Bitcoin Forum

What if there was a coin that could actually help end world hunger?

I've been thinking about the various alt-coins and their shortcomings. Personally I really like the idea of Freicoin, but the launch before there was any infrastructure, and the huge percentage going to a foundation with no clear leadership or goals is a killer flaw IMHO.

So - what if there was a duplicate of Freicoin that existed for the purpose of ending world hunger? The new coin would give 50% of newly minted coins to a foundation, but instead of waiting for people to write proposals, it would use that money to buy food for the homeless and starving worldwide.

It would keep the concept of 5% demurrage, and send 50% of mined coins to the foundation forever. The foundation would spend their share on food and provide regular reports to the community showing how the money was spent.

Suddenly demurrage doesn't look so bad. If you've got a bunch of FRC sitting around, you'll at least know that 50% of everything you lose is going directly to feed the hungry, and the rest goes to the miners who keep the network secure.

Banks who felt threatened by the new coin would have a strong incentive to leave it alone, as attacking it would be akin to attacking a charity - a PR nightmare.

Go for it! Freicoin is totally retarded for so many reasons but your idea might actually work. The coin should be run not by a foundation but by a registered charity with books that can be audited. I would certainly be interested.

I was thinking the same wormbog but rather than world hunger ending.. a World Health Service Coin

The thing is of course is that the aid is actually the problem. The world produces enough food to feed itself, it just wastes most of it, burns a good deal of it (as biofuel) and trade inequality prevents it from going to where it needs to go. I think just about every major famine of the 20th century was the biproduct of poor malevolent human decisions. The vast majority of 20th century famine was done purposefully.

World hunger could be solved tomorrow if there was the political will to do so. We don't need a charity coin. 

and if there was no hunger the population would increase so fast we all would die.

sux don't it

Nah we just need to cross breed more animal to be human predators in that case... I live by the sea and I still watch out each day for a flock of these to come tearing in across the horizon

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xd3fIWubTtc/SXUnJdnFq2I/AAAAAAAAAaI/pNhubTr18oM/s400/sharkgull.jpg

so if there is no need for a charity coin to end world hunger... is there any way that a coin could be adapted like the namecoin for such purposes as distribution, entitlement and evaluation of food supply?

I believe the only way to 'end hunger' is to have a free economy and society (i.e. leave people alone to make/earn their food). That's why a free marketplace is so important in my mind.

Hey Fuzzy I thought you were working on some auction site, how's that coming along? Auctioning some pizzas does help with the hunger problem ya know?  ;)

That's a noble idea, but a "coin" wouldn't quite cut it.

It would need to be a complete organization resembling a decentralized republic which a specific goal which is verified in regular intervals by a voting mechanism. "Ending world hunger" isn't the kind of goal which could work like that since there are different approaches how this could be attempted, some of which do not lead to a self-reliant society.

A more suiting goal would be something like "Create an Abundance of Food, Water and Shelter on the planet."
these goals could be arranged in phases, the first phase possibly the one I just mentioned.
The second phase could be abundant energy, the third colonization of the solar system and the forth faster than light propulsion.

The next phase will only be attempted if there is a wide consensus that the previous phase has been completed.
In between the phases should be smaller goals, in case of the first one for example deployment of the OSS- Ecology toolkit to archive self-sufficency of participants, campaigns to archive the necessary resources for expansion. Evolution of the infrastructure during the transition for large scale deployment.
Some of the immediate steps would be in paralell some in serial, all of those would need a certain amount of consensus in order to be valid.

The system should provide it's own p2p-version control software which is used to develop the software, including the currency part in a completely decentralized manner. And so that the state of the art corresponds to the consensus. (Immediate consensus would be proof of work based, so not fully democratic, but web of trust structures can be implemented to have some parts on the consensus democratic.)

I would think the results would be similar to the ones produced by Folding.

I am poor, give me coins.

"World hunger could be solved tomorrow if there was the political will to do so. We don't need a charity coin."

We need a charity coin precisely because we can't count on a political solution.

"I believe the only way to 'end hunger' is to have a free economy and society."

Let's call that Phase 2. Ending death by starvation seems like a more realistic near-term goal.

"and if there was no hunger the population would increase so fast we all would die."

No worries, we can still count on war to thin the herd.

"It would need to be a complete organization resembling a decentralized republic..."

We could bootstrap the whole thing by selecting and vetting a few existing charities and donating proceeds from the sale of all coins reserved by the foundation. Pretty simple really. Think of it as the social equivalent of code reuse.

But it might not be sufficient.

The point is to create a system which is 100% certain to work. Accounting for every possible variable is the only way to accomplish that and in order to do that the system must be adaptive and self-reliant.

