Human Potential Comes First
While I'm waiting to get the meeting notes from Sarah one thing that I remember that felt like a moment of clarity from today's meeting was when we were talking about bringing out the genius or the potential of each one of us.
Pono could account for both potential and contribution. Every person enters the world with the same reserve of Pono.
This reserve is a representation of the unique potential each person carries within them. This alone could also become a strong motivation to contribute and to help one another develop and support our individual strengths.
As people contribute to their community, care for others, create, teach, build, heal, or steward the land, portions of that reserve become unlocked and enter circulation.
Pono therefore records two things simultaneously:
Potential / what every person inherently possesses.
Contribution / how much of that potential has been brought into the world.
The purpose is not to reward people with value.
It is to recognize the value that already existed within them.
Then there are other questions, such as: How large should a lifetime reserve be, and what happens if someone uses all of it?
Today's economy is built around the fear of running out of money. This fear is almost embedded into our DNA.
I think the fear should not be, “What if they run out?” but rather, “What if they don’t?”
What gifts, abilities, and care remain locked inside people because they never had the opportunity or encouragement to express them?
To me, this approach reflects the distinction between an economy designed for people and people being made to serve the economy. Let the reserve run out while people are doing the best and most meaningful work they can do.
There are many possible remedies if someone uses their entire reserve.
In conventional economies, money continually disappears from local circulation through interest, speculation, rent extraction, and wealth accumulation. We all experience chronic scarcity because value is constantly being pulled away.
What we're trying to achieve is different.
First, every Pono stays within the system; it does not simply vaporize. Whatever leaves people’s wallets through demurrage flows into community funds where it can be recirculated into new projects, basic needs, land restoration, and community wellbeing and continues to circulate. Instead of flowing upward into permanent accumulation, value continually returns to the commons. In a circular economy, it would be almost impossible for someone to remain penniless because the community's capacity to recognize and support contribution is continuously renewed, it's the foundation of the system, it's the mother.
Second, issuing new Pono to organizations is more challenging because it will eventually create inflation, and inflation would cause each person’s reserve to lose value more quickly.
With a fixed reserve, organizations don't need an unlimited power to create new Pono.
Their operating budgets can come from sources such as:
- Community treasury allocations funded by demurrage.
- Contributions from members.
- Revenues earned through goods and services.
That avoids the difficult question of how much new currency should be issued to organizations every year.
Another option is to treat organizations as living entities as well and allocate fixed reserves to them to bring forth their potential. The goal is not to keep nursing organizations with unlimited issuance but to help them to kick start their projects so they have a chance to generate income further by doing whatever is aligned for their purpose.
The challenge there would be to see whether we create organizations to increase our stakes in the system, or to create genuine contribution in society.
So here it is: this is the beginning.
Pono is still a proposal. The rules must be shaped with the people who would live with them, the system must learn from real places rather than imposing an abstract model on them. But the path is one: the righteous action, the balanced approach, and harmony with nature and existence.
This will make it easier to recognize the fullness of human contribution, make room for basic dignity, and circulate value in service of people and land.