Bitcoin Forum

I've posted on this in another forum:  < https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=429437.0 >  but this one may be better suited to getting discussion going.

There is a concept of guaranteeing every person a free minimum income.  
- Advantages include countering extreme poverty and providing buffering against deep recessions/depressions.
- One justification is that a capitalist economy takes some value from all, by imposing externalities on all (pollution, loss of natural beauty, loss of access to formerly unowned land, etc).
- Probably the largest objection to guaranteed income is that it has always appeared that it would have to be created by a government, which would take from some in order to give to all.

My thesis here is that it might be possible to create a crypto-currency that provides a totally voluntary, non-governmental, world-wide guaranteed minimum income.
See the link above for some discussion of some technical attributes of such a coin system.

The biggest issue appears to be how to prevent fraud by double dipping - creating multiple fake accounts to generate multiple streams of free coins.
One approach would be to somehow tie participant accounts to their real identity.  Again, I've proposed a few ways that might be done in that other post.

Can anyone see any way to make this work, without tying coin creation to true identity?  Maybe some sort of "proof of work by a real human"?

Maybe some sort of "proof of work by a real human"?

A job?

 :D

Problem with "free" income is that you are going to spend your coins to get stuff for "Free".  However, that stuff wasn't free for the person who grew it, created it, or what have you - they had to work for it.

So what you've done, essentially, is enslaved the producers for that period of time they made that item or service.

What your saying is along the lines of: lets end poverty by simply giving everyone on earth who is poor One Million Dollars!  Then the producers can work their butts off for that money that was given to the poor people.  Couldn't be simpler, why hasn't anyone thought of that before?!!!!

The real way to get un-poor is to increase your value to the world - skill sets, working harder, etc.  The only way known to man that works.  NOT hoping someone gives you money for nothing.

What if the producers are robots

Accepting this altcoin would be just as voluntary as accepting Bitcoin.  So no, there's no enslaving going on.

Even if implemented, you could refrain from accepting free coins or payment in these coins, so there is no need to feel threatened by it.

Nobody of the capital owners will accept these altcoins IMHO.

Partially true - if accepting altcoins will be compulsory, this idea have no difference with taxation.
But assuming that main production factor will be the capital (robots) and not the labor, no people will be force to work, just bourgeoisie forced to share production means.

Perhaps I need to clarify.  No one would be forced to accept the altcoins.   Just as with Bitcoin, choosing to get involved is totally voluntary.  You could also trade in the coins without any obligation to accept them in the future.

But if and so long as one does choose to generate the free coins, one would be accepting an obligation to accept payments in the coin - at least up to the amount of free coins you spend.  (And this is not a hard fixed rule, it's just my current thought on how it would work.)

Instead of thinking of it as "free" coins, it's better to think of it on the same model as a government (or a bank like the Fed) printing coins and putting an equal debt on their ledger.  The entity - government, bank, or individual, "loans" the coins into existence.   Yes, it sounds like fairy magic, but that's pretty much how US dollars work...

BTW: It's awkward to keep referring to this as "the altcoin".  Suggestions for a good name?

(It's too awkward to keep calling this 'the altcoin'.  I'm going to call it Mincoin until someone comes up with a better name.  Refers to both 'minting your own coins" and "minimum income".)

The main factor Mincoin has going against it, is a rapid devaluation rate.  That makes it very poor as a long term store of value.

But merchants do accept 'worthless scraps of paper' that commonly lose 2% to 10% of their value in a year.  And they accept credit cards that charge them transaction costs as high as 3%.   Those are just costs of doing business, factored into their prices. 

So it doesn't seem too incredible that they might eventually do the same with Mincoin.  As long as they can turn over their mincoins in less than a week, a 2%/week devaluation could be considered a cost of doing business. 

One other thought I had:  if Mincoin requires a public account into which coins are created (to combat fraud), one could exclude about a month's worth of coins kept in that account from decay.   So if one can generate 3 mincoin a day, 100 mincoin in the identity-tied creation account wouldn't decay.  That allows one a month to spend the free coins, and merchants can hold a small amount of "cash" on hand without loss.  The increase in the total money supply would only be about 10% from implementing this.

Clearly, as with Bitcoin, there would have to be a 'bootstrap' process for Mincoin. Mincoin has a number of strong factors going for it in that regard:

People like to get "free" stuff.  In this respect, Mincoin might prove much more attractive than Bitcoin, where by design only a few get free coins.   Mincoin embraces one of the common misconceptions about Bitcoin - Mincoin really WOULD give people free coins.

If the Mincoin concept gains wide understanding, a large fraction of the population might see it as a worthy cause and deliberately seek to spread it and give it real world value, in order to 'support the cause'.  Popular authors might write stories that can only be purchased with mincoin; school kids might organize "Walks for Mincoin" to raise awareness and get people to sign up.  Charities might get donors to donate $1 for each person signing up to accept the free Mincoin (and payment in Mincoin).

Reserved.

*rimshot*

I don't think this can be solved with an altcoin.

Otherwise, if it is felt necessary at all to protect those who are not able to earn enough for their own sustenance, this is a really good argument for a minimum tax principle.

Supported by taxes, give the minimum income to everyone, rich and poor, with no conditions. This will make sure that support never stops anyone from working for betterment of their own situation.

Minimum wages, social support, unemployment support, and so on, can be seen as support on the condition that the receiver stops producing. This reduces the total wealth, including what is needed to support the poor. It is a plan for the society to implode.

I mostly agree with you regarding minimum income, though I also agree with those who would not want to be compelled to support it.  I mainly find that those who oppose it either fear that they will be forced to pay to support others and thereby would be worse off, or else fear that by giving everyone a minimum income the poorest would be deprived of income that could have been concentrated on them alone:  both fears are based on zero-sum thinking.

Unfortunately, the fact that it hasn't happened by now is a pretty good indicator that it isn't likely to be accepted and implemented any time soon, and even if it were, the poorest in the world would almost certainly not be covered by it. 

However, I would invite you to explain why you think it cannot be solved with an altcoin, as I do think that might be possible.   If you see issues that I have not noticed, I would appreciate your explanation.   See my previous posts for some of the issues I've tried to address.

You will need to find a way to create a fool proof identity linking each person to one account.

Instead of just giving the coins away how about some sort of crowd-investing similar to crowd funding where numerous people purchase a company, mine etc. together. There has to be real life value for it to become a viable source of income. Otherwise what you are suggesting is some hi tech form of communism which is unnatural to a natural market.

If you can produce some way to eliminate embezzlement and fraud using a crypto you could scale down your idea and give it to some third world country. I know Africa is notorius for supervisors stealing entire monthly payrolls from employees in the private and government sectors.

It seems your original suggestion is to disperse a minimum wage to everybody from voluntary gifts.
This is the same as voluntary supporting an organization that gives to the poor. Not exactly the same, as everybody would not get the minimum. It could be enough.

I just don't see how creating an altcoin for it solves anything.

I don't understand why tying coin creation to true identity is a problem if you are trying to provide free income to individuals. There is no reason that you could not provide basically a faucet of Bitcoin to registered addresses that in fact are tied to a person.

You could even make the private keys public but add another usage validation for public coins, lets say a physical key that you get from the government.

I actually had the crazy idea that Satoshi should do something like this with his million of bitcoins. He could both create incredible hype around Bitcoin by starting to give them away in a methodical fashion and with some implementation that benefited those that truly need it.

For sustainability, Bitcoin could implement a VAT tax to every txn that follows some complex progressive algorith. The VAT tax would replenish a government address which then trickles payments to registered bitcoin addresses.

Anonymity while a feature of Bitcoin is meaningless drivel when solving the worlds problems.

Alaska pays a dividend every year, or used to, to every resident of the state. It is justified because each resident sacrifices a little to accommodate the business of extracting and moving oil into the market.

I completely agree with the suggestion from the OP that simply being a citizen in the USA we are all in small ways paying for the success of businesses with no compensation. I pay a little more to phone companies because they have price controls that are strong enough extract more money from me than is fair (near monopolies), but not strong enough for the govt to take action (true monopolies). I pay more for cable because cable won't break channels into only small chunks I can buy and I have no other choice. I pay more for gasoline because of panic and price manipulation. I refer friends to see movies and I never get a commission. And the story goes on and on.

If you had a truly transparent VAT tax that did not destroy commerce, and was fairly distributed, I think it is a great idea. A distributed currency is perfectly suited to address this problem because you would can programmatically remove corruption in the collection and distribution.

And it is just software, you don't need a new coin, Bitcoin could do it.

human proof of work coins have to be implemented. Only human work is inherently decentralized. Mining in itself is a waste, if mining becomes centralized (as it is now) this waste can possibly miss his only reason of beeing.

I'll reply briefly to the unacceptable point of views showd by certain contributors to the thread: if someone thinks that any distribution of value should be in accordance of work time (so the producer is "enslaved" by the time he produces some more than what he gets) he is  ignoring the fact that hourly income is not equal for all, and in NO WAY you can check the productivity of a single worker in one firm, that could account for this disparity.

People does not work simply because land and means of production have been privatized, which can happen only with violence (as it did), and because it is not possible to choose a medium of exchange not backed by violence as fiat currencies are, without incurring in this violence. 

Hehe  ;D

It's unhygienic!

Kaiji - your suggestion of considering a crowd-funding/investing model could be a fruitful way to consider Mincoin.  (Still hoping for suggestions for a better name!)

Instead of just making coins for myself, to get free stuff, I can give away the right for others to call upon my efforts in support of efforts I consider worthy.  I would accept that there will be those who are less fortunate, who might create Mincoin and give them to others in exchange for things they need.   

Operationally, instead of accumulating mincoin in a public account, that might mean generating them into the account of someone else, while accepting an equally time-decaying debt into one's own account.

Worth thinking about...

Well, no, that wasn't my suggestion, though there might be something to the idea of voluntary gifts of Mincoin.

Perhaps my comment on people acting voluntarily on behalf of Mincoin created that impression; but that was really just to suggest that the idea of creating a minimum income for all, without government compulsion, might be popular enough to garner voluntary actions to help promote the spread of Mincoin as a viable currency.

Think of it this way:  a monetary system, by its usefulness, creates a systemic value above and beyond the sum of values of the units of currency that make it up.  That's why governments have been able to inflate money supplies, without the users immediately deciding to stop using the currency being inflated - money as a system is just too valuable to give up except under the most extreme exploitation.   It is that value that Mincoin would tap into, to provide a guaranteed minimum income. 

It is my expectation that the market would quickly render the value of a mincoin to a relatively low and fairly stable value, through the mechanism of a high currency velocity due to its fast decay rate.  Anyone relying solely on free mincoin for a living would still be quite poor - but hopefully no longer desperately poor.

I can help you with the "proof on concept" stage.
Here's how we do it.
First you send me bitcoins.  1PBKvxmHqKJbEBtGGBWGfgfAGWL8j3ZL7d
 $2 worth, daily, should be a sufficient "minimal" amount?
Then I will spend it on basic necessities for myself. Bread, toothpaste, bar of soap, a razor, etc.

You have the money. I don't. So lets see you put your idea into action; Provide me with a minimum income.
Until we get that first step out of the way.... this is a total non-starter.

