A proposal for wealthy bitcoiners out there: bitcoin for a new world

[bitsalame]

Hello, I have a proposal for those wealthy and ideologists out there.
How about buying a whole town and applying everything we know from urban design, urbanism, pedagogy, cognitive sciences, permaculture, behavioral economics that addresses the core of the problems of our society.

For instance: did you know that crime rates can be moderated just by urban design? Urbanism and criminalists already addressed these methods, but we have limited opportunities to apply them and it remains largely an academical thought exercise rather than an active policy to reform the cities.

Did you know that all the laws are meaningless because it tries to impose rules by punishment alone, we've known for half a century thanks to behavioral psychology that we humans (and animals in general!) don't work that way. It is way more effective to improve people's behavior through positive reinforcement, not by punishment. The whole concept of deincentivating through punishment is a medieval idea, and we need new laws and systems that actually compensate good behavior.
It is an intriguing idea and it is a very fertile field for creative incentives, such as this proposal from VW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iynzHWwJXaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
How about incorruptible meritocracy and a technocracy sound?
Public funds based on the open blockchain would make embezzlement impossible.

We have the ideas, we have the knowledge, we have the scholars, we have the technology and the only thing we didn't have was a place to put them into practice.
So this is the proposal in a nutshell, why don't we make a multidisciplinary foundation for experimental policy making, think tanks AND we can also afford a town to live and test them out and to nurture a bitcoin economy as well.
A testable utopia (no place); a first step towards prototopia (the first place).
I think it is very fitting to fund experimental urbanism with experimental currencies that share the same values and idealism.

Thank you for reading.
If anyone is interested, please contact me.
I am not here to request money primarily, I can fund it myself for now.
I am more interested in inputs and brainstorming.

[1714704511]

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[1714704511]

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[qwk]

I think it is very fitting to fund experimental urbanism with experimental currencies that share the same values and idealism.

I don't think bitcoin shares any values and idealism.
It's just what it is, no more, no less.
And that is good.

[bitsalame]

I think it is very fitting to fund experimental urbanism with experimental currencies that share the same values and idealism.

I don't think bitcoin shares any values and idealism.
It's just what it is, no more, no less.
And that is good.

So descentralization and giving a big fuck you to state regulation and central banking isn't fueled by idealism?
In any case, it doesn't matter, it is not the point.

[Carlton Banks]

We have another budding latter-day Pilgrim Father/Martin Luther here!

I'm very sympathetic to these ideas, but in practical terms, your starting point for this sort of venture is to find territory that you can make a "sovereign" claim to. I don't think you can get past this stage tbh, even sea-steaders have to conform to "the rules" (international maritime/mercantile law).   

[bitsalame]

We have another budding latter-day Pilgrim Father/Martin Luther here!

I'm very sympathetic to these ideas, but in practical terms, your starting point for this sort of venture is to find territory that you can make a "sovereign" claim to. I don't think you can get past this stage tbh, even sea-steaders have to conform to "the rules" (international maritime/mercantile law).  

Well, considering that towns and cities in the US are falling apart, and some of them are even on sale, I was wondering if we could simply buy one of them.
The prices are not really that outrageous, around a million and half.
http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=13107850

We don't need to be fully sovereign to begin, but a working prototopia could be the first spark that lights many more around the world.
Hopefully, that's my dream.

[Carlton Banks]

We have another budding latter-day Pilgrim Father/Martin Luther here!

I'm very sympathetic to these ideas, but in practical terms, your starting point for this sort of venture is to find territory that you can make a "sovereign" claim to. I don't think you can get past this stage tbh, even sea-steaders have to conform to "the rules" (international maritime/mercantile law).  

Well, considering that towns and cities in the US are falling apart, and some of them are even on sale, I was wondering if we could simply buy one of them.

Hmmm, with State and Federal Authorities presiding, I wonder how much free reign you could genuinely get. It may turn into Waco mk.II, but that depends alot on the prevalent mentality about the place once it got off the ground. It's definitely possible to create a Bitcoin based community that lives within the existing state/federal law, then use whatever regulatory elbow-room you have left to mold the place around Bitcoin-based living.

It's a gamble though. If, for whatever reason, some disaster took place, the media attention would be alot more intense than if it succeeded. The US is becoming (metaphorically) like that joke about the military auto-haircut machine with only one size setting for the soldier's head. 

[BitDreams]

Detroit.

[justusranvier]

The problems you've identified will not be solved via the methods you are proposing.

[justmyname]

The more possessions you collect the more you enslave yourself.

[gambit1]

It actually has been done before. The cult of Scientology took over the town of Clearwater Florida way back when. They didn't need to become "sovereign" exactly, they just bribed all the local officials and took them into the cults service. They therefore maintain de facto sovereignty over the town. They called the process by which they took the town over "Operation Normandy".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Normandy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwater,_Florida#Scientology

[gambit1]

Just an additional thought but why is it necessary to get bitcoiners together physically like this. This is lilke Finshaggys idea. Bitcoin is a digital, internet based currency. Why not have an internet based community. If we all get together we might not like each other. If we all start living together it could be worse.

