Let me be the first to say WTF? Not because your definition is not accurate but because it is pointless.

Your description matches tcp/ip, http, smtp, kazaa, limewire, bittorrent, and just about anything that is not paypal. How on earth is that useful?

These are great definitions. Here as in the rest of my life I struggle with naming things appropriately. I will try to use these definitions consistently in the future.

How would you describe LETS credits? The have long ends and short ends like split tally sticks, so currency seems superficially appropriate.

I'd never given two seconds thought to economics before I came here! :-)

Noagenda, I like the tally stick as metaphor. However it suffers from the same limitation as GETS/LETS. If you don't already know what they are, you have to look them up first. :-)

I really think bitcoin is two concepts merged into one term.

1) the global distributed tally system (currency-ness)
2) the fixed quantity policy (commodity-ness)

I created the GETS concept as a way to talk about the currency aspects independent of the commodity aspects. I think your tally system fits here appropriately but I need to study more.

(And I don't need to hear that both can be avoided by saying "it's just a convenience, Fresno)

A zero based LETS system doesn't suffer from the "tyranny of timing" that I've pointed out and Galuel seems to have devoted his life to. That means hiding "progressivism" in the monetary policy is unnecessary. That was why he had to lock the UD topic. It simply isn't a universal necessity.

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However, the key thrust of all banker/money changer arguments seems to be that these people get something that they are not deserving of because they did not do an amount of work proportional to the benefit they receive. They all seem to be "fairness" arguments.

LETS groups solve this problem in the most generalized way possible. They simply say, the point is not for you to compile credits so you can stop working and retire. The point is to keep us all working together for our common benefit. That's its hippie-ness. There is no subsidy/tax for delayed gratification.

Bitcoin is decidedly not hippie. The community loves bitcoins limited commodity-ness. As such they are almost giddy at its delayed gratification subsidy. (price deflation) It is supposedly fairer because anyone can get free stuff like bankers. They don't even have to understand banking.

Galuel, interestingly was proposing a monetary policy with a built in tax on delayed gratification. (monetary inflation to cause redistribution of wealth) It is supposedly fairer because it penalizes bankers to support workers.   

Well written! You've struggled with some of the same issues I have. I invite you to comment on some of the other threads as well. For example the GETS thread and the commodity thread.

The arduino idea is quite cool!

This is a silly way to play semantic games, and it is spamming too many otherwise interesting threads.

Fresno, the game is simple. Just start a new thread and in your post write your best description of bitcoin for the uninitiated. Feel free to not use any words you don't want to use. If new people understand bitcoin, then you win. If new people go WTF? you lose.

Or start a thread with campfire stories about boogie men. Then we can all try to out do each other with our stories of righteous indignation and a persecution by the man. 

I know a guy who runs a peer to peer conference. It is piggybacks on a digital media conference. There have been various groups interested in p2p payment systems there in the past.

I could probably get him interested in bitcoin if there was interest here. The group is small in number compared to the giant trade shows, so bitcoin would stand out more.

It is a LA or DC show usually. I haven't been in about three years, but I did get to meet ant party with the edonkey, morpheus, and kazaa folks. Lots of Hollywood types trying to figure out how to get paid for their digital properties there too. Bitcoin could be very useful to that market.

Any thoughts?

That is not a problem. It is the intended way of dealing with value using a LETS approach.

In fact if you are simply bringing charity, you do not have to be part of the system at all. Or you could barter one Lincoln Towncar for one authentic string friendship bracelet. That does not require participation in a system intended to tie you to the community.

One of the things I have been struggling with is the basis for "the value of money". You allude to the equation (fixed total currency)*(currency value)=(total value of non-currency commodities).

So if total value increases and currency remains fixed then, currency value must increase. However this equation does not really apply to LETS. I've convinced myself it doesn't apply to money in general.

If a potter and a baker join a LETS community, the system doesn't record how much bread or pots they own. Nor does the system take note when they bake more bread or create more pots.

