Pluralloc

Sustainable information economies are possible.

Problem: Arrow’s paradox

To determine the price of information, you must know what it contains; but once you know what it contains, you no longer need to buy it. You can’t sell information – only its transmission.

Since digitisation eliminated most physical bounds on distribution, knowledge workers have been searching for sustainable economic models. Current approaches are desperate workarounds:

• Artificial scarcity (DRM, paywalls) contradicts natural abundance
• Freemium models arbitrarily limit features, optimising for conversion funnels rather than user value
• Advertising optimises for attention capture rather than information quality
• Vertical integration makes software a sales driver for hardware, incentivising against portability
• Reputation pricing favors established creators, raises barriers to supplier market entry
• Bundling strategies lead to ‟consultantware” optimised for billable hours
• Sampling models create perverse incentives around hooks and teasers
• Goodwill donations unpredictable and often inadequate funding
• Patronage makes creators accountable to wealthy sponsors rather than the general audience

These distortions either concentrate power with owners of intellectual property or the carrier medium to extract ongoing rents from creators’ work, or force creators to split attention between their expertise and monetisation schemes to become rent-seekers themselves. And enforcing restrictions on copying requires making devices that are hostile to their users rather than empowering them, defying the core strength of digital microelectronics: perfect reproduction at scale.

The result of this systematic underinvestment in quality and innovation is a catastrophic signal-to-noise ratio outside of tightly controlled environments.

Solution: Bet on demand, invest in quality, reward delivery

Let all stakeholders specialise on what they’re best at:

• Investors evaluate proposals and invest in development based on predicted user demand, owning risk and rewards
• Creators receive up-front payment, to focus on quality execution
• Users pay into the pool periodically, then assign their contributions to results they find valuable

Using quadratic funding for payout allocation amplifies broad appeal while allowing individuals to back strong preferences. This ensures investors only profit when users are genuinely satisfied, users are in full control of expenses and only reward tangible outcomes, creators get predictable funding without business development overhead. And information stays free for everyone.

Build with us

Let’s work with technology instead of against it. Join creators, investors, and users in making freely shared information the winning strategy.

Pluralloc is self-hosting: the platform uses its own funding mechanism to develop itself. Don’t wait for someone else to build the future you want:

• Organise the first meetup
• Set up communication and development infrastructure
• Prepare legal incorporation

Contact bootstrap@pluralloc.org to get started.