A Helpful Economic System
White paper on the implementation of global spiritual humanism
<TODO: Review this article for broken links and missing images from the import process. See this Note for details.>
This article was originally published on the Church of Earth Platform in 2020. This article is a work in progress. This white paper inspired the creation of this website:
http://globalbasicincome.org/
The Church of Earth will create a cryptocurrency-based economic system intended to run in parallel to other economic systems. This Helpful Economic System will prioritize and measure actions which other people view as helpful, and behaviour which other people believe will lead to personal growth. This will be done in accordance with the core beliefs of the Church of Earth.
This economic system will be run through this platform. The Church of Earth Platform is developed and the Helpful Economic System is being architected. It will attempt to be as decentralized as possible, and include features discussed, approved of, and developed trough, a transparent and democratic user-feedback process.
It will be designed to mitigate income inequality and incentivize behaviours which are seen as beneficial by all parties involved. The Helpful Economic System is not intended to replace any existing economic systems, or reach their scale of operation. As a cryptocurrency-based system it will be able to convert helpful value into traditional economic value, and vice versa.
This paper will explain the capabilities of the Church of Earth Platform, and the Church of Earth Not-For-Profit Corporation, before explaining the Helpful Economic System.
This infographic explains the intent, purpose and outcome of the Helpful Economic System.
Abstract
The problem: Toxic levels of competition are harmful and incentivized by our current economic system
To understand the intent of the Church of Earth we must explain the concept of Toxic Competition. For the purpose of this white paper it’s defined as:
A state of competition where victory for one side results in a negative impact for all parties involved.
Toxic Competition occurs when victory is harmful. Evolution is competitive, but it is not Toxic Competition because the victors generally continue to evolve and grow. Life has evolved to engage in conflict with other life in order to claim resources, establish dominance, and win. Life competes in order to grow.
Humans exist differently. We have ego and intelligence. Ego can be one of the driving factors behind Toxic Competition. Toxic Competition powered by ego is spite. Our intelligence can help prevent Toxic Competition. We understand how to set goals, reflect on our progress and iterate on our ideas in order to improve them. Through our intelligence we can learn these concepts.
Whenever you see someone try to defeat another human without regard for the outcome of that defeat on the other human it’s possible you are witnessing Toxic Competition.
It’s important to note that the problem is not competition. Healthy, respectful competition allows us to grow. Growth is important and inevitable. All life grows. The issue at hand deals specifically with Toxic Competition. A zero-sum game can be an example of Toxic Competition, especially given that there is research suggesting people with a Zero-Sum Game worldview experience life more negatively (ref).
Toxic Competition has given us many of the worst elements of our civilization. Toxic Competition is at the core of many of the wars we’ve waged. Toxic competition results in unethical business behaviours which destroy individuals, communities and ecosystems. Toxic Competition is at the core of the more hateful elements of human culture and plays a significant role in the worst aspects of online culture.
Toxic Competition may be one of the Great Filters of the Fermi Paradox. Life must almost always compete to survive and evolve. From our limited perspective we can potentially infer that life will often, if given the opportunity and resources, reach a point where a tiny fraction of the species on a planet will dominate the entire planet. The competitive nature of a species that has dominated its ecosystem will not change unless through deliberate effort. This can happen after a shift between stable states (ref) when the type of competition required to survive changes, or through deliberate effort in order to maintain a stable state by removing elements which can cause instability.
The few notable exceptions to this type of competition, leading to Helpful Collaboration, have had incredibly beneficial impacts on the development of life on our planet. (ref)
The Solution to Toxic Competition is Helpfulness
Helpfulness is voluntary: You cannot take help from someone. Helping someone effectively requires their consent: When you help someone without their consent you are adding harm into the interaction and minimizing the impact of the help you offer. Helpfulness minimizes the negative impacts of Toxic Competition and can even add growth into a system.
The Church of Earth exists to provide new systems which can be used to increase the amount of helpfulness in our civilization. People can be naturally helpful. Tools and systems can improve this quality (ref).
The term #AMoreHelpfulWorld represents the efforts that go into trying to create a world with less Toxic Competition, as well as the outcome of those efforts. The Church of Earth has been deliberately created to achieve these goals as best as possible. It is designed to be modified as needed in order to adapt to the views and efforts of more people. The Church of Earth exists because the answer to the questions posed in this document are: An inclusive movement founded on principles of achieving healthy growth, helping others and worshiping future generations is an effective way to create #AMoreHelpfulWorld.
