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>Instead, a bundle of new innovations in mass coordination, remote work, and digital currency allow us to sidestep politics and create independent and competiti

by jdhn 5y ago

>Instead, a bundle of new innovations in mass coordination, remote work, and digital currency allow us to sidestep politics and create independent and competitive cities. I'm what you could call bullish on bitcoin, but I'm not sure how it applies here? It has less friction than dealing with bank transfers between countries, but the article specifically deals with the US, not international housing issues.

pjc50 5y ago
Tax evasion? Paying employees without having to deal with the bureaucracy of the state/country they're living in by doing it on the black market?
- samstave 5y ago
  How exactly does a company generate bitcoin from witch to pay employees from? Assume a company, now they want to pay people in BTC. how get BTC to pay employee - and what methods are used to accomplish. ELI5
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Sell their products and services for btc or buy it with the local currency?
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Even I've heard of exchanges.
simmanian 5y ago
I may not be very bullish on bitcoin but I can see that properly implemented digital currencies can allow communities to form much more easily and organically through increased transparency and verifiability. Not to mention that digital currencies can be integrated into many interactions and transactions natively.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Cryptocurrency doesn't free companies or individuals from their legal obligations. Paying someone in crypto doesn't mean they don't owe taxes or that the company doesn't have to comply with relevant laws. If anything, paying employees in crypto adds more layers of accounting, administration overhead, and legal work. Distributing payroll money isn't a bottleneck for city growth, so I don't know why this author tried to wedge it into this article.
CaptainZapp 5y ago
> It has less friction than dealing with bank transfers between countries I'd wager that you're wrong. At least in transfers between most European countries.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
wallacoloo 5y ago
A lot of the cryptocurrency space is exploring different modes of “governance” today. In the sense of “I have this project which exists on Ethereum, the ecosystem is beginning to build up around it, and I know we’ll have to make changes to the project down the road as the environment changes: how do I discover what will be best for the project, how do I announce those decisions legitimately, and how do I fund the new resulting work?”. I’m wondering if the author was referring to this use of cryptocurrencies. It’s sad, but a lot of these cryptocurrency projects have implemented much more transparent and frictionless forms of voting than what we have in representative democracies today. You don’t have to search out and then show up to some hours-long meeting about a new construction project: there’s just a public vote, with attached forums for the discussion aspect. Pull up the front governance page and you can see every proposal currently up for vote, and every historical proposal. It’s all there, easily accessible. If a new city were born which achieved any similar degree of transparency/low friction in their direct governance, I would seriously consider moving to it. There are lots of “if”s there, but LOADS of our problems in cities amount to misaligned incentives, such that they would disappear if only we got the right incentives in place (e.g. NIMBY policies benefit existing high-networth homeowners at the cost of more vulnerable/younger renters. There are ways to balance things such that NIMBYism at least isn’t an economically profitable position to take). Experimentation is the way to discover better incentives, and strong governance is the way to enact/enforce those. Today every city in the country almost universally uses a paper-based representative government. There’s such little experimentation in the physical world at that level that you’d either have to believe that a) we’ve already found & enacted the most effective form of governance or b) there are undiscovered systems which could better meet the needs of modern-day citizens. My money’s on b. And though b doesn’t need cryptocurrency, today’s cryptocurrencies are capable/flexible enough that they could be slotted in for such a purpose far easier than anything else, so why not use them.

by jdhn 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

Tax evasion? Paying employees without having to deal with the bureaucracy of the state/country they're living in by doing it on the black market?

samstave 5y ago
How exactly does a company generate bitcoin from witch to pay employees from? Assume a company, now they want to pay people in BTC. how get BTC to pay employee - and what methods are used to accomplish. ELI5
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Sell their products and services for btc or buy it with the local currency?
- pjc50 5y ago
  Even I've heard of exchanges.

simmanian 5y ago

I may not be very bullish on bitcoin but I can see that properly implemented digital currencies can allow communities to form much more easily and organically through increased transparency and verifiability. Not to mention that digital currencies can be integrated into many interactions and transactions natively.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Cryptocurrency doesn't free companies or individuals from their legal obligations. Paying someone in crypto doesn't mean they don't owe taxes or that the company doesn't have to comply with relevant laws. If anything, paying employees in crypto adds more layers of accounting, administration overhead, and legal work. Distributing payroll money isn't a bottleneck for city growth, so I don't know why this author tried to wedge it into this article.

CaptainZapp 5y ago

> It has less friction than dealing with bank transfers between countries I'd wager that you're wrong. At least in transfers between most European countries.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

wallacoloo 5y ago

A lot of the cryptocurrency space is exploring different modes of “governance” today. In the sense of “I have this project which exists on Ethereum, the ecosystem is beginning to build up around it, and I know we’ll have to make changes to the project down the road as the environment changes: how do I discover what will be best for the project, how do I announce those decisions legitimately, and how do I fund the new resulting work?”. I’m wondering if the author was referring to this use of cryptocurrencies. It’s sad, but a lot of these cryptocurrency projects have implemented much more transparent and frictionless forms of voting than what we have in representative democracies today. You don’t have to search out and then show up to some hours-long meeting about a new construction project: there’s just a public vote, with attached forums for the discussion aspect. Pull up the front governance page and you can see every proposal currently up for vote, and every historical proposal. It’s all there, easily accessible. If a new city were born which achieved any similar degree of transparency/low friction in their direct governance, I would seriously consider moving to it. There are lots of “if”s there, but LOADS of our problems in cities amount to misaligned incentives, such that they would disappear if only we got the right incentives in place (e.g. NIMBY policies benefit existing high-networth homeowners at the cost of more vulnerable/younger renters. There are ways to balance things such that NIMBYism at least isn’t an economically profitable position to take). Experimentation is the way to discover better incentives, and strong governance is the way to enact/enforce those. Today every city in the country almost universally uses a paper-based representative government. There’s such little experimentation in the physical world at that level that you’d either have to believe that a) we’ve already found & enacted the most effective form of governance or b) there are undiscovered systems which could better meet the needs of modern-day citizens. My money’s on b. And though b doesn’t need cryptocurrency, today’s cryptocurrencies are capable/flexible enough that they could be slotted in for such a purpose far easier than anything else, so why not use them.