GMeRitS — Generalised Merits for Respect and Social Equality

1. Money and debt, as we know them today, are arguably among the most important social innovations within the last 5000 years. According to some scholars, those innovations have even shaped the way we perceive ourselves as individuals and how we relate to each other. The innovation in these domains has not stopped: on the contrary, it is accelerating with a rapid pace.
2. There is early but growing evidence that the current forms of ownership and payment are insufficient to efficiently clear new kinds of markets our society is increasingly based on, especially those related with information and data. We are evidencing structural market failures, evidenced by the birth of the giant data monopolies and the accumulation of “knowledge silos.”
3. Industrial revolution continues, and DLTs are one of its latest manifestations. DLTs may be considered as the most potential accounting innovation since the 15th century, when double entry bookkeeping became commonplace. However, DLTs are not economic solutions themselves. Although DLTs enable governance decentralisation, tamper proofness, censor-resistance and resilience, the technology is still free to be exploited almost to whatever ideological and political purpose one wants.

We surmise that these themes – including societal pressures and technological possibilities – will lead to a very fundamental change in the way we perceive the economy and even ourselves. Careful institutional experiments and design is needed to set a direction for these developments. GMeRitS is carrying out these experiments.