Thank you for getting back to me. Yes, I think it might be a good idea to introduce the System in a separate post and I will do it eventually. For now, if your contacts are interested, they can review the links I gave. Below are my responses to your questions.
The System gives the high-value producers what they are after—a psychological signal of competence and relatedness (status is a pathological form of this signal). The actors working in the System basically trade the exchange value of material profit they would gain for their work in a classic market economy, for a non-monetary signaling reward. That value is the funding source for the system. Please note that charity runs on the same mechanism—the donors trade money for a psychological signal they need more than the money. The system was originally developed (and is a.t.m. used) to capture the volunteer-generated value, which is estimated to be more than a trillion USD/year. The money available for charitable causes probably exceeds this value. These two sources can bootstrap the System. Over time, the System will fund itself by its own economic activity—a radically different proposition from UBI.
The System also solves one of the biggest problems in charity—optimal allocation of funds to places where they are needed the most. This is achieved by several mechanisms. One is the motivation pull of non-monetary—signaling reward I mention above. This is the generator of resources that—given the floating exchange rate between the System and the national currencies, ensures that the least well off exchange their System money for a national currency first.
My proposal is not for the “basic jobs”-type work. You can do anything you want in the System … even disabled people can write poetry or collect napkins and get paid for it. An instinctive reaction one might have is—but people will do useless/unproductive things… well, UBI goes even further—it does not care what a person will do with the money. Besides, playing is a sign of intrinsic motivation which has all kinds of benefits, including producing innovation. Also, if offered a choice a normal person will choose to do something others will appreciate/use than digg a hole in the forest just to get paid.
Yes, it is money, but different :-). Unlike (for example) fiat money, the System currency creation is directly tied to actually performed work. The money is “minted” whenever new work is reported in the system. The money supply in the System is held optimal by a mechanism that destroys money when somebody makes a purchase. In effect, there is a silent contract that the System pays you before the market value of your product is known, but it then owns the product. Instead of profit, the product creator receives something similar to reputation points, which take care of psychological signaling that in fact is what motivates people to supply labor.
I believe, a system can be designed for distribution of money that lacks the most “problematic” features of UBI and streamlines the act of donations-making in general. The basic idea is to not give money away, but pay people for work—any work they want to do. Poetry writing, musical band practicing, gardening, picking trash,… They would have to report the work with a believable proof (photo, video, url,...) and have it approved by two other System-selected workers. They would receive a fixed amount of System Currency for every reported/approved hour. The Currency for the reward is created by the System at the moment the work gets approved. The Currency would be freely exchangeable for national currency (and back). A fixed exchange rate would be maintained by the donor and/or by inflow of national currency from other sources, like own economic activity of the workers in the System, investments into projects run by the workers in the System,… Products and services created in the System must be possible to purchase with the Currency. When purchased, the buyer pays the System, which at that moment destroys the Currency paid and awards the creator/seller of the purchased product with a numerical, reputation-like reward instead. The reputation reward is equal in amount to the paid Currency. A reputation score of a worker is non-transferable. Separation of the monetary and the skills/reputation-signaling rewards is the key to making the system both—equitable economically and efficient at the same time (workers have different reputation “signatures”)*.
The described system exists in a proof of work-level implementation and has a number of other, non-listed features. It was originally developed to make volunteer products consumption and production fair, but it will be used also for the use case described above. It would be great to find somebody who really understands technology to make the system scalable. Also, it will be easier to get funding with a team that has more than one founder - I think.
The POC runs at https://rovas.app and theoretical foundations are described in a paper I wrote about this.
* The separation of economic and reputation rewards might sound crazy, but it was suggested recently for different use case