Design of Information System for the HEN

DESIGN OF INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR THE HEN

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE HUMANIST ECONOMY NETWORK (HEN)

The Humanist Economy Network is a project to create a worldwide network of volunteers (individuals, organizations and companies), that work together in building a working model of a completely new economic system, with the aim to replace the present capitalist system, which we regard as violent and unjust. The HEN’s philosophical basis is Universal Humanism, which places the human being above all other values and aims to abolish violence and discrimination.

The economy proposed by the HEN will be both efficient and just. Technology will be applied to satisfy all of humanity’s material needs, requiring ever less man-hours of labour, thus liberating people from the slavery of production and affording more free time to dedicate to more interesting and elevating activities. In summary, a fairer distribution of economic well-being and free time.

One of the basic principles of the Humanist Economy is to liberate production from banking. The members of this worldwide network will exchange goods and services without using money. However, the HEN is not a barter system, because nothing is demanded in exchange for the products and services provided to others. Each member of the HEN gives his/her service to other members of the HEN community for free, knowing that in turn he/she will receive for free his/her needs from the HEN global economic community.

In order that each member may responsibly auto-regulate him/herself by knowing the proportion between his/her contribution to the community and his/her consumption, there will be a Web-enabled information system. Production will be measured in “Units of Necessity” which allow all goods and services to be valued and compared against one another. The database will be democratically generated by all members of the HEN and information on production and all transactions carried out will be publicly available for all members. This will also prevent abuse of the system by “cheaters” who attempt to do nothing but receive services without making any contribution.

These relationships of mutual help without money will be carried out internally amongst the members of the HEN. However, interchange with the external capitalist economy will necessarily be carried out according to the established procedures of capitalism. Goods and services will be sold to the external economy in order to finance the HEN, and this money will be used to purchase capital resources (machinery, land, etc.) necessary for production. These capital and financial resources will not belong to any private person or institution; they will belong to all the members of the HEN. In other words, this will be a social capital that will belong to all people that in increasing numbers join the HEN from all over the world, and it will be the people that democratically make decisions on how to make best use of this capital.

In summary, the Humanist Economy intends to incorporate the best of both worlds of capitalism and socialism. Its basic principles are:

Solidarity – Working for the common good and a fair distribution of material well-being and free time. Cooperation instead of competition.
Freedom – Each individual is free to undertake whatever enterprise or project he/she may choose, and to associate with others or not. There will be no centralized bureaucracy, government or corporation controlling affairs. Global decisions will be made democratically by the people.
Democracy – Every person can participate in making decisions, and the vote of each person has the same value. No person is to have power to dominate any other.
Justice – Solidarity does not imply that everybody has to have the same. Consistent with the principle of freedom, every person is free to work harder or less according to the lifestyle that he/she freely chooses. Justice means that each person therefore recieves a material well-being proportional to his/her contribution to the general well-being.
Efficiency – Eliminating wasteful work which in capitalism only serves for a few individuals to dominate the majority and does not produce anything useful for human life, such as banking, financial speculation, advertising, manipulation of the mass media and weapons manufacture. Technology applied to efficient production of a high living standard with use of little labour, thus affording more free time for more interesting and elevating activities.
Social Property – Capital resources such as machinery, infrastructure and land will be social property and thus belong to everybody.
Private Property – Private property will also exist and consist of each person’s goods for his/her private use, such as houses, cars, etc.

The HEN project is to be carried out in several phases. Phase 1 will be an initial test on a small scale in a small community in Santiago – Chile. Conclusions will be drawn from this real-world experience in order to introduce timely adjustments and corrections. Once done, conditions will be gained, with greater chances of success, for expansion by progressive degrees throughout the whole world.

For more information on the Humanist Economy Network and the ideas on which it is based, visit the following websites:

Humanist Economy Network:    www.humanisteconomy.org (Only in Spanish for the moment, we'll write the English version ASAP).
New Humanism:                      www.mdnh.org
Humanist Movement:               www.movimientohumanista.cl
Silo’s Message:                      www.silo.net

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUIRED SYSTEM

The information system for the HEN will consist of a large database of all registered members. Members may be individual persons, companies, or organizations. Members will interact with the system over the Internet. Each member enters the services or products that he/she/it can contribute to other members. In addition, he/she/it enters a list of necessities (food, clothing, health, education, housing, transport, domestic appliances, etc.) and the monthly quantity needed. The average sum of this information provides the basis for calculating the value of each necessity in Units of Necessity (UN).

Members will have at their disposal two directories with search engines:

A directory of all necessities of the members of the HEN, so that each member can find other people or organizations to offer help with his/her own service.
A directory of services and products, so that each member can request them from their providers.

When a member requests a service from another, the provider enters a transaction. When the service is delivered and the receiver is satisfied with it, he/she confirms it. This updates both members’ current account in UN, crediting one and debiting the other. If the receiver were to be unsatisfied with the service delivered, he/she would not confirm it and the transaction would remain in a pending status, until the conflict is solved by direct non-violent communication between the two parties.

