en natuur. Duurzame Dinsdag is er voor álle duurzame ideeën.
Tot 15 juni verzamelt Duurzame Dinsdag inspirerende en innovatieve ideeën uit de samenleving op www.duurzamedinsdag.nl. Die ideeën worden op de eerste dinsdag van september aangeboden aan het kabinet. Op deze dag neemt Staatssecretaris Dijksma de koffer met ideeën in ontvangst. Dit koffertje is de afgelopen 18 jaar een icoon geworden: een icoon dat de duurzame samenleving verbindt aan de politiek. De beste ideeën krijgen die dag letterlijk een publiek en politiek podium.
Indieners maken kans op één van de zes prijzen, die worden toegekend door een jury onder leiding van Maurits Groen:
Greenchoice Energieprijs, voor het beste idee hoe Nederlanders dichtbij huis écht baas worden over hun eigen energie;
ENGIE Jongerenprijs, voor jongeren
VHG Groenprijs, voor mensen die met hun idee of initiatief groen naar de buurt brengen;
NS Reis mee-prijs, voor het beste idee dat bijdraagt aan meer duurzaam reizen;
Asito Sociale-innovatieprijs, voor mensen die met hun initiatief mensen bij elkaar brengen;
Lidl Voedselprijs, voor ideeën op het gebied van voedsel.
Duurzame Dinsdag helpt initiatiefnemers verder
Alle ideeën krijgen een plek in de koffer, ook ideeën die niet binnen één van de thema’s vallen. Niet alleen prijswinnaars, maar ook andere innovatieve en inspirerende initiatieven worden een stapje verder geholpen. Duurzame Dinsdag biedt toegang tot een breed netwerk aan professionals en andere initiatiefnemers. Samen verbinden, versnellen en versterken we mensen en hun ideeën.
Over Duurzame Dinsdag
Duurzame Dinsdag zet zich al 18 jaar in voor een duurzame samenleving. De vele partners zorgen ervoor dat mensen met duurzame ideeën een platform krijgen en hun idee verder kunnen brengen. De Duurzame Dinsdag-koffer, vol met initiatieven van particulieren, bedrijven, jong en oud, wordt op 6 september op het Binnenhof – in de Oude Zaal van de Tweede Kamer – aangeboden aan het kabinet. Ideeën kunnen worden ingediend via duurzamedinsdag.nl.
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May 11, 2016
Democracy, can we actually vote for it?
The Western world claims to be a democracy. With lobbyists and big money having so much influence that statement might be up for debate. But we still have a vote to get the right people to power, don’t we? It depends on how you look at it.
What is the influence of our voting system on our voting behaviour?
What do we actually do when we vote? In most voting systems that I know, with the exception of Australia, you check one box on a list. In essence, you vote for one party. That may sound like it’s democratic but how often have you wished that you could vote for 2, or even 3 parties because they, together, represent best what you stand for? Right now you have to make a choice and that choice can be a hard one. It is also detrimental for new parties or minority parties because you might make a choice that is not based on who best represents you but on who has the best chance to get more votes. So, instead of just voting, you are also burdened with trying to make a prediction of the voting habits of others in order to make sure your vote is not lost. This is especially the case if you want to make sure there is enough counterweight against a political party from the other side of the political spectrum. This is tricky business at best.
It usually goes something like this in multi party systems. Say there are party A and B on your side of the political spectrum, X and Y are all the way on the other side and K and L are somewhat in the middle. Now say that X has become very popular and you absolutely don’t want to get them to come to power. You have one vote to cast. That means you actually vote for one party and against all the rest in an equal way. Party A and B are both in line with your own ideology and they are both established parties. Are you going to cast your vote to party A or B? This is a difficult choice because you don’t know what other voters will do. This decision gets even worse if you would be more aligned with a party that is not yet established, say K. Would you then cast your vote on K? Or would you think it’s a better strategy to go for the more established candidates?
Say you cast your vote to party K. When the results are published, it looks like this:
Party A: 22%
Party B: 18%
Party K: 7%
Party L: 18%
Party X: 33%
Party Y: 2%
You might go, damn! I wish I had cast my vote to party A or B. Or, why didn’t more people vote for party K? Maybe they were afraid that their vote would be lost? The thing is, you’ll never know because the voting system does not bring these things to the surface.
Party X now announces itself as the winner of the elections and representing the voice of the people and if you live in a country where coalitions need to be made, they will use this ‘victory’ as a power tool to make things go their way because they are backed by the people. Well, they are backed by 33% of the people. We actually don’t know anything about the support they have from the other 67%. Does that sound fair and democratic to you?
If we clump the political spectrums together we have the following result:
Side A, B: 40%
Middle: 25%
Side: X, Y: 35%
So, 65% does not support that side of the political spectrum, Sadly enough, their view on leadership will now become the dominant way of governance. Partly because they probably managed to force it into a governance agreement with the other parties they are forming a coalition with. How democratic is this?
