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Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

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Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I did, but the author seems to brush that aside and say "it needs to be accounted for directly" and I would argue that's not necessarily true. The problem is that I value my first gallon of water every day very highly for drinking. The next gallon also pretty highly for drinking and brushing my teeth. The next two gallons are for cooking and stuff, so they're less precious; the next five gallons for bathing and…

While it's not necessarily true that our exchanges need to account for value in this nonlinear way, I think it's an interesting thought experiment to discuss ways in which our currency can express different aspects of the value of our transactions. I'm not claiming that Strangecoin represents the "true value" of our transactions; I'm simply saying that it's another way to model our economic relations, and looking at…

You're right of course that the reason money has low transaction cost is because it is widely accepted. But that's kind of tautological; if it wasn't widely accepted it wouldn't be money by definition.

In my mind the low transaction cost is a feature in that you can make snap decisions (or in many cases not make them at all) without having to explain yourself.

What I mean is that if I had to itemize every gallon of water, every kilowatt-hour (or watt-hour) of electricity, every cubic foot of natural gas, every byte I upload or download, etc etc etc to come up with their "true" values I wouldn't have enough hours in the day to do 10% of what I normally do.

So I guess my question is this: at what level of granularity is this being proposed? And if it's anything less than "full granularity" why? What I mean is why should utilities be any less valued than phone apps? I need that first gallon of water WAY more than I need Angry Birds, so it seems to me like that needs to be accounted for. But that would be exhausting. I can't see a way for me to take this proposal really seriously AND not simultaneously want to hang myself.

I think it's an interesting idea to be sure, and it's fun to think about. But I really hope I don't have to tell everyone how much I like water or electricity or whatever.

Re: Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

#72

I'm rather disappointed that in spite of promises that transactions can be non-zero sum, on close inspection these transactions just draw money from other accounts - usually TUA. From the description, I expected new Strangecoins to be created out of thin air by transactions, and I wanted to see where you were going with that design. If money's still just flowing from accounts into other accounts, then it's something…

Other comments suggest that this can be implemented with existing tools, which I take as a virtue of the proposal. In any case, John von Neumann proved a long time ago that any nonzero sum game with n players can be modeled as a zero sum game with n+1 players, where the n+1 player represents the global state. TUA is simply an implementation of this proof. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions I tried…

>In any case, John von Neumann proved a long time ago that any nonzero sum game with n players can be modeled as a zero sum game with n+1 players, where the n+1 player represents the global state. TUA is simply an implementation of this proof.

It's not quite the same, since TUA can be empty. Unless TUA's balance can be negative, or if it's infinite.

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