I think the easiest way to understand is by analogy to carbon offsets, which are a kind of limited form of CoI that currently exist.
Carbon offsets are generally certified by an organization to say that they actually correspond to what happened, and that they are not producing too many. I don’t think there’s a fundamental problem with allowing un-audited certificates in the market, but they’d probably be worth a lot less!
I think the middle man making money is exactly what you want to happen. The argument is much the same as for investment and speculation in the for-profit world: people who’re willing to take on risk by investing in uncertain things can profit from it, thus increasing the supply of money to people doing risky things.
Here’s a concrete example: suppose I want to start a new bednet -distributing charity. I think I can get them out for half the price of AMF. Currently, there is little incentive for me to do this, and I have to go and persuade grantmakers to give me money.
In the CoI world, I can go to a normal investor, and point out that AMF sells (audited) bednet CoIs for $X, and that I can produce them at half the cost, allowing us to undercut AMF. I get investment and off we go. So things behave just like they do in the for-profit world (which you may or may not think is good).
What you do need is for people to want to buy these and “consume” them. I think that’s the really hard problem, getting people to treat them like “real” certificates.
Happy to talk about this more—PM me if you’d like to have a chat.
I think the easiest way to understand is by analogy to carbon offsets, which are a kind of limited form of CoI that currently exist.
Carbon offsets are generally certified by an organization to say that they actually correspond to what happened, and that they are not producing too many. I don’t think there’s a fundamental problem with allowing un-audited certificates in the market, but they’d probably be worth a lot less!
I think the middle man making money is exactly what you want to happen. The argument is much the same as for investment and speculation in the for-profit world: people who’re willing to take on risk by investing in uncertain things can profit from it, thus increasing the supply of money to people doing risky things.
Here’s a concrete example: suppose I want to start a new bednet -distributing charity. I think I can get them out for half the price of AMF. Currently, there is little incentive for me to do this, and I have to go and persuade grantmakers to give me money.
In the CoI world, I can go to a normal investor, and point out that AMF sells (audited) bednet CoIs for $X, and that I can produce them at half the cost, allowing us to undercut AMF. I get investment and off we go. So things behave just like they do in the for-profit world (which you may or may not think is good).
What you do need is for people to want to buy these and “consume” them. I think that’s the really hard problem, getting people to treat them like “real” certificates.
Happy to talk about this more—PM me if you’d like to have a chat.