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What we want to do

It's easy to see that people who have accumulated large amounts of capital get huge advantages, andpeople who don't have it are penalized and exploited.

Ordinary people, who have not accumulated a large amount of capital, could still get some of the

advantages of it (and avoid some of the penalties of not having it) if they would group together.Most people put their spare capital in a an!. "he an! pays them a small interest rate in exchange forthe use of accumulated capital in investment. #o people get more of what they already had $ small%uanities of money, in the form of &. interest rates $ and they resign even more accumulated capitalto an!s and to investors who already had enormous amounts.

hen people group together, they can start to ma!e use of capital in its accumulated form. It's oviouswhat advantage such accumulation gives to *dual income+ couples $ they can more easily uy anapartment, etc. ut if ten, or fifty people organize themselves to share their capital, the result could eeven more interesting. -eople who organize in this way would get punctual access to larger %uantitiesof capital, in the form of interestfree loans on the pool.

/ow much would memers decide that each could orrow, and how long would they give themselvesto pay it ac!0 Many different variations are imaginale1 large groups or small groups2 friends orfriends of friends or colleagues or even strangers2 large, shortterm loans, or smaller loans paid ac!more slowly. 3ot all variations will e useful. "he %uestion is how to invent the right form for asituation.

e hope our experiment will incite not only imitation ut mutation. "here are many different variationson the capitalpool model to try out. Our prototype is very straightforward and moderate. "he amountorrowed isn't enormous4maximum ten times the deposit4and the length of time to return it to thepool neither too short or too long4etween &5 and 67 months.

How we will do it

"he idea of pooling capital is very simple, ut tric!y to put into practice. "he an!ing system, and thelaw itself, are organized entirely around individuals. ut if we're determined enough, we might e aleto find new and unexpected ways to use an!s and existing laws to ma!e this happen.

"he collective should register as a nonprofit. 3onprofit organizations can give interestfree loanswithout any special license. "hat ta!es care of the legal difficulties.

"he tric!ier %uestion is aout hierarchy in this organization1 who will e in charge of !eeping accounts,and of ma!ing wire transfers from the organization's an! account when they are needed0 /ow muchtrust is re%uired0 ho would ma!e emergency decisions, if there was an emergency0 8ven a nonprofitorganization needs, legally, to have an official president. an!s only wor! with collective entitiesthrough the intermediary of a representative, who must e trusted completely.

an!s seem to e open to new technologies and practices at present, so it is possile that a new modelof interaction will ecome possile etween an!s and collectives. *#mart contracts+ could e part ofthis story. #mart contracts are a way of thin!ing aout a computer program as a constitution, or ofthin!ing aout laws as a computer program. "hey eliminate the need for a record !eeper andaccountant, as well as the need for an interpreter or 9udge. It's as if the laws themselves, the rules

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themselves, to which a group of people had agreed, could spea!. #ince smart contracts ma!eunamiguous 9udgments aout the internal affairs of an organization, they could provide a nonhumanintermediary etween collectives and an!s. :nd what's interesting here isn't that this intermediary (thesmart contract) is nonhuman, ut that it isn't an individual.

an!s would have to e willing to ta!e these contracts into account. It isn't unimaginale that they will

do so, that, in five or ten years, an!s will have some !ind of :-I for interaction with smart contracts.ut at present, this isn't the case. an!s in 8urope are 9ust starting to offer :-Is for interaction overcommon internet protocol, and common internet protocol is refractory to collective responsiility. ;oucan write a we application that follows the rules you have in mind, ut this application will always eeasy to modify for whoever is in charge of administrating the server. :utomated rules are an alternativeto trusting a single individual $ ut if they are run on an ordinary we server, they re%uire one to trustthe administrator.

If pro9ects li!e 8thereum really ta!e root, then it would e possile to run automated rules without anyadministrator, in which case the smart contract could really live up to its promise. In that case, the%uestion would e whether an!s could e convinced to offer a standardized integration with8thereum, and whether it would ecome standard enough that they would do so for cheap or for free(