us - public system
other.arkitech
other.arkitech at protonmail.com
Tue Dec 17 13:25:19 PST 2019
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, December 16, 2019 11:14 PM, Zenaan Harkness <zen at freedbms.net> wrote:
> I am largely DC illiterate, so I shall only respond to 1 or 2 points.
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 03:53:09PM +0000, other.arkitech wrote:
>
> > > Let's take example public health:
> > > Public implies a system applied to everybody.
> > > Libertarians/ voluntarists/ anarchists, usually say nothing should be
> > > compulsory, all should be voluntary.
> > > So public health means "many people contributing to a money pool, so
> > > those people who get sick and do not have money, can get medical
> > > care".
> > > OK, so compulsory taxation is a mechanism.
> > > Voluntary donations is another mechanism.
> > > When we have a "universal" system - e.g. every txn is taxed, and tax
> > > goes into a pool, then we must think about how to allocate the money
> > > from that pool - public medical care, national defence, etc, and who
> > > gets to make those decisions - and these sound like really
> > > fundamental questions which we should probably think about, before
> > > jumping into a particular technical proposal.
> >
> > The top level main loop can be: (executed every consensus cycle (1 minute))
> > 1.- all accounts are seen by the consensus public algorithm, who is in charge of modifying balances upon cryptographical evidence (transactions).
> > 2.- Fees are accumulating as tx are being settled.
>
> Even step 2 is beyond my ability to comprehend - sorry, I really am a
> DC newbie. I don't understand "fees are accumulating".
>
> My limited understanding of BTC is that nodes are computers, which do
> the BTC tx calculations, and they get a fee for doing these
> calculations. My understanding might be wrong.
when a transaction arrives to validating nodes (which know all balances of all accounts and have the capacity to alter them), they do 2 things:
1.- alter the balances of the implying accounts (in US-PUBLIC SYSTEM aka "usps")
spend utxos and create new ones (bitcoin)
2.- alter balance of inputs to take a fee. This fee goes to a place in memory. (the expression "fees are accumulating" refer to this)
(but they dont accumulate in your wallet at this stage, they stay in the mempool (like a temporary place))
>
> So if I run a node, and help the network of nodes do txns, then I get
> some fees or "commissions", which motivates me to keep running my
> node (paying electricity and ISP fees).
>
> Now, these "commissions" or fees, I assume, are accumulating into my
> wallet - that is, I get the benefit of my txn commissions.
>
I get the benefit of my txn commissions <- this sounds absurd to me
In Bitcoin all the accumulated fees go straight to the miner who won the PoW (they go to an account controlled by the wallet of the miner).
In usps these profits are used to
"pay public services", and the remainder
is spread across all nodes (all nodes have an account, all these node accounts see their balance increase)
Now if "public services cost is defined 0 (like it is just now)" then it means that all profit collected by transaction fees go straight to nodes (as a subsidy for maintaining the node. It could be called universal salary, depending on the value amount.
So it is a more complex problem to exactly define how to spend this money (the money for public services), but the important thing is that we have a source of money that cannot be censored or hidden, that can be pipelined to fill different budgets that nobody can alter individually (although there must exist a way to set it up and modify it (I suggest a new work e-politics?)), and a way to redistribute remaining profits collected by transactions in a fair way. In a way that can be seen as in "I run anode that works for the system and it gets paid for it".
The cool thing of this automation is that this is 'public money' and the way it is spent is public, so there is no place for corruption.
> Now I can make a guess, in your system, there is txn fee, and part of
> that is commission going into my wallet, and another part of that is
> "tax fee" going into "global tax" wallet.
>
Since a wallet is just a file with private keys
they come with programs able to sign transactions
wallets don't enter into account in the public system, they belong to the 'private system' and they reside in user computers, rather than node computers. (in usps the node runs both systems in the same computer, but this is for convenience, they are logically separated systems)
I haven't introduced where are taxes taken into account yet, because in my previous explanation of how usps works I assumed that
the cost of public services is lower than the profit made by transactions. So not only the system has money to pay them, but the remainder
is used to afford a universal salary.
