Meoh guidelines

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What is MEOH?

MEOH aims at being a cooperative society whose purpose is to provide resource flow management and collective decision making tools for communities willing to achieve projects.

These can either be social, entrepreneurial, educational, environmental, humanitarian or in the artistic, creative and inventive domain... and they may originate from the civil, public or private sectors.

 

I. Taking action

Bringing a new sustainable model can be achieved by joining different existing ideas and elements in an innovative way. Some key elements are :

  • cooperative society

  • organic groups / peer-to-peer

  • open money

  • collective decision making

  • open architecture

  • open licences

The system creates virtuous loop processes as individual, collective and public levels feed each other.  Advantages of this system are :

  • at a personal level, equipotent free cooperators in the commons ;

  • at a collective level, gather to leverage more resources than if done individually ; 

  • at a public level, take decisions and share benefits with community members.

 

I.1. Cooperative society

Cooperatives are defined as autonomous associations of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations. They are jointly-owned and democratically-controlled. The core idea is to share experience and benefits with community members.

 

I.2. Organic Groups 

The organic group function is what has made social networking so efficient and powerful. Groups bring collective intelligence at the collaborative level. Projects within the MEOH system are managed by groups, made of :

  • project promoters ;

  • core members (optional) ;

  • backers.

 

I.3. Tools to raise and share resources

Depending on the type of project a promoter wants to submit, different tools can be combined for an optimal flow of resources within the community :

  • crowd funding to collect money in legal currency ;

  • mutual credit to reward services in MEOH currency ;

  • Trusties to share surplus.

I.3.1. Crowd funding : promote and raise

Projects posted on MEOH get the attention of a large audience. Backers show their interest by providing small sums of money to the project(s) they support. The more backers, the more chances to reach the project's funding goal. This type of large-scale micro financing further motivates promoters to achieve their objectives. Moreover, funding is pledged in an all-or-nothing fashion until the deadline is reached, giving backers an increased safety feeling.

I.3.2. Mutual credit : for non profit enterprises

A project can also be supported through services. Those services are given a value using the MEOH currency. MEOH currency is a mutual credit system. One account is credited while another is debited of the same amount. Negative balances can be cancelled by providing time and services to other members. 

Any account-holder may know the balance (the degree of commitment) and trading volume (the level of participation) of any other account on the system.

I.3.3. Trusties : when incomes are involved

Above a decided threshold of participation, backers becoming core members can be included in the incomes of the project. The perspective of possible earnings will attract more committing backers.

Trusties stand for the aura of community members based on their reputation score. The more Trusties, the more access to advantages.

By keeping backers informed and providing them regularly with project updates, a promoter increases his “karma” rating. This score affects future earnings as people are more likely to do business with a trusted person. It is therefore a promoter's best interest to bring out the best of himself.


I.4. Collective decision making (and conflict management)

With a “one member, one vote” ratio, two major tools are involved in decision making and managing conflicts : Poll modules and Forums.

  • Decision modules are used to discuss a topic and take a collective decision.
    • Dot system to acknowledge the level of agreement on a topic and then to recentre the proposal.
    • Poll module to take decision.
  • Forums are places where potential conflicts are debated, moderated and resolved when decision modules no longer suffice.

I.5. Open Architecture

So far, Metacurrency seems to be the best candidate for sharing resources within the community. They promote protocols for an open-source economy complying to open architecture standards :

  • open identity : create, manage and own your identity in a trustworthy manner, independent of any central authority ; 

  • open rules : know the rules of any currency you participate in and see when they change ;

  • open transport : a protocol to enable a participant to transact with any other participant and a currency to interact with any other currency ;

  • open data : the ability to share, decentralize and distribute data (like your account balance) and ensure its integrity and privacy...

 

I.6. Open licences

As projects benefit from community resources, the output has to benefit the community as well. No strict copyright should be applied. Instead Creative Commons licences favour a richer public domain.

 

II. Forthcoming developments

II.1. Metagroups : gather and get

Metagroups favour the circulation of wealth between participating groups and can induce a stronger cooperation from third parties (like engaging volunteers, getting cost cuts from service providers or by claiming financial support from sponsors or local authorities).

 

II.2 MEOH awards : amplifying resonances

At the community level, a kitty is created to reward selected projects. Any promoter is eligible to benefit the pot attracting even more promoters and therefore backers and resources in the community.

 

III. Conclusion

The challenge is for civil society to deal with social, cultural, economic and environmental levers left aside or neglected by the political and economic powers. A self-organized community which has creative and financial capability, such is the endeavour.

"I teach you, you teach me, we learn together".

At a time when the issue of post-industrial society has not really been debated, we need a place for aspirations which are not related to the increase of consumer goods. We may easily know how many seeds are contained in a pumpkin, but how many pumpkins are contained in a seed, this is the next challenge we have to find out.
 

MEOH stands for Many Embers One Heat and the pulse is :

 " OPERATE > COOPERATE > CREATE > RADIATE "