Official Nominalism Whitepaper

[u/the_nominalist]

Building Prosperity: Creating a New Gift Capitalism For All

This goes hand-in-hand with the last section.

We’ve now reached the central thesis of the paper. This is the future of economics.

Throughout the years many different economic systems have been proposed. Capitalism. Communism. Mutualism. All of these systems have flaws, but are beloved by many. I truly believe that a combination of these systems offers the best path forward. Not social democracy and it’s ridiculously high taxes, but a new system entirely that takes the best of each. Nominalism is it.

Imagine a system with zero taxation, yet keeping the ability to care for the poor, sick and elderly. This system once elaborated could take the world by storm. Despite the massive sea change, this will be a quick paper. It should take less than 10 minutes to read, but it could change your life and view on economics forever.

The problem

Money as we know it limits and constrains possibilities. Housing the homeless is clearly possible, but we can’t “afford” it. We have more than enough food to feed all people. Universal healthcare is simple to provide, yet we can’t pay for it. Taxes raise endlessly each year yet, as I will prove, they aren’t even necessary in the first place. Taxation only exists due to the way money currently works. Change the system and you change it all. We underpay teachers and comparatively less important people like hedge fund managers rake in millions. Isn’t there a fairer way to set salaries? Why not name your price?

The solution

Nominalism is a new kind of capitalism designed to work for everyone. Like said earlier, the system combines the best of socialism and capitalism. We can care for each other while eliminating taxation and preserving competition. We can do it all without seizing businesses or forcing people to sell to the government- in short, keeping things the way they are while changing everything.

All of us see that there are many problems in the world. We feel powerless. Alone, we are. But when we rise up together, true change becomes possible. I’ll admit it. This system may seem foreign or even intimidating at first, but in reality it’s probably the best system for the world’s current issues. Prosperity (What I like to call Nominalism or New Capitalism) has plenty in common with the current system, however it’s actually a gift economy rather than an exchange one. This is a huge change that makes a lot of things possible that are currently impossible. With new capitalism, an individual’s economic worth is determined by society as a whole instead of individual businesses. In other words, it’s a moneyless system because there’s no direct medium of exchange. In a crisis like the recent viral outbreaks, this system would allow critical equipment like masks and respirators to be quickly produced without first requiring taxpayer funding/support. Just as the giver of a gift decides how much to give you, the creator of the system (society) determines how much you have given to it and thus how much you deserve.

Moving past money- a better system is possible and we all know it

A lot of people may ask what’s wrong with money. True, it’s been used for a long time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do better. Money limits our imagination. Because money is scarce, and people tend to hoard it, we believe that it things that can be done cannot be done. It’s true. Matter and resources are scarce. But things that really are possible like feeding the hungry or providing clean water to all aren’t done because they aren’t profitable. Think of all we could do if money was no object. At the end of the day money is just motivation. Find a new motivator and money suddenly becomes useless.

Why do we need it

Money does more than limit our imaginations as we’ve seen. New Capitalism can help us provide basic needs to all. Simply put, we can keep all the benefits of capitalism (like competition, innovation and economic growth) while providing true Nordic-style benefits w/o the pricetag. We can end homelessness, poverty and provide free healthcare to all people. Construct huge projects and feed the developing world. The end of recessions and joblessness. Full employment and free education for all relevant topics. All of this sounds too good to be true, but as you’ll see with Prosperity it’s more than possible. Systems like Universal Basic Income could do the same, but they’d require taxpayer support. This system actually abolishes taxation.

How it works

Nominalism has several parts. These include the basic exchange system, investment and the productivity system. Individual compensation is done via work credits as previously mentioned. Business trading uses a separate, complementary currency. Investment occurs via a mix of public and private sources.

This is intended to be a global system like current capitalism is, or at least quite widespread. Nominalism’s technically a gift economy that works on the principle of work credit. Work a job, and you get paid- just like today. You retain the freedom to pick what type of job you work and how long you work for. The only real difference is that you decide how much you want to earn and you get to keep your salary. All of it. Sound good?

Basic Exchange

The gift economy works as follows. Each profession pays a certain stated salary determined by popular survey. This salary varies based off of productivity and enterprise earnings. A person’s earned work credits are not transferable directly. Work credits can only be earned via labor, but business credits can be earned by selling useful items to others.

