Pay-What-You-Want Revolution

**The status of this article is first-draft; it might contain some original ideas that have not gone through refinement process of getting feedback from the intended audience (you). Give me feedback to help me improve the reading experience for the next reader (18.3.2015).**

What if I told you, that the next jobs lost to automation, will be the ones of the banks and credit companies, the controllers of advertisement driven mass media and the teams, who try to maximize the short-term profits of their company? That is Pay-What-You-Want Revolutution.

Pay-What-You-Want is instant pricing mechanism based on the feedback of user behavior gathered from payment histories and other relevant statistics. Upon that we can build a FairPayment system, which can track how fairly certain users pay and how much they can lure early adopters to buy new products. If we CrowdFund the product launches with co-operation of the eRetailers and companies who produce the products, we get better information about the whereabouts of loyal consumers for every new product.

Upon this we can build fan-oriented driven product launches, which make value based target marketing easier than ever before bridging some important gaps between traditional and ethical consumerism. The values contained within traditional mass media marketing are too mass-oriented compared to our individual world views. Internet of Things will bring all this to traditional retail shopping environments.

The First and Second World Wars have so far been the biggest investments on scientific public relationship management (aka propaganda), which encourages manipulation towards obeyance, indivudualism and bureaucratic model of human mind. We could build a new corporate business model for reputation and appreciation management of the consumers, which encourages intuition, co-operation and trust between the consumers and producers. In order to do that, we need to change how the money flows, and most essentially, why money flows. This future will be built upon integration of the CrowdFunding, FairPayment and Ethical Consumerism. Pay-What-You-Want pricing model is the beginning.

**As of 13.4. this page is under revision; complete later this week, you can read my past ideas today.**

**I want to learn from you, if my rationale is illogical, let me know so I can refine it. You can leave a comment (no-registration needed) or check my You-Can-Help-Me page for further information!**

## What is Pay-What-You-Want?

It is a combination of auction and classic price competition, that is fair. Let's assume that Amazon would be using Pay-What-You-Want model, here is how it would work:

* Amazon would create a Pay-What-You-Want campaign on a product
* They would tell the users that the normal price is 50% higher than they were currently asking for it, but let the customers Pay-What-They-Want
* Corporations want us to believe, that people would "steal" the product for free. However, science has shown this to be false, in reality people would pay a fair price, which is usually around 70% (according to one University professor I chatted with, who works for an eCommerce platform, that is based on Pay-What-You-Want model of pricing)
* For instance if the book would cost $100 and the Pay-What-You-Want price would be $150 and if average consumer would pay 70% of it, Amazon would get $105 in average

Everyone of you will now think, "Oh great... but this could not work when people know about this system". That is not true. To prevent the free rider problem (people who wouldn't pay anything), the basic Pay-What-You-Want was enhanced with FairPayment model. I will try to explain it here, but is okay if you don't understand it's mechanisms, you can trust me, that it is fair; much more fair than the system modern corporations use. FairPayment model works like this read if you want to, you can also skip it:

* When users pay fairly, they get more Pay-What-You-Want offerings open, otherwise they have to pay normal price and are given the alternative to pay more fairly, so that they would get Pay-What-You-Want offerings.
* When certain product is paid fairly on a frequent basis, it's base price will get lower, because Amazon is making more money from the volumes they are selling; because some people pay fairly, the product will get more affordable.
* We can use computer algorithms to adjust the prices quickly without any costs.
* If Amazon ordered the books from another FairPayment vendor, it causes a network effect where the author gets rewarded, the publisher gets rewarded and Amazon gets rewarded and some of the consumers will get the book cheaper, because this reputation network calibrated the price correctly without paying the salaries of marketing departments and business analysts.
* It would be safe to use for Amazon, because it reacts quickly to the user behavior: if too many books go for free, the Pay-What-You-Want campaign is over. If certain user appears to be a robot from a malicious backgrounds, they will be cut-off from the Pay-What-You-Want offers
* Advanced readers will notice, that this might be vulnerable to same problems as Stock Markets. For example competing publishers could create Bots to manipulate the prices. However, if there would be a minimum price for the book and the Bots could not take the book for free, no competitor could afford this kind of trickstery.

