1) About money.
Wait, your definition of money is not what I expected. Why bitcoin is not money? Are USDs money according to your own definition?
No.
According to my definitions...
Forms of money: gold, national currrencies, bitcoin, ripple (and therefore LETS)
Currencies: gold, national currencies, bitcoin, a concrete LETS, a concrete ripple line of credit
Units of accounts for exchange and/or credit: gold grams/ounces, dollars, btc, life hours (a concrete LETS unit), Kgs of carrots...
Units of account, by definition, are currencies. Money is something a bit different. 2) About the emergence of gold as money.
Gold emerged as a form of money far before option markets and futures. If you had say pork meat...well, the extremely fast way in which pork deteriorates (not comparable with 5% a year) invalidates it as money. It is not easy to transport and, most important, it is not fungible.
Imagine that gold had a magic property that makes 5% of it evaporate and return to the river or the mine. It would still have been better than say salt as money because it is more scarce and therefore can store value in a more dense fashion (better for transport).
It would not have been better than salt, if 5% were to vanish from the monetary base by it's nature. In such a case, silver would have been the dominate form of money in human history.
Gold is not only time-resistant, is also resistant to the elements (for example, water or acids).
It has so many qualities that it cannot constitute a proof that time-resistance is a necessary quality of money.
There is no 'proof' of anything, as such. But an ideal money is one that holds value, as well as is fungible, divisable, portable and difficult to fake. That is not to say that a commodity that rots a little can't be a money, since silver corrodes. But it doesn't corrode quickly, if stored in the proper conditions. 3) About the source of short-term thinking
Interest produces short-term thinking even within the lifetime of an individual. The bigger the interest the faster you want to receive the return on investment. Re-read the tree metaphor.
With a currency that yields 5% interest, $100 in ten years are equivalent to $ 61.39 today, with 7% interest, $100 in ten years is equivalent to 51 today. Interest makes us discount from the future, no matter the time interval.
I don't contest the above paragraph, but so what? By what logic do you conclude that short term thinking is contrary to the best needs of the market, or of the market players? How do you determine what kind of 'thinking' is ideal? We're back into 'fatal conceit' territory again. 4) About the worgl miracle.
So what you say is that the miracle came from the inflation.
No, I say that the miracle came from a temporary stimulus effect. And it was doomed to reverse itself whether or not the central bank ended the experiment or not. Done correctly, the reversal would have taken as long as the terms of the loans. Probably. Done wrong and we wouldn't be discussing the miracle, but instead the folly of Worgl.
You assume that lent fund was also reinvested in the local economy, if it were lend to say, china, worgl wouldn't have felt the "stimulus". In fact, since you think free-money is bad, if the fund would have been just hoarded (the stamp script would just have been a substitute of the same amount of schillings), worgl wouldn't had experienced a miracle but it would have been even worse.
Probably so. Why the central bank didn't just demanded to keep the "cover" of these new currencies in a suspense account? [/quote] Again, because they protect the banks, not the public. They were simply not interested in competining with an experimental monetary model. |
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AyeYo is just trolling again, and has no intention of actually debating these issues. Please don't feed the troll.
