~~~
Dear Mr Tabarrok,

Thanks for your idea of the Dominant Assurance Contract (DAC). I thought of a way to extend it to further open up opportunities in investment and value creation and make crowdfunding possibly more interesting than gambling. Maybe your students have already come up with all this and more, but what the heck.

Here are the rules of what I call Cooperative Dominant Assurance*:

1. The proposer seeds the failure-payback pot with any amount of money, sets the maximum payback rate between 100% and infinity, and sets the maximum profit rate. She can revise these rates upward until the proposal’s deadline. She also sets the investment reduction rate (explained below).

2. A contributor sets her rate of payback from 0% to the maximum.

3. Contributors with payback rates of less than 100% get the difference added to the payback pot. Any contributor can revise her contribution upward and her rate downward until the proposal’s deadline. The investment reduction rate determines the percentage of her contribution that reimburses the proposer’s seed investment and how much increases the pot.

4. In case of failure, the pot is divided amongst contributors in proportion to their contributions and according to their final payback rates.

5. In case of success, contributors with average payback rates of less than 100% are treated as investors who profit in inverse proportion to their average rate. Or get other bonuses, such as the opportunity to collaborate.

6. Contributors can make multiple contributions with different payback rates.

Thus someone with a really good idea but little seed money could still create an attractive DAC. Whole-hearted contributors (those with <100% rates) could profit from the risk of enticing the half-hearted (>100% rates ). The higher the maximum payback rate, the wilder the game gets.* It could be a spectacle of brinkmanship between the whole-hearts and half-hearts. Half-hearts would help attract attention to the proposal initially. Whole-hearts would help continue to attract half-hearts as the deadline approached.

*For example, due to Rule 4, a sole contributor of $1 (maximum payback rate) toward a failed proposal with an infinite payback rate would win the entire pot. A second max-rate contributor of $99 would take away 99% of the pot. If the proposer set the max rate to 110%, then the first would only get back $1.10 and the second $108.90, regardless of pot size. Due to Rule 5, in a successful proposal with a 20% profit rate, a contributor whose rate was 60% for 10 days and 20% for 10 days would have an average rate of 40%, earning her 12% on her contribution (to be paid upon proposal execution).

What do you think?

I’m not sure the rules are free of conflicts or redundancy, nor do I grasp the math or game theory involved. But it was fun and exciting to think about.

Which is ironic because I came across your uber-cool dealio while looking for ways to finance my recovery from exhaustion-depression. (Take something worse than chronic fatigue syndrome but better than death and combine it with clinical depression. A real kick in the pants!) Because I have less-than-zero confidence in medicine or its common alternatives, I spent 21 years looking for a way to heal from it before hitting upon darkness retreating (see website below). It’s relatively cheap ($2500), but money-making is not my strong suit.

Anyway, thanks again, and,

Cheers,
Andrew Durham

(*EDIT: I just removed this sentence from the third to last paragraph: “And I could not decide what to call this variant of DAC: Self-Funding, Autonomous, Automatic, Inclusive, Cooperative, or Viral DAC? DA Orgy?” I decided on “Cooperative”. If you think of a better name, please let me know.)

The lesson: approaching darkness as something I needed personally worked a whole hell of a lot better than approaching it as a world-saving idea in need of testing. Shame about my own psychosis, based on early bad experiences with expressing my suffering, had led to this charade. People, it turned out, care a lot more about me than my big ideas.

The major thing I learned this time about retreating itself is that scheduling sufficient time afterward to absorb its value and readjust to light is critical to a retreat’s overall success. So while I did not complete a 14-day retreat as planned, neither did I waste one learning about this, either. Instead, we spent only $285 discovering this final big piece of the puzzle.

Along with with this major lesson, I learned some useful minor things to be carefully applied in future retreats:

• having warm fresh air is a lot more comfortable than cold air combined with a powerful heater
• even a small amount of exercise really helps the whole process
• noise from other occupants, both audible and psychic, and electromagnetic distortion from the building’s steel and wiring has a huge effect on the quality of rest possible in a darkroom.

Will soon commence 12th attempt at a long darkness retreat, somehow, somewhere.

Other worthy systems I’ve come across in the last couple days:
cyclos.org open source software to run your own bank, complete with free hosting; boggling!
