My idea for an alternitive economy

[Melooon]

I've always been interested in economic systems, when I ran minecraft servers I used to use them a playgrounds to test out ideas; from an entirely communist server, to an entirely closed loop capitalist one - each had their flaws and benefits. I mostly learned that economies are very hard to get right, regardless of the system you use, and usually the best one is the most flexible one that can handle being a bit broken.

All that said I do have a novel idea for an economy based on a form of triple voting; mainly I was interested in how a society could function if instead of money, we voted on everything.

SO, imagine a city where everything belongs to everyone, yet people still need to subdivide the city into houses and shops and cups of coffee etc. How do you do it without money? Well, you could have a vast voting system, where for example when I want a cup of coffee I request a vote, and everyone has to vote to say if I deserve a cup of coffee... however there are a lot of flaws with that, mainly nobody has the time to vote on everyone else's cup of coffee every day.. There are also questions about, how many votes should be required for a valid cup of coffee vote? Why should anyone make a cup of coffee for you if they are not paid to do so? How do you stop influencers with hoards of voters supporting them from drinking all the coffee in the city?

I have a system  I call it the Tripple Vote System, and it divides votes into a sort of limited credit:

• Request Votes - Used for requesting new polls
• Active Votes - Used for voting in active polls
• Complete Votes - Used as a buffer for rewarding votes and labor

Every month, each person in the city is assigned lets say 100 Active Votes (This number is set by the City Hall), each person must use all their Active Votes by the end of the month or they pay a penalty. Active votes are used on polls for bigger issues (such as who gets to live in house Y). This both limits peoples voting power to keep things fair, but also encourages them to actually go out vote on things even if they don't directly relate to them.

Every time you use an Active Vote, its converted into a Complete Vote, complete votes are used a little like currency, they are a credit that you can use to get your cup of coffee, and are essentially the reward for voting on things.

When you spend a Complete Vote on a cup of coffee, the barista receives an equivalent Request Vote (This essentially rewards labor and encourages people to provide services). Request Votes have no spending power, they cant be used to buy things, but they are used to request new polls, and they act as a speed break to stop unnecessary polls from being spammed.

So as an example:
Lets say Bob wants to open a new Florist shop, and he sees an unused building in the city that would be a great fit! The cost to start a new "let me open a shop in that building" poll is 50 Request Votes, so Bob has to do some odd jobs until he has saved up enough. (It takes him a while because one month he didn't spend all his Active Votes, and the unspent votes were subtracted from his Request Votes - Bob should have been more civic minded!)

Eventually he saves his 50 Request Votes, and he goes to the City Hall to make a new poll! A Poll Officer takes his 50 Request Votes, reviews the property he wants and decides what the minimum vote count should be for it to be a valid vote (An area with many residents my need more votes for it to be fair etc). The officer also sets up a Poll machine outside the property to collect votes! A few weeks pass and locals and visitors pass the machine and spend some of their Active Votes to decide if Bob should get to open a shop there or not! (Remember votes can be Yes or No, both return Complete Vote credits)

There could be two outcomes; Bob gets to use the property, or Bob does not get to use the property. That will depend on how people decide to vote. Do they need a new florist there? Do they know who Bob is and trust him?

If you're worried, don't be! Bob gets his flower shop and it goes very well! 

Ideally the system is self regulating. There is no point in hoarding any one kind of vote because each in limited by its function. Active Votes are allocated equally. Completed Votes can only be acquired from Active Votes and so are also limited. Request Votes can be hoarded, but they can only be used to request civic polls, and are therefor directly moderated by the City Hall (which I assume is elected by votes too). I suppose that means that someone who could hoard a vast amount of Request Votes could constantly buy polls to claim and modify chunks of the City and City Hall policy; however those  polls would still depend on citizens voting in favor of them to pass; and citizens would be rewarded even if they voted no.

Anyway; normally these economic systems fall apart pretty fast when you think about them, but this idea does seem to loop around nicely and its a fun concept for a video game or a story world.

Can you spot any holes in it? How do you think such a society would work? 

[pepper]

I don't really see many glaring holes in this in theory but I certainly would prefer living in this economy than the one I'm currently living in!

I wonder: what happens to people that choose to not participate in the voting system at all? Let's say someone robs markets for food and squats in an unused building, has a few friends doing the same, the gang is known to be a problem and so some authority figure able to use force arrests them. What penalty do they face? Incarceration just leads to more of the same: it's the issue the US has. Monetary punishment/ fines doesn't mean anything if the gang isn't participating in the votes to begin with.

Anyways I like this idea, its very novel. I am learning (slowly) about barter economies for my scifi project, I might throw in some of these ideas as well!

[Tuffy!]

Interesting thought...

If I got it right, how could people be prevented from just spending their votes by approving/denying everything just to avoid getting a penalty? I can imagine lazy people clicking through it like a robot 

[Melooon]

what happens to people that choose to not participate in the voting system at all? Let's say someone robs markets for food and squats in an unused building, has a few friends doing the same

So the key thing I think is that in this city, everyone owns everything. You can't squat a space, or steal food, if you own it, its already yours. So, I'm assuming such a society would, at a minimum have a moderate welfare system, since it would be of no cost to the city or its residents to assign unused space and resources to one particular group of people, regardless of them voting or not. Not voting would simply mean you'd be excluded from some aspects of city life.

The real trouble would kick in if people chose not to accept the outcome of a vote. Say for example there was a successful vote to turn a building into a cinema, but the building already had some people living in it and they refused to move. In that case you'd end up with a pretty similar situation to someone refusing to move in our regular economy; it might come down to a balance between public good, popular opinion (I assume if everyone voted for a cinema, they would feel involved in getting a cinima, verses if it was just a faceless developer trying to build a cinima), and proving new options to the people being moved, such as alternative housing.

I can imagine lazy people clicking through it like a robot

So an important part of my story about Bob was that the poll officer would set up a physical voting machine at the site of the shop. There is no central voting website in this world, you have to physically go to the location of the vote in order to cast a vote. That's there for a reason, to ensure that people have to physically look at and understand the situation they are voting on.

It is however, not immune to the bussing issue; someone could bus in a bunch of people and reward them for voting on something even if they have no real idea what it is (This was a real issue in the US in the past). However its pretty easy to fix here; since the voting machines already exist, I assume people have some sort of voters card they swipe to cast their vote. You can assign localities to voter cards and make a rule that 50% of votes must come from a local voter. (Of course you'd need people to trust that the machines were accurate and trustworthy - in any vote system its important that votes are anonymous to ensure they are not used against someone)

FINALLY - I have found a hole in this plan
It currently does not account for large investment. For example; how is Bob acquiring the flowers for his flower shop? He could go and pick them himself, or he could buy them using his Complete Votes, both of those work for a small shop. However what if Bob's shop was successful and he needed to buy MANY flowers to supply all the hotels in the area? How is he going to prove that he should be the one to receive all the flowers? - You can scale that up too; what if they city needs a factory to build laptops; that requires a HUGE amount of investment to setup - I don't currently have a solution for this!

You could have a vote to assign a large number of flowers to Bob, but that gets back to the original issue; who would vote on that? Who has the knowledge of Bob and the flower growing season to know if Bob really needs them or if someone else should have them? (no one does! and no one has the time to vote on a whole city worth of things like that)

So there needs to be some extra mechanism to account for things like this; and I've not come up with it yet

[cyberfun1 (dizz)]

I think that if combined with an economy founded on worker coops and community, it would make all request votes be gained in a fair way