I'm German too, and I actually was at the Grundeinkommenskongress in Munich yesterday (briefly only though). My view on it is divided.

I welcome it in a very pragmatic sense for drastically reducing bureaucracy of our social system (only in theory though... we're in Germany after all  ). I furthermore welcome the idea of eliminating existential fears, which I'm confident will create a better and more human standard of living with more care and happiness, and I do believe (unlike most libertarians) that a society with insufficient equality can not realize its full potential.

My main issue with it then is that most models require the "big state" solution which may become corrupt over time (see GEMA - what a great idea in its beginning, democratic and all, but look what it has become  ). Unconditional my ass, more and more conditions *will* sneak in through the back door, just watch.

So I'm looking for other ways to achieve something similar to a basic income guarantee. The best would be when people can issue their money themselves (think Ripple etc). Some friends and me, we're working on the concept of some kind of network economy.

About automation and technological unemployment, most libertarians will argue that your point here is a Luddite fallacy, and I agree to a degree. New technology opens more possibilities, creates more desires and demand for those possibilities, and thus creates new jobs. For example, we software developers are in huge demand right now in order to achieve this automated society, and we will be the working class of the 21st century. They're already trying to streamline our productivity into industrialization-like schemes with all those agile/scrum/kanban (Toyota!) methodologies. The problem with technology is rather always structural. People lose old obsolete jobs and cannot learn new things fast enough, hence these phases of recession. In 200 years, everyone will want their own spaceship, then soon after everybody will actually *need* their own spaceship in order to be able to get a job at all somewhere in our solar system. And you'll be there then demanding an unconditional spaceship for everyone. In 500 years, maybe there'll be interstellar travel, and the new working class will be, I don't know, maybe space-time curvature architects.

RESET-coin?

Have you ever thought about a second chance? Why not to create a coin for a better equal society and give everybody not just a second chance but a N-chance?

All actual crypto-currencies are just a migration to the virtual world of the same monetary-financial model of society of our times. But, not always things have been this way. In many ancient society, past errors and debts where annually burned in big ritual fires. Many of this traditions persist in modern times, but with their meaning lost. Why not to try a completely different crypto-currency? Let's call it RESET-coin.

RESET-coin will be the first crytpocurrency with a reinitialization function.

On the creation phase (genesis point), everybody can create a wallet and will receive a fixed amount of RESET-coins (1.000?). People can sell, exchange, work for, or do whatever they want with their RESET-COINS.

An algorithm inserted in the RESET-coin source will automatically choose a “reset point”. On that day and time, everybody balances are going to return to the initial amount of coins.

The aim is to create a dynamic economy and guarantee same opportunities to everybody. With such ecosystem, doesn't have any sense to store large amounts of coins for a long period of time. On the other hand, you have to carefully administrate your coins in order to not get out of balance. The “reset” event will occur between some maximum and minimum period (for example: 6 months / 4 years) to ensure that is not predictable, creating “cycles” of economy.

This is just a sketch idea, waiting for community feed-back and ideas. From my point of view, the two keys problems to solve here are:

1. How to ensure a completely random and without manipulation, selection of the reset point.

2. How to ensure that on start point and reset point, each living human being receive the same amount of bitcoins, not more, not less. This have many consequences:
- Prevent one person to have more than one “account”.
- Computers and bots cannot substitute humans.
- Guarantee that only grow-up responsible people can have an “account”.
- when somebody die his account gets destroyed/inaccessible.
Some sort of “proof-of-live” should be created, can be a combination of Turing test and identity checking. Of course, anonymity is scarified, but in benefit of many other advantages.

What do you think about, is a interesting start point or just a bold, crazy, too radical and difficult idea?

My thoughts exactly.

A real 12 year old would be more concerned with playing conkers, Minecraft and sniffing girls' bike seats.

My thoughts exactly.

A real 12 year old would be more concerned with playing conkers, Minecraft and sniffing girls' bike seats.

That's not what cryptocurrency is. Whatever you heard of, it's not "cryptocurrency," it's just some thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

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.

Hi, the problem with that idea is that, although it sounds nice, money isn't actually wealth... it only represents wealth. If a currency was made to give enough money to everyone for a good lifestyle, it would be devalued over time. That's actually why prices in dollars go up over time: As the government gradually prints more money, each dollar becomes worth less. If they were to just print dollars for everyone *all* dollars would lose value and eventually become worthless. This happened to Germany during World War I. This picture picture shows kids playing with German money after the government printed so much that it because worthless. Although it would be nice to provide an income for all, to do so you either have to tax or print money (this goes for cryptocurrencies as well as fiat), both strategies do some serious harm to the economy.

I am *not* saying that we shouldn't take care of the poor. I believe we should, but we have to be very careful to avoid unintended consequences.

You know what fiat means? Congrats! You're ahead of some (If not most) adults.

In fact, your writing style and vocabulary are very large for a 12-year-old, pointing towards the theory that Bitcoin attracts those with the better education as opposed to their peers...

I think you'll do well in this forum, you're ahead of most newbies already.

That's good!

See everyone! Just because a kid is 12 doesn't mean he can't be intelligent!

Just make sure not to listen to FUD (Fear, Uncertantity or Distress ((Or something else, that's my abbreviation))) and always learn. I don't know Bitcoin inside and out, and you -probably- don't either. You'll always be learning, don't dwell on information you've learned in the past. Question what you read now, and ask about things based on the knowledge you have.

And props to you for telling people about Bitcoin, that's a great thing you're doing right there!

And if you ever need anything, just ask me. I'm really open in my schedule and I wouldn't mind doing things.

I agree with this.

Learning shouldn't be equated with being denied access to a forum.

Mine was certainly basic, no doubt about it.

Even if he is a kid; doesn't this mean that Bitcoin's demographics are expanding, and we're getting those who decently matter into Bitcoin?

He shouldn't be here anyways. His understanding is wrong, as expected, since he is a kid.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would work the way that you expect it to. People can easily abuse an unregulated system like that by using fraudulent means to "multiply" their "income." But if you regulate it, then it will become centralized even if that isn't your intent. Who would define what the "bare necessities of life" are? Someone who is about to become homeless would surely insist on being given rent money for free for the sake of "fairness." And why would the currency have any value if everyone can get them without having to do anything or invest anything exhaustible? People would just end up passing inflated money around while goods continue to be consumed without replacement. It would look like a perverted form of neo-communism designed for the digital age.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would work the way that you expect it to. People can easily abuse an unregulated system like that by using fraudulent means to "multiply" their "income." But if you regulate it, then it will become centralized even if that isn't your intent. Who would define what the "bare necessities of life" are? Someone who is about to become homeless would surely insist on being given rent money for free for the sake of "fairness." And why would the currency have any value if everyone can get them without having to do anything or invest anything exhaustible? People would just end up passing inflated money around while goods continue to be consumed without replacement. It would look like a perverted form of neo-communism designed for the digital age.

Yes, there's nothing stopping this from happening. A problem is that each address that is to receive the citizens' salary would have to be tied to a specific person. A government can do this, but it would also basically give the government power over this money. And they would have the power to create addresses to receive funds for wars and stuff like that, just like they do with fiat currencies.

Yes, there's nothing stopping this from happening. A problem is that each address that is to receive the citizens' salary would have to be tied to a specific person. A government can do this, but it would also basically give the government power over this money. And they would have the power to create addresses to receive funds for wars and stuff like that, just like they do with fiat currencies.