And in countries like the US, having to make these kind of decisions when voting makes it virtually impossible for independant candidates to win the elections. It’s even worse than that. Some people might even decide not to run for president out of fear that they might steal votes away from the party that they consider to be the second best choice, or the best of the lesser evils. Their candidacy might help the one that they absolutely don’t want to come power, come into power. The voting system protects the 2 party system immensily!
Popularity contests
Another side effect of these kind of voting systems is that elections become a popularity contest, not a call for sane governance. This is reflected in the numerous amounts of broken promises in any political system. It is not just the voting system that contributes to this of course but it does add to it.
In order to get voted in, you need to persuade people to choose your party above any others. It’s not enough to be second in mind for the entire population, no, you need to be top of mind. That means there is now an immense incentive to avoid anything that might be seen as unpopular, even if it would contribute to sane governance.
Taxes are one of those things that have been used over and over again to become popular. Throw tax breaks in your election progran and you are guaranteed to become popular with quite a few voters. But tax breaks means reduced income for government, which means dimished ability for spending. So, after getting into power, the cuts come to the surface. And usually in places where it hurts like healthcare, pensions, unemployment programs, privatisation of government services which usually lead to price hikes… And paradoxicaly enough, new taxes are often introduced too. Of course, you can’t become popular by coming out with a program that says you can only lower taxes if you then take away a whole range of benefits, so that part is conveniently left out.
Popularity contests do not make good governance though, as we have probably all experienced. The truth is, good governance looks at the long term and looks at things from a more systemic point of view. That means that it needs to be acknowledged that taxes are necessary to fund government projects that serve the people, as they should. It also means being open to different points of views and then deciding on the best solution to the best of our ability based on the knowledge we have at hand.
Currently though, because of the popuraity race, there is too much tendency to portray whatever the other party says as stupid, not realistic and lacking solid ground without the introduction of any facts whatsoever or cherry picked data at best.
Popularity races are also strengthened by the ideology based party system itself. Ideology based groups will always be at least partially blind to the advantages of proposals from adversaries. But that is for another article.
Are there better ways?
There are better voting systems than the ones we have in most parts of the world.
For a long time I believed that the cumulative voting system was a good one but it has some drawbacks. With cumulative voting you either select multiple options or you distribute a number of points, often equal to the number of options, between the possible choices. This gives a clear image of which parties are preferred but does not allow you to express a clear dislike of an option.
Take the example above and let’s use a point voting system. In this case that means 6 points are distributed among the parties. Imagine the extreme case where the voters for party X are all die hard loyalists and everyone else is squarely against them. That would mean that all 33 X voters would assign their full 6 points to party X, giving them 198 out of 600 points when there are 100 voters in total. Even if they don’t get a single point from the others, they would still end up with 33% of the points and would probably declare themselves the winner if none of the other parties managed to rake in more points.
Maybe adding an equal number of negative points might solve the problem. In the extreme case of the example given here that would mean that everyone who is not voting for party X would allot their 6 negative points to party X, subtracting 402 points from their result. That would have them end up with -204 while their voters would only have 198 negative point available to distribute over all the other parties.There is no way they would come out on top like that. But I haven’t found any research about a system like this
There are a lot of voting systems out there and if you want an exhaustive list I suggest to have a look at Wikipedia’s voting system page. I have been looking into them and the Shulze method looks very promising but it is designed to select a single winner, something that in a lot of countries is not really desirable. Shulze himself apparently thought the same and created a variation that allows people to elect multiple winners: the Shulze STV method.
As you can see, there is no clear winner and voting is a very complex matter when you look at all the different criteria that come into play. Yet, I believe that the voting systems we have in place in our political decision system today are not up to the job of delivering representative results. And the way forward is going for better, not perfect.
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May 10, 2016
S2M for Locals; it’s really happening!
You might have heard the rumors, you might have caught wind of something awesome, and let me tell you: it is all true! It has been a week and a half since the launch of S2M for Locals and since this Monday the pilot locations are up and running. The current pilot is taking place in/around Utrecht, but the international interest has been massive as well. Too bad, you have to wait a couple of weeks 
Werken bij iemand thuis? Het kan vanaf vandaag!
Je hebt het misschien al voorbij zien komen; Seats2meet for Locals, de AirBnB voor werkplekken, een kop koffie en een werkplek bij iemand anders in huis. Anderhalve week geleden kondigden we de officiële start van de S2M for Locals Pilot aan en ondertussen hebben al 6 mensen hun huis opengesteld voor coworkers. Wil je bij ze werken? Zoek dan tijdens het boeken van je workspace op ‘locals’ dan kom je deze locaties tegen. Na je boeking zullen ze contact met je opnemen met de details en je ook het daadwerkelijke huisnummer delen waar je moet zijn. We zijn benieuwd naar je ervaringen!
De pilot vindt plaats in Utrecht en omstreken, van jachthaven tot tuinhuis; je bent overal welkom om je laptop open te klappen en met de hosts te connecten. Het S2M netwerk bestaat uit slimme en interessante zp’ers, en de persoonlijke sfeer van S2M for Locals zal er aan bijdragen dat deze mensen makkelijker met elkaar in contact komen. Het ultieme startpunt voor serendipiteit!