payswarm.com html-based, frictionless payment system
picomoney.com based on http://opentransact.org/
opensourcecurrency.org run your own currency; need coding smarts
ripplepay.com solves LETS accountability concerns, unfortunately asocial
e-flux.com/timebank hip and simple
friendlyfavors.org 2nd largest after CES, clever and a bit complicated
johnturmel.com/uniset.htm very simple, start alone now
JEU/GAME not web but paper-based, very elegant, semi-private, decentralized accounting, best for when the lights go out.

CES is the most accessible, practical, and mature, though some of these systems, have much greater potential. Open source money has finally gotten legs, wings… and teeth.

Watch him type on the Nook Simple Touch on youtube:
Nook Simple Touch usb host support

Development thread with instructions:
(Nook Touch Android Development) [WIP] USB Host support (working)

There are still some bugs, and the instructions are over my head at this point. But the basics are there now for people who know how to use them. Once the bugs are worked out, I plan to simplify the instructions for everyone’s use. Maybe even offer microSD cards with everything pre-installed.

Here we go.

1. (Status on Thursday night:)
Dear Family and Friends: I am very sick. For the first time, I feel
that I am slipping, that I might not make it. Please help me realize
the solution I found. Not because it could be a solution for you, too. But simply because you care about me. This is what I have been trying to say for three years. Andrew.

2. (Friday, in response to 20 people who wrote in support of me:)
I am relieved to hear from each one of you. I also got supportive emails.

What I need is help in arranging and paying for a long darkness retreat.

It needs an empty, functional house and people to bring food and say
hello to me each day. And I need to not return to the US, where I feel very unsafe, to do it. There are places to rent here (Sweden) and new friends who could help.

The thing is, my 25 years of studying the absolute depths of both my
condition and the world’s made me good at solving extremely complex
problems, but not good at making money or simple arrangements like
this. I cannot overstate how much shame and embarrassment I have felt
about this. But I can state the truth about it.

Please do not let my articulateness fool you into thinking that I am
ok. No matter what, it seems, I am able to talk.

3. (Sunday)
Thanks to everyone who wrote. My immediate problem is solved. Nearly
undetectable poor air quality where I have been staying wore me down
over the last month. I am making arrangements to move into a proper
apartment tonight.

The wider issue of why I ended up in that situation in the first place is also getting addressed by rekindled support for the darkroom and other unforeseen means.

4. (Yesterday, in response to a Swedish friend who asked how I was doing:) I’m basically okay now, Maria. Still edgy, but not as bad as
yesterday. It was nice to be able to walk with you the other day. I
had been slowly suffocating (literally), and then I suddenly crashed.
It felt like I’d been run over by a train.

5. By the way, I never identified my sickness here, so I will now.

I view it as functional psychosis manifesting as a rigid dependence on my mind. This has numerous ill effects on my life, some of which some of you know all too well. For example, unconsciously setting myself up for periodic breakdowns like the one this weekend.

At 16, I had only a vague sense of my sickness. But it was strong, and it motivated my long search for the root cause of rapture: sanity. My discovery of darkness as an irreplaceable condition of psychological health ensued. This is why I have confidence only in darkness retreats as a means of healing from my sickness and why my wish to do one has finally found its way to the top of my priorities.

My understanding is that there are two factions of your organization: both people who try to use their power and wealth to free humanity, and those who use it to enslave us.

To both groups within your vast network, I wish to say that I understand and accept that you are each sincerely trying to handle our collective mess the best way you know how. For a long time, I thought that you were my enemy, and hatred and sadness about your activities consumed me. But now, as a result of my long search for understanding, I am extending both forgiveness and the offer of a way to handle our situation differently.

Since this subject is your main interest, please read my darkness conjecture. Then write me if you would like to help make this deep way of healing possible for yourselves. I could use your help, you could probably use a break, and working together would be a nice change from our previous isolation.

I have tried to see a way through our conflict that makes a place for everyone at the end, especially those of you that many in my position would wish to exclude (if not summarily execute). In my opinion, you are hurt by all this worst of all, and I believe the way I have found would serve you in an acceptable manner. I really believe there is place for all of us, even you.

Welcome.

Sincerely,
Andrew Durham

