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Nash tries to convince the audience that money is good despite popular opinions on money being the root of all evil. Those opinions aren't baseless, though. Mon

by natrius 11y ago

Nash tries to convince the audience that money is good despite popular opinions on money being the root of all evil. Those opinions aren't baseless, though. Money entitles you to a reward from society, no matter how you got the money. Even if some people know you did terrible things to get it, you only have to find one person willing to reward you. The store that sells things to that person is rewarding them for rewarding you for doing terrible things. We're all complicit in rewarding people for terrible things because our money makes us powerless. We want the good part of money: it allows us to engage in economic games of transferable utility, so we don't have to barter. But it'd also be nice to prevent the bad parts as well. Our current solution is regulation, so the profitable strategy becomes innovating new ways to profit at the public's expense before regulations are in place. We should just stop rewarding people for doing things that harm the public. If you make money by polluting, we should stop rewarding you. If you make money by tricking people into taking out loans they can't afford, we should stop rewarding you. We know who these people are, but as individuals, we have no way to stop rewarding them. We need a money that lets us do that. Instead of today's currencies, let's just explicitly model our spending. When I buy a bottle of water from a store, let's create a database record where I assert that the store rewarded me with $1 of stuff. Let's also connect that to the justification for the reward: either I did some work for someone else, or the store is letting me owe them a dollar. Instead of using a traditional private database, let's put these records in a public, shared database on a blockchain. This gives individuals the information to decide whose rewards they want to be complicit in. If you've done terrible things, I don't want to reward people for rewarding you. If you're impoverished and don't have a way to do valuable things for other people, I want to reward people who reward you anyway. This is merit capitalism. http://meritcapitalism.com/ http://meritcapitalism.com/

