Idea 455 of 500. Cluster 24: Proof and trust, as a business
Contractor registries with completed jobs photographed and clients named
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
Ask three builders or electricians who do good work whether you can photograph their last five finished jobs and call the clients who paid for them. Publish the photographs with the clients' names and their own words, with their consent, on one simple page. The proof is a new enquiry that came from the page, and a contractor willing to pay for the next listing.
- Who pays first
- A good contractor who loses jobs to cheaper ones with no record, and pays to be listed because a named client beats any claim.
- What leaves today
- Sri Lankan families abroad send money home to build and cannot check whom to hire; a record of finished jobs is the proof that makes them commission.
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
- 451A verified-review platform for Sri Lankan businesses where the reviewer is real and the review cannot be bought
- 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
- 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 455 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.