~~~

…I had a thought during our conversation about 9/11 that there wasn’t time to voice, but which I think you would like to hear. So I am writing you with it.

I think the reason that the idea of a conspiracy can be hard to entertain is that it seems to mean that the people involved are evil and consciously do evil things.

This, of course, is nonsense, and people are correct to reject it. The nature of human consciousness is such that it is impossible to do what one considers to be evil. However, rejecting conspiracism on this basis does not follow. What is considered to be evil and what is evil are not the same things. In other words, one can do evil while believing it to be good.

Any honest observer of history and current events can see that it is possible to justify anything (including the justification itself). For example, listen to professional political commentators of any persuasion. What is obviously evil to ordinary people can be seen as good and even obligatory by someone in power. Hitler and his helpers thought they were doing the right thing. Even on the stand in Jerusalem, Eichmann never really got what all the fuss was about. Some National Socialists (NAZIs) actually disliked the program, but they believed in it. It is only people’s basic innocence combined with their great naivete that enables them fail to make this distinction.

All this is aside from the fact that the ultrarich and powerful are psychologically damaged to a degree almost impossible to believe. I hesitated to mention the other night—and it is horrible to think about—but in the more established families, children are subjected to ritual sexual abuse from a young age. If you imagine a boy who is sexually molested in group Satanic rituals from the time he is less than a year old, with the knowledge and even participation of his own parents, then maybe you can see that his view of right and wrong might be a little bit distorted by the time he is forty years old and running a bank, a corporation, or a country (or these days, all three).

If so, then you can also see how it is possible that if the interests of enough organizations require, for example, the events of 9/11, then as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, those events will take place. Obviously the people in power are deadly serious about making omelets, and it matters to them not one whit that you and I happen to be the eggs.

That was the thought. As I write, it leads to a few similar ones.

Exactly why any organization would require such events as 9/11 has a lot to do with the fiat, debt-based money system I tried to describe to you. Since money comes into existence as interest-bearing debt, the money available is always less than the amount owed. So as some pay their debts, others must default on theirs. This is why money is always running out and there is never enough.

Then people borrow more to stay afloat. This inflates the money supply and devalues cash holdings. So just to stay even, individuals and groups must always be climbing upward financially, stepping on others as they go. We know how desperate the situation is at our level. Imagine the wicked cut-throat tactics necessary to stay atop a game in which there can never be enough.

Poetically, the naive resistance to the idea of an inside job on 9/11 rests on the same benevolent metaphysics as conspiracism. To the conspiracists, the universe is a friendly, life-supportive place and people are basically decent. Therefore, the horrors we witness in our culture must be created. To those we consider denialists, we conspiracists issue this challenge: prove how the material beneficiaries of 9/11 did not perpetrate it.

Lastly remains the simple fact that government has ever been a tool of the elite to control the (admittedly infantile) peasantry (including the professional class). That government could one day benefit the peasantry is merely popular propaganda. Since the job of the state consists of subjugating us—since that is what we pay it to do and as quietly as it can—9/11 is precisely what was required of it at this critical juncture in history. So, again: prove that it failed to perform its function.

With convention stood on its head like this, you can see the difficulty that conspiracists and denialists have in communicating. It is not just about the facts. It is about what a person considers humanly possible. Philosophically, it is a metaphysical difference. This is usually unbridgeable.

Everyone experiences what I am talking about, but as part of a whole lifetime of conditioning in resignation (hospitals, TV, industrial food, school, the legal system) and at a low level where the causes are invisible. This is especially true due to the common preoccupation with survival. Few have the time, stomach, or resources to even consider events in these lights, let alone understand or do anything about them. We issue bitter little complaints as we accept it incrementally.

And then there is the successful propaganda campaign about our masters’ being too stupid and incompetent to pull off something like 9/11. It is an impressive conceit that we are smarter and more capable than people who coordinate transnational corporations, global wars, and mass media. Those who deny conspiracy have underwhelmed me with their snide ignorance of basic facts of the case. In my few brushes with the ruling class, even average members impressed me as sophisticated and whipsmart. Now they have accomplished the additional feat of convincing most of us they are otherwise.

