theUBIguy's recent activity
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentHi all. This is Conrad from the Comingle team. Thanks for the invite! I signed in as theUBIguy, because that's my social media handle pretty much everywhere. I've really enjoyed reading through...Hi all.
This is Conrad from the Comingle team. Thanks for the invite! I signed in as theUBIguy, because that's my social media handle pretty much everywhere.
I've really enjoyed reading through these comments. It's exciting to see people really digging into the details and the info we've provided to come up with well-considered opinions and questions rather than the kneejerk assertions (e.g. "Clearly a scam!") we so often see from people who haven't really examined the materials. I posted a few responses above, and look forward to engaging further when I can.
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentThat's a specific legal definition of commingling. To commingle, in more general terms, means to mix or blend things together. The function of Comingle is to pool a percentage of people's finances...That's a specific legal definition of commingling. To commingle, in more general terms, means to mix or blend things together. The function of Comingle is to pool a percentage of people's finances together, and by doing so, mix people together in solidarity, connection, and a rising tide sort of prosperity. It's a direct, algorithmic, mathematical, and automated manifestation of the idea that we're all in this together. It's an infrastructure based on a very simple set of rules applied uniformly to everyone. Bulding such an infrastructure not only helps support people in and of itself, but also opens up significant opportunities for connection and "commingling" between members as we scale. It's like grassroots movement-building in which everybody has skin in the game and has each other's backs from the get go.
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentHi there. This is Conrad from the Comingle team. It is of utmost priority for us to entirely divorce Comingle from profit motive and any form of extractive monetization. That's why revenue is...Hi there. This is Conrad from the Comingle team.
It is of utmost priority for us to entirely divorce Comingle from profit motive and any form of extractive monetization. That's why revenue is built as a simple utility percentage, and also why we currently have no investors (all donations and grants to this point) and are only open to capped return investments with no equity conferred to shareholders. No individual ultra-wealth is to be created in the making of this platform, and we refuse to compromise Comingle's future ability to redirect excess revenue for public benefit.
We can only make promises for now, because we're actively raising the funds to put toward legal structuring, but please stay tuned for when we get those iron-clad rules in place.
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentHi there. I'm Conrad Shaw, one of Comingle's co-founders. Great points. We initially incorporated as a C-Corp to get an entity in place quickly and the ball rolling on software development....Hi there.
I'm Conrad Shaw, one of Comingle's co-founders. Great points.
We initially incorporated as a C-Corp to get an entity in place quickly and the ball rolling on software development. Technically, that's considered to be "for profit" but I don't think of it that way. The idea of Comingle operating like a typical for-profit makes me sick; it would ruin it entirely. A chunk of the budget we're raising is specifically for legal restructuring pre-launch to establish mission-aligned structure & bylaws, and to specifically remove all profit motive from our business model, decision-making, and incentive structure. Comingle needs revenue to operate, and there's a utility revenue model built in with the potential not only to eventually cover operating expenses but to generate large profits at scale, so I'm personally adamant that we avoid becoming entangled with shareholders who would be entitled to those profits, and set up our legal structure in advance (capped/transparent salaries, no further monetization mechanisms, etc) so that we are only ever legally allowed to spend excess revenue toward member/public benefit and that no individuals ever have a way to be enriched. That's a big part of why we're doing a crowdfund: to avoid shareholders and the fiduciary responsibility to extract profit that that entails. To date, we've been entirely funded by grants and donations to get where we are. We're hoping this crowdfund, as well as the additional grant funding it will help us make the case for, will fully cover the budget needed and allow us to remain uncompromised.
We did, by the way, partner with a new 501c3 nonprofit (ITSA Foundation) to help with fiscal sponsorship, fundraising, etc. ITSA's mission and structure are also seeking to radically challenge the status quo in the nonprofit world. Nonprofits aren't as squeaky clean as people think, but ITSA intends to be different.
Creating Comingle as a 501c3 itself would come with onerous limitations, because the IRS has certain requirements attached to that status that could trickle down to negatively impact user experience. We are adamant that no member ever has to fill out some sort of form to tick off an IRS check box trying to verify that they are a "needy enough" person to receive money through a nonprofit. 501c3s also have limited maneuverability in trying to maintain their legal status, and we don't want to limit Comingle's options down the line when it comes to building out new tools for the members.
