Mots-
Hmm. It kinda reads like a patent.
So when you say the currency is issued in “units” of various standard things - it sounds like an asset-backed currency rather than a labor-backed currency. Perhaps that’s a nit. I didn’t see any examples of “labor” in there. As in, “an hour of legal consultation.” “One day of at-home nursing care.” Etc. This isn’t an objection, it is just an attempt to be accurate.
Currency may be issued in kilowatt hours, solar (sunlight dependent) kilowatt hours, an amount of kilowatt hours based on time of day or other consideration, volumetric or energy unit measure of oil, biodiesel, synthetic gas, natural gas, other hydrocarbon, wood, wood pellets, or other measure of energy. Currency may be issued in units of food, futures of foodstuffs, futures of energy or other materials etc
I can see why you object to all the rest of the currencies, including bitcoin, because they aren't backed by anything - that is, you can't redeem them for anything. There is no "asset" standing behind the currency - which both puts a floor and a ceiling on its value.
This plan would certainly remove all the power from the government/bankster cartel, which is definitely a worthwhile goal.
Ok, so, let's go through a typical transaction. So with all these different units, and different reputations (resulting in various levels of discounts) - let's say a prospective car buyer comes in with a bunch of different bills, hands them to the used car dealer, who then has to go through a process of...valuing each bill, negotiating a discount with the buyer ("no this guy is a scumbag, I'm not taking his currency, this one is all right, this other guy is great, I don't need more volts, do you have any wheat?") - it would seem to inject a fair amount of friction into everyday transactions.
I mean, I have enough trouble buying wine, with all its infinite variety. And I have wine-searcher! And the variability is only across a single axis!
I think there's a reason things evolved to a standard national currency, versus banks issuing their own bills, some blowing up, with discounts, etc. A national currency is just a lot more efficient. Of course this also grants a lot of power to the issuer, which is eventually used to their advantage.
I guess that's the eternal cycle. Complicated local systems are (generally) more secure, but more efficient options can much more easily be rigged.
I mean - Amazon is a case in point. Very efficient. No need to have accounts on a thousand different websites. But do I trust them? My gosh no. I know these people are weasels, charging me one price, while charging someone else another. And once they own the world...company store.
So is there a way we can get some sort of automated efficiency while retaining the local asset backing and security?
EDIT: I see, you implemented this as an assist/bookkeeping system for already-functioning communities. This assumes for the most part that people don't travel far - or conduct transactions in distant places. I mean, they could - MonsterMegaCorp could have its own currency too.
Replacing your database with a blockchain would be a pretty easy step. A blockchain is just a public database, after all. You'd need someone - a bunch of someones - to run the database nodes - and they'd have to be paid - possibly by mining. Or a stake. A QR code could identify each note. It would fix the counterfeiting problem, at the cost of de-anonymizing the transaction. [Identifying who did counterfeiting might be a little difficult if this thing got too popular - or if the notes came from far away.] Issuing a note might cost something. It probably would, actually.
Still not sure how the exchange rates & discounts and convertibility would work. For this not to make people's heads explode, you'd probably need some sort of convertibility. "volts per needlepoint-hour." Or something. Otherwise its just barter. Which went away because transactions just had too much friction.
Hi Dave
The example given is 5 hours of labor for the currency bill (I left out some detail). As we do now in carpentry etc. some people may prefer issuing a money bill useful for 1 hour of personal labor, or for a particular job of repairing a door for example. A new unfamiliar member would use a mix of asset backing, such as good for one hour of labor with asset redeemable of 0.1 oz of silver. This helps take care of an estate if a person dies with money bills outstanding. A new untested person would use a higher asset redeemable value to make his money more valuable before developing a reputation. This kind of stuff is done by contract law.
We have tons of computers and AI, right? That is how the complexity of multiple sourced bills is handled. Already when I buy something from China I use at least two currencies and sometimes three. Computers are smart enough to keep a ledger of value based on experience and other data and to instantly compare and collate different individual currencies into one transaction. At some point a private club of currencies may gravitate to using the backing asset such as silver to merely compare and collate using the asset without even considering the reputation and other actions of each issuer. However, a big part of the human experience is that we constantly review and discuss each other`s value and this merely recognizes what has been going on for millennia. We should be focusing our mental energies on these factors and thereby encourage real wealth formation instead of gamesmanship seeing who can out game a banker for instant wealth taken from the wealth creators.
