Martin Armstrong Discussion

[OROBTC]

...

I have to agree with deisik on one fundamental point: that advances technology have many many, times helped humanity achieve greater growth (and a better average lifestyle) than contemporaries at that time thought possible.  

My best *guess* is that we are not done yet in keeping the Earth going.  I have no idea what will happen in the future, but in case my guess is wrong..., well that's why I own some gold.  Because you never know.

I still have not yet figured out where Bitcoin will fit in as technology continues to advance.  Nor even figured out of BTC or another crypto will be important -- though I would imagine so.

[iamnotback]

But things like the speed of light means it will likely always be a closed ecosystem.

The speed-of-light must be quantized else we can't measure our relative existence, but it is not bounded. Not understanding the distinction is a fundamental error of conceptualization.

For if it is was bounded, the universe is deterministic, pre-ordained, static and thus we don't really exist.

CoinCube and I have discussed in private that perhaps Godel (Godel's universe) had shown it can be either way working from the equations of relativity. But neither of our math capabilities is sufficient to verify this from a derivation point-of-view (and CoinCube's math education is more extensive than mine).

[r0ach]

I have to agree with deisik on one fundamental point: that advances technology have many many, times helped humanity achieve greater growth (and a better average lifestyle) than contemporaries at that time thought possible.  

"Technology" in a broad sense is useless in this aspect, or more specifically technology that's unrelated to the energy sector.  ALL human excess and abundance is based around energy, not anything else.  Just like I said in the silver example, people used to get paid a small amount of silver per day because it took a huge amount of human labor to get it out of the ground.  People then discovered diesel fuel and machines to dig it out of the ground for them, thus devaluing silver by just shooting it out of the ground at you with much less effort.  All it was is arbing "excess" or spare energy into the depletion of resources as fast as possible in a tragedy of the commons scenario.

This was all a zero sum, unsustainable game, depleting both energy reserves and metal resources as quick as you can for short term profit to a few individuals because people generally don't care what happens after they die.  Discovering new energy resources really does nothing to change this dynamic for non-renewable materials.  Everything is doomed to become more scarce and expensive for the advanced products that require them.  However, for renewable things like plants (which you can eat), generally adding infinite energy to the picture allows you to do all kinds of magic in terms of creating more abundance.

So, assuming you discovered some very abundant energy source (fusion isn't it, it's not actually high EROI as I said), you could then use this infinite energy source to create almost endless abundance of things like food.  The problem here is, you would have an R-selection population that doesn't have to submit to any selection traits just continuously getting bigger, while they also want to live a high tech lifestyle with things like iPads that require excessive use of all those more exotic materials like silver that I mentioned we have already maxed out tragedy of the commons on.

In summary, technology in the general sense solves nothing and only energy solves anything, but only if you can continuously bring in a constant stream of new non-renewable resources that you already depleted by tragedy of the commons, otherwise tragedy of the commons has then defeated you even with free energy.  This tragedy of the commons pain will be felt long before humans are able to "mine asteroids", if humans ever are capable of doing such a thing.  The actual economic benefit when mining asteroids would be very low return on investment compared to everything we've done for the past 10,000 years.

[sidhujag]

I have to agree with deisik on one fundamental point: that advances technology have many many, times helped humanity achieve greater growth (and a better average lifestyle) than contemporaries at that time thought possible.  

"Technology" in a broad sense is useless in this aspect, or more specifically technology that's unrelated to the energy sector.  ALL human excess and abundance is based around energy, not anything else.  Just like I said in the silver example, people used to get paid a small amount of silver per day because it took a huge amount of human labor to get it out of the ground.  People then discovered diesel fuel and machines to dig it out of the ground for them, thus devaluing silver by just shooting it out of the ground at you with much less effort.  All it was is arbing "excess" or spare energy into the depletion of resources as fast as possible in a tragedy of the commons scenario.

This was all a zero sum, unsustainable game, depleting both energy reserves and metal resources as quick as you can for short term profit to a few individuals because people generally don't care what happens after they die.  Discovering new energy resources really does nothing to change this dynamic for non-renewable materials.  Everything is doomed to become more scarce and expensive for the advanced products that require them.  However, for renewable things like plants (which you can eat), generally adding infinite energy to the picture allows you to do all kinds of magic in terms of creating more abundance.

So, assuming you discovered some very abundant energy source (fusion isn't it, it's not actually high EROI as I said), you could then use this infinite energy source to create almost endless abundance of things like food.  The problem here is, you would have an R-selection population that doesn't have to submit to any selection traits just continuously getting bigger, while they also want to live a high tech lifestyle with things like iPads that require excessive use of all those more exotic materials like silver that I mentioned we have already maxed out tragedy of the commons on.

In summary, technology in the general sense solves nothing and only energy solves anything, but only if you can continuously bring in a constant stream of new non-renewable resources that you already depleted by tragedy of the commons, otherwise tragedy of the commons has then defeated you even with free energy.  This tragedy of the commons pain will be felt long before humans are able to "mine asteroids", if humans ever are capable of doing such a thing.  The actual economic benefit when mining asteroids would be very low return on investment compared to everything we've done for the past 10,000 years.

Was the internet an energy based revolution that brought us to the boom of dot com what about the industrial revolution which made factories become more efficient?

In the same way.. bitcoin will have a causal relationship with increases in energy efficiency output the same way the others did.

[r0ach]

Was the internet an energy based revolution that brought us to the boom of dot com

The dotcom "boom" was basically just accounting fraud.  Kind of like that CYNK company except numerous CYNK at the same time.

[sidhujag]

Was the internet an energy based revolution that brought us to the boom of dot com

The dotcom "boom" was basically just accounting fraud.  Kind of like that CYNK company except numerous CYNK at the same time.

So internet wasnt a game changing invention to you. Got it.

[marcus_of_augustus]

We've never had a monetary unit that incentivises efficient energy production directly. Petrodollar is close but still abstracted and then inflated to all hell by the swindlers in the Fed.

Bitcoin changes that, it is a path to becoming a Type 1 civilisation.

[miscreanity]

Ideal money is not something that just holds its value over time. Money is ultimately a signalling system. Like the nervous system it's function is to coordinate independent actors directing their activity appropriately across the fitness landscape of the world and the economy.

The nervous system more like point-to-point communications - phone calls and text messages; directing moreso than signaling. An alternate analogy to the financial aspect might be the endocrine system which, among other things, regulates various hormone levels. Its effects are not as immediate as the nervous system, and the complex processes can be excruciatingly difficult to tease apart.

The Byzantine coagulation cascade is a perfect example of such intricate signaling. Perhaps this is why trading and financial analysis are so difficult to pin down.

If we imposed a system like bitcoin upon a society with growth potential people would still invest, but they would not invest appropriately in response to economic opportunities. They would under-invest because a fixed supply of money creates a strong incentive against risk. With an utterly fixed money supply you receive a percentage of future economic growth simply by doing nothing. Only the most promising growth opportunities would receive investment and those with more marginal returns would be ignored. A bitcoin monetary system thus creates a strong vector against growth or in bitcoin lingo a HODL mentality.

This holds true to varying degrees until the system is sufficiently mature. At that point a fixed money supply will grow in value relative to the economy as a whole, albeit with a lag. There is no need for the money supply to dynamically adjust itself - a static supply takes care of a myriad of problems, but there are other considerations that arise.

Assume Bitcoin is the global currency and the global economy grows at 5% during a given year. The value of a Bitcoin should rise by about 5% overall. Some sectors of the economy will grow faster than that rate, others more slowly, and some may contract. Investment occurs when there is an expectation of return greater than can be obtained by other methods, so a startup generating 10% profit will be a better option than simply holding Bitcoin.

What becomes a problem is availability of the usable money supply. That's the stage when smaller denominations are used and the decimal moves to the left (smaller fractions) instead of the right (larger denominations). Long-term holders of Bitcoin who have savings that need not be actively utilized effectively centralize ownership of the units. Whether this is good or bad is another question.

[miscreanity]

What interest me is the role bitcoin plays in improving the signalling mechanism of money.

...

Whereas, the crypto-currency I am going to offer (not only fixes Bitcoins problems) but it also has perpetual deflation (the money supply is forever asymptotically shrinking), thus it will provide the signaling you aim for. I am not making this up now, as this was already in my white paper which is already recorded online.

That struck me as an interesting element in Ripple, although there the supply was instantly available. Anxiously curious to see how you've got the supply structured to avoid instamine.

Actually at the start the money supply in my design is expanding. As it matures, the money supply can begin contracting.

I contrasted with PoS and PoW:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1744718.msg17558554#msg17558554

I see - not sure how it doesn't centralize then without some sort of demurrage or growing fee for older transactions.

