On 4/11/12 23:43 PM, Changaco wrote:
On Sun, 4 Nov 2012 00:20:05 +0100 danimoth wrote:
Regarding my proposal, he has two options:
*) Share some resources (hdd space and bandwith), and receive payments
for these
*) Buy bitcoin from other people, exchanging other goods (dollars for
example)
This is what the Relative Theory of Money calls "temporal
asymmetry" (or rather it would be if it got translated into English).
In a monetary system with a fixed mass, the first users get money for
"free", and those that come after have to "work" for them because they
don't get any.
That's part of what I meant when I said gold and Bitcoins aren't fair.
The other part being "spatial asymmetry", meaning that when there is
money creation it is not distributed equally either, because in Bitcoin
we can't ID people so we can't give one equal share to every
participant.
These sound rather like political statements, not economic statements.
It's fine to have these opinions such as X is fair and Y is unfair, but
it's not a particularly good basis for building a money system. A
better way to look at is what people do and why - why do people choose
to use mPesa or e-gold or bitcoin or webmoney or paypal instead of the
workable alternates?
A currency can't be both a long term reserve of value and a good medium
of exchange, because the former encourages hoarding instead of trade.
Sure it can! Don't get swayed by central bankers who prefer inflation
over deflation, and scare the bejeezus out of the population with
stories of economic collapse in order to keep their little money machine
ticking over.
What is far more difficult for a money than increasing long term value
is volatility, e.g., BitCoin, being so dependent on the whims and wishes
of a small group of people, has a more speculative feel. People aren't
comfortable holding the stuff unless they are in a 'risk' frame of mind.
Since we're talking about file sharing and not life savings, there is
no reason to choose a monetary system that allows long term hoarding.
Whenever we build a new money system, typically we have to seed the base
in some sense or other - what you might refer to as unfair.
E.g, The temporal asymmetry for Bitcoin certainly worked in its favour.
IOW, because it was to be worth more in the future, early people did
invest in it, on that risky expectation. And got rewarded. Which
created the virtuous circle of bringing new investors/money users in.
I wonder if there is a 'law' here? Someone or some many have to make
out like bandits to bootstrap a new money?
So, if it isn't an effect of appreciation, making early holders the
winners, what is it?
well, enuf rambling from me...
iang
_______________________________________________
p2p-hackers mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
