On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:46:40 +1100 ianG wrote:
These sound rather like political statements, not economic statements.
How money works is a political matter. If one can get a bigger share of monetary creation than other people, one gets power. It's also an "economic" matter, because badly designed systems cause crises.
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.
People eventually figure out when a system isn't fair, and it falls, because money is nothing without a community to use it. So yes, being fair is an important quality for the long term.
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.
Sure, anybody who doesn't agree with you has to be influenced by the evil central bankers, rightb/?
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?
As the name suggests, temporal symmetry is about the long term. Of course asymmetry gives a short term boost, the first users are getting money almost for free and can use it later to gain wealth. In addition, Bitcoin benefits from the fact that making a symmetrical currency is much harder and therefore hasn't been done yet. Spatial symmetry requires a Web of Trust while anyone can start using Bitcoin immediately. _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE