Statistically, the most likely scenario is this:
—You sign up and select the questions which are most akin to your values and behaviour.
—A list of names of the people who are already signed up will appear in alphabetical order. You can evaluate any of them – except for yourself, naturally. And your name will become visible to everybody else.
—After a week or two, when almost all your acquaintances have evaluated you, you will have earned a decent amount of electronic money which you can then spend.
—Soon you will reach your axiological and behavioural “glass ceiling”; in other words, the maximum amount of money you will receive from other participants. From this moment onwards, if you need to spend more money you should:
Raise the “glass ceiling” further: significantly improve your axiological values.
Offer an additional good or service which others can pay you for.
Reduce your spending.
Remember that every day – or rather, every night, every twenty-four hours – the programme recalculates the algorithms, the distribution criteria.
It appears so and it is so. This is the price you pay for apply this new theory of values! This isn’t a problem. You merely check the boxes “I do not want to be evaluated on this” for all questions and thereafter you can earn coins for the exchange of goods and services in the real world. Other participants will see on their screen that you have no values to be evaluated on. Only the checkbox concerning transfers for goods and services will be available. Obviously you will earn no points from third-party evaluations.
Monetisation of behaviours has always existed within diverse value theories. Through this programme we are merely trying to improve the format, the means and the timing of this distribution.
If someone were able to access the database and maliciously steal data, at most they would be able to find out (assuming they managed to un-encrypt the data quickly) that for example, one day a few weeks ago you said that somebody was energy-efficient. This is an isolated piece of information which is of limited importance in terms of personal security. The most important information which the system stores about you is your name and how much electronic money you have, and this is stored using the best possible IT guarantees. This programme can be stored on a secure https server.
The administrator does not have access to your third-party evaluations. He or she does not know what you think of others, though she or he does know, as your banker, how much electronic money you have. This knowledge is essential for testing and to ensure the distribution of coins, the overall balance and that the entire total treasury (TT) amount is logically robust and neither “short” nor inflated.
Positive evaluation from other people who know you in the real world. Perhaps this is the best possible shared wealth, the best support available. We don’t need rooms full of gold.
Here, the total amount of coins is limited when the system is founded, so you needn’t worry or expect to be devalued if that amount is increased. The coins cannot be lost because they are electronic and their total number is finite and known by everybody. Neither is it necessary to encrypt them, for the same reason.
No, these coins do not “rust”.
Silvio Gesell proposed this concept to avoid unfair accumulation, just as Lycurgus in Sparta proposed using an iron coin that one was not tempted to hoard.
To hoard currency is a human behaviour that one can judge as good or bad. Sometimes a community may decide that somebody deserves more money for some foreseen common cause, so it gives this person an extra amount.
If anybody in KT thinks that somebody is hoarding coins, they can lower their evaluation of that person. Anybody can lose coins at any time when the limit of the total treasury (TT) has been lowered: the distribution engine will proportionally remove some coins. So it’s easy to avoid unfair hoarding here, which is the purpose behind a demurrage fee.
These are decentralised anonymous currencies that circulate between distant users.
With Kptl, there is a centralised issuer, and it is used by identified individuals, who may come face to face in the real world. Rather than a currency per se, it consists of a social network that distributes electronic coins.
In any town where it might be used, the area of the municipal boundary is set. Just as the census of its average population remains more or less stable. It isn’t likely to grow to ten times its size in just a few months. To set a limit on the amount of coins in circulation at the time of founding avoids inflation taking hold.
You raise the price of your work or services when you believe that you need more coins or more recognition from others for your merits. You can achieve this by promoting others’ evaluations, without the need to raise your prices. In fact, you can even lower them, which would definitely stimulate a positive evaluation from others.
This currency is designed for application on planet Earth, which is finite, as is the number of people who can live on it at any one time. The objective is to grow in richness not size.
You ask them to accept this electronic currency.
If you’re in the street, you take out your phone and show your screen to the seller on which they can see you making a transfer from your name to theirs. They’ll receive it immediately. On your phone browser and by signing into your network.
No. This question concerns administrators more than users.
The distributable TT amount is an initial foundational amount. Once set, it cannot technically be changed. It would be better to abandon that installation and start another, or to reinstall it.
You can change or edit the wording of a question at any time, after agreeing upon that change with other users. And the number of questions also remains stable.
For optimum programme operation, it is not suggested you add or subtract questions during use, so as not to alter the database, though it is technically possible to deactivate or eliminate questions, for which you must momentarily deactivate the programme.
It’s a good idea to be clear from the start which questions you will be working with, and it’s an even better idea to have a few extra, deactivated questions, containing a text such as “Future question No X”, which you can later edit for a particular purpose. The text or language of each question is irrelevant to the machine, but not their total number.