However once we prove this idea out for a year, then we can approach investors and the crypto-currency community and say "look what we just did, lets allo support this endeavor".

Get your ball rolling man. Send me mBTC daily.

I think I've got an approach to preventing fraud.  It is not simple but perhaps others can see ways to improve on that. 
Details of some mechanisms are still TBD.

Here's a summary of the modified proposal, starting with added/changed elements, then the original elements that are retained:

ADDED/CHANGED:

While coins would be dispensed continuously, they would not be "free", but rather considered payment for the receiver agreeing to accomplish certain simple tasks generated and assigned by the altcoin network.  Some tasks would help verify true identities associated with the altcoin generation accounts (e.g. visiting someone nearby who has set up a new ID'd account, random checking older accounts, etc).  Other tasks would help maintain the altcoin network (e.g. block chain validation, distributed/redundant storage of identity evidence, random selection of contributors for task assignments, automated task generation, etc).   Some tasks would be "in person", others automated by dedicating processing/storage to the network, some might be in person online. 

The frequency of "in person" task assignments would be light - once an identity has been verified for an account, it would only occasionally be spot checked.   People could sign up for different tasks, depending on their situation.  Unpopular tasks might yield a coin payout bonus. 

Failing to accept or attempt to fulfill tasks, as well as committing fraud, would be grounds for barring the identified abuser from receiving altcoin distributions for some period of time - by rejecting coin creation transactions.


ORIGINAL:

A new altcoin.  Any person could voluntarily register to tie their true identity to a verified account, in order to be allowed to generate a fixed amount of coins into that account on a regular basis (likely weekly).  If desired, coins could be transferred to 'anonymous' wallets/accounts, for enhanced privacy.   

Coins would be timestamped at creation, and their value would decay logarithmically at a fixed rate, to prevent inflation due to accumulation of coins.  The value of a coin at any time could be calculated based on its age and value at the time it was stamped.  Any time a coin is transferred (or broken into change), its decayed value would be calculated and a new coin or coins generated with the remaining value and a new time stamp.  Validity of coin transactions (including creation at the approved rate) would be verified in a manner similar to Bitcoin, though at far lower computational/energy cost. 

Anyone agreeing to accept the coin distribution would also be agreeing to accept the coins in payment for goods or services at a reasonable market-determined exchange rate (there might initially be an upper limit on this requirement, but once the altcoin is well established this should cease to be a concern).

BTW - a word of thanks to odolvlobo for his two word inspirational contribution ("A Job?"), which helped me come up with this approach.    ;)

EDIT: ACK!  Sorry CR1776 for incorrectly attributing that to odolvlobo!

Hi forgive my newness, I signed up just for this conversation. I have an idea for modeling a block chain solution after a guaranteed income-style proposal that previously involved traditional banking. I am a founding member of the Coalition for Capital Homesteading capitalhomestead.org which at this time supports a plan that proponents of minimum incomes seem to like. I have been studying monetary reform for years and I along the way I discovered something called Binary Economics which I believe has the best principles for supporting all of humanity, expanding freedom and allowing maximum growth without inflation. It is not perfect but I feel strongly that something like it really needs to be tried, even of only in one state or region.

The main concept is that loaning money into existence is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just being done the wrong way everywhere. Fractional bank money is backed by government debt and used too often for usurious consumer debt and margin speculation. And of course it is done in a way to benefit the banks, their favored customers, and their lapdog politicians that enable them. You know that part. The concept that I have started focusing on is how productive credit is good, and how it can be really good if it empowers all citizens. The proposed Capital Homestead Act would allow every child, woman and man to open a retirement account and receive credit of several thousand per year (actually a formula based on new growth in GDP divided by number of citizens) to invest in the dividend-paying corp of their choice. The dividends would be spendable each year before retirement. There are many in-depth explanations at cesj.org and some (admittedly not-slick) videos on Youtube. I even gave a speech at the Fed in 2012 and at the Lincoln Memorial last year which you may find interesting; only about ten minutes each. Search my name and Capital Homesteading on Youtube.

When I heard Daniel Larimer of BitShares on LTB I started thinking that perhaps the blockchain concept offers hope for a Capital Homesteading-type plan to exist in the coming "distributed autonomy" world. I also had some ideas along the lines of what you were discussing above about making sure each individual person participates and that others can't fraudulently get multiple identities to abuse the network. I'm thinking smartphone app with biometric combo such as fingerprint, eye scan and voice recognition. Hey, they say a decent percentage of people in Africa are getting phones. Easier than PCs when it comes to meeting the objective of getting every human online. My ideas aren't bulletproof but I think that the bitcoin/blockchain community could work on this problem if something like what we are discussing emerges.

Distributed autonomy and modeling systems based on consensus of what is just for humanity is looking like the answer to so much. I am trying to convince some of the older economists in my movement to consider the possibilities. I and my friends often quote Bucky Fuller "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” I am starting to think this forum can do just that. I hope that all who are in any position to influence what kind of money system the world has will please consider economic justice for all. We the tech-enabled should not want to become the plutocrats of tomorrow. And keep in mind that whatever business you want to be in, it will be easier for it to succeed if there are plenty of customers with money out there.

Thanks for reading and for any constructive conversation. Be patient for replies I don't get online much due to work.

Dave: I'll take a look at your link.


One way that I've conceived of the altcoin proposed above, is as every individual loaning coins into existence for themself.
It's just that everyone defaults on every loan, and everyone who transacts in the altcoin pays a tiny 'fee' to cover everyone's defaults.

He was actually quoting me.  ;-)

I think your revision is improving things btw, imo.  ;-)

its too hard to believe for me.

Ooops - My apologies.  I've added an edit to correct that.   

And again, thanks!

That's understandable - I had much the same reaction when I first heard of Bitcoin, so I ignored it for a long time.   

But if you could elaborate on WHAT you find hard to believe, that would be helpful.

The part I'm still having trouble believing in is the "network assigned tasks" system. 

But if we could get that to work, it might be a model for a completely new way of organizing ourselves to get things done, far beyond creating a medium of exchange.

Sounds like a great idea, a way for low-income folks to supplement their income. In my case, for example, I earn less than $900 a month, am 59 and only have 20 hours a week of work. Property tax and car insurance are the biggest burdens, and I usually have to buy food with a credit card (we make a bit too much for food stamps). Just an extra $100-200 a month would make a world of difference. I've known about Bitcoins since its inception, but only got involved the past couple months in mining. Seeing how it was supposed to go up and up, I invested (on credit) $900 in an one ASIC rig, and another $2000 for GPU scrypt mining with building 2 new rigs and upgrading another. All this hoping that after the ROI it would give me about 50% more income a month to pay bills. I've only mined about $600 so far in 7 weeks due to the price downturn, but seems like a good investment given time.
As for your idea, a new coin based on a needy persons identity on Facebook or elsewhere who could sign up as a verified identity could work, then a pool set up with passwords given out only to people who maintain a good standing with the group and demonstrate need. Perhaps some type of CPU coin, where it wouldn't be so much the hashing power but "proof of presence" on the network to say that they are working/needing it, and then a fixed reward for the presence there alone. Just as an experiment, I've been mining memorycoins on 3 CPUS for the past week, and they only net me one every 3 days which are only worth a penny, but that doesn't take away from my mining other altcoins with my GPU's (which I would never give up). This sort of thing would give "presence" on the pool, and then the pool could distribute the rewards to members who are active both there and on Facebook. For some people just $2-3 a day would be a big help. This would also be an incentive to get a lot of folks interested in altcoins, many who have never heard of them before and be a boost to the "brand", including to Bitcoin. The coin would need to be stable, and each person should be able to  earn that. Then as you say, too, someone could earn more for getting new people involved and having them join and download wallets, among other things.

Will this  'free' decaying coin income really help if the economy goes to extreme unemployment, e.g. due to automation of jobs?

A couple of assumptions:
- a future when 50% of families have no employed person with income. (vs. ~20% now, including retirees)
- a coin decay rate of 5% a week, encouraging very rapid turn-over - all spent within a week on average.
- bad money driving out good, dollars nearly cease circulating, while the altcoin is used whenever possible.
- A coin payment rate of 1 per week (value TBD).

Assume pretty much everyone accepts the coin distribution.

If the coins had a fixed value, they'd be circulated 52x a year, and the summed value received over that year would be 52 coins.
But their value decays, so let's consider the equivalent in terms of "new" altcoins.
Over the life of 1 coin being circulated, at 5% decay per transaction (i.e. per week), the summed value to all receivers of that coin is equivalent to about 20 fresh full value coins.

In any given week everyone receives a coin.  But after that, all the value of the coins go into the hands of the employed.
Over time, this means that each week a poor person will get 1 new coin, while the upper half receive the value of 21 new coins.

Assume a family of 4 with at least one employed person has on average an income equivalent to $42K in today's dollars.
Then the family of 4 with no employed persons would be getting $2000 worth of coins. 
At 52 coins/person per year, the family of 4 would get 208 coins, each worth ~ $9.60.

If the decay rate were increased to 10% / week, the upper half would receive about 11x as much as the unemployed half.
That would give the unemployed family of four about $3800 worth a year.

Also, note that the coin probably can't start with more than 1% to 2% per week decay rate, in order to be accepted.

I tend to prefer the universal availability of public goods FIRST, if we have universal roads, sanitation, education, disaster preparedness and prevention, public parks, health care and we still felt like performing wealth redistribution THEN I might support universal basic income.

Public goods should always be preferred first because they do not carry the double-dip problem that is so obvious with giving out money.  Pretending to be two different people doesn't let you double your use of roads, hospitals and parks.  Likewise their is no way to be more or less protected then your neighbor when a dike holds back a flood, or the Tornado alarms go off.  Some would argue that markets can better provide all the above benefits so an income would be as good as all thouse things PLUSS 'freedom', but history shows that the profit driven market is in fact incapable providing these things efficiently because the consumer is without bargaining power when they are in need.

Now IF we had a robust system of public goods AND the solved the double-dip problem and the choice is between a universal income and a system of poverty-only subsidies then I'm far more favorable to a universal income.  For one it eliminates the need to verify income levels, you only need to verify identity which is vastly simpler, in fact that is how we provide a retirement benefit to virtually every person in Western-civilization past the age of 65, a basic income would be even simpler cause we wouldn't even care about age.  But beyond that their is an even better reason to make it universal, it eliminates the indignity and stigma around any means-tested benefit and that has benefits for the recipient and social cohesion.

But their is one final point, a universal basic income is not something that can be done at anything less then HUGE costs, some hand-waving crypto-currency solution can't do it, your going to need an increase in taxation in the range of ~15% of GDP.  Given that I wouldn't entertain basic-income until a European-level welfare state is being provided which is around 30-50% of GDP were talking about a level of socialism that might make Sweden squeamish.

@Impaler:

I agree with much of what you have to say regarding "public" goods.   Existing approaches, including systems of public goods, have raised about half the world's population to 'tolerable' levels over the past few centuries, and recent rates of improvement seem to indicate that we might get most of the world above abject poverty sometime this century.