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That's the core of the disconnect, isn't it? You assume that the primary reason that those who might wish to do you harm cannot get a nuke is the result of some act of government. In fact, the primary deterents are not governments at all, but natural limitations. That exist because of the synthetic limitations.  I should follow my own advice, and just ignore you. I wish that I could just hit the 'ignore' button on you altogether, but that would be shirking my responsibilites as moderator. How does it make you feel when your posts disappear? Most of that is me, BTW. |
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Short answer; no, of course not And you would prevent him getting one, how? That's the core of the disconnect, isn't it? You assume that the primary reason that those who might wish to do you harm cannot get a nuke is the result of some act of government. In fact, the primary deterents are not governments at all, but natural limitations. First off, much of the threats of the modern world wouldn't even exist without governments venturing off into other places searching for monsters to destroy; so by hamstringing governments down to their core functions as servants of civil society, we would be preventing future 'blowback'. Of course, this does not address the truly insane loner; but how, then, would an insane loner actually aquire a working nuclear weapon? If it is not the government in America that prevents the (previously unknown) psycopath from aquiring a nuke, or even a common bomb, why are such things so rare in the US? Every case of a bombing in the US involves the bomber receiving outside help and financing, with the intent of causing harm to the US via a nutjob. In a libertarain society, it's reasonable to assume that foreigners wouldn't have a grievence to motivate supporting a local extremist. So the crazy person is left to his own devices. Would Tim McVey had the resources or the knowledge to follow through with his plan, if he had to do it without external support? Certainly he had accesss to all of the materials, since he did anyway. This is still true, and yet such bombings remain uncommon in the US, putting the lie to the idea that regulations on bomb making materials in the UK are directly responsible for the reduction of such events in the UK. To this day, I can go buy dynamite with an instant background check; but if I were to use that dynamite in a crime, they would be on my ass in hours. I can buy two part explosives such as this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite...in an unmixed and unfinished format exactly the same way. Literally with no questions asked beyond "Can I see your ID?". They are commonly used to make reactive targets, like the kind seen on the cable TV reality show Top Shot. Likewise, I can go buy all the materials Tim McVey (and company) used to make the fertilizer bombs without any kind of background check or limitations whatever, if I have the money. But I don't, and neither would have Jared Laughner. The scope of his crime was limited to what he could aquire with his own resources. A satchel nuke is out of the question. |
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To facilitate this conversion at any time - and thereby provide a cover for the relief certificates - the trustees deposited at the local Raiffeisen Bank (credit union) an amount in Austrian currency equivalent to the issued local currency.
The money was loaned out to trustworthy wholesalers at 6 per cent interest. Interest thereby flowed back into the town treasury, yet further facilitating transactions with the 'outside' world.
The money holders were effectively lending at zero interest there. They were effectively lending out at a negative interest rate, but they were lending out funds that were not their own and for which they did not have to pay anything to utilize. This had the practical effect of nearly doubling the monetary base, because the Austrian Shillings used to back the local currency were not held in reserve at all, but themselves loaned out into local circulation. This doubling of the monetary base would reverse itself as soon as the currency was recalled or the loans paid without issuing of new loans. So the 'miracle' was, in part, a result of a local "stimulas" injection effect, that could be unwound by simply allowing the loans to mature and thus retract the reserve shillings back into the actual reserve fund. It was a pretty good plan, for what it was, but I wager that the doubling of the monetary base was unintentional. |
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It's not false that money is simply a barter commodiety, and thus has no special rules withregards to time preferences. You example of 500 fish or 500 moneies is a false choice, because it may not be the only choice for the individual.
You have admitted earlier that money is an agreement from a community. Sorry, I fell into a lack of sematic precision error. It's a common error, but not one that I should have stumbled into. Money is the commodity, currency is the standardized unit of valuation. The two terms are not quite interchangable. Neither Bitcoin nor Freicoin are money, they are only (somewhat arbitrary) units of valuation, agreed to implicitly by the community that may use them. Regression theorm is what you need to overcome, that I don't think that you can unless you can establish a backreference to Bitcoin's valuation (perhaps by an explicit bitcoin reserve, much like what that Austrian town did) or by the explicit support of a trusted institution. These are two bootstrapping techniques that Bitcoin could not utilize. I don't know how you do it, however.
Anyway, the difference with regards to time preferences is that fish perish and money doesn't.
Money is a common commodity that has as many of the features as an ideal money as possible, one of which is that it does not rot. It's one reason that gold is historically money, and why pork futures are not.
I guess you're ok with the short-term thinking that interest imposes on us too.
