Topic: Creating a guaranteed minimum income through crypto-coins - page 4. (Read 14940 times)

It's not principles I would support or associate myself with but every community chooses its own principles and anyone should be able to join with like minded individuals to share profit.

As long as anyone is free to leave and it's not hurting others, all of that is okay.

Then I'm kicked out. That is how a community works. No one is entitled to being part of a community. It's an honor to be a part of a community and some are more exclusive than others.


They seem to think it's easier to blackmail the politicians into doing it than doing it themselves. I guess they don't want to spend the time trying to invent a new system and would rather rely on the corrupt processes of the old system.

But if old methods are outdated or clearly aren't working then we should try different methods. Political methods aren't going to solve every problem and sometimes you have to invent something new to shake things up.

The thing about all these so-called communities of like-minded individuals that are all "working together" is that you could do that stuff NOW.

Take, for example, the I-think-healthcare-is-a-right-and-everyone-should-have-it-free crowd. Why don't they get together in groups TODAY and provide eveyone in the group with "free" healthcare? They don't need any laws. They never needed any Obiecare. They could have done it, instantly. What the hell was stopping them?

Similarly, free othercoins like those propsed here? What are you guys waiting for?

Principles:

1. Wimmin ain't as smurt as men. No gals allowed.
2. Anyone who took er jerbs is out. You take der jerbs with a new process. Thus, you're out.
3. Don't forget about the damn Dutch...

Are those all okay?


What if they decided out you go? Could you still deal with the others?

I'll read the paper later.

What happens when all of the people who think like I do choose not to participate? Or when you find prices heading up (fluctuating (inflation)) anyway? Or, what if some of the people who don't participate find ways to make a good living--but that tends to undermine the voluntary system? Not through deception or fraud, of course.

What happens then?

Here is what I have to say on the subject and I said it in your other thread as well.

By the way biometrics is a start but it will not necessarily be enough.

Choose or be chosen. Every human being should have the option to choose to join a virtual community, or a virtual sovereign nation. The model to use would be micro nations where you must register to receive citizenship and then you can get the dividend. This should include biometrics, a background check, and whatever else the virtual community decides is necessary before accepting an application for virtual citizenship.

Communities should do the choosing. The background check is to make sure you are an honest person and if you pass the checks you can join the community. This would keep scammers and bad actors out of certain communities as some more exclusive communities will not want to support them. It would also allow a community to accept or reject people according to principles.

A citizen of a virtual community would have voting rights and there would be a distributed Constitution of some sort which everyone in the community has found some way to agree upon. This way you would be able to join a community of like minded people and receive your basic income dividend from your community, your micro nation, your virtual sovereign entity. No one would force their values on you because you'd join the community of people who share your values.

I'm working on a white paper that is still a work in progress. You can read it here http://darkai.org/?page_id=41
Give it the peer review.

I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but there is a way to have a voluntary system that empowers all of humanity who wish to participate with no possibility of inflation.

The issue here is that a significant number of people will accept (from whatever authority) and spend them, but not contribute to creating them or accept them in trade. The effect is that, like with any outside regulation or interference, you skew the market, it corrects very quickly, and in this case, you either devalue money as a whole, or more likely, you end up with two different prices. One for the original currency, and one for the altcoin.

In essence, you aren't "counter-balanc[ing]" anything because all of the costs of all of the materials and labor that goes into all goods and services will skew as well, hence the $40K gallons of milk (If you handed everyone $1MM). Rest assured, the effect on prices has long since been proven.


This fails as well because the purchasing power of money always fluctuates in relation to the world around it. See, for example, how the purchasing power of the dollar has held up over the past 100 years. But more importantly, the costs of the labor and the materials that goes into everything that exists fluctuates as well because of labor shortages, labor gluts, scarcity, demand, consumer preference, technology advances, and on and on and on. The purchasing power of your outside factor is not immune, and if it is geared to lose value, that can’t help.
   


No. you cannot say “prices in dollars would fall somewhat” because you cannot possibly determine the aggregate outcome of the trillions of personal decisions. Another way to look at this is to assume your coin is a dollar for all intents and purposes. Just as a dollar comprises pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters (or tens, twenties, fifties) in your scenario, the dollar would comprise the normal divisions as mentioned, with the addition of altpenny, altquarter, atten, et cetera. Each of these would have their own value as well, meaning 10 altpennies to a penny, or whatever.

If you only intend to hand everyone $10 bucks a week, then prices will do exactly as I said they would, though they won’t skyrocket. Instead, the price for a gallon of milk will hover around $4.40 instead of $4.00. The net result remains the same as prices will skew higher in close correlation to the amount of altcoin you inject into the system.

