The Individually Controlled Account for Commons Focussed Activities

[Tom Crowl]

The structures of self-government designed by our founders are attempts to resove some of the inherent conflicts between hierarchical vs. distributed networks of power and decision making.

And while they provided an excellent framework... and especially an articulated list of "non-decision" areas (Bill of Rights, etc)...

Changes in scale, social patterns and technology have created imbalances favoring hierarchical structures and feedback loops accelerating that imbalance.

An individually controlled account for commons focussed activities becomes, in its essence, a distributed network for group decision and action with the potential for self-organization. The individuals account becomes an "empowered" node which because of networking and numbers acts as a counter-balance to hierarchical forces.

It's simply speech and association which require technical implementations that have changed with time.
Further, commons activities are both political and charitable.

See Chagora Prototype and Faq

[Tom Crowl]

The Chagora Account structure is also optimal for public finance of elections and as a framework for building leadership from the bottom up which I'll be happy to discuss further.

[Sepp Hasslberger]

Apart from elections and the political contributions connected with them, is Chagora considering to act as a conduit of micro payments to publishers of blogs, videos, music, and generally publishers of (useful or in any case appreciated) information on the net?

Would I, in other words, be able to use Chagora to pay a blogger whose article I appreciate, or the producer of a video or a piece of music, fifty cents or a dollar for his/her efforts?

[Tom Crowl]

That is certainly the hope ultimately... and is part of the vision originally laid out a couple of years ago. Right now I'm stuck till I can find Angel and/or VC capital. I was cut off by Bank of America right in the damn middle of finally getting up the prototype even with great credit!

Naturally, my credit has all gone to hell now... While I don't believe B of A did it with any real awareness of my project... the fact is Chagora, by empowering individuals in the commons, will hopefully reduce the hierarchical control of these mega-banks and lead to a more distributed system of ownership for them as well.

Its a part of the overall vision that the Chagora trust accounts would be better dispersed into local banks. The malinvestment of large banks is actually also a product of "scale" issues which Chagora is a part of addressing.

Chagora is actually very fundamentally required for scaling systems of association and speech without the hierarchical and unnecessary intermediaries that interfere and distort those transactions.