Woon je in omgeving Utrecht en heb je nog wel een plekje over aan je keukentafel? Je kunt nog steeds meedoen aan de pilot! Meer informatie kun je vinden op locals.seats2meet.com. Ben je vergeten om je keukentafel op te ruimen, of heb je helemaal geen werkplek over? Ga dan bij een S2M for Locals locatie langs! Je kunt ze gewoon vinden op Seats2meet.com als je zoekt naar ‘locals’! Vergeet niet een foto of berichtje van je ervaringen te delen met @S2M!
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Fixing the economy, eradicating poverty and making taxes obsolete
Yes, it is possible! It can be done with a new kind of currency. It’s an idea that has been brooding in my mind for about a year now and recently the final puzzle piece fell into place.
I’ll start with a short introduction to our current state of affairs and then I’ll lay out the goals to be achieved before diving into describing how money can work differently. For those who want to dive in immediately, skip to ‘Clearing the mind‘.
The current situation
Probably no one disagrees with the fact that there is a lack of availability of money. I don’t think there is a government in the world that doesn’t have debts they just can’t seem to get rid off. Poverty is getting worse, especially in developed countries, and the money there is seems to pool in the pockets of the happy few.
In short, our current money is created out of debt, mostly by banks. On that debt there is interest, which means that more money has to be paid back than has been created. Now there is also an interest on the money you keep in your accounts. As long as the total interest that is generated by money in accounts equals the interest payable on debts, there is no problem. This is explained in detail by Steve Keens. However, the reality of today is that average Joe pays more interest on his loans than he gets from the money he has in the bank. It’s only when you start to have really big piles of it that you have a chance of getting a bigger return than the interest you pay on your loans by speculating on the financial market (this is not money created by interest on bank accounts though, so where does it come from?). This creates a huge incentive for hoarding and that is a big problem we are facing. The hoarded money, which is mainly circulating in the financial market, is essentially outside of the economy we live in day to day. Economies thrive when money circulates, but slow down when it is hoarded. This speed of circulation is called the ‘velocity of money’ in economic circles. The higher the velocity, the more economic activity, the more value is potentially created with the same dollar (if we just pass it around in a circle, no value is created). Right now we seem to have two economies, the financial one for the wealthy and the one we live in. And money seems to be flowing mainly from our economy to the financial one.
The conclusion is: the current scenario is far from ideal.
For a longer explanation on how our money works, have a look at the Positive Money website.
Goals
The monetary system proposed in this article aims to create the following effects:
Solve unavailability
Eradicate poverty
Put an end to the split economy (‘real’ and financial)
Disincentivise extreme hoarding
Eradicate extreme inequality
Eliminate the debt/money imbalance for everyone
Create a self stabilizing monetary system that can cater to both a growing and a shrinking economy
Clearing the mind
Before diving into the thick of this new monetary system, I would like to invite you to temporarily set aside any assumptions you have about money. Feel free to collect them again at the end of the article. Ready? Ok, here we go.
Setting things up
The currency system is called ‘the Vault’ and the currency is a VCoin.
This article is proposing a new cryptocurrency built on the blockchain (a public, encrypted ledger for securely registering transactions). The blockchain already underpins BitCoin and many other cryptocurrencies. It eliminates fraud and facilitates a monetary system that does not have to be owned by a central entity. This then avoids or at least diminishes abuse of the monetary system by people aiming to gain power.
To be clear, this currency does not use BitCoins and it does not work the same way BitCoin does.
Let’s call the monetary system ‘the Vault’ and for the sake of this article, the currency itself VCoin.
The Vault has the following components:
Private accounts
Corporate accounts
Total amount of VCoins in circulation, which is called VCTotal.
Total stable amount of VCoins in circulation, which is called VCBase.
The Vault Bank from which money can be borrowed.
Total amount of outstanding loans, which is called VCDebt.
The borrowed money, which is called VCBorrowed.
Parameters for the setup in the article:
Initial balance for private accounts: 100,000 VCoins
Basic income: 2,000 VCoins / month
Demurrage fee: 2% / month (explained below)
Additionally:
VCTotal = VCBase + VCBorrowed
Creating VCBase
Everyone gets an account with 100,000 VCoins.
Everyone can open one and only one private account in the Vault. Every private account, when opened, will have a balance of 100,000 VCoins. This is newly created money. It sets up the initial amount of money that is available for spending.
With this setup VCBase = 100,000 x number of private accounts.
Basic income
Everyone receives a basic income of 2,000 VCoins per month.
Every month 2,000 VCoins are added to each private account. This is a fixed basic income.
The reason this is added has to do with the upcoming automation wave created by the advances in artificial intelligence. People say new jobs are always created when this happens but the question we need to ask is not ‘can we create new jobs?’ but ‘do we really need to create new jobs to keep society running?’
Demurrage fee
Every month 2% is taken off every account.
At the end of every month, 2% is taken off the account (calculated on the average balance of the account over the month). This is defined as a demurrage fee in economics. The amount collected this way is destroyed.
The demurrage fee disincentivises extreme hoarding since the more someone keeps on an account, the bigger the cut will be at the end of the month. This increases the velocity of the currency.