**I want to learn from you, if my rationale is illogical, let me know so I can refine it. You can leave a comment (no-registration needed) or check my You-Can-Help-Me page for further information!**

## Pay-What-You-Want Employment With CrowdFunding

You have probably heard about CrowdFunding Web-sites like Kickstarter or Indie-Go-Go. Some of you might even have heard of one of the first Pay-What-You-Want Employees, Amanda Palmer.

How does one self-employ as Pay-What-You-Want employee? Simple, you CrowdFund yourself. If you can build something of value people will give you money. Of course, only a small minority of us are Amanda Palmers, but I invented how we can cause a network effect, which will make this model work.

Let's say, that Amanda Palmer would donate certain amount of her CrowdFunded money to people who have inspired her. Now those persons would have motivation to market Amanda's CrowdFunding project, because they would be paid. Pay-What-You-Want Employment would be based on projects you have a passion for and which will ultimately have some kind of value to others.

### Pay-What-You-Want Project

We all need to earn our living and the regular week is 40 hours. If you work in a field, where a choice between self-employment and working as an employee is possible, you could start a Pay-What-You-Want Project. Here is example of my personal Pay-What-You-Want Project:

* I will work for the Pay-What-You-Want Revolution as best as I can
* I will commit to work 60 hours a week (I already do this, because I work 40 hours for my employee and 20 hours for myself in projects like this one, I don't watch TV or consume on products that consume my time out from my creative passions)
* I will commit to only spend 1,500€ a month for living
* I will start working after my current job contract ends
* In order to secure my living I will start looking for a new job when my savings are below 4,500€
* Every month when I have more savings than 4,500€ I will work full time (60 hours a week) for the Pay-What-You-Want Project, other times I will seek for a job and work 20 hours a week for the project.
* When I get a job, I will work 20 hours for the project and start a new CrowdFunding round, and when my savings exceed 4,500€, I will try to detach from my day-work and start to work full time on the project again

For some of you 60 hours a week might sound like a lot, but when you have a passion for something and stop wasting your time on TV and alcohol, it is quite easy to work total of 60 hours a week this way. Many people (Amanda Palmer for example) enjoy their self-employed careers so much, that it is hard to distinguish what is work and what is not. This is common trait for entrepreneurs and creative people.

By supporting this model and these people, you can be part of the slow progress away from corporate jobs towards Pay-What-You-Want Careers. AND sometimes you get real products included, just like in regular CrowdFunding projects!

### Pay-What-You-Want the "Project Is Inspired By" Mechanism

Because we are trying to establish a system that encourages cooperation, trust and passion of making things happen, the "Project Is Inspired By" mechanism is very important!

For every CrowdFunding round you endorse the people that inspired you the most to do the Project. You promise to give them a certain cut of your CrowdFunding money. Of course there will be a lot of people who are likely to inspire you, but choose only small number of them for each CrowdFunding round. Choose those whose co-operation you need the most at the moment; it could be your team mates, some people who can market your CrowdFunding round or help you get funded.

Each Round you should also thank those, who inspired your progress with your project. The "thanks section" should be a list of people who inspired you, but who you can't include to the small number of "Project Is Inspired By" mechanism; this would be kind of a way to tell them that "you will be included on my next round"

**I want to learn from you, if my rationale is illogical, let me know so I can refine it. You can leave a comment (no-registration needed) or check my You-Can-Help-Me page for further information!**

## Pay-What-You-Want Company, Employer Funded by The Network of Customers

Also companies can use the Pay-What-You-Want business model. The labor will be divided to regular jobs and Pay-What-You-Want jobs. When an employee uses his or her free time to help a customer project, the customer can pay what the customer wants to pay. Regular work is done with regular salary, successful Pay-What-You-Want projects are paid as bonsuses.