This guy just posted about Africa and hungry kids...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137307.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137307.0)

Also, check out his website:  bitcoinstocharity.org (http://bitcoinstocharity.org/)

man, ask people in Haiti how much they really got from all millions and billions collected all over the world. they got nothing. help to the people directly, not through taxes, through organizations, etc. one girl came from France in my country and asked me to make bank food organization together, I refused to participate as long as she doesn't want to give food to homeless directly then she want to give food to organizations which help to homeless. I told her such organizations will resell food on the market and homeless will not get it or they will get just a little but not all.

so, I can tell you, in EU, many organizations get millions to help to homeless, to help to the people in Africa, etc, but they spend the biggest part of money for their own organizational needs than for end users. one organization in Copenhagen get 20 million euro from budget per year + private donations, better give that money to homeless, after 5-7 years, you could buy flats for all homeless with so much money. but homeless get only food and shower and sleeping, so, they stay homeless million years.

I think one organization from Britain spend just for marketing 1.5 million pounds, they get a lot of money from budget and they have about 100 million per year, they pay British to go to Africa to explain them they should wash hands, the aim is to decrease diseases connected with dirty hands. sorry, but it is much cheaper to pay Africans to explain to Africans to wash hands than to send people from london to africa and to pay they 3000 euro salary + bonus for working far away from home.

summa summarum, billions are spent in bad way, give that money directly to the people in Africa, directly to homeless in Europe, and problem will be solved much faster. it is the fact, there are still homeless even different organizations got millions every year, they didn't succeed to lower number of homeless, but they got 2000 euro salary for themselves. I know man who is homeless several years and I he is not smoking, drinking or anything else. simply, it is forbidden for him to work. I have also my problems, I can not help to him, but I know what is situation and I can tell you, if you make organization for help to homeless and you get money from budget from ministry for social work (share little with them under the table), you will become rich man.

now you understand better how much it is complex problem, making freicoin or similar coin is the smallest problem.
Haiti is the best example of stealing money which is collected by people who believe to politicians. in Germany there was TV show organized for collecting of money for Haiti, people gave money massively, and for what? for their naive beliefs that they did something good if they didn't move from chair, they just paid money to some account. better give money directly to the people or help them to get a job, there are crowd of people who are homeless just because they are without job. but many are immigrants, so, again, crazy nationalists extremists will hate homeless who are not domestic homeless. so, it is story without end, some people are limited in their minds and it is better that they just pay some money to some account than to express their stupid hate against people with different nationality, color of skin, etc.

I would like to respond, but please add paragraphs.

who?

thanks for formatting your post predic.

You are mostly right most of the money given to charities often does not end up at their respective receivers, much is wasted. But that's not the main problem.
There is a organization which tries to measure the performance of different charities and you can compare them against each other. see http://www.charitynavigator.org/

But the core problem with charities is that they often only address the symptoms instead of the causes. That is supplying gratis food, clothing or housing but without supplying the means to archive self-reliance.
Even worse there is no systematic approach at work here, the whole concept of charity is applied from a wrong assumption.

They just try to help as many people as they can instead of changing the world.
The work of charitable organisations will never be complete because they do not change the system. But changing the system will make charity at least in the current form obsolete.

All you need to do is reduce the population back to about 2,573,738,433 and all the nasty problems we have at the moment (petrol wars waged bu USA and it's allies, pollution, pandemics, hunger, no jobs etc)
Invent a coin that makes mots people jump out of the window (in densely populated areas), and you have done a huge favor for the entire planet (I do not mean that ball of molten rock with a thin crust, but everything and everyone on it, hurtling through space at 111 624,1 km/h)

Cheers!

You are not helping  :-\

I'd be interested in mining a coin that helps charitable causes.

Please, i am poor, give me coins... how poor should i be in order to receive? Maybe i am electable and you can donate me your wealth.

Am thinking to set something up in place like this project OP has said. But with a lot of differences but maybe using current coins and alt coins. Lot of things going on and maybe will have something running like this in the future

Please i want to know do you define "the poor". Maybe i am electable and i can receive all your money. For instance, do i have to be african? Do i have to be black?

how do you define which one is poor??

And by the way, have you made a budget to know how much money is needed to end the hunger and no longer ask for this issue?

You do not want to be that guy :)
http://wumocomicstrip.com/img/strip/-WM_strip_DK_20120717.jpg



From: http://wumocomicstrip.com/strip/2012/07/17/

i do think cypto currencies may help end world hunger especially when there is no centralization or any thing that controls our credit.
maybe by using decentalization, people may access to financial services that make them more accessible. Moving forward, rather than visiting an institution, by decentralized banks will bring financial services to the user. In a globalized world, a decentralized system will build a peer-to-peer model of cooperation across regions, sectors, subjects and accounts. The nightmare of international banking will be over for those who have access to financial services, and it will provide easier access to those who do not. All of the user's actions will be transparent and easily traceable on the Blockchain. With Blockchain technology rapidly available, companies such as Distributed Credit Chain (DCC) are building safer financial institutions. :)

To learn more about DCC, you can visit their website at http://dcc.finance/ or follow them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DccOfficial2018

 

You can try it, but I think the root cause of hunger is the problem of social distribution. In many areas, there are power or rich food. They don't think too much of hunger. I think the economy can produce enough food to maintain the whole world. Many resources have mastered the hands of a small number of people.