Pyramid schemes could be viewed as a voluntary and decentralized wealth transfer system, where each person that joins is driven by the promise of profit. Nathan Waters coined the idea that a form of decentralized basic income system could be achieved through a “positive pyramid scheme” (video). I took this idea to me, because it seemed to be describe a system I had been working on that I called swarm-redistribution.
In a recent article on Basic Income Earth Network (basicincome.org), I described the system that I call Resilience as that
Those who pay forward a Taxeme will get rewards from future people and companies whose transactions and business grow outwards from where the Taxeme originated, forming a perpetual wealth redistribution cycle that is driven not by violence, but by something similar to the golden rule.
Nathan Waters said in a chat we had that
I’ve got this image in my head of branching fractal pyramid+networks pulsing out every time I buy something and then pulsing back money.
So, I’ve recently come to look at my idea as a form of “positive pyramid scheme”. Every single transaction you make will grow into a new pyramid, and you are incentivized to join for similar reasons that people have joined pyramid schemes in the past: The promise of profit.
You are only part of a pyramid for a short time. If we look at a standard pyramid scheme like the one on ethereumpyramid.com, each level in it would only be able to receive a limited amount, and it would then decay, leaving the next level as the major winner.
Each level would also be constantly branching into new pyramids. The swarm-redistribution system is based on what I’ve called dividend pathways, inspired originally by the trust-lines in Ryan Fugger’s Ripple framework (2003).
These pathways are similar to electrical wires, or to blood vessels, in that they act as conduits for what could be conceptualized as a liquid or as a current. I’ve not yet come up with a name for this medium, but sometimes compare it to blood or electricity.
The pathways come in different widths, and wider pathways convey more blood than pathways with a smaller lumen, similar to how arteries convey more blood than capillaries, or an electrical wire with higher admittance conveys more electrons per second.
As you make a transaction and inherit what I’ve called a Taxeme, you will form a dividend pathway, and wider pathways will compete for more profit as your new branch continues to branch out, in this “positive pyramid scheme.
This rewards people for spreading Taxemes that extract a high percentage of each transaction, and this tax then flows downwards through the pyramid, rewarding people while gradually using up their dividend pathways and “pruning” the branch.
@Futawe inspired the word Taxeme in a chat we had, and he's mentioned the Resilience project a few times in his broadcast on evolution, technology and the future, capturing a snap-shot of the future and bringing to our attention the unfathomable rate of change that we live through at the moment. Watch Universal Darwinism and Taxemes for an overview of darwinian systems such as genes, memes and Taxemes.
Links:
https://medium.com/@resilience_me/basic-income-through-fractal-transaction-pathways-99a91e506a47
http://basicincome.org/news/2016/07/johan-nygren-crypto-states-make-taxation-impossible%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Adarwinian-basic-income-is-the-future/
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/resilience-decentralized-basic-income-through-paying-it-forward/2016/05/19
https://bitnation.co/blog/using-a-genetic-algorithm-for-self-organising-emergent-tax-rates-in-a-crypto-basic-income-system/
http://themerkle.com/resilience-decentralized-taxation-system-for-free-market-taxation/
https://medium.com/@resilience_me/decentralized-wealth-redistribution-on-the-ethereum-state-machine-f5083636c087#.1bak1n1mr
https://medium.com/@resilience_me/try-out-proto-taxemes-c0d27f3ae36a#.2cwz42q7j
https://medium.com/@resilience_me/serapath-requests-a-scenario-616f586024e2#.j6fl5ac71
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6Z8kxpJTS7enwBjooJY9Q/
http://magazine.ouishare.net/2015/10/why-decentralised-organisations-require-a-new-type-of-welfare-system/
https://bitnation.co/blog/bitnation-decentralized-government-to-provide-universal-basic-income/
http://basicincome.org/news/2015/04/bitnation-basic-income-application-set-for-bitnation/
https://medium.com/@crypto_nation/the-resilience-protocol-darwinian-basic-income-7add92e5daf1#.tviwjrul2