Note that the basic income equals 2% of the initial deposit when opening an account. This choice is made for simplicity reasons.
Going below 0
Negative balances are not allowed.
Negative balances are not allowed. This is not as big an issue as it might seem because loans are interest free. See below under ‘Lending and borrowing money‘.
Closing an account
Closing an account removes 100,000 VCoins from VCBase.
When someone dies, the account needs to be closed and in order to make sure VCBase still equals 100 000 times the number of personal accounts, 100,000 VCoins need to be taken out. There are 3 possible situations:
The account balance is exactly 100,000 VCoins: in this rare case the account is closed and the money on it is destroyed.
The account balance supercedes 100,000 VCoins: 100,000 VCoins are taken out and destroyed, the rest of the money goes to the appointed beneficiaries, after which the account is closed.
The account balance is below 100,000 VCoins: the account is closed and the money that was on it is destroyed. The missing amount will ‘leak’ out of VCBase because of the demurrage fee. Say the balance was 60,000 VCoins. That means the remaining 40,000 VCoins are on other accounts. These 40,000 VCoins are subject to the demurrage fee but the equivalent is not re-injected through the basic income because there is one fewer private account to put it in. This way the 40,000 VCoins will eventually leak out of VCBase.
Accounts are only really closed when someone dies. Otherwise they are set to inactive. This is to avoid people closing down accounts when they are depleted and reopening them again in order to claim another 100,000 VCoins. A secure identification system would be needed to avoid fraud but that topic is outside the scope of this article.
An inactive account is still subject to the demurrage fee and still receives its basic income of 2,000 VCoins every month. Eventually the balance will reach 100,000 VCoins, no matter what it was when it was inactivated. If the owner decides to reactivate the account, he regains access to the balance on the account at that point in time.
Corporate accounts
Corporate accounts do not receive an initial balance, nor a basic income. They are subject to the 2% demurrage fee.
There can be as many corporate accounts as people want. Corporate accounts work slightly different in comparison to private accounts. They are subject to the 2% demurrage fee but do not receive the initial 100,000 VCoins and they do not receive the basic income.
When corporate accounts are closed the balance can either be distributed to designated private accounts or it can be set to inactive, which will result in the balance eventually reaching 0 due to the demurrage fee.
Lending and borrowing money
Loans are made interest-free
The demurrage fee creates an incentive for interest-free lending since the lender can safeguard her capital against the demurrage fee by lending it out.
Say that I have 300,000 VCoins in my account and I am spending 5,000 VCoins a month on average. And you have started project for which you need 250,000 VCoins. I would be more than happy to lend you those 250,000 VCoins without interest for a monthly rate of 4,000 VCoins. Now I am only paying 1,000 VCoins in demurrage fee (2% of 50,000) per month instead of 6,000 VCoins (2% of 300,000). This gives me an income of 6,000 VCoins per month minus the 1,000 VCoins in demurrage fee, which leaves me with a net income of 5,000 VCoins. Enough to cover my living expenses. And that is when I don’t have any other income.
In case no private lender can be found, a loan can be made from the Vault Bank, also interest free. This is new money, VCBorrowed, that is added to VCTotal. It is also subject to the demurrage fee. Let’s call the amount that is taken out of VCBorrowed by the demurrage fee VCVoid. One of 3 options can be taken.
VCVoid is re-added to VCTotal. This immediately restores the balance between VCBorrowed and VCDebt, making sure there is enough money in the Vault to pay off the debts. This is difficult to implement because the only option we have available is adding it to the basic income. That would create an incentive for lending with the intention to raise one’s basic income, something that would lead to out-of-control inflation and is better to be avoided.
VCVoid is subtracted from VCDebt. This also restores the balance between VCBorrowed and VCDebt. The effect of this is that loans are made with a negative interest-rate equal to the demurrage fee. This creates an incentive for borrowing from the Vault bank in order to fund projects. At the same time it disincentivises private loans, thereby further disincentivising hoarding as a side effect.
Nothing is done with VCVoid. Now there is an imbalance between VCBorrowed and VCDebt, namely VCBorrowed < VCDebt. This means that in order to pay off the total debt, money from VCBase needs to be used. In the long run that is not a problem because as soon as VCTotal drops below VCBase, the sum of all the demurrage fees taken out of all accounts would be less than the total sum of all basic incomes added to VCTotal, bringing it back towards the initial VCBase.
Which option is chosen depends on the incentives we want to create. Option 1 is not a smart choice, option 2 would create an investment-friendly environment where risk-taking is encouraged while option 3 would make people more cautious before they start taking out loans for their projects.
It’s even be possible to create a mix of options 2 and 3, thereby playing with the impact of the different incentives. For example, loans could have a 1% negative interest, thereby depleting VCBorrowed slower than the demurrage fee would do with option 3 while at the same time creating some caution when people borrow money for their projects.
Relentless borrowing could de-stabilize the system. The question needs to be asked why people would do it though. Is there enough incentive? Our current monetary system would also suffer with out-of-control borrowing and safeguards have been set up. The same can be done for the Vault. The details of these are beyond the scope of this article.