Creating all of this required faith.
Part 1 – The Church of Earth Platform
This Platform asks “How can we create an inclusive online community that allows people to achieve healthy growth and support each other in their growth?”
It provides an answer through the following:
The creation of a primary focus for all actions on the platform: Being Helpful.
The formation of an anonymous network of communities with limited ability to create “social media influencers”.
The exclusion of design concepts like infinite/endless scrolling and recommendation algorithms is intended to minimize the potential for addiction and provide a more active user experience, rather than one of passive media consumption.
A lack of monetization through advertising, or through revenues generated through the usage of the data of platform users.
The development of a complex system of tools designed to offer a varied experience to users depending on their style of engagement and interests. This platform was designed to be used in a wide variety of ways.
The foundation for a helpful economic system where the concept of “Helpful Votes” has a stable value as a result of planned scarcity through daily activity limits.
Using this platform
This diagram shows an average day in the user of this platform. This platform is not intended to be used addictively.
A Helpful Online Community
Human conflict often occurs in part as a result of the diversity between groups (ref). That doesn’t mean diversity always causes conflict, or that diversity does not have benefits. Heterogeneity, or diversity, increases the potential creative output of communities (ref), which gives them more ability to problem solve, at the cost of a risk of increased risk of conflict between members (ref). This conflict can be minimized through shared goals and objectives, often in the face of shared challenges (ref).
By focusing on “Being Helpful”, and by deliberately enabling that focus through the addition of fields such as “How is this Helpful?” and “Who does this help?” when posting content, the Church of Earth platform allows users to specify their intention and the expected outcome of the content they’re creating. The hope is that this will minimize potential conflict through deliberate effort.
A goal of this platform is to build a community with functionality that enables people of very diverse backgrounds to work towards personal growth or shared objectives together. This platform is at version 1.
The current version isn’t perfect but this platform can be iterated on over time and improved. Future versions of this platform, designed with community feedback, will allow it to better enable this type of inclusive and healthy collaboration.
Meaningful Identities, Powerful Content Filters
Traditional social media platforms typically rely on standard elements of identity (name, profile picture, location) or descriptive elements of identity (username, biography.) The identity of users of the Church of Earth platform is formed around metrics of how they have used the platform. There are no public user profiles. All content on the platform will be displayed next to a listing of the types of other content created by the user, including the helpfulness ratings broken down by content type. This could be argued as “Judge people for what they do and not who they are.”
Users can set their preferences so that they have minimum thresholds of Helpfulness for the content they see. If content does not meet this threshold it is not displayed. This threshold can be set via percentage of Unhelpful votes, count of Unhelpful Votes, or a mix.
The reporting features allow content to be flagged as “Mature Content”, “False or Misleading”, or “Illegal” by the community. User preferences allow for whether or not this content is visible. Content found to be illegal or in violation of the Terms of Service will be removed.
This page displays the available options for user settings on this platform. These can be modified to filter certain types of content.
The Gospel of the Church of Earth
The Gospel of the Church of Earth is the term used to describe all of the content created on this site. Anyone who wants to create content on this site, for whatever reason, is able to do so because the Gospel of the Church of Earth is designed to be as inclusive as possible. The content of this site is harder to find compared to social media platforms with the concept of a personalized news feed. The Gospel of the Church of Earth is designed to be actively searched rather than passively consumed.
This platform is not designed to be addictive and users are only encouraged to use the platform as much as they need to during a day. The Gospel of the Church of Earth is intended to inspire people to go out and improve our world, or plan and coordinate with one another if required. The Church of Earth is software more comparable to using Salesforce or Microsoft Excel than to using a social media site like Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit.
A Complex System of Tools
The Church of Earth is a web application with 7 distinct modules. Users add to the Gospel of the Church of Earth by creating content with the intention of helping themselves, or others, in the various modules on the site. The complexity of these tools will enhance the versatility of the Helpful Economic System created by the Church of Earth.
Any content in the Gospel can inspire any other type of content. The Gospel of the Church of Earth is a cultural ecosystem.
