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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
by 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 agoVery. 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 agoThere 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 agoNick 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 agoSmart contract are a great idea, but they aren't exactly what you are describing and are orthogonal to the original thread. Smart contracts are further uses of the immutable shared ledger. The mixing of law and money I was talking about is what we have now.
- jipsom 11y agoI am not sure what you are pointing to or if we disagree. I mean to say the relationship between money and law is that of the moon and its reflection. Not separable but in this way.
- natrius 11y agoNo one said anything about building law into money, nor about making digital money more like physical money. We're just adding information about who is being rewarded. That's it. Individuals can use that information to make decisions about who to reward, and that's what money is for.
- CyberDildonics 11y agoBut that's not all. If anyone does anything with the information then the money diverges from ideal money because it is no longer as fungible. The usability becomes crippled and more complex in the best case, while completely unusable in the worst case. The end result is that people won't choose that money. The idea of what people 'should' use or 'the money that would be best for everyone' is shaky - people will use what serves their purposes the best. For the first time people have real choice in the money they use, and they aren't going to choose something with regard to the greater good, it never works like that in a system of people with competing incentives except through violence. The same idea coincides with inflation. People say 'a deflationary currency won't work'. The truth is, it will work at some point because it must - no one given a choice would choose an inflationary currency all else being equal. While all else is certainly not equal, people for the first time have that choice. The same applies to colored coins.
- natrius 11y agoYou're overestimating the loss of fungibility. When someone decides to stop rewarding a polluter, they'll broadcast that fact to the public. They can limit that to future rewards rather than past rewards. It would be rare for money you hold to suddenly become worthless. I agree that no one wants that, which is why I don't think large swathes of society would do something they don't want. It could happen, though. This isn't about making a choice for the greater good. Choosing a currency that lets you decide who to reward gives you power. People like power. They will grab it.
- CyberDildonics 11y agoYou don't know this, because no one really does. Plenty of people are trying to predict the future of crypto-currencies like they know without a doubt what will happen. Choosing who to reward is a power money already gives you. Cross reference the companies you find to be the worst in the world with their stock prices to see if your theories hold up.