Overview
Taken everything together, the Vault now looks like this:
Variations
It is easy to build variations on this. The initial balance on personal accounts can be varied, the basic income can be varied and the demurrage fee can be varied. Varying these parameters over time while the system is in use should be done with care and side effects need to be taken into consideration.
No matter what the values of the initial parameters are, VCBase will always gravitate towards:
VCBase -> Number of private accounts x basic income x 100 / demurrage fee
So, if a basic income of 5,000 VCoins is chosen, together with a demurrage fee of 1% and an initial deposit of 10,000 VCoins per private account, the balance of each individual account, when left alone, will eventually end up at 500,000 VCoins. This creates a stable VCBase that scales with the population while borrowing adds money that scales with economic activity.
Impact
I believe that the Vault or something similar would create a more stable economy and a more collaborative world. Some of the expected results beyond the initial goals are:
End of cut throat competition and an age of higher collaboration
Increased information sharing, resulting in better innovation
Obsoleteness of the financial market for pure capital gain
A return to a ‘real world’ economy with ‘real world’ projects instead of financial schemes
More investment in long term projects such as battling climate change and caring for the environment
Impact oriented economy instead of profit oriented economy
Better work/life balance
…
Predicting everything is hard but I think that the positive impact would far outweigh any negatives that would pop up. And no system is ever perfect, the goal is to create a better one.
What about the government and taxes?
Government spends money into existence
By now you might be wondering: and where do we make taxes obsolete? I decided to keep that one for last because in order to get there we need government involvement.
When government starts using the Vault a special case is created. Government gains the ability to spend money into existence. The amount of money created by the government is VCGov. VCGov increases VCTotal and the formula for it now becomes:
VCTotal = VCBase + VCBorrowed + VCGov
At first sight this might create an out-of-control inflation but it won’t because there is a built-in safeguard.
Say that government spends 1 billion VCoins a month. The first month this happens, VCGov would equal 1 billion VCoins. At the end of the month though, these 1 billion VCoins are subject to the 2% demurrage fee. This amount is destroyed along with the rest of the collected demurrage fees. The first month, 20 million VCoins are destroyed this way. Every month this amount will go up until it reaches the monthly amount spent.
With a government spending 1 billion VCoins every month, inflation stops as soon as 50 billion has been spent into existence, taking the monthly demurrage fee into account. At that point, 1 billion VCoins will be destroyed every month due to the 2% demurrage fee, the same amount that is re-spent into existence.
Government is now released from the burden of balancing the books and can focus on implementing projects for the public good. Higher spending automatically means higher economic activity and lower spending means lower economic activity. That way government spending is on par with the size of the economy which is created by government spending. When big, expensive projects are finished and less money needs to be injected, the surplus will leak out over time due to the demurrage fee and less money being created each month.
Taxes
Taxes are made obsolete
Government is no longer dependent on tax income because they can just spend the necessary money into existence. Therefore, taxes are no longer needed to run the country.
They can still be useful though. Namely to disincentivize unwanted behaviour such as:
Polluting
Producing non repairable products
Producing non recyclable products
Deforestation
Waste generation
…
It is best to add these taxes back to VCTotal in order to avoid large fluctuations in VCTotal. The worst case scenario is when collected taxes are higher than the total sum of all basic incomes. This would make VCBase shrink. It is really easy to avoid this.
There are 3 possible ‘sources’ from which the taxes come from:
VCBase
VCBorrowed
VCGov
In all cases it can be injected through government spending, thereby effectively turning taxes collected on unwanted behaviour into benefits for the public. And it has a dampening effect on the temporary inflation created by VCGov.
Tax income will undoubtedly diminish over time. But with government not reliant on taxes that’s not a problem anymore. The only problem that could arise is that government has too much tax income, i.e. when it can’t spend it all back into the economy. Not a situation I think will easily happen but even that could be easily rectified by lowering taxes.
The complete picture
Putting all these components together we now end up with the following overview:
Added impact
On top of the effects mentioned earlier, government involvement adds the following effects:
End of governments struggling with budgets
End of austerity measures
Governments can again focus on investing in projects for the public interest and the common good
Taxes only used to disincentivize behaviour that is damaging to the public interest
Implementation
The Vault is currently only an idea, it has not been implemented yet.
In the best case scenario we have government working with us. Now that Japan has recognized BitCoin as a valid currency this might even happen. But it can also be done without government involvement. We’ll still have to pay taxes in that case though.
We only need a group of people to implement the Vault in order to start using it. Since the launch of the Ethereum platform we have the tools to easily make this happen.
Then we need a community that is willing to use it. In the end, money is based on trust. And with the blockchain a platform can be created that is trustworthy. The setup parameters (initial deposit, demurrage fee, …) can be tweaked so that it scales with that community.
Transparency is needed. That means that if you have an account, everyone can see that, but not the balance on it. By having an account you automatically accept the currency, at least as a percentage of payment for your services and/or products. That percentage can grow when the user base grows. The more services and products that can be traded with the currency, the higher the trust and the more people will be willing to accept it as payment, growing the user base and adding ever more products and services.