Clear intentions
All content added to the Church of Earth platform must include meta information which can be helpful to other users in order to understand the thought process or mindset of the creator of the new content. This is deliberate and is critical to achieving the goals of the Church of Earth. Online communication lacks many elements of in-person communication, often resulting in increased conflict. The Church of Earth compensates for this missing visual information by requiring additional descriptive information.
The Intentions dropdown. This field is attached to every piece of Gospel in the Church of Earth.
Every post on this platform must include these fields. They exist to help communication by removing ambiguity about the intentions of the person who created this content.
Scriptures
Scripture allows us to understand our thoughts and feelings. Scripture could be a blog post, a journal entry, poetry, a short story, an open letter to a public figure, or part of a conversation with another user. Writing scripture is intended to inspire thought or emotion in you, and in the people who read your content. Doing this involves the use of skills that will be taught through this platform.
These are the fields required to write scripture.
Sermons
Sermons are used to inspire people. They can be a short burst of text (eg: A Tweet), or a link to something helpful off the Church of Earth platform (A news articles, a video, a meme.) You can embed videos, or images. The Church of Earth does not currently offer the ability to upload media or files.
This is where you select the type of sermon you want to give.
These are the fields required for your sermon. “Text” sermons do not have a “link” field.
Prayers
Prayers are requests for help directed at other users on the platform. Prayers can be answered by anyone. Prayers can inspire new content, or can be answered using a secondary module of the Church of Earth platform: an Answer. Answers only appear when viewing a Prayer, rather than in other Gospel pages. Answers are public. Users can pray for one of the things they need to thrive: water, food, information, energy, support or freedom.
These are the fields required to explain a prayer on the platform.
These fields describe the type of prayer you’re creating.
Goals
Goals allow us to manage the projects of our lives, measure success and see opportunities for further growth. There are different categories of goals. Users of this platform have “Personal” and “Professional” goals. The Church of Earth also has goals: Business Organization, Technology Platform, Moonshots. Users can add goals to any of these categories.
These fields describe a goal being created on this platform.
Missions
Missions allow multiple people to come together in order to offer help that requires significant organization, collaboration and effort. There are different types of missions. Missions can also be ways for an individual to prepare for and plan their engagement with the Church of Earth.
These fields are used to explain a mission on this platform.
These fields contain mission details that will further describe a mission.
Rituals
Rituals allow us to codify repeatable behaviours which can be used to provide us with internal focus or external connections. Huge portions of all of our encounters with other people are based on rituals that we understand intuitively through long-term exposure. Rituals can be discussed, developed and shared with others. Rituals can be attached to Missions.
There is a Community Guild for ritual creation, the most helpful rituals in that guild will appear as options in all Missions during creation.
These fields describe a ritual on this platform.
Community Guilds
Community Guilds are groups that allow us to organize ourselves in order to align towards a shared focus. Guilds can be formed around specific communities, and may also be based in a physical location (although this is optional). Community Guilds will allow people to engage with the Helpful Economic System of the Church of Earth locally.
A Community Guild could represent: a rec center, a business, a group of friends, a classroom, a park, a gym, a place of worship, and many other possible places.
Community Guilds allow us to add a layer of organization to all the content created on the site. Any piece of Gospel can be optionally added to a Community Guild a user is associated with. Users can only be in 1 Community Guild at a time (This number will probably go up to 3).
These fields describe a community guild on this platform.
Community Guilds can be ONLINE ONLY, or IN PERSON. In person guilds have a location attached to them.
Elections
The Church of Earth is democratic. It has the ability to run elections to select individuals or ideas. Community Guilds also have this ability. See further down for the section on Sortition to understand how results are chosen. Elections with a set end date will be determined through Sortition. Elections without an end date are considered ongoing polls.
An election isn’t just about finding a person to fill a role. An election can also be used to poll people in order to elect an idea.
These are the basic fields to create an election.
Versions
The Church of Earth has major and minor versions. A version allows us to set a specific focus in order to work towards shared goals and objectives. Community Guilds can also have versions.
Major Versions allow Community Guilds to set a long term (months, years) focus to their activity.
Minor Versions represent the added focus needed to work through the focus of a major version. Minor Versions are options
Setting a short and clear focus ensures that people are best able to understand the spirit of their shared objectives.
