The issue I see with projects like this is always the same. Why would the above average earners sign up for this. They would give more than they get. Sure there are some people who believe this is...
The issue I see with projects like this is always the same. Why would the above average earners sign up for this.
They would give more than they get. Sure there are some people who believe this is the right thing to do but I'm fairly certain that there will always be a bias to lower income households participating in such programs.
I don't think an ubi can work on a voluntary basis and instead needs to be "forced" by the state.
While technically I may not count as above average (low to mid 5 figures) I have few financial responsibilities and so most of my money is disposable income. And I would sign up if not for two...
While technically I may not count as above average (low to mid 5 figures) I have few financial responsibilities and so most of my money is disposable income. And I would sign up if not for two reasons. One is that I am actually in the process of quitting my job with no plans to get a new one anytime soon, so I can go live in a monastery, meaning that the bit of money I have saved will be necessary for foreseeable future expenses but I will have no need of weekly income. And the second is that I'm uninterested in this as a for profit techbro enterprise. If it was a non profit with more of an emphasis on mutual aid even paying its staff a decent wage I wouldn't mind. But running this specifically as a profit making enterprise means I'm out.
I think you can comfortably call me a Buddhist. As to what attracts me, I think it's a better use of my time than anything else I can come up with and I came this decision when I realized that I...
I think you can comfortably call me a Buddhist. As to what attracts me, I think it's a better use of my time than anything else I can come up with and I came this decision when I realized that I had a good job that I enjoyed and believed in, more money than I knew what to do with (though not very much I'm just inexpensive), and a happy healthy relationship and I was still unsatisfied. It depends on the tradition the overall requirements, Buddhism being a pretty massive religious category with hundreds of subcategories.
For the tradition I'm looking at, it is free. However, it requires quite a bit of time investment. First staying at the monastery as a lay guest, then longer term, then formally stating intentions. In all it's a multi year process. Giving both you and the monastery time to build a relationship and get a feel for one another and also providing plenty of time for either you or the monastery to decide that the relationship doesn't work. Many people are drawn to the idea of ordaining but realize part way through they aren't cut out for it. On the monks side they are looking at accepting you into their community and living with you full time so it's understandable to be a bit discerning. Otherwise requirements basically come down to not having debt, being relatively young and in relatively good health. Since when you fully ordain you give up money and material possessions and therefore will be reliant on the monastery and the lay community for healthcare needs. Though that's more important in a place with more limited resources like the US. My understanding is that there are plenty of jokes in places like Thailand about becoming a monk being an old farmers retirement plan.
Sorry for the lag time in responding but I was at the monastery and out of service.
Sorry for the long lag in response time, but I've been gone (monastery and all that). You're welcome to ask any question you want. Though I'm not going to post the name of the monastery itself...
Sorry for the long lag in response time, but I've been gone (monastery and all that). You're welcome to ask any question you want. Though I'm not going to post the name of the monastery itself publicly in the interest of maintaining some level of anonymity. I will go ahead and say that it's a Buddhist monastery in the US. I'd probably be willing to get more specific over PMs if you're really interested.
I like the idea of UBI. But I'm slowly coming round to the idea that it's not actually the solution that we need. UBI implies that currency and therefore capitalism in its current form is what is...
I like the idea of UBI.
But I'm slowly coming round to the idea that it's not actually the solution that we need. UBI implies that currency and therefore capitalism in its current form is what is going to remain.
We know all the problems that capitalism causes, so shouldn't we look at pivoting from it entirely (Thus rendering UBI moot somehow)?
I disagree. You can have social ownership within the framework of a market economy. UBI doesn't imply capitalism in its current form will remain. As opposed to a fully planned economy, I'd prefer...
I disagree. You can have social ownership within the framework of a market economy. UBI doesn't imply capitalism in its current form will remain. As opposed to a fully planned economy, I'd prefer market allocation of resources, as it does a pretty good (i.e efficient) job as long as wealth disparity is in check.
Even if we transitioned to a non-market economy eventually, it would likely be practical to make changes in stages. Nationalizing key infrastructure (railways, utilities, monopolistic companies, etc.), strengthening labor unions, and enabling collective ownership would be easier than abolishing the dollar (in my non-economist opinion).
I think that's where my thinking is going to be honest. I love the idea of employee & customer owned industries where market capitalism is needed. So that means if the CEO tries to fuck with...
I think that's where my thinking is going to be honest.
I love the idea of employee & customer owned industries where market capitalism is needed. So that means if the CEO tries to fuck with people... they're held accountable. But still provides those economic scales as needed.
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...
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....
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.
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,...
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...
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.
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.
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
Yes, I think it works best when it's either forced by the state on a very large scale (taxes), or voluntary on a very small scale (local mutual aid group in your neighborhood). I used to have a...
