Boingcoin

meta
103

whuffie is not earned in such a way that you can bank on it (which is what I presume you mean by collecting shekels, some value token given that retains its value permanently). It’s a reputational concept, and if you build it up over the years until its high, you can still lose it all if your reputation sours overnight. [emphasized text added for clarity]

So it’s a purely relational concept. There can be no whuffie without other actors, and your whuffie is totally dependent on those other actors.

You could earn it by designing Disneyland, by delivering bricks to its construction, for bringing glasses of water to its builders, to giving tours of it, etc [all differing amounts, dependent upon who is relating to you]. But if its discovered that you’re cruising around on a yacht called Monkey Business it can all go away overnight [this example is not well integrated].

You can’t really inherit it. A grand-daughter born to a well-respected hotelier is unlikely to gain anything from that unless she develops a particularly popular line of handbags (without hiring a designer to develop them).

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104

can’t?

So the concept is of personal gain of some kind related to the social intricacies of a post-scarcity environment. Which already takes it out of the context of our world for the foreseeable future but which specifically remunerates individuals with spending potential, rather than associating individuals with contributory potential for value creation within the context of an ad-hoc community project.

Unless I’m readin’ that there wikipedia wrong.

What it does sound like is this digital currency proposal I linked above:

But you can be born into a context which makes it very easy or even inevitable that you will accumulate it in droves.

I like the discourse method of ironing out ideas, this is way easier than repeatedly arguing with my self.

Edit:

hmm, but perhaps more similar than I had concluded:

Whuffie has replaced money, providing an esteem- & admiration-rewarding motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation and is gained (or lost) according to a person’s favorable (or unfavorable) actions. Public opinion determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable

Apparently Cory doesn’t go into too much detail about how it is ‘spent’ though.

It might tend to favour popular speech at the expense of public discourse, and it could frequently be uninformative:

And this seems to be the hook upon which I have hung my crux.

People may very well determine that such social capital exists in association with the value so created and in fact, it would be impossible not to make some kind of an association of that form.

This has got me thinking about corporate persons and the life span of a project or cooperative entity. If the entity is earning value through contribution, the value created would act like stasis for the function of the project. The form would naturally evolve in the same way as property might; being re-purposed, adding more advanced features like plumbing and the like but to my mind this entails a life span that should somehow be programmed into the entity.

I need to mull this over…

“Like straw dolls tramped into the dirt.”

105 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_reclamation

while people have the right to private property, they should give it away as enlightened altruists

However, benevolence was not to be enforced, being a matter of free individual “private judgement.”

but…belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was influential on the later development of anarchist communism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism#Motivation

‘bundle of contributory aspects’
*to be delineated as one separates the measurement of the magnetic moment from the spin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management#Management_science

According to Pink, for the vast majority of work in the 21st century, self-management and related intrinsic incentives are far more crucial than outdated notions of hierarchical management and an over-reliance on monetary compensation as reward

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Cooperative_Corporation
106

This, this I like;

The physical location of the stone may not matter—though the ownership of a particular stone changes, the stone itself is rarely moved due to its weight and risk of damage. The names of previous owners are passed down to the new one. In one instance, a large rai being transported by canoe and outrigger was accidentally dropped and sank to the sea floor. Although it was never seen again, everyone agreed that the rai must still be there, so it continued to be transacted as genuine currency. What is important is that ownership of the rai is clear to everyone, not that the rai is physically transferred or even physically accessible to either party in the transfer.

Almost Pratchett-esque.

(mess in process of being less of a messy thought)
In terms of a contributory register (ledger) one may delineate the aspects so gifted to the project. One may derive a usefulness quotient to be applied to future creation of the ‘stone’ or in this case the project (I’ve been discussing the gifting of cash to train guide dogs but feel like the training, breeding, housing and organizational capacities would be the ledger-ised, proof-of-work '‘thing’ that actually contributes to the value of the project.) Again, like a negative exchange value for future pooling of work-value.
[gilbertwham means the stuff above the line]

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107

That’s as perfect a description of currency in general as I can imagine.

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108

A little light reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_currency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_currency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_of_Bitcoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_currency_exchanger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledgers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_currencies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerocoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinye
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_ATM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropian
109

Hey guys, remember that time I accidentally dropped all those thousands of kilograms of diamonds into the Mariana trench?

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110

I need a 3 year education in monetary systems… or some provigil.

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111

I think there is a reason why all of this is so complex, and it’s not to make it approachable and useful for the average person like us. It’s literally to make it complicated so that only “experts” can understand it. It literally reinforces hierarchy and privilege.

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In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems.

Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

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This, to my mind, is just the philosophy phase. Wherein I try to get my head around the underlying contributory aspects to value and cooperative exchange etc.

The eventual creation of a small project that uses some kind of system that encapsulates the more useful, realistic aspects of the stuff I’ve posted above will be far more simple and, by design, a failure before it starts. Then the next version will patch the holes, redesign and re-implement.

I think the only way this takes shape is by trial and error.

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They must use all that digital currency which isn’t a digital currency… Like the Landsraad must. Piddling ‘entire economy of a planet’ rubbish.

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Oh, I’m not trying to be disparaging of your working through this material… It’s a good thing and you are more than capable to understanding it. I’m just pointing out that the complexity is a feature, not a bug.

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116

beggin your pardon there, read your comment all wrong. The complexity is a definite barrier to entry but I wonder how much of that complexity is necessary…

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117

Probably not as much as they’d [sorry for the scare word there!] like us to think. I think my fundamental concern with all of this is that making relationships, online or elsewhere, as a form of currency kind of does introduce a level complexity we might not need just by embracing this language and way of thinking. We’re dealing here with the theories and concepts that underpin the system of currency that are overly complicated, and on some level that level of complication is part of the system of self-justification - the various sorts of fields that deal with this stuff (mostly economics, but other fields tangentially touch on this stuff as well, including my own field of history), and on some level, they only exist to justify having a field around it.

It’s like Foucault… an important French philosopher and historian. One of his American colleagues asked him why his work was written in such a dense text (see the Order of Things, for example, incredibly dense and hard to read, in any language). Foucault told the guy because one would not be taken seriously by other French philosophers otherwise. In other words, the field builds up this complexity to justify itself into existence. If I’m honest, what makes my work somehow different from the works of history that say journalists do? I’m in a program, learning to write history in a particular way, based on how people have done that in the past. So, I’m completely complicit in this, and I too feel at times that others are “encroaching on my territory” when they aren’t professional historians, and they are writing history.

I think the complexity can be interesting, useful, and even fun to try and parse and understand. But, honestly, I’m very concerned with writing in such a way that is open and accessible to pretty much anyone. I’m really not interested in some sort of circle jerk with others of my profession. What’s the point of that?

We should be open to understanding the basics of this stuff and peeling back the layers of complexity that exist. I do think that this makes this discussion worth while, even if I’m not necessarily on board with the project of a boing coin in general…

TLDR: Yes!

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118

Nietzsche is my big favorite and I don’t think I’ve met more than one other philosopher (in the specific sense) who anywhere near agrees with my interpretation of his work.

I’m thinking that the principles of what I’m proposing (whatever it comes to be called) can be applied (not only the construction of the thing itself but) to any other collaborative project.

If defined properly and open-enough a concept it could be applied to the interpretation and dissemination of historical information as well, in that it could very well act as a register of consolidated knowledge.

The contribution of an interpretation of recorded events can be valuable, no?

(It’s late now and I’ve had a drink or two)

:smiley:

119

I would like to annoint myself Chancellor of Boingcoin. Kthxbye

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120

Ok so far:

Customer Relations (Feedback Officer): @kimmo

Anarchistic Purity ‘Ad-hok collection of autonomous individuals’: @the_borderer

Drugs and sundry Office: @brainspore, @glitch

Historicity Reinforcement (HR): @Mindysan33

Q: John deLancie

President of the Bank of Boingcoin and Motto Divisional Chief: @ChickieD

“This is very hard to follow” : @walterplinge

Treasurer: @steampunkbanana

Whuffie Exchange Officer: @OtherMichael

Annointed Chancellor of Boingcoin: @anon68287401

Lazy good-for-nothing: miasm

“Sorry, you can only mention 10 users in a post.”

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121

To do.

Ima start crossing these off soon, promise.

  • Complete boingcoin graphic.
  • Summary of philosophical underpinnings.
  • Digital Currency format options.
  • Proposals for virtual economy (probably on-line game space).
  • Software development options.
  • Sample Ledger.
  • Toy model.
  • Test conditions.
122

An interesting thing to get right is the money creation / money supply aspect. If there’s one thing that is wrong with Bitcoin, it’s that all the value is created in the first couple of years of the currency so the early adopters get a disproportionate advantage. What are the different ways of creating currency?

Edit: Also, given that man is mortal, finite and imperfect, whilst God is infinite, We have to build in the seeds of our own ruin, So, we need an API to define Boingcoin loans, Boingcoin debt, Boingcoin contracts, Boingcoin interest rates, Boingcoin futures, Boingcoin put and call options - Boingcoin martingales, the ability to price Boingcoin volatility…

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