If you are interested in learning more about the concept discussing it and helping to develop it, please join the group so we don't bog down the other groups with our discussion.

Much love,

Life

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What is the Burning Man First Project (BMF)?

The BMF Project is a proposed alternative economic system based on the principle of gift exchange that is central to the Burning Man community (BM). This economic system is facilitated by two business ventures that are wholly owned, operated, and governed by the BM community.

The purpose of the project is to provide Black Rock City (BRC) residents an alternative to the current capitalist system. Capitalist economies extract value and surplus (potential resource exchange value) from products, services, labor, and/or materials supplied by individuals and manipulate the value of these resources using capital (money) to create a false need based on supply that is formulated by the amount of capital that is used to purchase a particular resource (i.e., production and supply are based on what money is used to buy). Additionally, with capitalism, the surplus is placed in the hands of those with capital to purchase and amass large quantities of a given resource with which they can gain more capital when that resources is needed.

Gift economies, however, do not rely on capital so the value of resources are based solely on the need that the community and its individuals have for them and the surplus of that value remains with the people who provide and exchange the resources. This proposed system is designed to simultaneously do away with money thereby keeping the value of products, services, labor and materials based on the needs of the people, allow surplus value to remain with the community, and to utilize the current business structure to build the resources that are owned by the community.

The proposed BMF Project consists of the development of two separate Burner owned and operated businesses. The first is the Burning Man First Website, which allows any citizen of Black Rock City to register the service, product or labor they provide. The website will catalog the offerings in terms of services, products and labor types as well as alphabetically and by state. The website will also index these services products and labor types according to occupational categories and project associations. With this website, registered BM participants will have an online catalog of thousands of resources at their fingertips. This would allow users to seek supply from Burning Man First before dealing with the default world.

The second business is the Black Rock United Contributory Exchange (a.k.a. BRUCE), a corporation that is owned by BRC residents who have some type of business license (dba, sole proprietor, llc, etc.) and act as independent contractors. BRUCE facilitates the process of independent contractor owners bringing in project contracts of all types that are fulfilled by contributed resources (i.e., service, products, labor and materials that are cataloged by the BMF website). The contracts provide capital that is transformed into resources that contributing contractor owners can gain in exchange for their contributed resources.

Contract owners can search for project proposals (RFP) that will also be cataloged by the BMF website, meet with the project agents, offer a bid for the project generated by the BMF website using the registered BM participants. Registrants are prioritized for contract consideration by the BMF website according date registered; amount of services, products, labor or materials contributed to actual projects and by whether the participant is currently on or off a project.

When a bid is accepted by the agent that results in BRUCE being awarded a contract, the contract owner responsible for bringing that contract to BRUCE (a.k.a. the Receiver) can either continue to work on that contract or stop there. The BMF website, which has already notified registered contract owners of their potential involvement with a pending BRUCE contract, will automatically send sub-contractor agreements to those who were notified of their potential involvement.

Upon submission of these agreements, the BRUCE participants then contribute services, products, labor or materials that are need for that contract in exchange of services, products, labor or materials for which they have the need that were contributed to BRUCE by other contract owners.

This process allows BRUCE to serve as a central agent for the gift exchange of these resources between BRC residents while actively using these resources on contracts to produce capital that multiplies and supplements the resources that are then available for future contracted projects and available to meet the needs of the community of BRC residents who are seeking exchanges for their gifts of services, products, labor, or materials.

(To be continued on the burningmanfirst Yahoo Group)

Life