The You Can Upgrade the Economy Yourself and Increase Everyone’s Income Project

Using this new technology, we aim to reduce the widening economic inequality and increase everyone’s income.

It is difficult to eliminate income differences entirely in a free society, but we must address the fact that excessive inequality makes life harder and competition too intense. Crime and war are increasing.

However, governments have limited means, and social media often fuels division.

For anyone, ordinary work enables ordinary life and raising a family with peace of mind. Effort affords a home and a car with comfort.

By accumulating small actions in our daily lives with Requestland technology, we upgrade our economy. We nurture a “flourishing economy” where inequality narrows and excessive competition is no longer needed — the dream of humankind.

This project is not connected to any specific political stance or basic income ideas. It does not aim at individual poverty relief, but rather at a fundamental upgrade of the entire economy.

Whether in work, education, or relationships, chance encounters and luck are important. But lately, don’t you feel that such luck has been fading?

Today, we get a tremendous amount of information and act through the internet. That information is pre-sorted and stored in databases on servers.

Sorting means arranging data by price, rating, or performance order. This is a technical convenience so servers can display results quickly.

However, because our actions are matched based on this ordered data and sites' profit considerations, there is little room for chance or luck. As a result, income inequality tends to become fixed.

In other words, there is less space for the “natural order that governs luck,” such as chance encounters and unexpected discoveries, to work — even if you desire it.

So, what can we do? If there is a problem with the information technology system, we need to improve it — and on top of that, find ways to solve excessive inequality.

Distribute Income Directly Yourself, DIDY.

When you buy something, try to find what truly suits you — even from less-ranked or less-reviewed options, and preferably from nearby stores — to create income opportunities for more sellers.

Business owners also raise employee wages and aim to expand revenue by boosting the local community and overall economy.

That's all.

People in each region build communities, share tutorials, exchange seller case studies, and hold tea parties to make friends.

The more people use Requestland, the more income opportunities will be distributed — and your income will grow, too.

Everyone is welcome. Just use Requestland or contribute.

Peace and Passion, a social startup from AIST and Tsukuba University in Japan, leads the project along with all Requestland users and collaborators.

What’s the Problem?

When we shop, there are too many products and stores to choose from. It’s overwhelming. So, most of us end up buying from the top search results, top recommendations, or high-ranking items.

The graph shown here illustrates how users click on Google search results (Advanced Web Ranking CTR).

Clicks are heavily concentrated on the top 1st to 4th search results, while those ranked 6th or lower get less than 3% of clicks. Companies that can afford to spend on social media and ads rise in rankings and gain more customers. Their brand grows stronger, they can charge more, and they become even richer.

Online advertising, in particular, gives ad placement to companies that bid the most. This creates a “rich-get-richer” structure. Recommendation systems, rankings, and AI searches also amplify popular products because they are designed to repeat what most people are already saying.

Meanwhile, most sellers (maybe including your company?) are left out—even if they develop great products. They are forced to lower prices and become poorer. Many local small and medium-sized businesses can’t afford to raise employee wages.

There are many factors behind economic inequality, but we believe this is one of the major reasons why inequality has been rapidly increasing in recent years.

Though it’s impossible to eliminate income differences in a free society, governmental income redistribution is insufficient and ineffective. However, we urgently need to narrow the widening gap and upgrade the economy so that we can earn better incomes. But how?

Creating More Fortunate Encounters

The basic idea, “Distribute Income Directly Yourself (DIDY),” is simple and obvious: let’s create opportunities for buyers to meet more sellers beyond the top-ranked companies. This will help increase those sellers' sales and put them in a better position to raise employee wages.

For local business owners, raising employee wages strengthens consumer spending, which improves the local economy and eventually increases profits for their own companies. This creates a continuous virtuous cycle driven by the multiplier effect.

Peter Drucker once said that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. In reality, you need to create customers who are able to buy. For top management, that’s a fundamental and evergreen strategy.

To support this, we need a system that encourages local buying and selling.

The “Requests” tool helps with this. It lets users send purchase requests on a map, encouraging local trade and reducing CO₂ emissions. Buyers can first ask stores in specific areas to see if they offer what they want. Sellers—regardless of their ranking—read these requests and, if they can meet the need, respond with consultations or suggestions.

When making a request, the buyer can specify how many seller proposals they would like to receive (up to 4). To increase opportunities to connect with a diverse range of sellers, if more sellers apply than the specified number, the system randomly selects which sellers are allowed to respond.

