Scoot(69)
I declare Scoot(69) in appreciation of Jay-Z, king of the flow.
All we can do is tribute. How could we even hope to try to express the appreciation of Jay-Z better than he’s done himself a thousand times?
Spit your flows or tweet them out. Tribute to Jay-Z it don’t have to rhyme and the master can make anything flow, but 250 charectoers is enough for a good verse or hook so have a go. Or you can go long form, like I did.
Send your tribute flows this way
#scoot69 @geniusandvanity
Content Block 1 – 11/17/2022
Excerpt from Brandon Awbrey’s asimov:
Scoot of Bling (SOB)
In the Billionaires chapter, I talked about the privileges of wealth. This is where we define them. The privileges of genius wealth are different than property wealth privilege in an important way. They’re both vanity, genius privilege is the good kind of vanity.
How fun is it be to be wealthy if you can’t flex? I think wealth flex vanity is foundational to our civilization, it’s been around a long time. It was probably invented in Texas, but it’s been forty years since I took seventh grade Texas History. Let’s just assume for now.
The problem before me was, how to make wealth more equitable while at the same time replacing the property-based vanity wealth that’s so much fun. There’s a simple solution that solves another problem, how to replace the geo-flex of the East Coast West Coast rap rivalry, without all the murder.[1]
There’s are a reason the Pea’s song goes Up inside the club or in your Bentley. Apl.de.ap is cool, he wants to save the planet, but it can’t be Up inside the club or in your Tesla. You can’t flex something you can’t hear coming.[2] You can’t flex a tax credit – that’s like an anti-flex because rich people and royalty don’t pay taxes. Come on, now.
Bentleys are rare, made on a faraway magical island where once upon a time if you were a king and your wife didn’t bear you a male heir, you could just chop her head off. That’s some flex. I demonstrate the bad side of property-privilege, which we want to remove from society. With wealth, even genius wealth, must come privilege, or only hippies are going to sign up. To see how that works out, I refer you to the collected works of Sir Eric Cartman.
Wealth privilege is a must have in any functional value system. Despite two worldwide waves of revolutions directly reactive to inequality and class systems, we still have a problem with wealth inequality in a world that is fantastically prosperous in global sum and remains so with each succussive generation having more bountiful and peaceful lives. Despite this, we retain a high level of global inequality as our consumption expands faster than our total available sustainable resources. Why? Because wealth – standing apart from your peers in a measurable way – is an innate or biological need. We feel an aspirational need to do better, and we have to measure it. It is a good thing to aspire to, if you can measure value in a way that is both sustainable and equitable.
We need to emulate royalty, without all the bad stuff. Throughout history, even in kingdoms where there was no food, the royals always had them some bling.
The genuine article, I do not sing though
I sling though, if anything, I bling yo[3]
If you’ve watched the historically and ironically accurate Canadian docuseries Vikings, you’d know that king Ragnar was a forward-thinking man, because what he really wanted was farmland and peace on the British Isles but had to do all the pillaging and slaughter to keep his vain men satisfied, as they measured the value of their conquest in gold. The real hero Vikings valued something more than gold, and it had a purer, almost magical value. And thus Ragnar, after losing his mind in France due to a Chinese seductress getting him strung out on opium, gave up all possessions and walked the earth, and then would go on to become legendary, extracting vengeance before dying a martyr’s death in a pit of snakes. The legend was valuable beyond measure, true generational wealth, as all the sons of Ragnar, even the stupid and lame, became legends themselves.
Scoot is an open system of governance, but it’s not only democratic. We can’t make it strictly democratic, or we’d have to leave out smarty-pants Finnish benevolent dictators. We support a form of royalty specific to individual value systems. Scoot have the option to have characteristics – privileges – that match their responsibility.
Let’s say you’re Jay-Z and you’re just filthy wealthy, both in property wealth and your own personal genius. Your genius is universally accepted, and you are married to a queen. In your value system – the value of flow – you rule absolutely.
You hear an eighteen-year old’s rhymes, and it blows your mind, so you show him love on social media and then you have a new Bentley delivered to his home. That’s some legendary praise, and it shows that Jay-Z and the newly knighted rapper share a common measure of value in music. McKnight turns into a strung-out junkie who gets pinched trying to trade his Bentley to an undercover cop for a brick, what does that say about your shared value system? Even if McKnight turns out to be a choir boy, do you have any idea what it costs to pay insurance, taxes and maintenance on a Bentley? Social media indentured servitude at best, at worst, the kid would be out driving Bentley Uber every time Flo calls for an installment. How’s that going to look for Jay-Z’s chosen one? It’s a crime of necessity, because as a musician, Jay-Z gives you a Bentley, you can’t not drive it, it’s a golden ticket for potential generational musical wealth. Whatever it takes.
There’s a better way, and it’s Scoot of Bling.
Instead of buying a Bentley off the lot with a phone call, you have your people find you a special Bentley. Maybe the one that John Bonham had to borrow from Princess Margaret in December 1970, racing across the country to keep schedule with the band to record When the Levee Breaks. Legend is, he ran over a goat on the way and stopped at the farm, knocked at the door, apologized profusely to the stunned farmer, and handed over a briefcase with £100,000 and then helped the farmer bury the goat. The legend does not specify if the briefcase belonged to Bonham or Princess Margaret.[4]
You ride this mythological bad-boy Bentley with the ultimate pedigree around Brooklyn, sometime on your own, sometimes with your boys, sometimes with your queen. It don’t take long, and everybody knows it’s Jay-Z’s special car. You turn it into a Scoot – the fine automobile becomes a gift to humanity – controlled by you, though maybe you lay off some shards to your friends, they put some asimov down, they earn privileges, maybe they can “curate” the car for when their sister gets married, or to take their mother to church, or whatever, like one day a year and scheduled in advanced. What they contribute builds up a reserve fund in the Scoot that can be used as escrow for insurance and maintenance.