I'm indifferent to it. It simply is, and I don't think that you can change that perspective even if you are successful in suppressing the market interest rate in freicoin. If nothing else, the growth of your currency, even if it takes off, will be suppressed at an equal rate as you suppress the market interest rate because those who would lend never bother to invest in your currency to begin with. Consumers have a short term thinking, and even investors don't have very long term thinking. Both generally intend to enjoy the fruits of their own labors within their own lifetimes. Very few people invest on their grandchildrens' behalf, and those that do only do so with excess income. There really isn't a way to invest into projects that exceed a lifetime in their ROI. |
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Back on topic, if your neighbor has a history of mental illness or a strong propensity towards violence; it is within the right of the community to collectively choose to restrict that neighbor's
Jared Laughner had no known history of mental illness though the poor man suffering from constant vivid hallucinations if his Youtube video about "conscious dreaming" is anything to go by. Do you think Jared Laughner should have had access to a nuke? Asked and answered. Did you not bother to read what I wrote. Classic troll behavior, simply not interested in what I write, only interested in responding to what you think that I might write and burning straw. Forgive me - its a big thread. What is your answer? Do you think Jared Laughner should have had access to a nuke? Short answer; no, of course not. Longer answer, not unless he had the skills to build it himself and the trust of his neighbors in his abilities to contain the risks. If he had the skills, even the current model doesn't prevent such an event anyway. The materials required to build such a device are expensive, difficult to handle, and require much expertise to utilize; but have legitimate civil uses. Thus the materials should be available to anyone without a need to seek community permission to anyone without a history of misbehavior. |
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No, I didn't. This is another way to look at the Austrian Economic theory of the business cycle. Most of the time Keynes is given no credit, however he wasn't just some hack.
The Austrian School says the root cause is excess credit expansion, at least according to Wikipedia. Yes, and even under a gold standard, credit can expand excessively due to the mood of the loan officers and their employers. The manipulation of the free market interest rate, commonly practiced by central banks today, make this effect worse but are not the cause of it. The business cycle did, and would still, exist within a sound/hard monetary system. It just tends to not reach the same level of malinvestment nor persist for as long before the correction phase. The correction phases prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve were called "panics" and the booms were called "manias", but usually only in retrospect. A quick google search and it will become quite obvious that the business cycle exists in every monetary system ever devised, and will continue to do so. Bitcoin isn't immune either. |
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Back on topic, if your neighbor has a history of mental illness or a strong propensity towards violence; it is within the right of the community to collectively choose to restrict that neighbor's
Jared Laughner had no known history of mental illness though the poor man suffering from constant vivid hallucinations if his Youtube video about "conscious dreaming" is anything to go by. Do you think Jared Laughner should have had access to a nuke? Asked and answered. Did you not bother to read what I wrote. Classic troll behavior, simply not interested in what I write, only interested in responding to what you think that I might write and burning straw. |
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Yeah, businesses and corps aren't waiting for one world government to form, or have UN declare laws. Yet, somehow, they're managing on...
So you admit the world is basically a libertarian model then? Then you admit that the only time a nuke was ever detonated against others was in a libertarian model. I don't agree with this. Basicly national government act as individuals of different levels of wealth, resources and trustworthyness within an anarchy, not a libertarian model. It's an anarchy because 1) there can be no higher appeal to authority and 2) individuals don't have any common agreement on the rights of individials and thus 3) conflicts that cannot be resolved by reason or politics can only be resolved by violence. |
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I think business cycles are avoidable because I think their root cause is interest.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is wrong. The business cycle's root cause is malinvestment. The social aspect is that, during the boom, investors are as upbeat as everyone else and are more likely to investing borderline projects. Artificially low interest rates, manipulated by central banks, make this pattern of malinvestment worse but are not themselves the cause. The root cause of the boom is a form of collective sentiment, what Keynes called "animal spirits". Keynes was not wrong about the role of the mood of the collective in the business cycle, he was wrong in his belief that it could be forced via monetary policy. The malinvestment of the boom cycle is what then makes the correction inevitable, but there is always a trigger event that draws the attention of the collective towards the developing cracks in the system. Once the first true crack is identified to the collective, it starts looking for more, and it finds them; and then the mood changes. And this continues until the correction resolves the cracks, and the recovery begins. After a time of no cracks, the sentiment slowly turns to a 'feeling' that there are no more cracks to worry about, and the boom starts again. In the past, both a gold standard and the more local regionality of the credit & productive markets tended to limit the scope of the boom, and thus the severity of the bust. The boom from 1992 to 2001 was the longest national (worldwide?) boom period in the history of the US, thus we can expect the most severe correction in the history of the US. But only once those with the power to manipulate monetary and fiscal policies finally resign to allow the correction to occur, or simply fail to continue to prevent it. I think you just created a new economic school. This is definitely not the Austrian explanation for the business cycle but it definitely makes more sense. No, I didn't. This is another way to look at the Austrian Economic theory of the business cycle. Most of the time Keynes is given no credit, however he wasn't just some hack. |
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Consumers will borrow in bitcoin because they will be able to spend in bitcoin, and sellers will price in bitcoin because they can get paid in bitcoin. Neither will happen for freicoin now that bitcoin has the market advantage so long as the value rots, and there is nothing that a user can do to reduce or avoid the fees.
