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

With this new technology, we aim to reduce growing economic inequality, increase everyone's income, and encourage local economies.

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 done to make the display results more useful and to enable the server to render them quickly.

However, because our actions are matched based on this ordered data and sites' profit considerations, there is little room for chance or luck.

Regarding work and income, the kind of good fortune where your company' content gets lots of views and orders keep coming hardly ever occurs. As a result, income inequality tends to become fixed. (You must expect views at first, but reality shows there are too many competitors. Most of us need ads to get views.)

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, how do we fix this and get your luck back?

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.

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

You can also create a community branch of the project in your local area. Make friends through activities such as holding lectures for beginners, having tea gatherings, and exchanging information on use cases.

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 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.

If we distribute revenue opportunities and help a company increase its sales, will the pay of the people working there also increase?

Decision-makers such as business owners and investors play a crucial role in ensuring that revenue redistribution is effective and helps resolve excessive inequality and social instability.

Many managers and investors act as local leaders and are interested in solving regional issues; some serve on nonprofit or school boards, and others invest their own money in local causes.

Through this project, many individuals and companies can turn revenue distribution into income distribution. As demand rises and local economies are revitalized, companies can expect sustained long‑term profits. Managers are likely to think, “OK — I’ll give it a try,” and involve their employees. This can help address regional and corporate challenges, and may even lead them to take a leadership role in their community.

This is still at the hypothesis stage, but to encourage you, I’ll write while checking the accuracy with ChatGPT as I go.

First, let's break down how wages are set and what it takes for them to increase. Wage mechanisms are complex, but broadly speaking, they work like this.

A wage's ceiling is the value that employees create for the company through sales. The floor is set by the minimum wage and the bargaining power of workers. Within this range, the actual wage is determined by the supply and demand for that specific job—how many people want the job versus how many positions are available.

There was an expectation that wages would rise by accelerating competition and mobility of the workforce. But instead, the wealth gap has grown so large that it's hurting people's daily lives and making society unstable. This intense competition leads to high employee turnover, which is a heavy burden for both individuals and companies and makes the entire economy less efficient.

Globally, the lifespan of companies is getting shorter. For example, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company after World War II was 67 years; today, it's only about 15 years. From an investor's point of view, stable, reliable returns are often more attractive than high-risk, high-reward gambles.

Since workers often have less bargaining power, it's up to managers and investors to set wages. We need an upgrade in our thinking: instead of seeing wages as a short-term cost, we should see them as a long-term investment strategy to help everyone thrive.

So, what should this **"new wage floor"** look like? Here are two fundamental conditions that local business leaders and investors need to understand:

1. A wage that allows any employee, including part-time or contract workers, to marry, raise a family, and provide their children with the education needed to work in their industry. This is essential for the sustainability of the business.
2. A wage that allows employees' children to pursue specialized education, like college or graduate school, so they can contribute to the community's social or technological development.
   If wages aren't high enough for this, money doesn't circulate locally. Instead, it gets siphoned off to outside corporations. For example, when a large chain store opens, it creates some jobs, but the profits leave the town.
   So, how many children in a region need specialized education? Since we can't predict which children will drive future development, the goal should be to ensure that enough young people can get a quality education and choose to stay and build their lives in the community. Otherwise, the region will decline.

In reality, business leaders deeply understand the importance of nurturing the next generation, don't they? After all, they themselves were raised in that way, so many are already putting this into practice.

A lot of tax money goes into education to foster the next generation. When I pay taxes (heavy!), I sincerely hope they will grow up with a spirit of altruism and consider for everyone's happiness. As you know, many people are angry that some act only in their own interests, and many see this as contributing to widening inequality.

The above "new wage floor" is much higher than the legal minimum wage, but it’s the true baseline needed for both companies and communities to survive. And even this doesn't account for leisure. If people don't have extra money to spend, industries like fashion, restaurants, cars, and tourism will shrink. Talented people will move away.

That's why, to create a thriving, growing community, we need to pay wages that allow more people to buy local goods and services. This means a wage level where ordinary work enables ordinary life and raising a family with peace of mind. Effort affords a home and a car with comfort. This is the other "new wage floor"—one that's essential for attracting talent and boosting sales.

Henry Ford, famous for the Model T car, provides a classic example. He paid his factory workers enough so they could afford to buy the cars they were making. This was a key moment that helped expand the market for automobiles, happening back when cars were not yet common.

So, the role of a manager is twofold: pay employees enough for their children to get an education that drives technological progress, and increase the number of people in the community who can afford to buy various products.

The way to achieve this is by finding ways to increase the company's added value (raising the wage ceiling). By raising wages, you expand the entire market, which in turn boosts your own sales and profits. This is a fundamental business strategy for both managers and investors. It has been shown that expanding the middle class raises GDP, and we're essentially making that happen with a bold, decisive push.

Even if the theory holds, isn’t it hard for individual companies to come up with the concrete “ways” that raise value added?

There is — and we have them, though not for all industries.

That's why we developed the "Requests" feature—a tool that uses a map to connect local buyers and sellers based on buyers' demands, helping businesses lower their costs for sales and procurement. Our "Banban Board" also helps with smart sourcing. You can use it with a "set-your-own-commission" model, and there's even a free tier.

This will cut costs significantly and, together with distributing revenue opportunities, boost value added and competitiveness. It generates resources to view wage increases as an investment. Because it’s map-based, money is more likely to circulate locally and help solve community problems.

Let's summarize the three conditions for the "new wage floor." Through this, when we provide "distribution of revenue opportunities" to companies, it becomes both a "distribution of income opportunities" for individuals and a profit for the companies.

1. A wage for raising children and providing them with an industry-relevant education.
2. A wage for specialized education (like college) for the next generation.
3. A wage that stimulates the local economy (allowing for a comfortable life).

For example, pays (wages) differ between jobs like sales and software development. In any line of work, it is a serious problem if people love their jobs but the pay is too low.

The three conditions of the "new wage floor" help narrow the wage gap between different jobs. While the direct distribution of income opportunities in this project does not by itself eliminate these differences, there is promising potential.

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.