BTW TC, someone over at Freicoin is also looking to do a universal income experiment also, again as a voluntary layer onto of the coin, you may wish to contact him.

http://freicoin.freeforums.org/application-to-make-an-freicoin-basic-income-experiment-t701.html

This is largely the motivation behind Freicoin which implements 'Demurrage' the technical term for the decline TCraver described, reducing interest rates to zero is the primary goal and reduced hoarding is a means to that end.  I don't believe loaning normal 'hard' money even for productive investments in adequate because interest rates act as a floor for what IS a profitable investment.  Demurrage is designed to cancel the liquidity value of money and it is this liquidity value with gives rise to interest.

I also like the idea of universal ownership of dividend paying stock as a means of universal income and suggested something similar in another thread.

No problem.  It's just a placeholder name.  So I'll use a different one, hopefully ugly and generic enough no one will want it.

How about "TheCoin"?  Assuming no one has claimed that, I hear by declare it to mean "any generic coin that I happen to be talking about".

First, this is a voluntary system - if you didn't want to take the coins, or even accept them in payment, no one would force you to.  But many and probably most - including you eventually - probably would, precisely because it would NOT suck to get money for little or no effort.  Even if you think the altcoin is going to drive up prices, it makes less sense to refuse them, than to take them to counter-balance the higher prices you project.  So participation would likely be high, even if you were correct about the impact on prices.

Second, the number of coins per capita in circulation would rapidly approach a fixed level, as the number of new coins created is balanced by the decay of the larger number of coins already in existence.  If the decay rate is 2%/week, the total number of coins in circulation would reach about 50 times the number paid out per week, and stay at that level.   

Dollar circulation would slow somewhat, as people would prefer to spend those last.  And sellers would prefer dollars - so prices in dollars would fall somewhat.  However, by taking that and the expected rate of circulation of the altcoin into account, the "correct" value of the altcoin in terms of dollars can be calculated.  At a rough guess, the dollar value of the distributed coins would be on the order of $10 per person per week.  After some initial fluctuation, the altcoin's value relative to the dollar and to goods would end up close to the original estimated level, rather than inflating dramatically, as you speculate.

Another problem you face is that you will need to come up with a different name.  Mincoin (MNC) is already in existence for some time now.

https://mincoin.io/

https://mcxnow.com/exchange/MNC

You don't have to worry about biometrics, or ID, or any of those things because these ideas cannot, and never have, worked. They can't.

This, basically, sums up why this and similar ideas are stillborn (and always will be), even with all the machinations being suggested here.

The reason is very simple, whether you give everybody $1mm, or mandate the minimum wage at $500/hr, or add a bunch of zeros before the decimal point, or any other way of handing it out, in essence a combination of two things will always happen. 1) You devalue money (call it hyperinflation if you will), and 2) demand skyrockets for everything. Instantly.

What that means is that in a matter of days, prices for goods and services will explode by approximately the same order of magnitude of the amount you skew the system. In other words, in no time flat, the price for a gallon of milk (hovering at say $4.00, today) will hover around $40,000. Which means that the net purchasing power of the poor hasn't really changed at all. This will happen for every single good and service at the same time.

THAT is the fundamental flaw with all of these schemes. Since supply and demand define equilibrium, and since all prices always hover around equilibrium (except when skewed by gov't force (law, regulation, import duties, et cetera) which never increases supply) no one is any better off than they were.

Keep this in mind: if you are going to have to force me to participate in your ideas, that means they suck. Badly. There is a ~reason~ that the pillboxes in East Germany were pointed inward.

Thank you TCraver for that explanation. I can see how that would have some merit. I lean toward having no intentional increase or decrease in value, though. But if that scenario were to materialize and every person created an equal share of coins, this could be another place where the smartphone ap that uses biometrics would work identifying separate individual participants.

@DaveHamill:

Decay rate, at least in this context, means that coins are time stamped when created, and at any later moment their value relative to a new coin can be calculated using a decay rate equation.  

For example, if the coins were timestamped only to 1 week resolution, the week after one was created, it might be worth 0.98 * new-coin-value.  In the second week, it would be worth 0.98 *0.98 * NCV, or about 0.96NCV.  After about a year - 52 weeks - without being spent, that coin would be worth 0.98^52 NCV, or about 0.35NCV.  A coin that goes unspent would theoretically NEVER decay away to zero - though the value would become trivial after a few years.

No matter when you acquire the coin, whatever amount of value you've obtained will decay at the same rate, as if it were newly created.  (In actuality, any time a transaction is done, the sum transferred (and any change from old coins) would be merged into a single lump and get a new time stamp.  Also, the decay equation used would be a "continuous decay" equation.)

