FAQ
What is Levl?
Section titled “What is Levl?”Levl is a platform and an application that allows any number of people to collaborate under the same goal(s) in a non-hierarchical self-managing manner.
At its core, it’s a system designed to help companies inherently protect employee rights, without having to rely on the goodwill of individuals.
How is Levl able to decentralize management?
Section titled “How is Levl able to decentralize management?”The idea is to replace every decision that any manager would normally have to take with votes that everyone can partake in.
This may include planning, task management, hiring, firing, finances, prioritization, performance evaluation, etc.
What kind of organizations can Levl be used for?
Section titled “What kind of organizations can Levl be used for?”Levl aims to offer its capabilities to all lines of work, this is why it’s built to be modular. Organizations can choose which modules they need and customize it as they see fit.
Developers will also be able to create new modules for Levl that adapt it to their work. Expect Levl to be a viable work platform for software companies, grocery stores, restaurants, you name it!
How does Levl make an organization more efficient?
Section titled “How does Levl make an organization more efficient?”- Organizations that use Levl will not have to spend any money on management.
- Much less time on meetings will be spent as many more discussions and agreements can be made asynchronously.
- When profits are shared across all contributors, salaries can increase and/or products can be made cheaper.
Profits
Section titled “Profits”What is profit sharing?
Section titled “What is profit sharing?”Traditionally in corporate capitalism, profits generated by companies are in control of the biggest shareholders. This system places capital owners at a great advantage, and workers at an unfair disadvantage.
We think those profits belong to all contributors, each according to how much they contributed.
Don’t founders & investors take the most risk and thus deserve the biggest cut of the revenue?
Section titled “Don’t founders & investors take the most risk and thus deserve the biggest cut of the revenue?”If that’s true, why do any layoffs ever happen? While owners risk slightly lower profits, workers constantly risk losing their careers and having to adapt to shifting market demands.
What is Merit? Is it a currency?
Section titled “What is Merit? Is it a currency?”Merit is a score system used to track how much each contributor contributed to an organization. Merit is meant to track ownership, and in a way, the trust that a contributor has earned from the community.
Merit is not a currency as it cannot be spent or passed from one person to another.
How does this compare to shares?
Section titled “How does this compare to shares?”While shares track ownership in terms of capital and directly represent economic value, Merit tracks ownership in terms of amount, quality of work done (or effort performed) and approval of the community.
In a way Merit represents the “share” of ownership a contributor has. We might experiment in the future with a link between Merit and capital but for now unlike shares, Merit cannot be traded or sold.
What is Merit used for?
Section titled “What is Merit used for?”Merit can be used in a variety of ways. We thought of a few:
- Votes can be weighted by the amount of Merit a contributor has (within reason).
- Profits can be divided according to the Merit each contributor has earned (the level of inequality could be configurable).
- Some features in the system can be restricted to only contributors that have earned above a certain threshold of Merit.
Wouldn’t a system like this be a source of inequality?
Section titled “Wouldn’t a system like this be a source of inequality?”Yes. This is intentional.
While Levl guarantees equality of opportunity, it does not and is not meant to guarantee equality of outcome. Some people work harder than others, and some people are more talented than others. Hard equality would undoubtedly choke out any room for innovation. If traditional organizations remains more innovative, Levl stands no chance.
However, this inequality is controlled through democratic mechanisms. A meritoracy within a democracy, if you will.
See the “Abuse & Regression” section for more.
Abuse & Regression
Section titled “Abuse & Regression”Wouldn’t Levl’s organizations also inevitably regress into a hierarchy?
Section titled “Wouldn’t Levl’s organizations also inevitably regress into a hierarchy?”With a large enough number of contributors, we do expect the amounts of Merit that contributors earn to look hierarchical. What differentiates this effect from real hierarchies however is the following:
- Contributors that have higher amounts of Merit do not have absolute power over everyone below akin to people higher up a hierarchy. They only have as much power as they have Merit.
- Control is not top down, but rather highly fluid. Since any contributor can vote on the ideas of any other contributor, there can be no oppression.
- Power is not unchecked. Someone with a large amount of merit must continue delivering in order to maintain their position. Otherwise, they can simply lose it across time to other hardworking contributors. No one gets a throne.
What about nepotism?
Section titled “What about nepotism?”A bunch of workers could indeed collude against others and value their own work higher than is considered fair. This is possible.
In order to mitigate against this: Levl can have built-in mechanisms that avoid bubbles and echo chambers.
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The “panel” of contributors picked to review a certain contribution must be picked by an algorithm that dis-incentivizes abuse (spam prevention, picking different people, etc). For example, contributor X may only vote on contributor Y’s items at maximum 5 out of the last 10 times.
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Contributions may be submitted anonymously.
What if someone gets all the Merit and dominates all votes?
Section titled “What if someone gets all the Merit and dominates all votes?”There will be a configurable (through voting) limit to how much inequality can be pronounced in a vote.
What if a contributor breaks the agreed upon (through voting) rules?
Section titled “What if a contributor breaks the agreed upon (through voting) rules?”There will have to be a feature where wrong doers can be voted out of the system.
Could this idea scale well enough to run large organizations?
Section titled “Could this idea scale well enough to run large organizations?”A few problems could arise when this concept is scaled up:
- Extra management overhead compared to traditional hierarchies.
- Information overload could be used as a vector of attack to subdue the democracy (as is used in society nowadays).
- The value of merit could start “drifting” where for instance really valuable work could be valued for much lower merit on one end of the org, than less valuable work on another end of the org.
These problems can be solved through compartmentalization. Basically “teams”. This is still not very well thought out yet, but teams could have their own review feeds, rules, and separate merit scores that can be connected to a root one using coefficients.