Yes, I think it works best when it's either forced by the state on a very large scale (taxes), or voluntary on a very small scale (local mutual aid group in your neighborhood). I used to have a monthly donation to a mutual aid group that just gave out money no-questions-asked to people who asked for help, and I felt great about that, but I think that's partly because I was helping my specific community. It's a harder sell if it's an anonymous distributed community - not only are you losing money, but the effects and the people you're helping will probably be invisible to you. Also the mutual aid group was run by volunteers and didn't take a cut.
Hell I don't even mind if they pay a decent salary to the people running it. I firmly believe people should be compensated for their labor. However, that's quite different than an explicitly for...
Hell I don't even mind if they pay a decent salary to the people running it. I firmly believe people should be compensated for their labor. However, that's quite different than an explicitly for profit venture.
I was intrigued until I noted that operating expenses of 3% are involved: I would not be hard-pressed to find more effective options. The entire U.S. Social Security Administration currently has...
I was intrigued until I noted that operating expenses of 3% are involved:
And when you join the community, you’ll know that 97 cents of every dollar you contribute will be going directly to somebody who needs it, proportionally to how much they need it, without bureaucratic waste or middlemen’s salaries. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more effective giving option.
I would not be hard-pressed to find more effective options. The entire U.S. Social Security Administration currently has an operating expense margin of 0.5%. UBI, without some of the Social Security requirements for eligibility determinations, should be even easier to to administer. The input side, the Internal Revenue Service, is still cheaper to run.
While the claim is that profits will be handled by a "Steward-Ownership" model, the whole idea of doing this for profit makes me itch.
I was gonna say, beyween the IRS and SSA, the entire infrastructure for UBI is in place. You could eliminate all the admin in SSA other than just collection and distribution, and fold it in the...
I was gonna say, beyween the IRS and SSA, the entire infrastructure for UBI is in place.
You could eliminate all the admin in SSA other than just collection and distribution, and fold it in the IRS in short order.
Heck, provide a national bank via USPS or something to cover banking deserts and other exploititive practices and you've filled in the last of the gaps.
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....
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.
This sounds nice, but I'll want a much more definitive answer as to who profits from the administration of this program. I really, really want a UBI, but the fact that Comingle is a for-profit...
As we solidify our corporate structure, we'll be adopting a steward-ownership model in which profits serve the mission of the company and protect it from extractive-capital. With legal safeguards built into the company's DNA, investors are fairly compensated with capped returns while decisions remain in the hands of a core, purpose-driven team along with all Comingle members.
This sounds nice, but I'll want a much more definitive answer as to who profits from the administration of this program. I really, really want a UBI, but the fact that Comingle is a for-profit business makes me hesitate until such time as I see really iron-clad controls on how the company can profit from or change the payouts to the participants.
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...
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.
I like the idea of UBI, but I don't see how it could possibly work as an opt in model. I can only imagine it will be a race to the bottom. No one will opt in unless they think they have income...
I like the idea of UBI, but I don't see how it could possibly work as an opt in model. I can only imagine it will be a race to the bottom. No one will opt in unless they think they have income less than the average of their users. Then the top 50% of the memebers are going to realize they're losing money and quit, lowering the average salary even more.
this is just a novel variation of a charity, why would you not expect people to treat it as such? It's definitely not implausable for it to become popular as a way of socially signalling your...
this is just a novel variation of a charity, why would you not expect people to treat it as such? It's definitely not implausable for it to become popular as a way of socially signalling your generosity, similar to the Giving What We Can pledge, or even given support by any one of the major political campaigns running on the promise of UBI
How it will work in a nutshell: From their FAQ, "How much money will I get if I use Comingle?" There is a crowdfunding campaign right now to...
How it will work in a nutshell:
Comingle runs on two simple rules:
We all pledge 7% of our income.
We all get back the amount of the average contribution.
Once these two rules are applied, and your pledges are offset by your share of the community payout, you'll end up giving money on weeks when your income is higher than the average member’s, and getting money when it's lower, with amounts in proportion to income.
From their FAQ, "How much money will I get if I use Comingle?"
[..]
Enrollment is paced to ensure that anyone earning less than 200% of the federal poverty line still gets more money out than they put in.
The maximum payout per member never exceeds $16,000 per year (the annual “gift exclusion” in the US), so that deposits from Comingle can be treated as gifts between friends, and won't need to be declared on a tax form.
[..] cover the development costs required to boost Comingle to the next phase, which will allow us to verify user identities, detect fraud, address security concerns, and begin transferring real money on a weekly basis.
This amount will also put the project on track to launch in 2024 as the central component of a national impact campaign we’ve been quietly developing for 7 years to build and test the first permanent and scalable universal basic income (UBI) community. That's what Comingle really is: a UBI we can build ourselves without waiting for the government (e.g. a DIY UBI!).