The currency quantity is bounded but elastic so it need not vary in value. So if both the baker and the potter start with zero balances, then if the baker needs a pot, he simply takes one and tallies the LETS credits to reflect this. Potter +=1, Baker -= 1.

Now if the clay digger is hungry he gets bread from the baker and he tallies his actions. Baker += 1, Digger -= 1. Eventually the potter will need more clay so he gets it from the digger and updates the tallies. Digger += 1, Potter -= 1.

Now everyone's balances are zero again. Meaning the total amount of credit/currency circulating = zero. However, there is an increase in total commodities (pots).

Therefore commodities can increase without price deflation. Credit/currency can increase without causing price inflation.

Truly traveller it is veer interesting and much more up my alley than bitcoin. However there is so much more to analyze and learn than with bitcoin.

It makes one feel a little slow and behind the curve.

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So let's start with a noob question. Is it in use anywhere? Is there annother community forum somewhere that I can go  and lurk in?

I understand your point of view. It makes perfect sense in reality. Say I come into a community and I teach basket weaving. If I leave and take nothing the community is richer. 

However in the case of a formal monetary system it does have consequences. A LET system is equivalent to a fixed currency system in the sense that coins, bullion or tally sticks, it someone enters the community than leaves taking the currency, then there is less currency to go around. It is monetary deflation. It makes it harder to trade.

In LETS as others' balances go more negative you have to either allow more credit to compensate for the unspent credits or change prices to compensate for the hoarded currency.

If die or formally leave the community and return your unused credits, you have the same issue as someone dying with negative credits. You still have to redistribute the good fortune, or the burden. It is much easier in a LETS system since there is central control of the accounting.

For anyone outside the US, the above statement is basically silliness. W-4 form is the form employees fill out specifying how much salary withholding they are ALLOWING the employer to withhold. There are mandatory withholding laws that apply to all employer/employee relationships. There are certain responsibilities each party MUST comply with, like it or not. The W-4 form is a form that shows compliance. It is not a contract. If you refuse to sign and W-4 and the employer still wants to employ you, he must still comply with the law. You must also still comply with the law whether you sign or not. It says so right on the form:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

The W-4 form is not a contract. That should be clear to any observer as the required part is only half a page long.

Of course you can have the kid down the street mow your lawn! This is the stupidest statement I've seen on this site.

The lawn guy that cuts my lawn is NOT my employee. He is an independent contractor. If he has employees then he has to comply with the law. I certainly don't have to. Nor is the guy at the grocery store my employee because he carries my groceries to the car. Nor the waiter because he brings me my food. Please don't make Americans look like idiots.

Obviously they do. Sometimes people use them to point out you are spouting nonsense.

You ducked the question by saying people can agree to whatever they want.
I suggested that it simply doesn't make sense to pay someone extra for their "delayed gratification". While you might think that delaying your own gratification is somehow noble. It doesn't benefit me at all.

Moreover, in the context of a LETS system it negatively effects the community. If someone hoards a positive balance, then others' balances by definition have to remain negative.

A LETS system is a shared credit system (according to wikipedia). Suppose a system starts everyone out with a zero balance and allows people to have up to a positive or negative 500 credit balance. So in your case if you had a zero balance you could easily pay the lawn guy 10 or 11 credits. Whatever you negotiate. The community is lending you those credits at zero interest in the hope that you will use your skills to benefit the community. The only reason you could not pay the lawn guy, is if your balance was already -490 (Which is publicly known by definition). At that point the lawn guy could have the community accept the risk for your -10 credits, or he personally could take the risk for your -11 credits. That would be up to him if he wanted to trust you for it. He would have a lot more evidence from the LETS system than most people have making those sorts of decisions today (unless they run a credit report).

The community risk in a LETS system is that people run up a negative balance and then exit the community. This means they took services from the community but did not repay with services of their own.

Say a person died with a -500 credit balance. Then by definition, there are +500 credits out there that can never be balanced. That would be the equivalent to "inflation" in other monetary systems. To bring the system into balance either someone has to take responsibility for working off the -500 credits, maybe other family members. Or the community as a whole would have to "write off" +500 credits of their expectations.

