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The Good Person Club

It needs to have a modest title but that wouldn’t stop it from being desirable.

Most people are “good” people. 90%? 95%? 99%? Who knows, but most of use would agree that most of us are. Wouldn’t be marvellous to be about flash a membership page that stated you were good? A bit like how you need a police check before performing certain roles in Australian society, but on steroids.

It would initially only be available to people in certain countries where the first requirement can be met in a trustworthy way. But that could, hopefully, encourage other countries to become less corrupt so their people, even their leaders, could join the club.

Requirement #1 – no recent or substantial criminal history.

There are many instances were criminal histories are checked and judged, for example entering a foreign country. The idea is all that matters at this stage, but something like no imprisonment in the last 10 years, and never ever having a 3 years sentence. It could be more nuanced than that. Crime is typically representative of the opposite of good. And that is the only easy requirement to come up with – the rest are more subjective and harder to verify.

2. Charitable

This is verifiable. Provide your tax return (every year, as part of your renewal). And provide the club with cash, for the club to send to your preferred charity on your behalf. Levels of charity would of course be tiered to levels of income. But minimums would apply, otherwise the requirement is meaningless. Keep in mind, this isn’t a club everyone will be able to join. The plan is to aspire people to want to join.

3. God fearing

That’s half a joke. Simply have paid, receipted membership of a local club or society. This is in the category of “we’ll never check it particularly but most people wouldn’t fake it”.

4. A questionnaire

A personality test… make it arduous but impossible for a good person to fail. To weed out the 1% only. Obviously not an easy test to create. But make sure the required pass mark is not known publicly.

5. References

Three references from non-family members. That’s a little unfair on loners, but loners won’t be flashing their membership card around the world. The references are open statements, with no hints or examples provided. Basically my neighbour saying “I never seen him hit no-one” would suffice. However, at least one will be verified. And each must include selfie of you and your reference together.

6. Social media

You need to join the offical social media system of the club and make x number of posts during your probation period. Or you supply your existing username at FB, Twitter or whatever. Posts will be checked by AI (and double-checked by a human if anything pops up) for hate speech, but applicants don’t know that.

And that’s all I can think of. It can easily be self-funded through low membership fees, or advertising on the social network or newsletters, or 1% of the donations (probably the best).

Ultimately the purpose is, if video libraries become popular again, you can become a member by flashing your Good Person Club badge. No need to take down any details, you are trustworthy.

Or anything like that, perhaps getting into a “nice” club, the sort where people don’t get stabbed. Without having your licence scanned. Or to show someone on your first date (yes it has your photo, I thought of that!).

Damn, I just thought of a security system! Want to check if a photo ID is real? It has a QR code on the back – scan it and your phone sends you the photo associated with the ID. And the card holder receives a text message verifying the same, so they can show you.

BTW – this is just an idea – I come up with ideas. I has serious downsides. We already have major problems in countries like the US where felons who have done their time cannot get work. Everyone deserves the chance for redemption and anything that creates an us and them in society is divisive and unhelpful. I thought of requiring “must have pet” so Trump would fail. But you could also go “must be vaccinated”. Serious downsides!

But also… it could start out as specific to one industry association that has trust issues. Like financial advisors. Or car-salesmen.

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