Originally Published on Medium on January 24th 2019 -- Link to original here:
Back in my senior year of high school, i signed up for my very first facebook profile. I remember how cool I thought I was when I made it and uploaded photos of me and my friends Trevor and Duane riding bikes together at the West Seneca B3.
Those pics are still on my profile to this day.
I love it.
As time went on and I used it more and more, I started coming up with suggestions or ways to improve facebook.
I sent them to Mark Zuckerberg via private message.
(5/25/2008 12:52 PM) That’s when I first messaged him. I’d post the conversation, but I don’t know how if that would be invading his privacy, so I’m erring on the side of caution.
I also sent him a friend request, but he never accepted.
He did, however, actually read and respond to my messages.
I didn’t realize until years later that that’s kind of a big deal, but I thought nothing of it.
Now, you can’t even message Zuckerberg as he’s completely locked down his profile.
Over the years, I’ve continued to use and follow the development of Facebook and other social networks pretty closely.
They’re powerful tools.
I think we all can agree on that.
But one thing is fundamentally wrong with them.
And that’s because they inherently exploit their users.
I oftentimes refer to this relationship between the platform owners and users as internet feudalism.
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I feel guilty.
Yesterday, my niece and I spent the day together running around doing errands and she told me about a kid at school who, at the kickball tournament in the fall, was scared that his Dad was going to be mad at him because he got his brand new sneakers dirty.
Ruby, my amazing niece, then acted out how the kid was acting and saying things like, “he just spent $500 on a new car”.
Ruby said this to me and my heart sank.
Ruby said, “bro, it’s only $500” and I snapped at her. That’s the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard her say.
I told her that $500 is a lot of money to most people.
She said she didn’t say that to the kid, thank god, because it can really hurt kids’ feelings.
I remember growing up, and how sensitive a subject money is for practically everyone. It was always an embarrassing and shameful thing for me.
I had a single mom who raised 3 kids all on her own.
Food stamps only temporarily.
Child support whenever the sperm donors felt like paying.
I still can’t shake it.
How fucking detached have I become?
How detached has my niece become?
It’s not so much that money changes you, but that money allows you to forget about how hard the world is on so many people.
How unforgiving one mistake can be.
How one bad thing can lead to another and how money quite literally solves 99% of problems out there.
The emotional trauma from never having enough money to even survive is still engraved on my soul.
I still feel that pain.
I’ve just ignored it for so long that I forgot about the realities of this world.
I began to feel guilty about doing well financially.
Half a million dollar house paid off. Ninety thousand dollar custom built and tuned ford raptor truck. A sports car. Bunch of random, meaningless shit.
and all this week I’ve been frantically calling and driving to every Ford dealership in Western New York trying to ensure that I am number 1 in line for a 2020 Ford Mustang GT500.
2020 Ford Mustang GT500.
What the fuck have I become?
When did this shit become so important to me?
As I leapt forward monetarily, I regressed spiritually.
I totally gave up on my initial goal that I set in 2008.
That was to give everyone who used my app, Givengi, money for using it.
We’d redistribute the profits equitably.
I worked on this in various forms for many years.
Until 2014.
Which is when I gave up and focused on other things in Life.
In his book, “Assholes Finish First”, Tucker Max said that “the devil doesn’t come in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.”
How true this is.
I’ve realized something.
Money doesn’t change things that much.
But money does alleviate pain.
Money is a drug, and it’s a pain killer.
*_*_*_*_*_*___
I haven’t programmed anything in over 2 years.
Did I fall out of Love with it?
Or was my ego hurt so bad from failing with Givengi, that I gave up and moved on.
Now, as time has passed, I don’t consider Givengi a failure.
I think it was a success provided how early on in the game it was.
Only now are we beginning to see more press and social awareness around concepts and ideas concerning a UBI or Universal Basic Income.
Imagine what the world would look like if everyone’s basic living needs were paid for?
Families would have less stress on them, people would get along better as they feel relieved, fewer stress hormones are released on a massive scale.
Societies can heal.
The world can Love again.
When people aren’t fighting over scraps, they can ascent Maslov’s hierarchy of Needs and actually fucking Live.
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I’m going to pursue Givengi again.
I’m going to use Blockchain tech.
Givengi was too early.
The world wasn’t ready.
The tech wasn’t ready.
But now it is.
Blockchain will play an integral role in Givengi’s development.
At first, I will be working on this project alone, unless people volunteer to help develop it.
All development will be on my Github.
Open Source Blockchain.
It’s so much more than a social network.
In fact, I wouldn’t even consider it a social network that pays users.
It’s a passive income generating machine.
And the Givengi foundation will invest in various dividend earning utilities to ensure the long term viability of not only the service, but the value it provides to the earth.
I think of Givengi as one giant Gift Giving machine. It’s spews out gifts to everyone who plugs into it.
I want it that way.
My goal is to provide every individual who uses Givengi with a Universal Basic Income distributed via cryptocurrency and exchangeable into their native currency.
$2,000 sounds like it would do the job for most families.
So that’s the goal, $2,000 per month, for everyone on Givengi.
In future posts, I’ll go into exactly how the economics work here.
For the financially savvy, you probably already have an idea.
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_**__
My soul yearns to have impact.
I don’t want to leave this earth until I’ve given something that improves it.
Thanks for listening.