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Final text draft
Today, on the 1st of June 2030, we look back to the 2020 COVID-19 crisis which abruptly brought the world to its knees. The health measures that were taken resulted in an unseen economic fallout with millions of people losing their jobs and putting enormous financial and emotional strain on large parts of our society. Financial support programs were rolled out without knowing who would pay back all the debt once the health crisis was over. Although there were massive outbursts of solidarity during the crisis, political leaders feared the economic consequences of the created debt could cause civil unrest and violence in the streets.
Fortunately, at the EUvsVirus Hackathon of April 2020, a team came up with an unorthodox, yet brilliant idea. An innovative, non speculative, currency with a built-in universal basic income, combined with a distributive mechanism which not only guarantees financial security for all but also forms a stable monetary base for a thriving economy which operates within the boundaries of our planetary resources.
At the Hackathon, the team implemented an innovative proof of concept with a next gen distributed ledger, presented simulations which demonstrated the monetary stability of the system, and worked out a roadmap towards the future.
Following the Hackathon, a successful pilot was launched in the city of Antwerp; a pilot which lifted everyone out of poverty, led to a massive increase in both well-being and entrepreneurship and safeguarded the solidarity which erupted during the crisis. Simultaneously, a European task force was created to promote the concept in all countries. Partnerships with central banks and governments were set up and the system was implemented everywhere. Today we can hardly imagine to have ever lived without it!! Inequality is at an all-time low, poverty is a thing of the past, economies are now measured by a global well-being index.
And when in 2028 there was a new COVID outbreak, the currency proved its resilience. We successfully sailed through 6 months of complete lockdown without any consequences to our global economy!! And to top it all off, a EU report just came in, declaring that we managed to accomplish all of the 17 SDG's last month. We would like to extend our thanks to the organizers of the Hackathon and the SuMSy team that made all this possible 10 years ago.
Suggestions:
(An alternative to blockchain that haves/has high standards of security.)
Intro
Part I Problem: There was a lot of insecurity, fear, stress...
Part II Solution: a sustainable money model called SuMSy, allowing a permanent Universal Basic Income for all combined with a redistribution system leading to a continuous supply of money for common good projects like fighting climate change, eradicating poverty and offering education for all (so helping to execute/accomplish SDG's).
Part III Accomplished: 4 year of work, white paper, board game
Part IV Planning to do not - what have we done (we are looking back from the future)
End
Gianluca
Gianluca
Since the beginning of modern time societies tried to fight pandemics by evolving themselves whether it is with societal innovations or with education improvements and research. This can be seen nowhere clearer than in the creation of sustainable systems. A sustainable system is one in which preventative measures are implemented to effectively solve possible future problems. Vaccination, for example, was born as an innovative and sustainable system, right?
But how much is it sustainable and is it Our “preventative” Solution? We have experienced that vaccines are lifesaving, but they are more a solution rather than a sustainable system. As you have seen the vaccine for Covid-19 started its problem-solving stage after the spread of the virus. Ok, that is right, because if a virus (the problem) does not exist we cannot find a vaccine (the solution). Furthermore, a vaccine normally takes 2 years to be deployed (whereas in this pandemic crisis it took 42 days, Time magazine https://time.com/5790545/first-covid-19-vaccine/ ). Do you think that we cannot make more than solving after problems arise?
But WHAT IF we could have prevented it at first? Our sources say that “Coronavirus may disproportionately hurt the poor - And that’s bad for everyone” (show the frame with Time magazine https://time.com/5800930/how-coronavirus-will-hurt-the-poor/ ). We worked this weekend on it and we found that the best solution is to AVOID poverty (show a red X on poverty on the frame or visual effects). To do so we created from the scratch the societal model for a new sustainable monetary system. We considered everyone (stakeholders) in the game to get it done.
We would like to work and deploy a Minimum Viable Product to study an innovative sustainable solution to avoid rapid spread of Covid-19 and to get many more positive effects on our globalized world.
Thank you for hearing our Pitch!
(create subtitles for deaf people)
Marcel
COVID-19 has shown us the solidarity we have with each other. Not only we help others not getting infected. But COVID-19 is creating a lot of financial stress for a lot of people. We want to facilitate all the good that came out of this crisis and alleviate the economic stress so many people are suffering from.