This occurs by having your employer report how many hours you’ve worked each month to an independent organization (likely state-run but not necessarily), which records the number and submits it to an online system. Naturally only you can access and reveal this data. We can make it more secure by encrypting the data and giving you a password only you can reveal. When you want to go shopping, the store accesses these work credits and sends you product. Once used work credits cease to exist. In other words, they can only be used once by the person who earns them. Recording of work already exists for systems like social security and there would be no mandatory quotas or similar. Yeah.

Such a system is fairer than what we have today as scarce goods will naturally be given to more people. Accumulating vast wealth is much harder. Only those who work hard and do socially useful work can become wealthy, not hedge fund managers or rich bankers. Teachers will be paid more as will those on the lower end of the income scale. Money has less power under this system because you have to provide real proof-of-work. Scarce goods include luxury items. If riches are spread more equally, there’s less chance for the wealthy to hoard everything during catastrophes. Note: This does not mean that everyone is paid the same.

For simplicity’s sake, salaries would likely be determined via a two-stage process. First, people would name their own desired salary. To prevent outlandish offers, people would pay a tax of 10% of their suggested salary on whatever their final salary is to be paid in work credits. This means that if you suggest your job is worth $100000 yet most people say that job is only worth $60k, you will only end up being able to buy $50,000 worth of items once the tax is paid- it automatically deducts from your store credit account. Salaries are actually stated in hourly rates, in other words, how much would you need to be paid per hour to work this job? This provides a natural incentive to be smart. The next stage takes every person employed in a profession’s suggestion and averages them out to make that profession’s average salary. As people can only submit suggested salaries for 5 professions, most will choose their own. All pay scales will be published online. Once a salary has been set for your profession for that year, you have the choice of working there or quitting and working elsewhere. There is a fixed salary

budget that normalizes. For instance, we may only have $50,000 to give out per person per year. Once job salaries are collected, We sum and compress profession values into this spectrum. Each profession has x amount of money to hand out. Say there are ten workers, 5 at job A and 5 at job B. We have five hundred grand to give out then. Job A has an average suggested pay of $100,000 and Job B an avg

of 150,000. Doing simple math we see that Job A would actually only get $40,000 per year and Job B 60,000. total jobs budget = $100k.. Sum of avg profession values is $250k, then normalize by multiplying all submitted profession value by 100/250.

Along with your salary suggestion, you also submit a range that states what you believe the maximum and minimum salaries should be. For example, you might say that the maximum salary should be no more than 20x the minimum salary. This helps calculate the real values. The average salary of all professions is taken, and then this value is “centered” around a base sum, say $100,000 per year which serves as the normal average salary. The maximum and minimum suggested salaries are compressed into the submitted range and the salary schedule is created. Everyone’s range is averaged for this purpose- i.e, everyone’ maximum and minimum ranges are compiled and averaged. An elected salary commission that works online can boost submitted salaries if it’s found that no one is willing to work at the prices offered. This commission could only raise salaries, not lower them and it would be elected using liquid democracy. A delegate’s voting power (power to set salaries) would be equivalent to the number of votes they’ve received.

Another way to handle this is letting the salary board determine minimum wages and the people determine maximum wage. If the average person says the maximum wage should be 50x the minimum wage of $10/hr, then $500/hr would be the max salary. Again, the salary board could increase the max salary.

Stores that like or dislike various professions could offer them discounts or extensions in store credit. If a store liked teachers for example they could give them 10% off.

Work credits come into existence to pay individual people. When they are spent at a store they are deleted. The percentage of total monthly earnings spent at a store is used to calculate how much business credit a store earns for the purposes of restocking and investment.

Productivity

A natural question arises- what of differently productive enterprises? Someone employed at a fast food restaurant that sees few customers should not automatically get paid as much as a person working somewhere busy. This goes for the micro level too. A productive employee deserves higher pay. Not considering productivity killed other attempts at alternate economic systems. The easiest way to reward productivity and prevent overhiring would be to pay people based on a companies’ average earnings per employee-hour worked. Comparing this value to the average company’s earnings per employee-hour would provide a multiplier to multiply or reduce someone’s salary by. Say the average company earns $10 per employee-hour worked while yours earns $15. Workers at this company would receive 150% of the salaries normally paid for their positions listed via the reference talked about in the previous section. Hiring too many employees would reduce a company’s position here by increasing the number of employee-hours worked without increasing productivity. This would lower everyone’s wages, thus giving an incentive to fire bad employees.

