I would appreciate your comments on this market place model. If it was used to regulate the ecologic economy, it would make it independant of any possible financial crisis.
I expect you will excuse my english language, and will consider the matter more than the form. I am the author of the prototype and looks for support to develope it. I will maintain it available in order than you can experiment it http://www.openbarter.org Regards Olivier Chaussavoine abstract ********** We present a market place to barter measurable commodities that does not use any monetary medium. It's prototype openBarter allows competition on prices and, thanks to multilateral agreements fostering cooperation, allows a coincidence of wants as probable as if a monetary medium were used. 1. Notion of price ******************* When measurable commodities are exchanged, the price is the ratio between received and provided commodities. The price is defined for a couple of commodities, but not for a single commodity as we understand it usually. It can be expressed by defining the quantities of commodities received and provided. For example 2 grams of gold for 1 baril of petrol. It can also be expressed using the ordinary definition of price. If the gold is 50.01 $/gram and the petrol 95.89$/baril, the price is expressed by 95.89 grams of gold for 50.01 barils of petrol. Even if a monetary medium is used to express it, the price remains independent of this medium. By "competition on prices", we mean the search for the cycle of bids whose product of prices - a non dimensional number - is minimum. This cycle meets offers whose prices are the lowest. We call it the "best possible agreement". By "stock", we mean a quantity of commodities associated with one or several bids whose author is the owner. 2. Description of openBarter ******************************** The market place openBarter allows competition on prices. Thanks to multilateral agreements fostering cooperation, it allows a coincidence of wants as probable as if a monetary medium where used. The market place allows participants to: * Publish unilateral commitments to exchange (§2.1 publication of bids) * Search for the best best possible agreements for reachable commodities (§2.2 search for proposals) * Decide on draft agreements proposed by partners (§2.3 draft approval) * Remain free to use it's stocks for other purpose along all these operations. Multilateral agreements are compromises found between unilateral agreements to exchange - the bids - by adjusting if necessary their prices. This adjustment is for each partner an effort that the market place shares equally between them. The publication of a bid provokes the search for best possible agreement(s) that are submitted as draft as soon as they are found. A draft agreement is formed by putting aside commodities, decreasing available stocks of bids forming the exchange cycle. Bids remaining on the market place are only those that cannot be satisfied. In technical terms, the market place always maintains the set of offers as an acyclic graph. 2.1. Publication of bids ************************** A participant owning an excess of some commodities can exchange it by declaring this quantity as a stock. He defines his bid using this stock and a price he wants to obtain for the commodity he asks for in exchange. Several bids can be made on the same stock. When, for a given stock, the list of bids is defines, it is published sequentially in the same order on the market place. A participant can at any time withdraw his stock. This action makes commodities of this stock available, withdraws the bids related to the stock and the draft agreements related to these bids whatever are their approval status. At the end, these commodities are again available for new bids. The publication of a bid that can be matched with others is immediately converted into draft agreements. 2.2. Search for proposals ***************************** Looking for opportunities, a participant can search for possible agreements by defining the nature of the commodity he is looking for; then the nature of the commodity he wants to provide in exchange. He obtains a draft agreement where the quantity he provides and the price are defined by default. The provided quantity defined is the maximum available according to stocks of partners of the draft agreement. The price defined is computed from prices of their bids without any adjustment. The participant can modify the price of the agreement. The effort necessary to obtain it is shared between partners. He can also modify the provided quantity. When he obtains the convenient draft, he submits the draft agreement for approval to other partners. This draft agreement is for partners the first opportunity of the market, due to the acyclic property of the graph of bids. It's for them the best price whatever the price defined is, since there is a single opportunity. The submission provokes the creation of a bid that produces the proposed draft. 2.3. Roundings ***************** Roundings are necessary to compute the draft project. If, for example, we provide 0.1 EURO in exchange of dollars at the price of 1.456 $/EURO, the draft project will propose 0 .10 EURO in exchange of 0.15$. At a different scale, for AirbusA340 in exchange of Kilos of phosphate, the agreement will happily propose integer values of AirbusA340 and will compute necessary roundings to be as near as possible to the prices requested by partners. When a nature of value is defined, the quantum is chosen in order than roundings can be ignored by partners. We try to avoid values whose quantum is too large. A draft agreement presented to participants is the result of this rounding process; it provides the maximum rounding error made, for example 1/(10*10*10). 2.3.1. Effort ************** The effort is related to a draft agreement; it is the ratio between the price of the draft agreement and the price defined by the bid of the participant. It is 1 when these prices are equal, and grows as the effort of partners grows. The draft agreement is computed in order to share equally this effort between partners. The sharing remains fair even if several bids of the same partner are met in the same draft agreement. 2.4. Draft Approval ********************* Any draft agreement is submitted to partner's approval. When a partner approved a draft and waits for approval of other partners, he can refuse it to use commodities of his stocks for other opportunities. When the draft is approved by all partners, it is executed. If it is refused by a partner, it's decision is stored for his bid(s) in order than no future draft proposes the same relation with other bids. 3. Limits *********** Due to algorithmic reasons, the computation volume necessary for the agreement searching grown as the ratio between the diversity of values and the number of bids. This market place is well adapted to a situation where the number of values is not too large, and where the number of partners necessary for the coincidence of wants is not too large. But the number of bids can be as large as necessary without any computational limitations. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. 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