Open Source
The Church of Earth platform will be released as open source software. It can be used or modified in any way. It can be used to inspire the growth of other communities along a similar structure. It will also grow as a result of the efforts of the creative individuals who contribute new code and elements to the platform.
The code that is written to create the of the Church of Earth is part of the Gospel of the Church of Earth.
All Content is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Every contribution added to the site, everything in the Gospel of the Church of Earth, is given freely with the intention of being used in whatever way it inspires someone. Everything is public.
All of the content on the Church of Earth platform can be shared externally to other devices, apps and websites.
Part 2 – The Church of Earth nonprofit organization (NPO)
The question at the core of the Church of Earth NPO asks “How can we best use the systems and tools of our civilization in order to create a helpful world where everyone thrives?”
It attempt to answer this question with the following:
A structure and hierarchy that borrows diverse elements from existing and comparable entities and organizations, but with modern technologies and approaches.
A governance structure inspired by non-profit board governance but with a democratic selection, with term limits and a random selection process to minimize conflict and corruption.
Through the formation of subsidiary businesses created to address specific shared challenges.
The management of the Helpful Economic System at the core of the Church of Earth.
Governance Structure
Every position of authority in this organization is elected. Elected officials are called Paragons. Every position has a term limit. In the event of close results in an election the winner will be selected randomly from among top contenders. This is called sortition. This is being done to minimize the potential impact of a political class in the hierarchy of the Church of Earth. The main reason for choosing sortition is to prevent the formation of a political class within the Church of Earth.
The Paragon System
The Paragon system exists to help rotate people with appropriate skills and leadership experience through the Church of Earth in a democratic way. When guidance, insight or expertise in a specific area is required Paragons are found to address that need. Paragons serve term limits and exist within a structure intended to prevent amassing long-term political power.
Paragons are elected to serve specific leadership roles in the Church of Earth. The Church of Earth as a global organization elects Paragons. Individual Community Guilds of the Church of Earth have Paragons. Paragons are recruited based on the requirements of the part of the Church of Earth they represent. Not every Community Guild will have the same Paragons. Paragon roles may not persist indefinitely.
Paragons can be compared to C-Level employees of a corporation. The Church of Earth Organization will launch with 7 specific Paragons. None of these positions are filled as of the writing of this document. Ideally the first people to hold these roles will not be people who have contributed to this project up until this point.
The Paragon of Leadership
The Paragon of Operations
The Paragon of Finance
The Paragon of Technology
The Paragon of Communications
The Paragon of Science
The Paragon of Faith
Minimizing excessive political power
Concepts like term limits and sortition are used to help prevent individuals from achieving elevated political power and achieving undue influence.
This diagram explains how sortition will be used to improve the democratic process of the Church of Earth
Note: Sortition where multiple positions are to be elected hasn’t been mapped out yet.
Servant leadership is at the core of how the Church of Earth is designed to be run. Servant leadership is effective and helps increase trust (ref). This trust must be maintained by having a consistently open culture and high level of transparency. The choice to use sortition comes from a view that, in the absence of a clear preference by the voting public in a helpful environment with limited Toxic Competition, many alternatives can have relatively equal merit even though they are different and any inequalities can be addressed through concerted effort and focus in a deliberately helpful environment.
The Church of Earth will be governed by a board similar to a nonprofit organization using the Paragon System. Official Community Guilds of the Church of Earth will be governed similarly. Voting for these positions will be achieved through the Church of Earth platform, in accordance with the principles of account activity validation, and votes will be added to a blockchain. Non-elected positions will be hired through a traditional human resources process.
All groups of elected officials must be composed of individuals who identify as followers of the Church of Earth faith, and individuals who do not. Everything about this process is done to promote as many different individuals holding positions of responsibility in the Church of Earth over time as possible. This will create a more engaged and knowledgeable community.
Representation in the World
The Church of Earth, like any business entity, will interact with the world through its employees, services, products and marketing.
Community Guilds
An Official Community Guild can represent the Church of Earth in a community. This community can vary in scope from anything between a small, rural village or a group representing an entire nation. or to an online community brought together for a specific purpose. Unofficial Community Guilds can also be created by users of this platform in order align themselves toward achieving shared goals. Learn more about community guilds here.