So BFD to throttle bad actors, transaction ordering to facilitate reliable cross-chain commits while obviating the need for mining, and some form of cryptographic signature to seal the deal. It would seem that makes your approach more of a blockchain-agnostic protocol than a static design?

The tricky part appears to be the commit ordering. I'm guessing the initiators of the transaction poll a random subset of nodes for the given chain(s) to determine sequence based on block height instead of system time; redefining time in a sense.

Then there's the issue of the transaction(s) propagating through the respective network(s)...

Of course, I may be completely off base.

[CoinCube]

If we imposed a system like bitcoin upon a society with growth potential people would still invest, but they would not invest appropriately in response to economic opportunities. They would under-invest because a fixed supply of money creates a strong incentive against risk. With an utterly fixed money supply you receive a percentage of future economic growth simply by doing nothing. Only the most promising growth opportunities would receive investment and those with more marginal returns would be ignored. A bitcoin monetary system thus creates a strong vector against growth or in bitcoin lingo a HODL mentality.

This holds true to varying degrees until the system is sufficiently mature. At that point a fixed money supply will grow in value relative to the economy as a whole, albeit with a lag. There is no need for the money supply to dynamically adjust itself - a static supply takes care of a myriad of problems, but there are other considerations that arise.

Assume Bitcoin is the global currency and the global economy grows at 5% during a given year. The value of a Bitcoin should rise by about 5% overall. Some sectors of the economy will grow faster than that rate, others more slowly, and some may contract. Investment occurs when there is an expectation of return greater than can be obtained by other methods, so a startup generating 10% profit will be a better option than simply holding Bitcoin.

What becomes a problem is availability of the usable money supply. That's the stage when smaller denominations are used and the decimal moves to the left (smaller fractions) instead of the right (larger denominations). Long-term holders of Bitcoin who have savings that need not be actively utilized effectively centralize ownership of the units. Whether this is good or bad is another question.

To understand the problem of a bitcoin only currency growth must be understood as an integral. In any economy at a given instant there are various investment opportunities. In an economy capable of a theoretical 5% growth there will be investments that return 1% growth and those that return 50% growth. However the integral of growth opportunities the sum of all all actual known growth opportunities is a fixed value. We can never know with certainty what this is as it involves the cumulative knowledge and opportunities available to all members society.

If we hypothesize that at a specific time growth opportunity averages 5% across the economy then ideal money should be at least theoretically capable of matching resources to investment opportunity to actualize this growth.

In a bitcoin only economy if expected growth is 5% only investments with an expected return of greater then 5% will be considered. All economic opportunities with expected return between 0.1% and 5% will be ignored as it is a better economic decision to simply hold bitcoins and free ride on the faster growing sectors of the economy. Thus actual growth will not be 5% it will be less. Exactly how much less depends on the distribution of growth opportunities some have argued this is a Pareto distribution but that is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. The take home message is that all growth opportunities between 0 and 5% are lost. The money fails as an optimal signalling system. Depending on the distribution growth may only be 3% when the economy is capable of 5%. This generalized under-investment never goes away. There will always be under-exploitation of opportunity in such a system.

It is impossible to know from a top-down perspective what actual growth opportunities are. Opportunities are unlikely to exponentially grow forever nor are they likely to zero out forever. Both situations are possible, however,  at any given time so a money with zero debasement is is potentially just as flawed as one set at 5% in terms of optimally matching capital to growth opportunities.

However, if we introduce competing currencies one optimal in a scenario of eternal exponential growth (electronic fiat) and one optimal in an environment of zero growth (bitcoin) and allow capital to move freely between them then individual actors moving back an forth between the two currencies can alter the economic signalling. Once you introduce simultaneous monetary systems the value of each does not necessarily track economic growth instead the values become driven by capital flows between them which in turn is driven by expectation and available opportunities. These two currencies send opposing economic messages. Bitcoin introduces a tendency towards under-investment fiat towards over-investment.

As bad money drives good money to a premium such an economy would likely uses fiat as its primary transactional mechanism and bitcoin would be a savings vehicle. The question is whether two such currencies along with the the ability of individuals to rationally move between them would allow an economy to capture the economic growth that would be missed in a bitcoin only economy while avoiding the over-investment inherent to a economy using only debt based fiat.
 

[r0ach]

Why Bitcoin is currently a roach motel:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1760723.0

[iamnotback]

What interest me is the role bitcoin plays in improving the signalling mechanism of money.

...