Their FAQ is pretty informative. Folks who understand tithing would get it pretty much right away. It's not an investment scheme as such: you're investing into the lives of human beings, not in...
Their FAQ is pretty informative.
Isn't this like a mutual aid network, a lending circle, the tithe at my church, or a rotating savings and credit association?
Pretty much. But in those models, people generally pitch in money, then wait their turn to make use of the collected funds. Or there’s somebody in charge deciding who should get the money. They're also limited to a small group of people who are socially connected in some way.
Folks who understand tithing would get it pretty much right away.
It's not an investment scheme as such: you're investing into the lives of human beings, not in your own gain and how much you'll get out of it. One big difference is that you're not going to see it or hear about the positive changes. You're going to have to use your imagination.
Would love to see something like this work. I'm surprised that they didnt talk at all about who they are. Great ideas still need good people to function. in fact, who is doing something is more often to be more important than what they are trying to do.
Reply to self. Scott Santen: founder and president of ITSA: Putting on my selfish cynical b*astard hat for a minute. This project takes a percentage of your pledged income, which is like tithing....
I'm also interested in seeing just how many people of faith who believe in tithing join Comingle. If you already believe that you should provide 10 percent of your income charitably, then sign up for Comingle. Automate your tithing. Join a community where you know your tithing means that no one falls below seven percent of the weekly average income of the entire community.
Because the success of Comingle will rest on finding those who wish to be net donors, another key element of Comingle will require the use of waitlists where those with below-average incomes won't be able to join until another person above the average income joins. This will help ensure the average income stays sufficiently high and also encourage those below the average to actively go out and help enlist those above the average. It also means that the earlier someone signs up for Comingle the better, both in terms of net donors and net recipients.
Putting on my selfish cynical b*astard hat for a minute.
This project takes a percentage of your pledged income, which is like tithing. But that's where the similarities end. Tithes go into a physical, concrete, and (usually) small community where you know the potential beneficiaries and you're involved in the collection, the distribution, the accounting and marketing etc.
This is a start up, an app, a tech bro selling you a dream. The recruitment aspect of it makes me particularly uncomfortable as well. What is someone low income on the wait list supposed to say to their friend, hey man, want to pass your money to me? Want to join a non get rich quick Ponzi or MLM?
Getting back to the tithe analogy because they chose to use it. One, people who are already putting their 10% into supporting a concrete community with grandmas and lights/taxes/sewage/bills and need to put food on the table for various charities, won't be able to swing another 7% right away into something new and unknown. I know Christians who increase their 10% income tithe by one percent a year so their giving portfolios can keep growing. In that example it'll take them some 7 years to join, assuming they don't cut existing charity efforts.
Two. As a Christian we're promised riches beyond our wildest dreams, a hundred fold profit, a thousand fold increase .....for riches in heaven. We tithe knowing we get nothing back this life, let alone this week. Nobody joins a church thinking their tithe money gets poured down a drain: even those fooled by crooks imagine their private jet buying dollars go towards granting eternal life to the most deprived. Even the greedy and stupid think their faith seed money grows because some cosmic power wants them to have the money to do good in the world.
So, I would urge every single person who is joining this campaign to NOT expect a single cent back, to nearly expect it to fail, to end in corruption and scandal, for your hope in humanity and faith in good will to be shaken by greed and evil. And then to still contribute to it. Volunteer there. Put in your hours to steer the ship. And even after all the cynicism to still believe in the concept rather than any one failed project. And to take satisfaction that perhaps some lives were helped while the gig was running smoothly.
You'll be contributing to something more eternal than a single start up. And the rewards still await you if you don't lose that shining bit of believe in Human Good come what may. That is faith.
I think this is not quite the takeaway that works, specifically the use of the word "riches". And the idea you'll get those riches in heaven. This was something that caused a lot of conflict in my...
Two. As a Christian we're promised riches beyond our wildest dreams, a hundred fold profit, a thousand fold increase .....for riches in heaven.
I think this is not quite the takeaway that works, specifically the use of the word "riches". And the idea you'll get those riches in heaven. This was something that caused a lot of conflict in my teenage years before I finally learned to drop Christianity entirely.
I think Christianity is far stronger when it doesn't promote riches, but instead promises a more "true representation" of what heaven would give - eternal perfect contentedness. Life in a so called garden of Eden. Living like you're a caveman, but being totally and perfectly happy because of a lack of the suffering of "want" - in a very Buddhist fashion. And you can have that here on earth as well, despite the evil that's about.
And to be "saved" and accept Jesus would be an adoption of that very mindset, and a desire to throw away all your wealth and status and desire for "more" to adopt the idea that you will be content with having little and serving your "whole" - in this case, the church.
Riches? You don't need them. It's why the bible says a rich man doesn't go to heaven. The rich man fundamentally doesn't have their priorities straight.
But in reality:
You'll be contributing to something more eternal than a single start up. And the rewards still await you if you don't lose that shining bit of believe in Human Good come what may. That is faith.
