I got it working on my site ( http://shiresilver.com ) using a module I just had to install and configure. There was one purchase attempt that failed the other day (probably just a network glitch) but other than that its worked fine for me. |
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Well, fixing the unit is a problem. Any sort of fixing will lead to an abuse of power by those with the ability to do the fixing. It also leads to problems with arbitrage. That's why it needs to float.
Again, it is not cash, it is credit. For every positive balance there's another participant with a negative one. There's no need for arbitrage because it is not a commodity nor cash. It's like saying that loan debts need to float. I don't want debts to me to float. I want to negotiate a unit and get paid back. The unit is just an agreement. Instead between each debtor/creditor pair, between the LETS community as a whole. As a prerequisite, all participants know and trust each other. Also every participant needs to understand and accept the rules. The only way to abuse the system is by leaving with a negative balance. In that case you're betraying the trust that you were given. Its not the debt itself that gets arbitraged, but the units. If the units are fixed, then an arbitrage situation will arise - whether it is "needed" or not is irrelevant. And credit money isn't needed for everyday trade - commodity money works just fine for that, better than credit money actually. The only time you need credit money is when you need to expand the money supply beyond what the commodity money can provide. And then you need it to be able to collapse back into nothing (AKA clearing). Trying to base an economic system on credit based currency is suicide, as so many countries are finally starting to find out. |
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That doesn't make sense. If it can be created and destroyed at will, there's no good way for the market to derive a value for it. Its ability to be created and destroyed makes it much more useful as a credit tool.
LETS just won't work as a primary currency - only as a secondary adjunct to something else as a primary currency. Adding it as an option to a system based on bitcoins or precious metals could work.
Because of what you say, you cannot make cash out of mutual credit. You need an unit, but it doesn't have to be necessarily a "primary currency". You can use USD, ounces of silver, hours of unskilled labor (yes, wages aren't fixed, the doctor can charge you more than an hour per hour), loafs of bread, or liters of beer or milk. My point is that you don't need another currency to use it as a medium of exchange. You can trade directly with it. We could say fix the unit to a kg of butter and then negotaite prices from it. For example... -1 beer, please. -Ok, give me 0.5 butter units of our LETS as payment. Being that you can use any unit, 1970 USDs (inflation adjusted) or terras (or any other basket of commodities that the community defines) seems more appropriate than bitcoins or gold as the price would fluctuate less. My point is that is not a technology for lending, it's meant for trade. And it doesn't need any other currency as backing, just a unit. I think usd and hours of unskilled labor are the most popular choices. But there is at least a Ripple based (also mutual credit) local currency denominated in silver: https://www.shirehours.com/Well, with Ripple, multiple units can be used at the same time. I think they use both hours and silver ounces. Ripplepay allows btc, gold ounces, usd, eur, slv ounces, cad, hours, JPY... villages.cc only hours I know these aren't LETS, but they're mutual credit too. Well, fixing the unit is a problem. Any sort of fixing will lead to an abuse of power by those with the ability to do the fixing. It also leads to problems with arbitrage. That's why it needs to float. I haven't logged in to ShireHours for quite a while. I know I've been registered on that system since 15 Dec 2008, but I'm only connected with two other users. It mostly seemed to me to be a way for people that don't have any money to pay off debts without doing the work required to earn the money. |
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IMHO, LETS is only really useful as a tool for local lending. Its not a currency. But it does allow for the temporary expansion of currency, giving the system the flexibility it needs without creating a permanent excess.
No. LETS is used for payments. It is based on mutual credit but it is definitely a currency. You spend the money into existence and destroy it by accepting it back. The main purpose of LETS is trade and not financial lending/borrowing. If it were for lending, not many lenders would be attracted since the interest is zero. Even negative in other mutual creedit systems such as ROCS. That doesn't make sense. If it can be created and destroyed at will, there's no good way for the market to derive a value for it. Its ability to be created and destroyed makes it much more useful as a credit tool. LETS just won't work as a primary currency - only as a secondary adjunct to something else as a primary currency. Adding it as an option to a system based on bitcoins or precious metals could work. |
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Also, when shipping always use some sort of tracking or delivery confirmation.