For the benefit of both us and our tortured masters, I hope that my work can help bring an end to the madness I describe. Like most people, I believe that each of us, underneath the exhaustion, resignation, and damage, is still innocent at the core. I cannot believe that anyone really likes or is satisfied with what is happening. Surely we can find another way to be here together. But surely we cannot find it without first seeing things as they are, both in our souls and in our society.

Well, it was nice seeing you, again. Thanks for dinner.

Best regards,
Andrew

EDIT: the above attempt failed. Taking a bare cabin with only electricity and heat and trying to make even a simple bathroom, kitchenette, and ventilation proved overwhelming. No, the thing is to start with a fully functional building, darken it and start retreating, already. This will require taking the message to the people again.

Let us further say that they, combined with those of equal realization and commitment in other traditions, manage to liberate a million people a year until the job is done. At that rate, it will still take them 7,000 years to finish. That’s if population remains constant from now on.

Keep in mind this is a 2,500 year old tradition. And that all spiritual traditions combined are not pulling off more than a hundred genuine liberations a year. Which, according to some wise men I once knew, is an extremely generous figure. How are we to make sense of the Bodhisattva’s project What are they counting on

Maybe they are banking on an exponential effect of their efforts. Maybe we are only a few years or generations away. The results come faster as time goes on and the task gets easier, because its enormity nonetheless is shrinking, while their collective power grows.

Maybe they, like the Mayans, are merely holding out till a cosmic event completes the task in one fell swoop.

So they’re not worried. Maybe I should not worry so much, either. Many people have said as much, and lately, I have begun to notice what they’re talking about.

And, maybe it is time to review the effectiveness of the method of liberation. Or maybe we could just eliminate the need for it.

Suffering comes from a catastrophic injury to the psyche;
the psyche is a system of an organism;
organisms are self-healing;
healing requires vital energy;
vital energy accumulates during rest;
psychic rest is most profound in absolute darkness;
therefore, darkness is the solution to inordinate suffering.

[Note 1: See end of basics for updated version of this.]

[Note 2: I learned this is not a syllogism, just a regular old argument. Syllogisms have only three propositions.]

Hey: Dagny Taggart has blackout blinds @1:45

“You can get an ipad and compose a book on that. The ipad has more glare to look at than e-paper that is e-paper’s advantage.”

I replied:

I say it in my plea, but let me state my assessment of the advantage of e-paper slightly differently here to better match what you are saying.

The advantage of e-paper is something much greater, much more fundamental, much more affecting than its lack of glare. A matte finish can be put on any display, or even achieved after the fact with plastic screen protectors.

What is different about all e-paper devices, regardless of their finish–is the absolutely still nature of the image. Once the page changes and the new words and images appear, the screen holds perfectly still. [EDIT The rest of this paragraph is erroneous. See NOTE below {It does not continue to refresh. The tiny pixels are not quivering with reinstatement 60+ times per second. The eyes, which normally make 80 movements per minute are not constantly exhausting themselves in adjusting to the movement of the image. As with the static nature of ink on paper, the eyes do not get irritated. Thought and emotion thus remain undisrupted.}

This is why:

• people love reading on e-paper devices, even if they do not understand exactly why.
• e-paper would matter even more to a writer
• I think this would be the most important invention since the personal computer, if not the typewriter or even the printing press.

The written word is the motive power of this culture, the fulcrum at its center. E-paper device makers are thus sitting unawares on a revolutionary opportunity to do something super cool, serve the world–and make a pile of well-deserved money in the process.

Who will be the one to stand up at a company meeting and help connect the last dots by pointing out the simple, obvious application of an existing product For the sake of everyone who has ever suffered from:

• an aching hand from handwriting
• injuries from typing on a manual typewriter
• the strained eyes, headaches, and insomnia of the hundreds of millions who write on computers
• and far more importantly, the consequences of ideas that had to be dragged through all this torment.

I wish I knew how to help this happen in even the smallest way. I want one of these things in my hands as soon as corporately possible.

[NOTE I learned that it is strictly backlighting that causes the eyestrain I feel with LCD screens, whether the backlight is fluorescent or LED (due to Pulse Width Modulation). See my topic on mobileread about this, Project: E-Paper Tablet (typable!).