Following some recent discussions on the esp Google Group, Tav emailed in this clairification of Pecus. I thought I’d reproduce the email here as it relates to my previous post It’s about Actualisation and means there’s a permalink to the documentation.

Over to Tav…

In the long long ago (late 1999), Pecus came into being as an internal currency to manage resources/rewarding within ESP. It was an actually an acronym for “Plex Economic Currency Units” and was meant to be a 21st century reflection of the Latin pecu — the origin of the Latin word for money/wealth, pecunia.

This was tied into a trust-based organisational structure — which would soon after go onto become what is today referred to as “Trust Maps”. And, quite separate from all of this were our efforts in the field of gift economies.

We were creating a media client called “Espra” which intended to have an “aggregated micropayments” service. The idea being that you would listen/watch/read using Espra and every couple of weeks it’d go “Hey dude, it seems that you’ve been enjoying all this great shit — would you like to give something back?” and you’d give it say £30 and it’d split that up according to what you’ve been reading/watching/listening/etc.

You can see related discussions here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010818140920/lists.espra.net/pipermail/espra-dev/2001-February/date.html

Now, several iterations later, we get to 2007 — the 24weeks Iteration. By this time the concept of Pecus had gone through various iterations and the overall economic model had become a tad bit more complex: http://wiki.espians.com/Image:Toman_ecology.png

As a firm believer in the existence of “simplicity beyond complexity”, I wasn’t too happy with this. And one of the main things I did —during the second half of 2007 and early 2008 — was work on simplifying this model.

And, as a result we have the current redefinition of Pecus — Personal EConomic Units — which has nothing at all to do with currencies! Pecus are:

1. Personally branded. That is, we’d have @nslater pecus, @evangineer pecus, @saul pecus, etc.
2. Public (for reasons of transparency) units of accounting relative to an individual’s brand.

That’s it!! It’s so simple that a 16 year old could implement it in less than a day. Quite ironic, since that’s exactly what Tim Jenks (then 16) did back in 1999 — the very first bit of code that was written in Espian history — with the difference being that back then it wasn’t personally branded and was global instead.

So what’s so great about Pecus? The idea is simply that as people go through their lives, they give away their branded pecus to the individuals who’ve provided something that’s been beneficial to them.

This can be explicit. For example, some of you will find yourself in the tav-branded Pecu allocations I made earlier this year: http://tav.espians.com/pecu-allocations-by-tav.html

Or, it can be implicit. For example, you may want to give one of your Pecus every time you watch a YouTube video — perhaps you have it set to automatically give out 3 Pecus if you watch a YouTube right to the end! Same for anything you might read, watch, listen to, etc.

A pseudo-structure of a Pecu allocation might look something like:

Pecu {
  from, # who is doing the allocation?
  to,     # who is it being allocated to?
  for,    # what the allocation for?
  comment, # optional field providing a comment
  amount,    # the amount of pecus being given
  valid_until # can be set to 'lifetime' or a future date
}

In short, Pecus simply provide a public accounting of the people (and the things they’ve provided) that you’ve found beneficial in your life.

Together with Trust Maps — this can be pretty damn useful already! For example, one could look at all the YouTube videos that people in a given Trust Map of yours have given Pecus to. The possibilities are endless.

But the real brilliance of Pecus comes with the notion of Pecu Payouts. This is a bit like dividend payouts in a company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend — a bit like having non-voting shares in a person!

Like Pecus, Pecu Payouts will also be completely public and transparent. The idea is that people can choose to do “payouts” across their Pecu allocations whenever they please.

For example, let’s say that I’ve made the following Pecu allocations:

• James Arthur: 4,000 pecus
• Sean B. Palmer: 4,000 pecus
• Danny Bruder: 2,000 pecus

So, in total, I’ve allocated 10,000 tav-branded Pecus.

Now, if I decide to do a payout of say £800, this would be split according to the portion/share the individuals have been allocated, i.e.