Whereas, the crypto-currency I am going to offer (not only fixes Bitcoins problems) but it also has perpetual deflation (the money supply is forever asymptotically shrinking), thus it will provide the signaling you aim for. I am not making this up now, as this was already in my white paper which is already recorded online.

That struck me as an interesting element in Ripple, although there the supply was instantly available. Anxiously curious to see how you've got the supply structured to avoid instamine.

Actually at the start the money supply in my design is expanding. As it matures, the money supply can begin contracting.

I contrasted with PoS and PoW:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1744718.msg17558554#msg17558554

I see - not sure how it doesn't centralize then without some sort of demurrage or growing fee for older transactions.

The money supply will always be power-law or exponentially distributed for any resource. I document this claim with some references in my whitepaper.

What my design posits to do is maintain the consensus algorithm decentralized regardless. They key is finding a way to eliminate a Sybil attack without relying on a resource that becomes centralized. And to remove advantages due to economies-of-scale in the economics that impact the consensus algorithm and its long-term stability. I believe I have achieved it theoretically via separation-of-concerns. In other words, I slice-and-dice the responsibilities for achieving consensus such that no party has economy-of-scale incentives. I do this with a feedback mechanism, which I view as analogous to Byzantine fault detection. The design needs peer review, so assume a flaw may be found.

So BFD to throttle bad actors, transaction ordering to facilitate reliable cross-chain commits while obviating the need for mining, and some form of cryptographic signature to seal the deal. It would seem that makes your approach more of a blockchain-agnostic protocol than a static design?

I can't grok what you are writing here.

[iamnotback]

CoinCube, when analyzing monetary systems the factor of public confidence and liquidity also plays a huge role.

US Treasuries denominated in dollars are favored because they are the most liquid, the USA has the most powerful military, and the USA has never canceled the dollar.

I do agree that gold has been dying as an alternative to legal tender because the transactional demand for gold is dying. Thus we do need a new gold to act as the signaling and release valve to legal tender.

And as I wrote upthread, the very high transactional demand is absolutely necessary otherwise there is no backstop of liquidity and a stampede can result in no bid.

I think it can also help if the crypto-currency has a shrinking money supply so that there is positive return just for holding it. Gold could not do this unless the economic growth was greater than 1.x% but then with growth investment alternatives to gold have a superior ROI.

It actually turns out that we can't have decentralization of crypto-currency without a shrinking money supply. Well at least that is what I think based on all my research. So this is a very interesting outcome if it turns out to be fact. It means the new gold has different fundamental properties which are superior to gold.

This is going to be a whirlwind year 2017 if I get cured. We will learn a lot. I might be wrong or have a flaw in my work though (especially considering the discombobulated mental state I had while doing the work given I was probably dealing with TB spread all over the tissues of my body). Let's see as the brain fog clears...

[iamnotback]

Coming breakup of the USA:

Sad to see "Shelby island".

[iamnotback]

Highly recommended (Michael Pettis and I have exchanged communications in the past):

http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66610
http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/64825

Into the hornet's nest we go:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article57662.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/01/20/as-trump-assesses-china-start-with-facts-not-theory/

It is inevitable that Asia rises because of demographics. But we could possibly see an economic correction first in Asia between now and 2020.

[r0ach]

It actually turns out that we can't have decentralization of crypto-currency without a shrinking money supply.

You can always er on the side of inflation and use proof of burn instead, or you can go the route of separating the monetary unit and consensus unit into two different tokens.  If your consensus token is a separate token from the monetary unit, you just give the consensus token inflation but also burn them, while your actual monetary unit isn't experiencing any of the associated inflation or deflation.

There was my idea for doing this, which is basically combining PoW open entropy consensus with DPoS scaling:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1550027.0

[r0ach]

tinfoil hats

Looks like the "tinfoil hats" were the ones believing the non-r0ach narrative:

http://www.dailystormer.com/white-men-against-trump-protester-called-out-as-filthy-jew-rat/

[freshman777]

Who is still waiting to go on a shopping spree for sub 1k gold?

[OROBTC]

...

iamnotback

You might be interested to know that The Left has been going NUTZ the past few days (yeah, even worse than before).  The profanity-laden "Million Woman March" (featuring well known intellectual Madonna) and the profanity-laden "lady" getting kicked off the Baltimore - Seattle flight are just two of the best examples.  The MainStream Media is shilling as usual.

Were it not for the various issues you are dealing with over there I would advise you to stay...  

[trollercoaster]

Marxism or TB, which is deadlier