Slow Money Movement | Hacker News Reader

Slow Money Movement

beetcoin.org

52 pointsmooreds31 comments

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Does the video explain what the slow money movement/beetcoin is? Because none of the text seems to.

This is probably the best short explanation: https://slowmoney.org/about/principles

There's a couple of books as well: https://slowmoney.org/publications

Seems like Kiva to give 0% loans but for US organic farmers.

https://beetcoin.org/how-it-works

Not sure why this isn't upvoted higher. I thought the infographic on that page explained it pretty clearly, step-by-step.

I participated in a Slow Money chapter for a few years in the Boulder CO area with Woody and others. AMA.

Could you please explain why you chose to participate in this/what it means to you?

Sure. I am interested in new economic models and Slow Money gave me a chance to explore investing with accredited and non-accredited investors into local enterprises, particularly those in or adjacent to the food system. This felt new to me, though it is a variant of impact investing which has been around for decades. My time was before the 0% interest loans, which is a new model that I haven't participated in. Woody has been in the financial and non-profit world for years, so this was a golden opportunity to get the chance to work next to him.

I believe you have a few levers to make change in the world:

  * your livelihood
  * your free time
  * your spending
  * your investing

I invested because I wanted to see what change we could accomplish with this group of investors. I learned how hard it is to properly evaluate lending to businesses (from many angles, including recruiting businesses to apply for loans, even low interest ones). To be blunt, the end results weren't good in terms of capital return. I do think we impacted the local food ecosystem in a positive way, but there's a reason risk departments are not run by committees of volunteers.

I'm excited to see the new experiments the Slow Money folks are working on. I think that is room and need for some new economic models and am encouraged smart passionate folks continue to work on this.

>My time was before the 0% interest loans, which is a new model that I haven't participated in.

Why not? Do you not enjoy investing with guaranteed 0% return (actually negative return factoring in inflation) but all the regular risk?

Ha. That form of philanthropy is not for everyone. It can be higher leverage that charity, though.

Mind sharing what slow money movement exactly is?

There is a button when you scroll down that says "If you're a boomer, you should click here". I feel like that's enough on its own to completely undermine any credibility and gravitas a site might have. I can't imagine donating money to be managed by a group of people who decide to inject generational politics into this for utterly no reason.

Clicking on the link (omg am I even allowed to?? I'm not a boomer!) yields some kind of manifesto about racism, 1%ers, AI, slavery, social justice, and silicon valley? What the hell am I even reading, honestly.

This project crossed the line into Poe’s Law [0] for me. I believe it’s raising money for small farms, but I’m far from certain of that fact.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Yeah it's the website equivalent of your uncle that starts the conversation with a reasonable sounding topic to lure you in before unleashing all his beliefs about the government on you.

Yeah, that was a pretty big turn-off for me as well.

Like, I'm down for the 0% recirculating loans to local farmers (I like this a lot), but reading that manifesto really made me uncertain as to whether there were more goals besides helping out local farmers that I was implicitly signing up for too here.

If I want to donate some money to help out small-scale farmers, but don't want to eat the rich, is this still the place for me? Reading that link left me unsure.

You can lend 0% to farmers, including U.S. farmers on Kiva:

https://www.kiva.org/lend/filter?sector=Agriculture&countrie...

Boomer doesn't exclusively mean baby boomer. It's just slang for someone who is old/out of touch. See 30-year-old boomer.

In the context of this page, it looks like they are talking about literal baby boomers, by virtue of the author associating with them ("dear fellow boomers").

But whew, just using it as slang for somebody who is out of touch is some next-level condescension. Cut that out.

Boomer is a way of putting a group down. It's elitist and I'm shocked by the people who use it. Most would try hard not to offend other sections of society.

Someone who is out of touch with what exactly? TikTok memes? Its easier now than ever to be somewhat out of touch with whatever trend youth is following, but you cannot follow all that, have a full-time job, a family, and following the stuff which is relevant for you (as a 30/40/50/60/70/80/90 something).

So for me, that slang just means people who are older than me who have a different reference because they are in a different point in life.

However because 'we' (those who have passed youth and young adolescence) are older we are supposed to feel empathy for youth. We've been their age, but not vice versa. So I suppose that is the goal, with an explanation of what is different in this time compared to when I was young (e.g. 2001 vs 2021).

Where's the investment sense in zero-percent loans (regardless of whether they're made to farmers or not)? If you're asking people to finance in something without an expectation of return, then call a spade a spade and call it a charity.

The main CTA is DONATE, that's a pretty clear spade signal to me.

Just read the website. "The Slow Money Institute pools beetcoin donations and makes grants to local 0% loan groups"

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