Tracing between large groups or with a large group is done now by shoehorning the local currencies into a more universal currency. Most of the international transactions nowadays are carried out by actors who generate units of their local currency and convert to a foreign one (the US dollar) for the transaction. After the dollar collapses I expect that a gold backed digital currency, maybe from China or bitcoin will be used by many. It will be an interesting ride my friend…
Mots-
I think there’s a zero percent chance that the CCP will ever issue a gold-backed digital currency. That’s because, if they did, there would be no ability to engage in corruption which is legion in the banking system over there.
The trick is - a powerful CCP mogul gets the bank to loan his girlfriend money, which she never has to repay. He takes 80%, she keeps 20%. Loan is on the books, always marked as good. That’s what happened to Fan Bingbing. Supposedly.
This is something that doesn’t only happen in China.
This is why the RMB is not treated with much respect internationally. Its also why the very first thing moguls do is get their money out of the country. Its also why the CCP does not open its capital account.
If China ever comes up with a - fully convertible - gold-backed digital currency, then that will only happen when the CCP is no longer in control of the country.
A pretend (i.e. non-convertible) gold-backed digital currency - that’s entirely possible.
Look at the banking reserves around the world. China is the #2 economy in the world. Yet, what is its percentage of central bank reserves? Today: 2%.
Why do you think that is? Are all those central bankers just “anti-China?” Or do they know something we don’t?
good points
is there a sound money out there? I define sound as being backed by real wealth and being tied to real wealth.
Is bitcoin sound money? Virtually all the comments on bitcoin seem based on the illusion of wealth wherein we are supposed to buy bitcoin and sell it later and thereby abscond with real wealth produced by others (who therefore lose by a kind of theft) by gaming the system.
I assume that the purpose of an economic system and of a currency or a money is to act as a tool to facilitate real wealth production and distribution for all of us to have a better life.
It seems that sound money is rarely discussed or considered here so I welcome your comment. I think that the real bills doctrine has a role to play in making a sound money.
We talked here about this long ago. Lots of discussions of sound money.
I think the general agreement was, if the issuer couldn’t make more of it upon demand - if there was some structural limit on money creation - then that was sound money.
'Is bitcoin sound money?
Yes.
Virtually all the comments on bitcoin seem based on the illusion of wealth wherein we are supposed to buy bitcoin and sell it later and thereby abscond with real wealth produced by others (who therefore lose by a kind of theft) by gaming the system.
Bitcoin proponents are all about getting the first mover advantage. They believe they are doing the equivalent of buying Manhattan from the Indians for $25. Is that theft? Or simply seeing the future faster than someone else? If debasement is baked into the cake, then any "sound money" that everyone agrees with has value will end up being a store of value.
I assume that the purpose of an economic system and of a currency or a money is to act as a tool to facilitate real wealth production and distribution for all of us to have a better life.
I think that's half right. Money has two purposes: a store of value, and a medium of exchange.
Storing value is critical. If you can't store value, you will never defer compensation, there will be no savings, and no investment. You cannot "save for a rainy day", or "prepare for your retirement." This seems unfortunate.
"I'm gonna save a few wheat tokens so I can be able to eat if/when I'm unable to work." Otherwise, you have to store the wheat yourself. And wheat goes bad. Etc.
You can of course save gold - but then why not just use gold as money?
The real bills doctrine is one abstraction layer above barter. But it doesn't seem to be sound money to me. Because you can't really save it. It is too dependent on the individual - as you pointed out, if they die, that's a problem. Old-people money will be worth a lot less than young-people money. It will suck to be old.
At the same time, it clearly works in real life. So maybe we can find some way to facilitate it. Labor-money which allows personal creation (perhaps at some kind of discount), interoperating with some other store of value. You were kind of hinting at that.
And there is a limit to issuance. The system should provide a cap for individuals, and companies. That would keep it sound money.