In a more dramatic case, which is closer to the case we live every day, profits of transactions are not enough to pay public services.
(this happens because in our world banks and private institutions profit privately from money transfers).
So in order to be able to pay public services, participants must pay extra (taxes) and forget about having universal salary.
This is also coded in usps, all account would be altered and reduced in enough quantity to be able to feed the public system pipeline.
> I am trying to understand the basic mechanisms here, and even that is
> probably a bit of a "rabbit hole" - I think the basic philosophical
> questions are probably more productive to discuss, before talking
> about technical how to.
>
> > 3.- Accumulated Fees are used to pay public services. They are fed into a structure of public budgets which are defined via [to be discussed further (dont want to mess the simplicity of this loop)]
>
> Simple loops can be good sometimes, but too much simplicity can mask
> or hide the real problems. When I see what looks like too much
> simplicity to me, I sometimes think to myself "oh, he is just hand
> waving away all the real problems".
>
> > If not enough money is available to pay public services then
> > the money is taken from the accounts (taxing).
>
> Woah! This is another step which is written as though it is really
> simple, easy, taken for granted, and "nobody needs to worry, it will
> just work".
>
> "If" means a condition. So "if" more money is needed, "then" more
> money is collected.
>
> This is a decision tree (re taxation), and sounds just like gov.
>
> When we make simple statements, we make lots of assumptions.
>
> Here's another assumption in the same statement - the word "need" (in
> my statement, "if more money is needed") - so "need" is another
> decision tree, another flow chart, involving more or same or other
> people.
>
> Here's another assumption - "public services" - what services
> "should" be public, which should be private?
>
> Who gets to decide?
>
> Here's another one - if ... then money is "taken from accounts" - so
> is money taken as part of TXNs, or is money taken outside of normal
> txn (e.g. buy some petrol or milk) and a new "tax" TXN is created
> against -all- accounts, to increase the public budget, because more
> public money is needed for the public services?
>
> This sounds too complicated for me, and I am way outside my depth
> because I don't really know about BTC.
>
> I still think the basic questions about "public services" should be
> discussed more first...
>
> > > (Of course, a technical system might be interesting and worthy of
> > > discussion by itself - but you have presented a high minded (good
> > > thing) 'big solution for A, B and C' type of conversation, so you
> > > lead us automatically into these fundamental questions, the
> > > philosophical questions.)
>
> Good luck,
Let me try to it in math with a simplified ledger of accounts with their balances:
ledger:
account1 1000 <-node account (where a node is paid for validation work)
account2 1000 <-node account
account3 1000 <-account
account4 1000 <-account to pay roads
account5 1000 <-account to pay health
public system: takes 10 for roads and 20 for health
Minute 1:
profit from transactions: 100
profit after paying public services: 70
profit spread -> 2 nodes -> 70/2=35 per node;
ledger:
account1 1035 <-node account (where a node is paid for validation work)
account2 1035 <-node account
account3 1000 <-account
account4 1010 <-account to pay roads
account5 1020 <-account to pay health
--------------------
Minute 2:
profit from transactions: 50
50<70 profit not enough to pay public services.
taxes: 20 (takes 4 from each account) (this a simplification for illustrating, the real algorithm takes from each account proportional to the balance)
ledger:
account1 1031 <-node account (where a node is paid for validation work)
account2 1031 <-node account
account3 1996 <-account
account4 1016 <-account to pay roads
account5 1036 <-account to pay health
This represents fairly well how every cycle of consensus work in usps. (with some intentional imprecisions in aras of clarity)
Thanks Zen for asking very good questions.
My argumentation goes as my thoughts are for using cryptoeconomy to solve a public system that could compete with traditional governments. It will be the choice of the people to choose the better system.
Happy to discuss about it.
--
Oarch
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