Swiss trade school teacher, administrator pledges a personal entrepreneurial donation of USD 21, 000—but conditions apply!
by Thoughtfox staff
At a time when a large percentage of the human population is reeling under the pressures of unemployment, poverty, starvation, disease, and death, a Swiss man seems determined to lend a helping hand.
A sports teacher-cum-administrator at Zurich’s Baugewerbliche Berufsschule, a trade school, Thomas Schwendener launched an online campaign (via his blog as well as Youtube and Facebook accounts) on January 1, 2021—promising to donate USD 21, 000 (Twenty One Thousand) of his hard-earned savings to a worthy entrepreneurial proposal (or to more than one proposal, as he clarified in an interview with Thoughtfox).
Thomas Schwendener
https://luttai.com/en/
As to what sort of a proposal might be considered worthy of his donation, Schwendener refers in his Youtube video to ‘a meaningful, intelligent business idea’. He further explains it as a project that would be beneficial to ‘sentient beings’—not necessarily just humans (and surely not inimical to anybody)—and would also be economically sustainable and promising.
Schwendener also insists that the entrepreneur seeking his donation should also sign on to his ‘alternative economic model’—the essence of which is that the person should agree to donate, to another entrepreneur, a small percentage of any profits that may accrue to the blessed project (instead of obsessing with increasing the profits). Additionally, an applicant to his donation must clearly illustrate to him that the proposed project has no realistic chance of taking off without this donation.
As to how a person seeking his donation might apply for his donation, Schwendener mandates that such a person must upload a video illustrating the proposed idea—and showing the fulfillment of the above three requirements—anywhere on Youtube, Facebook, or Instagram; crucially, the person must title such a video along the following format: #LuttaiTeamHuman_Country_Name_IdeaTitle
Schwendener claims that he would periodically search the above social media platforms for videos with titles bearing the above hashtag; if he finds any such video, he would review it—and contact its uploader if the business proposals contained therein interests him.
That hashtag, incidentally, includes a key abbreviation that is intrinsic to the title of his initiative itself, which he views—in the best-case scenario—as a movement-in-the making. Schwendener has called this initiative in his video (and elsewhere) the LUTTAI Experiment 2021—with LUTTAI de-abbreviating as Let Us Try To Act Intelligently.
The philosophical upshot of this initiative is an aspiration for compassionate economic enterprise that downplays exponential profiteering (and discourages interest-based loans) while promoting struggling (or wannabe) ethical—entrepreneurs via donations from excess personal earnings.
In his Thoughtfox interview, Schwendener revealed that despite having launched his initiative at the start of this year, he has not yet found a single video upload (on the three social media platforms of his choice) with his requisite hashtag: which might be another way of saying that nobody has yet noticed—or taken seriously—his offer of donation.
Nevertheless, he is in no mood to give up on his initiative until the end of this year anyway. In response to the Thoughtfox interviewer’s question regarding what he would do with the money in case no (suitable) project catches his eye before the end of 2021, Schwendener asserted that he would donate it to the following website: GiveDirectly.org
Schwendener’s interview with Thoughtfox could be accessed here.