Bitcoin could work as the store of value component, so would a convertible gold-backed bitcoin. And if I wanted to retain your legal services, I could just go on the open market and find your outstanding issued bills, buy them up, and then wave them at you when I came to your office.
Who knows. They might even go up and down in value depending on demand.
I think its an interesting system. Never really heard about something like this before.
Hmmm. Yeah. There would definitely have to be a discount on your hourly rate for it to be worthwhile. You issue 1-hour notes at a 10% discount. I can redeem them for full value. That makes it worth my time to hoover them up.
It’s an interesting back and forth, Mots and dave; thank you, guys, for its civil tone and the time you’re taking to flesh out Mots’ idea. Reading through, this morning, I have two reflections.
First, for me Mots’ explanation of his labor-backed individually-produced currency system convinces me it only has a hope of working in a fairly closed, small community. In such a setting, however, any system the locals devise is sufficient; hence Ithica Hours. But like Ithica Hours, there’s a reason such systems, fairly described by dave as one step of abstraction up from barter, don’t translate well beyond the hyper-local. And why Ithica Hours and its ilk have ultimately failed.
Applying IA to such a system seems to me to simply add a level of complexity that will more likely amount to confusion: if person A shows up to purchase something from person B using scrip from persons B, C, D, and E, even pointing out the relative values of each scrip according to the latest AI-derived relative values index would require person B to both confirm and affirm those valuation claims made by person A and, having done so, consider them personally acceptable under the immediate circumstances. How much easier would the whole transaction be if they all agreed to use one community-wide scrip. That, then, gets to the prior issue of how the local marketplace values each producer’s output in that common scrip. In close communities that process, formal or informal, can be fraught with conflict. It’s very hard to tell a carpenter that she really sucks at crown molding work, especially if she’s a neighbor and that’s her source of livelihood.
I think that the smaller and more intimate a community, the harder it becomes for the marketplace to conduct a free and impartial evaluation of the value of each person’s labor and end results.
Second, as one early adopter of BTC I want to point out that I am not buying in low to sell high at a later date. There are speculators doing so, of course, especially latterly. They come and go. My intention, as that of most hodlers, is to hold BTC until it has enough network built out to be usable as currency to actively buy and sell goods and services. I want to use it (or a secondary, BTC-backed layer) as money - real money that reliably stores and expresses value across time and geography, unlike fiat currencies. That’s the real vision of BTC diehards.
The volatility in BTC is already beginning to dampen, and will more do so as its market cap grows and participation rates increase. Over the next 30 years or so it very likely will become a truly global alternative to what will become increasingly volatile national currencies.
Any true money (distinct from fiat currency) properly represents the virtues Mots champions. When embraced broadly, that is, beyond some very local community, such money (which can be precious metals or a secondary pm-backed layer as readily as BTC-backed) can store the value of production and facilitate trade without the wild speculative gyrations we have seen in currencies since the debasement and then untethering of once gold-backed national monies. When money is sound, banks and even speculators provide the necessary virtue of liquidity (along the lines dave suggested when he said a kind word about bank margins).
The following statement is an assertion for which you have no proof.
“Bitcoin proponents are all about getting the first mover advantage. They believe they are doing the equivalent of buying Manhattan from the Indians for $25. Is that theft? Or simply seeing the future faster than someone else? If debasement is baked into the cake, then any “sound money” that everyone agrees with has value will end up being a store of value.”
You and others would call me a proponent of BTC. I am not a proponent of BTC (crypto) to gain “first mover advantage”. Mots is stuck doing the time warp again " it is just a jump to the right, it’s just a jump to the left" He and lots of people are overthinking cryptocurrency.
Mots ignored my post for good reasons< albeit personal and prejudiced. BTC and other cryptos are “labor/energy based.” Crypto is a medium of exchange. As VT pointed out the currency promoted by Mots is extremely limited to a very small group/area. Ithaca hours failed. Local currencies are not decentralized, they require a great deal of input to keep them up and running. I brought Paul Glover to our town to give a presentation on Ithaca hours in 08. A group of us worked hard at getting one established. Then came BTC. It made local currency obsolete. BTC is in fact a global local currency. I have used it as a medium of exchange. I have used it as a store of value. One problem with local currency is they can be counterfeited. It is impossible to counterfeit BTC. If I want to send my local currency to Vietnam to buy a container of plywood, how does that work Tip it doesn’t.
