Financing utopia
Hedonistic mechanism design
2015-02-16 — 2021-11-11
On more equitable ways to get capital-intensive risky things done. Weird stakeholder models. Worker-owned firms. Der Mittelstand. Should probably include Prediction market and/or mechanism design angles.
For descriptive stuff, see finance, descriptive. For actual strategies in already-existing markets, portfolio theory.
1 Worker-owned institutions
See Founders and workers.
2 Georgism
An interesting thing that I will file under land economics for now.
3 Crowd lending
A placeholder to remind me to return to investigating the various models here. Various models here. TBC.
I am indebted to Annette Loudon for mentioning Savings pools in this context.
A platform through which the crowd can lend money to growing businesses that are delivering impact. […]
Impact SMEs post deals for the capital they need to the crowd.
Lenders in the crowd choose the deals they support because of the business, the terms and the impact.
Borrowers chase their business and impact goals, and repay their lenders an agreed interest rate after an agreed time frame.
The above models tend towards impact investing. I guess more broadly we refer to alternative non-impact models as “crowd equity”:
We’ve worked with the team at Cooley to create an investment instrument that has elements of both debt and equity. Debt in that we will not be purchasing equity initially, but, unlike debt, there is no maturity date, no collateralization of assets and no recourse if it’s never paid back. The equity element will only become a factor if the participating company chooses to raise a round of financing or sell out to an acquiring company. We don’t have a clever acronym or name for this instrument yet, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something great.
This instrument gives us a lot more flexibility to work with different types of companies than the Delaware C-Corps most commonly funded by VCs. It also facilitates the two elements of the indie.vc terms that were most important to us and to founders: cash distributions and contingent equity conversion.
equitise and Tsimilar: Equity crowdfunding for private companies in Australia/NZ. I kind of like that this exists but also… why would you rationally take on the higher risk of non-listed firms? Serious question.
4 Financing better futures
Kickstarter for a new civilization
You make a commitment to the jubilee and to the terms of the new monetary system (including a basic income).
You agree that, if and only if the project hits its critical mass target (say 200 million people representing $2 trillion in potential gross income) you will commit to personally absolving all debts (moral and fiscal) owed to you by anyone who has also made the commitment; to acting in peace, good faith and personal integrity with all such people; to personally refusing to pay any debts owed to those outside the community (and taking responsibility for the legal consequences thereof) and to working diligently to enact a political debt jubilee within all legal jurisdictions that you have a vote in.
This commitment is encrypted and sealed — and linked to your new money wallet. You are now an anonymous (but cryptographically unique) “member” of the new monetary system and entitled to receive a basic income and any other rights associated with this membership.
When the critical mass targets are hit all of the commitments are unlocked and the jubilee begins.
Maybe capital has our backs if, e.g. burning down California is securities fraud. Right? Right?
Everything is securities fraud!
On November 16, 2018, an Edison shareholder filed a securities class action lawsuit in the Central District of California against both Edison and SCE, as well as certain officer and directors of both companies. … Specifically, the complaint alleges that the defendants made false and misleading statements or failed to disclose that: “(i) the Company failed to maintain electricity transmission and distribution networks in compliance with safety requirements and regulations promulgated under state law; (ii) consequently the Company was in violation of state law and regulations; (iii) the Company’s noncompliant electricity networks created a significant heightened risk of wildfires in California; and (iv) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.”
Edison International is a holding company that owns utilities including Southern California Edison Co., and California regulators are investigating whether SCE’s equipment might have been involved in starting two of the recent California wildfires. […]
One obvious point is that if a utility’s senior management knew that their equipment was going to start huge wildfires, the thing to do with that information would be to not start the fires, not to write more accurate disclosures for shareholders.
5 Blockchain precarity
Taylor Pearson, Blockchain man mashes up utopian freelance precarious market-ism with tech trends, but shies short of calling it a manifesto because it is notionally about how people will talk about our micropayment future, not what will actually happen.
The Balkanization that began in the late 20th century with the fracturing of post-colonial Africa and post-USSR Eastern Europe will continue through the 21st century. The city-state will become the organising unit of global society.
Much like the Catholic Church today, Nation-States will continue to play a meaningful, but secondary role. […]
Instead of a paycheck, The Blockchain Man’s income will be a large number of micropayments from past projects. The tokens from different projects will appreciate or depreciate based on the success of the project (and perhaps pay dividends). […]
Where the Organization Man’s world was defined by The Organization, The Blockchain Man’s world will be defined by markets.
Even something as simple as commuting will be market driven.
What happens when you mash blockchains, Uber and Self-driving cars together? The self-owning car.
A car that pays for its lease, its insurance, and its gas, by giving people rides. A car that is not owned by a corporation. It is a corporation. The car exists as an autonomous financial entity, potentially with no human ownership.
6 Impact investing
Placeholder.
7 Incoming
- The Grocery Store Where Produce Meets Politics
- What Co-ops and DAOs Can Learn From Each Other
- [Decentralized autonomous organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization#:~:text=A%20decentralized%20autonomous%20organization%20(DAO,words%20they%20are%20member%2Downed)