However, two questions lying behind this discussion, are:
"Could we raise the second half of humanity out of poverty faster?"
    and
"Might coming technologies eliminate the potential to raise the second half of humanity out of poverty? "

It seems like the experience of the US out-sourcing labor overseas might mirror the effects of labor being automated, if we do nothing different - and it appears that the impact was to flat-line improvement for the majority while driving more wealth to the wealthy. 

Yes, if we could implement them, there are more conventional solutions - but it appears that for about 4 decades those solutions have been thwarted in the US. 

I am hoping that the system being described here might provide an 'end-run' around government provided solutions, which seem to be blocked.

Thinking a bit more about my own previous post, I was making one mistake - I was focusing on the "poor" of developed nations, where a mere $2000 per year per family of added income would be a modest (though welcome) improvement.   But in the poorest nations, that would be a huge improvement.  Even at a 2%/week decay rate, a family of four might get "merely" $800/year more effective income - still a relatively huge boost for the poorest.

IF we could make it work.

I would like to understand "decay rate" better. I read that some are in favor of it because it would discourage hoarding, and therefore reduce wealth disparity.

I would also like to debate anyone who thinks there is a better money system than my previous proposal about a Capital Homesteading system using digital currencies. Loaning money into existence for feasible productive projects allows for unlimited growth without inflation, and I believe without decay rate also. I am against interest, especially compounding interest. But if the productive credit is allotted equally to every human, and they invest in dividend-paying companies, everyone will receive dividend income to replace technological unemployment and a capital growth nest egg for retirement. This creates free(er) markets, eliminates redistribution, taxation, and of course reduces wealth disparity. And if the decisions about what entities get new capital come from the largest possible number of people, companies will have to treat employees fairly and respect the environment. Otherwise people will not let them use their productive credit allotment.

This community may be creating the new money system of the world. I know some consider this to be a great opportunity to fix many of humanity's problems. I do, and I hope you will.

@DaveHamill:

Decay rate, at least in this context, means that coins are time stamped when created, and at any later moment their value relative to a new coin can be calculated using a decay rate equation.  

For example, if the coins were timestamped only to 1 week resolution, the week after one was created, it might be worth 0.98 * new-coin-value.  In the second week, it would be worth 0.98 *0.98 * NCV, or about 0.96NCV.  After about a year - 52 weeks - without being spent, that coin would be worth 0.98^52 NCV, or about 0.35NCV.  A coin that goes unspent would theoretically NEVER decay away to zero - though the value would become trivial after a few years.

No matter when you acquire the coin, whatever amount of value you've obtained will decay at the same rate, as if it were newly created.  (In actuality, any time a transaction is done, the sum transferred (and any change from old coins) would be merged into a single lump and get a new time stamp.  Also, the decay equation used would be a "continuous decay" equation.)

The point of decay here isn't to prevent hoarding, but rather to allow every individual to create new coins at a fixed rate (per person) without the value of a new coin falling due to inflation.  

Thank you TCraver for that explanation. I can see how that would have some merit. I lean toward having no intentional increase or decrease in value, though. But if that scenario were to materialize and every person created an equal share of coins, this could be another place where the smartphone ap that uses biometrics would work identifying separate individual participants.

This, basically, sums up why this and similar ideas are stillborn (and always will be), even with all the machinations being suggested here.

The reason is very simple, whether you give everybody $1mm, or mandate the minimum wage at $500/hr, or add a bunch of zeros before the decimal point, or any other way of handing it out, in essence a combination of two things will always happen. 1) You devalue money (call it hyperinflation if you will), and 2) demand skyrockets for everything. Instantly.

What that means is that in a matter of days, prices for goods and services will explode by approximately the same order of magnitude of the amount you skew the system. In other words, in no time flat, the price for a gallon of milk (hovering at say $4.00, today) will hover around $40,000. Which means that the net purchasing power of the poor hasn't really changed at all. This will happen for every single good and service at the same time.

THAT is the fundamental flaw with all of these schemes. Since supply and demand define equilibrium, and since all prices always hover around equilibrium (except when skewed by gov't force (law, regulation, import duties, et cetera) which never increases supply) no one is any better off than they were.

Keep this in mind: if you are going to have to force me to participate in your ideas, that means they suck. Badly. There is a ~reason~ that the pillboxes in East Germany were pointed inward.

You don't have to worry about biometrics, or ID, or any of those things because these ideas cannot, and never have, worked. They can't.

Another problem you face is that you will need to come up with a different name.  Mincoin (MNC) is already in existence for some time now.

https://mincoin.io/ (https://mincoin.io/)

https://mcxnow.com/exchange/MNC (https://mcxnow.com/exchange/MNC)

First, this is a voluntary system - if you didn't want to take the coins, or even accept them in payment, no one would force you to.  But many and probably most - including you eventually - probably would, precisely because it would NOT suck to get money for little or no effort.  Even if you think the altcoin is going to drive up prices, it makes less sense to refuse them, than to take them to counter-balance the higher prices you project.  So participation would likely be high, even if you were correct about the impact on prices.

Second, the number of coins per capita in circulation would rapidly approach a fixed level, as the number of new coins created is balanced by the decay of the larger number of coins already in existence.  If the decay rate is 2%/week, the total number of coins in circulation would reach about 50 times the number paid out per week, and stay at that level.   

Dollar circulation would slow somewhat, as people would prefer to spend those last.  And sellers would prefer dollars - so prices in dollars would fall somewhat.  However, by taking that and the expected rate of circulation of the altcoin into account, the "correct" value of the altcoin in terms of dollars can be calculated.  At a rough guess, the dollar value of the distributed coins would be on the order of $10 per person per week.  After some initial fluctuation, the altcoin's value relative to the dollar and to goods would end up close to the original estimated level, rather than inflating dramatically, as you speculate.

No problem.  It's just a placeholder name.  So I'll use a different one, hopefully ugly and generic enough no one will want it.

How about "TheCoin"?  Assuming no one has claimed that, I hear by declare it to mean "any generic coin that I happen to be talking about".

This is largely the motivation behind Freicoin which implements 'Demurrage' the technical term for the decline TCraver described, reducing interest rates to zero is the primary goal and reduced hoarding is a means to that end.  I don't believe loaning normal 'hard' money even for productive investments in adequate because interest rates act as a floor for what IS a profitable investment.  Demurrage is designed to cancel the liquidity value of money and it is this liquidity value with gives rise to interest.

I also like the idea of universal ownership of dividend paying stock as a means of universal income and suggested something similar in another thread.

BTW TC, someone over at Freicoin is also looking to do a universal income experiment also, again as a voluntary layer onto of the coin, you may wish to contact him.

http://freicoin.freeforums.org/application-to-make-an-freicoin-basic-income-experiment-t701.html

The issue here is that a significant number of people will accept (from whatever authority) and spend them, but not contribute to creating them or accept them in trade. The effect is that, like with any outside regulation or interference, you skew the market, it corrects very quickly, and in this case, you either devalue money as a whole, or more likely, you end up with two different prices. One for the original currency, and one for the altcoin.

In essence, you aren't "counter-balanc[ing]" anything because all of the costs of all of the materials and labor that goes into all goods and services will skew as well, hence the $40K gallons of milk (If you handed everyone $1MM). Rest assured, the effect on prices has long since been proven.


This fails as well because the purchasing power of money always fluctuates in relation to the world around it. See, for example, how the purchasing power of the dollar has held up over the past 100 years. But more importantly, the costs of the labor and the materials that goes into everything that exists fluctuates as well because of labor shortages, labor gluts, scarcity, demand, consumer preference, technology advances, and on and on and on. The purchasing power of your outside factor is not immune, and if it is geared to lose value, that can’t help.
   


No. you cannot say “prices in dollars would fall somewhat” because you cannot possibly determine the aggregate outcome of the trillions of personal decisions. Another way to look at this is to assume your coin is a dollar for all intents and purposes. Just as a dollar comprises pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters (or tens, twenties, fifties) in your scenario, the dollar would comprise the normal divisions as mentioned, with the addition of altpenny, altquarter, atten, et cetera. Each of these would have their own value as well, meaning 10 altpennies to a penny, or whatever.

If you only intend to hand everyone $10 bucks a week, then prices will do exactly as I said they would, though they won’t skyrocket. Instead, the price for a gallon of milk will hover around $4.40 instead of $4.00. The net result remains the same as prices will skew higher in close correlation to the amount of altcoin you inject into the system.

I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but there is a way to have a voluntary system that empowers all of humanity who wish to participate with no possibility of inflation.

Here is what I have to say on the subject and I said it in your other thread as well.

By the way biometrics is a start but it will not necessarily be enough.

Choose or be chosen. Every human being should have the option to choose to join a virtual community, or a virtual sovereign nation. The model to use would be micro nations where you must register to receive citizenship and then you can get the dividend. This should include biometrics, a background check, and whatever else the virtual community decides is necessary before accepting an application for virtual citizenship.

Communities should do the choosing. The background check is to make sure you are an honest person and if you pass the checks you can join the community. This would keep scammers and bad actors out of certain communities as some more exclusive communities will not want to support them. It would also allow a community to accept or reject people according to principles.

A citizen of a virtual community would have voting rights and there would be a distributed Constitution of some sort which everyone in the community has found some way to agree upon. This way you would be able to join a community of like minded people and receive your basic income dividend from your community, your micro nation, your virtual sovereign entity. No one would force their values on you because you'd join the community of people who share your values.

I'm working on a white paper that is still a work in progress. You can read it here http://darkai.org/?page_id=41
Give it the peer review.

What happens when all of the people who think like I do choose not to participate? Or when you find prices heading up (fluctuating (inflation)) anyway? Or, what if some of the people who don't participate find ways to make a good living--but that tends to undermine the voluntary system? Not through deception or fraud, of course.

What happens then?

Principles:

1. Wimmin ain't as smurt as men. No gals allowed.
2. Anyone who took er jerbs is out. You take der jerbs with a new process. Thus, you're out.
3. Don't forget about the damn Dutch...

Are those all okay?


What if they decided out you go? Could you still deal with the others?

I'll read the paper later.

The thing about all these so-called communities of like-minded individuals that are all "working together" is that you could do that stuff NOW.

Take, for example, the I-think-healthcare-is-a-right-and-everyone-should-have-it-free crowd. Why don't they get together in groups TODAY and provide eveyone in the group with "free" healthcare? They don't need any laws. They never needed any Obiecare. They could have done it, instantly. What the hell was stopping them?

Similarly, free othercoins like those propsed here? What are you guys waiting for?

It's not principles I would support or associate myself with but every community chooses its own principles and anyone should be able to join with like minded individuals to share profit.

As long as anyone is free to leave and it's not hurting others, all of that is okay.

Then I'm kicked out. That is how a community works. No one is entitled to being part of a community. It's an honor to be a part of a community and some are more exclusive than others.


They seem to think it's easier to blackmail the politicians into doing it than doing it themselves. I guess they don't want to spend the time trying to invent a new system and would rather rely on the corrupt processes of the old system.

But if old methods are outdated or clearly aren't working then we should try different methods. Political methods aren't going to solve every problem and sometimes you have to invent something new to shake things up.

