Five families have accepted invitations to participate in the first Copiosis demonstration project. Kenton Copiosis, located in a North Portland, Ore., neighborhood will be launching in September.
Participant families, who will remain anonymous until they agree to release their identities, are excited about participating. Most are eager to see how the demonstration project works, how the software works, and what results are produced through the project.
Members of each family will be acting independently in the project. They will be able to accumulate net-benefit reward (NBR) just as anyone would in a full-blown, nationwide or global Copiosis economy using software designed by me, managed by Aaron, our IT person, and built by a class from the Portland State University Computer Science department. The software uses the Copiosis algorithm to measure results of participant actions to create benefit for others. This is the first time the algorithm will be used in a real-world demonstration.
I’m pretty excited by all this. The families after orientation were too. They were excitedly talking about what they could do to benefit others. Next steps for the family members are to attend a software training. They also have requested a brainstorming meeting to identify what else they could do to receive NBR.
There are three demonstration projects launching on the US west coast in the near future. Kenton is the first, followed by Chico, Calif., which is expected to launch this fall. A group in Oroville, Calif., is just beginning the process, which includes hosting a Copiosis Tour, then a series of meetings in which people will scope out what their project will look like.
Since capitalism requires people to buy everything, they will not likely want to give things to others they have to buy supplies for. They’re likely to do things that don’t cost much money, which leaves plenty of things people can do for others. It just requires a little imagination.
Demonstration projects are designed to prove that Copiosis can work. They approximate a context of maximum freedom for participants to organize and effect their own Copiosis demonstration. We want to answer the following questions:
- Does the project stimulate people to do things for others they weren’t doing before?
- Does the project motivate people to collect net-benefit reward?
- Does the project increase community connections by introducing community members to each other?
- Does the project increase community resiliency?
In addition to answering these questions, a lot will be learned on the back end of the project. Behind the scenes we have to do an analysis of the things people will offer each other, so we can add value data to the algorithm so the algorithm produces the right NBR for the product or service offered. That’s not going to be a small task, but it’s all good because we’ll learn a lot more about what we need in the software, how to refine the algorithm, how to gather the data, and how the Copiosis Payer Organization will work in reality, which is EXACTLY what these projects are designed to do! We’ll also see how people attempt to game the system as well, allowing us to close such “loopholes” for future projects and the full-blown system roll out.
In the Kenton project, a local award-winning newspaper and a few alternative healthcare providers are interested in offering their services as producers to project participants.
I’m excited about what we’ve produced so far. The Kenton Project appears to be right on schedule despite lengthy delays this summer with getting our software on our servers. I hope you’re as excited as I am. With three projects in various design stages, and the software up and ready, I’m looking forward to seeing demonstration projects all over the country and perhaps other countries over time, all demonstrating that Copiosis is a viable, practical alternative to running the world on capitalism.