Ok, so you accept that if other people accept it as payment, you as merchant would accept them, as a consumer you would spend them first and as entrepreneur you would prefer to borrow them (at a lower interest rate), you just don't think any merchant would ever accept them. That's something. It's a chicken and egg problem, further complicated by the fact that Bitcoin has already overcome it. But why bitcoin did it and freicoin won't? Because there was an unfilled niche, for which Bitcoin was well suited; and it still took over 2 years for Bitcoin to overcome it. I'm not sure that it completely has, but it has a nearly three year head start on all derivitives and the first-to-market advantage over those same derivitives. Any currency that expects to compete with Bitcoin has to either solve a problem that Bitcoin cannot, or find it's own little niche. Now I have some questions:
Why the worgl experiment was a success in Austria during the great depression?
Although Worgl Shillings stamp script did have a monthly demurrage of 1%,
First of all, Schillings weren't from Worgl nor had demurrage. Schillings were the Austrian national currency. You mean Worgl stamp script. Again different currencies but one unit. Sorry, my error. it was also possible to avoid that devaluation by returning to city hall to have that month's stamp impossed upon the Shillings.
No. When people went to the city hall to get the monthly stamp was exactly were they pay the demurrage (otherwise the bill was invalid until someone went to the city hall with it) and nobody was willing to do it, they prefer to avoid to pay the demurrage. This is factually incorrect. "He issued numbered 'labour certificates' to the value of 32,000 schillings, in denominations of 1, 5 and 10 schillings, respectively. These became valid only after being stamped at the town hall, and depreciated monthly by 1 per cent of their nominal value. It was possible for the holders to 'revalue' them by the purchase, before the end of each month, of stamps from the town hall, in the process creating a relief fund.... The depreciation not only encouraged rapid circulation, but also the payment of taxes, past, current and upcoming. These taxes were used to provide social and public services. At the end of each year, it was required that the notes be turned in for new ones. No charge was made for the transaction if the required stamps had been affixed. Subject to a 2 per cent deduction, the town also undertook to convert the labour notes into Austrian schillings." http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=904Emphis added. Although it was not possible to completely avoid all demurrage by monthly stamp seeking trips to city hall, it was possible to avoid some of it, which would have otherwise ecome a kind of end of year transaction fee/fine for anyone who failed to have all twelve stamps on their script. date=1317148987]
In this case, it encouraged citizens to come to city hall once each month, if they have enough value to justify the trip. While there, they had to pay any taxes that they owed, if they wished to have their money stamped.
No they were discouraged to go to the city hall to pay, they were encouraged to spend their script. They didn't have to pay the local taxes to have their money stamped, they just had to pay the demurrage for that. The reason why people paid taxes in advance was to avoid paying the demurrage.BINGO! He can be taught! Also, Shillings could be used to pay local taxes, and local government clerks were paid in shillings; two important features that functionally made shillings a local legal tender. Freicoin cannot have such explicit and official support.
What about Chiemgauers? You can't pay taxes with them and the city won't pay anyone with them. What about Grok? There's lots of examples. I dont have time to critique every example of a local currency, and compare that to your proposal. I'm just trying to point out where I think your error resides. If you still disagree, go ahead an try it. If you fail, please consider my words. If you don't fail, I'll eat mine. Freicoin might work anyway, if some major company/bank/institution established a backing ratio, publicly announced same, and had enough public trust and resources to be able to support such a backing.
How bitcoin could make it without any backing? It actually has some implicit community backing, by reason of the fact that it filled a niche that could not reasonablely be filled by fiat currencies over the Inbternet and the large and growing group of people who had taken the time to understand how it worked and came to believe that it could. Now that niche is filled, and ther is no such advantage for Freicoin. Why the central bank felt so threaten by it that it has to exercise his monopoly on money creation and forbid it?