Are SOME people wanting to take advantage of being early adopters. Mark Rees comes to mind. It would be good to remember some things about BTC. It was developed and launched in response to the 08 meltdown. It was conceived as a democratic form of money, decentralized to prevent the hierarchy from gaming us by controlling money. The vast majority of early adopters were anarcho capitalists. I know this because I spent many hours on forums discussing the ramifications of the technology. Are most people now speculating? Perhaps or maybe many are hodling like VT and myself for the day when it has greater acceptance and velocity.
A big problem with labor backed currency has been exposed by SC2. What if there is no labor? Unemployment of 40% means no one earning money. What about people unable to work? What about the elderly? The infirm?
Once again we have a global local currency, actually many that are far more efficient than paper very local currency. There is zero need to invent another one. A better a strategy is to embrace what we have and make it stronger. 2 billion people around the globe are unbanked. Crypto changes that with a cell phone.
The future is here.
Will work for crypto.
There’s one more attribute that Mots is talking about. Something that bitcoin doesn’t provide, that is actually super useful to a community. And that is, being able to create money without requiring a bankster. (Or being a “miner”. Or borrowing bitcoins from your neighbor. What if your neighbor doesn’t have any coins? What if none of you do? What then?)
His monetary system basically allows individuals to borrow money into existence without use of a bank, on the strength of their word and/or reputation and/or skillset.
It turns out, this is super useful, especially in a deflationary environment. That’s what local Depression currencies were all about - eliminating the banksters and the payday loan weasels and the loan sharks (basically the same group) that take a cut of everything and provide little value.
With a “labor-backed currency”, every person can basically create money from nothing, based on their promise to provide their own labor (or product) to the recipient. You are the bank. Everyone is the bank. Your debt is extinguished when you do work, or buy back the obligation from the market.
Bitcoin can’t provide this feature.
This is a form of elastic money. There are a lot of details to be worked out, but this is the essence of what he’s talking about - a high tech framework for all the local currencies that popped up during the Great Depression.
Companies do this right now by financing their accounts receivable.
This would basically provide this ability to normal people.
“I’ll gladly give you a haircut Tuesday, for a hamburger I can eat today.”
So this is an elastic medium of exchange, but not a store of value. If we could somehow link the two, I think we’d have something really useful.
I do not have any of the details worked out.
I’ll say it again. How do you work for bitcoin, if nobody nearby has any?
It’s okay it is a relatively new phenomenon. BTW there are only 2,5 million (of 21 million) BTC left to mine. The vast majority of BTC are in circulation. You don’t have to be a miner to acquire BTC. As I have said you can work to get BTC. You Can sell goods and services to get BTC. Hell I will give you and MOTS each a Satoshi if you actually research crypto.
Digression over. The relatively new phenomenon is called DEFI. I am not by any means an expert so I can’t address many questions. I am just scratching the surface myself. Crypto can be loaned to others. Traditional financial instruments are being adapted to the space.
There are coins such as Tezzies which allow you to stake and earn interest. You have to have 8,000 to “bake” but you can pool with others or put them on an exchange like Coinbase and EARN almost 5%.
“how do you work for BTC if nobody nearby has any?” Dave really? Come on man. I realize you are new to the internet. lol But we are linked to a global network. As I have stated (once again NUMEROUS times) Elon Musk is covering the globe with Starlink. You yourself have sent BTC for server time correct? Somebody earned money in that transaction. How do I send a local currency (paper) 11,000 miles around the globe? Why would the other person be interested in a local currency that is not local?
You and Mots are having a nice little theoretical conversation that will go nowhere. After all is said and done more will be said than done.
You do not have to reinvent the wheel.
For the record for all the gold bugs here present company included, gold is not a currency, it is not a medium of exchange (except for the central banks) . It is a purely speculative investment based on a historical belief that it is a store of value.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Thank you Dave
I agree. A big issue here is that the future is local and we need tools that comport with this reality.
