[Upd-discuss] Andrius travels to California with proposal

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:23:45 +0300

I share my letter because perhaps somebody would like to meet in 
California, but also because I describe the kind of business model by 
which I think we can think out loud, work openly, and generate assets in 
the Public Domain.  Generally, all of our lab's work takes place in the 
Public Domain.  Wealth is in the relationships (knowledge outside of 
context is worthless) and our lab members are willing to work in the 
Public Domain and that frees us from worrying about permissions as we 
apply our best judgement on each other's behalf.  Andrius Kulikauskas

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Hi!  I am getting ready to travel on April 20 to Dublin, Ireland, then 
April 22 to Chicago, Illinois, and then on April 29 to Silicon Valley in 
California where I will attend the News Tools 2008 conference 
http://www.newstools2008.org and look for clients for our Includer 
http://www.includer.org but especially for our network of independent 
thinkers who participate even with marginal Internet access.

I share below a proposal for $500,000 which I wrote for Yahoo but could 
be adapted for other companies as well.  We have a very profound network 
and we can apply ourselves vigorously to be true to our concerns even as 
we reach out to engage others.  I appreciate our thoughts.

I am also looking for a place to stay not far from public transport by 
which I could get to the Yahoo conference center in Sunnyvale, 
California.  I will stay in the Bay Area until May 5 or so, and then fly 
to San Diego.  Please let me know if you would like to meet!  Andrius 
Kulikauskas

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I have been thinking about how our Minciu Sodas lab might relevant to 
Yahoo groups and online community.  Our lab is good at organizing people 
around the world and helping them grow in consciousness as self-directed 
independent thinkers.  I think of two possibilities:

A) Inward economy with Friends.  We have our own internal economy which 
is a strong gift economy to support each other's projects with air 
travel, computers, paid work, etc.  We also do work for clients (like My 
Food Story http://www.myfoodstory.com) and on projects (like the Ethical 
Public Domain workshop for the EU http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org) 
where we meet each other half-way, so that hundreds of self-directed 
workers are building momentum for the client's project while also 
furthering their own projects.  We could encourage other Yahoo groups to 
participate in such an internal economy (with one or more community 
currencies) to encourage many small projects.

B) Outward economy with Enemies.  We do outreach and we could work to 
expand our network of independent thinkers into more regions and thus 
grow an asset of a human network that all can share.  This human network 
can then be mobilized swiftly in the event of an emergency (such as 
pandemic flu) in the spirit of "love your enemy" which we exemplified in 
Kenya by engaging the youth who were blocking the roads (We organized 
100 peacemakers  to avert genocide http://www.pyramidofpeace.net ).  I 
think we could engage the stakeholders (employees, customers, 
shareholders) of a company (such as Yahoo, Microsoft or Google) and seek 
moral accountability for all aspects of work.  A team of a few hundred 
activists and a few thousand supporters could seize moral control of a 
large corporation by reaching out towards enemies and inviting them into 
our network.  Intense scrutiny of a corporation would sharpen its share 
price and thus increase its utility as an investment vehicle and thus 
attract more kinds of investment and thus raise the share price in the 
long term.  This might be very relevant to Yahoo to make it less 
attractive to immoral people or to make Microsoft more attractive to 
moral people.

I separate the two economies because the Inward economy is the key to 
our sustainability in the world we wish to create, whereas the Outward 
economy is effective in the world we find ourselves in.  Our priority 
should be our inward economy.

At this time an optimal size of project for us would be $500,000 for one 
year and would include work with both "friends" and "enemies".  We would 
distribute that roughly:
* $60,000 for me, Commander-in-Chief
* 5 x $12,000, Commanders / Strategists
* 24 x $2,500, Peacemakers / Coaches
* 120 x $500, Peacemakers / Center Leaders
* 600 x $100, Investigators / Project Leaders
* 3000 x $20, Project Team Members
* 15000 x $4, Project Team Members
and leave the rest as a buffer or a profit for our lab.

For a rather large global team, where the rewards for the lower levels 
would be not cash, but something useful such as free use of an Internet 
connection at a center.  We would organize independent thinkers in 
cash-poor economies so that online they can engage people in the 
cash-rich world in meaningful ways, such as helping people find each 
other and build relationships, analyzing obscure but important issues, 
bringing in fresh perspectives and making the whole world relevant. 

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
+370 699 30003
skype: minciusodas
Vilnius, Lithuania