Tainted Money?

What if we started tracing how money moves around in our economy, in an open and transparent way?

Hypothetically, Practically (see below(!)), I can start voluntarily taint money that goes through me. Publicize how much money I got from who, and to who do I give it. An extreme way of “voting” with every economic transaction I make. What if organizations started to do this in a standardized way?

Could this make some money worth more than other money?

Could this make our economy more “compassionate”, as Daniel Goleman would put it?

Technically, we can very easily start doing some things in this direction. Open a free account, and start logging our transactions over the net.

Decide that the money I got from here, is going in this direction – and see how it goes (or get stuck) from there on…

A proper meta-data would allow us to ask some interesting questions.

Was a shady business involved in the sources I got this money from?

How is my donation being used?

Did the government just “taint” 1 trillion USD last month??

“I only accept money from vegetarians…”

Stuff like that

Sounds easy to implement, and could be tons of fun, don’t you think?

Disclaimer:

<Transaction>

<id>1</id>

<source>http://www.semantinet.com</source>

<target>http://www.eburcat.com</target>

<amount>12</amount>

<date>March 31st, 2009</date>

<unit>USD</unit>

<comment>Salary</comment>

</transaction>

<transaction>

<id>2</id>

<source>http://www.eburcat.com</source>

<target>http://www.istockphoto.com</target>

<amount>1</amount>

<date>April 16th, 2009</date>

<unit>USD</unit>

<comment>That photo you see up there </comment>

</transaction>

Update: a more appropriate representations…

<Transaction>

<id>3</id>

<source>http://www.eburcat.com</source>

<target>http://www.gov.il</target>

<amount>1</amount>

<date>March 31st, 2009</date>

<unit>USD</unit>

<comment>Income tax…</comment>

</transaction>

Every time I piss in the toilet, I feel a great shame over the clean, fresh and tasty water that I’m using to flush my number 1. It’s a massive and collective insanity, when you pause and think about it for a moment. A giant elephant in the bathroom. About half of us on this planet, males, could piss without wasting even a single drop of water – but instead, we simply piss on everybody, and put this precious resource to a stupid use.

So, with our poor water conditions here in Israel, how come that we still don’t have some waterless johns in our homes? Awareness, Architecture, Interior Design, Engineering, and Marketing. We need all of these to solve the issue.

And here’s my challenge:

Now, that you’re aware of the situation – this is one of the greatest things that you can do to serve specifically Israel, and humanity at large: By the end of this century, make it so – that 99% of the Israelis will have a waterless-toilet-in-their-homes. Devise a name, a story, a design and an architecture – that will get us rid of this stupid water misuse. 

Anybody with me on this? Let me know. I’m thinking about starting a real competition with this