I never considered “money” as having a “res” but instead merely a tool to facilitate cooperation leading to the production of goods and services. Another tool, just like law is a tool and not something to pile up as a goal of existence. Maybe understanding this res feature of “money” or “currency” can help unwind the biggest problem that everyone is ignoring, namely extreme inequality.
I suggest that focusing on accumulation of money per se is counter productive to society because basing success or failure in contests between people on how much money the opponent has causes great inequality. I prefer to live in a society based on merit.
I suggest that instead of working hard to build up a store of money or bitcoin as a life goal, which has a main effort of providing an unfair advantage over other people, we should instead work for long term a. build up of good-will bank accounts with our neighbors, b. build up of humus in our soils, c. build up character and good experiences in our children, d. build up value in our own companies and skill sets, e. build up ownership in other companies in the form of stock, f. build up our homes, g. increasing ownership of commodities including food, gold and silver and tools against times of want. Saving money to build a company or complex machine in the future is great, but this idea of currency having intrinsic value so lets pile it up as an insurance policy decreases acts such as those listed above, which are true investments that comport with reality, which sometimes checks us with unpleasant consequences. Regarding all those advantages for using bitcoin internationally and global etc. I am trying to disengage from globalism. I dont want to be connected and integrated with global and regional systems of control. You can have that. I tried real hard a few years ago to buy bitcoin but was forced to give copies of my passport and drivers license to total strangers. Why is that?
I disagree with the fervent desire to plug into global resets or financial systems of control. I hope that I am wrong, but I see an extended dark ages coming and am convinced that we need to develop local systems, including local monetary systems. I am happy for others who enjoy their globalism and smart phones and bitcoins. Just ignore me and my community. Ignore me, I and my community are too stupid and to poor to pay attention to.
I know that my view is unpopular and that taking one’s money out of the system to “invest” in resilient community development is considered foolish by many. Perhaps I have my own irrational belief system, which matches the intensity of those who “believe” in bitcoin as a guiding principal of daily life.
Dave/Mots …
(Mots – i would love a copy of your paper to read and share with Scott, Also thanks for sharing Solar info with Nick, my friend and Neighbor in Atlanta, Additionally Dave – 100k thanks to you, a close 2nd to Chris Martenson - for your tireless work, perceptive , generous nature, one day our paths shall cross )
good dialog, close bright young friend of mine Scott was mentored by Bernard Lietar (one of designers of Euro, Community currency expert) https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/2019/02/11/bernard-lietaer-renowned-money-systems-and-community-currency-giant-passes-away-at-76/
Scott worked with Qoin
Qoin Foundation is a non-profit, full-service
complementary currency design and implementation organization
For almost 30 years, the Qoin Foundation and its associates have specialized in designing, implementing and managing tools for economic development on all continents, specifically to achieve a wide variety of viable and sustainable social and environmental impact outcomes.
https://qoin.org/
I have a small inventment in TIME
About Chrono.tech
Chrono.tech is building a comprehensive ecosystem for HR and finance, helping reduce or eliminate the barriers to recruitment and payment processes for both workers and employers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxrqNmv2tR0
CRYPTO “expert” Alex Saunders who might be familiar if you watched the video "Bitcoin made simple. Interviewed by Raoul Pal. This is what a real interview with a Crypto "expert sounds like. This interview is packed with information and vision. You , at least I will have to watch this several times to unpack it. Raoul Pal is doing amazing work with Real Vision. For the latest cutting edge analysis with some of the greatest minds in finance I can’t recommend it enough. I am now going down another rabbit hole. The promise of BTC is being realized. As Paul Tudor Jones has said this space has some of the most sophisticated, intelligent people in the world working in this space. Competition in the monetary system? Bring it on BTC wins hands down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cZtrX2EHtw
Mots-
Ok, I think I understand now - you are looking to construct a regional system for your local community - this is only to track the max-90-day labor-and-product obligations that you guys issue to one another.
Any savings must happen outside the system. If you want to save for a house, a car, your upcoming marriage, your family, or your new business, you’ll have to do it outside the local monetary system. These debt issues are strictly temporary, and are deliberately not made for savings.