You make it known that Jay-Z’s Bonzo Bentley is like a knighthood of rap. Either you just decide – by fiat – or maybe you set up some contest. It’s possible to hold elections either in the responsibility domain or value domain, perhaps you get nominees from the public, or perhaps it’s strictly at your royal whim. Regardless, when you declare a winner – you throw him scoot with a responsibility characteristic – the winner must accept[5] – and he gets to drive the Bentley – until somebody else comes along a displaces him and takes it. Each new winner accumulates responsibility – the direct requirement to pay a portion of the upkeep cost – and some occasional privilege to the Bentley for special occasions. This all can be managed via the protocol; somebody writes an app to manage the scheduling and the collection of dues.
Maybe you become the car share king of New York, Scooting every one of your vehicles, as you can only flex one at a time. The Bonzo Bentley is special, it’s for those who can flow, but maybe you start handing out Scoot of Bling to people you come across in everyday life. A waitress really impresses you with her hard work, attention to detail, and professionalism, and a proximity app on your phone alerts you that the waitress is a pledge. The next morning, start of her shift, one of your people show up at the restaurant with keys to a Mercedes. The waitress gets to drive it for a few months, but a waitress can’t afford that kind responsibility in perpetuity, so you don’t lay that characteristic on her scoot. Ten years later, when she’s out of school and a big-time lawyer, she petitions you to lay the responsibility characteristic on her, and she contributes, paying it forward.
You can expand your car collection, share the rides responsibly, and avoid the perpetual upkeep cost. Are there downsides? If you find yourself broke, you can’t sell it. The cars are scooted – they belong to humanity – just curated by you. If it’s really bling – a privilege of wealth – then you’re not going to worry about that. You’re Jay-Z, you don’t liquidate value, you create value.
In Appendix D I describe Scoot of Special Purpose Entities (SSPE) which are designed to ensure that property that is transformed into genius wealth remains in the public domain. It’s easy to see that Scoot of Bling could be an instrument for fraud and tax evasion and that would undermine the system. SSPE work as statis for the physical property curated by Scoot. SSPE will repurpose property in a system that ensures that it is a benefit to the public good.
What happens when Jay-Z moves on? It depends. He can leave control of the Scoot to his heirs, and they can be the arbiters of what kind of sounds deserve the legacy of Jay-Z’s Bonzo Bentley, or it can be arbitrated by the Scoot itself. It’s fair to expect that the holders of the Bonzo Bentley Scoot – people responsible for what it represents – would want to continue the tradition as a tribute to their mentor. It becomes genius royalty, passed on for generations, as long we remember the flow.
The value of this scoot is a privilege bestowed by a genius upon recognition of some other genius – specific to their shared value system. The Bentley becomes valuable because of the value of Jay-Z’s genius. The value is a direct reflection of Jay-Z’s lasting value to humanity at large.
How this is managed as generational wealth is a choice. Children may inherit this kind of privilege, or it can be passed down symbolically – a bond of shared genius and a commitment to keep a value system alive in the future.
There are many benefits of transferring ownership of property into shared custodianship for a public good. It changes the wealth flex from the flaunting of valuable property to the flexing of your gift of value to the public good. In the case I described, it directly converts Jay-Z’s immense but finite wealth in the property-domain into immense and perhaps infinite wealth in the genius domain. The small commitment of wealth would strengthen the foundation of the system – that genius and not property is the real treasure of humanity. Changing the wealth flex for the wealthiest will have a trickledown effect, so that the wealth flex moves away from investment in consumable goods into durable sharable goods – quality and leveraged value over quantity. Things that can be shared. This is a path towards a more sustainable life.
Scoot of Bling will form staking networks with other Scoot of Bling. A rapper from Korea visits Brooklyn, because he’s in the same exclusive staking network as the Bonzo Bentley, he might warrant an honor of a pickup – it’s like a royal courtesy – as long as there is a special set of wheels waiting next time Jay-Z lands in Seoul.
This could lead to all kinds of exclusive luxury. Every genius musician needs a boat, but a musician don’t need a boat every day. Scoot of Yacht is the way to go.
Exclusivity is a privilege of genius wealth. It’s open and every participant will know the rules. The exclusivity lasts while the bling has value. The Bentley, without its association with Jay-Z’s genius, is just an expensive car that costs way too much to insure and maintain. The value is conferred by its association with the value system of Jay-Z.
It’s a way to confer responsibility for your values to people you value. It’s a knighthood in the Scoot royalty system.
I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex[6]
[1] You ally with the 713, baby.
[2] In addition, Tesla don’t rhyme with epilepsy or apl.de.
[3] From Crazy In Love, by Beyoncé, featuring Jay-Z
[4] When Jay-Z flies this bad boy back to the states, better land in Houston, we’ll take care of the paperwork, and I know a guy who can perform a flip job, turn that funny hand drive back American.
[5] For a musician to decline a gift of genius privilege from Jay-Z would be a powerful – or powerfully stupid – way to make a point.
[6] Public Service Announcement by Jay-Z