[p2p-research] [Abundance] Re: [Open Manufacturing] Re: == Currency Based on CPU and Man Hours (for Digital Goods) ==

[marc fawzi]

Kevin,

I think the question of "why do we need to back money with anything"
is very important question (although it's not applicable to the kind
of money creation I have developed) The question keeps popping up so I
need to address the response to all those on the relevant lists, so I
don't have to re-answer it on all lists.

I'm looking at the economy as a programmer working with a model made
up of several algorithms, running at various times, concurrently, for
each participant, and in this view of the economy complexity at the
level of the whole economy arises from a starting set of basic rules.

If I said "let there be money" and waved a magic wound and let the
resulting system run then I would have lost the ability to model the
system's behavior, deductively and would have the kind of system that
can only be modeled numerically, which isn't bad for the whole
economy, if the constraints on money creation assure long term
stability, but I couldn't then guarantee each given participant that
if they follow the rules of the game that they would do well. I have a
problem with that.

In other words, unless I link money creation to higher productivity, I
would not be able to predict deductively what an increase in money
supply would do, i.e. what is the money being linked to?  In the case
of the joule tokens and the "cpu hour" and "man hour" tokens, money
(tokens) is created based on the increase (delta) in the flow of man
hours and cpu hours (two different tokens) from peers with surplus to
peers with deficit (which represents a definite future increase in
productivity as those surplus man and cpu hours are spent rather than
being idle), so this linkage allows me to deductively predict the
outcome of new money. I would not be able to deduce  what new money
would do to productivity if it's not linked directly to it.

The money is not "backed" by energy (or in this new model human and
computer energy).. It's "linked" to productivity.

So the right word is "linked to" not "backed by."

Marc



On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Kevin Carson
<free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Reply re: "Flexible universal currency" vs "specialized currency"
>
>>  Today, the only "common everyday resources" that a meaningful economy
>>  can be based on and that meet the conditions of sustainable abundance
>>  is human energy (and more exactly creative energy is what we see an
>>  abundance of) and machine-computational energy (which I believe
>>  continue to double at the single node level every 18 months)
>
> I don't understand why it's necessary to have any such backing for a
> currency system.  The accounting/warehouse receipt functions don't
> require any backing:  just a secure network and an accounting unit
> that can't be counterfeited.  I expect the producers in local
> economies will be creative in working out barter arrangements through
> LETS systems and the like, on an ad hoc "let a thousand flowers bloom"
> basis, when the FRN suffers a catastrophic loss of value and the
> official banking system collapses.  And the free market mechanism will
> result in inter-exchangability between such local systems for
> long-distance trade, or for working out units of exchange for
> networked production.  As for pricing particular goods and services,
> why not just let the producers set their own price in whatever
> arbitrary unit is being used, and adjust it depending on how many
> takers there are at a given price--IOW a market price system, but
> absent the artificial scarcities currently built in for privileged
> classes?
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Anarchist Organization Theory Project
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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