If someone can figure out ways of saving production costs by co-operation of customers, reorganization of work or other such maneuver a Pay-What-You-Want Project is started and it will be inspired by the people who will be working on it. I have created a Pay-What-You-Want business model for software companies.

The Indutrial Age and the current system has brought us one huge problem: we need laws to maintain order and stealing is against the law. This means, that you are not allowed to eat if you don't have any money. The Pay-What-You-Want model could make it easier to provide food and shelter for everyone. We could have different grocery stores for people who have money and they could Pay-What-You-Want for the same products to make them available for a lower price at another grocery store, whose customers are less wealthy.

In a sense when you go home from your local grocery store a product you bought might have a certificate on it, which would provide you a web-site address to the producers Pay-What-You-Want Project, which would try to send food to Africa for free or donate to a charity. Sure the sceptics of you might think about how efficient all this would be... but in the end, it would be much more effective than what we do now, because Pay-What-You-Want Projects require more transparency.

**I want to learn from you, if my rationale is illogical, let me know so I can refine it. You can leave a comment (no-registration needed) or check my You-Can-Help-Me page for further information!**

## Pay-What-You-Want Government, Rewarding Citizens Who Make It Run Better

What if the entire Government would be working by the Pay-What-You-Want principles? This would be huge improvement on how we govenrn human beings! More about this can be found here, where I sketched a OpenLife, CrowdFunding 2.0 model.

If the local communities would work within an OpenLife-system, the people without fair-pay track could only enjoy the unfair payments for a short-period of time, after which they would be excluded from the FairPayment system and forced to pay for the private entities full pricing.

Because government today operate through same employment rules as the corporate world, but can't go bankrupt, the officials end up protecting their jobs instead of the greater good of the entire system. Instead, if they would be rewarded for making more efficient solutions and co-operting with their local communities, savings woud ge generated.

## Pay-What-You-Want Start-Up Fundraising

Start-ups are risky business and they are really hard to do. Many of you reading this probably dream of getting investments in and start working on your idea. However, if you are passionate enough, you can start working on your start-up right now by creating your own Pay-What-You-Want Project.

I made a bankrupcy with one start-up idea and I had to start working for another company and pay-up the loans I had guaranteed. If I would have had the option of using Pay-What-You-Want Start-Up Fundraising I might had been able to keep on working for the project, because we had many enthusiastic supporters.

Also a start-up that has been able to operate with Pay-What-You-Want Project based CrowdFunding Rounds will have a much easier time approaching the investors, because you have proven to the investors, that you are dedicated, able to make a buzz about your business idea and you are not driven by greed but passion instead. Such investors who appreciate non-greedy approaches are also more likely to be of the co-operative type, who will use their own networks and time for your success. Some investors are greedy opportunity seekers, who just want that piece of pie from your company that money can buy.

**I want to learn from you, if my rationale is illogical, let me know so I can refine it. You can leave a comment (no-registration needed) or check my You-Can-Help-Me page for further information!**

## Guidelines of Creating Your Own Pay-What-You-Want Project

1. Create a Wiki for your project, Wikia is a very nice and easy to use platform for this (you should see the Create Wikia at top right corner of this page)
2. Create a Facebook-page for promoting your project and to provide easy way for your supporters to follow your progress.
3. Create a Facebook-group if you want to provide your supporters a place to discuss about your idea, contribute to it and share important information with you!
4. Promote your project at your LinkedIn profile
5. Create your own You-Can-Help-Me page to your own Wiki with links to your CrowdFunding projects.
6. Send me a message with a link to **your You-Can-Help-Me page** through my LinkedIn profile (add me as your contact also so I can follow you!) so I can check that you have understood the concept correctly
7. I will add your project to the list of Start-Ups Using Pay-Me-Whatever Funding.
8. I will use all my networks to promote your start-up!
9. Thanks for sharing your time for my ideas!