Ok. Since I’ve done a fair amount of AI, I don’t think you can rightfully just toss the job of automatically valuing a fistful of labor contracts to my side of the fence. “Here, AI. You handle it. Somehow. You know - because you’re AI.” AI can help, but it can’t do this.
Not all attorneys charge the same hourly. Not all hairstylists do either. I’m not sure you can get away from having some sort of baseline value. You suggested silver ounces. Sure. That works. Silver, gold, bitcoins - something non-perishable, that everyone agrees has value. You pick what they are. But that item has to be floating around in the community, otherwise, it doesn’t back anything, because it won’t be usable to extinguish the contracts when necessary.
Computer could flag default risk for someone who issued too many contracts, or for someone who has defaulted before. But that’s just a warning flag.
Each contract has to be convertible at some rate. If you manage to acquire wealth somehow (say, you sell your house), you need to be able to buy back your issued contracts at a price certain. Or if you get sick, break your leg, your warehouse has a fire, your farm gets flooded, a riot destroys your shop, and can’t fulfill for some other reason either short or long term. The default has to have a set price to it. Presumably.
Or - you tell me?
Basically what I think you are describing is a metals-backed currency, that locals can issue based on their promise to deliver labor or products in the near future, with the promise to deliver metal instead, if there is a failure to deliver on the contract.
The computer is used in place of “the bank” to assess the relative creditworthiness of the “community borrower.” These effective labor-backed currency/loans are all short-term, and presumably a discount is provided to motivate people to redeem the contracts for the actual product within the time allotted.
Does that sound about right?
EDIT: In a series of Jack Vance novels I read long ago, the interstellar currency was the SLU - standard labor unit - the value of an hour of unskilled labor under standard conditions. Perhaps that could be the underlying benchmark, instead of a fixed amount of silver. If we’re going to have a labor currency, maybe we just go whole hog. Picking vegetables in the hot sun might be 1.5-2 SLU, working as the maid or babysitter: 1 SLU. My direct reports writing the code for this monster: 6-8 SLU? I shudder to think how much our patent counsel would cost. Triple that, perhaps?
The SLU sure does personalize wage differentials, doesn’t it?
The community could have a set rate for silver-to-SLU conversions. Heck. Maybe those are 90-day contracts too.
Note for the rest of you - requirements gathering is about figuring out what sort of system your customer needs. Some things you can do, some things you can’t, and sometimes you have suggestions in how to construct what they need that maybe they didn’t think of.
I’m not saying the customer is always right - but they usually have more insights as to what they are trying to accomplish, and you might consider respecting that insight.
I’m not sure what Mots is asking for requires blockchain. A centralized local database is probably good enough. But of course you have to trust the person running it, and - maybe that’s too much power for one person or entity. So having this distributed around the community might make everyone feel more relaxed. And distributed databases are definitely more resilient too.
And the code reuse is always helpful. The phone apps that use blockchain could be fairly easily repurposed to use this local currency. Maybe even the same code, just modified a little bit. Why reinvent the wheel?
Everyone has a different view as to how the future will unfold. Some imagine the future will look a lot like it is today - completely connected internet, but - maybe just less oil. Others think there will be far more difficulty, and their region will be on its own. Maybe only a local/regional internet/power grid will still be working reliably.
As they say - intelligent people can differ on how this all plays out.
Me, I have no idea. I’m just gathering requirements.
Dave
Yes that is about right.
We already have the liberty to seek assistance based on a promise and not backed by a metal or bitcoin or whatever. A very good artisan can do that and farmers have arranged financing based on future production. Farming often requires that.
I personally like to see silver/gold/electricity/food backed currencies. Each person can issue their own money. We do this already in a small tight knit community and having it more formalized just makes it easier and will help us weather a collapse. After all, this was done during the last depression for the same purposes.
