The world turned upside down.

[James A. Donald]

    --
For a long time the US has been the center of the world
monetary system, and the US dollar the base money of which all
others are derivatives.

The primary way of doing transactions on the internet is by
credit card, with the headquarters and computers located in the
USA.  The secondary way is by paypal, located in the USA.
Paypal and credit card requires information that ultimately
links to your true name and social security number, and people
in those peripheral and backward countries that do not yet have
their system of government issued identity well integrated to
that of the USA, for example Poland, cannot use Paypal.

The US government makes a big profit out of this, effectively
gaining an interest free loan on each dollar it prints, and it
also leverages it into a source of power.  Those it disapproves
of are cut off from the mainstream money system.

Now if one cuts a few terrorists off from the money system, no
problem, but when one cuts off large numbers of terrorists,
suspected terrorists, suspected child pornographers, suspected
money launderers, suspected tax dodgers,  and the entire
population of Poland, who is being cut off?  The terrorists or
the US?

Well people, I think the money system has just turned upside
down.  The money launderers are not being cut off from the US
led international monetary system.  Instead the US is being cut
off from the money launderer led international monetary system.

The two most popular no-true-name accounts are e-gold an
moneybookers.

I googled for web pages containing both the word "egold" and
the word "moneybookers".  Got lots of hits, seems that lots of
quite ordinary people are finding it cheaper or more convenient
to mediate international transactions through computers that
are not located in the US and whose accounts are not coupled to
true names.

The great majority of people and money are still going through
the US led system, and since people are reluctant to change,
that will continue for a long time.  But they no longer have
to, and for most people in the world, there is no longer a good
reason why they should.

A no-true-name account is inherently cheaper than a true-name
account, because of the high cost of managing true names.  The
early adopters seem to be largely people who are sensitive to
the cost of setting up accounts.

However, a no-true-name account still faces the problem that it
is reversible, dragging the issuer into the arbitration
business, which most issuers are not competent to do.   All
users have to pay a transaction cost reflecting arbitration
costs, whether they want their transactions to be arbitrable or
not.  The solution to that cost, is chaumian money.  The fact
that no-true-name money seems to be beating true-name money
leads me hope that economics can beat inertia and regulation. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     ForgDjc+maghCgZHGp2ILgpQ1EJ4weji+guNpA6d
     4V0E4la174KcnGEHgMo0C/zJlMQlOcMwzRGJ+HQ5W