Panhandling in 2070: Spange-net
If there has been any one group that has benefited the most from the creation of the wireless net it is the great masses of the homeless in urban areas. The conversion from cash to credsticks made it exceedingly hard to panhandle as it required that the homeless person had a credstick and that they could convince someone to stop, pull out their stick and slot them to transfer money. Now that money transfers are wireless the only thing that is required is for the donor to click on an AR request for money from the homeless person’s comlink to assuage their corporate guilt. But how can the poor SINless person have a comlink or bank account? The answer is the Spanger and a Spange-Net.
The Spanger (Compression of Spare Change)
The Spanger looks like a large, but thin tablet computer. The screen is touch enabled to allow the homeless person to write a message on it and that message is then displayed on the screen and translated into AR where it feeds into a Spambot program that puts a pop up in front of everyone in a 10 meter radius. The AR sign also carries the corporation number and verification of the fact it is a legitimate Non-Profit Corperation (NPC) and some message about the NPC’s mission statement. If you make a donation the spam net will not bother your SIN again for 28 hours (and that’s for every person in the same Spange-Net). The Spanger has none of the other functions of a normal comlink.
All Spangers operate on the Public Grid and most are banned from any other Grid.
Stats:
Device rating 1 with Spambot software.
Availability: 4R (You must be a registered Non-Profit Company to buy them)
Cost: Only available in units of 10. 10 Spangers cost 800 ¥
Spange-Net software costs 5,000 ¥ requires a Comlink able handle all the Spangers (5 Spangers per level) or a Host. End users can use any comlink provided they subscribe to the Spange-Net.
About Spange-Nets:
A Spange-Net is nothing more than a bank account registered to a Non-Profit Corporation (NPC) with some modified accounting software. This bank account verifies and collects all the donations made to a homeless person using a Spanger (a striped down comlink issued by the NPC to a homeless person). It keeps tabs of the totals that each panhandler accumulates and puts some portion of the collected amount (25-75%) into the homeless person’s commissary account. The commissary account can be used to buy food, clothing, bed space or anything else that the NPC chooses to stock and sell. The NPC uses its portion to fund daily operations, soup kitchens and other outreach missions. In general it is a win-win for all involved.
The Dark Side of Spange-Nets:
This system also has huge abuses to the system. Some drug dealers and pimps register as a NPC and send out their dealers or joytoys out with Spangers or comlinks subscribed to their Spange-Net to collect “Donations”. This helps Johns and users from having to explain odd transfers to bosses or spouses as all their dealings show up as charitable donations. (Yes that means that yuppy scum Nova-coke user with that joygirl gets to write them off on his taxes.)
Also some NPC are nothing more than scams. The person who sets up the company draws a large salary as “operating expenses” and widens his margins by selling overpriced booze and BTL chips in their commissary.
Example: A pimp decides to try and increase his profits by using a Spange-net. He sets up a corporation (non-profits are preferred so they don't have to pay taxes). Call it the Joygirl Rescue League(JRL). He then gets a Spange-Network up and running with a corporate bank account in his SIN or in a good fake SIN.
Now the girls get their clients to pay as a "donation". It shows up on his bank account as a tax free donation to the JRL. The pimp then rents places for the girls and himself using JRL funds and list it as "Girl Rehabilitative Housing". He also pays himself a salary for being the manager of the JRL. The girls might get money as "fund raisers". Legbreakers still get listed as "security".
If the pimp has organized crime ties then he can make donations to THEIR charitable organizations as a way to launder the money.
If anyone ever comes down to his turf the girls all know to say that they JRL comes down there with food and offers to get off the street. If they investigate the housing, they find it filled with street walkers (who are supposed to be living there as a halfway house).
In SR the smartest criminals work for the corporations, so all the other criminals emulate them.
