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The alternative to capitalists picking who gets funded doesn't have to be central planning. You could have a consumer driven model where citizens get to allocat

by m_ke 5y ago

The alternative to capitalists picking who gets funded doesn't have to be central planning. You could have a consumer driven model where citizens get to allocate money to new research and development, similar to the democracy dollar idea that Andrew Yang was pushing. This would allow money to trickle up to the best companies instead of "trickling down" and getting captured by the rich. If each American got to distribute 5 thousand a year to businesses, researchers or infrastructure the world would be a much better place. I'm sure none of them would allocate it to advertisers or tools that spy on them.

winterplace 5y ago
Could you expand on your point about the distributing?
- m_ke 5y ago
  I had a crowdfunding like model for government grants in mind where projects are pitched with funding goals that everyone can chose to allocate a portion of their fixed budget to. This could also work for businesses or whole industries, so as an example software engineers could decide to allocate funds to open source projects that would make them more productive. Another example would be diabetics funding research and development of more affordable insulin. In general I'm in favor of more direct democracy and empowering citizens/consumers over politicians and bankers.
nafix 5y ago
That’s a very interesting idea. That would be a very fair and grassroots driven mechanism. I don’t think that’s something the government would ever allow though. Then again, in some ways the recent NFT craze is kind of precisely the case. The government printed a _lot_ of money last year and paid out a lot of money during covid. This stimulus is almost like a stipend to go spend/“invest” on all these meme and non meme stocks and crypto related projects, because thats where I feel most of this money is going lol. I don’t think that was intentional by the government though. And by government, I guess I mean the Federal Reserve?
binbag 5y ago
Do you think Google could make a good pitch to consumers about how much great stuff they produce and how critical they are to modern life so the consumer should give them at least 30% of their 5,000? I bet they could, and words like 'advert' wouldn't be a consideration. Asking the average person to decide what gets funded is probably just as bad as asking VCs.

by m_ke 5y ago

winterplace 5y ago

Could you expand on your point about the distributing?

m_ke 5y ago
I had a crowdfunding like model for government grants in mind where projects are pitched with funding goals that everyone can chose to allocate a portion of their fixed budget to. This could also work for businesses or whole industries, so as an example software engineers could decide to allocate funds to open source projects that would make them more productive. Another example would be diabetics funding research and development of more affordable insulin. In general I'm in favor of more direct democracy and empowering citizens/consumers over politicians and bankers.

nafix 5y ago

That’s a very interesting idea. That would be a very fair and grassroots driven mechanism. I don’t think that’s something the government would ever allow though. Then again, in some ways the recent NFT craze is kind of precisely the case. The government printed a _lot_ of money last year and paid out a lot of money during covid. This stimulus is almost like a stipend to go spend/“invest” on all these meme and non meme stocks and crypto related projects, because thats where I feel most of this money is going lol. I don’t think that was intentional by the government though. And by government, I guess I mean the Federal Reserve?

binbag 5y ago

Do you think Google could make a good pitch to consumers about how much great stuff they produce and how critical they are to modern life so the consumer should give them at least 30% of their 5,000? I bet they could, and words like 'advert' wouldn't be a consideration. Asking the average person to decide what gets funded is probably just as bad as asking VCs.