• James Arthur: £320
• Sean B. Palmer: £320
• Danny Bruder: £160

So, not only would I have publicly acknowledged the way I’ve benefited from those 3 individuals, but I’d have rewarded them with a payout too!

As to why people might be motivated to actually do payouts — I’m sure Jim Carrico will have lots of references in favour of Gift Economies — and the article by James that was referenced earlier makes a fairly decent argument: http://www.thruflo.com/2009/04/29/its-about-actualisation.html

The way that I tend to pitch it is that people care more about social status than money (lots of research out there to back this up). And those who’re “successful” and doing Pecu Payouts will find themselves invited to the cool parties whilst those that don’t won’t…

Myself, once the Plexnet is up and running, will be making Pecu Payouts of 50% of everything I make.

The beauty of the system is that it’s totally voluntary — that is, there is no enforced costs. And the fact that there are no micropayments gets around the obstacles like the mental transaction costs that Shirky is talking about. If anything, it’s aggregated micropayments.

I’ve also come up with ways in which we can do Pecus without having to be subject to regulation by the Financial Services Authority — but I’ll save that for a later post.

Now, let’s look at 3 simple scenarios:

1. Bruder has thousands upon thousands of fans who love his music — but besides concerts, he doesn’t get any reward for giving away his work for free on the internet. With Pecus and Pecu Payouts, it’s not inconceivable that he gets on average £0.50 from say 8,000 of his fans on average every month — enough to live comfortably. It won’t be the same fans every month — and there’ll be varying amounts every month. But the point is, he can focus on creating great work instead of doing shit deals with labels to just do what he loves! A form of micro patronage for the 21st century! It’s not inconceivable for any of us to find a few thousand people who are willing to support what we’re doing.

2. Gloria goes to Gambia and helps build a school for the kids in a village there. Usually this would be considered a philanthropic act. Besides the experience of doing it, she’d get no direct financial benefit from doing this. Now imagine a scenario with Pecus. Say those kids, thankful for having a decent school, give her 1000 Pecus each. Besides as a sign of kudos, those Pecus will initially be worthless — but how about in 15 years time? Those kids would’ve grown up — especially thanks to having had an education — and some of them would be in a position to do Pecu Payouts. Now, all of a sudden, Gloria is getting rewarded for her act!

3. A bunch of kids start playing a game every morning that as a side effect gets the local streets cleaned! In places like London this would normally be paid for by Council Taxes. Instead, the kids just get given Pecus by the locals — some of whom do Pecu Payouts. The kids get to have some fun, do something beneficial for the local community and the usual bureaucracies of local government gets completely bypassed!

In short, Pecus can totally transform the nature of our global economy. Turn it from one focused on extraction into one which benefits us all and enables everyone to be doing what they love!

But the real beauty is how Pecus — being so simple — compose really nicely with all of the other Plex ideas.

For example, combining Pecus with Trust Maps and Plex Democracy, we get Plex Challenges. This brings the beauty of capitalism — competition — into the Plex Economy in a healthy way. Plex Challenges are basically context-specific and time-limited competitions (e.g. 24weeks). Everyone can put forward Pecu allocations towards those that “best” fulfill certain Conditions, e.g. “A Logo for the Plexnet”.

With “best” being decided using the mechanisms of Plex Democracy — explained here: http://www.openideaproject.org/irclogs/browse/esp/2009/06/07#20-26-56

There’s only one winner — which is the stark reality of capitalism, even if we do our best to mask it — and the only stipulation of the Plex Challenges is that the produced work goes into the Public Domain (the Commons). The nice thing about this is that it limits competition to specific elements and thus promotes innovation whilst constantly improving the Commons.

The whole Plex Economic model is structured to create win-win-win scenarios as opposed to the current mode of win-lose. Anyways, I am starting to ramble — I hope I’ve explained Pecus enough… it’s
really quite simple…