Overview
Introduction
The Greshm System is a US-dollar-based payment system with a built-in UBI. It’s like PayPal®, but you get free money every day.
It would be nice if the government started paying out a UBI yesterday. But we don’t have to wait for the government. The Greshm Institute has designed the Greshm System as a way to issue UBI through a private company.
A key insight from Consumer Monetary Theory is that we can hand out money to people as long as the economy can produce goods and services for those people to buy with their money. A UBI at the right level can give consumers full access to the economy’s resources.
The Problem
In today’s economy, local communities are suffering. People aren’t getting the resources they need to live healthy, free, and meaningful lives. But the real tragedy isn’t that people are suffering. It’s that they’re suffering needlessly. Many communities already have the resources to support their members, but the people are unable to benefit from those resources.
The problem has to do with the changing flow of money. Local businesses provide an important mechanism by which money cycles back into the community. When people have enough money, they can buy what they need. But local businesses are becoming increasingly unable to compete with Amazon and friends. An important source of spending money is drying up.
This problem has inspired social movements that encourage people to shop at local businesses and to buy local food. It has also motivated experimentation with local complementary currencies designed to keep money circulating within communities. These measures certainly help, but they can only go so far.
What’s not so obvious to most people is that the global economy is suffering from the same problem. We have the economic capacity to eliminate global poverty, yet poverty remains. Collectively, we have the resources to provide humanity with a far better quality of life, but the flow of money to individuals is inadequate. The economy won’t produce what people don’t have the money to buy.
The Solution
To remedy this problem, The Greshm Institute is developing a complementary monetary system that sits on top of the United States dollar in much the same way that USD itself once sat on top of gold. By creating new money within the Greshm System, we can provide individual people with permanent steady incomes. This flow of money will activate existing economic potential that has been lying dormant. The economy will produce what people do have the money to buy.
Unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are only currency in name, the Greshm System is a true complementary monetary system bootstrapped in the only way that has ever worked and the only way that will ever work: by basing it on an existing standard unit of value. A dollar within the Greshm System is worth the same as a dollar outside of the Greshm System.
Similarly to PayPal®, Greshm users can make payments entirely within the system. They can also link their Greshm accounts to their normal bank accounts to transfer USD in either direction. The Greshm System maintains a reserve of USD to fund withdrawals. This ability to withdraw USD is what enforces the dollar peg.
A special rule provides the system with stability: users must wait 30 days before withdrawing USD from their Greshm account. This restriction makes Greshm immune to a currency run in which people panic and withdraw all their money at once. If they panic, they can instead only spend their money. And spending money within the Greshm System resets the waiting period, so the same psychology that normally depletes the reserves of a central bank actually helps protect the USD reserves backing the Greshm System.