LETS is an accounting convenience owned, used, and maintained by the community. It is used to facilitate trade and wikipedia defines it as a full fledged monetary system (not barter).

I don't find the noun "convenience" used alone to be descriptive enough to be useful in this situation.

In the US there is nothing wrong with trading using whatever token you want. I use frequent flyer miles, credit card rebates, hotel and untold other points systems, karma, coupons, and many other things listed as "foo dollars" or "foo bucks". There really is no threat.

If I used any to avoid taxes or send money to terrorists they would hunt me down and ask why. But I don't do those things so I'm unconcerned.

And legally speaking, your intentions matter but your vocabulary usually don't. You can be convicted of having someone "offed" just as easily easily as if you had said "killed".
   

This is more common than you think and not arbitrarily non-sensical. Suppose you work for a fixed salary and generally work 5 week days and get 2 weekend days off. Now if you happened to work one weekend extra it is clear that you are "owed" two days of not working as compensation. If you take those two days the next week that seems perfectly reasonable.

However, what if you decided to "bank" those two days and to not take them for five years? Say over those five years your salary increases 50%. So when you take those two days, they are equivalent to three days of work at the rate you banked them. Is this fair to the company? What if there is a recession and your salary falls 50%? Do you have the right to demand four days off-work instead of two?

More and more companies in the US are employing a use your vacation (this year) or lose your vacation strategy whenever possible to avoid these issues.

The LETS philosophy adopts this concept for everything since everything is basically "work" to them. According to the founder there is no point at all in saving in LETS credits. Credis should remain fixed in value. If you want to save in something that changes in value choose one of the numerous commodities produced and traded by members of the LETS community. That is why they stress keeping everyone's balances close to zero.

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Bitcoin differs greatly from LETS in this philosophy but only because of the 21,000,000 fixed bitcoin policy. Bitcoin's monetary policy could be varied (in theory) to bring it closer to LETS, but that is definitely NOT a priority of the bitcoin community.

There has been much discussion on this site about how best to describe bitcoin to the uninitiated. Some people, favor currency metaphors, others alude to commodity metaphors. Others caution either of these as dangerous taunts to authority.

I posted the following in another thread and there was a suggestion that I write an extended article about my simile. It seems likely that my suggestion is as polarizing as any other. So to avoid any unnecessary aggravation, I'm soliciting comments in advance.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

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I'd like to submit that I think the most apt description of bitcoin is that it is most like a Global Exchange Trading System (GETS) which is a variation on the LETS concept that isn't for hippies.

Descriptively it differs because it's community is loosely knit and global rather than an intertwined small-town. As such, there can be no commonly trusted party to operate and monitor the system, so that function is trusted to redundancy and mathematics. (block list)

LETS communities can rely on "local knowledge" of peoples historical behavior and intentions. As such it is perfectly reasonable for them to advance credit to people (negative balances) in certain situations. In a GETS community advanced knowledge of all parties and intentions is not practical or even preferred. As such, GETS operates on a zero credit policy. (no negative balances)

Also, since GETS trade globally, there is no "national currency" that can be used for equivalence. As such, GETS defines it's own unit for accounting purposes. Since this currency must necessarily vary against some national currencies, the LETS strict "no interest" principle cannot be preserved.

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I think if people understood LETS they would intuitively understand GETS. The rest of the bitcoin details are just one possible GETS monetary policy.

Yes this is interesting. I need to do more research befor I can say anything interesting too! Kudos though!
 

Sub-groups are a huge overall benefit to mankind. They allow the world as a whole to try many different solutions to any given problem. It is an "evolutionary" solution that is incredibly undervalued by some other sub-groups. Namely Venus/Zeitgeist type groups that think the world would be much better if everyone would just get along by doing things the way our group wants them to. You never here these types say, the world would be much better if I just did what that group wants me to.

I highly value the existence of sub-groups they make the world a much better place. I like to go and visit other sub-groups learn about them and borrow/steal their good ideas. I also like to leave their bad ideas behind.

