Universal Dividend

[Galuel]

Hi,

BitCoin seems a very great project, we started to think the same idea (no center money system tool) in the LiquidBank project in France.

However we think limitating money is an error, money shood increase in regular basis of 5%/year given to each participant in the collectivity, accordingly with long term economic growth.

Could you take some time to read in French the "Universal Dividend" Money System ? http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividende_Universel

Or by Google Translation : http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDividende_Universel

Please let us know about the monetary system you propose to use.

I suppose BitCoin is a tool able to be used for separates money systems ?

[kiba]

I don't see how this encourage bitcoin users to create services and goods for the economy. In fact, by starting a business, encourage others to start a business, so a bitcoin user gain a "dividend" in the form of economic growth. Much more so, if they start a business.

[Galuel]

A growing money system encourages to invest or buy, instead of a deflationnary or stable one, which encourages keeping it and invest later.

So Monetary mass must grow, not stay at the same level. In fact if you stay it at the same level you stay at zero.

When you start creating money, you should not stop it, because if so you give advantage to the first ones in the system who earn money for free, and the later ones who might give goods to obtain their first credits. This is not fair.

If we want generation after generation of users entering the system obtaining a quite equal part of the money created, a regular %/year of money must be created (see demonstration in http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividende_Universel

And without an Open clear and ethic money creation system, I won't use that money. I won't start investing in a money system I think is not designed in a complete ethic way, spatially (which is the case of BC because it anounces equal distribution of the created money) AND temporally (equal distribution IN THE TIME also, the next generation of users, should not be out the creating money process, and as possible earn the same relative part of existing money like the old ones).

[FreeMoney]

In a system where everyone can get money for nothing money is worth nothing. A system where some can get money for nothing is a system of slavery.

In bitcoin no one is getting money for noting, you must help process transactions to get the new money and anyone who can do that can get the money.

[kiba]

A growing money system encourages to invest or buy, instead of a deflationnary or stable one, which encourages keeping it and invest later.

This is nonsense since computer prices keep deflating. Economies grow when they have capital or saving. More saving, mean more resources to spend. All this will balance out when people start spending money again.

[kiba]

In a system where everyone can get money for nothing money is worth nothing. A system where some can get money for nothing is a system of slavery.

I will join a revolt as soon as there is one if such things is happening. I cannot be a leader since I don't have any knowledge in cryptography.

[FreeMoney]

A growing money system encourages to invest or buy, instead of a deflationnary or stable one, which encourages keeping it and invest later.

A growing money system is great!

Growing numbers is just arbitrary and does not grow the system. The system grows whenever more people accept bitcoin as payment.

[fresno]

The only way to be sure that everything will be totally fair is to put me in charge.

With that settled, I decree that we increase the value of all French wine by putting an additional 5% water into it each and every year. Not only would this be absolutely fair to all, but the quantity of fine older wine will actually increase!

My brother Louie will be there shortly to oversee the nominal taxes and regulatory system this will require.

A toast, to equality and fairness!

[FreeMoney]

The only way to be sure that everything will be totally fair is to put me in charge.

With that settled, I decree that we increase the value of all French wine by putting an additional 5% water into it each and every year. Not only would this be absolutely fair to all, but the quantity of fine older wine will actually increase!

My brother Louie will be there shortly to oversee the nominal taxes and regulatory system this will require.

A toast, to equality and fairness!

Indeed. Please don't water down my wine or my money.

[bytemaster]

it seems like the same tired arguments are made over and over that some how the act of "spending" stimulates the economy and that the act of "hoarding" hinders it.  From this fallacy flows every justification for monetary inflation.

The act of spending is simply an act of trading one good for another.  At the end of the day there is NO DIFFERENCE in the physical economy whether something was "spent" or not only who controls what real asset.  There are just as many profit opportunities for those who know how to allocate resources.  The money held from circulation does not reallocate resources and thus does not affect the ability of everyone else to be productive.  

So the question is why do people trade?  They trade because they want something else more than what they have.   Both parties are better off by every trade.  If I am better off holding my gold in speculation that in the future other goods will be more plentiful than gold then that is good.  It means I delayed consuming other goods and let others consume them because I had no better ideas.  Forcing me to "find something" means poor choices.  

