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"Launching a new global currency by giving a free share of it to every person on Earth is an enormous challenge." - https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org

"Launching a new global currency by giving a free share of it to every person on Earth is an enormous challenge." - https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/ This strikes me as a good problem to solve. Giving a free share to every person is exactly how a new global currency should be launched, no? How would you solve it differently?

lalaland1125 5y ago
https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/
jollybean 5y ago
"Giving a free share to every person is exactly how a new global currency should be launched, no?" No, that's not how currency works at all. A currency is just a means of exchange, it itself is not wealth. A 'global currency' for example, might be something backed by assets. So anyone with assets can trade those in for some currency. (Which would be hard because it's hard to value those assets, but you see the point.) You'd need a regulator to try to control how much currency exists at any given time, if you're trying to keep it stable with respect to other currencies. (Or not if you don't want to that.) In order for the Orb scheme to have any use use, you'd have to start everyone off with quite a bit of 'new currency', but because it's issued arbitrarily, it's unlikely that anyone would value it. For example, why would the surgeon accept a currency at face value when the same amount of currency was given to his 17 year old kid who played video games all year? Imagine if we did this with regular, paper bills. Imagine if you printed high quality physical currency, called 'World Bucks' and gave everyone on planet earth 100 000 each of 'World Bucks'. Would that catch on as a currency? It might in some niches for some things, but pragmatically no, it would not. It would be treated about as valuable as Monopoly money. You can't print value out of thin air. Crypto has a way of distracting people from the reality of what's going on, especially those without any financial background might tend to believe that if you just printed a piece of paper and called it money, that you could finance an economy that way. If SV want to help poor people, then they can probably help the most by helping to root out corruption, by investing, setting up real industry etc..

lalaland1125 5y ago

https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/

jollybean 5y ago

"Giving a free share to every person is exactly how a new global currency should be launched, no?" No, that's not how currency works at all. A currency is just a means of exchange, it itself is not wealth. A 'global currency' for example, might be something backed by assets. So anyone with assets can trade those in for some currency. (Which would be hard because it's hard to value those assets, but you see the point.) You'd need a regulator to try to control how much currency exists at any given time, if you're trying to keep it stable with respect to other currencies. (Or not if you don't want to that.) In order for the Orb scheme to have any use use, you'd have to start everyone off with quite a bit of 'new currency', but because it's issued arbitrarily, it's unlikely that anyone would value it. For example, why would the surgeon accept a currency at face value when the same amount of currency was given to his 17 year old kid who played video games all year? Imagine if we did this with regular, paper bills. Imagine if you printed high quality physical currency, called 'World Bucks' and gave everyone on planet earth 100 000 each of 'World Bucks'. Would that catch on as a currency? It might in some niches for some things, but pragmatically no, it would not. It would be treated about as valuable as Monopoly money. You can't print value out of thin air. Crypto has a way of distracting people from the reality of what's going on, especially those without any financial background might tend to believe that if you just printed a piece of paper and called it money, that you could finance an economy that way. If SV want to help poor people, then they can probably help the most by helping to root out corruption, by investing, setting up real industry etc..