Socratic FAQ

Asker What is Pantrypoints?
Pantrypoints It’s a points-based economic system that implements the system proposed by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations”.
Asker What’s wrong with the current economic system?
Pantrypoints It’s based on selfish-interest. This leads to marginal utility and ‘diminishing returns’ which then leads to the concept of profit maximization within Neoclassical Economics.
Asker What’s wrong with profit maximization?
Pantrypoints

Adam Smith says that a society has 4 classes: rent-earners, wage-earners, donation-earners, and profit-earners.

Profit maximization over-feeds the profit-earners that it starves the other 3 classes. This leads to governments with huge debts, workers needing to work 2 or more jobs, and research not getting funded. Statistically, it leads to the productivity-wage gap.

If there is profit-maximization, then there should be:

  • tax-maximization (or rent-maximization)
  • wage-maximization
  • donation-maximization (or grant-maximization).

That would be fairer.

Asker How does Pantrypoints reduce profit maximization naturally?
Pantrypoints

By using bilateral points instead of money. For example we will use:

  • Pointtax to increase goverment revenue (rent)
  • Trade Points to increase wages
  • Social Points to increase donations

Unlike currency which is multilateral and can be amassed quickly, points are bilateral and takes time to build up. This prevents leveraging, and emphasizes primary arbitrage over secondary arbitrage.

Modern economics goes for the latter arbitrage as ‘buy low, sell high’. The problem is that ‘buy low, sell high’ is exactly what causes crashes and originates from selfish-interest.

A profiteer who succeeds in “leveraging” arbitrage will earn huge amounts. But it means that the 3 other classes were starved of revenue. This starvation manifests as a crash or financial crisis later.

Governments try to solve profiteering through taxation. But this merely leads to tax evasion and avoidance because of selfish-interest.

Asker What is your alternative to selfish-interest?
Pantrypoints

Common interest.

It means people think about society more and give importance to the society instead of just caring for the self.

Adam Smith wrote this as fellow-feeling or sympathy in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, which is the foundation of The Wealth of Nations.

Asker How does Pantrypoints push common interest over selfish-interest?
Pantrypoints

Through the bilateral points system and the formalization of the ‘society-entity’.

The bilateral nature creates a chain of transactions that traces the supply chain. This chain is what the Physiocrats called the Economic Table. It will give real-time information to policymakers on the flow on an economy, as well as the blockages that stifle the circulation of value.

Abstractly, the points from this transactions system forms the memory of the society-entity, which treats a town, city, country, or world as one entity with specific dynamics as explained by our Supersociology.

Asker Why can’t this be done with the current money-system?
Pantrypoints

When you buy something with money, the transaction might not be recorded because the seller just wants to get your money and not provide any information about the transaction. This is why tax evasion and avoidance are very common in money-systems.

Even commercial receipts just list the seller and the item sold. They have no information on the buyer and how he got the money to pay for the item.

Without such data, the ‘memory’ of the society-organism is not formed.

Asker So Pantrypoints has its own evasion-resistant taxation system?
Pantrypoints Yes, we call it Pointtax where people pay with their productivity at their own pace. This reduces budget deficits while making taxation easier, aligning with Adam Smith’s taxation maxims.
Asker So Pantrypoints has a transaction system and taxation system rolled into one platform?
Pantrypoints

Yes, for the ‘public’ transactions such as commercial transactions between strangers.

For private transactions, or those between friends or known customers which are non-taxable, we are prototyping implementations that even have basic Sales, Ordering, Moneyless Point-of-sales (POS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Human Resources system.

We call this Pantrypreneur.

Asker Pantrypreneur sounds like an Enterprise Resource Plannnig (ERP) System
Pantrypoints

Yes, we call it Micro-Small Enterprise Resource Planning (MSERP) because it focuses on micro and small businesses, different from ERP which focuses on large and big corporations.

If Pantrypreneur is MSERP, then Pantrypoints is SERP or Social Enterprise Resource Planning, with governments acting like an enterprise for the society-entity. This then leads to a fourth branch of government, as the Resources Branch, to augment the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

Asker Is there anything that Pantrypreneur, as MSERP, can’t do for businesses?
Pantrypoints

Pantrypreneur can’t do Accounting, Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Inventory, Logistics, and E-commerce because these require matter and the money system.

However, the system will be able to do world trade, as a separate platform called Pantrypoints World. This is because global free trade is one of the biggest features of Adam Smith’s system which aims to unify the global society-entity.

All parts of the system, whether MSERP or SERP, are actually geared towards making free trade possible, with or without money.

Asker How will Pantrypoints World solve problems with the global supply chain when it doesn’t do logistics?
Pantrypoints It will solve it indirectly through Pool Clearing.
Asker What’s Pool Clearing?
Pantrypoints

It’s a trade system proposed by EF Schumacher wherein the trading countries act as one ‘pool’ that coordinates their foreign trade to maximize efficiency.

It requires member countries to have a common interest that overrides national interest in order to create a single pool that fully integrates their economies with each other. Think of it like small robots creating a giant robot, just like Voltes V, Voltron, and the Constructicons combining to create Devastator.

This is very different from the current world trade system established by Bretton Woods wherein the United States has a superior position in world trade with the US dollar as the international reserve currency.

Asker So if the IMF-World Bank imposes the materialist money system onto the world from the top-down, you implement the nonmaterialist points system from the bottom-up?
Pantrypoints Yes, painstakingly since 99% of people seem to want money instead of predetermined* goods and services. (*This one we got from Spinoza)
Asker What is your replacement to the US dollar as international reserve currency?
Pantrypoints

We are working on a closed cryptocurrency Point Coins which are pegged to grains such as rice or wheat. One coin in Asia represents the value of 1 kilogram of rice, for example.

This will give the global economy a standard value to base all values on. The closed nature means that Pantry Coins are only tradeable between governments. It matches ‘bank gold’ which is different from market gold traded by citizens.

Asker Wow, you seem to have thought of everything.
Pantrypoints The Scottish Enlightenment thought of it. We just implement their blueprint and maxims into a real-world system.
Asker How do I sign up?
Pantrypoints You can register in the waitlist or send us an email at [email protected] or [email protected]
Asker Who maintains these apps?
Pantrypoints

We have a volunteers who test and contribute to maintain them. So please don’t expect them to be bug-free yet. We will register a real company in Q4 2022 or Q1 2023 depending on the commitments that we get. We piggyback on an NGO to help us implement them.

We predicted that a global stagflation by 2020 would make people interested in our solution sooner or later.

The banking crisis of 2023 came a bit late, but at least its here.