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

[georgemw at speakeasy.net]

On 20 Nov 2001, at 22:54, Greg Broiles wrote:


> 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.
> 

Here's my recollection as to how this was supposed to work:
1) people who participated in the beta got free mojo as a
reward for participating (they'd keep their mojo when the
beta period was over)
2) In the non-beta, people would have to pay (or something)
to get a starting stash of mojo
3) I don't think the "Evil Geniuses" ever expected to act as 
mojo-cash brokers; rather, anyone who had a supply of
cash and mojo could act as a cash-mojo broker, and mojo
would find its own price. 


> 
> 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?
>

Right. If the tokens are EVER going to be worth anything, there
can't be a way to accumulate then for free.  If people have this
psychological block against paying "real money" for tokens,
maybe it's a good idea to make them trade CPU time for them
in one of the seti-like projects.  Somebody mentioned something 
about one involving protein-folding that sounded like it might 
actually be useful. 

George
 
> 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
> 5000 dead in NYC? National tragedy.
> 1000 detained incommunicado without trial, expanded surveillance? National 
> disgrace.