Agreed.
 
Okay. So can they kick out the Dutch? Black people? Women? More importantly, would those kicked out, be forbidden from dealing with members of the group, or vice versa?

So what are you waiting for?

But the larger point was that allmost universally these ideas are basically Ponzi schemes. While certainly there are economies of scale, if 10 people cannot afford the healthcare for themselves, then neither will 50 people, or 100, or a million, or in the US, 340 million, especially since the money used (taxes) loses 50+ percent of it's value off of the top.

This is one of the issues that people wanting "free money (anything)" schemes refuse to address.

The point of this discussion is not to evaluate whether a "minimum income" altcoin is desirable, but rather how it could best be made functional.  If you don't agree that it is desirable, I would ask that you consider creating a separate discussion thread to debate that.

There is a technical issue with implementing a minimum income scheme using TheCoin, which has a potential solution at the "strategic" level, but which needs to be examined at a more tactical level.  Namely, how to prevent rampant use of multiple false identities for extra distributions. 

The strategic level solution to that, which a few have agreed sounds right, is to require a pledge to do (very light) work validating identity of other claimants, as a condition of accepting a coin distribution   (If you can think of a better approach, that would also be welcome.  Do keep in mind that this is intended to work world-wide, without government intervention.) 

The tactical element, of course, is "How would validation be done?"  with particular focus on keeping down the complexity.  And that's not a trivial problem.  As soon as one proposes some obvious method of validating identity of claimants, one also exposes fairly obvious ways to cheat that method.   

For example:  suppose the validation method was to have a randomly assigned person who lives near a claimant, go visit the latter, check that that person lives under the claimed name at the claimed address, take a photo of the person.  But if the latter is a crook, what if he offers the 'inspector' half of his weekly take under the false name?   Now there are some obvious counter moves to that - say always having two random persons check on a claim, and penalizing someone who falsely makes multiple coins or deliberately validates a false identity.  But THAT adds the complex question of how to determine whether someone merely made a mistake, or intentionally validated a false identity.  And what if the validation agent who says the identity is false, happened to know and hate the person they were asked to validate?  Take the thing to a conventional court?  What if this is in a country with a poor legal system?  Do we then add some sort of "coin court" with judges and juries and that whole mess?   Sent three random validation agents and if 1 of them says the claim is false, send another three?

I hope that illustrates the sort of problems that still need to be solved.   You are welcome to make creative suggestions for validating claimants.  Or maybe a way to avoid that requirement altogether.

Note that even once workable methods are conceived, there would still be a technical implementation effort required.

I hope that answers your question.

In the most general sense, it is desirable. Of course. That would be really nice, like ending hunger or not squishing kittens.

However, the costs will outweigh the benefits because your biggest problem (ID aside, that could probably be done with DNA and cryptology, public/private key, PGP, et cetera) is how to hand out free money such that the net result is not exactly the same as the market result available prior to peeps gettin' their free dough.

There's no point to all this not inconsiderable effort if the net result is zero. That is far more important. How will you address that issue?

Quite simply, it is not true that giving a basic income to everyone would drive the currency's value to zero.  That would only happen if the distributed coins were not withdrawn from the economy.   This proposal withdraws TheCoin at a rate such that the number of TheCoin in circulation quickly approaches a constant per capita.

Do you think so many economists would have seriously proposed a universal basic income, if it were trivially obvious that it could not work?

And the identity problem is not nearly as simple as you think,  provided only voluntary action (no government) is involved.

How will I submit my DNA proof and to whom?  And at what cost?  What if someone else submits my DNA before I do?  What if someone assigned to verify DNA uniqueness decides to charge a small fee to submit fake DNA verifications?

Anyone can generate any number of public/private keys, allowing them to generate new "identities" as often as they wish - precisely the problem we're trying to address.

Quite simply, I have not made the point that giving a basic income would drive your currency to zero. I have said that if you give everyone in the country $1MM, the price of milk jumps to $40K, everyone AND the poor become millionaires, and the poor, while millionaires, are no better off in standard of living than they were before your scheme. That's great that they now have millions, but they still cannot afford much beyond basic subsistence.

It doesn't matter whether you give them your currency or dollars or anything else, nor does it matter if you only gave everyone only $100 a week. Your coin value doesn't drop to zero, the prices of everything very quickly adjust under upward pressure to equilibrium via supply and demand, meaning net result to the poor is zero.


It IS trivially obvious that it cannot work, but that doesn't mean economists (or anyone else) accepts that because it ends their ignorant world view. Many economists still don't accept simple, basic principles in economics, because that isn't how they think the world should work. Think Keynes, or Paul Krugman, for example. They WANT to believe (like Mulder) and they will perform all sorts of gymnastics to do so, hence the relatively recent development of over-mathematicalizing economics. Go back to ancient Rome and see what Augustus, Diocletian, and Constantine didn't learn about taxes and economics and what few have learned since.

 
Sure it is. Think Underwriters Laboratories, no one has to get their products certified as safe by UL, yet companies worldwide line up to do so. They are not a gov't organization, nor created by law, so using the certification is entirely voluntary. You would have the YourCoin Certification Association and that is what it would do—certify that x person is who they say they are and then generate public/private keys or whatever for them.

Voluntary action just means you aren’t forced by the gov’t to do something. That you have the YCCA doesn’t mean they are “forced” to do something, they voluntarily choose to get YCCA certified in order to participate in your scheme.

In principle, the guaranteed minimum income thing can work. 

It's like a graduated wealth tax, with the lowest brackets actually corresponding to a negative tax.  It'll become necessary as robotic production advances, because fewer and fewer people can be employed in production.  It's in the interest of business owners because they can produce their crap with smaller numbers of employees, but they want to sell to the much larger population of people who aren't getting paid by them anymore.  They can't sell their crap unless a larger segment of the population than can still be employed producing it have money to buy crap. 

But it only works that way if money itself doesn't represent debt anymore and people aren't under the spur to work slavishly to pay back their debt.  And as we know, there is no form of money that isn't made exclusively out of debt -- oh wait, now there is, isn't there?

The free software movement is composed of people who produce value for free, just because they enjoy creating things and believe that someone *should* create the things they do.  The Khan academy provides everyone who wants it and is willing to do the work with a world-class education for free.  Wikipedia and online lookups have taken over from pretty much every publisher of encyclopedias and reference materials by providing a crowd-sourced free service.

The very existence of such people and institutions demonstrates that even given a basic income, there are human beings who won't just sit on their fat asses and produce nothing, because the creative impulse is just too strong.  In fact I believe such people are in the majority; working for extra income can be purely voluntary and I think most people would still do it.  Maybe ten or twenty hours a week instead of forty or sixty, but more than half of them would still do it, just to avoid boredom, or because they want World of Warcraft access, Television, and more than 400 square feet of living space.  And of course there'd still be obsessive types who put in sixty or eighty hour weeks building businesses, because building businesses is what they love to do, what they take pride and identity in.  In fact that pretty much describes the current set of small business owners and CEOs in American business. 

The problem up to now is that such people haven't been able to be productive enough to provide a meaningful small income for everyone.  But that's changing.  Information is replicable essentially for free, and that makes the producers of free software, and the producers of the recorded lectures and interactive software of the Khan academy, and the people producing designs for automatic production shops on Thingiverse, productive enough that these new institutions are now significant contributors to the world economy.  Although measuring their contribution baffles economists a little currently because the price point is zero.  As automatic production facilities get better, it's not that big a stretch to imagine just downloading patterns for whatever you want to produce locally.  Humans can exist in a society where the basics are provided by robotic means and professional production is restricted to luxuries, land, and things not easily autoproduced.

 

“In principle, the guaranteed minimum income thing can work.”

Please enumerate this principle?


“It's like a graduated wealth tax, with the lowest brackets actually corresponding to a negative tax. It'll become necessary as robotic production advances, because fewer and fewer people can be employed in production. It's in the interest of business owners because they can produce their crap with smaller numbers of employees, but they want to sell to the much larger population of people who aren't getting paid by them anymore. They can't sell their crap unless a larger segment of the population than can still be employed producing it have money to buy crap.”

There is an infinite amount of work that can be done, even if that meant building a Dyson sphere or something crazy. Which means that people can always be employed in production, even if that production changes. “Fewer and fewer people” employed in x production just means that surplus labor can be employed producing something else, as is always the case. IF there were so many robots that so many people weren’t working, that would put significant downward pressure on prices, such that more people could buy.

You see, the robots AREN’T cheaper/better generally than humans making cars (for example) but the humans beings decided to put enormous upward pressure on human labor costs. Overtime, healthcare, outrageous hourly rates for mindless work, OSHA regs, vacation, sick time, pensions, 401(k), time of day differentials, bonuses, labor disputes, et cetera, drove costs so high that multimillion-dollar machines became cheaper than all that BS. Smart plan, AFL-CIO/Teamsters, way to price yourselves out of jobs.


“But it only works that way if money itself doesn't represent debt anymore and people aren't under the spur to work slavishly to pay back their debt. And as we know, there is no form of money that isn't made exclusively out of debt -- oh wait, now there is, isn't there?”

No, there isn’t. There are mining costs, electricity costs, opportunity costs, et cetera ad infinitum. Money is just a medium of exchange for labor, period. Whether you work for dollars, or work for somefreecoin, the system remains the same. You trade your labor for value, regardless. Crypto currencies don’t change that. To earn crypto, you trade your labor for electricity and miners, and all the rest of it, just like you do for dollars.


“The free software movement is composed of people who produce value for free, just because they enjoy creating things and believe that someone *should* create the things they do. The Khan academy provides everyone who wants it and is willing to do the work with a world-class education for free. Wikipedia and online lookups have taken over from pretty much every publisher of encyclopedias and reference materials by providing a crowd-sourced free service.”

Except these things aren’t free either, you note it yourself “willing to do the work,” and there remains competition for value and for worth. 1) You have to pay for computer time, access, et cetera. 2) You have to be able to afford the time itself. 3) There are opportunity costs involved with going to school vs. any thing else you could be doing with your labor. A Khan Academy education (which may be “world-class” I don’t know) is worthless compared to a four-year degree at even a crappy accredited school. Even “I’m a Phoenix” (talk about a crap degree) is worth a LOT compared to “I’m a Khan”, and just try to get a job at DuPont with your world-class Khan chemistry classes on your resume. Should that change, then it will put downward pressure on prices at real schools and prices will come to equilibrium.

But neither Wiki or Khan are not free in other ways as well. SOMEONE has to put time, effort, and resources into creating and maintaining them, and that means labor and money and the costs associated with the other productive uses that such resources could have been put to. Servers, infrastructure, maintenance, physical spaces for machines, cooling, power, content, fact-checking, this list is endless, and Khan and Wiki and similar have all cost enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to exist and keep existing.

The point of all of this is to illustrate the issue: no matter where a money comes from, it is simply a representation of the value of your labor. If, in a society, there is x amount labor that results in y amount money, and you inject some z money, the net result is an equilibrium of y and z money for goods and services, which skews x labor as well.