Faith and the promise of contentedness are lies designed to control you.
Having money is generally pretty cool and throwing your money away so people who have zero intention of contributing can take it is generally a bad idea. All you'll be doing is wasting time and resources that could be going to better causes.
The church you would serve? It will happily crush and use you. It's why they want your faith, it makes abuse easier.
Be eternally skeptical of anyone who asks you to suspend your critical thought process. They generally aren't your friend, and Jesus was a cult leader.
Look, I am an atheist (indeed, a strong atheist, the kind that even agnostics hate), but this is just not how Christianity — or any religion — works in the majority of cases. Yes, there are some...
Faith and the promise of contentedness are lies designed to control you.
Having money is generally pretty cool and throwing your money away so people who have zero intention of contributing can take it is generally a bad idea. All you'll be doing is wasting time and resources that could be going to better causes.
The church you would serve? It will happily crush and use you. It's why they want your faith, it makes abuse easier.
Be eternally skeptical of anyone who asks you to suspend your critical thought process. They generally aren't your friend, and Jesus was a cult leader.
Look, I am an atheist (indeed, a strong atheist, the kind that even agnostics hate), but this is just not how Christianity — or any religion — works in the majority of cases. Yes, there are some high-profile abuses that we hear so much about, but we have heard about them because they are shocking, not because they are the norm.
Most religious people are pretty savvy about these things. There are so many competing religions, and denominations of those religions, and divisions within those denominations, and communities within those divisions. People who grow up in this environment learn to be very choosy about which communities they associate with (as exemplified by jokes like this and this).
As history has proven time and time again, Christians readily desert churches they aren't happy with and form new ones to suit their needs.
And most of these churches and other religious communities are just fine. They made up of normal people working toward normal goals, and they do good work. Outside of actual cults (which are extremely rare, despite how much we hear about them in the media; for example, Scientologists make up less than 0.001% of the US population), there is not some deep conspiracy behind it all.
It's just normal humans doing normal human things. Like it or not, but religion and spiritual belief have been a part of humanity for as long as we have been human. It's a part of the human psyche, like music or love.
No that's pretty explicitly how it works. They ask you to have faith because they have no actual proof and they don't actually contribute much to your life. It's literally a mechanism of control,...
this is just not how Christianity — or any religion — works in the majority of cases
No that's pretty explicitly how it works. They ask you to have faith because they have no actual proof and they don't actually contribute much to your life.
It's literally a mechanism of control, as is the promise of damnation if you don't follow their teaching, which is one of the most insidious and destructive lies you can tell especially when it's taught to a parent who has a kid who is not Christian.
They made up of normal people working toward normal goals, and they do good work
And this is relatively true. Most churches are pretty bland, but that doesn't change the nature of what christianity is at its core. The need for faith. The requirement to go to church every Sunday. The promise of damnation. Those are all explicitly designed to manipulate and make it easier to abuse a person.
That doesn't mean all churches are abusive, and churches can be very good for a lot of people because of the community and all that stuff.
But all of that good comes with a massive * in the form of the fact the entire institution is built on lies and manipulation.
It's a part of the human psyche, like music or love.
Who is "they" in this scenario? These religions are made up of people who themselves believe the religions. I agree that there is "no actual proof", but tons of people believe in things with "no...
No that's pretty explicitly how it works. They ask you to have faith because they have no actual proof and they don't actually contribute much to your life.
Who is "they" in this scenario? These religions are made up of people who themselves believe the religions.
I agree that there is "no actual proof", but tons of people believe in things with "no actual proof" without there being some insidious conspiracy behind it. For example, I believe the dinosaurs were killed by a comet impact, but I don't actually have proof of that; my opinion is based on the claims of scientists I have placed my trust in. I have not done the research myself and seen the proof with my own eyes.
...as is the promise of damnation if you don't follow their teaching...
There are many different denominations of Christianity with different ideas about how damnation works (or if it even exists), and individual Christians have their own beliefs beyond that. For example, I dated a Quaker who was insistent that "Hell" was really just the absence of God (i.e., it is just a state of continuing to be an atheist after death, or else being a theist who willfully chooses to be separate from God), and anyone can enter or leave that state freely at any time after death. Even though he knew I was an atheist and believed I was very likely bound for hell, he was not worried that I was going to be damned to eternal torture or anything of the sort.
...but that doesn't change the nature of what christianity is at its core. The need for faith. The requirement to go to church every Sunday. The promise of damnation. Those are all explicitly designed to manipulate and make it easier to abuse a person.
Christianity isn't anything except what those who call themselves Christians make of it. There is no "core" of it. It's just people doing things and thinking things and calling that Christianity. There are some loosely shared ideas, mostly related to the idea that Jesus was a real person who existed and that the Bible is the most important book to take spiritual influence from, but they can't even agree on whether Jesus was just a regular person or a facet of God, whether the stories in the Bible are literally true or just allegory, which translation of the Bible is most canon, etc., etc.