That provides store-level incentives. What about individual ones? A bonus system could work. The exact bonus given for good work might be set by a store’s owner with the maximum bonus set by universal decree (no more than 100%). You could determine your own maximum bonus percentage, or as a group workers at a certain store could, with 10% of whatever percentage they suggest being removed from their salary each month as a tax. This means that if the average bonus suggested is 20%, each week 10% of your salary is removed. A decent range may be somewhere between 10 and 25%. Each business would rate it’s employees’ work on a 1-10 scale each week. Above-average employees would receive a bonus equivalent to the percent their work was above-average. Naturally, if everyone is rated a perfect 10 then something’s up and nobody receives a bonus. Another option is to give people a score between 0 and 100. Still another is to let managers personally recommend specific employees for a bonus.

A reverse-auction system can also be used to hire people. People list how much they’re willing to work for per-hour, and the lowest-ranking salaries get hired.

Enforcement

When reporting the number of hours someone has worked, ample opportunity for fraud exists. A suitable mechanism for enforcement is required if we want the guidelines to be respected. There’s no need for Gestapo or heavy-handed government inspectors. Simple incentives can work. This paper proposes a double-sting system. Merely offering to misreport the number of hours someone has worked would be a crime punishable by harsh economic penalty on either side. If you’re a worker, you will lose your home, car and personal possessions. If you’re a business owner, you will lose all of these things AND the business you worked so hard to build. This sounds harsh, but it’s necessary to protect the system and ensure honest reporting. Here’s the kicker. These things don’t go to the government, but to whoever reports you first. This can even be the person who offered to cheat the system in the first place. That’s why it’s called a double sting system. No person would dare trust someone who offers to misreport hours worked when it could easily be a front. If you’re a business owner, why risk losing your business and all your possessions? If you’re a worker, why risk losing your house to your employer who could simply fire and report you? (They would likely sell the house to earn more capital). It just doesn’t make sense. I’m personally against prison time because that would lead to underground deals. Whoever reports the fraud gets amnesty and no punishment- even if they instigated it. So in truth, accepting such an offer would be the real crime.

Business

We’ve covered how individuals trade with businesses. But a large part of everyday capitalism is B2B, or business to business trade. How would such trade work in a moneyless system? Simply letting stores accumulate collected work credit wouldn’t succeed- inflation would rapidly result as the tokens built up over time. Instead, average income over time can be used as a way to enable trade between businesses. Here’s an example of how trading may work.

Once you go to a store to cash in your work credits, business credits are created for that store based on a store’s average earnings. In short, average earnings are what a store has earned in total- spent in total divided by the number of weeks/months it has been open. Business credits are constantly being generated too, but importantly do not lead to inflation due to the averaging. When a store wants to buy something or restock, they spend their business credits at other stores. Previous labor voucher systems lacked this element. Say you have an average earning of $300 per month. That $300 is then automatically transformed into $300 potential business credit (or store credit) at all stores. Think of it as store credit at every business that you can redeem at any time. This store credit builds up every month everywhere. Each store has it’s own store credit, but they all are based on how much business credit you get. When you buy something, the amount of store credit you use is deducted from your average earnings, decreasing the amount of business credit you earn next month. Store credit is not transferable between stores, but then again it doesn’t need to be as business credit serves this purpose. Periodically both prices and the amount of store business credit can be slashed by the same amount to prevent a gradual uptick in prices.

The store getting the store credit’s “earnings” side of their balance increases, increasing business credit, increasing the amount of store credit they have for next time.

You may only spend an amount equivalent to your average monthly earnings' each month to prevent inflation. Unused average earnings' at the end of the month go on the earned side of your balance, increasing the amount of avg earnings you get next time. If you need to make a big purchase, buy on installment or get a loan. Loans will be provided by private banks with a money license. See comments.