seiji 11y ago
Creating an electronic currency capable of "coloring" money by its origin is much more interesting than anything the bitcoin camp can ever promise. Though, it does become a giant money laundering problem. When Russian oligarchs who obtained their money through destroying their own country and killing their own people invest in YC, then YC funds startups, then startups pay employees, how "dirty" is the money when it reaches the employee?
- natrius 11y ago
  Very. Money maintains its history from its creation to its destruction. Money is created when someone provides goods, services, or labor in exchange for debt. Money is destroyed when its creator accepts the debt as payment. With that said, everyone's going to be better off if we only punish transgressions that occur after merit capitalism is in place. Our monetary system has driven people to do crazy things, but we should just fix that, forgive them, and move on.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  There are a number of fallacies in this. First, ideal money has a neutral origin. Money isn't a physical thing at its core. It is a shared ledger. Gold is a shared ledger. Bitcoin and all crypto-currencies are a shared ledger. The currency of a country is a shared ledger (albeit with more infrastructure and less guarantee of the total). So 'coloring' is extending the idea that money is physical into a place where it doesn't work. The Russian oligarchs didn't create the money they have, they had it transferred to them by others. Maybe they forced citizens by violence, but then again, maybe they sold oil and natural gas to China. Who is 'guilty' now and of what? The second fallacy plays in to the first. Money is not law. Building law into money has been an excessively dangerous idea throughout history that to no one's surprise favors those who create and enforce the laws. Often those people are the ones with the most money. It isn't a leap to see that this is a cycle that reinforces itself.
  - jipsom 11y ago
    Nick Szabo is the person peoples most think programmed bitcoin. 20 years ago he developed smart contracts, which is basically programmable money that uses law as the analogue for its implementation. This is because this is essentially what is happening the mergence of software, programming, money, law, economics. http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html The current leading implementation is "ethereum"
    - CyberDildonics 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- natrius 11y ago
  If you offer to sell me your assassination car, I'll ask you for your receipt for the car. You can drive the car all you want, sure. Using it as a money replacement is hard. Banishing people to barter is an effective disincentive.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
The privacy implications of this are enough to make me totally reject the idea.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Which is why I still have the saying "privacy vs. progress of mankind - pick one". Privacy is not worth nearly enough to be used for rejecting everything out of hand.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Would you be willing to set a precedent and begin publishing a public ledger of all your transactions? Then we can see if it catches on ;)
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I just looked at my ledger file (I use ledger-cli to track finances) and I don't see anything particularly embarrassing, so yeah, sure. It's incredibly boring though. ;).
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        So where is it?
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        On my Dropbox. But since this information is still happily under my control - how much are you willing to pay me for it? :). (The real reason I'm not sharing it is because after browsing I realized I would have to edit out the names of people I've payed back or that payed back me - they may not be willing to have their information revealed - and that seems like a lot of work to defend a point I honestly think I've already mostly lost.)
        11y ago
skilesare 11y ago
Have you ever considered flipping your idea on its head? Instead of tying the value of money to what happened in the past, tie it to what may happen in the future. If I have the choice today to spend a dollar with a polluter vs a non-polluter, instead of punishing the polluter in the far future, reward me for making a good choice. How? Make money decay back to those that spend it through the accounts of those they spent it with so that they are rewarded more if they spend their money with 'good actors' that constantly increase the value they provide. Read more at http://catallax.info http://catallax.info
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Information asymmetry. How do I know who will be a polluter, a murderer, an immoral person, or a criminal in the future. You're creating friction rather than reducing inefficiency. I'm not going to do some pyschoanalytical research on the guy who is making my sandwich at subway as well as dig around for the company's (probably bad and definitely unavailable) track record of food wastage and then decide whether or not to pay him and the company for my sandwich. Also, the current monetary system already has the idea of "decay" built in due to the Fed targeting a 2% rate of inflation every year. Also, not being able to trade "prefs" strikes me as a silly idea; one that you can't enforce and that a black market would form around relatively quickly.
  - skilesare 11y ago
    >Information asymmetry. How do I know who will be a polluter, a murderer, an immoral person, or a criminal in the future. You're creating friction rather than reducing inefficiency. Exactly! You don't know. But you don't know now either. In the future the market will know. And why should the subway shop that the polluter bought a sandwich from be punished after the fact when we find out he is a polluter. Instead, throw the guy in jail and fold the blockchain over him so that the sandwich shop is connected to the original person that unknowingly paid the polluter. You can't know, but you can guess. It isn't even that hard. And while you are trying to guess all the sandwich shops are showing you why they are the most profitable and why they can deliver you the most value. >Also, the current monetary system already has the idea of "decay" built in due to the Fed targeting a 2% rate of inflation every year. Inflation is unpredictable and under less control than now appears. See 1970s. Predetermined decay is a carrying cost. Unexpected inflation is a theft. >Also, not being able to trade "prefs" strikes me as a silly idea; one that you can't enforce and that a black market would form around relatively quickly. This is just a technical issue that building on a blockchain solves. Post transaction data analysis can find collusions.

by natrius 11y ago

seiji 11y ago

Creating an electronic currency capable of "coloring" money by its origin is much more interesting than anything the bitcoin camp can ever promise. Though, it does become a giant money laundering problem. When Russian oligarchs who obtained their money through destroying their own country and killing their own people invest in YC, then YC funds startups, then startups pay employees, how "dirty" is the money when it reaches the employee?

natrius 11y ago
Very. Money maintains its history from its creation to its destruction. Money is created when someone provides goods, services, or labor in exchange for debt. Money is destroyed when its creator accepts the debt as payment. With that said, everyone's going to be better off if we only punish transgressions that occur after merit capitalism is in place. Our monetary system has driven people to do crazy things, but we should just fix that, forgive them, and move on.
CyberDildonics 11y ago
There are a number of fallacies in this. First, ideal money has a neutral origin. Money isn't a physical thing at its core. It is a shared ledger. Gold is a shared ledger. Bitcoin and all crypto-currencies are a shared ledger. The currency of a country is a shared ledger (albeit with more infrastructure and less guarantee of the total). So 'coloring' is extending the idea that money is physical into a place where it doesn't work. The Russian oligarchs didn't create the money they have, they had it transferred to them by others. Maybe they forced citizens by violence, but then again, maybe they sold oil and natural gas to China. Who is 'guilty' now and of what? The second fallacy plays in to the first. Money is not law. Building law into money has been an excessively dangerous idea throughout history that to no one's surprise favors those who create and enforce the laws. Often those people are the ones with the most money. It isn't a leap to see that this is a cycle that reinforces itself.
- jipsom 11y ago
  Nick Szabo is the person peoples most think programmed bitcoin. 20 years ago he developed smart contracts, which is basically programmable money that uses law as the analogue for its implementation. This is because this is essentially what is happening the mergence of software, programming, money, law, economics. http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html The current leading implementation is "ethereum"
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