Technically you have two options: download and install the programme and store it and the database in your server, or use the application that uses our server. Then you should select the values and behaviours you want by writing and choosing them for your pupils. You should choose between five and fifty. You should also determine the total number of coins which you will work with, from the thirteen possible options. For your reference, the table below contains the three lowest options:
Option 102 = 100 coins, for around ten people each with around five values. This is the smallest and most experimental option.
103 = 1,000 coins.
104 = 10,000 coins, a larger option for around one to two hundred pupils, working with between five and ten values.
You should also organise a competition to generate ideas to name the currency, in singular and plural. Then comes the most delicate step: constructing a table of conversions between the normal legal currency and the most common goods and services encountered in their everyday life. This is a table of prices or a conversion from the official currency. Don’t deliberate too much on this though, as it is a draft document which will be modified according to user comments over the next few days.
Next, make sure there are no technical problems, no digital divide, so that everyone can access the application whenever they want, via online Internet portals or mobile phones. And start enjoying the application! By using it, one of two things may occur: either the female pupils will become wealthy and male pupils better people, or vice versa!
I also suggest you evaluate whether, in addition to being the administrator, you want to participate in earning and paying out this currency. Alternatively, you could appoint a pupil to be the administrator.
Your coins are returned to the Treasury. You are cleared of your debts. Because the positive evaluations you’ve given in the past (if you don’t change them by leaving the system) are maintained and don’t create any debt for you. Neither do positive evaluations you’ve received from others.
If you have maliciously ordered a good or service from someone, but leave after receiving it but before paying for it, just remember that you probably both live close by. Besides, before you exit, the administrator will probably inform the other participants of your exit and departure.
Technically, the administrator could deactivate, then delete your profile by deleting the field with your real name, so that only your user ID number remains.
In KT there are neither negative balances nor debt. In your case, the database could have shown that you have a negative balance. If you soon start to behave well and people start to value you better, your coins will not be shown on-screen until the valuations settle the negative balance.
So, the programme does not label you as a debtor, and does not display that you are in the red on-screen. Neither does it charge you extortionate interest rates for your arrears, but will wait patiently until others value you – or transfer money to you – in order to award you the first coin in your new life.
The prices of common goods and services are shown on a table which is publicly available, showing the equivalent value in the official local currency. This is normally fixed. It’s clear that the TT is not going to increase even slightly, just as the population of your town is not likely to grow tenfold. Nobody is going to speculate with this assumption.
Of course you can. At the end of the day you love each other and live together. It’s normal for you to give each other high behavioural and axiological evaluations. Others who know you will take this into account when valuing each of you individually.
On your screen you will see this, Treasury = 0. You then have the following options:
You can increase the TT, by adding an extra zero, reinstalling the application. I hope you don’t need to repeat this action within the next few years. In terms of the human population, it doesn’t seem to have much human or ecological axiological value to grow exponentially in such a small area.
Be stricter with your mutual evaluations.
Or you can stay still, holding your breath until the person with the greatest need has the courage to lower their prices, and sell or work more for a lower price. Being the first to lower your price has some disadvantages: you are gripped by deflation and inscribed in the strike-breaker´s book of (dis)honour. Yet it also has some advantages: your followers will have to lower their prices the same amount or more. Others will follow your example. They cannot hold their breath much longer than you.
You will substitute the traditional and well-known economic inflation system for an axiological one: no more cash in circulation, but better values and behaviours.
We have developed the idea and the programme code from a philanthropic human perspective. You take on your capabilities and responsibilities, managing the programme well and using it appropriately. We hope it will be useful and profitable for you but we cannot be held responsible for its misuse.
We have put the programme through extensive testing and it functions to the degree of stability and accuracy which we expect of machines and humans. We were entirely well-intentioned in the development of this idea, improving it as much as possible and developing lines of code which we offer and make available to you for your use and analysis.
A complementary social currency, or to be exact, a complementary or alternative, electronic, experimental currency is the currency format the programme distributes. Just like other alternative or complementary currencies, these are unofficial exchange units, not supported by a government. They tend to become established in local or regional population areas, which is why they are also called local currencies. Here, its electronic format stops users from possessing the coin physically, so that each user receives an abstract or virtual amount: a number on their screen.
A community that uses KT sells, purchases and evaluates its economy without paying taxes in its other official currency. Yet KT can also be used to collect taxes. In the case of a municipal KT, the people in charge of public funds can collect – as is their job – a necessary measured contribution for the common good.