So the question becomes, does increasing the rate at which goods change hands actually improve anything?  Or does the inefficiencies of having to manage a "hot potato currency" cause people to make rash decisions in an attempt to avoid a loss caused by someone arbitrarily creating something from nothing in the name of some economic religions view of "the greater good"?  

The only "inflationary" money supply I support is the one that gives me all of the new money.  If you have a problem with me having it... then why should you expect me to give it to you so you can distribute it in what ever scheme you think is most fair?   After all, anyone trying to "manage" an economy is first claiming authority and therefore ownership of it and thus if they had the power to decree 5% dividend then they must also have the theoretical power to decree that they get it all because they are deciding how it should be "given" away.

[Anonymous]

In effect you want to steal %5 of my bitcoins value each year and give it to someone for nothing.If you want bitcoins its easy,find something to trade for them.

[Red]

Cool!

Something I disagree with more than the permanent deflation concept!
 

[hugolp]

A growing money system encourages to invest or buy, instead of a deflationnary or stable one, which encourages keeping it and invest later.

A "growing money system" encourages speculation since you are influencing people to spend or invest more in the short term than they would naturally do. Since prices are going up there is no incentive to save in money and all the incentive is to "save" in form of commodity or investment. Following what you propose is how people is forced to play in the Wall Street casino or buy all type of things to keep their savings (buying houses is great, they always go up in price and the rest of the mambo jambo...) just to preserve their savings. This is why big banks always promote this type of system.

I certainly dont want that type of events happening in the bitcoin community. Encouraging speculation is not what a monetary system is about.

[Galuel]

It seems no answer has read the definition of Universal Dividend : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividende_Universel

1) When you create 5% of Money / year, it is a small amount of creation rate, which allow the new people entering the money system to obtain the same part of money creation as the old ones.

2) A new people entering a money system is not a "money for nothing", the fact is that when a human interact, give information, receive information, is a value.

3) Creating money for a technological reason (increasing the number of nodes) instead of human reasons (allowing exchanges by money for each individual HUMAN member), will have a result to exclude people for the system, and attract machines.

4) If you think a human being is not the fundamental creator of ALL value, and so that money CANNOT be created in other way than by each individual member of the human collectivity which want to exchange goods with a universal accepted way we call money, so in fact, we cannot agree.

5) AGAIN you should read AND take time to understand http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividende_Universel with all the links of SUCESSFULL REAL implementations of Universal Dividend : SCEC Italia, Alaska, Namibia, Brasil, BIEN etc...

6) If your purpose is to build a community of exchange of values between CONSCIOUS men, without giving the DIVIDEND of the enterprise to the members, so I won't join it for sure.

7) BitCoins seems a great technical implementation, which is very near the system we want to design, so probably if it possible as an open source system we'll make a fork and propose a Universal Dividend as a money system based on that technology.

It's sure if people don't agree the way the money can be created, they should not associate in such a trading system.

Money is only the way to exchange in goods in a circular way for ALL the members accepting it as a COMMON way to do that in the SPACE and in the TIME.

[caveden]

Galuel,

I read the wikipedia article. (I jumped the math part).

Not only there are some wrong economic ideas, but mainly, the ethical principals it bases on are very wrong.

You start from the idea that there is such a thing as an universal positive right. This is a denial of human self-ownership. Positive rights are only fair if acquired by voluntary contracts. A universal positive right means someone should be forced to give you something simply for the reason that you exist. This is servitude, partial slavery. It's unethical.

About "rémunérer tout le travail non marchand", this is an ethical absurd that derives from the false premise of universal positive rights.
If somebody decided to perform a work that absolutely nobody is willing to pay for, s/he should not earn anything for it. Will to pay for something means you are willing to exchange part of your work for this something. If you do something nobody is willing to exchange their work for, they should under no conditions be forced to. That's a form of slavery, and from the economical point of view, it's clearly a waste of resources. It's a form of subsidy, and like all subsidies, it destroys wealth.
And by the way, the examples of "travail non marchant" given on the page are bad ones. Most of, if not all those activities can be remunerated voluntarily. Some will not be remunerated as well as highly demanded jobs, but this is perfectly reasonable and fair. You should be remunerated proportionally to what you give to society.

Sorry if I sounded rude, but it seems that you understand well some stuff, like the fact that the current monetary system is crap and causes economic cycles, but by starting from wrong ethical principals you may derive some dangerous absurds.