The members can also optionally contribute money to the HEN, in order to finance the acquisition of capital resources. This money will accumulate in an account, which may be consulted by all members via the Internet. The members can request capital to finance projects and acquisitions, and also participate in voting to authorize or reject purchases and investments.

Each member will have access to a wealth of information on the HEN by means of the following queries:

Each member’s personal account balance in UN

Balance in UN of any other member

Current social capital (resources and finances)

Approved Projects

HEN Overall Performance Statistics

In order to encourage communication between members of the HEN, there will be discussion groups, mailing lists and chatrooms.

In addition, there will be a directory of groups of the Humanist Movement and Silo’s Message, which will allow searching by neighbourhood, and day and time of weekly meetings.

All the aforementioned functionalities will only be available for members of the HEN. Therefore members will login with a password.

Non-members will have access to the following content only:

All information about the Humanist Economy Network.

HEN Commercial Yellow Pages. This will consist of a directory of services and products that members advertise to the external economy. These services will not be free and consist of the members’ usual activities done in order to make a living. The idea is to help all members of the HEN to financially support themselves. Non-members can advertise here for a fee. For members, advertisements are free.

Registration page to become a member.

ACTIONS

Members and non-members will be able to perform the following activities on the website:

Non-Members and Members:

Read the ideas, philosophy and principles.

Yellow Pages – find payed services

Become a Member:

Contact information (name, phone numbers, e-mail)

Services offered

Necessities

Members Only:

Search for needs of others

Yellow Pages – find free services

Consult social capital

Update personal information, including services offered and present needs

Start transaction

Approve transaction

Consult own balance, production and consumption in UN

Consult other member’s balance, production and consumption in UN

Consult HEN performance statistics

Request capital for purchases and projects

Approve capital requests of other members

Vote on various issues

Participate in electronic discussion groups

Search for meetings of the Humanist Movement and Silo’s Message

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

The database will be PostgreSQL and the web pages will be written in PHP. Following is specific information on the tables, relations and PHP pages.

TABLES

TABLE	DESCRIPTION
Members	HEN Members
MemberNecessities	Members’ necessities
MemberServices	Services and products offered by the members
Necessities1	Categories of necessities (1^st level in hierarchy of types of necessities)
Necessities2	Types of necessities (2^nd level in hierarchy of types of necessities)
Transactions	Transactions done between members
Countries	All countries of the world
States	All states/provinces (1^st administrative division) of all countries of the world
Cities	Most important cities of all states of the world
Units	All units of measure used, eg. kilos, litres, etc.
Languages	All languages used in the HEN
Dictionary	Dictionary containing translations from English into all languages used in the HEN. Used to translate all types of necessities in table Necessities2 into the language chosen by the user.

PHP PAGES

DESCRIPTION	PAGE FILENAME	AUTHORIZED ACCESS	TABLES QUERIED	INCLUDED IN PROTOTYPE
Yellow Pages (Payed and Free Services and Products)	YellowPages.php	Everyone	MemberServices	YES
Register to become a member	Register.php	Everyone	Members MemberNecessities MemberServices	YES
Update personal information page, including necessities and services	EditMyInfo.php	Members Only	Members MemberServices	YES
Search necessities of others	SearchNeeds.php	Members Only	MemberNecessities	YES
Query global necessities and production	GlobalNeedsProd.php	Members Only	MemberNecessities Transactions	YES
Query own production, consumption and UN balance	MyUN.php	Members Only	Transactions	YES
Query production, consumption and UN balance of other members	MemberUN.php	Members Only	Transactions	YES
Query own pending transactions: own confirmations and own recievers’ confirmations	MyTransactions.php	Members Only	Transactions	YES
Start transaction	Transaction.php	Members Only	Transactions	YES
Maintain States table: insert, update, delete	States.php	Members Only	States	PENDING
Maintain Cities table: insert, update, delete	Cities.php	Members Only	Cities	PENDING
Maintain Units table: insert, update, delete	Units.php	Members Only	Units	PENDING
Maintain Necessities1 table: insert, update, delete	Necessities1.php	Members Only	Necessities1	PENDING
Maintain Necessities2 table: insert, update, delete	Necessities2.php	Members Only	Necessities2	PENDING
Maintain Languages table: insert, update, delete	Languages.php	Members Only	Languages	PENDING
Maintain Dictionary table: insert, update, delete	Dictionary.php	Members Only	Dictionary	PENDING
Query social capital	SocialCapital.php	Members Only	*	PENDING
Query HEN global statistics	Statistics.php	Members Only	*MemberNecessities Transactions	PENDING
Request capital for project	RequestCapital.php	Members Only	*	PENDING
Approve acquisitions	ApproveCapital.php	Members Only	*	PENDING
Vote	MyVote.php	Members Only	*	PENDING
Participate in discussion groups	DiscussionGroups.php	Members Only	*	PENDING
Search for meetings of the Humanist Movement and Silo’s message	SearchGroups.php	Members Only	*	PENDING

PROTOTYPE

We have created a prototype of the system. It is not an exact model of the final system; it’s purpose is simply to give an idea of what the system is supposed to look like. You can see the prototype at:

http://hen.hub.org/model/ENG/index_ENG.htm