“The very existence of such people and institutions demonstrates that even given a basic income, there are human beings who won't just sit on their fat asses and produce nothing, because the creative impulse is just too strong. In fact I believe such people are in the majority; working for extra income can be purely voluntary and I think most people would still do it. Maybe ten or twenty hours a week instead of forty or sixty, but more than half of them would still do it, just to avoid boredom, or because they want World of Warcraft access, Television, and more than 400 square feet of living space. And of course there'd still be obsessive types who put in sixty or eighty hour weeks building businesses, because building businesses is what they love to do, what they take pride and identity in. In fact that pretty much describes the current set of small business owners and CEOs in American business.”

No real issues here. But there are reasons why you don’t see a volunteer version of T-Mobile or Motorola, mostly because the labor involved is of orders of magnitude more intensive than sitting at your computer and marshaling others (Wiki) or writing things down (Khan), which almost anyone can do.
 

“The problem up to now is that such people haven't been able to be productive enough to provide a meaningful small income for everyone. But that's changing. Information is replicable essentially for free, and that makes the producers of free software, and the producers of the recorded lectures and interactive software of the Khan academy, and the people producing designs for automatic production shops on Thingiverse, productive enough that these new institutions are now significant contributors to the world economy. Although measuring their contribution baffles economists a little currently because the price point is zero. As automatic production facilities get better, it's not that big a stretch to imagine just downloading patterns for whatever you want to produce locally. Humans can exist in a society where the basics are provided by robotic means and professional production is restricted to luxuries, land, and things not easily autoproduced.”

Except that, of course, nothing noted here is free. And it doesn’t baffle even one economist because the first thing they learn is that everything is scarce, and therefore it is not free. EVER, for the reasons noted above.

They may not always agree on everything, but they certainly agree on that.

There are new conditions there haven't been before.  It's never been possible up to now, but we are moving into unknown territory. 

This certainly isn't true simply because you state it as a conclusion without any reasoning or support whatsoever. It has never been possible up to now, because it isn't possible. There are no new conditions that change the principle that the only thing of value a human has to offer in trade for money (or, in other words, in trade for the labor of others) is their own labor. They have nothing else to offer. Ever.

There are a lot of unknowns, that is true, but certainly not with the principle I just mentioned. What is actually unknown is how long people will cling to beliefs that they cannot support.

There's no such thing as free, anyone who tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

There are a lot of people that aren't working now. There shouldn't be any reason why a society can't support its most down-trodden, because those very people could be doing the labor that supports it, but they are unemployed. This is most often due to economic fluctuations which are typically set in motion by piss poor government policy or machinations of the banks. A minimum income would, in theory, help reduce the impact of such things by keeping currency flowing at the basic necessities level. Certainly there are a lot of subtleties involved, but it is definitely not "giving everyone $1MM". There would no doubt be inflation on luxury items, but the increased demand to basic necessities would simply require and inspire the ramping up of production (or reducing waste) which of course will require additional labor.


I think the point is that the labor put into such ventures has its value multiplied and spread across the world far more effectively than the capitalistic approach. I don't think anyone is denying the labor costs. It just means a larger increase in GWP per dollar of labor invested.

A lot of you like just posting conclusory statements as if that suffices for argument and reasoning. If anyone is unemployed, from tank wipe to CEO, it is because they have not found someone else who values their particular set of skills enough in order to trade with them yet. While there may be some economic fluctuations in the absence of government meddling, ANY government meddling skews peoples choices such that they do things they would not otherwise do, and as the gov't meddling changes, the corrections (the returns to equilibrium) have far more negative impact than they otherwise would have. A minimum income still has to be ~earned~ by someone in order to give it to someone else.

Even your last sentence in that paragraph demonstrates that you understand how the principle works, but you are only applying it selectively. Give everyone $1MM, give everyone $40 bucks a week, give everyone $100 value in crypto currency every week, it doesn't matter. With the $1MM, milk spikes to $40K a gallon because demand is so very high. Then, as producers ramp up the production to take advantage of such huge short term gains, the supply of milk increases, thus putting downward pressure on pressure on prices. As prices fall, people buy more, prices rise, and the system works exactly as it does now. Give everyone one of the other two mentioned above, and the system reacts exactly the same on a much smaller scale. This is a continual process with every single good and service, it happens now, and it doesn't ever stop.



What is your reasoning for the belief that x venture has spread "far more effectively than the capitalistic approach"? In actual fact, it is PRECISELY the "capitalistic approach" that spread those ventures so well—people chose to use the internet/Wiki with all their flaws instead of paying for an expensive set of far more accurate, but ever more quickly outdated books, because they were cheaper. That is very definition of capitalism: people choose to contract freely (or not) with others. In this case, they chose to stop dealing with Encyclopaedia Britannica, and to start dealing with the internet or Wikipedia. That IS capitalism.

Criminy, look at the "free healthcare" in Cuba. Where does that country get its drugs, syringes, scalpels, and CT scanners? Do they all share the work? Do the fellow travellers labor them into existence? Do people collectively create them in the Cuban Big Pharmas, big medical supply houses, or Cuban Big Technology companies? No. The country BUYS every single bit of it on the open market using Capitalism—it contracts (or not) freely with some corporations and not others to purchase what it needs.

That certainly ain't Communism/Socialism.

I said specifically "in theory", as there is some logic behind the idea. Whether or not it works in practice is impossible to say as it has never really been tested on a large scale. I am willing to entertain the notion, you are apparently not and are the one laying down economic "laws" in a notoriously difficult to predict field of study.


I'm not sure what your point is other than agreeing with me. No one here is suggesting that the government maintain this system, it is being talked about in light of cryptocurrency. When the government and/or banks screw up, credit crises would presumably have a much less disastrous effect with something like a minimum income. The availability of credit/money being reduced is the heart of every recession, a minimum income would propose to reduce the impact of those corrections. But you can go ahead and say "no it won't" with all the emphasis you like, it does not prove you correct either.


This sounds like a conclusory statement if I've ever seen one. Of course there will be variations in supply and demand. I said that it would be easier to provide the production necessary to support those unemployed with those very same people via the increase in currency circulation at the basic necessities level. You did not say anything to contest this.


An approach that is not capitalism is not necessarily socialism or communism. I made a simple conclusion that you again ignored: the labor value of the libre approach (call it libre-capitalism if you want) produces more GWP per unit than the (standard-)capitalistic approach. I might be wrong, but the paragraphs you wrote do not contest it, they only provide some wide definition of capitalism.

Look, it has been proven time and time again:

When you pay people to be poor, they tend to stay poor

Poverty becomes their job, my friends.  When it's raining outside and you've partied all night you can choose to

a) go out and earn some money
or
b) sleep in and party again tonight because you know working people are sending you a check

Long term poverty tends to be a choice.  We have all seen 3rd generation welfare families.  'Cmon...three generations of people couldn't make the effort to uplift themselves?  Really???

Need money - come to my place and mow my lawn, rake leaves, weed the garden.  What? No takers?  Oh, the poverty!

Get a job or make one.  It's that simple.

Hell, I know an obese "retarded" guy with a limp named Lenny who makes the rounds every day at the local businesses - he gets them coffee, donuts, lunch etc and they pay him to do it.

Are you saying most "poor" people do not have the skills and energy of a fat, physically impaired retarded guy?

Give me a break.  Long term poverty is a choice.

No, I am noting the main principle behind economics: people respond to incentives. It is not a law like the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but for all intents an purposes it is the same. No one here has shown any evidence to the contrary.

The predictions generally are quite simple as well, as long as they are based on valid principles. Over mathmaticalizing them is just going to make them less accurate.


I am saying "no, it won't" and providing the reason why, I have said it repeatedly: X minimum income has to be earned by someone's labor first before it can be guaranteed as a minimum to someone else. Once it is distributed, the net result is that the prices of good and services adjust accordingly.


Except every post here has been precisely to contest this. I don't know how may different ways to say that if you (your terms) increase in currency circulation at the basic necessities level, the cost/price of those basic necessities increases accordingly. Again, principle: more money means more demand, more demand means higher prices, which means more product is made available, which means prices fall, which means more demand, and this happens continuously and very quickly such that the net result no difference.


Criminy. The point was to show that the libre- or standard- are just capitalism. There is only 1 spectrum. From 100% private ownership of labor (capitalism) to 100% state ownership of labor (communism), yes, every system falls somewhere in that spectrum, including your libre-capitalism. Which likely falls closer to the communist side than the capitalist side.

I haven't ignored your conclusions, or anyone elses. I've asked them to support their conclusions, at a most basic level: how any new scheme will somehow escape the basic principles of economics? They don't show reasoning behind their idea that somehow crypto currencies operate outside of basic economics.

You *may* be right, sometimes, with Wiki or Khan-type things. Like I said, they are significantly fewer costs to sitting around at the computer than there are in creating products. But by no means is that evidence that libre- is always, or even all that often, better/more effective than standard-.

If people can do better by not working than they can by working, then yeah, they'll produce nothing.  I don't think anybody's been advocating that.  No matter what happens, working has to keep on showing a marginal profit, and preferably a pretty steep one, over not working. 

Still.  What is, is, what can be, can be, and what will be, will be.  It doesn't matter whether anybody believes it now.  All you can do if you believe in something, is try it.

Sure. This is why Kennedy reduced the highest marginal income tax rate from 90% to 50% (which is still far too high to encourage productivity). Who in their right mind seeks to work any longer when they are only keeping 10% of their pay for any further work?

No, I don't think anyone is advocating people not producing anything, but they aren't addressing the effects these ideas have on the cost of living.

It is like people who think "we" have to pay taxes to "help" people, and corporations must pay higher taxes for the same reason. They don't address these issues:

1) Let us say you pay $100 in tax. Here in the US, that $100 is instantly worth about $60, after taking off DoD, interest on the debt, and the cost of gov't itself. It's actually worth less than that, given that there is a Social Security "Trust Fund" which isn't a trust fund at all, it is just the gov't loaning itself money. Every try to loan yourself money? Let me know how that works. So paying taxes to "help" or build roads or job training or whatever just means that for every dollar you pay, you get back a little more than 50 cents. That's just brilliant mathematics, but people line to hell up to keep spouting that line.

2) Corporations do not pay one dime in taxes, ever. Every single penny that is taken from a corporation in taxes is passed directly to the consumer because it is just another cost. Nike sells a pair of shoes for $10.00. Tax Nike 10% and the shoes are now priced at $10.10. Tax Nike 90%, and the shoes are now priced at $19.00 because the taxes are no different than the costs of the leather, laces, rubber, labor, et cetera. More importantly, that price increase hurts the poorest, the most because the price of shoes is a much higher percentage of their income.

These are not abstractions on a discussion board, these are how things work in practice. Without addressing these issues when advocating higher corporate taxes (for example) your position lacks credibility. Similarly, if you don't address the problems I've noted with "free" crypto currency skewing the system, that plan can't work either.

But "more product" can't just appear from nowhere, it requires labor, therefore there is an increase in the total output of the economy, which is the intent of the minimum income--at least from my perspective.


