how seeds transcends the binary of for-profit/non-profit đź’—
As most of y'all know, anyone can redeem a SEED to ask for help themselves, or on behalf of another individual/organization. Those who give through Seeds receive SEEDS cryptocurrency in thanks.
Paul, a member of the board of RAIN, a science-focused non-profit in Tacoma, Washington, USA, has redeemed a SEED on RAIN's behalf 3 times now.
An established non-profit, folks were already making gifts to RAIN. But Paul recognized an additional benefit if that giving were to be channeled through Seeds instead: givers would benefit RAIN, and receive SEEDS in thanks as well.
As of this writing, there’s only $1971.14 to go until they reach their $50,000 goal.
Paul’s most recent Request for Help on RAIN’s behalf.
(Please note: gifts made through Seeds are not currently tax-deductible, but with the help of a new, super sharp attorney found after lots of careful searching, we hope to have the ability to make this possible soon.)
In RAIN's case, Paul has shared that the givers he has crowdsourced intend to indefinitely hold their SEEDS in thanks in a wallet especially for RAIN. If and when SEEDS go up in market price, this can be of even greater value to their social good organization.
If a non-profit stakes SEEDS to receive the bonus, this can be of even greater monetary value, and in doing so, the organization would simultaneously be supporting others in need around the world.
I like to imagine a future in which Seeds helps society transcend the dumb non-profit/for-profit binary baked into late-stage capitalism. In my slightly sarcastic, definitely frustrated historical overview:
~250 years ago, Adam Smith decided that the organizing principle of our economic system should exclusively be self-interest, leaving no room within that structure for giving. Nation-states based their tax systems on this premise, and non-profits became a necessity. So on the for-profit (aka self-interest) side, we can have rampant greed that's bad for everyone. On the non-profit side, there are often organizations spending half their time fundraising, struggling to make ends meet. The non-profit side becomes dependent on the “rich” people who made their money via self-interest.
I've known many cishet white male startup founders who didn't question the notion that their trajectory would go something like this: they would make a bunch of money in tech. Then later, when they were like 60, they'd Bill-Gates-it-up and go into “philanthropy.” I get why this unreflected-upon-belief they defaulted to was a perceived “noble” path, and many startup founders (Jobs) were too self-involved to have an interest in helping others even after becoming ultra-wealthy.
Within the confines of late-stage capitalism, getting rich in the for-profit sector to later give it away seems like a best-case.
At the same time, so many fem folks I've know - people of every gender who have a lot of healthy feminine energy, and many of these folks are bio women - just want to give! They give and give and give. Society teaches them that asking for help themselves is a shameful thing…and they don't deserve it anyway.
They may start out in non-profits, become disillusioned. People have kids, need more money (especially in countries like the increasingly horrifying one I live in, that does little to help people out with childcare), so if they have the luxury, they feel they have no choice but to get the highest paying for-profit job possible.
By systemic design, Seeds addresses and works to heal all of these things. đź’—
**
As Smith famously wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."
He stated this even as he lived with his mother for most of his adult life. He definitely got his dinner from a fem person who probably had a motivation for caring for her child that superseded the limitations of self-interest…but he was too oblivious to recognize this, and we've been suffering under his dumb dictum ever since.
(BTW there's a great book by a fem Swedish economist - Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? - that breaks this down if you're interested.)
To be fair, societies (and humans) evolve. It's why I believe we're here. To paraphrase Ken Wilber, we have to hit certain stages of evolution before some superstructures are even tenable. Capitalism made some sense for a long while. As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government….except for all the others that have been tried."
But it's increasingly glaring that we need to stop living under the internalized authority of dangerously outdated ideas articulated and executed by white men dead for centuries, many of whom bought enslaved humans, none of whom believed the personhood of women was of enough value that it merited legal outline.
How could people like that, living in that context and benefiting from that strain of privilege, imagine an economic system that was anything other than mercenary?
We can choose to battle those systems, but as someone who inherently has a lot of fight in me (for my astrologyheads, my natal sun, moon and ascendant are all in Aries, and my Mars is at 28 degrees of Scorpio), I've learned the hard way that opting into that struggle is another means of perpetuating the thing we wish would end… and it can cause us a lot of unnecessary pain in the meantime.
So I've come to understand, like Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Whoa I really didn't intend for this message to turn into this like long impassioned rant, but here we are.
If we focus our energies on giving - together - and fueling a new, more abundant, kinder economic system than the dumb dying one entrapping us, the old thing can more quickly fall away.
Here's to the future. 🎉
Rachel