Public Education
The Church of Earth will create educational content and training materials intended to allow learners to focus on accomplishing tasks, becoming tradespeople or craftspeople, and finding employment while using a helpful mindset in the execution of their tasks. Workshops will also be offered on things like project management, time management, scheduling, budgeting, arts & crafts, communication skills, and many other things.
Church of Earth Universities and Colleges can also function as seminary schools where Preachers are trained. Part of the training of a Preacher would be to support students on these campuses and in their efforts towards advancing their education.
Communities
There will be a desire among individuals to form into communities based around this ideology. The Church of Earth will create infrastructure that will enable people to accomplish this task. There will be plans, guide books and other content created to allow people to understand the possible communities they are able to form, where they can be formed, and how to work towards forming those communities. The Church of Earth will create technology solutions intended to help manage these communities in line with the values of the Church of Earth.
A Church of Earth community can be anything from a loosely aligned network of people in the digital space, or in a physical space like an apartment or office building, or a planned community where many, or all, residents are aligned with the core beliefs of the Church of Earth.
Business Ventures
There is economic value in creating helpful products and systems in order to make them available in global markets. The Church of Earth, as a non-profit entity, will seek to support the creation of these products when possible, sometimes this will be achieved by forming subsidiary corporations.
Examples of potential subsidiary corporations are: Tech startups, Universities or Colleges, Art Galleries.
Part 3 – The Faith of the Church of Earth
The Faith of the Church of Earth answers the question “How do I feel about the future of our civilization?”
The answer provided is “We’re going to be OK. It’s not going to be perfect and it’s going to be hard. But we can do it. We can build an amazing world for everyone.” Religion is a structure our species builds around faith. We have done this countless times in incredibly diverse and significant ways. It’s important to remember there is a difference between the Church of Earth as an entity, and the faith of the Church of Earth as a concept.
Note: A more romanticized, narrative driven version of this answer is available here.
The origin of faith is within our consciousness and the origin of consciousness is currently unknown. The faith of the Church of Earth is inspired by elements of western and eastern faiths. The unique value proposition at the core of the Church of Earth, which renders it distinct from other faiths, religious movements or spiritual practices, is Descendant Worship.
This image explains how Descendant Worship fits into the ecosystem of faith.
Descendant Worship
We don’t actually know if things will work out for our species after we die, and we won’t find out while we live in this world. How we view that period of time informs how we act while we are alive. We live in our world because of the decisions made by our ancestors. We can see the chains of decisions linking their world to ours. Descendant worship is about visualizing that chain of decisions extending into the future and beyond our lives. Descendant worship can be measured in the echoes of our lives.
The best thing we can do for our descendants is try to build a world for them where everyone thrives. The Faith of the Church of Earth is that we will eventually build that world.
This can also be called hope. Faith exists in parallel to hope.
This Faith is Optional
You cannot force thoughts, feelings or opinions into the mind of another human. You cannot force someone to adopt a faith, you can only force them to lie to you. No amount of expenditure of energy can result in someone adopting this faith unless they choose to adopt it. People cannot be forced to adopt this faith, they can only see the value in what is offered and choose to accept it if they want.
There are no official rituals around how people join this faith, including the ritual of asking someone to participate in this faith. People can simply choose to identify with it and attempt to live their lives in a more Helpful way. People who do not share this faith are equal to people who do. We are all different and equal.
Have Faith in Each Other
There are many circumstances of our lives which have huge impact on who we are and yet are totally beyond our control. If any human had been born in the position of any other human it’s safe to assume there would be meaningful similarities between their shared lives, regardless of the differences in their original and separate lives.
This means that when we view and consider other people there is value in considering the fact that we would likely share elements of their opinions and perspectives if we had lived in circumstances similar to theirs. This is empathy. It’s experienced in different ways by different humans. The differences between us as individuals can be significant, but the impact on our lives resulting from those differences may be equal when compared in the abstract. This faith is embodied in the concept of The First Five.
We are different and equal.
Core Beliefs:
Help others and you’ll live in a more helpful world.
#AMoreHelpfulWorld is the next step towards a world where everyone thrives. Not all steps are the same size, and that’s ok.
Improve yourself and you’ll improve the world.
We exist in an ecosystem of ecosystems. The changes we make to ourselves ripple outwards in countless aspects of our lives, impacting the lives of others.
Consume less and you’ll value what you have more.
