This is a smarphone app where you can list the kinds of plants you are growing.

And you can see all the kinds of food growing in gardens around your neighbourhood.

Every set period (say a week) you recieve free credits, which allows you to 'pay' for these home grown foods.

If you have your own garden, you can announce in the app a specific time and date where you will be giving away food for credits.

Each credit point system has a 'lifetime'. After it expires, it is deleted and added to the 'Karma tally' of the seller. Karma points are also gained from transaction (and tracked separately as well). These allow for some healthy competition for imaginary karma points (hopefully linked to reddit as well).

The idea of the credit system is to implement some form of /r/basicincome system. Since without a credit system, you run the risk of bad actors just rocking up and taking all the fruits/vegs being given away, and leaving none to others. Also the automatic conversion of credits to Karma points prevents the massing of economic power to any central individual or organization (While recognizing good performers by providing them with social recognition. Which is partially why people want more money as well... social recognition)

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Another reason for using credit system, is to allow for flexibility in bartering. E.g. You grow lots of apples, but need a set amount of other food.

Why apps to implement such system? Well it provides possibility of process automation, take for instance you can automatically schedule a 'wishlist' of food. This means they may not even need to trade credits, instead they can rock up with the 'food' in your wishlist and do a direct swap. (And gain karma immediately, instead of waiting for the credits to expire)

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TL;DR: Easier sharing of grown food by smartphone app, and distribution regulated by automated credit system modelled after basic income. (Heck maybe this can be a platform for testing different basic income algorithms)
-- mofosyne, Jul 27 2014

The Internal Revenue Service regards bartering as involving taxable income, per the Fair Market Value of things you grow that you then barter.
-- Vernon, Jul 27 2014


So, excluding the bartering system, this thing wont annoy the IRS?

The credit system is not ment to act like normal money(since everyone gets credits for free, and the credits have an expiry date), it's just meant to ensure that everyone has equal chance at getting what they need.
-- mofosyne, Jul 28 2014



random, halfbakery