For the same reason that they feel threatened by any alternative legal tender; should there ever be a major monetary crisis in the future, people would shift quickly to the local legal tender, pushing up it's value and velocity while the national fiat crashed in both. Note that that the stamp script were backed by a stored reserve of the national currency. Not to give them value (people couldn't redeem them back for the national currency) Also fctually incorrect... " Subject to a 2 per cent deduction, the t own also undertook to convert the labour notes into Austrian schillings.To facilitate this conversion at any time - and thereby provide a cover for the relief certificates - the trustees deposited at the local Raiffeisen Bank (credit union) an amount in Austrian currency equivalent to the issued local currency. The money was loaned out to trustworthy wholesalers at 6 per cent interest. Interest thereby flowed back into the town treasury, yet further facilitating transactions with the 'outside' world.Emphasis added.
but to avoid being accused of creating money and inflation. So the further extension of those stamp script currencies couldn't destroy the value of the national currency. Towns need it to issue the local one.
Also why the central bank didn't pay attention to the growing employment?
Employment isn't really the mission of a central bank, then or now. The mission of a central bank is to serve the member banks and protect them from the risks involved in fractional reserve banking. Employment talk is secondary, at best.
Why there's so many local (most of them private) currencies with demurrage working today?
Most of them are backed, explicitly by an institution or implictly by community agreement. A community agreement is also what backs the monetary value of gold, just the community is greater and older. A community agreement is also what backs bitcoin. True, but both those examples fill important niches and both have an existing history that Freicoin does not while attempting to break into the same niche as Bitcoin. Some of them also have alternative methods of avoiding demurrage, by doing something particular that is preferred by the issuing institution; as in the above example.
I don't know any currency with demurrage that have "alternative methods of avoiding demurrage". Can you point me to one? Yes you do. In fact you likely know of several, you just don't recognize the demurrage as such. Gold is, by definition, the original example. The storage fees for gold is demmurage. If a national currency is gold backed, then the storage fees are borne by the nation, not the indivicual gold saver.
Why lossing 5% of the nominal value would make freicoins value drop to zero
I din't say drop to zero. I implied that it would never acrue above zero, without backing, in the presence of a functioning and continuingly trusted Bitcoin. Your argument is circular: "It won't be ever accepted because it won't be accepted being that bitcoin exists". Call it circular if you like, but it remains true. For any currencyto be accepted, there must be a pricipal and common reason why it's a better medium of exchange than what is already available. This was true with Bitcoin, because there was nothing quite like it online beofre it. This is not so anymore, so for Freicoin to stand a chance at pulling itself up by it's own bootstraps (without institutional backing of some kind) it would have to either fill a niche that Bitcoin does not do wel or solve a flaw with Bticoin. and and losing real value by inflation doesn't destroys national currencies overnight?
If you say because of legal tender laws, why Ven (a private currency based on a basket of national currencies) doesn't get destroyed in the same way?
I had to look that one up, but offhand I would guess that it survives due to an implict community backing form the HUb Culture community. Don't do it. Nothing special with that currency. The point I wanted to make is that is based on national currencies (therefore suffers inflation), cannot be used to pay taxes and it doesn't collapse overnight. Then it's just a dollar substitute. Yes, I believe in the time prefereces of money.
I understand that, what I don't understand is why you call crap another theory that you know for a few days. And why can't you explain what is wrong with it if you're that confident that is crap. Sorry, I'm just not interested in going down that rabbit hole. I don't have that much free time. If you wish to defend it, I'll listen, but I don't consider myself to be the one with the burden of proof here. Fair enough. I repeat my arguments against the time-preference theory on interest: Of course if there's interest the time preference on money applies. But that's obvious, that doesn't explain interest. The theory assumes that what is true for money is also truth for other goods, which is false.
Why would Robinson prefer 500 fish today over 500 fish next week if you're not going to eat anymore today and fish rots?
For the short term thinking that interest imposes on us (no, money is not value neutral, it is the water where we swim and it influences us), here's an example:
It's not false that money is simply a barter commodiety, and thus has no special rules withregards to time preferences. You example of 500 fish or 500 moneies is a false choice, because it may not be the only choice for the individual. I don't have the |
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Ithaca hours are not a LETS, but there are LETS based on hours. Here's an example. Ithaca hours are just worth $10 by their users agreeing on it, as far as I can tell. I'm not saying establishing the units of account in a ripple credit line as the same of one LETS. I'm saying using ripple to manage an actual LETS community. Here's how you would do it: By definition, a LETS system is a mutual credit system, of course you could establish one intended to be used within Ripple. But it's still not Ripple. The distiction isn't semantics. The LETS managers start a ripple node that gives and receive credit from all the LETS participant in the same unit of account. Voi lá, you have a LETS community.