Of course, we haven't done any of this restructuring yet, because we haven't raised enough of our budget to focus on anything other than the software development, so all I can provide on this at this time is our word.
And yes, a 97% efficiency rate (to start) is inferior to what a federal UBI would enjoy (well over 99%), but far superior to any currently viable option (charity often means 20-40% going to nonprofit salaries). And Comingle has the advantage of being immediately implementable and scalable once built. After 7+ years researching and advocating for UBI, I believe the political headwinds to enacting a federal UBI are nigh insurmountable, and if things get bad enough in our economy to necessitate an emergency UBI at some point, I fear that without precedent we'll end up with some perverted and poorly-designed version of half-UBI. Comingle's purpose is to prove a workable model through impactful demonstration and tweaking/testing/data to learn, optimize, and scale. So long as UBI stays in the intellectual space (as opposed to the practical), we won't be making enough headway toward a real and workable solution.
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentHi there. I'm Conrad Shaw from the Comingle team, invited in to engage with some of the great questions going on in here. A nonvoluntary federal UBI would be administratively much simpler to run,...Hi there. I'm Conrad Shaw from the Comingle team, invited in to engage with some of the great questions going on in here.
A nonvoluntary federal UBI would be administratively much simpler to run, yes, and would benefit from revenue from the wide range of incomes in America. The major barrier for the federal version is political will.
A voluntary UBI like the one we're creating has the advantage of being able to get up and running with a self-selecting population at any scale in order to test and prove the model and grow organically to the whatever size it can, potentially quite large. What we're creating is essentially its own little nation and government within the larger US society, bypassing all politics and moving straight into implementation.
You rightly point out that Comingle's major limitation revolves around the makeup of who does choose to participate and what range of incomes are represented among the membership. We obviously cannot force people to participate, and to function properly and resiliently, Comingle's membership base needs to maintain a range of incomes (doesn't need to include millionaires, but does need to include up into the middle and upper middle class), with an average income maintained above a minimum threshold (so that those of very low income aren't putting in more than they get out), and a portion of the membership population (20-35%) knowingly and willingly putting in more money than they get out. In order to establish and maintain this, our strategy involves...
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Implementing a waitlist mechanism to ensure that the average income of the group doesn't drop below a certain threshold. Essentially, this is a measure to throttle a potential flood of low income folks from deluging the platform before there are enough higher income people to balance them out and maintain a meaningful weekly payout.
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Demonstrating orders of magnitude higher impact and efficiency than classic charity, philanthropy, and tithing out there in order to attract (and grow) some of the enormous charitable giving market in America. Currently, Americans give ~$500B to charity annually, knowing full well that large percentages of that giving are sucked up by the salaries of the nonprofit employees, and that the form of giving is often too little too late and misses a lot of people. We'll be looking at ~97 cents on every contributed dollar (to start, and improving in efficiency as we scale) flowing directly to others, as cash, within a week, and that's before potentially being able to offer tax deductibility to givers. No charity comes close to that.
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Also, the potential to layer on other more targeted direct cash initiatives (disaster aid, bigger UBI pilots, strike funds) is significant. Here's a little video we recently released about the potential to radically shift power dynamics in the film industry: https://youtu.be/14OjSEAYnwc
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Comment on Comingle, an app to provide a small weekly UBI for its users, by its users in ~finance
theUBIguy Link ParentI disagree that currency implies capitalism, even though that's largely how it currently manifests. Currency could simply be a powerful tool for trade, social infrastructure, and resource...I disagree that currency implies capitalism, even though that's largely how it currently manifests. Currency could simply be a powerful tool for trade, social infrastructure, and resource distribution. UBI, to me, is a mechanism to facilitate these things far more efficiently and divorce a portion of our economics and incentive structures away from capitalistic hoarding and toward the common good.
It's a chicken and egg issue if we try to imagine going through the political process, which is so dominated by those currently in power and unlikely to support a drastic shift in power dynamics. You need some power in order to fight for more, and the more you get, the easier the fight becomes, but we're currently so dwarfed by the massive piles of capital held by a very few that it's hard to get anything started.
That's why we're building Comingle. It's an infrastructure to support direct and scalable power building toward the idea without having to go through any political process, and without having to rely on permission from the ultra-wealthy to carry it out. It's an infrastructure that taps into what is our real asset, which is people. And that power comes to fruition when those numbers organize and push in one direction. Comingle's motto is Strength in Numbers for a good reason.