How to achieve shared prosperity worldwide?
“We are the only species on Earth that has to pay to exist. It hasn’t always been that way. We made it that way. We constructed poverty as we know it. We have so much food that half of it goes to waste. We have so many homes that there are five times more vacant homes than people experiencing homelessness. Poverty is a legal status imposed on those excluded from legal access to the needs of life. It is economic injustice. It is a weapon” (Santens, 2020).
“If you are afraid of poverty, you will accept that shitty job for that shitty wage. You will do that work you feel is wrong, that hurts other people or the environment because it’s better than hunger and homelessness. You will keep your mouth shut when you would otherwise speak up” (Santens, 2020).
However, poverty can be eradicated, its weak spot was first identified in 1797 by Thomas Paine in the Agrarian Justice. Then, it was retaken with strength through research and experimentation for the past 60 years by many scholars and activists, but always failing subject to two main reasons: (1) political interests and (2) national borders limiting collective action.
Is everything lost? Totally the opposite. It is our turn to strike back!
Democracy Earth, Proof of Humanity, and Kleros built the tools humanity was missing for both bypassing political interests and erasing the borders limiting the collective minds.
We are now on the path to have every single human being covered with a universal basic income.
For how long? For the entire lives of each one of us.
Will this income be enough for me? Where will this income come from? How can this income guarantee my basic needs? How can I start using it? How can I collaborate to speed up the process? These are the questions we will address in this call to action.
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Decentralizing the ecosystem growth
Today, the Proof of Humanity community is living in a historical moment. One where the organization enabling both a global universal basic income and a Sybil-proof identity, is hiring a one-single full-time Product Manager. But even if this my dream job, is this what the org really needs? Do we need a single person to direct the product strategy? I agree that at this very moment, organizationally speaking, we need a person to commit full-time, be the single point of contact, and the only one accountable for failure regarding the product strategy. However, we need that this someone also looks to decentralize itself, dissolving its “authority” into the community by employing proper coordination mechanisms. Why? Because the cost of paying a manager could be used to facilitate and incentivize self-development. The limited-time, network, and knowledge capacity a manager has can be unlocked by having a truly regenerative decentralized autonomous organization where anyone can propose a product, find others interested too, get resources to make it happen, and connect the final product with both the digital and local worlds.
This is precisely what I am proposing here as the polycentric product manager. In short words, the polycentric approach means including multiple centers of action and decision-making into the autonomous and coordinated self-development of products, while also retaining one person accountable for making the strategy happen.
My goals as PM are two. Establish the social coordination mechanisms to turn the PoH DAO into a manager-less organization while focusing on driving digitally and locally, the adoption of $UBI as a preferred payment method.
How long it will take? An answer is not possible to outline at this moment. However, by the end of one working year, the process of decentralizing the product manager should be already in place, and thus the cost of having a manager to monitor and improve the system could be migrated to the community through bounties, communications channels, and governance mechanisms.
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Product Roadmap
You might agree that there are four repetitive pain points areas for the community:
(1) User Interphase: Registering is complex, expensive, and with risks;
(2) Communication: On one hand, Telegram channels are chaotic, there are many of them, and conversations are difficult to follow due to mixing debates. On the other hand, the governance forum is mainly in English, it requires people to register and learn how to use a new tool, and it does not engage people to participate in.
(3) The $UBI token: Two things. Value dilution and making use of the token to cover daily needs is quite impossible;
(4) Collaboration: There are many people willing to contribute to the development of PoH but they do not know specifically what to do or how to help.
From actively listening and participating in the chats, a group of highly committed members of PoH, self-called the UBI Rebel Alliance, got together to work and deliver solutions to alleviate the above-mentioned problems. Among these, the polycentric product manager’s proposal covers the following:
TL;DR: The above roadmap is the aggregation of milestones in working progress.
The main objective of Humberto’s strategy is to configure an enabler environment for anyone to work on the development of their ideas, find collaboration matches and resources for realizing both for-profit and non-profit endeavors that push up the price of $UBI, and uses PoH as an identification method.
Below is a summary of both achievements and to-dos within each pain area.
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1️⃣ User Interphase
Done: A YouTube channel that shows how to properly set up a profile in PoH without risks. Showing and linking the viewers to community-created resources such as Telegram groups, guides, bots, and websites mitigates the risk.
In progress: A Discord server that facilitates communication and coordination between talents and needs (Thanks to Mati for leading it). Here, proposals such as the one RoboTeddy did for improving the user experience, will have support in both Discord and YouTube for facilitating the matching of talent with realizing those improvement proposals.
2️⃣ Communication
Done: Gathering of active members of PoH (atm, I have only reached the Spanish-speaking side) to work together in communications improvements. The PoH Newsletter 📰 (soon delivered).
In progress: YouTube sections called Planetary Senate and Agora Humano.
Hilde Latour has confirmed participation.