We also want to help the ones who cannot work because of COVID-19. We would like to have a sound economy that provides income for everyone. But how? Which people, which companies, which countries should be supported? How much? And supported in what way? (which industry?)
The last economic crisis was resolved in a very negative way which led to a greater distance between those who have and the ones who have not. The ones that got rescued were not the ones who paid for that rescue. This resulted in greater distances within our societies. People felt no longer connected and started to take care of their own interests only.
We want to keep and use the solidarity of COVID-19 to help each other, no one excluded. We want everybody to feel as a part of our communities, also in the financial way. Our team worked on SuMSy, which stand for sustainable monetary system, that keeps the great aspects of a free market-economy without having the negative consequences of too much focus on money itself.
SuMSy it not something new. It has been worked upon for four years already. It combines great theories that have been already accepted by many. Universal Basic Income is one of them, a sound and proven idea that is so necessary now for helping each other out financially. But SuMSy is not just Universal Basic Income. It also encompasses the so called donut-ecomomy where all excesses are prevented and all interventions are sustainable. SuMSy changes the way we create and remove money. SuMSy removes the role of the financial market.
What makes SuMSy so appealing is that it can be rolled out next to the existing economy. We can restrict SuMSy to only certain places and certain economic transactions. In that way stakeholders can learn and trust SuMSy without running the risk of introducing new calamities. SuMSy has been described in a thoroug white paper. But also there is a board game and a simulation that will help people to learn and get convinced about it.
Our team made the plan and the pitch to make SuMSy work here and now to tackle the economic situation. We need the jury to provide us with the time and the stakeholders we need to run SuMSy in places so that others can see and learn that SuMSy works.
Eddy
We are the year 2030
10 years ago due to COVID-19 the global economic activity on our planet was almost reduced to zero for several months resulting in the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of people lost their jobs. Our leaders were in despair and were asking themselves how to avoid increasing poverty which may lead to rebellion, a revolution and maybe even the third world war.
Fortunately there was a small team at the EuvsVirus Hackaton who came up with a bright idea. They developed a sustainable money model called SuMSy, allowing a permanent Universal Basic Income for all combined with a redistribution system leading to a continuous supply of money for common good projects like fighting climate change, eradicating poverty and offering education for all. Thanks to SuMSy the world actually managed to reach all targets of the SDG’s in 2030!
It all started with the EUvsVirus Hackaton where SuMSy succeeded in getting the resources it needed to be fully developed and deployed.
“After a modest pilot in the city of xxx, which lifted every inhabitant out of poverty, led to a massive increase in both well-being and entrepreneurship and safeguarded the solidarity which erupted during the crisis, the idea caught on worldwide. Partnerships with central banks and governments were set up and the system was rolled out everywhere. Today we can hardly imagine to have ever lived without it. Inequality is at an all-time low, poverty is a thing of the past, economies are now measured by a global well-being index” (source: text Stef).
In 2030 thanks to SuMSY we have a thriving global society within the ecological boundaries of our planet. And this was made possible thanks to EUvsVirusHackathon!
Stef
The year is 2025, we are looking back at the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The crisis brought us an outburst of solidarity but also spelled economic doom for many, especially those who were already living in poverty. But luckily the EUvsVirus Hackaton of April 2020 brought forth a solution which is still a boon for society today.
A small team came up with an unorthodox proposal to create money that would be used to give everyone a permanent UBI, something unheard of in those days. Their presentation blew the jury off their socks though and they managed to get massive exposure.
After a modest pilot in the city of xxx, which lifted every inhabitant out of poverty, led to a massive increase in both well being and entrepreneurship and safeguarded the solidarity which erupted during the crisis, the idea caught on worldwide. Partnerships with central banks and governments were set up and the system was rolled out everywhere.
Today we can hardly imagine to have ever lived without it. Inequality is at an all time low, poverty is a thing of the past, economies are now measured by a global well being index and our transition towards a sustainable economy has been put on steroids.
We want to extend our thanks to that small team 5 years ago for bringing us a stable and fair economic model which has truly made this world a happy place.
César
NOTE: Not for the video, but something that came out and wanted to share...
Somewhere in Europe, May 2021...
In the new world that is ahead of us, where this new system is spreading out rapidly, the word “bank” is changing completely its original meaning, being nowadays a combination of a social care office, an employment office, and a coach and self development office.
