i-burn Legacy Proposal

An issue that I have come across over the past few days is one of legacy.

Legacy forms part of your estate. Long after you are dead, the rewards you have earned from the hard work in this life are able to be benefactored or gifted on to surviving loved ones or other beneficiaries or groups.

When I was working as an Administration Manager with an Accountant Sole in Brisbane, Australia from time to time I would assist her with estate planning. Most people think that estate planning is just about last wills and final testaments. Sure, that's a major component.

Estate planning also involves an element of forensic accounting. You need to ensure all assets - both tangible assets (e.g., landed property, cash, and securities) and intangible assets (e.g., the goodwill of a business, personal and corporate brands, and other non-physical thingies) - have been found and accounted for. A list can then be prepared and attached to the estate documents, perhaps as an appendix to the will.

If you want to know more about intangible assets, here is a link to a recent article that I found most interesting: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intangibleasset.asp

So now, as we prepare to pass from one year to another, my mind drifts. I reflect on how short our lives really are. This year alone, two legendary professional surfing affiliators I have had ether'd contact with have passed. I'm sure that there are a few more, I've just not been told about them.

. . . .

Stephane (Steph) Tourigny @quadabilities

Stephane (Steph) Tourigny left us on February 22, 2019. He was known as quadabilities on the affiliate training program ClickTrackProfit, and he owned a few sites including the traffic exchange VikingHits and the mailers SurfingOldSchool and TrafficExchangeWiz. He was also the former site owner of CupOfTraffic, now owned by Russell Stockley @russellstockley.

Thank you Steve Ayling for passing on the message of Steph's passing a few months. Here's the link to Steph's obituary that Steve gave in his email dated March 7, 2019: https://memorials.guenettefuneral.com/Tourigny-Stphane/3765276/obituary.php

Steve also mentioned in that email that Steph's loved ones could not locate the passwords to access the back-office of the various websites that Steph owned. Sadly, those intangible assets are lost to them.

. . . .

Graham McCallum @screwball

Just yesterday, I noticed a message from Rob Lawson in the TrafficSwirl chatroom of the passing on Sunday, November 10 of Graham McCallum, known as screwball11 on that site and the team leader of Swirl With Attitude, and as screwball on ClickTrackProfit.

Last night (my time), I passed on the information re Graham's passing to the ClickTrackProfit team members via the official CTP Telegram group chatroom. Their thoughts and comments were passed back to Rob on his TrafficSwirl profile page: "Ian, thankyou so much for passing on the information. Graham would surely appreciate it. Sent and passed on all the kind thoughts to Marcus and his family. Rob"

Here's the link to Graham's Facebook account, in case you want to message his loved ones: https://www.facebook.com/GrahamMcCallum2011

. . . .

Please do prepare a list of your intangible assets, and how to access them. You have a duty of care to your loved ones, to ensure they can make use of what you have worked so hard for.

I had almost completed another article on the need to prepare a legacy portfolio of intellectual property rights, when I saw Rob's comments re Graham. Too raw the loss of another surfing legend, so I'll post that article tomorrow perhaps.

Writing this post has really pushed me well outside my comfort zone. Not only have we lost two exceptional e-friends, I'm now in the embarrassing situation of being paid to be the bearer of such sad news.

Suggestion: we set up a tag on the Steem platform, something like i-burn, so that an agreed percentage of revenue can be burned automatically once a post in the form of an obituary or epitaph is uploaded, or a comment is entered on an i-burn tagged article. In this way, we share the loss of a loved one, and their legacy on the Steem platform is that all steemians will benefit from less Steem in circulation.

Of course, the author and the commentators are entitled to some remuneration; I'll be comfortable again if that is set at say, 25% of revenue in the nature of a messenger-of-sad-tidings fee with the remaining say, 75% of revenue to be cremated in honour of our fallen.

To be sure, what I'm proposing is that the author and commentators get only 25% when i-burn is used as a tag. I know that there is a null tag we can use that will take out 100%, what I'm hoping for is a totally automated graduated system that is appropriately named to reflect the loss of a loved one. As a new fish here on Steem, I have no idea how to set up such a function, nor whom I should contact.

The following article from @neoxian-city last month may assist here: https://steemit.com/neoxian/@neoxian-city/neoxian-city-tutorial-1-how-to-set-beneficiaries-from-different-interface

Your thoughts on this i-burn tag proposal are most welcome; please comment below.

Ian Ballantine
Wellington, New Zealand
November 15, 2019.

RIP Steph
RIP Graham

Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser or legal adviser, so the comments written by myself and that are contained in this article are meant only for general interest purposes. If you need advice on intellectual property and your rights pertaining to that property, then seek advise from an appropriate professional such as a financial adviser or a patent attorney registered in your own jurisdiction.