You're confusing currency with unit.
I'm not confusing currency with unit, because you can't seperate them. All currencies are, by their very nature, units of measurement (of abstract value). I can't get them confused because they are one in the same. Some monetary systems have additional features, but the unit is the currency.
If mcdonals or facebook creates a ripple node that only use bigmacs or facebook credits as the unit and people use them for trade, aren't them two different private currencies? If mcdonals also issues dollars denominated ripple IOUs, isn't that a third currency?
Yes to all. I can use ripple issuing IOUs denominated in whatever I produce (say Kilograms of carrots), I don't need dollars, or gold as reference at all. I just need to agree in the exchange rates with my ripple neighbors.
The difference here is trust. Do your ripple neighbors trust that you can honor your currency, and not manipulate or devalue it's future value. McD's has a reputation to uphold, which implictily backs their Bigmacs currency.
With ripple every person can issue his own currency (more than one if he uses different units), but only his ripple neighbors accept that currency.
That doesn't mean that every person can sustain the trust a currency requires. That's the magic of Bitcoin, the trust is vested in the blockchain, it's security model, and the accuracy of it's collective ledger system. There need not be a trust in individuals to that level. I must be able to trust that vendors I deal with will send my my orders once paid, but if they issue currencies, I have to trust that they will be honored (at near to their present value) into an indefinate future. |
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Consumers will borrow in bitcoin because they will be able to spend in bitcoin, and sellers will price in bitcoin because they can get paid in bitcoin. Neither will happen for freicoin now that bitcoin has the market advantage so long as the value rots, and there is nothing that a user can do to reduce or avoid the fees. [/quote] Ok, so you accept that if other people accept it as payment, you as merchant would accept them, as a consumer you would spend them first and as entrepreneur you would prefer to borrow them (at a lower interest rate), you just don't think any merchant would ever accept them. That's something. [/quote] It's a chicken and egg problem, further complicated by the fact that Bitcoin has already overcome it. Now I have some questions:
Why the worgl experiment was a success in Austria during the great depression?
Although Worgl Shillings did have a monthly demurrage of 1%, it was also possible to avoid that devaluation by returning to city hall to have that month's stamp impossed upon the Shillings. This is exactly what I'm talking about, there must be a way to avoid the devalution, or at least part of it, in order to encourage a particular behavior. In this case, it encouraged citizens to come to city hall once each month, if they have enough value to justify the trip. While there, they had to pay any taxes that they owed, if they wished to have their money stamped. Also, Shillings could be used to pay local taxes, and local government clerks were paid in shillings; two important features that functionally made shillings a local legal tender. Freicoin cannot have such explicit and official support. Freicoin might work anyway, if some major company/bank/institution established a backing ratio, publicly announced same, and had enough public trust and resources to be able to support such a backing. Also, If I recall correctly, shillings were directly useful on the local public transit system without additional transactions. A tactic used by some local governments in America to get locally unemployed people to show up at city make work projects.
Why the central bank felt so threaten by it that it has to exercise his monopoly on money creation and forbid it?
For the same reason that they feel threatened by any alternative legal tender; should there ever be a major monetary crisis in the future, people would shift quickly to the local legal tender, pushing up it's value and velocity while the national fiat crashed in both.
Why there's so many local (most of them private) currencies with demurrage working today?
Most of them are backed, explicitly by an institution or implictly by community agreement. Some of them also have alternative methods of avoiding demurrage, by doing something particular that is preferred by the issuing institution; as in the above example. Again, this isn't presently or realisticly possible for Freicoin or Bitcoin.
Why lossing 5% of the nominal value would make freicoins value drop to zero
I din't say drop to zero. I implied that it would never acrue above zero, without backing, in the presence of a functioning and continuingly trusted Bitcoin.
and and losing real value by inflation doesn't destroys national currencies overnight?