By the way, things like attending church on Sunday are absolutely not core to Christianity. Less than 50% of Christians worldwide attend church regularly. (Indeed, Christians don't even all agree that Sunday is the Sabbath day.)
But all of that good comes with a massive * in the form of the fact the entire institution is built on lies and manipulation.
I think this is where our disconnect lies. You see Christianity as an institution. I see Christianity as a catch-all term for a bunch of independent institutions, as well an institution-less individuals. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an institution; the Christian Science church is an institution; your cousin's wife's aunt's non-denominational Christian book club is (in some sense) an institution — but there is no meta-institution above them dictating to them. They are different groups of people with different ideas, and while they may have branched and evolved from a singular Christian movement that emerged millennia ago, that isn't actually saying much. After all, even though I am an atheist, my ideas also evolved out of the same Christian origins; most of modern western science emerged from Christian natural philosophers seeking to understand God's creation (e.g., Nicolaus Copernicus, Carl Linnaeus, Gregor Mendel, and many others).
Christianity is not.
Christianity is just another flavor (or, more accurately, a loose grouping of flavors) of spiritual belief, like humans have exhibited across all cultures and time periods that we know of.
I'm put off by the idea of some kind of monetary wealth in the New Jerusalem (aka Christian after life) as well, but the text isn't shy about the streets paved with clear gold, gates made of...
I'm put off by the idea of some kind of monetary wealth in the New Jerusalem (aka Christian after life) as well, but the text isn't shy about the streets paved with clear gold, gates made of humongous single pearls, gems, and everything precious. Riches isn't in and of itself a bad thing: bad men make riches bad. The Christian God isn't Buddhist: Christians are not to be materialists, but we're not to despise matter either.
Sorry you had such a bad experience. I'm glad you found something better.
Incidentally you didn't think I was asking anyone to suspend their critical thought process somehow did you? Something in my writing was poor enough to create the confusion? I would benefit from your pointing it out if you'd spend the time, thanks.n
Is the name meant to be ironic? When I heard the name I immediately thought, money laundering. Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia for Commingling:
Is the name meant to be ironic? When I heard the name I immediately thought, money laundering.
Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia for Commingling:
In law, commingling is a breach of trust in which a fiduciary mixes funds held in care for a client with his own funds, making it difficult to determine which funds belong to the fiduciary and which belong to the client.
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...
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.
Meta: I've reached out to Conrad, co-founder of Comingle, to ask about a few points that were brought up in the comments here. He replied with what I thought were good, detailed answers, and also...
Meta: I've reached out to Conrad, co-founder of Comingle, to ask about a few points that were brought up in the comments here. He replied with what I thought were good, detailed answers, and also said he could participate directly in this discussion in Tildes. What do you all think?
I can send him an invite and ask him to add commments here.
I can send him an invite and ask him to do a separate post, almost like an AMA. That may come dangerously close to self-promotion, but also it could be thought of as something different, since it'll be by invitation.
I can post his replies to my questions either verbatim or my takeaways and refrain from inviting.
Sure - if they're interested, you're welcome to invite them and they can respond to comments here. I don't think making a new post would be needed, since their replies to this one will bump it...
Sure - if they're interested, you're welcome to invite them and they can respond to comments here. I don't think making a new post would be needed, since their replies to this one will bump it back up anyway.
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...
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.
The issue I see with projects like this is always the same. Why would the above average earners sign up for this.
They would give more than they get. Sure there are some people who believe this is the right thing to do but I'm fairly certain that there will always be a bias to lower income households participating in such programs.
I don't think an ubi can work on a voluntary basis and instead needs to be "forced" by the state.
While technically I may not count as above average (low to mid 5 figures) I have few financial responsibilities and so most of my money is disposable income. And I would sign up if not for two reasons. One is that I am actually in the process of quitting my job with no plans to get a new one anytime soon, so I can go live in a monastery, meaning that the bit of money I have saved will be necessary for foreseeable future expenses but I will have no need of weekly income. And the second is that I'm uninterested in this as a for profit techbro enterprise. If it was a non profit with more of an emphasis on mutual aid even paying its staff a decent wage I wouldn't mind. But running this specifically as a profit making enterprise means I'm out.
Is the monastery comment some metaphor, or do you literally mean that? If so, why?
Quite literally. It's a Buddhist monastery and I'm seriously considering becoming a Buddhist monk.
What attracts you to this lifestyle? Are you a Buddhist? Do they have conditions for who can join, or is it free for anybody that wants it?
