Well, we're imagining systems set up deliberately to be beneficient. If someone wants to create an awful orwellian thing instead, they can do so; with enough guns they'll get everyone to register to anything. So, leaving aside the non-technical question of "what if the creators are assholes with guns", let's get back to the core question; how to implement a fairly OK "Basic Income On Blockchain". Firstly, basic income is the sort of system that you can likely only do with an external registrar for person:key correspondance, because we've never cracked the sock-puppet/sybil problem and might never do. This registrar need not actually be able to *track* these people once registered, though; that's the whole idea behind blind signatures for voting, for example. The registrar could be asked by a person to sign their basic income allowance to any (evenly divisive of the income) number of sub-addresses, which would be blinded from the registrar, and the funds could then be redeemed zerocoin-style as income by the registrant. The registrar "knows" that someone's just claimed their income, but not to what addresses, and can therefore prevent double-claims. The registrant gets their income to one or many bitcoin addresses and can then generate new receiving addresses as usual for the change. Of course, this might all be meaningless if you just used zerocoin instead, because with zerocoin you could just collect your coins openly in your own name, launder them trivially, and move on. On 26/05/15 07:10, Nadine Earnshaw wrote:

the one thing I always come back to when thinking about the blockchain and how it could be used against the masses is

if a savy government simply makes it a legal requirement to register whichever addresses you use for business purposes or

personal tax reasons

this means that you now find yourself only a Blockchain script away from an annual audit and if you do transactions with non registered addresses then what?

follow that rabbit down the hole and you find yourself very much in the Orwellian land of 1984

if your starting point in life meant all the money you have ever had was tracked how would you even get around that?

blackmarket gold? but how do you buy it in the first place. start buying jewellery I guess that just gets lost

----- Original Message ----- From: "Cathal (Phone)"

To: "Troy Benjegerdes" , "grarpamp" Cc: Sent: Mon, 25 May 2015 18:11:03 +0100 Subject: Re: Basic income (was) Re: noscript is 10 years!

Blind signature scheme to guarantee person:income-key correspondence without breaking the privacy of who each represents? However, you'd need to give each person as many signed private keys as transactions they're likely to use each income-cycle to avoid spending-correlation deanonymysation.

On 25 May 2015 17:46:22 GMT+01:00, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 03:55:23PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 1:37 PM, John Young wrote:

NYT today has book review on gradual replacement of humans by robots, a beloved investment of those at the top, so John Deere

Shame no one properly broke the last 3-5 messages off into a separate thread when it went off noscript

What will happen to the 7000000000 unpaid system redundancies?

We don't need the money, the money needs us, and I expect something like 6,999,999,900 redundancies will suddenly find themselves with various forms of basic income guarantees once the money finally figures ou! t it's automating itself out of job, and realizes it needs to start giving the HCF (human confinement farms) money or humans are going to stop spending it, and this, my friends, would be the end of money.

What's important for this cypherpunk is to figure out how to make sure we have alternatives and free choice to leave the HCFs and choose among many basic income systems, or make the choice to not use money at all.

Are blockchains a reasonable thing to build a basic income system on? How do you ensure a blockchain private key is held or controlled by only one person, so that one cannot simply create many anonymous IDs and collect several hundred basic income guarantees?

It seems there must be a human factor, and something that looks a lot like a government, but I can't quite wrap my head around how to make sure each of those 7e9 redunancies can only create 7e9 basic income generating accounts, anddo a moderately good job of identifying and stopping those that try to collect, via force, coercion, or deceit, more than their share of basic income.

-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

-- Scientific Director, IndieBio Irish Programme Now running in Cork, Ireland May->July Learn more at http://eu.indie.bio and follow along! Twitter: @onetruecathal Phone: +353876363185 miniLock: JjmYYngs7akLZUjkvFkuYdsZ3PyPHSZRBKNm6qTYKZfAM peerio.com: cathalgarvey

On 5/26/15, Mirimir wrote:

On 05/25/2015 10:46 AM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:

...

It seems there must be a human factor, and something that looks a lot like a government, but I can't quite wrap my head around how to make sure each of those 7e9 redunancies can only create 7e9 basic income generating accounts, and do a moderately good job of identifying and stopping those that try to collect, via force, coercion, or deceit, more than their share of basic income.

The AIs could just collaborate. They would estimate what the basic income guarantees should be, and negotiate shares. There would be no reason to involve humans, excepting any human-AI hybrids involved.

I think "those that try to collect via force..." refers to some of the 7e9 humans, not the AIs - why would the AIs need money anyway? They have perhaps energy need for their existence and ... that's it; except for some programmed "imperative" - other than survival energy need - any other imperative is overlaid or in addition to mere survival. If there are multiple AIs, not one, are they competing - some dominance imperative? We humans certainly tend to think in terms of competition - but I say that besides survival, this is a taught reflex and neither necessary nor our ideal - from the earliest stages of mental development we get measured by our exam marks and gold stars, celebrated and praised for our performance "over" others, rewarded with money for our competitive advantage in "the market" - sadly most of us "modern trained" humans are thoroughly entrained or schooled with the competition mindset. Schooling, sadly so far from education in so many ways. Such an irony then that we "have" such abundance, or could have - and yet are so often limited in our language? When in abundance for all, money needs us if money is to persist as a dominant or even relevant social concept and reality within our communities. Money is currently a primary measure of our "competitive performance" in the current "modern" world, yet where survival is no master (everyone in abundance) money is now a mere contrivance - a play thing for some, or perhaps for many. Perhaps money would be useful to signify standing in a community - esteem or assumed wisdom in decision making. Alas further growth of humans is certainly indicated by the current environment, human rights and inter personal record of the human "race" <money>keep running hampster! <7e9>I think I can, I think I can! Presently those who take positions of power generally appear to be those who lust after such and evidently these humans carry predominant intent of competitive "me first" personal agendas (albeit perhaps extending to family and friends on occasion), sucking through their snouts from the trough of limitation, presuming scarcity and some ungodly "need" to act selfishly and to dominate by any means (oh, idk, may be a middle eastern invasion or something will "prop up" "our blessed economy"). Can abundance be sustained or indeed is it worth sustaining at all in the face of the present reality of so many of the 7e9? Many/most humans, by my eyes so unable to restrain themselves from appealing to the next vote rather than ever truly stand for a principle, appear to need royal kicks up the arse. And "the masses" are little better, riding populist waves of media hype and hysteria. Conundrums, possibilities, challenges, intentions. If a worthy one were to appear, could I convince him or her that humans are worth making a stand for? Well, as I keep getting reminded, some humans a cool, some thoughtful, others passionate and some fun to be around on occasion, and some even stand for a principle. It is those latter ones for which I gather up my bootlaces to walk another mile and ask for a little forgiveness for my excessive cynicism. Perhaps we see in the libre software world the beginnings of a possible model or comprehension for how we might conduct ourselves (act) and organise ourselves (relate to one another) in a world structured around the reality of abundance rather than the gross illusion of competitive scarcity. Here's hoping, fellow humans! Z