Idea 451 of 500. Cluster 24: Proof and trust, as a business
A verified-review platform for Sri Lankan businesses where the reviewer is real and the review cannot be bought
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
Every idea in cluster 24 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Pick the restaurants in one town and write 10 honest reviews yourself, each with a dated receipt photographed as proof of the visit. Show the set to the owners and ask whether they would pay a monthly fee to be listed on a platform where every review is tied to a receipt and payment can never change or remove one. The proof is owners who sign up on those terms.
- Who pays first
- A good restaurant or guesthouse drowned out by fake reviews, which pays for a listing because honest reviews finally work in its favour.
- What leaves today
- Visitors cannot tell honest businesses from the rest, so the honest ones cannot charge for being honest; a review that cannot be bought is that proof.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. SixThe Fridge by the Road
The fridge by the road: proof that the rules hold - Ch. FifteenThe Odds
13 of 101 countries made it, and what Singapore's prosecution cost
More from cluster 24
- 452Escrow services for transactions between strangers, so that the money moves when the goods do
- 453Published price lists at the tourist sites and in the taxis, with a complaints line that answers
- 454A landlord and tenant rating service, since neither can currently check the other
- 455Contractor registries with completed jobs photographed and clients named
- 456Independent building inspection, so that a buyer abroad knows what was actually built
- 457Court-record and land-registry search services for the buyer abroad
Idea 451 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.