Anyway, the only fair/ethical monetary system - which, as usual, happens to be the best economic solution - is a free one, where everybody is free to choose whatever they want to use as exchange means. If you agree with that, it's fine, people that agree to use this constantly inflationary currency would agree in given part of their savings to others. I see no problem in that.
But if you wish to force that through state law, and that was the impression I got from the wikipedia page, then, well, we have a really strong disagreement there.

Regards

[Galuel]

@caveden

"A universal positive right means someone should be forced to give you something simply for the reason that you exist. This is servitude, partial slavery. It's unethical."

So a mother should not give attention to his children in an ethical way, that's exactly you are saying. You don't understand human as a social living being. By this idea you propose to be a "choice" his life for the wolf child.

Of course they are positive rights for ALL. And those who are taken care today will take care others tomorrow. This is the sens of economic exchanges. I do for your today, something, and you'll do something to other tomorrow, thru a monetary compensation.

"If you do something nobody is willing to exchange their work for, they should under no conditions be forced to".

And so ? What is Linux ? What is Internet ? You use things you didn't work to because some incredible work was done by developpers for free content which means NOT "gratuit" where is your payment for all that ? It means that if you don't consider the COMMON goods as NO DIRECT EXCHANGE goods, you are wrong about the idea of society. Some goods take value BECAUSE they are used by all with NO DIRECT EXCHANGE. It's the case of language, free code, free work, free organisation, free care of mothers towards his children etc... IT MEANS NOT "gratuit"... So a part of the money MUST valuated all that free given goods to the sociaty participation in the value of the enterprise we name society who give DIVIDEND of the GLOBAL growth it benefits.

"You should be remunerated proportionally to what you give to society."

THIS is the fundamental point a wrong view.

WHO decide of the value of "what you give to society" ? "thanks to all the people who died for society and bye bye ?".

Should you die for society ? Why did people dye for it ? What is the value of the french inventors of photography and cinema who gave the invention to the society without any rights ?

You are not (an NO ONE is not) able to estimate "proportional remuneration of what anyone give to society" it's impossible to agree between all about the notion of "value" now and for the future... So an intermediate way to monetise that, is to share the global dividend of society to all members.

How could anyone estimate the value of Guntimberg gave to society hundreds years ago, now, and for the future ?

You should relativise your notion of value because space is growing, and nothing in the universe has value in front of expansive transformation. So is the universe of human society where the common value is more than each individual sum of acts.

[caveden]

Of course they are positive rights for ALL. And those who are taken care today will take care others tomorrow. This is the sens of economic exchanges.

No, there must not exist universal positive rights since they violate the principle of self-ownership. And the only way to ignore the principle of self-ownership without creating an ethical code completely incoherent to the human nature is to establish a society where some own others. That's normally considered unethical by definition. Try reading this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe11.html

And this (positive natural rights) is completely contradictory to the meaning of economic exchanges. An economic exchange is something done voluntarily. If you force me to do something, that's definitely not an economic exchange. (once a philosopher defined it as "political exchange" I don't remember his name) 

I do for your today, something, and you'll do something to other tomorrow, thru a monetary compensation.

Only if it's voluntary. Otherwise it's probably theft if not worse.

WHO decide of the value of "what you give to society" ? "thanks to all the people who died for society and bye bye ?".

Society itself. That's the value of stuff. What people are willing to give for it. For it to happen, all exchanges must be voluntary.

[17ujzChRb6VPQGyANVyktc1du]

A growing money system encourages to invest or buy, instead of a deflationnary or stable one, which encourages keeping it and invest later.

So Monetary mass must grow, not stay at the same level. In fact if you stay it at the same level you stay at zero.

When you start creating money, you should not stop it, because if so you give advantage to the first ones in the system who earn money for free, and the later ones who might give goods to obtain their first credits. This is not fair.

If we want generation after generation of users entering the system obtaining a quite equal part of the money created, a regular %/year of money must be created (see demonstration in http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividende_Universel

And without an Open clear and ethic money creation system, I won't use that money. I won't start investing in a money system I think is not designed in a complete ethic way, spatially (which is the case of BC because it anounces equal distribution of the created money) AND temporally (equal distribution IN THE TIME also, the next generation of users, should not be out the creating money process, and as possible earn the same relative part of existing money like the old ones).