I think Cryddit was saying that it is becoming possible to be a producer of libre knowledge and innovation. 3D printing is often alluded to as the next step, a Star Trekkian utopia is usually the final. There is no question as technology has advanced that economic output has shifted on the spectrum from being physical-labor intensive to knowledge-labor intensive. The adage of "as more robots take our jobs, we will need more robotic engineers" oversimplifies but does apply. It's no secret that more educated people tend to make more money. But if the education and the knowledge of production (and possibly even means of) becomes free or really cheap, the standard-capitalism approach is probably not going to work very well anymore. "Basic economics" will be flipped on its head. Surely you have to concede the possibility that capitalism can be improved (by a large increase of GWP per labor unit), and such things are more likely/guaranteed to happen as knowledge becomes more powerful and cheaper. Those who are "giving it away" are working to accelerate that process.

if satoshi comes back and does this, it would be epic

Here, as you bolded, people see increased demand, and so increase production to meet that demand and to therefore profit from it, that is a standard economic principle. But the minimum income idea is reversed. With the minimum income idea you are adding money to the system without the prerequisite work. To put it another way, some people may do some work (earning crypto) to give to everyone. But that work at earning crypto comes at the expense of any and all other productive work that those people could have done, so the net result is no real change. They are just earning something of value, which is the same as if they earn dollars, mine copper, mine gold, or mine bitcoins.



The standard capitalism approach isn't going to change one scintilla nor will basic economics be flipped on its head because these things ARE simple capitalism and simple basic economics. Nothing that has been suggested here changes the simple economic principles involved: people respond to incentives, or given a choice of two exactly equal things, people will always choose the cheapest one for them.

3D printing is no different. It just means that for some items it will become cheaper to home-produce them than it is to buy them already factory made. Trekkie utopia fails because not everyone will do as Picard says. I certainly won't, and neither will anyone that thinks as I do. That doesn't prevent you from doing it, have at it. It means that I will not participate and will deal with Trekkies as I see fit. I will be the Big Pharma that Cuba (the Trekkies) buys its drugs from.

Certainly, over time, some things become cheaper given reductions in the amount of labor and capital used to produce them. Conversely, other things become more expensive as the reverse is true, given the scarcity of all resources. But what you said above isn't an improvement on capitalism, it IS capitalism, because the economic principles remain the same. There may just come a time where most basic necessities are very very cheap, but that is directly a result of simple economics and capitalism, not some perceived sea change in how labor is used or because some people donate their money to everyone else, no matter what the form that donation takes, labor, dollars, bitcoins, litecoins, diamonds, or whatever.

It is like any other incentive system with money, just more direct and obvious. The government can and does do this all the time. Production gets geared towards where the money is. And basic necessities production generally does not require much skilled labor, so it would be easier to employ those who are currently relying on government hand-outs anyway, and thus create a self-sustaining system that lowers unemployment and poverty.

Certainly it will take value away at least initially from some other sectors--but when the financial sector really adds very little net value to the economy yet possesses such a large percentage of it, you have to wonder if the current incentive system is flawed. I mean, isn't that why we're on bitcointalk.org?


I said Star Trekkian utopia because it isn't a perfect utopia and there probably never will be. But at some point we've got to realize that doing what we can to raise the opportunity level for all humans to contribute to society will bring far greater returns than the temporary control of keeping the status quo. Actually, you don't, it's going to happen whether you want it to or not because cryptocurrency does give us the tools to try other things and see what works without waiting for the approval of those in control.

If we are talking about virtual communities then most of these categories of division do not have to exist. If they do exist because it's a separatist community then the separatists have the right to exclusively associate and assist only other separatists. I don't see how it's my business to interfere with these matters whether or not I agree with it.

I don't think you can force a community to support a group of people financially who they don't want to support without initiating force against them. If you're asking about security issues and the use of force that is an area I cannot cover or be involved with but if you're asking about technology to give people the choice to form their own communities in any fashion they like then I can discuss it from a technological and politically agnostic perspective.


Shares are capital assets. It's not a ponzi scheme to distribute capital assets which appreciate over time. It's not a ponzi scheme to use a dividend to give out basic income. As businesses in the community generate a profit by providing products and services of value they'll have money to give back to shareholders in the form of a dividend. That is not a ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, or anything else. No one has to be coerced, it's entirely voluntary and government force does not have to be used so there is no class warfare agenda in my plan.


You don't understand because you did not read my white paper. Dividends are not free money. Dividends are given to shareholders only if the business is profitable. Businesses which fail don't produce any dividends.

Distributing shares isn't the same as "free money" because shares alone aren't worth anything until people make the businesses profitable.

Getting a job doesn't make you rich. This isn't about rich and poor really. Every human being costs x amount of resources and has to be accounted for one way or the other. Basic income allows the human being to develop their skills, educate themselves and live up to their potential while prison, poverty and some of the other options only suppress human potential.

The idea I have is to use a dividend based around shares in DACs. DACs don't become profitable without any work. If you are going to use 3d printers or develop cool new products you have to be very creative. Artists have to design and render the product. Marketing campaigns have to be developed. It's not as simple as just giving people money and expecting value to generate itself, instead tools have to be built to facilitate value creation.

And value isn't created by a useless 9-5 but by innovation and production.
It's not entirely a choice if we aren't giving people a better option. If it's impossible to get rich, and easier to go to jail, then people will take welfare. If there is basic income instead of welfare then if people want more than just the minimum then they'll have to create value by making something new or doing something important.

Most jobs people have today are not important, don't make anything new, and will soon be automated. What happens next?
Machines will do that, so what happens next? You're not thinking of the big picture are you?
How do you make a job without investors? How do you have investors without people who have enough saved?
Crowd funding allows anyone to become an investor in anyone else. If everyone in the community is a shareholder and anyone can crowd fund anything then there is plenty of money for people who want to start a business to make jobs.

But in order for people to have money to invest they need basic income because you can't invest if you can't eat or pay rent. People who you think should mow your lawn are people I think should be investors and shareholders.


Long term poverty is a choice? So you know the secret to getting rich and if everyone follows those steps then everyone can do it? I don't think the situation is that simple. You ignore technological unemployment and the effects of automation. People just aren't all that useful for labor anymore.

So if the machines will be doing the labor what should the people who don't want to live poor do? They should own shares in the machines which do the labor. Bitcoin shows the way, let the computer mine for you.

How do you define labor though? Playing WoW is labor if the coins in WoW can be spent to buy real world items.

The difference is people will be able to do what they want to do because the basic necessities are free. Very few people will choose to do nothing at all except maybe drug addicts, depressed persons, etc.

The people who are depressed or with drug problems is not the vast majority. So as the vast majority has more free time then we will have more art and people playing sports, games, and other kinds of jobs. Work will be between 10-20 hours a week because no one really needs to work more than that and productivity doesn't improve working more than that unless you're trying to start a business and there is literally no one else to do it.

This thread takes it as a given that a basic or minimum income would be desirable and effective, and asks if it can be done via an altcoin system, and if so, how best to do that.
I understand that some of you don't agree, but that is no reason to effectively DOS attack this thread with an off-topic discussion.

There are other discussion threads covering the topic of whether technological unemployment is possible or not,  and whether a basic/guaranteed income is desirable. 
Why not take that discussion there?   

Here's one:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318001.460

No, I understand quite well, and yes, I did read your paper.

"Any human being instinctively uses this sort algorithm on a daily basis, as well as the path of least resistance algorithm but for computers we must take the actions human beings do in ordinary life, turn them into algorithms and then translate those algorithms into computer code."

This is just cost/benefit analysis, which is what humans do with every single decision they make, no matter how small.

Your paper sounds nice, just like Social Security sounds nice: "we're just asking everyone to pay their fair share to help those less-fortunate." Except, well, in practice it has been almost the dead worst investment ever; it takes an enormous amount of personal income, thus acts as a disincentive to productive work; and it has given the government a further tool to mislead the populace and devalue money.

Beyond that? Well, I'll just mention one here. If you actually create some sort of non-owned autonomous entity, someone else is going to take it away from you.

We are discussing precisely that. My position is that it cannot be done via an altcoin system, hence we discuss.

If you invest enough, you can  :)

Oh come on now, it's a fun discussion. And it's really hard to come to terms with an idea as specific as "minimum income" fitting into a decentralized cryptocurrency system. However...


If you can broaden your definition of minimum income, you might be interested in discussing the Decrits proposal: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=189239.msg1960697#msg1960697. It does not describe anything exactly like a minimum income, but it does have properties that are similar, and it is in development.

"You can't be in two places at the same time."

Suppose TheCoin was distributed at a specific time of day (say local solar noon for every degree of longitude).  Each potential recipient would need to undertake a few actions that take a few minutes, that they could not in general physically do with two or more devices.

For example, they might have one minute in which to log in, after which they would receive a series of instructions directing them to a random series of positions reachable by walking for a few minutes total (by which time the password entry and start walking window would be long over).  Sometimes they would be directed to take a picture in a specified direction.  Sometimes they would meet someone else and exchange random codes to be entered into their devices.  Etc.

Some would attempt to get around this by hiring poorer people to do it for them (similar to gold farming).  One way to reduce the value of this, would be to only pay out TheCoin randomly, averaging once a week.  Anyone who wants to hire others to do this would have to hire them for every day of the week, even though they only get TheCoin once a week on average.  (Longer term, the problem is mostly solved as networked mobile devices get common and cheap enough for all - why do it for someone else? )

In addition to the above control on distribution, TheCoin system might require some small amount of work to earn the distribution, such as running a light weight server, or doing mechanical turk things such as examining photos to verify they were taken where claimed, or show a person matching a photo of the person who claimed to be there at a specific time.

Keep in mind that all you're doing with all these schemes is driving up the cost of using this system.

Like I said, the easiest and more accurate would be the Oddballcoin Minimum Income Verification Association. The OMIVA would just verify people and issue them some part of a crypto system.

I'm sorry, I don't see where you have said any such thing.  Those terms don't show up except in your latest post when I search all Bitcoin Forum, nor in the obvious Google searches.   

Are you just making up this "OMIVA" term to describe your previous unsupported claim that this is actually an easy problem to solve?  Or is this something real that I just can't seem to find?

Describe a real proposal, or provide a link to it, so we can evaluate it.   I'll be happy if it does turn out to have a simple solution, but so far you've only made a vague claim that it is possible, not any specifics of how it would be done.

In the meantime, it appears that you agree that my proposal could work adequately.  I don't see how it increases cost at all (and relative to what?), though it does mean that the effort required is more than zero - maybe half an hour a week to collect TheCoin, plus some other light activity (TBD) to earn the coins.   

No. (Well, yes, I made it up as an example). Look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=430364.msg5389223;topicseen#msg5389223 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=430364.msg5389223;topicseen#msg5389223) But very briefly: You set up a non-profit association whose only purpose is to validate that people are who they say they are. 100% voluntary.


No, you either did not read it, or you forgot that you read it. The specifics are simple. I wasn't vague, and I gave you a real-world example.


It increases costs because people a) have to do something, and b) that something seems like a pain. Plus opportunity costs.

The connection of OMIVA to the proposal you sketched previously was not at all clear.  

I'll go into a lot of detail below to explain why what you have proposed is not simple, and far more expensive and susceptible to corruption than what I just proposed.  

