Safeguarding the Integrity of the Plan

This supplementary economy is transparent from every angle:

  • All participants share in decision-making regarding goods and services
  • There must be no reasonable objection to any of the goods and services available through the Plan
  • A list of available goods and services will be published with their prices.

Safeguards

  • Attendance of discussions and voting on goods and services can be checked through the computer system by all SIFA participants, so no one can say they voted against something when in fact they have not raised any carefully-reasoned objection.
  • There are two development workers assigned to every region: one from the region itself, and one from outside. They attend group meetings and can have private consultations with every person in their region, to make sure that there is no coercion or dishonesty.
  • Professionals are employed to monitor the computer system and to watch for unaccountable purchasing patterns that could be due to coercion.
  • Since the same rules apply worldwide, the system can be monitored by all participants.
  • Irregularities will be investigated by the SIFA Administrative Agency, and periodically reported, thus discouraging local coercion.
  • Penalty for any form of abuse of the system can be temporary or even permanent exclusion from the system both as user and as producer. Substantial sums, especially for producers, can be at stake right from the beginning. As individual supplementary income would increase every year, large sums would be at stake and exclusion would also be detrimental to personal and business reputation.
  • As technology improves and computers become more accessible to all people, abuse can be spotted and reported more easily.
  • Safeguards to the system are built in at each of the following levels:
    • Each person decides privately, in consultation, if necessary, with the two development workers, which goods and services to order.
      While not mandatory, decisions can be discussed in group meetings, with friends, family and whomever else one wishes to include.
    • Each person receives the goods and services they have ordered only after clear identification.
    • Computer fraud is unprofitable, in that it is easily detected both because what a particular person has ordered can be known by the local SIFA community and by the trained SIFA development workers, and because unusually high balances of producers are automatically monitored by experts hired to spot fraud in any part of the system.