I know of many house sales/transfers based purely on family obligations. In fact, most housing transfers traditionally and even now in many present countries are based on promises and not a bankerized sale. Americans have been divorced from the reality of normal human existence. I define normal based on probability and historical records. At the end of the day, when a man loses a hand via accident, or loses crops or a house via fire, the community and his bank accounts held with neighbors and friends have always dominated and were relied on to make the person whole. Americans have been living in a strange money-money-money dominated world. On the other hand the legal concept of private property rights that make Rome so powerful is best implemented with a reliable backed currency that will work throughout the land of the contracting parties. But success going forward will occur outside of globalist corporations. I suggest that we will (or at least the lucky ones) rediscover our humanity as we learn to live in small communities again. I like to see each person issue their own currency for facilitating small community life. If someone needs to buy advanced products from China, thats fine. The tail does not have to wag the dog. If a Chinese factory requires bitcoin (or yuan) for a purchase, fine, at that time we can get bitcoin (or yuan) as needed. Lets see what kinds of digital currencies that we will be forced to use and also what kinds of local credit unions that arise to handle such needs. There are tons of financial experts who are or will be out of a job soon and who can address those needs. I never claim to address or suggest or opine on a complete and comprehensive soup to nuts economic program and structure for the world. But CHS has some good points regarding labor backed currency which already exists in some informal ways outside of a 3rd party money corrupted society and which we should explore in my opinion. We absolutely must work on our investments in each other, in building soil, creating energy etc. at the local level and stop wasting so much time and energy dreaming about free shit, in my opinion. Many of us have discovered that basic food for living and other things such as shelter are available and supplied at the local level completely outside the bankster controlled money system. Lets focus a little bit on that and stop screaming about bitcoin and ranting about the necessity of international communications/transaction for bitcoin implementation in order to do stuff like get coffee from our neighbors and trade our labor. Local community interactions are better without getting basterdized by relying on far away 3rd parties who are motivated solely by free shit. I suggest that any party to a transaction who does not give a rats ass about the other parties but who is only conniving to maximize free shit, is not appropriate. Local community currencies should thus be used as much as possible.
The method of and the act of personal currency generation (whether formal as i suggest or informal such as I scratch your back you scratch mine) itself in part defines the work and is part of the work process. We should not abandon things such as trust, personal responsibility and personal reputation to a bankster class to manage those things. Money pricing alone does not accommodate the real needs of transactions between people. Good faith, reputation, previous good acts etc. are important and should be embodied in a currency system. That is basically what I propose.
Yes Dave, dont need blockchain (or the tremendous energy consumption incurred) for local currencies. I always thought that hashgraph had some good features, assuming that the slightly lower security compared to bitcoin was acceptable. Whatever happened to hashgraph? Does anyone have information or insight into hashgraph? I think that a tally stick type of hashgraph accounting would be particularly ideal for community currencies wherein the details of transactions are not very private but on the contrary, would make up much of the gossip and conversations between people, as being kind of public.
Western law has evolved a public centralized database for the most important property transfers of all. Your county courthouse records land transfers serially. I have not read any serious issues regarding the use of that centralized database. The cost of record searching could be eliminated with a good electronic improvement of that but I dont see the need for an energy expensive crypto to handle that. Maybe it is the secrecy aspects of crypto that make them so god-awful energy consuming… ?
Public centralized databases work well for intangible property buying and selling as well, as the US Patent Office has proven with the US patent registration/publication service, which is voluntary and extremely cheap to use. Modern electronics has provided us many tools for registering commercial transfers that do not require obscene amounts of energy to implement. But there is no free-shit! motivation to use them by 3rd parties who want free shit in return for not producing real wealth. Lets focus on producing wealth.
Mots-
You can have a cooperative-owned database which has fault tolerance/redundancy using a “permissioned” blockchain mechanism rather than the proof-of-work mechanism.
“These are the servers we allow to create blocks on our network.” No need to have a competition proof-of-work, which would probably be overkill for your application. But it would be public. And would let you have 4 or 10 or 20 different copies, for safety. What if your only server got hit by lightning? Or “accidentally” set on fire by someone who was heavily in debt? A single point of failure in a monetary system would seem to be a bad idea.
I poked around a bit yesterday and saw a few Linux Foundation managed blockchain platforms which might qualify. Here is one: https://www.hyperledger.org/
Note: I haven’t used it. But open source is a requirement, at least to me. You can look at the source and modify it yourself, if need be. Bitcoin has this feature as well, of course.
I believe bitcoin is the future that is happening right now. If this currency becomes a thing of the past, the experience we are gaining now will teach us a lot.