But in essence, it sounds like you propose a "traditional" non-profit business version of the network organization I previously proposed trying to implement via network-distributed tasks.  I set that aside as possible but more complex than I would like.  

OMIVA would find the identification task just as complex, but would also be slower to get started, more expensive to operate, and less likely to provide sufficient internal cross-checking to prevent corruption, than the network organization I previously suggested.

-----

So your proposed OMIVA model is analogous to Underwriters Laboratory.  

UL is voluntary only in the sense that their customers voluntarily seek their inspection and stamp of approval - it does not provide free services.   It is a trusted brand/mark only because consumers understand that UL's future income rests on maintaining their reputation as a trusted inspector.  

UL has relatively few customers compared to the potential global 'market' for TheCoin distributions - so the size of organization you are proposing is necessarily much larger.   Creating such a global organization from scratch would not be quick or easy, which would be a major limiting factor on spread of TheCoin distributions.  

It would also cost a lot to create and operate.   Who would pay for OMIVA?  That is - what future business might they lose if they became corrupt and started validating false identities in return for a 50% cut?  

If it is the identity-verified coin recipient, and OMIVA is corrupted anyhow, what happens to all the people who had honestly gotten verified by them?  Do we discard their identities and make them to pay for new ID verification?   Even if TheCoin recipients somehow don't have to pay for the service, they might be cut out of the distribution until a replacement validation organization gets around to re-validate them.

What happens if OMIVA is subverted from inside by a short-sighted crook - not necessarily the whole company, just someone with the right access controls - who doesn't care about OMIVA's reputation, but just wants to grab a quick personal fortune and disappear?  What keeps its field agents honest?   High pay perhaps?

Does OMIVA have a monopoly, or would there be multiple ID agencies?  If it is only OMIVA, the disruption of any corruption would be universal and massive.  If there are multiple competitors, the likelihood/frequency of corruption increases even if they are all somehow qualified.  If anyone can start a validation company with no qualification process, you are pretty much guaranteed that crooks will jump into the business.  And if there are multiple agencies, what prevents someone from creating a different fake ID with each?

Which brings us to the question of how OMIVA agents verify personal and unique identity.  

- By residence?  What if someone moves and doesn't tell OMIVA, but goes to a new OMIVA agent in their new town to create a second identity for a double distribution?  What if a group of 4 friends share two addresses under 8 different names to get double identities through two different OMIVA agents? (Lying to landlords and other potential witnesses and spending time in both places to create a convincing facade)?   Does OMIVA check up on people at frequent random intervals (increasing its expenses)?  How can it tell if those 4 friends have other names and another address, if they spend time at both addresses?

- By Government issued ID?  What about places that have none?  There are also those who will produce good fake IDs for a fee.  Also, a big part of TheCoin system is an attempt to end-run around dependence on and limitations of governments.

Etc.  


Effort is not cost.  As for whether TheCoin is worth the opportunity cost - that would be for each potential TheCoin recipient to decide.  For someone unemployed with zero income, I think I know the answer.

Not clear to you, maybe.


No. UL is voluntary in the only sense of the word that matters: No one is forced to deal with them. Ever. You voluntarily choose to deal with them, or you choose not to deal with them.

Yes, their brand and reputation is a powerful motivator.


Your choice, of course, but no, it won’t limit anything really. If people want the coin, they will come to you willingly. Creating just such organizations is part of your process. That, or putting out specs and accepting bids.

 
You have no idea what it would cost to operate, but once again, yes there are costs involved in EVERYTHING. In this case, a one-time validation vs. doing a little dance or whatever you suggested every day. Who would pay for it? The people that come to get validated, because the cost (the fee) is greatly outweighed by the benefits (TheCoin).

As far as corruption, that is somewhat of an issue for anything humans create. But, as far as I understand crypto, OMIVA would take a cheek swab, blood, hair root, whatever for DNA. That DNA gets hashed, and along with the OMIVA key generated for each person, the result gets entered into whatever computer distributes the coin. The DNA insures each person can get only one code.


Meh. You’re arguing about human-created systems. If it was created by humans, it can likely be subverted by other humans. Billions has been spent on this problem. “What keeps field agents honest?” What keeps cops honest? What keeps bank auditors and accountants honest? What happens if a locksmith company or a bank is subverted from inside by a short-sighted crook - not necessarily the whole company, just someone with the right access controls - who doesn't care about Citibank’s or Huge Locksmith’s reputation, but just wants to grab a quick personal fortune and disappear?

What happens? You pick up the pieces, improve the system, and go from there.


I think it would be foolish to have a monopoly. Let different comers compete against each other for who can do it the best. Much like the costs for a phone are driven down by Motorola and HTC trying to crush each other.


By DNA, as I said above. The person who wants TheCoin will come supply it. A DNA hash and a unique code from the authority, hashed together to enter into the whatever system is distributing TheCoin.



Here it is. Here is the fundamental flaw that you don’t understand. This is the sticky wicket: Effort IS cost. Let me repeat that because it is a fundamental concept. Effort is cost because it costs you that effort to earn a benefit.

The only thing you have in this world to trade for what you want is effort (read labor). You trade your labor for what you want (most often, money). Every single aspect of everything everyone involved with your project does to set it up has a cost: their labor or effort and the opportunity costs of their choices.

This is why you make the claims you do. Somebody, through their labor, has to create all of the value that you wish to be distributed to others that did not earn it. Whether they earn dollars or BTC or rupees or Litecoin or whatever, it all has to be earned, first.

Great discussion, but as brush242 says it would be far too messy to require proof-of-human work every single day.  A non-profit verification foundation makes more sense, and to avoid double-dipping/double-claiming it would need to base verification on a derivative of some unique identifying feature that cannot be changed.  I think there are three broad categories of such identifiers, all of them imperfect:

• Commercial identifiers (phone numbers, accounts on social networks)
• Government identifiers (passport metadata, tax/identity number etc)
• Biometrics (see CheapID for a proposal on this front)

The fourth way is to build a web of trust with crypto, check out OpenUDC project who have gone down that road.

Once a week would be enough, assuming weekly distribution of TheCoin.  Is a 3-5 minute walk once a week really that much to ask?   If someone thinks it is, maybe they don't need TheCoin distributions.   (Daily position checking was just an attempt to make life harder for those who will hire poorer people to collect TheCoin for them.  But on reflection, they'll mostly hire people who don't yet have their own wireless internet device, and it's better that those poor coin farmers get some income, than none.)


Honestly - I've previously considered and rejected a number of the most obvious options, including a real world verification organization. 

So far the unique spatial position test, backed by random real-time interactions with others who are also verifying their positional identity, is so far the simplest and quickest and best.  Yes, it still has flaws.  Not everyone has mobile internet (yet).  Until everyone can afford that, crooks can hire others to walk for them.  Not everyone could physically perform the "walk".  (Perhaps have randomly selected people verify the physical location of the disabled person as part of their own walks.)   

Hmmm - new names for TheCoin:  "Walkers".  Or  "Walkies".   ;)
-----

TheCoin success depends on rapid roll-out.   Building up real world ID verification organizations would take too long - likely a decade to even get coverage of most major cities on Earth, decades to get close to universal coverage, even assuming no political interference.   In areas with thin or corrupt law enforcement, crooks would take over the local organizations.  Desire to maintain a good reputation is simply not a strong enough motivator - as evidenced by the many known instances of corrupt behavior in organizations, plus the larger number that go undetected.
-----

Biometrics sound good - but unique personal attributes are subject to high measurement error/variation.  A person could count on a slightly different digital representation from every capture.  Hash that, and you'll get a different hash every time - allowing multiple identity creation.   Attempts to eliminate those errors reduce the uniqueness of the measurements - creating higher likelihood of more than one person with the same ID code.

Consider DNA sequencing (though it will be too expensive, for several more decades, to be a practical global solution):   Even the best (expensive) sequencing has error rates of 1 in a million bases.  ("Cheap" methods, ~1 in 1000.)  For the ~3 billion bases in the human genome that's at least ~3000 errors per sequencing.   No two sequencings of a person's DNA are likely to ever give the same digital representation. 

One might imagine cleverly "averaging out" DNA sequencing errors somehow. But human DNA is 99.9% the same for everyone.  Blood relatives will be even more similar - perhaps only 1 in a million bases differing.  That's on the same order of magnitude of the best sequencing error.  Trying to eliminate the errors to get a repeatable digital representation, will map more than one person to the same digital representation, and hence to the same hash code "identity".   

CheapID is interesting for the privacy protection it aims to grant - but still subject to easy acquisition of fake IDs, as well as corruption of accreditation agencies.

I tried to come up with a solution based on Webs of Trust.  But a WoT is not as good at preventing a person from having multiple keys by getting different groups to verify trust in them.  Casual cheaters could probably be blocked by requiring them to inform their trust networks of their name, address, etc.  But a small group of cheaters could build their own sub-web of trust with a number of fake identities per real person.  The best counter I came up with for that was bounties for catching cheaters.  But that adds a lot of complexity for verification of cheater reports.   

Then you're skrewed. Rolling this out will take beyond decades, just to marshall the resources that would be necessary to ensure that 90+% of the world's population have access to some device, power, signal, markets, goods, et cetera. Plus, the environmentalist wackos will fight you every step of the way--they don't seem to realize that 1st World countries are not going to give up their standard of living, which means significantly more resources (coal and oil 'cuz dey hate dat nuqulear stuff) will be expended to bring the entire population up to even a modicum of bare necessities.


This may be true now, but in the tens of decades it will take you to ever start setting The Plan, that won't be the case. Especially as I didn't really mean just DNA. It could just use all of the following: DNA, fingerprints, retinal scan, finger length ratios, et cetera. You'll be able to get the error/cheat rate to essentially zero.


Yep. Cost after cost after cost after cost. And you still haven't gotten to the earnings/mining issues.

So far I've described the "spatial identification for coin delivery" process as requiring a smartphone or similar mobile internet device - i.e. needing at least GPS and internet connection and camera. 

By 2020, smartphones will pretty much have displaced feature phones (though some large fraction of them may use WiFi for internet access) with around 80% of global population having one or more mobile internet devices.   And that's before considering any impact on demand from TheCoin being implemented - which might create demand for extremely cheap devices specifically for TheCoin distribution and use.

But suppose we wish to enable near global distribution of TheCoin now - as soon as the software can get written?  Phones at least capable of sending/receiving SMS are now in the hands of around 60% to 70% of global population.  SMS messaging can be gotten very cheaply, once one gets away from the absurd "Wireless Plan" SMS pricing in places like the US.

Can we leverage SMS to get going sooner, at least in areas where smartphone penetration is low and poverty is high?   

Instead of using GPS coordinates and photographs to reliably prove unique spatial identity, what if we use code exchanges between random recipients known to be in an area?    Each locale will have commonly known local places, which could be entered into TheCoin network and used to generate walking instruction messages to get random pairs of people to meet and exchange codes.  Once both parties have sent their codes, both would be sent directions to their next exchange point.    This system is slightly less reliable, in if anyone abandons their walk, they will break the chain of location proof for the person they were to meet.  A fall-back of allowing the abandoned person to try again with a location they haven't yet been to, should be sufficient to fix most of this.