But just because the existence of different sub-groups in an absolute good, does not imply that every sub-group is equally good, or espouses equally valid opinions. It is very important to be able to compare and contrast groups, so we can borrow/share good ideas and leave behind the poor ones.

Nationalities are important sub-groups to use in examples because many people can understand your point in few words. It is completely accurate in many cases to say, "Americans are so..." because we are. You know that, and sometimes we even know it. :-) 

It should go without saying that, there exist Americans that are not... but sometimes humor does not translate well between different languages. On a forum it is always good to point out when you are deliberately being silly.

In my case, I was referring to a really old joke that many Europeans seem to know. It goes in one variation:

"Heaven is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, the lovers are Italian, and everything is organized by the Swiss.

In Hell, the police are German, the cooks are English, the engineers are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians."

Hence my reference to their replacing perceived bad French engineering with perceived good German engineering. At the expense of people worrying about German policing.

Cheers!

This is open mockery and is intended with humor rather than a direct attack on anyone!  :-)
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I read a bit on the Venus Project web site: "The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture." It also mentions: "The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project"

It is clear that Jacque Fresco the founder of the project thinks the world can't make due without him. However, the whole concept of redesigning the world based upon the musings of a Frenchman seems absurd. So even he seems to think its plausibility depends on it sounding a bit more German.

But really, nobody much cared for the last two times the German's decided to take humanity in a new direction! Not even the French!

--End Mockery!--------
(Yes, I know they are based in Florida and are stealing from Walt Disney, but thinking of this as an American concept just makes me sad.)

Feel free to mock me if you wish!

I think I'll copy all his stuff and declare myself sovereign of North America. That way in the post collapse aftermath, if people are stupid enough to accept him as a global leader, I'll have equal claim!

Wow! That is high praise from you Creighto!

I'm willing to start a new thread about it. I'm also willing to contribute to the project. However, by nature I'm very lazy! I often fail to complete projects like this.

However, should my laziness consume things, you've already demonstrated your aptitude for the project. After all, it was your analogy to begin with!

Cheers!

If you trade another commodity for bitcoins and SAVE the bitcoins, they you are gambling on relative future demand versus todays demand. If the future demand for bitcoins is higher you win, if it is lower you lose.

There are only two reasons for other people to "demand" bitcoins. Either they wish to save them for future use. Or they wish to trade them in the near term for another commodity.

So if it turns out that "all of the demand" for bitcoins is because people want to save them and sell them later when they are in higher demand, then you have a classic ponzi scheme.

If "all of the demand" is for use in immediate trading, then you have a very high velocity type of currency. (Changes hands many times over a short period of time) Counter-intuitively this "highest velocity" case actually defines the minimum demand for currency in a given community.

So yes, at the moment bitcoins as an investment fit nicely under the umbrella class of "Ponzi scheme". As a holder of bitcoins, the value of the coins increases most as more people decide to purchase bitcoins and save them.

When trading, the highest demand for bitcoins is caused by the smallest cycles.  
1) A has bitcoins, wants Apples; B has Apples, wants bitcoins
2) A has Dollars, wants Apples; B has Apples, wants bitcoins; C has bitcoins, wants Dollars.
3) A has Dollars, wants Apples; B hash Apples, wants Oranges; C has oranges, wants bitcoins; D has bitcoins, wants Dollars.

In (1) trading one unit of Apples, requires one unit of bitcoins
In (2) trading two units (Apples & Dollars), required only one unit of bitcoins.
In (3) trading three units (Apples, Oranges & Dollars), required only one unit of bitcoins.

So as bitcoin becomes popular for people to both buy and sell things using bitcoins, the demand for coins could very well drop. If you are speculating in bitcoins but promoting bitcoins for trading, you want small cycle trades (a la paypal). Large cycle trades minimizes the demand for your holdings.

So I really wasn't blowing smoke when I said Bitcoin has many Ponzi like characteristics. That may not be the intent of bitcoin users, but neither was it the intent of Ponzi's investors either.