If you say because of legal tender laws, why Ven (a private currency based on a basket of national currencies) doesn't get destroyed in the same way?
I had to look that one up, but offhand I would guess that it survives due to an implict community backing form the HUb Culture community. You keep saying to many variables but you don't say what variables. What makes V be volatile in your opinion?
consumer sentiment. Employment Government actions Wars and rumors of wars. And many more besides. Velocity is affected by so many things that re both unpredictable and beyond your control. Fair enough. Then I just claim that V would be more stable (and higher) with demurrage than without it, not completely stable. I have no evidence that your beief is incorrect, nor any to support it. Yet, I still do not agree that intentional reduction of intrest rates or the intentional support of stablility of velocity are neccessarily befefits. I have no way to know what is the proper interest rate nor any way to judge teh proper velocity at any given time. quote] Yes, I believe in the time prefereces of money.
I understand that, what I don't understand is why you call crap another theory that you know for a few days. And why can't you explain what is wrong with it if you're that confident that is crap. [/quote] Sorry, I'm just not interested in going down that rabbit hole. I don't have that much free time. If you wish to defend it, I'll listen, but I don't consider myself to be the one with the burden of proof here. |
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Oh, I do. Ripple isn't comparable to a LETS. Ripple cannot function without a common currency with an external valuation, be it a fiat dollar or dollar equivilent, or bitcoin or silver or gold or Ithica Hours. Ripple is not currency, it's a distributed web-of-trust credit system.
If you try to use an unestablished or uncommon currency over Ripple, you will fail.
Of course Ripple is comparable to LETS. Ripple is a generalization of LETS. LETS is just a concrete Ripple topology: you can stablish a LETS currency (or a time banking system for that matter) inside of a Ripple network. <sigh> No, a LETS system establishes the value by common agreement, usually by pegging it to some ratio against a national fiat currency, thus becoming subject to manipulations of said currency and not really an independent currency itself. A LETS based upon an agreement concerning the relative value of labor hours, such as the Ithica Hour, is an independent currency as such. Certainly you can establish a commonly accepted LETS within Ripple, just as you can do the same with gold ounces or a national fiat currency. Ripple doesn't affect that in any way, it only establishes a web of trust credit system. If you try to establish a LETS system that is CENTERED around Ripple, and derives it's value only from the Ripple community, it will fail. There is nothing within Ripple itself that can support such a currency unattached from an external valuation. Any kind of internal valuation WILL fail. |
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Hey Moonshadow, I'm glad you're back. I wonder do you have the time to answer this question? @Moonshadow: I'm still waiting for your non-arbitrary definition of "acceptable weaponry", and if it's not a simple static list then please outline the valid circumstances for a few representative weapons. If it's truly non-arbitrary, then I'm sure myself, FirstAscent, Ayeyo, Hawker *and* bitcoin2cash, Rassah, FredericBastiat will all instantly realise that the definition cannot logically be otherwise - or at least, we will after some (finite) debate.
Okay, I'll try to define it, as I see it. Basicly, a device that has no other legitimate use beyond mass destruction is verboten. This is because, if it has a legitimate use, then we have no right to prohibit or even substantially burden that legitimate use. This, of course, means that WMD of any form are out. Nuclear weapons fall into this catagory, but nuclear fuels do not. Yet, this applies to governments as well as citizens; for it is citizens that actually run governments. People are fallible, and if a citizen cannot be trusted to own such a weapon (due to it's enourmous threat potential) then no one can be rationally trusted to have command control over a government's arsenal either. Back on topic, if your neighbor has a history of mental illness or a strong propensity towards violence; it is within the right of the community to collectively choose to restrict that neighbor's property rights so long as he continues to choose to live within the community. This is why one would have to go to a court. This is a form of government, but it's community specific. If you don't like the community's restrictions, move. As I see it, the individial should have the right to own a certain class of weapons without asking for permission from either the government or the community (so long as he has no history of misbehavior). This class of weapons, in my view, can reasonablely be limited to weapons that can be borne (held and operated) by a single person, are sufficiently accurate (in practiced hands) as to no be a realistic threat to bystanders simply by reason of their presence. I.E. an "assault" rifle; be it semi-auto, burstable or automatic, should qualify because in the right hands it is a very precise weapon. However, a grenade launcher would justify a review by the community (or government, if you prefer) because, even though it can be borne by a single person, it is not possible to be a precise