User:Ryan.Salisbury/Knab

Introduction
The crowdfunding bank, or knab, is a proposed core VIAAC subsystem that will facilitate several of its services as well as interaction with the outside world. Its primary goal is to take in deposits, perhaps supplemented by an initial, external bank loan, and to eliminate rents. It does so using payments to turn a rent or recurring cost into a smaller, irreversible, and one-time cost, known as a sunk cost. The process is called "decapitalization" and the payments are called, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, "depth charges".

The "depth charge" can be thought of as the reverse of ''capitalization. ''Capitalization is the discounting of present value based on expected future earnings, or a claim on future earnings. The knab's primary goal is to identify expected future needs, and discount present value based on that, denying others' claims on earnings from fulfilling that need.

Process
The most basic mechanism of the knab works like so:


 * 1) The knab receives a request or takes the initiative to identify a recurring cost that could be sunk through the purchase of productive property (e.g. buying a renewable generator to sink the cost of electricity).
 * 2) The knab negotiates a contract with affected parties in which they will agree to continue paying the rent until the loan is repaid.
 * 3) The knab proceeds with the purchase, and the repayment period begins.
 * 4) The parties may refund the knab the income saved to increase its purchasing power.

Convenience Model
The knab could achieve its goals faster and reduce complexity for its contributors by structuring itself as a billpay system. Community members would join the knab and agree to pay their bills through its system. By staggering the payment into the knab and the payment of the bills, the knab can use its temporarily-held funds to transparently issue depth charges for its members. At first, this could take the form of consolidating services through the bulk-purchasing model. Later, it could include property purchasing to completely eliminate members' bills. This would occur transparently to the user, who would only see that their bills are disappearing over time.

Another advantage of this model is the possibility of adding an insurance service. By having members pay a small additional fee, they can insure themselves and the other members against foreclosure or being cut off from services due to an inability to pay. This could be a powerful supplement to existing foreclosure activism.

Issuance of Currency
The knab which exists in a community in which trust is low could issue a local, deflationary currency in order to facilitate local commerce. This would allow the knab to issue loans of unearned money and to exchange much or all of the local legal tender for the new local currency. By holding the community's legal tender in trust, it becomes much easier to attain a high sustainability margin (SM) through bulk purchasing.

Another possible scheme which would combine bulk purchasing and issuance of local currency would be to take legal tender for purchases through the knab and return a share of SM as the local currency. The small network of people that use the currency significantly reduces the chances of capitalization, especially if the VIAAC members are wary of it.

Property Ownership and Decisions
Funding, once given to the knab, should be considered repayable until spent by the knab. Property bought by the knab should be held in a community commons trust and rights to it distributed through loanership. How much each person contributed should not influence the decision of how the funds are used. That should be done on the basis of decapitalization and sustainability. Considerations based on contribution will preserve irrational hierarchies that VIAACs are looking to eliminate. Decisions should be made democratically or empirically, with the aim of the community regaining power over themselves and the ability to self-provision.