[franky1]

although finshaggy's idea of utopia was ... well .. i cant put into words how much fail it was.. but if those that truly want a utopia

instead of diluting all of these idea's into micro projects all over the world. how about combine them with existing idea's..

EG new hampshire project.

its better to have a great area like new hampshire with so many inspirational things happening, and legal stuff ALREADY in the pipeline instead of  having millions of coins 'wasted' on half baked idea's spread out and having to start new legal stuff in different area's which simply wastes the funds.

make new hampshire the prototype area for everything. and once its successful it can spread like wild fire. much more simply then 'wasting' smaller amounts on micro projects scattered around where they become useless.

[Carlton Banks]

Just an additional thought but why is it necessary to get bitcoiners together physically like this.

Well, OP did mention that it would be a way of testing out how a singular municipal area could be administrated with just Bitcoin. Direct democracy could be curious under such arrangements: perhaps the public funds could all be in a Wallet where multi-signature transaction are required to send funds, with a minimum number of citizens required to sign the transaction in order for it to be validated.

But I would think twice about being a first-mover, I think it would be a genuine experiment, and I don't know whether I'd experiment on myself given such a scenario.

[gambit1]

Never head of the New Hampshire thing but it sounds interesting.

The problem is that bitcoin is not a social system and isn't designed to solve all problems. Bitcoin solves one major problem only: it has a fixed supply and so the total money supply cannot be manipulated by anyone. That is a great thing, but a social system it is none.

[franky1]

Never head of the New Hampshire thing but it sounds interesting.

The problem is that bitcoin is not a social system and isn't designed to solve all problems. Bitcoin solves one major problem only: it has a fixed supply and so the total money supply cannot be manipulated by anyone. That is a great thing, but a social system it is none.

agreed, but bitcoin can be used as the stepping stone to release 100% control and dependancy on government. even if it is 10%, then using other projects such as new hampshire project where all the businesses in the town accept this one currency to allow people to live on non FIAT based lifestyles meaning wages are paid in bitcoin. as oppose to just using bitcoin for occassional transactions/investments. bringing government control down to 80%, then self funding of the towns resources through rent / local utility bills only(higher rent of course to cover the road maintenance of the roads the houses sit along). and not tax a separate tax, thus all the funds stay within the community.

slowly dividing the need of government control down, one % at a time

[bitsalame]

If we had a time machine and told to someone in the 1800's about a democratic world without slavery and without absolute monarchies, would sound like an outlandish story and nobody would have believed us.
And yet we improved socially and politically from those times, we had the french revolution that was spread like fire to the whole world, slavery was abolished. But this wasn't enough, countless philosophers tried to think about better ways of organizing our world, but the key problem was that whatever political system we implement we end up corrupting it because we humans are wicked.

The only thing that stopped true utopias from becoming a reality was the lack of technology to support it, and all the fantastic improvements we had in our lives was also thanks to technology.
I believe that we might be close of a new social revolution, bitcoins might bring a fresh breeze of hope with a new financial paradigm.
I strongly believe that it is time to think out of the box and actually apply scientific method in policy making and social assistence.

There is a horrible gap between academic knowledge and politics, and it is absurd to just sit and follow rules that are KNOWN to not be effective at all.
I hope to find bitcoin idealist who share similar dreams and criticism about the current world, and I hope to see the rise of an (experimental) technocracy.

[gambit1]

That's the problem. You are expecting too much of bitcoin (you are expecting it to be the lynchpin of a technocratic Utopia apparently). The best bitcoin will ever be is a medium of exchange. That's it. Even if it becomes really big and replaced fiat currency, which is extremely unlikely, that's all it will be.

Bitcoin can solve some big problems and take us forward in a few specific areas. If you want to change the whole nature of society, however, you should not invest all of your hopes in bitcoin.

[Moogle]

where do people come up with these ideas? O_o wonder how many people said users of paypal or e-gold should start buying towns -_-

[btc4ever]

Actually it can be argued that bitcoin or a cryptocurrency with similar properties and greater privacy (zerocoin?) could be THE disruptive technology that helps bring about major and positive social, economic, and political change.

Consider that the U.S. government was started as a relatively small and weak entity, with the states having most of the power.  It remained relatively weak whenever it was confined to the gold standard.  Times of major governmental expansion (power grabs) have required breaking out of those chains, such as issuing greenbacks to finance the civil war, introducing the federal reserve note in 1913, and defaulting on bretton woods in the 1970s, thereby ending any link to gold.  Of course, society is being robbed blind by these actions.

When society begins to adopt a currency that cannot be inflated or controlled, that introduces real competition to fiat currencies in general, and the dollar in particular.  People are going to want to rid themselves of the weaker currency, and hold the stronger one.  Ie, good money drives out bad when allowed to compete.  ( Thiers' law ).  Eventually a tipping point must be reached, where the weaker currencies become measured by the stronger currency... ie, the stronger currency becomes the yardstick in which people tend to think and value.  At that point, government is once again constrained within the chains of a non-inflationary currency, because no matter how much fiat they print, people will primarily store value in the stronger currency, and buy the fiat currency only when they need to interact with the government (paying taxes, for example) at the present exchange rate.   And the government must also pay for goods and services denominated in the stronger currency.