This platform can easily run in parallel to our current monetary system … until it takes over.
Conclusion
You can call me crazy and a dreamer but the world has never been changed by ‘realists’. I know I’m not the only one who has been thinking along these lines. And with all the financial scandals being uncovered and the uprise of grassroot movements of people who have had it with the status quo, I believe the time is ripe to take back the biggest power tool on the planet: the monetary system.
Ok, you can now collect your assumptions about money again if you still want to.
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Lancering nationaal platform maatschappelijke initiatieven Wij Samen voor Elkaar.
Vandaag wordt in Amsterdam het nationaal platform maatschappelijke initiatieven Wij Samen voor Elkaar.nl gelanceerd. Een initiatief van MaatschapWij, een onafhankelijk samenwerkingsverband van een snel groeiende groep ondernemingen, sportbonden en maatschappelijke organisaties, waaronder het Rode Kruis, de Zonnebloem, de Consumentenbond, de Hartstichting, NOV, KNVB, KNHB, KNLTB en KNGU, alsmede FrieslandCampina, NUON, Capgemini en NS.
Achtergrond
In een tijd, waarin alles steeds sneller verandert, worden geheel nieuwe eisen gesteld aan ons “samen leven”. Talloze individuen, clubjes, verenigingen, maatschappelijke organisaties en ondernemingen zetten zich al in ons land in om een bijdrage te leveren aan een betere en mooiere “samen leving”.
Wat zou het mooi zijn als al die initiatieven beter zichtbaar worden en elkaar versterken, en daarmee steeds meer mensen en organisaties inspireren om hun steentje bij te dragen? Dat is het uitgangspunt van MaatschapWij.
Wij zullen het met zijn allen moeten doen, en als burgers, naast consument ook producent in deze maatschappij moeten worden. Dat betekent zelf verantwoordelijkheid nemen voor het wel en wee in onze ‘samen leving’.
Verbinding en zichtbaarheid van goede initiatieven kunnen andere mensen en organisaties inspireren, om zélf initiatief te nemen voor een grotere maatschappelijke bijdrage. Samenleven is een werkwoord; daar moet je energie in steken. Samen werken staat daarbij centraal, dat maakt onze levens zoveel mooier én waardevoller.
Het portaal
Wij Samen voor Elkaar is het motto van MaatschapWij, waar de website naar is genoemd. MaatschapWij wil dus een bijdrage leveren aan een samenleving waarin we meer rekening met elkaar houden, meer voor elkaar over hebben, meer initiatief nemen en meer samenwerken. Het portaal dient als inspiratiebron voor iedereen die een actieve bijdrage wil leveren aan meer “wij” in onze maatschappij, van buurt barbecue tot nationale campagne.
Daarvoor biedt het portaal negen categorieën met een zo compleet mogelijk aanbod van actuele maatschappelijke initiatieven. Burgers en organisaties kunnen die er zelf gratis in de spotlights zetten, verbinden en op tal van manieren versterken.
Naast eigen aanbod worden op Wij Samen voor Elkaar.nl ook de initiatieven van partner sites als Buurtlink, GroenGelinkt, Nudge, Nextdoor, MAEX, We Helpen, LeeftSamen, Wijkconnect en iSocial getoond. Ook deze partijen ondersteunen de beweging
Ons logo
Alle initiatieven worden onder een gemeenschappelijk logo gepresenteerd: het &-teken. Het symbool voor “samen”, als in samenleving en samenwerking. Als je het ziet dan weet je, hier maken mensen onze samenleving een beetje mooier. Onze initiatiefnemers noemen we &Ablers, naar het Engelse werkwoord “to enable”, dat “mogelijk maken” betekent.
De introductiecampagne
Vanaf 10 mei zullen we ons logo en de website op zoveel mogelijk manieren onder de aandacht gaan brengen, zowel in de media als in het land. We worden daarbij geholpen door een vijftigtal bekende, maar vooral relevante, Nederlanders waaronder Adjiedj Bakas, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Bart Combee, Jan Peter Balkenende, Steven van Eijck, Diggie Dex, Freek de Jonge, Jeroen Smit, Prem Radhakishun, Jan Marijnissen, Maurice en Marc de Hond, Funda Müjde, Ronald van den Hoff, Rachelle Eerhart, Gijs de Vries en Adelheid Roosen, allen met een grote maatschappelijke betrokkenheid.
The post Lancering nationaal platform maatschappelijke initiatieven Wij Samen voor Elkaar. appeared first on Seats2meet.
The Meeting of the Future, session 2 – May 9, 2016
New trends
After an inspiring first session in January, we continued our ‘The Meeting of the Future’ brainstorm sessions yesterday, led again by Ronald van den Hoff. Kicking off with an introduction round (new people from last session!), we quickly came to the cases of wholesaler Makro and the pop-up location during the Ricoh Open, a big tennis tournament in The Netherlands. Both parties recently joined the S2M Network. This immediately led to the realization that corporate organizations are getting more aware of the need to open their doors, leaving their vertical, hierarchal structures to create more of a horizontal, networking organization by connecting to the outside world and giving room to co-creations.
