[ExI] Must money be a state monopoly?

Giovanni Santostasi gsantostasi at gmail.com
Wed Jun 11 05:27:35 UTC 2014


Brent you are wrong about bitcoin being dumb because of the 10 % production
rate. The total number of BTC is finite. We have already 10 Million and
another 10 Million means nothing in terms of magnitude scale. In a way is
if BTC are already maxed out. Consider that BTC to be a world currency
needs to reach a large number of people in the world. Even if just 1
billion adopted it you will have about 10^-3 BTC per person. Without
counting the BTC that got lost and so on. So anything than inflation.

Also about the carbon foot print of miners that is also big BS. It cost
enormous amount of money to produce fiat money. Printing the money,
transporting the money, having brick and mortar banks and so and so on.

BTC has a insignificantly small carbon footprint in comparison with the
current fiat system.






On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>
wrote:

>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 1:31 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> There are huge benefits to anyone who puts money into circulation.
>> That's why companies create stock, so they can pay for things like
>> employees, other companies, in the stock they create.  And it's even more
>> so, for a government.  Companies can't print more stock, because they want
>> their stock value to go up (i.e. stock deflation), while a Government wants
>> their currency to inflate some each year, so they must put lots of new
>> money into circulation to keep it from deflating in value.  And if your
>> government supplies the exchange currency for the rest of the world, that
>> benefit is HUGE!  Every time some libyan hides a US $100 under a mattress,
>> the US must print up another $100, and do something like buy a bomber, or
>> something, with it to keep the value of that $100 from going up to much.
>> The U.S. government provides way more services, than they collect in taxes
>> because of this.  The Federal Reserve pays for government expenses, not the
>> other way around.
>>
>> The question for society is, what should the money that is put into
>> circulation, at a significant rate to keep deflation at bay, do to benefit
>> that society?  Most societies figure it is the government's job to figure
>> out what to do with it.  Sadly, governments spend way to much of it on war
>> and the ability to destroy all other hierarchies.
>>
>> A big problem of all Alt currencies to date is all of them are dumb
>> currencies - i.e. they have some fixed dumb algorithmic rate at which they
>> get into society.  Currently Bitcoin is producing more than 10% / year.  If
>> a country produced that much, they'd have terrible inflation.  And the only
>> benefit bitcoin miners add to society is consumption of energy, huge carbon
>> footprint, and so on.
>>
>> What is needed, is some intelligent system to figure out how to get new
>> currency distributed, to accomplish what the holders of the currency want
>> to do with it (i.e. not more aircraft carriers), in a leaderless, non
>> hierarchically controlled, amplified wisdom of the crowd way.  That's the
>> goal of Canonizer.com going cryptographically public with Canon Coins.  How
>> many new coins that go into production will be determined by the amplified
>> wisdom of the crowd, and the work done to get that currency into society
>> will be, again, determined by the amplification of the wisdom of the crowd,
>> canoniztion process, or in effect by the will of the holders of the coin.
>> In other words, it will do what the holders of the currency want it to do,
>> not what some hierarchy wants to do with it (i.e. just fear and destroy
>> other hierarchies.)
>>
>> Obviously, any intelligent currency will always out compete and blow away
>> any dumb currency.
>>
>> great topic, by the way, thanks for all the great responses so far,
>> everyone.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
>>
>>> Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> , 9/6/2014 11:25 PM:
>>>
>>> I'm aware of the libertarian roots of Bitcoin and other digital
>>> currencies, which some individuals hope (and some states fear) can become
>>> true currencies not printed and controlled by a state. I wonder if why it
>>> is that states do monopolize currencies (or try to) and what the dangers
>>> would be if states simply stopped doing this. Any thoughts?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Coming from a libertarian/Nozickian minarchist angle, it seems that the
>>> only legitimate job of the state is protecting the rights and freedoms of
>>> the citizens. Usually that is seen as violence monopoly, but it might
>>> extend to protection from epidemics too (protection from wild animals too
>>> small to see!) However, obviously there are plenty of other functions that
>>> are nice to have, it is just that it is not clear the state (the violence
>>> monopoly) should be the one running them.
>>>
>>> Money has not always been a state monopoly - corporate scrip was
>>> widespread, and occasionally I come across Scottish banknotes that are
>>> indeed marked with the bank that printed them (valid tender even down here
>>> in South England). There might be reasons to want to centralize these
>>> functions: I don't know enough economics to argue about it. But even if one
>>> wants to centralize money it is not clear that the money monopoly has to be
>>> the violence monopoly. In fact, to balance power it might be very
>>> reasonable to keep them apart!
>>>
>>> Charles Stross had a character make the point (in Glasshouse) that the
>>> legitimate role of the state is violence monopoly, timekeeping and identity
>>> management. Timekeeping matters since the sequencing of events is paramount
>>> for many functions, including the crypto that may underlie money and
>>> identity. Identity is not just important for being able to make contracts
>>> (the foundation for much minarchist/anarchocapitalist society) but also for
>>> effective law enforcement (if it is not possible to tell who did what, at
>>> best crude deterrence and heavy locks are the solution). Some of the
>>> cryptocurrencies might also take on interesting identity properties; it
>>> would be fun to consider if one could put identity management into not just
>>> bitcoin wallets but into proof-of-work.
>>>
>>> (Or, as I suggested a few months ago, run uploaded minds *on* the money
>>> infrastructure)
>>>
>>>
>>> Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of
>>> Oxford University
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140611/d1c552ae/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list