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Manohar Lal Baharani

Jun 16, 2014
02:42

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encouraging the re-use of product until its life cycle is good sign whether done through barter trade web links or otherwise. A number of web sites are available that came up from market driven economies where profit is driving factor. There are some "not for profit" drivers. Shifting gears further "charity" is key driver has to contest on its merit with respect to the "profits" as driver in market driven economies and global market place. How to bring shift in society for giving more weightage to charity than profits in life style / life support activities? The proposal deserves more to add beyond the web based endeavors.

Chris Taylor

Jun 17, 2014
09:38

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Hi Manohar, Thanks for your feedback. Since your comment I've made an additional more straight forward video presentation, and tried to clarify why users of a barter website would prefer profits to go to charity, rather than some private company. The other attraction is that the charity funds generated through the purchase of the trading web-based currency is so large, at no obvious expense to the users. I agree with you that consideration should be given to something more than a web-based project, however, electronic currencies are abstract and thus, easy to issue. That can't be said for physical currencies. Further, physical currencies are redeemable, a charity barter electronic currency is not.

Paul Wolfram

Jun 19, 2014
07:28

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I think it would be nice if you could provide an examplary calculation on how much green house gas emissions could potentially be saved. It seems a delicate task as you will have to make several assumptions, such as on how many items will be saved from ending up in landfills for example, however it might be helpful.

Chris Taylor

Jun 20, 2014
02:43

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Hi Paul, Thanks for your comment. I only came up with this idea a few weeks ago, and it's still developing in my head, so expect a complete re-write over the next week. I will take heed of your advice though, and calculate emissions reduction. Once again, Thanks for your input.

Zoe Whitton

Jun 20, 2014
02:35

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Hi Chris Like laxmimanohar, I think it would be interesting to hear more about why you think people will be into this. Will they prefer to use their goods to raise money for charity, when they could sell them? If so, what might drive this preference? Also, it would be great to have a short overview of the proposed system at the beginning of the proposal. I take it that the system you're proposing is one in which people who wish to give away goods put them up for a price on a barter platform, and when others pay for these goods the funds are dedicated to charity? It took me a bit of reading to figure out what the idea was. Finally, it would be good to see a little more about emissions reductions, as raised by Paul.

Chris Taylor

Jun 21, 2014
03:53

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Hi Manohar, Paul and Zoe. Thanks for your comments. I’ve added three paragraphs to “What actions do you propose?” answering the question “Why will the public choose Charity Barter over trading on other platforms, or even over trading offline?” I’ve also jumped into explaining what an electronic barter currency is, much earlier in the summary. I also noticed that the links to the YouTube presentations weren’t working. If you didn’t see the Youtube presentations I made, I suggest you watch them now. Electronic Barter Currency is a pretty abstract concept and its explanation is better suited to video media. I’ve also carried out an emissions reduction calculation. The result is rather modest, but considering the cost and effort which would be required to get a Charity Barter website up and running, it’d be worth it. Further, once the Charity Barter currency settles down after launch, a price could be put on carbon, penalising products traded on the website, which consume a large amount of energy, and using the carbon price revenue to subsidise energy efficient goods. Something which could be done without waiting for the U.S. Congress.

Climate Colab

Aug 5, 2014
08:43

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The proposal is quite interesting and not too unreasonable. However, the idea of bartering for charity is not new, it has been tried before with mixed success. Because this proposal doesn't add anything fundamentally new that would make it more likely to succeed, we think it would be rather low impact. It may well be possible to get some developers to help out, but without a good marketing plan and a very serious effort, the project seems unlikely to succeed. That said, this is actually a very good proposal among the ones we received. Unfortunately we can only let so many proposals through to the next round, so we had to make a tough decision. We do however encourage you to continue working on your idea.