Collaboration vouchers

The use of collaboration vouchers (CoVr) is a proposal where people are given vouchers to be spent on joining in-person groups in their local community.

Aims

Improving social capital

The primary intention of this policy idea is to build social capital through people forming meaningful in-person relationships amid constructive activities, rather than spending large amounts of time in online spaces or consuming streaming services, or less constructive in-person activities such as recreational shopping or gambling. The flow-on benefit should be improved mental health, which has been declining in each generation since the Internet arrived. Collaboration vouchers have been proposed as "annual grants given to each citizen, able to be spent on the membership fees of any registered collaboration. Unions may become registered collaborations, able to receive vouchers, and hence represent not only salaried employees but also the precariat and unemployed". The policy remains theoretical; however, some success has been achieved with using such vouchers for funding youth activities in Australia and Iceland.

Collaboration vouchers (CoVr) have been compared with other mechanisms designed to improve people's standard of living and enjoyment of life, such as a universal basic income (UBI) and universal basic services (UBS). The primary dimensions of both these approaches, and CoVr, is cost, target, and ethos.

• Regarding cost, CoVr would be around the same cost of a UBS, of approximately 10% of a typical UBI
• Regarding target, CoVr is not intended to provide for living expenses (UBI) or basic services such as transport and internet (UBS). However, it may indirectly help both targets. An individual's networks improve mutual assistance, which can improve access to basic necessities such as housing (e.g. couch surfing) and transport (e.g. carpooling), and being offered odd jobs. Ethnic and faith communities leverage one other for mutual assistance in terms of sharing opportunities, but also financially, such as the Jewish tradition of bar and bat mitzvahs, that creates a norm of financially investing within their community.
• Regarding ethos, CoVr assumes that - beyond mere survival - people prosper as a result of who they know. A UBI perceives that poverty is purely the individual's finances; however CoVr sees poverty as additionally an opportunity problem. Poverty is often due to combined lack of opportunity, and inability to capitalise on opportunities. Increasing opportunity is why elite education is perceived by parents as worth the exorbitant price due to access to networks. However, poor interpersonal skills and/or mental health may prevent a person from capitalising on what opportunities do exist.

Alleviating poverty and social inequality by increasing people's capacity to function as part of organisations and networks is an indirect method relative to a UBI but may be significantly more effective. Functional people are more productive, which grows the common wealth rather than just redistributing it. Membership of local community groups may offer people access to new networks, and also significant improvements to mental health and interpersonal skills. These should work in tandem to offer opportunities, while equipping the person to take advantage of them.

The necessities of life, such as housing, transport, food and clothing, must exist before people can consider joining local groups. Thus CoVr would require a traditional, targeted (means tested) welfare system, but may work well in conjunction with a UBS.

Reduction of misinformation and extremism

The secondary intent of CoVr is to make society more resilient to misinformation and extremism. Both are products of largely online information silos, magnified by in-person self-assortment, where people congregate with (or even move house to be closer to) similar others. In a population sense, self-assortment takes various forms, with the most common being class (wealth) and education (intelligence).

Commonly, more educated and wealthy people prefer (and can afford) urban areas, whereas less educated and wealthy people prefer (and can afford) rural areas. Overall, self-assortment magnifies the silos produced by the internet and leads to extremism, both on the left and the right. CoVr is intended to reduce misinformation and extremism by promoting in-person rather than online interaction, and by creating an ecosystem of groups whereby the more friendly are preferred. Groups with a friendly culture are more likely to contain members with moderate views, who will tend to gently challenge extreme or misinformed viewpoints.

Dynamic ecosystem

Collaboration vouchers are intended to create a dynamic marketplace of local groups, where members vote with their feet. While a smaller-scale market in community groups may already exist, such as on MeetUp, the requirement for members or leaders to self-fund dramatically reduces the options that exist, and fewer options reduce the effect of quality control. For example, if only one book club exists in a local area, people who do not like that group have no choice except not to attend any book club.

People are given a certain amount of money in vouchers per month, which they can spend on the membership fee to join local groups registered to the system. A month is deemed long enough to learn whether a person likes a group, but not too long that the person is locked in, and unable to join another should they wish. Fluidity in membership improves the ecosystem-like quality because less friendly and functional groups will lose members faster to those providing a better member experience. This is like free-market capitalism, where consumer choice provides quality control.

The innovative dynamism of cities provides evidence for the power of such a marketplace in social options. It is not coincidental that cities also tend to be more liberal (left-wing), because more social options, and the ability to leave undesirable social environments, promotes more enjoyable and functional (collaborative rather than hierarchical) groups.

Potential flaws

A collaboration voucher scheme has numerous potential flaws:

• The policy may be abused by those who use agree to form a group, and use the vouchers to fund normal consumption.
• Groups may become insular and unfriendly to new (or certain types of) members, and so no longer serve the overall community.
• Certain individuals may use their voucher to join groups for destructive purposes, e.g. to make unwelcome approaches, or generally be unpleasant.
• Socially adept people usually form the foundation of any social group. However such people are already socially engaged and a communities' remaining people may not have the capacity to form functional social groups.
• Most people are very busy, especially when raising a family, and vouchers may tend to be used by the unemployed and retired.

Some of these flaws have proposed solutions, which may or may not prove viable. The latter two flaws would rely upon the availability of vouchers promoting their usage, even by otherwise busy people. In time, it is also hoped that an expectation will arise that everyone takes part in their local community, and not only their family and workplace and existing friendship circles.