Is your life really your own? How much of your time do you spend doing what you would choose to do if you were entirely free? Is your job an extension of yourself, work that stirs your passions and fulfills you, or is it simply the means to earn the money required for survival and to pay for compensatory amusements?
If turbulence throughout the global economy has shown us anything in recent years it is that the economic systems in place serve the vast majority of human beings with wildly inconsistent and unreliable results. COINT aims for nothing less than the creation of a new reality. COINT is an alternative marketplace with it’s very own digital currency, a peer-to-peer network based on sharing goods and skills as opposed to the exchange of money.
The Reputation Currency
The money-driven market has been rigged against most of us from the beginning. Laboring long hours at work that deadens a person in order to satisfy the wishes of a higher authority is the norm. Most recognize this existence as fundamentally wrong, but accept it as the way things operate. COINT envisions a marketplace where “work” is no longer a dirty word, synonymous with soul-crushing production and consumption of goods. Instead, people work by doing what they love for a living. People use COINTs (digital and free international coins) and their natural skills to trade for services and goods with other members.
A snippet of the website’s brief manifesto reads as follows:
We believe in an international online currency based on reputation for the productive community, because people’s mental model for work is not in line with today’s dynamic attributes of daily life. People produce and consume in a highly intermittent fashion while being absolutely constrained by their outdated understanding of what “work” should be. We see everyday that this is causing significant inefficiency and wasted resource around the globe.
Collaborative Consumption
We see a shift away from the old concepts of work taking root already. Employees want more flexible schedules, better working conditions, to be treated as equals rather than underlings. Progressive companies that make greater effort to honor the overall well-being of their staff recognize that happier people work more efficiently and productively. COINT looks diffuse this understanding and provoke a more dramatic leap toward an economy where helping each other find fulfillment is the new wealth.
Despite gross inequality, continuing violence, and catastrophic environmental degradation, the stranglehold current power brokers maintain over determining value prevents effecting necessary changes. The COINT marketplace presents an opportunity to break the destructive cycles governed by money and establish a currency healthy for both individuals and the collective good.
The idealists behind this digital currency are graduates of various London universities and colleges. Follow their efforts to usher in a global sharing economy on Twitter and Facebook. “We shouldn’t have to choose between meaning and success.” We shouldn’t be “so busy making a living that it’s impossible to make a life.” The truth of these statements hardly needs arguing. By joining COINT, perhaps we might finally put our money where our hearts and senses are.