The walking instructions might start with something like "Text back # of nearest location as starting point for TheCoin delivery:   1.Your Home.  2.Han's Bar.  3.Village well..."   That will set the baseline of persons who are ready to receive TheCoin, along with their location, allowing generation of pairs of persons to exchange codes at nearby locations.

A bit later each ready recipient would get a message like: "Your ID is 8253.  Go to Village well and find someone with ID 3549.  Give that person code 2967.  Message back the code they give you."  Etc.

After 3-5 locations and completed exchanges, TheCoins would be deposited to their accounts.  A total of about 8-12 (sent and received)  messages, probably costing less than 50 cents total.

So how might people attempt to cheat this system? 

They might collude to ignore directions and gather in a single spot to use multiple devices.  That won't work for large towns and cities, but could work for tiny villages with very few people, which nonetheless happen to have SMS mobile phone service, but not WiFi or mobile broadband.   Such places would tend to be poor - most people would have at most one device.  Any who have multiple devices would have to agree to pay each person they cheat with, to gain their cooperation.  So initially this would be a very tiny problem, benefiting the poorest, without having significant economic impact on TheCoin system overall. 

Still, it'd be necessary to counter it eventually.  Delays between code exchanges could be examined to look for odd variations in how long it takes recipients to get to exchange points.   When it appears that cheating has become rampant, indicating that most will have gotten enough income to purchase more than one device, it can be assumed that the villagers can now afford mobile internet devices and WiFi, and switch that region over to the standard system.  (Just knowing that this will happen will have some deterrent effect.) 

Note that this latter deterrent need only be implemented for the small fraction of the world's population living in tiny villages, so it is not a large added cost, and is a feature that can be added some time after TheCoin system has become globally established.

A random thought about social consequences of the Spatial Location Proof of Identity system:

Some cultures place tight restrictions on women.  That will place members of such cultures at a financial disadvantage, in that their women may not be allowed to go meet random strangers (including men), in random locations.

Maybe the system will provide a little pressure for them to change, which from my perspective would be a good thing.

I think your bigger issue will be getting 1st world people to use such a fiddly system. The tracking/privacy issues alone would be a disincentive.

This sounds a lot like socialism.

If everyone had a guaranteed income then why would anyone work?

They would work since said income would be enough to survive living cheap, but not enough to live in relative luxury.

A much better question is: Why cant people ever do their research on basic income before asking the same stupid questions as the 100.000 previous askers and calling socialism?

Are you aware that Richard Nixon in his days wanted to implement basic income?  He certainly was no socialist.

The fact is that all research on basic income shows wery positive results. Reduction in mental and physical illness, better nutrition, less educational dropouts and economic growth due to a boom in small local businesses. BI is showing it self to be an extremely usefull tool for reducing powerty.

http://www.globalincome.org/English/BI-worldwide.html

If humans were all rational all the time you would be correct but this is a bit far fetched. Still it's an ideal that we can say humans strive for.

My paper makes no mention of wealth redistribution. In fact the concept my paper promotes is called universal basic capital. My paper presents a plan which would make everyone a capitalist by giving everyone a share in capitalism itself. If you keep excluding people from the rise of capitalism then you cannot expect people to believe in the system. Remove the barriers to entry to that as a community improves it's productivity, and profits rise, the dividend goes to the community who also are the shareholders.

This is a straw man argument. I said nothing about social security or socialism. You're debating a straw man and it makes me question whether you really read my paper. My paper is based on the work of James Albus and his book a path to a better world.  The difference is my idea is decentralized, global, and doesn't require a government permission. All it would require is that the SEC and government does not persecute future generations of capitalists who want to believe in capitalism.


A decentralized autonomous corporation can either be owned by a community (like Bitcointalk) or it could be self owned. If it's self owned then the shares don't exist or they exist but only allow humans to vote. It would mean the machine or autonomous entity would profit for it's own sake and pay humans and machines alike to repair / replicate it.

So it is theoretically possible to have unowned machines. If the SEC for example were to persecute people then we could go with the unowned model. Just as we could say no one owns Bitcoin but it still exists.

They way to do it is to provide universal basic capital. Universal basic income still requires there be corporations or businesses providing products and services. Universal basic capital is owning shares in these businesses.

So if your community owns shares or if your nation owns them then the profit of the corporations would become a dividend. This dividend could be the universal basic dividend paid to every citizen or community member.

You don't need to tax anyone or redistribute wealth. Wealth creation itself would create the dividend just as it currently does for the small handful of shareholders we have. If everyone had their fair share of ownership then if capitalism does work it works for everyone.

Also it would make things more democratic. So if you're an anarcho-capitalist or a left-libertarian it would still work in your favour. If you're a billionaire then you don't have to worry about your taxes going up because it's not funded by taxes. What you would have to worry about is competition from decentralized businesses owned by communities.

If you're part of the community today we could take a snapshot of every member of the Bitcointalk forum. We could make each one prove they are human. We could then give each one beta access to a new kind of DAC or decentralized application.

This DAC would buy shares in other DACs and then hold them on behalf of the community. If the laws allow then these shares could be turned into real shares or signed over to each member who verifies they are a unique biological individual. The shares would then be legally signed over to them or given to them over Ethereum.

What happens next? Well this app would not be an ordinary app. Users of the app would earn shares in the app. The more you use the app the more potential shares you could earn. As the app becomes more profitable your shares would pay dividends from transaction fees. It's also possible to burn the transaction fees and cause deflation which also has the same effect.

The app would be 1.0. As a 2.0 is made or when different people make new DACs then they would simply airdrop to the shareholders of the original 1.0 app. That means once you join the community it's once per lifetime and you never have to do it again. The network on Ethereum would remember you and would know you're human.

So that would be something which could probably only be done on Ethereum in the form of a DAO. But I don't think taxing people or inflating a currency is a good way to produce a sustainable basic income. A sustainable income could best be produced if you either tax automation or own shares in automation.

captchacoin??

Guaranteeing income is the best way to keep people from working.

Take disability insurance for example. The vast majority of people who go on disability (via social security) will never return to the workforce. In order to qualify for disability you must have some issue that "prevents" you from working for at least 1 year. Once you qualify for disability you continue to receive it assuming you do not earn (via a job) income over a certain amount for live (until retirement age at which point you receive social security "retirement" income). Most disabilities that people use to get on disability are not really preventing a person from working, but rather the fact that the person does not want to work.

Extended unemployment insurance is another good example.

When a person has a guaranteed income while looking for a job (unemployment) then they will have less of an incentive to be serious about looking for work until this guaranteed income is about to stop. There is a very high percentage of people who would "look" for work for a year or two years while on unemployment, then once their benefits expire would find a job within weeks (or find a job very close to the end of the benefit)

One of the problems of guaranteed minimum income is that many people who are perfectly capable of working will refuse to do so because they do not feel the need to.

Ironically that is also the problem of capitalism, as people with enough money will just retire early (in fact that's the whole point of making money).

I think any system based on money will encourage some people to not contribute to society, that's why a society-based system would be so much better.

I remember seeing a threat about the danger of robots stealing our jobs. This is not a new topic either. When industrial revolution started some people predicted all jobs would be eventually outsourced to machines, but back than it was considered a good thing, and in fact it should be.

Some things require human thought and skills machines will never be able to perform, but most jobs can be perfectly handled by machines, fully automated, and much cheaper, faster, efficient and less wasteful than a human ever could. This would mean that no human would ever be required to work 40 hours a week, and leave us free to do what we desire most, while occasionally doing some light jobs that machines can't do. The whole world would benefit from it.

However in the current capitalistic world the only thing that would happen is that whoever replaced their workforce with robots will just safe a lot on wages and make a huge profit, but it will not directly benefit anyone other than the stakeholders of the company. In fact all the employees who got fired will be off way worse.

So even though the productivity and efficiency of the world increased, and by extension "true wealth" increased, relative wealth decreased for all but the very rich investors. That's one of the many things wrong with capitalism. Fiat money (and even gold/bitcoin) are not an accurate representation of true wealth, and people are more concerned about their own short term interest than about the long term interest of the world as a whole.

When people work less productivity still goes up. Technology increases productivity.

So why do we need people to work? Automation is going to replace most of the jobs that people do and then what? Then people will be out of work and machines will do it. This is a similar situation to when we got rid of the draft and made enlistment voluntary.

So why hold onto a legacy attitude designed for the previous century? Adapt to the changing times bro.

The economy does not need them working. If it did then it would pay them significantly more than they'd get from Basic Income or anything else.

Let's face the modern reality,  the service and retail jobs will not be done by humans for much longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDJc1NoGg2g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Teo6veZOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLTPbdT87a4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt0KOp5UiAI

Why would you need a human bartender or restaurant waiter in an era where the restaurants are being automated along with the bartender. The human worker culture of life is being phased out and human workers just aren't as important as they once were with the machines coming online.

This is why unions don't have much power anymore.

A robot bartender will cost lot more than a human one.   Makes no economic sense

It depends.

Robots you pay for once. Humans you pay for continuously. Once you buy the robot then it doesn't get tired, it doesn't ask for a salary or sleep.

Repair and maintenance cost of robot are expensive. You could argue health care cost is expensive also.


Hence, you have all the corporation outsourcing their entire production to 3rd world country where they don't have to pay for health care nor pay for polluting the environment.

If you use a robot for one year it will likely be more expensive then one years salary for a bartender.

You will still need to pay for things like repairs and electricity for the robot. If you are paying the bartender only $2.13 per hour then these expenses would potentially exceed what you would pay the bartender.

A robot will also not be able to effectively upsell and encourage additional sales the same ways that a human can. 

Have you ever seen a robot steal office supplies?  Have you ever seen a robot take a smoke break without clocking out?  Have you ever seen a robot watch youtube cat videos on the boss' dime.

Man reigns supreme!

Even with these inefficiencies the cost of tipped service labor is likely to be less then that of the electric and maintenance costs of a robot.

Tipped labor has an incentive to attempt to sell the most product as their pay is linked directly to their sales as well as the level of service they provide. Tipped labor also has incentives not to be inefficient as in your examples as their level of service would decrease. 

Solar electricity can power robots so I don't think electricity is the issue. I think repair can be made by letting robots make a profit and pay for its own repairs with its savings.

I do think robots eventually will be dramatically cheaper for the service industry. It will start with vending machines and slowly progress to robots.

We already have vending machines and they do not replace many jobs as they usually sell things that would not otherwise be sold at their locations.

Solar energy is not free or even cheap. Counting the costs to buy the solar panels and their expected useful life span solar energy is more expensive then other forms of energy, it is just that the government has chosen to subsidize the solar energy market temporarily

Some sort of place where human input is needed that can provide a stable salary is known as a job
In cryto I guess it would be a miner but until we develop 3D engagement systems we probally won't need maintenance teams in the cloud where cryto coins would be useful.
A nice ideal though

There are already many coin similar to this, check out motocoin.

What a brilliant comment. I completely agree with you. I would much rather see a world without money. How about a world not based on money which breeds individualism but on unity. Imagine if we could combine the minds and skills of the people? How great would the world be?