natrius 11y ago
If you offer to sell me your assassination car, I'll ask you for your receipt for the car. You can drive the car all you want, sure. Using it as a money replacement is hard. Banishing people to barter is an effective disincentive.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

The privacy implications of this are enough to make me totally reject the idea.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Which is why I still have the saying "privacy vs. progress of mankind - pick one". Privacy is not worth nearly enough to be used for rejecting everything out of hand.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Would you be willing to set a precedent and begin publishing a public ledger of all your transactions? Then we can see if it catches on ;)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I just looked at my ledger file (I use ledger-cli to track finances) and I don't see anything particularly embarrassing, so yeah, sure. It's incredibly boring though. ;).
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      So where is it?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        On my Dropbox. But since this information is still happily under my control - how much are you willing to pay me for it? :). (The real reason I'm not sharing it is because after browsing I realized I would have to edit out the names of people I've payed back or that payed back me - they may not be willing to have their information revealed - and that seems like a lot of work to defend a point I honestly think I've already mostly lost.)
        11y ago

skilesare 11y ago

Have you ever considered flipping your idea on its head? Instead of tying the value of money to what happened in the past, tie it to what may happen in the future. If I have the choice today to spend a dollar with a polluter vs a non-polluter, instead of punishing the polluter in the far future, reward me for making a good choice. How? Make money decay back to those that spend it through the accounts of those they spent it with so that they are rewarded more if they spend their money with 'good actors' that constantly increase the value they provide. Read more at http://catallax.info http://catallax.info

roymurdock 11y ago
Information asymmetry. How do I know who will be a polluter, a murderer, an immoral person, or a criminal in the future. You're creating friction rather than reducing inefficiency. I'm not going to do some pyschoanalytical research on the guy who is making my sandwich at subway as well as dig around for the company's (probably bad and definitely unavailable) track record of food wastage and then decide whether or not to pay him and the company for my sandwich. Also, the current monetary system already has the idea of "decay" built in due to the Fed targeting a 2% rate of inflation every year. Also, not being able to trade "prefs" strikes me as a silly idea; one that you can't enforce and that a black market would form around relatively quickly.
- skilesare 11y ago
  >Information asymmetry. How do I know who will be a polluter, a murderer, an immoral person, or a criminal in the future. You're creating friction rather than reducing inefficiency. Exactly! You don't know. But you don't know now either. In the future the market will know. And why should the subway shop that the polluter bought a sandwich from be punished after the fact when we find out he is a polluter. Instead, throw the guy in jail and fold the blockchain over him so that the sandwich shop is connected to the original person that unknowingly paid the polluter. You can't know, but you can guess. It isn't even that hard. And while you are trying to guess all the sandwich shops are showing you why they are the most profitable and why they can deliver you the most value. >Also, the current monetary system already has the idea of "decay" built in due to the Fed targeting a 2% rate of inflation every year. Inflation is unpredictable and under less control than now appears. See 1970s. Predetermined decay is a carrying cost. Unexpected inflation is a theft. >Also, not being able to trade "prefs" strikes me as a silly idea; one that you can't enforce and that a black market would form around relatively quickly. This is just a technical issue that building on a blockchain solves. Post transaction data analysis can find collusions.