Re: [p2p-research] Metacurrency

Hi, We are working on this. See: http://www.global-settlement.org/ The software contemplated is distributed. We are working on a Lisp based core with a blackboard based approach with GBBOpen (you can happily do agent based programming), and ties in to any other project such as Voucher Safe in Java (not yet released), Loom (see https://loom.cc/) in Perl, etc. Bandwidth as a currency is a natural outcome. There is no need to invent imaginary currencies such as the USD to run an economy. Such currencies are rooted in fraud and the current entrapment of the "debtors" and together with them all the nation states is unfolding. More on the Rayservers blog. http://www.rayservers.com/blog Any lisp programmers who are interested can contact me. Cheers, ---Venkat. On 10/12/09 11:58, Eugen Leitl wrote:

----- Forwarded message from Samuel Rose -----

From: Samuel Rose Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:59:01 -0400 To: Gerry Gleason Cc: Peer-To-Peer Research List Subject: [p2p-research] Metacurrency

Gerry, I am interested in the metacurrency event. My own interest lies in creating a set of simple open standards around alternative currencies. My interest is that these simple standards be adoptable across many different web applications.

Everyone keeps pointing me to the metacurrency project, and I keep repeating that metacurrency project does not have any published simple standard that I can adopt. They do have examples, but they are not complete, and do not constitute a replicable body of work. Plus, in my opinion, metacurrency approach is overly complicated.

I also see something missing from metacurrency.org, and that is that "currency" can depend on the ecology/medium. This is different than traditional currency, and allows "money" to be tied to what is being exchanged within the system.

I talked with Paul Hartzog in Ann Arbor about something similar recently:

The idea that the medium of activity dictates the "currency". Paul uses the example of bittorrent: For users of bittorrent, the currency of exchange is literally the "bit". You have to upload to download, and you can upload more now, which will let you download more later (thus creating a surplus within the whole system). These types of exchanges are not "market" exchanges, like buying and selling. They are commons-based exchanges, where participants have feedback about how they are taking from and contributing to the common-pool resource of bandwidth in the bittorrent system... Read More

There are also similar commons-based webs of exchanges between people and natural systems that can follow a "code", and the "code" need not be like a script on a computer.

Instead it can be more like an agent based model, where you follow simple rules about how you act within a system. Achievement of creating a balance between yourself and the system will usually consist of what you take from system, and what you put back in.

The argument that Paul and I make is that you can also look at your yourself as a fractal micro-cosm of the larger system you are a part of. You can look at where you are getting inputs from, and where your outputs go to. What you take in can be from the "waste" of someone else ("waste equals food"), what you output could be the basis of raw ... Read Morematerial for other's "input". These are the simple rules, the "code" for what I call a "wealth generating ecology" (wealth = other kinds of wealth beyond just money) a system that can generate surplus consistently even for one person, and can exponentially generate surplus as more people enter the system. The catch is that most of the resources end up being voluntarily or systematically co-managed as a "commons": a resource that everyone who uses recognizes as something that no one user fully owns, and so must be co-governed somehow by users. (resource is not just physical object, can be the combined time and attention of people, etc)

(Gerry: copied this to p2p research list, I feel that people there would be interested in this exchange. I clipped off your personal notes to me)