Sellers can pay a voluntary entry fee (starting from $0) to support the operation of Requestland. This increases their chances of being selected somewhat. Whether it’s a single lip balm or a high-value building deal, sellers can pay whatever amount they deem appropriate. Unlike online ads where only the highest bidder always wins, this system gives each entry a corresponding chance every time, so even small businesses have opportunities. It also provides insight into demand trends.

Requestland can sustain and grow by receiving fair compensation based on the value users gain.

Lower Prices for Buyers, More Sales for Sellers

When researching purchases on your own, the “Banban Board” lets you compare options by arranging product cards. This helps you explore beyond top-ranking sellers and discover what truly fits your needs.

Often, products not at the top of rankings are priced more competitively. So buyers have a better chance of finding great value—“hidden gems.”

With Requests and Banban Board, we can expect buyers to get better deals, while sellers can increase sales without lowering prices too much. This will help them raise wages for employees.

Running the Double Loop

Our goal is to create two loops by boosting the productivity of lower-ranked and smaller businesses. First, a local loop where higher wages increase consumption and money circulates within the community. Second, a broader loop where happy families and thriving regions help the entire economy grow—including the big companies.

Anyone can contribute to turning these loops. Over time, both top and lower-ranked businesses can grow richer.

Government redistribution has its limits. So let’s take action ourselves, reduce income gaps, and build a better, thriving future!

More about the new technology, the H-Market Model.

To address the issue of economic disparity between countries, you can use the Luncho index, developed by us at Peace and Passion. Luncho is a universal value index for price comparison across countries, accounting for prices levels and inflation.

For example, people working in childcare usually earn much less than software developers. In any job, saying “I love my work, but the pay is too low” is a serious problem.

How wages are set is very complex. In general, it depends on how many people want (or are able) to do a job compared to how many job openings there are. That’s why the wage levels vary. In the past, many believed that more competition would improve productivity, and more job changes would lead to higher wages. But the gaps between jobs have grown so wide that people’s lives are being affected, and society is becoming unstable.

Because of intense competition, many people leave their jobs frequently, which creates stress for both workers and companies. It also lowers overall economic efficiency. We need to find ways to raise the bottom and reduce these gaps.

These wage differences between job types can’t be fixed directly by the supply and demand mechanisms mentioned earlier. But there is hope.

The economy is strongly influenced by people’s expectations. Today, one of the biggest factors is fear about the future.

If this project becomes widespread and small or local businesses—not just top-ranking ones—start getting more orders, the competition for orders would ease. As more businesses become stable and can afford to raise wages, people will feel less pressure to chase higher-paying jobs just to feel secure. This could also reduce the pressure on children to succeed, and many people would support higher government wages for jobs like teaching and nursing, especially if tax revenue grows.

Less fear about the future also means less pressure from short-term-focused investors, and companies won’t need to pay extremely high salaries to attract talent. They could take a longer-term view and invest more in innovation.

When jobs are stable and people don’t worry as much about the future, they feel more comfortable spending money on housing, travel, or leisure. This leads to steady economic activity and makes sudden drops in consumer spending less likely, helping stabilize the economy.

For companies, a more stable economy and long-term employees who grow their skills over time are major advantages. These changes could help reduce wage gaps between job types over time.

The most important thing is to realize that a system where everyone competes only for their own benefit cannot remove our fear of the future. We need to build a better economic system ourselves.

In the past, some believed that “removing regulations and letting the market handle things” would work. Others pointed out that even if individuals act rationally for their own benefit, it can lead to bad results for society as a whole. That’s why governments have used taxes to support the economy. But this has caused public debt and tax burdens to rise, so new approaches are needed.

This project based on H-Market model is a challenge to reduce economic imbalances by helping people distribute income opportunities more evenly, using new information technology—without relying only on government support. If it works, taxes could focus more on direct poverty support and redistribution, while we handle the rest through our own efforts.

Generative AIs such as ChatGPT learn from the thoughts of many people online and make logical conclusions. We asked about 16 major LLMs:

“If you were a human with a family and expected to live a long life, would you prefer to work in a society with intense competition and large wage gaps, or one with mild competition and smaller gaps?”

All of them chose the latter. They preferred security and peace of mind over endless competition and risk, even if it meant lower chances of high income.

Even if wages are rising, if prices rise even faster, life becomes harder. For technology that adjusts price levels, see the H-Market Model explanation.