weapon when in use. It is quite plausible to hit one's target (or attacker) in as precise a manner as the weapon allows and still cause great harm or death to bystanders. Likewise, although a machine gun designed to be "crew served" and thus it is not reasonablely possible to be born by a singe individual, can be very accurate; it still might justify review because it's not possible for a single person to be responsible for the results of the weapon being utilized. A fictional description would be the 'sentry gun' in TF2. There is a bit of a disconnect here that has not been well addressed. I'm a true libertarian, and hit the max position on every one of those 2D political quizes, but the question that is never asked is "should government exist?". I am not a anarchist, although I can agree that from a philisophical perspective that anarchy is the logical end conclusion, taken to it's extreme. But most libertarians are not anarchists, even though many here seem to be. |
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Ripple cannot function without a common currency with an external valuation, be it a fiat dollar or dollar equivilent, or bitcoin or silver or gold or Ithica Hours. Ripple is not currency, it's a distributed web-of-trust credit system. I think you are oversimplifying a bit. Ripple is both a medium of exchange, and a store of value. The medium of exchange quality is clear. The store of value quality should be apparent if we think that each unit of ripple owned by someone is a debt someone else has to his friends, business partners and immediate family. In case of famine gold or dollars might prove uneatable, but the trust of your social network is an extremely valuable asset - these are exactly the people you would rely on when gold and dollars become worthless. It follows Ripple is a very good store of value. That doesn't follow at all. Ripple works by consolodating the many small amounts of credit that people who know you personally are willing to extend to you, and permitting someone that you don't know to trust you because, should you default, all your friends (for which a direct chain of trust can be shown by the Ripple system) are now on the hook for up to whatever amount of credit that they said you were good for. It's like a distributed version of getting your Dad to cosign a loan for your first car. If you were to die, or some other lesser event to occur, your credit would fall. To zero if you died. There is no storage of value there, for if there was any kind of real asset (beyond a good credit rating, for those who consider a good credit rating a social asset) it would be inheritable by your heirs. Credit isn't inheritable.
So the only thing Ripple needs to work as money is the unit of account quality, an external benchmark on which to measure the issued credit. Sure, you could do it by pegging the value to a fully fledged currency, but you don't have to. For example you could express balances in time dollars (not that I like the idea of egalitarian constructions like time dollars, but they are simple to understand). What I'm trying to say is that you don't need the extra complexity of the Ithaca Hours you mention: a central ledger, standardized scrip, and all the things that make Ithaca Hours a currency. You just need the valuation benchmark, one hour of work in my behalf, something the participants can easily measure; the rest is handled by the Ripple system.
That is exactly what I was trying to say. That Ripple requires an externally valued benchmark, which is usually called a currency, in order to function. There is no practical way that Ripple, itself, can serve as that valuation. |
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I think we all agree not to murder, rape and rob each other. At some point, we don't need to agree on everything. There can exist competing jurisdictions. If you own property, you set the rules on that property. If you go on someone else's property, you follow their rules. If you don't like it, leave their property. However, don't be confused like AyeYo and think that you can set whatever rules you want for other people and force them to leave their own property if they don't like it.
+1! AyeYo knows this, he's just trying to goad you. His last 100 rants have demonstrated that enough. They're trollish and nonsensical. I can explain it to my 16 year old, and he can get to the answer faster than AyeYo can, and I don't even have to finish my sentences. Common sense isn't so common after all. I tried to warn you all, and yet I can see that many of you still got sucked in. |
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Just like Newtonian physics had to take a back seat to General and Special Relativity theory on the macro scale of physics, and quantum theory was developed to explain and thus predict the events at the nano scale; I think that, perhaps, we are going to witness the fall of another class of deep assumptions about how the universe actually works over the next couple of years. http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/09/21/how-the-earth-got-its-water/The water theory notwithstanding, the video is an excellent primer on Electrical Cosmology Theory. And in light of the recent accidental (potential, but yet unverified) events as CERN; with particular regard to their neutrino beam experiments apparently exceeding the speed of light, Einstein's own "dissatisfation" with Special Relativity might just require an update to physics textbooks everywhere. |
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