Hello Everyone!
This is a call for of attention for people who are interested in developing an alternative deployment of Taler for a post market economy. My name is Pelle and I’m an electrical engineering student at FH in Aachen.
A post market economy needs to possess a few functions which are fulfilled by a market currently.
First, there must be a function in this economy to transmit product related information. Currently that is only price, which already is sufficient for the construction of supply chains. In a post market context, product information would be maintained along the whole chain of production and be multi dimensional. (i.e. CO2 Emissions, Sustainability Factor, Labour Expense, etc.)
This function is important, but only at larger scales of economy.
Secondly,
a post market economy needs to understand and balance demand and supply. Currently markets only react to financially supported demand and supply can only be provided if transactions are profitable. Understanding the demands and needs of all people and letting them participate in social economy, as well as organizing supply whose value can not be captured would be features of a post market economy.
Finally,
an economy needs to measure value. Markets facilitate exchange and thereby establish quantitative relationships between goods. Out of this process comes data which allows for an understanding of exchange value. Price data is very important because it is a very simple legible indicator of economic activity and dynamics.
A post market economy needs to have a different way of measuring value.
We propose a supplementary economy established and administered by cities, which measures value in labour time. Work would be completed by people who participate in projects, where bread is baked, renovations are completed, educational activities are organized etc.
These projects, coordinated by the city administration, are balanced so that people working in one, demand and benefit from the service and product of the others.
We are the team behind KairosComún, which aims to become the software layer to run such an economy in cities. We are currently in the getting started phase of the work. We try to develop coding procedures where we can slowly build our project to the scope of software that is necessary to run something like a city wide supplementary economy.
Taler is an ideal solution for the needs of such an economy and we would like to use it as the payment system. A Taler would be equivalent to 1 hour of work and would buy the product of one hour of work.
The implementation of Taler that is required for such an economy actually would mostly need a reduction of features and functions as compared to a full Taler deployment currently. A few features would need to be added too, but overall Talers features are an amazing match!
If people here are interested in discussing more details, helping the team with organizing or possibly are even interested in developing a version of Taler adapted to a post market economy, please don’t hesitate to write!
Thank you very much for your attention
Pelle