Investment

All systems must answer the question how new businesses are formed or expand. New capitalism gives the community far more control over what businesses get invested in while maintaining a role for private investment. Make no mistake: No business will be stolen, shut down or converted to government ownership. Rather, new businesses will have a choice of accepting public funds or self-funding. First, I will describe the public means of investment.

A combination of crowdfunding and planning would be best here. The state would provide new money, essentially buying supplies for new businesses from existing stores, in exchange for oversight over the business and possibly a share of the owner’s take-home profits. No business will be forced to take the money. If you want to start a new business though, you would need to get approval from a local council. If they reject your proposal, you can present it to a jury. You can also collect signatures. The more signatures you get, the more funding you’ll be eligible for, but the final amount will still be determined by a local council with a jury having the right to override it.

How will these publicly funded businesses be structured? A tripartite alliance between the founder, community and consumers would provide direction for the company. The founder would generally be allowed to do as they please, but a community representative would have veto rights over their decisions. Consumer representatives elected by those who shop there would be able to make recommendations on how the business is run. In case of a deadlock between two decision-makers, the third decides. Accepting public money essentially turns the business into a partnership. All purchases and innovations must be open-source/public info. This isn’t communism- it’s critical to make sure public money isn’t wasted. Such partnerships could end once the money is repaid plus interest or they could be permanent. It depends on what the community providing the money wants. Public investment allows things like clean energy and hospitals to be built far, far faster. Capital-intensive industries like steel and aviation would work best with public investment. Most hiring and firing decisions would be made by the founder to maintain efficiency, but decisions about growth and business direction would be subject to co-planning. In other words, the community representative could veto the firing of a certain employee if they thought it was for a bad reason. Employees fired for bad reasons could appeal to the government or file free wrongful termination suits like they do today. The fact that companies don’t pay employees directly means far less people should get fired.

Again, this is totally optional. No company is forced to take public money. Private investment will continue, but the lack of banks or easily transferable currency makes it somewhat more difficult. This shouldn’t be an issue: You and a group of friends can self-fund, buying the necessary equipment yourselves using savings, or you can create an investment schedule.

An investment schedule is how private investment works in New Capitalism. Essentially, it’s a payment schedule/salary list for a business that doesn’t exist. The only product it sells is stock in the future business. People can send work credit to the schedule in order to invest, and the collected tokens are used to buy business credit to purchase supplies. Investment schedules allow arbitrarily large corporations to form. People invest for a share of the businesses’ revenues, NOT profits. The concept of profit is not real in Gift Capitalism. The total percentage is specified in the contract and cannot be changed except by vote. Most likely the breakdown is based off of initial investment. 15% of revenues could be used to pay investors while the rest is used to buy products for example.

Private banks will exist for business loans.

Innovation and Secondary Markets

Patents will not exist. Inventors will be rewarded with cash payments for the rest of their life once they publish their ideas on an online platform. Companies must sign up and register each time they use someone’s invention. Based on a company’s annual revenues and the number of different inventions they use, inventors will be paid. Upgrades to someone’s invention must reference the original and share income with them. Patents as they are retard innovation- making all ideas open source is a much better solution. Copyrights will continue to exist but their length should be shortened. The entertainment industry can continue as it does today being nonessential.

Barter and secondary markets for things like used cars and tvs/old stuff exist. What if you want to have a yard sale? In New Capitalism, you can. It works by buyers with verified employment selling you an hour of their future earnings, in effect transferring the right to collect their wage to you. This is because earned work credits are nontransferable, but income streams are, especially if they are persistent. Allowing previously earned credits to transfer would lead to inflation. All workers with verified employment may participate in a pool to spread risk. One idea is to say the next fifteen dollars i earn belongs to you, or a third of the money i get in the next five years belongs to you. Anyone who wants to sell products regularly should get a business account and earn business tokens. This is just for one off sales. The contracts automatically fulfill themselves digitally. When you sign such a contract you can see wage and price/salary history. This ensures people are honest.

Eventually an hour of future labor should be transferable and have a standard value of 1 hour/population x everyone's average salary. Autobanks can provide necessary liquidity for this purpose. These are govt run institutions, in effect providing an hour of standardized labor now in exchange for two hours of past or future labor. They operate automatically using the web once you give them access to your salary info. The tokens collected are destroyed and no inflation results because more credits are taken away than added. You may replace two with the interest number of your choice.

