tyaga.org

In previous posts, I have highlighted the efforts of an activist group and an institute-type entity that could potentially become independent currency issuers. This time, I would like to focus on the activities represented by the PSPad brand. (Note: There is no direct relation between the tyaga.org and PSPad brands other than the latter’s text editor being used by the former for coding projects.)

Based on its voluntary donation system, it may be safely assumed that the PSPad text editor was created out of self-determined purpose and effort. That is, in reading through the PSPad web pages, especially in the donation page, the reader could get a sense that the author was not externally coerced to do the project, in the same way that there is no obligation for a user to pay for the software. Of course, there must have been various incentives for the author to start on the endeavor, but I doubt that the incentives involved guaranteed material rewards. The fact that self-determined obligation, in itself, could result in a high quality product, such as the PSPad text editor, is evidence of entity specialization, mission statements and goals as bases for currency unit creation.

But there is another aspect that makes PSPad a good candidate for becoming a potential currency issuing entity within a satconomy framework. Upon scrolling down PSPad’s donation page, the reader will find currency inflow entries in units of US$. So besides tyaga.org, there is at least one other market entity on the internet that publishes a publicly auditable, open ledger. I’m sure there are more examples that I could reference, and sometime this year, the website that I’m working on for a nonprofit would belong in those examples. However, I should also point out that tyaga.org’s ledger demonstration also includes published currency outflow (in addition to inflow) while also offering a facilitated mechanism for public audits and automatic reconciliation of inflow/outflow between different sites.

As always, I accept that not everyone is ready to experiment with alternative systems, especially at this point when there is a dearth of tools that would facilitate the early adoption of such systems. Hopefully, tyaga.org will be able to offer more guidelines and products soon to encourage voluntary participation in the satconomy framework. With enough luck and effort, maybe tyaga.org would establish itself as a reputable brand, just like PSPad has done with its brand of text editor.

While I’m working on the currency brand reporting mechanism, I’d like to take some time to highlight the efforts of a family that I’ve been following off and on since early 2005.  Started as www.pathtofreedom.com or PTF, I now read their homegrown exploits at http://urbanhomestead.org/journal. Perhaps it might still be too early to expect a ’seedling’ organization to issue its own currency brand, but when that time comes, I could see the Dervaes Institute as a prototype for such independent currency issuing entity. I’ll list the reasons.

1) PTF has a clear, compelling, self-determined mission. PTF’s mission statements and goals provide a clear yardstick for the market to assess its performance.

In a satconomy framework, each currency issuer declares an obligation to provide specialized services/goods to the market, which in PTF’s case includes public outreach and exploration of sustainable solutions (e.g., 10000 lbs of garden produce). All contribution towards the fulfillment of that self-determined obligation is represented by self or entity-issued credits, which brand members could use to purchase the products of other currency issuers and in the process cancel the seller’s self-declated debits. Credits are always issued with an equivalent number of entity-issued debits.

2) PTF is a very transparent organization. Not only does PTF offer a clear yardstick for evaluating its performance against its self-declared goals, PTF also offers the public the ability to closely scrutinize its actual week-to-week performance through regular blog updates.

In satconomy framework, it is not enough for market participants to agree with an entity’s mission and goals - the market must also determine the sustainability of an entity’s market contributions. It is easy to see PTF’s weekly challenges, successes and even the few failures (e.g., failed crops or unproductive yields). The blog updates are comparable to the press releases of a publicly traded, stock-issuing corporation.

3) PTF already offers ways of quantifying the market’s support of its activities. For now, PTF has the ‘grow-the-future’ metric of total donations in its journal site. PTF also measures the ongoing quantity of its produce, by weight, against the target 2008 harvest yield that it has set for itself.

In a more mature implementation of satconomy framework, a currency issuing entity would also provide regular, timely and verifiable updates of its currency activity. This reporting mechanism is what I’m currently trying to prototype.

Whether or not the use of alternative currency mechanism is in PTF’s future, tyaga.org hopes to see it flourish like the lush plants in its urban garden.

When I think of people who publicly voice their support for movements and activism that they support, I wonder if their emphathy is strong enough for them to sell products to the groups that they admire, even if it means accepting independently issued currency brands from those groups.

As an example, take the environmental activists in India who are tyring to protect the Ganges River. If the likes of Rakesh Jaiswal’s group decided to issue its own currency brand, would a farmer accept Jaiswal’s currency in exchange for his produce? That same farmer might already be accepting money from those who recklessly pollute the Ganges River. How could the farmer or the market in general determine where a buyer’s money come from, so that market particpants will have the ability to cater their products to support sustainable economic activities, instead of blindly accepting money?

Tyaga.org hopes to provide practical solutions to these questions, through the issuance of currency brands that are traceable to independent market entities.