Relevance – more than just a buzz word
We concluded that the great thing of a pop-up location is the fact that it’s relevant: it’s there at the right time, attracting a diversity of people with different motivations to use that specific pop-up location. Due to all kinds of shifts in economy, society is having an abundance of spaces, places, locations that entrepreneurs want to give some sort of relevance, whether they have a co-working center, meeting space center, lunchroom, library, corporate, school, or otherwise. So why not migrate these ingredients for relevance – right time, diversity, motivation – to a permanent location and make that a big success? That’s what everyone is looking for and it’s easier said than done. It’s exactly what makes these brainstorm sessions so precious: we are sharing our knowledge, coming up with new ideas and growing stronger as a collective because of it. We are co-creating the preconditions of staying relevant in this turbulent world.
Embracing diversity
The key to innovation – in other words, the way to keep your right to exist as an organization/location – is to embrace diversity. After all, co-creating is not about us all doing the same thing. The best illustration of that might be a soccer (or any other sports) team that needs forwards, midfielders, defenders and a great goalie to play a successful match. Creativity is born when differences collide and something happens right there. At that point a difference becomes a productive factor. These last two sentences I have borrowed from Dutch philosopher Huub Oosterhuis, as I recently was struck by the way he described the need for diversity so perfectly simple. This is the reason why the hub & spoke model that we talked about during this session is such a great one. Working in a model like that with all kinds of different types of locations (and different business models), will not only reinforce your local network, but also brings diversity ergo innovation to your own location. So, also here, reaching out, connecting to the outside world is the key to scale up and ensure the right to exist of your organization.
Feeding The Serendipity Machine
Ronald explained why it is so important to scale up the S2M Network fast now, which brought us back to where we started: creating relevance. We need to create a critical mass and quality input to feed the S2M algorithm in the right way. This way, The Serendipity Machine will be able to make more and more relevant matches and therefore offer us very valuable output. This output can be used to spot trends in the market in an early stage and be offered to clients making their business more relevant. Guess who will be able to facilitate these processes and stay relevant as well? Exactly. Having access to this output in combination to sharing knowledge with other S2M Hosts & Ambassadors allows you to create lucrative and even disruptive new business models. Want to learn more? Please feel welcome to attend the next sessions of ‘The Meeting of the Future’, as two more are planned. We’ll keep you posted on the dates!
Want to know more about Society 3.0 and download the book of Ronald van den Hoff, co-founder of Seats2meet? Click here.
The post The Meeting of the Future, session 2 – May 9, 2016 appeared first on Seats2meet.
May 9, 2016
10 essential work tools if you live in the 21st century
The work as we know is changing. Wait, is that the first time someone says that? Let’s be practical. Here are 10 (out of hundreds) tools to help you work on the 21st century.
The dutch startup helps anyone with a passion and a project to find a team. Create your part up about a project and wait for your team to gather. People with the same interest and with abilities and talents to complement your own will see your part up and join. There you can also make schedule meetings and organize your project.
Ok, so now you have your team on part up. But who is better to lead at each step of the project? Teamily work with the famous MBTI test that traces 4 essential personality traces to suggest whose person is better to lead in all the 16 project steps they mapped. In that way everyone practices their strengths in a smart way and the project is followed up until the end.
Basecamp is a website where you can create several projects, add team members, create an schedule, to-dos, check everyone’s status with check ins, quick chats, upload files and post massages as updates. All of those tools combined with a really nice design to make everything organized, easy and accessible for everyone.
Even during the 21st century we need physical spaces to work and meeting people. Seats2meet locations and workspaces are in more than 20 countries. In the Netherlands the workspaces are for free. You can also check the cool workspaces pointed by the ambassadors. There you have caffes, coworking centers, university campus and all kind of awesome places you can go to work around the globe.
Seats2meet serendipity matchmaking
In need of help? Don’t panic. Go to a seats2meet location, check in, send an e-mail telling what you need and wait. There you will have a large network and knowledge in abundance to help you solve any problems. The best part? Those people are nearby! Have an instant meeting. Faster than ramen!
Do you work selling files as design pieces, music, photos and videos? Well, now you have perfect platform to sell your files in a safe environment. Filepurch is a website that allows you to post your files there, as a client’s logo. They can only download it after they pay for it. In that way you have the guarantee that your services will be paid.
So you live in New York, your app developer in Singapure, your marketing consultant in São Paulo and your partner in Berlin. You are stuck in a problem and need to make a brainstorm. Realtimeboard is the solution. You have various tools options as inserting images, text, lines, drawings, videos, post its, notes, you name it. The cool part is that more than one person can edit at once.
Yes, we still need to scan stuff. Face it. CamScanner a free app, super easy and super efficient. I won’t even waste my time explaining how it works because it’s so easy.
You are in a conference. By the end of the day you can have hundreds of business cards and will take forever to save all of that contacts on your phone. Samcard will scan it and save in your contacts. As easy as that.
