Naming and expressing the group ideology
Many ideologies in tension and options to consider! From Sid-
“An Agent-Centric Wealth/Economic System”
Distributed ledgers are empowering people to interact with each other in new ways. They’re giving birth to an economic system that is contextual, and built around the human experience.
Our agent-centric economic system empowers individuals, communities and organisations to leverage tools that harness the new economy. Build, collaborate and share in whole new ways, amplify and scale new kinds of value and discover new patterns of social orchestration.
Tools: Distributed micro-accounting, agent-centric value, reputation based economics and more.
Potential branding themes:
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Digital Commons
Works well with Commons Engine branding
P2P Economics
Open App Ecosystem (join this existing umbrella project?) “A suite of interoperable, open source tools which support transparent, democratic, and decentralized organizing.”
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Economy Kit, Economikit or “Toolkits For A Truly P2P Digital Economy”
Pros: broad applicability, non-partisan
Cons: potentially loses punch in being unopinionated
Sovereign Systems / sovereigntytoolkit.org This theme might be ideal naming. See https://twitter.com/dan_mi_sun/status/1196974408335626241
Please edit to add more & discuss relative merits & perils below!
Emaline Tue 10 Mar 2020 8:31PM
These are great ideas!
Couldn't agree more, @Sid Sthalekar. It's a tendency rather than an absolute law, but I notice everywhere that the flashier the name and the more it insists that it is a truly new, revolutionary, world-changing thing, the less impressive the product often is 😂 Overcompensation is real, y'all.
Lols aside, common(s) sense economy is an EXCELLENT trope. It gestures easily to the fact that something's awry in economic business-as-usual, but also that we take inspiration from a strong, legitimate history of minor strands (e.g. ecological economics, de-growth economics, marxist analysis).
I would look forward to a vision/mission statement that qualifies what it means to make an economy more human or that seeks to make people matter. It could be really powerful to contextualize this stuff in relation to the historical obfuscations of mainstream economics, decentralized systems' cultural obsession with overriding the need for humans, and especially recognizing ourselves as actors (both victims and perpetrators) within global, cybernetic capitalism.
Sid Sthalekar Tue 10 Mar 2020 3:00AM
I was thinking about it this morning too. Couple points that have been on my mind:
- There's something about agent-centricity that seems central to the collective; it will define the structures and organising principles of what we build. To me this translates as 'a more human economy' or as Schumacher put it 'Economics as if people mattered'.
- I'm increasingly drawn towards very simple, almost mundane, naming (Economikit has that ring to it). Over the last decade we've seen tons of initiatives with inspiring names/vision statements that for multiple reasons have delivered pretty non-revolutionary offerings. Maybe the name has to be more functional? I think the people involved + the actual magic in what we're building will do the talking.
pospi Tue 10 Mar 2020 2:23AM
Thinking about naming again after Emaline's thoughts on packaging REA materials.
When I meet new people and tell them about these things, I often mention Basal's ethics equations and Sacred Capital's reputation data types to reflect on these same conclusions being reached independently; as they are just obvious conclusions. The same is true of REA in many aspects of its fundamental design- i.e. "an exchange model coupled with an input-process-output model" or "measuring objective reality with SI units". And to some extent of MetaIntegral's meta-currencies and the UN's SDGs.
So... what about the "common sense economy" or the "obvious economy"? Isn't that what is really emerging here? Are these concepts worth playing with? Maybe there are ties here to the OSS movement or concepts like selbstentfaltung.
Sid Sthalekar Wed 26 Feb 2020 2:09AM
Yeah, I like that. I was just about to share an article along these lines. I'm seeing great value in building something the provides 'contextual guardrails' for the movement of money + content + labour. The image above captures the essence, but should be updated to include the impact of agent-centric tech. It basically means communities can be created across physical distance/geography. (I'll send you some stuff over email which highlights the importance of this)
pospi Wed 26 Feb 2020 1:52AM
We do seem to have a lot of "regional economic development" projects in the mix. It occurs to me that this might be a compatible narrative to that of "neighbourhoods". And perhaps fairly all-encompassing? (see image)
Sid Sthalekar Tue 25 Feb 2020 12:58AM
How it resonates as narrative for Economikit?
To me, Mutual Credit rings true, but it could be articulated as non-extractive + co-operative monetary model. This allows any kind of implementation i.e. issuing credits or equity shares with a cap etc.
Food systems seems a bit narrow to me though. Perhaps it could be articulated as some form of basic sustainability framework? Just a thought.
pospi Mon 24 Feb 2020 6:26AM
Last sync @Ferananda Ibarra spoke about mutual credit & food systems as being cornerstones of the CommonsEngine narrative. This seems resonant on many levels- I'm curious to hear reflections on the group as to the specificity and narrative of this vision.
Sid Sthalekar Tue 17 Dec 2019 9:59AM
Feels like the name could reflect the bottom-up/distributed/agent-centric/self-sovereign theme. I'll post a couple name options in this thread as I think of them.
pospi Tue 17 Dec 2019 12:55AM
I am just throwing this out there for the lols, it kind of goes with @Tom's controversial idea of "Reality Engine"... what about "Economicon"?
Fun branding... maybe not the right vibe :P But I also like playing with the idea of very controversial names designed to get people defensive and curious from the get-go.
But maybe being inviting is more important than provoking critique when considering initial interactions heh
Sid Sthalekar · Wed 11 Mar 2020 12:45AM
I think you've just laid the foundations for a very good conversation @Emaline :)