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I wonder if merchants could be convinced to contribute to this project themselves. They would have to respond to an email once a month to verify they are still in business or something. Also, maybe they would be willing to fill out a poll asking how much business (roughly) they do each month.
What I do for merchants listed on my Shire Silver site is have them pay $1/month. If they decide to no longer participate, they have an incentive to update that status. It might be a trivial amount, but it does help ensure only those who are serious in acceptance are listed. Perhaps a satoshi/month or so might work for this. |
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@ShireSilver - Just about ordered a couple of your 5gram cards last night, find the idea intriguing. So do you usually have a couple around for fast shipping? Would like to inspect the product, before committing to a larger order or getting setup as a merchant.
My understanding from your post is that a box of 40 cards could take a couple of weeks to get manufactured and then shipped, sounds reasonable, but wouldn't want that to become a month or two.
Well, typically I don't keep a lot of inventory. Its an extremely low capitalization business - mostly because I'm pretty much broke. Shire Silver is currently my biggest/best chance to make it big. Currently in stock I have 54 half-gram silver cards 1 twentieth-gram gold card 1 tenth-gram gold card I do have some spare silver sitting around for another order that I can use. The customer prepaid for the cards but they wanted a special design, which isn't ready yet. I could make a couple 5 gram silver and as many as 10 one gram silver cards out of that, in order to fulfill quickly, and order more metal to replenish their stash. (That's the sort of juggling that any manufacturer would do to maximize client satisfaction.) So if you put in an order this weekend that was small enough, I could get it shipped on Monday. But a larger order would probably take a couple weeks due to needing to resupply. I have had two previous orders take as long as a month, but these were multi-thousand dollar orders and my supplier ran out of gold. |
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Also: I tried it warm, and I tried it chilled. I should have trusted the baker on this, warm is good, but chilled is so much better.
Deep fried. Seriously. |
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IMHO, LETS is only really useful as a tool for local lending. Its not a currency. But it does allow for the temporary expansion of currency, giving the system the flexibility it needs without creating a permanent excess.
What I envision is bitcoins and commodity money being the primary currencies, and LETS coming in to handle the small business temporary loan situations.
For example, say a small clothing manufacturer gets an order for a sizable amount of pants. They don't have enough cash on hand to order the cloth, so they use the LETS system to get a loan to buy the cloth. They know they will get paid for the eventual product, so taking out a loan makes sense. Once they get paid for the finished product, they can pay off the loan.
Perhaps the clothmaker and the buyer are part of the LETS system as well. The loan can be transferred/cleared automatically when appropriate, and only the profits for each part of the transaction need to be transferred.
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My non-investment grade 5 gram silver cards are cheaper than their 5 gram bars. http://shiresilver.com/product/silver_five_gram_card $8.50 (me) vs. $8.83 (NWTM) plus my shipping is cheaper and no minimum order and bitcoin acceptance is built in to the site's cart. And if you are signed up as a merchant (for $1/month) you can get it at a discount. Buying in bulk (about 40 of these cards), you can also get another 1% off using the code SILVER. Assuming shipping to continental U.S. you could currently get 200 grams of .999 fine silver for $305 - $50 less than with NWTM. It would probably be delivered within two weeks. Of course my cards are still new and not as well recognized, so not as liquid (yet). |
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Smaller amounts than even 5 grams are available at ShireSilver.com. They're not investment grade, but are intended for everyday trade usage. Sign up merchants and earn referral fees! |
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Howdy - my name is Pete and I call the 'shire (New Hampshire) home because I'm a big advocate of self-government and this place seems to have the most potential for that happening. I say that after criss-crossing the united states a couple of times through projects like Motorhome Diaries (MHD) and Liberty On Tour (LOT) and meeting thousands of people. During both MHD and LOT the vehicle utilized was a 30' RV dubbed MARV - the Mobile Authority Resistance Vehicle. MARV is actually the impetus for me creating an account here on Bitcoin Forum since I'm raffling him, and taking Bitcoins as one payment method (in addition to FRNs, Dwolla, and PayPal). After FRNs, Bitcoin is the least-expensive way to get raffle tickets: 5 BTCs for 1 raffle ticket or 42 BTCs for 10 raffle tickets. The online portion of the raffle ends on June 15th. The in-person portion of the raffle ends a week later at PorcFest (an annual event in northern NH where 1,200+ liberty-oriented individuals gather). If you're interested to learn more I encourage you to visit http://peteeyre.com/marv where you'll find a 2-min overview video and more information about obtaining raffle tickets. If you have questions let me know. Thanks for your time! -Pete MARV is awesome, as is PorcFest. Welcome Pete! |
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I probably would have gotten into bitcoins 6 months earlier if this module had been stable and maintained. As it is, if you're using Drupal and Ubercart, Paysius works very well.
