Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks

[Greg Broiles]

At 11:45 PM 11/20/2001 -0500, dmolnar wrote:
> > distribution.  Unfortunately the MN network lacks compelling content
>
>Right - it's for optimizing load balancing and data distribution. Roughly
>stated, it seems to me to be a DoS prevention mechanism. It's not at all
>clear that Mojo will ever be meaningfully convertible to "real" money, at
>least not to me. but then again, I'm often unclear.

Very early in its lifetime, the Autonomous Zones/Mojo Nation people said 
that maybe Mojo would someday be exchangable with real cash, though the 
assumption was that during the early stages of software development, people 
were playing with worthless currency for proof-of-concept, and that at some 
point the old Mojo would be useless or disabled, and people would start 
using New Mojo instead, where New Mojo might have real value.

Since then (that description is meant to be of the state of the Mojo Nation 
in October 2000 or so), they've abandoned plans for making Mojo valuable 
and/or convertible to other currencies, and it is only intended as a 
resource allocation tool and/or DoS prevention mechanism.

As far as I know - I stopped paying close attention to them when they 
shifted focus from a currency-based publishing system to a load-balanced 
content delivery system - they also give out all the Mojo you care to ask 
for, free, 10 million Mojos at a time - so it seems very unlikely that the 
current tokens will ever be convertible to real value, given that sort of 
inflationary history.

And that problem seems to be at the center of Nomen Nescio's sotto voce 
suggestion that some unnamed cypherpunks work up a currency which can be 
used to "pay" people for providing information which is of value - I get 
the impression that s/he is imagining some magic fairy would mint up piles 
of the currency, and assign it equally to every subscriber, who would then 
be empowered to pay it to the content providers they liked best.

That's very warm and fuzzy and hippy-like, but if these tokens are handed 
out for free, then what, exactly, is their value?

I think the Extropians did something like that, which ended in some sort of 
fiasco which some cypherpunks were involved in, though I don't know the 
details and was never a participant in that list/social circle.


--
Greg Broiles -- gbroiles at parrhesia.com -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961
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