What we consume controls the state of our lives. Our time consuming media impacts our minds and our consumption of products impacts our body and environment. We must consume to exist. Consumption that causes massive harm is never in our best interest.
What should you do with this information?
The core beliefs of the Church of Earth are not rules. They are things you can choose to believe which are intended to help you feel more comfortable with the world. They exist to provide guidance towards healthy growth. Growth is inevitable. We are alive. We grow. How we choose to focus on that growth impacts how we grow. We grow in different ways and for different reasons. We can learn from each other. We can help each other. We all need help sometimes.
Open Source Spiritual Humanism
This faith is Open Source because it is designed to evolve through the actions of the people who engage with it. It is spiritual because it is a non-theistic religious movement. It is humanist because it seeks to elevate the value and potential of the human condition and experience as one of the most powerful forces of positive change in our world. If you have doubts or concerns about the Church of Earth it is designed to be responsive to those concerns and provide you with ways to express yourself and address things.
You do not need to share this faith to participate in the open source spiritual humanism of the Church of Earth. You do not need to share this faith to use this platform. You don’t not need to share this faith to share the goals of the Church of Earth.
#AMoreHelpfulWorld
The faith of the Church of Earth tells us that once we work hard enough we will build a world where everyone thrives. In order to thrive we must have access to: water, food, information, energy, support, and freedom. Our Helpful Economic System will help power this world.
A Material Afterlife
The Church of Earth, in keeping with its nontheistic nature and focus on the future, celebrates a material afterlife. Our afterlife is the world we leave behind. It is the impact we have had on our friends, loved ones, communities and ecosystem. It is our digital presence on the Church of Earth platform, and elsewhere.
Our afterlife will last as long as we are remembered or can be felt in the complex tapestry of our civilization. INFOGRAPHIC
Part 4 – A Helpful Economy
Our economy is one of the ways we connect with each other in our civilization. The Church of Earth intends to build a new, separate economy based around providing help, either to others or to ourselves. This Helpful Economic System is designed to promote helpfulness on the Church of Earth platform and in Church of Earth communities.
Important Note, October 12,020. None of this is built yet. This infrastructure is complex and will have far-reaching consequences. It must be built appropriately, securely and with significant transparency and oversight.
Helpful Votes Represent Value
Because the Church of Earth platform has restrictions on the amount of content and votes people can produce during a day, and because the platform is built around the focus of creating helpful content, we can state that a Helpful Vote represents a relatively stable value added to this ecosystem.
This will come in the form of a unique digital token representing this transaction between humans. This video explains more about cryptocurrencies.
Tokens can be traded internally
Helpful tokens can be given to other users of the platform when interacting with their content. This cannot be implemented until it is done in a way that is transparent, well researched and as well constructed as possible.
New token types can be created over time to halt inflation
The spiritual humanist movement of the Church of Earth is versioned. The shared focus of all participants of this movement can be declared by the governing body of the Church of Earth, and this focus is stated on the platform. These versions are not expected to change rapidly. The token generated through the Church of Earth platform can be tied to this version, meaning that the token type can no longer be created after the version of the Church of Earth has changed.
Compensation can be altered in ways intended to promote helpful economic growth.
The token created by this system is digital and can be handled in nontraditional ways when compared to standard currency. A Helpful Vote does not just just create a token for the person who has created the Helpful Content, it also creates a token for the person who gave the vote.
#AMoreHelpfulEconomy provides rewards to both forms of participation in the economy. This is because the act of creating Helpful Content provides a different type of reward to the creator. They have enriched their lives by putting their time and energy into creating something helpful.
Income earned through the Helpful Economic System will be optimized to achieve maximum personal growth while minimizing income inequality.
Bonus and Maximum Funding
When a piece of content receives Helpful Votes from a broad range of individuals, the amount of Helpful Tokens the creator receives is multiplied (Formula TBD). If someone creates content that “Goes Viral” they will receive additional compensation for their efforts and impact. This is achievable because this currency is purely digital. This method is known as Bonus Funding. Bonus Funding is a critical component of the Helpful Economic System, as it will create increased valued for people who create very helpful content.
When a piece of content has reached a publicly displayed upper limit of Helpful Votes, new Helpful Votes will generate tokens at a reduced capacity, using a formula that is also publicly displayed, explained, and agreed upon.
