This project was part of a group undertaken as part of a brief set by Intels Peoples and Practice Research Group. The project brief was to explore new interaction with the future roles of money.
This project looks at the big picture, but focuses on three individual users of a complex ethical trading system. It explores ideas of alternative currencies, the Link between Ethics and Money, and future finical instruments.
There is so much to be said of having an ethical value these days, but what if the value of your ethics was linked to a real system, where they could be traded for money via a brokerage system. The system starts as a very simple community based method, set up by those with vested interests in ethics they wish to promote. Ethics Traders would run Syndicates of Ethical Names, meeting in the coffee houses to make exchanges of Ethical Contracts.
It was a good thing at first, people made tiny profits, but soon a dark horse emerged, Ethics Speculators soon saw this as a new Financial Instrument, and before long the market was becoming skewed, not by ideals, but by profit.
Ethical Names are the individuals who participate in purchasing and fulfilling ethical contracts, and to bank a premium of ECUs in the process. Names can be individuals or companies, and are arranged in syndicates. Originally these would be communities who would form together to promote something, and their was friendly competition between them.
Ethical Traders are those that run syndicates, and are also those that are in charge of setting up and maintaining the system. They facilitate the trades of ethical contracts between the syndicates, raise money from companies and encourage them to join the system. They can not normally be Names themselves, but make their money by charging commission on trades and cash exchanges, as well as paying for the maintenance of the system.
Ethical Speculators are those that join the system, seeing it as a new form of financial instrument. Initially as Traders, but with a very different methodology. Not looking to promote anything in particular, but looking for where the market is going, and eventually skewing the prices on the most obscure things.
At the heart of the system is the Ethical Currency Unit. This is a standardised unit that all trades are kept in, to keep money into the system. It is at a nominal exchange rate with Pound Sterling at 1:1. ECUs act more like scip, they keep money into the system, are used for all trades, with commission being charged on any exchanges between Sterling and ECU.
ECUs are exchanged between traders, and distributed to their syndicates. This occurs by the fulfilment of Ethical Contracts, highly standardised contracts to perform ethical obligations. Names and Companies could make out contracts for something they wanted to offset or promote, which would then be exchanged for a premium on the market between the traders. The receiving Names would then full-fill the contract and bank the ECU value plus a premium. The contracts would be standardised, for example, purchase £100 fair trade goods, but could also be for more everyday things too, such as 100 Overt Politeness Incidents. Contracts are recorded on a trading site and verified by the community.
Corporate Social Responsibility, and now Personal Social Responsibility, Green-washing, Carbon Trading Schemes and the like, everything seems linked into this idea that an ethic can be quickly bought off. Even the idea of a Credit Card to help the poor, help the poor by becoming a greater consumer. It is not that I believe these things are a bad idea, or where launched with bad intentions, but I wish to question the wider environment that has given rise to such services, are they truly the best way to promote an ethic?
A secondary influence where community currencies, where groups of people had deliberately sought to separate themselves from existing financial systems, though still had to maintain a symbolic link. How could a financial system work where the base unit of currency is an Ethic.
The world I have created in these social fictions examines a system for trading ethics, and three users interactions with the system. How does attitudes change if suddenly everything that can be ethically measured becomes linked to money?