I bet you have never heard of this one! Yes, google. If you don’t know it here is the link: google.com. it is an awesome tool! But what I like most about it is that you can have a shared desktop with anyone from your small company. I mean, it’s the best tool to have your company’s e-mail, agenda and document storage (in google they call it drive). Everything online. You can access it from any computer or cellphone. It’s not because something is obvious that is not worth mentioning.
Is there anything missing? Let me know by commenting!
The post 10 essential work tools if you live in the 21st century appeared first on Seats2meet.
10 work tools if you live in the 21st century
The work as we know is changing. Wait, is that the first time someone says that? Let’s be practical. Here are 10 (out of hundreds) tools to help you work on the 21st century.
The dutch startup helps anyone with a passion and a project to find a team. Create your part up about a project and wait for your team to gather. People with the same interest and with abilities and talents to complement your own will see your part up and join. There you can also make schedule meetings and organize your project.
Ok, so now you have your team on part up. But who is better to lead at each step of the project? Teamily work with the famous MBTI test that traces 4 essential personality traces to suggest whose person is better to lead in all the 16 project steps they mapped. In that way everyone practices their strengths in a smart way and the project is followed up until the end.
Basecamp is a website where you can create several projects, add team members, create an schedule, to-dos, check everyone’s status with check ins, quick chats, upload files and post massages as updates. All of those tools combined with a really nice design to make everything organized, easy and accessible for everyone.
Even during the 21st century we need physical spaces to work and meeting people. Seats2meet locations and workspaces are in more than 20 countries. In the Netherlands the workspaces are for free. You can also check the cool workspaces pointed by the ambassadors. There you have caffes, coworking centers, university campus and all kind of awesome places you can go to work around the globe.
Seats2meet serendipity matchmaking
In need of help? Don’t panic. Go to a seats2meet location, check in, send an e-mail telling what you need and wait. There you will have a large network and knowledge in abundance to help you solve any problems. The best part? Those people are nearby! Have an instant meeting. Faster than ramen!
Do you work selling files as design pieces, music, photos and videos? Well, now you have perfect platform to sell your files in a safe environment. Filepurch is a website that allows you to post your files there, as a client’s logo. They can only download it after they pay for it. In that way you have the guarantee that your services will be paid.
So you live in New York, your app developer in Singapure, your marketing consultant in São Paulo and your partner in Berlin. You are stuck in a problem and need to make a brainstorm. Realtimeboard is the solution. You have various tools options as inserting images, text, lines, drawings, videos, post its, notes, you name it. The cool part is that more than one person can edit at once.
Yes, we still need to scan stuff. Face it. CamScanner a free app, super easy and super efficient. I won’t even waste my time explaining how it works because it’s so easy.
You are in a conference. By the end of the day you can have hundreds of business cards and will take forever to save all of that contacts on your phone. Samcard will scan it and save in your contacts. As easy as that.
I bet you have never heard of this one! Yes, google. If you don’t know it here is the link: google.com. it is an awesome tool! But what I like most about it is that you can have a shared desktop with anyone from your small company. I mean, it’s the best tool to have your company’s e-mail, agenda and document storage (in google they call it drive). Everything online. You can access it from any computer or cellphone. It’s not because something is obvious that is not worth mentioning.
Is there anything missing? Let me know by commenting!
The post 10 work tools if you live in the 21st century appeared first on Seats2meet.
AmsterdamConnected – the new place to be in Amsterdam
In a land far far away (also know as the south east part of Amsterdam – 25 min from the central station) in a not so long time ago (a week ago, to be specific) the workspaces at AmsterdamConnected got started! You can just go to seats2meet and book it right now. Hooray!
Now you ask me why am I celebrating? Well, AmsterdamConnected is something different. It’s a mix of that relaxed place where startups actually take their first steps and the big fancy offices that costs a million euros to be in.
It is a huge building right next to the Holendrecht metro station. What used to be a bank is now a variation of innovative companies as Ricoh. The organization that used to work only with printers now is specialized in atomization and all kinds of technology for office spaces. One good example of what they do is The Edge – no, not the U2 guitarist – it is the Deloitte office in Amsterdam, the most sustainable building in Europe.
Organizations located in AmsterdamConnected don’t bring only their presence but also contribute to the vibe and the transformation of their surroundings. The whole space is equipped with Ricoh technology; the awesome people from permanent beta also bring their presence, work and idea into place. And to top it the entire seats2meet platform working so anyone can join, use and contribute to the creative and innovative ecosystem of AmsterdamConnected.
I spoke to , one of the cofounders of AmCon. As we know from the marketing perspective we developed products from a simple commodity as coffee beans to a complex and well thought experience as in Starbucks for an instance. Now imagine the next level. What if there was coffee that transforms you. Makes you as fast as Usain Bolt. Now that would be something wouldn’t it?
AmsterdamConnected propitiates an environment of transformation. Of course that in order to transform some inner effort is needed as well. As the world we live in and ourselves Amsterdam Connected is a physical space that proposes to be in constant change with the people in it. It is definitely worth checking it out, and as a consequence being a part of it – even if it is a small one.
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