When used as a school currency, the legal implications of KT are simple. But a payment for services between professionals using KT may not have the same weight as using the official currency. You could classify these payments as if to a mutual assistance fund, or else define what services and for what price or public tax your electronic currency should be charged or encumbered.
The recommendation of the European Commission of 22 March 2010 guarantees the possibility of substituting money from the Central Bank for other means of exchange, and comments on the scope and effects of the legal tender of euro notes and coins,
The creditor or a payment obligation cannot refuse euro banknotes and coins unless parties have agreed on other means of payment.
The application can function alone, its repetitive tasks do not need human attention and its efficient daily distribution operation is very clear for the administrator on his or her statistical display and clear for every individual user. Yet somebody must control participants’ admission to or exit from the programme. It is also logical that somebody remains in charge after installation.
The administration module allows the admission of not just one, but several people into the collegiate administration – each using their own password, just like a door with several locks that can only be opened in the mutual presence of its other custodians. With more people watching a single screen it is easier for you to feel safer.
It’s best to answer this by giving you average data results. It depends a lot on how many of the community you know in the real world and who you also meet on-screen.
On your first day, between fifteen and twenty minutes. To validate your registration, mark your own items and evaluate your acquaintances. Yet it depends on the number of acquaintances you see in your daily life.
During the initial weeks, a few minutes a day, as in any other social network.
After a month, the same amount of time or slightly less.
You don’t have to sign in every day. If you don’t sign into the application for several days, the last evaluations you left are all automatically applied.
Normally, after a few days, you’ll have evaluated all your daily acquaintances. Perhaps you go online to search for the name of someone specific to mark or change some item.
I’ve talked about the most serious and committed part of the programme: evaluating yourself and others. Apart from this, the act of transferring coins now depends on the frequency of your payments or collections.
You are in another small society, with another scale of values. Their total treasury amount might work on a different model to yours, a different total amount, and the currency may have another name, with different prices. So you can’t interact at all with that other currency. Unless at some future date they decide to merge.
Ask to sign up in that other community, so that you appear in that community as well. It isn’t a problem participating in two places, neither technically nor in terms of the ethical intentions this application promotes.
As well as moving between these two places, you’ll also have to monitor two different screens generated from the separate servers for these two electronic currencies.
In the next version of the programme, we’ll add the option of making payments between different KTs.
True. In your entire experience on the Internet this will be one of the few personal pages where you can’t add a photo. There are several reasons.
This is not one of those social networks for sharing words, links or photos just with those whom you choose to, where you would see each person’s face linked to their name. Here, coins and evaluations are distributed among all members. So we believe that it is better to see a complete list of names without seeing an accompanying photo.
Those who know you in the real world, who will evaluate you, already know your first name and surname because you’ve introduced yourself and told them. They already know what you look like.
We want to avoid you from being positively or negatively rated, based simply on your photo. We prefer to work with measured judgements here.
We also want to avoid you being able to evaluate somebody whose face you have glimpsed briefly in your day-to-day life, but whose name you don’t know. If you don’t know their name, then you haven’t spent time with him or her. Or perhaps she or he hasn’t told you, or you haven’t been introduced, so it is not appropriate for you to evaluate that person.
Do you remember that well-known image of Justice with her scales in her hand and a blindfold on her eyes? She listens carefully to reason, but is blind to passion.
It’s true that recognising the photo of somebody whose name you don’t know could lead to some interesting evaluations. The idea and programme code are at your service. You could allow a box for photos in your programme and server, but we preferred not to incorporate one.
They were returned to the total treasury (TT) amount, or they went to somebody else.
There are two different “cutback” strategies, both processes which the programme works with:
1) They went back to the treasury because somebody received a high evaluation from you which you maintained over several preceding days concerning their values and behaviours in real day-to-day life. This version of the programme doesn’t tell you who has received that evaluation, nor which of several possible evaluations withdrew money from you. Imagine that you guess for yourself. The coins you lost did not go directly to those people, but were returned to the TT amount.
2) They went to somebody. They went to somebody who suddenly, due to other evaluations, deserved them. Recently, the TT amount was close to zero, or at around 1% of its initial total, so now the distribution engine has “skimmed off” a small amount from everybody to redistribute it fairly, according to recent positive evaluations which the programme must reward. Somebody was evaluated yesterday by others, perhaps even by you, and the programme withdraws an amount from everybody to give that person the amount they deserve. It cuts back by successive decimal thresholds proportionally, to take a greater amount from whoever has the most.
You will be able to. The current version does not allow this. In the upcoming version, all scalability issues have been resolved: transferring wealth between programmes that work with different values, communities and treasuries while keeping the respective total treasury amounts stable.
No.