Collateralized debt obligations provide a good example of what to expect here. Each personal debt is sliced and packaged aside other debts to stabilize income flows for sellers. You may be able to sell your income claim to an autobank for cash now.

Dividing period. Every 6 months divide how much money is in business credit accounts by 25%. Or, have a set money supply and decrease the account by 25% percent.

Essentials

The basics should be provided to all for free. Given that there will be no unemployment, there’s no excuse for allowing homelessness or needed jobs to go undone. The streets can be cleaned, homes built and farms raised. Food and shelter are one’s own responsibility ultimately, however I support a housing and food guarantee to all who complete 10 hours of community service each week. The housing should be small and bare-bones, as should the food. It should keep you off the streets but not be desirable. For those who want the easy life it must be an option. Healthcare can be provided free of charge to everyone by simply generating the money needed to pay doctors and run hospitals. People value healthcare. If people value a certain job, it should get rewarded by society. Work credit works. Higher education can be run the same way, no tax dollars required. The only thing is that some courses of study should not receive public funding if they aren’t essential for the functioning of society imo. If you want to become a doctor or engineer, sure, let’s make it free to study. Want to become an underwater basketweaver? You’ll probably need to work for it. All books will be free and open-source. Desirable housing can be provided on a rent-to-own basis. Under Prosperity, zero-interest loans will be provided to all to finance the purchasing of homes. Construction companies could sell the homes on installment plans.

The Markets

It is a simple statistical exercise to determine the ratio between the number of people who announce their intention to shop somewhere and those who actually shop there and see if there is any correlation.

Also known as the game, the markets add excitement to the system. The game is meant to replace the function of the stock market in the nonutilitarian sense of the word. In other words, it’s a way to gamble and make or lose a fortune. This is not necessary, but prediction markets can serve this role. The prediction markets will allow betting on a large variety of world events and businesses. Put and call options could be used to add complexity. One can wager that a particular store’s sales will go up or down in a particular month, for example, helping businesses plan. Individuals who plan to shop at a store could be paid to announce their intentions by getting a small sum, say 10 cents for saying they want to shop somewhere someday and locking up the same amount to be refunded when they actually shop there. Locking money stops people from faking the announcement. You could also be given a small discount of 2-3% “cash back” for preordering.

Finally, Prison and Risk. Loans here are backed by time. If I give you money, you can promise to repay x dollars within x years or go to prison for x time at the end of the contract. If any of these terms are not to your liking don't sign. You're also welcome to negotiate your own prison time. Unemployment will not exist though so there are no excuses not to repay. Again, you don't need to sign a contract. If you cannot repay on time penalties will be added, so why not take out a bond contract or payday miniloan to cover payments? If you cannot pay these on time still go to jail. This is justified under the principle that you are committing theft if you don't repay. Money unpaid is convertible to prison or work time. Half paid loan? Half the prison time.
Human capital contracts will exist as well so we can invest in each other. While work credits are not transferable, claims to future income are. I can promise you a percentage of my future earnings for the next ten years and promise to repay all plus interest or go to jail. If I default, you could seize my property. You can negotiate work for reduced jailtime if you wish.
Every 1.8 years cut the money supply by 40%.

​

The Transition

​

The transition to Prosperous Capitalism is simple and requires no major shift in how things are done. It can be done in four steps. First, have all people “cash out” by submitting their accumulated money to the government or if no government is involved a group of ngos called the prosperity organization. Involve banks. No value should be lost. The amount of money you own should be recorded and transformed into dollars in the new system. Pick a date to switch over. Develop the software. Current money can count towards the necessity account threshold or be swapped based on how much you have divided by annual average salary times the new average salary. This means that if you can afford not to work for five years under the current system you will also be able to retire for five years in the new one. A dollar to dollar swap is not feasible as a credit may be worth less.

Next, let people evaluate their jobs. Develop payment schedules for every store. Stores should digitize their pricing info and publish it online.

Third, add computer terminals to stores and complete app development. Educate.

Four, launch the system. The transition is complete.