I think you can comfortably call me a Buddhist. As to what attracts me, I think it's a better use of my time than anything else I can come up with and I came this decision when I realized that I had a good job that I enjoyed and believed in, more money than I knew what to do with (though not very much I'm just inexpensive), and a happy healthy relationship and I was still unsatisfied. It depends on the tradition the overall requirements, Buddhism being a pretty massive religious category with hundreds of subcategories.
For the tradition I'm looking at, it is free. However, it requires quite a bit of time investment. First staying at the monastery as a lay guest, then longer term, then formally stating intentions. In all it's a multi year process. Giving both you and the monastery time to build a relationship and get a feel for one another and also providing plenty of time for either you or the monastery to decide that the relationship doesn't work. Many people are drawn to the idea of ordaining but realize part way through they aren't cut out for it. On the monks side they are looking at accepting you into their community and living with you full time so it's understandable to be a bit discerning. Otherwise requirements basically come down to not having debt, being relatively young and in relatively good health. Since when you fully ordain you give up money and material possessions and therefore will be reliant on the monastery and the lay community for healthcare needs. Though that's more important in a place with more limited resources like the US. My understanding is that there are plenty of jokes in places like Thailand about becoming a monk being an old farmers retirement plan.
Sorry for the lag time in responding but I was at the monastery and out of service.
May I ask where ?
Would it be possible for me to ask you a couple of questions in this regard? I think this fascinating!
Sorry for the long lag in response time, but I've been gone (monastery and all that). You're welcome to ask any question you want. Though I'm not going to post the name of the monastery itself publicly in the interest of maintaining some level of anonymity. I will go ahead and say that it's a Buddhist monastery in the US. I'd probably be willing to get more specific over PMs if you're really interested.
I like the idea of UBI.
But I'm slowly coming round to the idea that it's not actually the solution that we need. UBI implies that currency and therefore capitalism in its current form is what is going to remain.
We know all the problems that capitalism causes, so shouldn't we look at pivoting from it entirely (Thus rendering UBI moot somehow)?
It's early days thinking... but just an idea.
I disagree. You can have social ownership within the framework of a market economy. UBI doesn't imply capitalism in its current form will remain. As opposed to a fully planned economy, I'd prefer market allocation of resources, as it does a pretty good (i.e efficient) job as long as wealth disparity is in check.
Even if we transitioned to a non-market economy eventually, it would likely be practical to make changes in stages. Nationalizing key infrastructure (railways, utilities, monopolistic companies, etc.), strengthening labor unions, and enabling collective ownership would be easier than abolishing the dollar (in my non-economist opinion).
I think that's where my thinking is going to be honest.
I love the idea of employee & customer owned industries where market capitalism is needed. So that means if the CEO tries to fuck with people... they're held accountable. But still provides those economic scales as needed.
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.
You're probably right with that. My issue is that given the current power dynamic, could we achieve that?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
Yes, I think it works best when it's either forced by the state on a very large scale (taxes), or voluntary on a very small scale (local mutual aid group in your neighborhood). I used to have a monthly donation to a mutual aid group that just gave out money no-questions-asked to people who asked for help, and I felt great about that, but I think that's partly because I was helping my specific community. It's a harder sell if it's an anonymous distributed community - not only are you losing money, but the effects and the people you're helping will probably be invisible to you. Also the mutual aid group was run by volunteers and didn't take a cut.
Hell I don't even mind if they pay a decent salary to the people running it. I firmly believe people should be compensated for their labor. However, that's quite different than an explicitly for profit venture.
I was intrigued until I noted that operating expenses of 3% are involved:
I would not be hard-pressed to find more effective options. The entire U.S. Social Security Administration currently has an operating expense margin of 0.5%. UBI, without some of the Social Security requirements for eligibility determinations, should be even easier to to administer. The input side, the Internal Revenue Service, is still cheaper to run.
While the claim is that profits will be handled by a "Steward-Ownership" model, the whole idea of doing this for profit makes me itch.
I was gonna say, beyween the IRS and SSA, the entire infrastructure for UBI is in place.
You could eliminate all the admin in SSA other than just collection and distribution, and fold it in the IRS in short order.
Heck, provide a national bank via USPS or something to cover banking deserts and other exploititive practices and you've filled in the last of the gaps.
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.
This sounds nice, but I'll want a much more definitive answer as to who profits from the administration of this program. I really, really want a UBI, but the fact that Comingle is a for-profit business makes me hesitate until such time as I see really iron-clad controls on how the company can profit from or change the payouts to the participants.
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.
I like the idea of UBI, but I don't see how it could possibly work as an opt in model. I can only imagine it will be a race to the bottom. No one will opt in unless they think they have income less than the average of their users. Then the top 50% of the memebers are going to realize they're losing money and quit, lowering the average salary even more.
this is just a novel variation of a charity, why would you not expect people to treat it as such? It's definitely not implausable for it to become popular as a way of socially signalling your generosity, similar to the Giving What We Can pledge, or even given support by any one of the major political campaigns running on the promise of UBI
If it was run as a charity, it would be a lot more compelling, but right now it’s explicitly for-profit even by their own admission
Ah, I didn't see that, thanks for mentioning. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens to it.
