[gotodengo]

This has interesting ramifications in areas which do have the ability to support power supply, but haven't implemented our style of loans tied to collateral (Edit: Or rather haven't implemented automated billing, pre or post paid, tied to an identity.).

I saw this in play in Mozambique. Few people had bank accounts, even fewer had mailing addresses, but many still had power.

Once a month or so you went down to the market and bought a little scratch off ticket worth X amount of power, I assume with the same one time use keys used on gift cards. When a house wanted hooked up to the grid they'd be supplied with a power meter which had a keypad. Type the numbers from your scratch off into the box, and it'd update it's counter with how much electric you had left.

A lot of things worked on this scratch off system, and it's one of the things I really liked. It enabled the power company to trust in their hardware instead of having to place trust in an individual. So the individual didn't have to provide any collateral. There was no credit check to get a new phone plan, because you either bought a scratch off that month or you didn't. No one came around to check your power meter unless there was something wrong with it, and they company didn't much care what it was supplying power to. I watched my neighbor build a new house and transfer his live box (quite dangerously) from his old to the new. The power company trusted the hardware, not a person or house it was tied to, so it didn't matter and there was never any record of what he was powering with it in the first place.