They are places that you are attended by a kind person willing to listen to you. They ask about your family members, your personal situation and what you would like to achieve. In order to help you better, they ask for your ideas and dreams, and give you options about how to build them up and turn them into real projects. They also let you know what your community is in need, since this new concept of bank also manages what society requires. It’s now a centralized network and a virtual platform that gathers all the info related to work needs in the community, related to projects based on the common good principles.
Any business in this system can always post their vacancies, ideas and needs to get more people involved, and therefore, the bank could always offer you to join other people’s projects that are in a lack of help, always according to sustainable parameters, and to what the officer understood are the fields that you are attracted to. Apart of the option of developing the main idea that you came out with.
You could always do everything online or by phone as well, but this banks would have a local office for you to go in person in your local community, where you can talk to a professional and find some support, especially when joining the system at first, helping you to understand it easily. There would be always a virtual community, video tutorials, chats, and all sort of virtual tools and support.
Once the account is open, you’ll start to get your guaranteed income and the places that you can use the money, also giving you the opportunity to work in projects that other people of the system are already launching, aiming to create a sustainable society.
Nowadays, there are 23 European small cities that have active communities around their 23 banks there, were social workers, psychologists, project developing experts and coaches help citizens out. There are also offices in at the local university campuses, where banks have also open spaces shared with fab-labs where people gather to develop new projects.
The new currency is spreading really fast, especially in communities that where more vulnerable to the crisis after coronavirus, where many people lost their jobs. Many rural areas near cities are now reopening organic farms and circular economy businesses on them, based on the growing community that are joining the system, since many people are being able to get everything that they need without using other currency.
After the last app updated and the new payment terminals that read directly from phones, transactions have been really easy to manage and people are jumping into it.
It is really nice as well the recent bank strategy that gives a phone and training, apart from psychological support, to homeless people that are getting into the system.
Last month, there was the first house sold in the new system, and it motivated a lot more people to join in and sell their homes, as a solution for all the airbnb apartments that stayed empty in cities.
Few small towns have also proposed that in the next local elections they could open the polls to any citizen that feels like coordinating public policies, making a raffle among the most qualified voted candidates, since their local issues have reached to a point that are getting fund by the local people with their demurrage fees and with the extra money that the bank is providing to help hire more workers.
It is really easy to see how much money exists and where is being used, since the website of the system has deep reports in local and global scale that helps to track every move and coin.
We are definitely accelerating the achievement of the SDGs and now over 100 cities in Europe and outside of it want to have a local bank there to set a stable community that uses the new currency. There are members of the system already training a lot of the new motivated bank workers in those cities, meanwhile the offices are getting ready.
This project would soon jump to other countries outside the European continent, since there are already thousands of users worldwide and the transactions are getting to a global scale.
It seems that, after the Civid-19 crisis, we humans learnt how to take care of each other by providing a world in where we all fit in.
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May 2020:
I'm the mayor of a city with over 50.000 people in Europe, a budget, political will (coalition with left and green parties), and 25% of unemployment due to the coronavirus crisis. We want to implement Sumsy as the first testing city.
What do we do? Where do we start?
1: Infrastructure
With the local university, the city fab-lab (makers space) and an open source virtual community, we develop the blockchain technology in which one the system is going to be based on. We'll use public computer to hold the system.
2: Constitution:
With experts in Sustainable Development Goals, triple balance, human rights and circular economy, we develop the constitution of the principles that would lead the system, writing down the criteria that would drive the future businesses and projects of the new economy.
3: Project Embassadors:
The very first people to join in would be workers of the system (part or full time), having part of their salaries in Sumsys. They would explain the concept to producers (farmers, local services, stores, freelances) in order to have a critical mass of people that could start to exchange products and services between themselves using Sumsy.
4: Bank Office
A physical location would need to exist, in order to help elder and people not familiar with technology to understand the system and be part of it, getting training with the app, and having assigned a personal assistant.
5: Feedback group
With the bank, the university, the users, the network and the platform, a lot of information would we gathered and analyzed, in order to keep the always-improvement culture that the system brings to the table.
6: Growth
The system would always have the target to bring more people in, since as bigger the commuity is, the better the system gets, being its best stage once the 100% of a community is totally using it.