How it will work in a nutshell:
From their FAQ, "How much money will I get if I use Comingle?"
There is a crowdfunding campaign right now to...
I feel like this is not going to last. If the loophole does indeed exist, if this gets any traction I'd expect it to be closed shortly.
Their FAQ is pretty informative.
Folks who understand tithing would get it pretty much right away.
It's not an investment scheme as such: you're investing into the lives of human beings, not in your own gain and how much you'll get out of it. One big difference is that you're not going to see it or hear about the positive changes. You're going to have to use your imagination.
Would love to see something like this work. I'm surprised that they didnt talk at all about who they are. Great ideas still need good people to function. in fact, who is doing something is more often to be more important than what they are trying to do.
Reply to self.
Scott Santen: founder and president of ITSA:
Putting on my selfish cynical b*astard hat for a minute.
This project takes a percentage of your pledged income, which is like tithing. But that's where the similarities end. Tithes go into a physical, concrete, and (usually) small community where you know the potential beneficiaries and you're involved in the collection, the distribution, the accounting and marketing etc.
This is a start up, an app, a tech bro selling you a dream. The recruitment aspect of it makes me particularly uncomfortable as well. What is someone low income on the wait list supposed to say to their friend, hey man, want to pass your money to me? Want to join a non get rich quick Ponzi or MLM?
Getting back to the tithe analogy because they chose to use it. One, people who are already putting their 10% into supporting a concrete community with grandmas and lights/taxes/sewage/bills and need to put food on the table for various charities, won't be able to swing another 7% right away into something new and unknown. I know Christians who increase their 10% income tithe by one percent a year so their giving portfolios can keep growing. In that example it'll take them some 7 years to join, assuming they don't cut existing charity efforts.
Two. As a Christian we're promised riches beyond our wildest dreams, a hundred fold profit, a thousand fold increase .....for riches in heaven. We tithe knowing we get nothing back this life, let alone this week. Nobody joins a church thinking their tithe money gets poured down a drain: even those fooled by crooks imagine their private jet buying dollars go towards granting eternal life to the most deprived. Even the greedy and stupid think their faith seed money grows because some cosmic power wants them to have the money to do good in the world.
So, I would urge every single person who is joining this campaign to NOT expect a single cent back, to nearly expect it to fail, to end in corruption and scandal, for your hope in humanity and faith in good will to be shaken by greed and evil. And then to still contribute to it. Volunteer there. Put in your hours to steer the ship. And even after all the cynicism to still believe in the concept rather than any one failed project. And to take satisfaction that perhaps some lives were helped while the gig was running smoothly.
You'll be contributing to something more eternal than a single start up. And the rewards still await you if you don't lose that shining bit of believe in Human Good come what may. That is faith.
I think this is not quite the takeaway that works, specifically the use of the word "riches". And the idea you'll get those riches in heaven. This was something that caused a lot of conflict in my teenage years before I finally learned to drop Christianity entirely.
I think Christianity is far stronger when it doesn't promote riches, but instead promises a more "true representation" of what heaven would give - eternal perfect contentedness. Life in a so called garden of Eden. Living like you're a caveman, but being totally and perfectly happy because of a lack of the suffering of "want" - in a very Buddhist fashion. And you can have that here on earth as well, despite the evil that's about.
And to be "saved" and accept Jesus would be an adoption of that very mindset, and a desire to throw away all your wealth and status and desire for "more" to adopt the idea that you will be content with having little and serving your "whole" - in this case, the church.
Riches? You don't need them. It's why the bible says a rich man doesn't go to heaven. The rich man fundamentally doesn't have their priorities straight.
But in reality:
Faith and the promise of contentedness are lies designed to control you.
Having money is generally pretty cool and throwing your money away so people who have zero intention of contributing can take it is generally a bad idea. All you'll be doing is wasting time and resources that could be going to better causes.
The church you would serve? It will happily crush and use you. It's why they want your faith, it makes abuse easier.
Be eternally skeptical of anyone who asks you to suspend your critical thought process. They generally aren't your friend, and Jesus was a cult leader.
Look, I am an atheist (indeed, a strong atheist, the kind that even agnostics hate), but this is just not how Christianity — or any religion — works in the majority of cases. Yes, there are some high-profile abuses that we hear so much about, but we have heard about them because they are shocking, not because they are the norm.
Most religious people are pretty savvy about these things. There are so many competing religions, and denominations of those religions, and divisions within those denominations, and communities within those divisions. People who grow up in this environment learn to be very choosy about which communities they associate with (as exemplified by jokes like this and this).
As history has proven time and time again, Christians readily desert churches they aren't happy with and form new ones to suit their needs.
