I am starting to wonder whether we need groups at all anymore. What if RAD income just came from personal rather than corporate income? I am also really tempted to start calling groups of Radical people Conviviums, a word that I got from one of the Capital as Power papers.^∇

So I’m going to try and flesh out this idea of payment. I think of RADs as being able to reward the giants on whose shoulders I have stood and the people I am in community with. And solely that.

Ads and Sponsorships

For example, I have a YouTube channel where I publish videos of my 3D Printing projects. I also have a Patreon account. And I start a Discord chat that centers around my inventing activities. All my Patreon sponsors get invited to the chat.

Altogether, I generate revenue from,

• YouTube Ads
• Patreon sponsorship

I invite everyone who provides YouTube feedback to a RAD community and I also invite Patreon sponsors who provide valuable feedback about my videos. Their contributions inspire me and I want to reward them. Everyone in the RAD community is recognized, by me and everyone else, for their contributions. As a result, they get RADs. And everyone with RADs shares the dividends from the YouTube revenue.

Let’s say I make $5K in dividends and I distribute $2.5K of it through the RAD Community according to the allocations (i.e., which everyone can see). The actual money can be distributed through Venmo, CashApp, or Zelle.

Patreon Sponsorships

In the case of my Patreon sponsorships, I know that what I am doing is thanks to 1) the people who build, maintain, and promote YouTube, 2) youtubers who normalized publishing videos for a living, and 3) many others that made YouTube what it is today. However, they already got compensated for their contributions to bring it to this point and I don't feel an obligation to compensate them further (i.e., YouTube already takes a big chunk of the Ad revenue).

However, maybe the sponsors who comment on my videos should benefit from the overall Patreon dividends, too. I could create a separate RAD community to share that revenue according to their contributions. Or I could lump the Ad revenue and the sponsorships and add the sponsors to the RAD community. That sounds like interesting experiments.

Confidential and Attractive

Suppose that someone says, “You look so confident and attractive,” in response to one of my YouTube videos. That night, riding high on the compliment, my partner and I make beautiful love and we made that night all the sweeter. Feeling inspired by the compliment and the love making, I come up with an invention, patent it, and I become a billionaire. Shouldn’t the complimenter get to share in my windfall? She would if I had recognized her contribution and had given her RADs in an Invention RAD community

There is no “correct” answer, it is not at all clear. We don’t claim that we can cleanse ourselves from the mindset and it will take us all a long time to shake off those habits.

It seems that in this case,

• I share some of my revenue with the group because they are actively contributing to what I do in YouTube
• On the other hand, I am not sharing my Patreon income because it feels that that comes as a result of my individual effort.

The Pump Convivium

A group of people gets together as a convivium to make pumps. I make the impeller. A woman, one my my peer co-owners, makes the housings. And a nonbinary person sells the pumps. Other companies is happy with the pumps and pays for them.

In this case, the revenue happens because of the work we all do. None of us could build pumps at the same rate and quality by ourselves.

The dividends are distributed according to the RADs co-owners gave each other through the pump building process. RADs are based on our recognized contributions.

So…

We need groups.

ENDNOTES

• Ulf Martin. The Autocatalytic Sprawl of Pseudorational Mastery. May 2019. <https://capitalaspower.com/>