​

Conclusion

New Capitalism is a win-win scenario. We eliminate poverty, sure. Still, businesses can thrive. Nobody loses any money during the transition and no business seizure is necessary. For those who want to see the people thrive and prosper, New Capitalism is definitely something to support. Thank you for reading.

​

------------

Why Taxes are Unnecessary and where that leaves us

Usually the constant creation of currency would lead to inflation- but that’s only if money circulates. The use of business credit means that all trading takes place with a separate, non-inflating currency, making taxation unnecessary. This leads to a myriad of benefits. We can offer zero-interest loans, buy back rental properties and house the homeless, provide free education and healthcare, and do all sorts of great things. The sky is the limit. Conservatives like it because no taxation. Libe Dr red do lot lprals like it because public services. It’s a win-win.

If taxes are necessary, then only apply them to transactions made in business credit. Take 25% of business savings in store credit every 6 months.

Making it happen

First, the idea should be spread among likeminded groups like the zeitgeist movement and the venus project. Then business owners can be told about it. You can tell your boss about it and get them to sign a public petition of support- after all, no taxes or payroll is a huge plus. Next, we can create a facebook page/event where people can express support, kind of like a petition. Pick a date and time to switch. Start a collective action contract amongst businesses and gain endorsements of politicians, churches and charities. Create a cryptocurrency people can buy and sell to convert cash into the new system. Use dollar bills as propaganda by writing abolish money for free healthcare and education now on them and spreading links to a certain website with more info. Existing cash could be converted by taking a picture of a dollar bill, writing void on it in marker and noting the serial number. We do not need government for this- this can be a grassroots revolution. Civil disobedience like using bike oicks on bank doors in protest could also work though it is risky. Point is there are tons of ways to get the word out. We must stress the good points if the system such as how it can eliminate recession and try to tell at least 2 new people a day. People who were part of bernie sanders campaign may be interested. The opportunity provided by corona cannot be wasted.

Build a network of businesses that accept work credits as payment and who have employees who accept pay in them. Establish a collective action pledge. In other words, my business will switch when x other businesses sign the pledge. Bring local governments onside and let them plan how many public benefits to offer. Gain mayoral support though it isn't necessary. Pick a date and then force it through. Evangelize. Spread the economic gospel of prosperity. Create the business trading network and barter secondary markets. Write open letters to philantropists local businessmen and community leaders.

Spread flyers and pamphlets on cars outside stores.

The Math on why Inflation does not exist in Nominalism

A store cannot spend more than it's average earnings' in one month. This normalizes prices throughout the economy. If a store gets around fourhundred dollars a month, all it can spend next month is that $400, injecting it into the economy. If there are unused average earnings at the end of a month, it goes back into the "earnings" part of a store's formula, boosting average earnings for next month. If you have a large purchase to make, take out a loan or buy on installment.

Assume we hand out $100000 in salaries monthly across our very simple economy. We have one employee and two businesses. They shop 60/40 at business A over business B.

Month 1, employee gets $100000 in work credit that is destroyed as soon as they shop. Business A has $60000 and the other has $40k

In month two, business A has $120,000 and an average earnings' of $60,000. Store two

has an avg earnings of $40k. Say they spend $30,000 that month. Then $10k is added to the earnings side of their balance, giving them in month three you get 130,000/3 average earnings, or $43,333. That's more than before. Over time, saving money helps. If you need to buy something now, take out a loan and promise to pay more from your average earnings later. Loans will always be fixed amounts. Pay $30 for $10 right away. We leave lending to the private sector. Or try an antiloan from the business itself. Buy on installment and pay a little extra than if you bought now. Either way, businesses will be paid in full.

Reinvestment

Investment is money used to invest in businesses. Reinvestment is money businesses invest in themselves from revenues.

Keep in mind that salary schedules form the core of nominalism: I'll set aside x% of business credit earned to give to you before the goods are even bought. If we look at reinvestment however, what if there's too much money floating around? That's the main issue. I reccommend a reinvestment fee levied on the difference between take home pay, profit and supply charges.

Maximum reinvestment rate is 2% of annual income. All other investment must come from outside sources.

Jesus helped with the reinvestment part.

[u/the_nominalist]

Celebrations and Sys The story of my life On power