Furthermore, if content is appreciated and consumed by users with diverse backgrounds the bonus can be increased. The Helpful Economy is designed to incentivize skillfully delivered and well considered contributions.
The system mitigates corruption and abuse as a result of the other mechanisms in place to prevent abuse on the content platform:
daily activity limits
limits on how frequently an account can vote for another account
limits on when an account is in good standing and able to create tokens through Helpful Votes
token creation in bulk on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule in order to ensure that the data is reviewed before token creation
When multiple people think content is Helpful the value of that content is increased by a bonus amount.
Integration with traditional markets
Because this Helpful Token represents a cryptocurrency it can be traded through appropriate mechanisms for other cryptocurrencies, or traditional forms of currency.
Measures to prevent inflation
Tokens that are not converted to cryptocurrency and exchanged for physical currency, or which have not been traded to other users, will expire. This already happens on the platform with Daily Votes that have not been used. The activity they represent will remain on the platform but their ability to be converted to additional value will be removed. This will prevent inflation within the Helpful Economy.
New versions of the Church of Earth will be used to create new tokens.
The Church of Earth has multiple opportunity to implement functionality to reduce inflation.
Measures to prevent abuse
Tokens will be paid out on a weekly or bi-weekly basis in order to ensure that token generation is being done in accordance with community guidelines and the spirit of the Church of Earth.
Part 5: Market Research of this platform (Incomplete)
Things to consider about this platform:
The religious nature of the subject will be off-putting to many potential users.
Using this platform is not compelling unless it has an active community.
It is far more complex than what people expect from social media. The difficulty is more in line with a software, or Software as a Service.
It’s a responsive website and not a mobile app, so the user interface is clunky on mobile.
The platform was intended to be a minimum viable product (MVP) and needs to be rebuilt as soon as possible.
Users can use this platform in a lot of different ways. This is extremely powerful but also overwhelming.
Because the Church of Earth has a whole module designed to share content from other sites it can be of value to people with presences elsewhere on the internet.
Types of people who will use this platform:
People who see the value of these tools and this community for personal growth
Who share the faith of the Church of Earth
Who are comfortable sharing this space with people who share that faith.
People who are primarily engaged in efforts to participate in the creation of helpful content in order to benefit from the Helpful Economy.
Artists
Entrepreneurs
Podcasters/YouTubers
People who intend to disrupt the stability of this platform
People who intend to misuse this platform
Conclusion:
The Church of Earth exists to help connect people who prioritize achieving personal growth and collaboration. It is not intended to be adopted by people who reject its premise or methods. It is not designed to be forced on people. Participation can only ever be optional as consent is at the core of the ideology.
It is designed to be fully inclusive in order to foster the growth of a vibrant, diverse and inclusive ecosystem of ideas and efforts to advance human civilization. It is designed to accomplish these goals regardless of the scale of adoption it achieves. It is built around the hope that we can build a series of tools around it in order to foster helpful discussion.
The Church of Earth is naïve. It “shows a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.” The naivete of the Church of Earth can only be reduced through the inclusion of a diverse set of experiences and knowledge.
The Church of Earth is built in a way to deliberately grow those experiences and knowledge. It represents a framework of tools, ideologies and behaviour that are intended to achieve a specific outcome: #AMoreHelpfulWorld. In this world everyone thrives. In order to thrive a human needs access to: water, food, information, energy, support and freedom.
The Church of Earth represents one possible path to creating this world. It is not the only path, although it may be the most direct in its intentions. There isn’t a “right” way to engage with the Church of Earth because the Church of Earth doesn’t have rules about what’s right and wrong, and justifies this position because it’s built on faith in people.
Your help is of value to the goals of this organization
This document does not exist to ask for your participation in this project. It has been written to explain the intention of this project and the rationale behind the choices that have been made in its creation.
The Church of Earth is intended to offer a meaningful way to connect individuals spanning various ideologies, societies and geographic locations in order to align them towards overcoming shared challenges. It attempts to offer a spiritually fulfilling path towards achieving meaningful and healthy growth. It offers complex technological tools designed to pragmatically address logistical, social, ideological and economic challenges.
It’s only as good as we can make it. This is as good as one person has been able to make it. A lot of this must change over time as more specialized knowledge becomes available. It is incomplete and imperfect.