And most of these churches and other religious communities are just fine. They made up of normal people working toward normal goals, and they do good work. Outside of actual cults (which are extremely rare, despite how much we hear about them in the media; for example, Scientologists make up less than 0.001% of the US population), there is not some deep conspiracy behind it all.
It's just normal humans doing normal human things. Like it or not, but religion and spiritual belief have been a part of humanity for as long as we have been human. It's a part of the human psyche, like music or love.
No that's pretty explicitly how it works. They ask you to have faith because they have no actual proof and they don't actually contribute much to your life.
It's literally a mechanism of control, as is the promise of damnation if you don't follow their teaching, which is one of the most insidious and destructive lies you can tell especially when it's taught to a parent who has a kid who is not Christian.
And this is relatively true. Most churches are pretty bland, but that doesn't change the nature of what christianity is at its core. The need for faith. The requirement to go to church every Sunday. The promise of damnation. Those are all explicitly designed to manipulate and make it easier to abuse a person.
That doesn't mean all churches are abusive, and churches can be very good for a lot of people because of the community and all that stuff.
But all of that good comes with a massive * in the form of the fact the entire institution is built on lies and manipulation.
Community is. Cooperation is. Hope is.
Christianity is not.
Who is "they" in this scenario? These religions are made up of people who themselves believe the religions.
I agree that there is "no actual proof", but tons of people believe in things with "no actual proof" without there being some insidious conspiracy behind it. For example, I believe the dinosaurs were killed by a comet impact, but I don't actually have proof of that; my opinion is based on the claims of scientists I have placed my trust in. I have not done the research myself and seen the proof with my own eyes.
There are many different denominations of Christianity with different ideas about how damnation works (or if it even exists), and individual Christians have their own beliefs beyond that. For example, I dated a Quaker who was insistent that "Hell" was really just the absence of God (i.e., it is just a state of continuing to be an atheist after death, or else being a theist who willfully chooses to be separate from God), and anyone can enter or leave that state freely at any time after death. Even though he knew I was an atheist and believed I was very likely bound for hell, he was not worried that I was going to be damned to eternal torture or anything of the sort.
Christianity isn't anything except what those who call themselves Christians make of it. There is no "core" of it. It's just people doing things and thinking things and calling that Christianity. There are some loosely shared ideas, mostly related to the idea that Jesus was a real person who existed and that the Bible is the most important book to take spiritual influence from, but they can't even agree on whether Jesus was just a regular person or a facet of God, whether the stories in the Bible are literally true or just allegory, which translation of the Bible is most canon, etc., etc.
By the way, things like attending church on Sunday are absolutely not core to Christianity. Less than 50% of Christians worldwide attend church regularly. (Indeed, Christians don't even all agree that Sunday is the Sabbath day.)
I think this is where our disconnect lies. You see Christianity as an institution. I see Christianity as a catch-all term for a bunch of independent institutions, as well an institution-less individuals. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is an institution; the Christian Science church is an institution; your cousin's wife's aunt's non-denominational Christian book club is (in some sense) an institution — but there is no meta-institution above them dictating to them. They are different groups of people with different ideas, and while they may have branched and evolved from a singular Christian movement that emerged millennia ago, that isn't actually saying much. After all, even though I am an atheist, my ideas also evolved out of the same Christian origins; most of modern western science emerged from Christian natural philosophers seeking to understand God's creation (e.g., Nicolaus Copernicus, Carl Linnaeus, Gregor Mendel, and many others).
Christianity is just another flavor (or, more accurately, a loose grouping of flavors) of spiritual belief, like humans have exhibited across all cultures and time periods that we know of.
I'm put off by the idea of some kind of monetary wealth in the New Jerusalem (aka Christian after life) as well, but the text isn't shy about the streets paved with clear gold, gates made of humongous single pearls, gems, and everything precious. Riches isn't in and of itself a bad thing: bad men make riches bad. The Christian God isn't Buddhist: Christians are not to be materialists, but we're not to despise matter either.
Sorry you had such a bad experience. I'm glad you found something better.
Incidentally you didn't think I was asking anyone to suspend their critical thought process somehow did you? Something in my writing was poor enough to create the confusion? I would benefit from your pointing it out if you'd spend the time, thanks.n
Is the name meant to be ironic? When I heard the name I immediately thought, money laundering.
Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia for Commingling:
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.
Meta: I've reached out to Conrad, co-founder of Comingle, to ask about a few points that were brought up in the comments here. He replied with what I thought were good, detailed answers, and also said he could participate directly in this discussion in Tildes. What do you all think?
Also summoning /u/deimos
Sure - if they're interested, you're welcome to invite them and they can respond to comments here. I don't think making a new post would be needed, since their replies to this one will bump it back up anyway.
Okay, thanks!
(I'm late only because of personal stuff, nothing on Conrad.)
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.