I’ve just sort of put it together with a little tidbit I wrote here. We will have a decentralized internet heavy society whereby services that we want will be offered freely in exchange for either community based help through expertise, artistic inspiration and feedback for future ideas and features, and redeemable vouchers that are usable for interchange value. This could but will likely not be transacted through BTC and other existing cryptocoins, but perhaps through a grandchild or great grandchild of sidechain mechanisms like counterparty will allow businesses to easily give away tokens of value that can be redeemed for goods and services. This will work on the expectation that the tokens can and have been redeemed for past goods and will continue to remain good as long as the business exists.
Right now in 2014 we are seeing Bitcoin act as a token of value and now endeavors like www.Letstalkbitcoin.com where using a token of value, participants can purchase goods, advertising time, stickers, creative content, and other barters offerred by members of the community. Imagine a world where this model expanded into other directions, like gym memberships (uploading a 5 minute recipe and results log from your efforts with the gym perhaps gives you a free membership for a month, you as a member are allowed to do this a maximum of 9 times per year, thus reducing your gym membership by 75%. Now translate that service over into your car insurance, but now allow your car insurance to fluctuate for a rolling 10 day period through gps monitoring (for speed – their reports cannot be used nor handed over to the police for criminal investigation purposes as it would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy (be on the lookout for future terms and conditions that allow companies to circumvent your rights and avoid these organizations) Groceries you say? Well how about sponsored uniforms that when proof is given that they are worn (to advertise) – the users are given $20 dollars (max redeemable 1 time per day, 3 days per week) Sure, it equates to about $240 in value given to that person, but if they are literally acting as a walking billboard for you, it could translate into cheaper aggregate advertising costs – plus imagine the additional customers who would be notified of the program through word of mouth. I know that I usually spend more than $20 per visit to the grocery store, so ultimately, customers who get a little back from wearing an ‘ad uniform’ are also spending that little extra in gratitude and convenience.
What about service jobs and service workers? We will have dispenser technicians and process operators who oversee the equipment. Those who do such work will no longer be frowned upon because with those newly created jobs of specialization will come the existing traditional pillars except that now they will come together so that fry cook will also have some of the expertise of a machinist as well. What of concierges and personal trainers? There will still be established places for these however they will become the new-found tools of elitism. People will waste money, exorbitantly so to ‘fit in a false upper class’. The new levels of efficiency will allow casual users of technology to participate in things they traditionally enjoyed while providing feedback directly to the brands they enjoy and provide value through decentralized administration, decentralized support, and decentralized marketing in exchange for real world value, redeemable for those said goods.
“Wow Frankenmint! That’s A-MAZING! Sign me up, I’d like a PS5, Bugatti Veryon, Island in Abu Dubai with a 10 bedroom house with nice furniture and high speed internet, and 4 figure weekly stipend in perpetuity!”
1st of all “hold on there slick!” I can’t get you ANY of those things currently unless you can pay me a 2% finders fee and afford them of course. Certain goods and services would be up for decentralized incentivizing (as I’ll now dub this term) However there will be a net limit to how far promoting can work until a loss is incurred – which was why I mentioned quality content modifiers that limit the amount of submissions. Perhaps there will be tiers of incentives so that the best of the best get more perks than those who promote the brand less often – I suppose we could compare this to youtube content providers – if you get 1 millions views per video, then you should be paid accordingly for the ad impressions – vs the other guy who only got 1000 views or even just 100 views. I may be able to get you the bugatti if you’re willing to do a couple million dollars worth of work (advertising, be able to get maybe 15 of them sold and you’ve probably earned enough commission to own one yourself), same goes for everything else mentioned, except for that 4 figure weekly stipend….you’re probably on your own there. (Create a top 10 blog for an area of expertise that you have passion in – like smoking crack? Then start a Crack review website and setup ad banners for pipe resellers, your slogan could be “cause Rob Ford tried it…he’s okay!”)
I also want to see a combination of things – passive efforts (such as wearing marketing apparel or using a car-wrap to promote a brand) as well as active efforts (participating on a support forum for XBox if you play a lot or perhaps creating Reprap videos to promote a specific web-store in exchange for them giving you a sizeable discount off for more PLA filament, the skies are the limit.
My bottom line is that the future will create a slew of individuals who will have more time to spend towards creative endeavors or even towards non-traditional models of generating income. We will gradually transition more robots and automated processes to continue replacing our existing processes (ATM machines, Car Wash Machines, Automated grocery checkstands, hell Ecommerce itself) will bring on a generation of technicians who can aggregately work less time – (imagine 10 or 15 hour work week) and spend a larger portion of their time contributing either creatively or analytically towards projects or brands that inspire them for a real return – whether it be vouchers for the product to be redeemed or perhaps digital tokens that act as a share of ownership to be redeemed otherwise.
You’re welcome,
Frankenmint