Additionally, the Discord server will be soon open to all the community for facilitating access to clean and structured conversations by thread and language. As well as supported by moderation bots, reputation rankings, and other cool features!
3️⃣ The $UBI token
Done: First quick explanation of what is Human.Money; Video tutorial of how to connect to Polygon network (thanks to Javier for making the guide). First conversations with other crypto-based UBI projects to work together in product development and channel their UBI tokens to humans registered in PoH.
In progress: Two fundraising campaigns, one to lock liquidity in the Human.Money vaults and the other to support full-sponsored registration.
To be started: A program for local shop adoption with three main axes: Employee registration, $UBI as a payment method, and both an app and a crypto debit card for facilitating easy payments through the Polygon network.
4️⃣ Collaboration
Done: Got GitBook for free and added the RaidGuild’s methodology contextualized to PoH. Created a GitHub org where the products here proposed are being developed.
In progress: Three simultaneous efforts. The operationalization of the RaidGuild’s methodology in Discord. A human profile page as a dynamic CV attached to your PoH’s address🖺. And a hiring center that pays in $UBI, named Human.bounties ❤️.
The projects within the collaboration area are key in enabling the whole community to contribute to the development of PoH.
In Discord, every product and project proposed by the community will receive assistance from the server’s stewards, first by helping outline their product/project proposal and then by assisting project leaders in breaking their milestones down into bounties.
The Human.Bounties site will facilitate the job of the stewards while enabling anyone to hire other members of PoH for projects even outside PoH’s ecosystem. The Human.Bounties site is designed with embedded safety for both parties (of being paid/receive what you paid for) and payment in $UBI by default.
This strategy will serve as a force to increase the demand for the $UBI token.
The dynamic CV will, on one hand, allow PoH to create badges as a way to recognize contributions from its community. On the other hand, allow PoH members to display the badges earned for contributing to PoH. As each badge holds evidence of the skills and knowledge employed, you will be able to show to future employers your skill portfolio ;)
Note: This is a work in process from several purpose-driven individuals from www.fightpandemics.com where I am currently PMing this product.
Do you feel is too much for an individual?
It is. That’s why I am not working alone. As stated from the beginning I am working with highly committed members of PoH and outside of it to establish an enabler environment for anyone to autonomously develop the idea of its dreams.
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⚖️ Why choose Humberto’s proposal?
👉 Accountability
Bi-weekly reporting. On Mondays, I’ll present the week’s to-do plan. On Fridays, I’ll present The Good (achievements), The Bad (obstacles), and The Ugly (failures) from my progress.
👉 Reachability
Every two Fridays, I will lead an Ask Me Anything, open to everyone, recorded and uploaded to our YouTube and LBRY channels. This event will also be a space to know the progress of other product/project leaders.
👉 Purpose-driven
The goal is to end poverty. For that, we require to support all community-based proposals that drive adoption, value, and ease of use. And the best way of supporting them is by providing an enabling environment for product development, one that pushes up the value of the $UBI token, expands its global coverage, and facilitates coordination among all. That’s precisely what my work aims to.
👉 I publicly committed my life to facilitate global prosperity and peace wherever a human being lives by turning global goals into mission-oriented local businesses
I have always started my own businesses. I have learned from crashing some to selling others, to keep my focus only on those that give me the most of happiness and income. In this path, I learned that putting my skills, knowledge, contacts, and passion can make a bigger impact when acting within a global purpose-driven community, than creating something that will only give me money. I have volunteered and participated in several communities. However, Proof of Humanity got my full attention. I believe we have in our hands the true potential to make the world a safer and fairer place for all.
This working position is a big challenge that I am prepared to take. Gladly, I am already working with many people as committed as I am to PoH and UBI. You are not alone. Together we are able to eradicate poverty and make our local communities safer and fairer places to live.
Summing up! 👐
Where will the basic income come from? From implementing business strategies that constantly add liquidity to the reserve pools.
Will this UBI guarantee coverage of my basic needs in the future? Yes. Only if we focus on both developing a business strategy that enables continuous self-funding while improving the coordination mechanisms of Proof of Humanity.
In specific, we need to focus simultaneously on two things. Supporting the self-development of products that use UBI and PoH so they act as a balance to the increasing selling pressures of UBI. And improve the communications and coordination mechanisms for unlocking the whole potential of the collective mind.
A single-sided team will try to reach everything or try to focus only on one area. And let’s be honest. This is a titanic endeavor that requires to be at multiple fronts at the same time. The Proof of Humanity community needs to enable all its members to take care of those subjects that resonate the most with them. In this line, the polycentric product manager strategy includes the community in the self-development of PoH’s products through 5 areas and a budget tagged to each area. Learn what is the strategy I propose here.
If you believe the community needs to be part of the product development strategy vote for Humberto as PM.
Let’s end poverty together!
Let’s be the first DAO awarded with a Nobel prize ;)