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I said in the thread that I was thinking of a "mail a bitcoin" sort of service.
So a sort of snail-mail coinapult? Heck, even just wrapping their service so people can use it paying with bitcoins would be cool, although I'm not sure how much use it would get. |
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Well, there's 6 bonds being rotated, so why not just have two of them (A and D) at a set time for the first time slot, two (B and E) for the next, and the other two (C and F) on the third. Make them 8 hours different. Essentially treat the world as having 3 time zones. Those of us in time zone AD get 2 of 6 weeks where we get preferential treatment, but the same goes for the investors in BE and CF.
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I'd like to set up a Bitcoin Purchase mob day sometime to Celebrate a store deciding they will accept BTC, will have to figure out how to make that happen.
Anyone have some links to best methods of presentation for BTC, and tools to point a Brick n Mortar store owner to? I point them to the basics, but for the store owner they need a little more than a wallet app.
You might try organizing a bitcoin mob for places you'd like to see accept it, before they agree. Do some A/B testing. Would a bunch of people seemingly randomly coming into a store and asking if they accept bitcoins get them on board? Going in to businesses cold and asking them if they're interested would work with the small percentage that are already open to the idea. But having a bunch of potential customers asking for it would be persuasive for businesses that don't really care about alternatives to the dollar. |
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<ontopic>
There will be a bitcoin vender at porcfest. There will also be a few vendors that accept bitcoin. Porcfest should be a lot of fun, anyone who enjoys freedom and doesn't mind camping should go. There are hotel rooms available, but they sell out quickly.
</ontopic>
I already know of a handful of vendors that will be accepting bitcoin at PorcFest. I sure will be. Of course almost all of them will be accepting Shire Silver, let's see if we can get bitcoin acceptance up as well! |
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nope, were flying the bitcoin flag, we our sovereign.
Now if you wanted to fly say a Liberian flag, sure you have to follow Liberian rules, which state no firearms on civilian vessels.
Ah, no. It doesn't matter what flag you fly, civilian vessels may not have weapons. Otherwise they are a valid target of war. That is stated explicitly in an international treaty called "the law of the sea". Who signed this treaty and who enforces its rules? Edit: I wikied this and it seems the USA did not bother to sign... So Americans can do what they want as long as teh UN does not come down on them? My landlord is a merchant mariner, and I asked him about this. His reply was that Americans can and do carry, which is why pirates don't attack American vessels. (Probably also because the U.S. navy would kick their asses pretty quickly.) |
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Awesome! And I see the categories bug has been fixed too.
You should put the link in your forum signature.
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I do think there's a benefit though: not being able to know how much currency is in circulation isn't a good thing when you're relying on the rest of it to raise in value. There's no need to return the coins to circulation, but voiding them after some time has advantages - it would let you know how large the money supply is, and it would allow old blockchain history to be dropped completely after the coins expire. (The current pruning scheme often can't remove old blocks when some outputs are still unspent.)
The only reason anyone cares about how much is out there is because they are trying to manipulate the economy. The free market doesn't need to know the total amount of currency, and neither do the individual participants. They only need to know how much stuff they can trade the money they're holding for. Its the politicians that care about things like M2 because it gives them a big knob they can turn to "fix" the economy. The big open secret is that for politicians, doing something - even if it is actually the wrong thing - is better for their career than doing nothing - even when that's exactly what they should do. |
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