At that point, we should start to see the size, power, and influence begin to shrink for real.  As they can only spend what they actually bring in via taxes, which has its limits.   ( and eliminating those is a topic for another discussion. )

So essentially... we can put the [evil] genie back in the bottle.

Consider also that money printing has and continues to be at the root of the following bubbles: housing, health care, higher education, military industrial complex, prison industry, big pharma, big agriculture.

So what would society look like if all the government moneys were removed, and those industries worked like every other industry?

Utopia?   Probably not.   But definitely a big improvement in my book.

As for politics... when government is constrained to a realistic size by market forces, its power is much diminished and most people can get on with their lives without worrying too much about it.   Look for voluntaryism to be on the rise.


This will all take time of course, and will not be a smooth progression.  The beast will fight back... hard.  But it will lose in the end.  I hope to see a good portion of it play out in my lifetime.

PS:  The fighting back part is a big reason why privacy/anonymity/plausible deniability is super important for any cryptocurrency.  Keep in mind that every transaction you make is public record.... forever.   Please support the zerocoin guys.

That's the problem. You are expecting too much of bitcoin (you are expecting it to be the lynchpin of a technocratic Utopia apparently). The best bitcoin will ever be is a medium of exchange. That's it. Even if it becomes really big and replaced fiat currency, which is extremely unlikely, that's all it will be.

Bitcoin can solve some big problems and take us forward in a few specific areas. If you want to change the whole nature of society, however, you should not invest all of your hopes in bitcoin.

[johnyj]

You don't need a physical form of such world, it can be totally network based. Any social structure is essentially a protocol that is agreed among its members

[bitsalame]

where do people come up with these ideas? O_o wonder how many people said users of paypal or e-gold should start buying towns -_-

If you can't tell the difference between bitcoins and paypal/e-gold, you truly don't understand what bitcoins are.
Clearly, you are more lost than a vegan in a meat market.

[Dan Dascalescu]

Does anyone know who uttered these words on May 16, 2013?

There’s many, many exciting and important things you could do that you just can’t do because they’re illegal or they’re not allowed by regulation. And that makes sense, we don’t want our world to change too fast. [But] maybe we should set aside some small part of the world… an environment where people can try out different things and not everybody has to go

I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society, what's the effect on people, without having to deploy kind of into the normal world. And people [who] like those kind of things can go there and experience that and we don't have mechanisms for that.

These are the words of a visionary; these are the words of Google CEO Larry Page.

Perhaps without knowing it, Page described precisely the concept of seasteading, the movement to colonize the oceans on floating platforms, with quasi-independent jurisdiction, allowing for competition in the area that is in most dire need of it - governance. They will allow the next generation of pioneers to test new ideas for living together. The most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world. I am fortunate to be part of Blueseed, the first commercial seasteading venture, and I am happy to see other visionaries here.

I don't believe money is the root of all evil; but there is plenty of evidence that lack of government accountability is the root of much inefficiency (regulatory burdens cost each US household $14,768, and the country at large $1.8 trillion) and human suffering. A public ledger will force the government to become more competitive, as spending becomes far easier to identify and quantify.

Bitcoin is much more than a mechanism to have a fixed supply of money, both directly (watch Mike Hearn's excellent video on that) and indirectly, through its implications such as the public ledger mentioned above.

Of course, Bitcoin isn't enough. In the US, the Government Accountability Office, and many non-profits, routinely disclose government waste or blatant corruption (such as the revelation in Wired last month that House representatives who voted for N5A to continue its surveillance had received double the defense industry political contributions). Yet "we" don't do much about it. The problem is this "we", the "voter", who actually has no incentive to care. Large-scale government is doomed to fail (if you only click one link in this post, click this one).

Even if we can associate in cyberspace and trade using Bitcoin, there's only so much you can do online. What about undergoing experimental therapies, or using new medical devices, on your own risk? Can't do that in the U.S. - the FDA mandates that you must die. What about more mundane things, like starting a business and announcing that you're raising funds? Can't do that in the U.S. - not yet; and the law hasn't changed in 80 years. "Is everything illegal?" You'd be surprised how much is.

As the OP showed with the speed camera lottery video, random reinforcement and instant feedback loops are fantastically more effective than post-factum punishment. How about we apply those techniques and principles? For that, we need a physical space. Since every piece of land is under the jurisdiction of one government or another, and because trying to work with them can backfire (the Honduras "private city" effort of last year was declared unconstitutional), there's only one unclaimed place on Earth: the oceans.

Experimentation with governance needs to be done at small scale, with a group of interested people, using the latest advances in technology, and be informed by accurate findings from behavioral economics and social psychology. At the same time, experimentation needs to be realistic, and incremental.

I am of course biased, but I would like to submit that this is exactly the goal of Blueseed.

And with a launch cost of $30M, Blueseed is far less expensive than many avenues proposed so far, let alone unsuccessful lobbying.