Bitcoins is growing.

Here money creation will halt, even if it doesn't halt it would be unfair by your rule because first comers would still have more money than later ones.

Bitcoins doesn't know about identity, you can't know which user is new or not. Money creation comes from CPU computations. You don't want your universal dividend ending up to whom can efficiently create bitcoins ?
Before applying some 'maths' you should see if it is even possible.

So don't use that money.


Also your dividende universelle operation just looks like a vast blogspam operation using wikipedia to promote your creationmonnetaire.info blog. Quite obvious looking at the wikipedia history.

[hugolp]

@caveden

"A universal positive right means someone should be forced to give you something simply for the reason that you exist. This is servitude, partial slavery. It's unethical."

So a mother should not give attention to his children in an ethical way, that's exactly you are saying. You don't understand human as a social living being. By this idea you propose to be a "choice" his life for the wolf child.

Honestly, when someone starts with this type of charlatanery it looses any credibility. Its obvious that you want to use cheap tricks and not acomplish anything constructive.

And I will do something for you even when I dont know you, I will give you an advice: Dont come to a place and start going over peoples head telling them they dont understand human nature (and obviously implying you do completely). First, take the head out of your ass, come down to earth with us mortals, and then consider that the ideas you regard as "moral" are just evil, abusive, inmoral and degenerated.

"If you do something nobody is willing to exchange their work for, they should under no conditions be forced to".

And so ? What is Linux ?

Linux is an open source kernel or the community that programs it. Whatever you consider they are both VOLUNTARY. Nobody is going to take you seriously if you say that you have the privilege (or positive right, call it how you wish) of forcing anyone to program something for you. Linux and the linux community has nothing to do with what you are proposing.

What is Internet ?

Internet is a network of computers, just in case you didnt notice.

[Galuel]

No, there must not exist universal positive rights since they violate the principle of self-ownership. And the only way to ignore the principle of self-ownership without creating an ethical code completely incoherent to the human nature is to establish a society where some own others. That's normally considered unethical by definition. Try reading this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe11.html

If self ownership exist who earn the earth ?

Who earn USA ? Descendant of Native Indians so ?

Your description doesn't feet with reality. In reality a nation can impose citizens, and impose some collective obligations like respective collective rules, pay collective contribution thru specific rules (and often non "ethic" rules with such or other point of view...).

Self-ownership created Latifundios in South America under Spanish period http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundio ...

Self-Ownership is detmined by the Collective Onwership which decide to allow or not some part of private ownership under certain rules. By not respective this evidence of mass power of collective rules of societies some kings lost their heads in the past.

So reality is : when self ownership over-rules collective feeling of equity it is breaked. Because of Collective property is more important in term of stability and power in time.

And this (positive natural rights) is completely contradictory to the meaning of economic exchanges. An economic exchange is something done voluntarily. If you force me to do something, that's definitely not an economic exchange. (once a philosopher defined it as "political exchange" I don't remember his name) 

You cannot separate laws, politics and economy, they are NOT different they are interdependant.

You won't be able to develop any trading system that is AGAINST collective interest of a majority of citizens. If you take for your own more than a supportable part of collective ownership, you will receive big advertisement. Take care.

I do for your today, something, and you'll do something to other tomorrow, thru a monetary compensation.

Only if it's voluntary. Otherwise it's probably theft if not worse.

No. The law can impose you to do some things, like paying taxes for using collective goods that are : The space you live in which is not your, the justice, the security, and some collective investments. You must do that or you will have problem, because it's denying the fact you don't live alone, but into a collectivity.

WHO decide of the value of "what you give to society" ? "thanks to all the people who died for society and bye bye ?".

Society itself. That's the value of stuff. What people are willing to give for it. For it to happen, all exchanges must be voluntary.

That's the role of democraty, and laws. Society change his point of view and change the common direction it wants to take by this way.

So you cannot separate a money system from the collectivity using it, and the laws inside that community. If collectivity decide what you are doing is against its stability, against its own volontary decision, it will stop you.

So Voluntary has two aspects : Your own will and the other's will, that can be contradictory. If you don't accept others will, so you might find a solution to live in other part than the collective society is established, or to develop a revolution to change collective will. But don't think it's possible to follow you own will ignoring collective's one without consequences.