We decide value together.

Who decides what counts

Every price carries a decision about what counts. Someone decided which costs belong in it and which are left out. In most of today’s economy that decision is made by market speculation or by decree, far from the people who live with the result.

The Semo Truth Engine starts from a different place. Economic activity is valued by its real social, ecological and practical impact. Once those impacts are visible, one question remains: how much should each of them count? A clean river, a fair wage, a product that lasts. These are not only facts to be measured. They are also values to be weighed.

Semo’s answer is short. We decide value together.

This is the second of the two processes the Semo Truth Engine brings together. The first reveals what is true about each economic activity. The second decides, collectively, how much each truth should matter. Semo’s own documents describe the aim as a way to collectively value economic activity based on ecological and human preferences, with ownership, valuation and distribution managed collectively by the users.

Facts are verified, values are voted

Deciding together does not mean voting on what is true. Semo keeps two kinds of input apart.

Facts come from data. The economy is built collectively. Anyone can contribute and verify data. In the design set out in the Semo Technical document, users vote on whether they agree with data that others have added, and each vote must carry a comment, so that the votes that count are considered ones. A comment that does not support the purpose of the data can be flagged. A comment flagged by three independent people is removed, every flag needs its own comment, and flags can be flagged in turn. A person’s track record sets how much their data input weighs.

Values come from people. How much the environmental impact should count against the social impact is a matter of judgement, not measurement. Here Semo is designed so that the community decides the weights, one person, one vote. A vote on what matters never overwrites a fact. Personal settings sit on top of both. You can personalise what matters to you, and that is designed to change your own view, never the underlying facts or the shared score.

That boundary keeps the game honest. Truth is revealed. Value is decided together.

Six ways of counting one decision

Semo combines different decision-making frameworks to explore how collective intelligence can govern an economy.

A vote is not only a choice between options. It is also a rule for counting. Change the rule, and the same people with the same preferences can produce a different result. Semo treats the counting rule as something to examine, not something to inherit. How we decide is part of what we decide.

The ballot below makes this visible. It uses one invented decision: a town has €2M and must choose between a school roof, a cycle bridge and a river clean-up. Three groups vote. Parents want the roof, commuters want the bridge, riverside neighbours want the river cleaned. The groups differ in size, in how strongly they care, in how close they live, in how long they have followed the issue and in when they voted. Pick a counting method and the result is counted again.

Each method rewards something, and each one carries a risk.

Majority voting is the traditional democratic method. Every person counts once and the largest group wins. It rewards equal voice. It does not see how strongly anyone cares. In the example the roof wins, and the neighbours who care very strongly are simply outnumbered.

Delegate voting, shown here as proxy, lets you hand your vote to someone you trust. It rewards trust, so people who cannot follow every question can still be represented. Its risk is that a proxy votes their own judgement, not your original preference. Who you choose matters more than the fact that you chose. In the example, delegation tips the result to the bridge.

Quadratic voting lets people express how intensely they care. Everyone gets the same budget of voice credits, and every extra vote on one option costs more than the last. You can press hard, but only on what matters most to you. It rewards focused concern. Its outcome depends on how the budget and the prices are set.

Proximity-weighted voting gives more weight to people close to where a decision lands, for example by location. It rewards the people who will live with the result. It also means that people further away, who may still be affected, count for less.

Time-based voting weights votes by how long someone has been engaged with the issue. It rewards sustained attention. It can make it harder for newcomers to be heard.

Time-weighted voting weights early votes slightly higher than late ones. This lowers the strategic benefit of waiting for the running total and then tipping the result the other way. It rewards early commitment over tactical timing.

Run all six and the ballot gives three different winners. The roof wins twice, the bridge once and the river three times. Nothing about the people changed. Only the counting.

The ballot is an illustration, and it says so. The town and its groups are invented, and the weightings are one plausible setting of the dials, not fixed policy.

An experiment, on purpose

Semo does not claim to know which method is best. The Semo Technical document is direct about this: variations and other methods will be tested as experiments, to gradually mature the way we make decisions as human beings. The settings themselves, such as how many credits an intensity buys or how much closeness is worth, are exactly what is meant to be tested in the open.

That is why the home page calls it a playful experiment. Life is a game, and every game has rules. In most economies the rules of deciding are fixed and out of sight. Semo is designed to put them on the table, where every player can see what each rule does to the outcome. The ballot above does this for one invented decision. This game is played by all the users.

The experiment is designed to grow from illustration into evidence. These frameworks can be used at scale for simulations, referenda and other real-world decisions. The Technical document describes the features for this: comparing voting methods in live scenarios, and tracking real-world decisions so they can be compared with the collective outcome. It also says how success would be judged: how closely results correlate with real-world decisions, and whether the alternative methods measurably improve the quality of decisions.

An experiment is only worth something if it can be trusted. The same document names the risks: manipulation of data, growth in participation, security and legitimacy. Its answers are strong verification, an architecture built to carry more participants, regular audits, and continual refinement of the methods themselves.