13.5 From Participatory Budgeting to Crowd Funding for All
277
everywhere. Accordingly, in a country, there are lots of “forgotten places”, which
could be best upgraded by locals, if they had access to the necessary means.
“Guerilla Gardening”,
30 i.e. the distribution of seeds of colorful plants in public
spaces, is a little example showing how easy it can sometimes be to turn a depressing
city landscape into a colorful paradise.
As described in the chapter on Digital Democracy, it does not have to stay there.
Hackathons, Make City Festivals, and Urban Source Urbanism have taken things big
steps forward. Why shouldn’t it be possible to lift this to a professional level?
In the future, I imagine that people would engage in economic, social, environmental, and cultural projects. In some of these projects, they would take a coordinating role, in others they would contribute. Digital assistants,
31 using augmented
reality and other digital technologies, would provide supportive tools for organizing
such projects (from recruiting project staff over budget planning and organization to
detailed instructions for a state-of-the-art implementation). In this way, citizen-based
projects could be run on a professional or semi-professional level. Of course, it is
conceivable to include experts with a special education and city representatives as
well, to achieve high standards and a coordination with other projects.
The citizen-run projects would be financed by means of crowdfunding.
32 If there
was just enough money for crowd funding, in perspective one could even imagine to
build a sports arena or develop a new medical drug using community-based funding.
So, here is the idea: What if everyone got a special budget every month, which
would be reserved for crowd funding. Such an “investment premium”
33 would allow
ordinary people to chip money into local projects that they consider important. This
could be official projects or citizen-run projects. People could donate their investment
premiums (or parts of them) to whatever seems to be good economic, social, environmental or cultural engagements. Projects that manage to attract enough money
for their realization would go forward. Other projects, which lack maturity or popularity, would be dropped. The competition for funding should make sure that primarily
high-quality projects would be realized.
13.6 A New Monetary System
How should we pay for all of this? In principle, in the same way as in the past: Let
money work! However, in the future, it should work for everyone, not just for a few
people or private entities. For this, we should have the equality principle in place.
30 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening.
31 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant; also: Interaction Support Processor,
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160350685A1/en.
32 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding.
33 Decomplexing the System, Roland Berger (June 4, 2018) https://www.rolandberger.com/fr/Pointof-View/Decomplexing-the-system.html, see also http://futurict.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-utopiansociety-that-would-be-feasible.html and https://werteundwandel.de/inhalte/dirk-helbing-wir-mue
ssen-wirtschaft-und-politik-neu-erfinden/.
277
everywhere. Accordingly, in a country, there are lots of “forgotten places”, which
could be best upgraded by locals, if they had access to the necessary means.
“Guerilla Gardening”,
30 i.e. the distribution of seeds of colorful plants in public
spaces, is a little example showing how easy it can sometimes be to turn a depressing
city landscape into a colorful paradise.
As described in the chapter on Digital Democracy, it does not have to stay there.
Hackathons, Make City Festivals, and Urban Source Urbanism have taken things big
steps forward. Why shouldn’t it be possible to lift this to a professional level?
In the future, I imagine that people would engage in economic, social, environmental, and cultural projects. In some of these projects, they would take a coordinating role, in others they would contribute. Digital assistants,
31 using augmented
reality and other digital technologies, would provide supportive tools for organizing
such projects (from recruiting project staff over budget planning and organization to
detailed instructions for a state-of-the-art implementation). In this way, citizen-based
projects could be run on a professional or semi-professional level. Of course, it is
conceivable to include experts with a special education and city representatives as
well, to achieve high standards and a coordination with other projects.
The citizen-run projects would be financed by means of crowdfunding.
32 If there
was just enough money for crowd funding, in perspective one could even imagine to
build a sports arena or develop a new medical drug using community-based funding.
So, here is the idea: What if everyone got a special budget every month, which
would be reserved for crowd funding. Such an “investment premium”
33 would allow
ordinary people to chip money into local projects that they consider important. This
could be official projects or citizen-run projects. People could donate their investment
premiums (or parts of them) to whatever seems to be good economic, social, environmental or cultural engagements. Projects that manage to attract enough money
for their realization would go forward. Other projects, which lack maturity or popularity, would be dropped. The competition for funding should make sure that primarily
high-quality projects would be realized.
13.6 A New Monetary System
How should we pay for all of this? In principle, in the same way as in the past: Let
money work! However, in the future, it should work for everyone, not just for a few
people or private entities. For this, we should have the equality principle in place.
30 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening.
31 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant; also: Interaction Support Processor,
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160350685A1/en.
32 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding.
33 Decomplexing the System, Roland Berger (June 4, 2018) https://www.rolandberger.com/fr/Pointof-View/Decomplexing-the-system.html, see also http://futurict.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-utopiansociety-that-would-be-feasible.html and https://werteundwandel.de/inhalte/dirk-helbing-wir-mue
ssen-wirtschaft-und-politik-neu-erfinden/.