The point of decay here isn't to prevent hoarding, but rather to allow every individual to create new coins at a fixed rate (per person) without the value of a new coin falling due to inflation.  

I would like to understand "decay rate" better. I read that some are in favor of it because it would discourage hoarding, and therefore reduce wealth disparity.

I would also like to debate anyone who thinks there is a better money system than my previous proposal about a Capital Homesteading system using digital currencies. Loaning money into existence for feasible productive projects allows for unlimited growth without inflation, and I believe without decay rate also. I am against interest, especially compounding interest. But if the productive credit is allotted equally to every human, and they invest in dividend-paying companies, everyone will receive dividend income to replace technological unemployment and a capital growth nest egg for retirement. This creates free(er) markets, eliminates redistribution, taxation, and of course reduces wealth disparity. And if the decisions about what entities get new capital come from the largest possible number of people, companies will have to treat employees fairly and respect the environment. Otherwise people will not let them use their productive credit allotment.

This community may be creating the new money system of the world. I know some consider this to be a great opportunity to fix many of humanity's problems. I do, and I hope you will.

@Impaler:

I agree with much of what you have to say regarding "public" goods.   Existing approaches, including systems of public goods, have raised about half the world's population to 'tolerable' levels over the past few centuries, and recent rates of improvement seem to indicate that we might get most of the world above abject poverty sometime this century.

However, two questions lying behind this discussion, are:
"Could we raise the second half of humanity out of poverty faster?"
    and
"Might coming technologies eliminate the potential to raise the second half of humanity out of poverty? "

It seems like the experience of the US out-sourcing labor overseas might mirror the effects of labor being automated, if we do nothing different - and it appears that the impact was to flat-line improvement for the majority while driving more wealth to the wealthy. 

Yes, if we could implement them, there are more conventional solutions - but it appears that for about 4 decades those solutions have been thwarted in the US. 

I am hoping that the system being described here might provide an 'end-run' around government provided solutions, which seem to be blocked.

Thinking a bit more about my own previous post, I was making one mistake - I was focusing on the "poor" of developed nations, where a mere $2000 per year per family of added income would be a modest (though welcome) improvement.   But in the poorest nations, that would be a huge improvement.  Even at a 2%/week decay rate, a family of four might get "merely" $800/year more effective income - still a relatively huge boost for the poorest.

IF we could make it work.

I tend to prefer the universal availability of public goods FIRST, if we have universal roads, sanitation, education, disaster preparedness and prevention, public parks, health care and we still felt like performing wealth redistribution THEN I might support universal basic income.

Public goods should always be preferred first because they do not carry the double-dip problem that is so obvious with giving out money.  Pretending to be two different people doesn't let you double your use of roads, hospitals and parks.  Likewise their is no way to be more or less protected then your neighbor when a dike holds back a flood, or the Tornado alarms go off.  Some would argue that markets can better provide all the above benefits so an income would be as good as all thouse things PLUSS 'freedom', but history shows that the profit driven market is in fact incapable providing these things efficiently because the consumer is without bargaining power when they are in need.

Now IF we had a robust system of public goods AND the solved the double-dip problem and the choice is between a universal income and a system of poverty-only subsidies then I'm far more favorable to a universal income.  For one it eliminates the need to verify income levels, you only need to verify identity which is vastly simpler, in fact that is how we provide a retirement benefit to virtually every person in Western-civilization past the age of 65, a basic income would be even simpler cause we wouldn't even care about age.  But beyond that their is an even better reason to make it universal, it eliminates the indignity and stigma around any means-tested benefit and that has benefits for the recipient and social cohesion.

But their is one final point, a universal basic income is not something that can be done at anything less then HUGE costs, some hand-waving crypto-currency solution can't do it, your going to need an increase in taxation in the range of ~15% of GDP.  Given that I wouldn't entertain basic-income until a European-level welfare state is being provided which is around 30-50% of GDP were talking about a level of socialism that might make Sweden squeamish.

Will this  'free' decaying coin income really help if the economy goes to extreme unemployment, e.g. due to automation of jobs?

A couple of assumptions:
- a future when 50% of families have no employed person with income. (vs. ~20% now, including retirees)
- a coin decay rate of 5% a week, encouraging very rapid turn-over - all spent within a week on average.
- bad money driving out good, dollars nearly cease circulating, while the altcoin is used whenever possible.
- A coin payment rate of 1 per week (value TBD).

Assume pretty much everyone accepts the coin distribution.

If the coins had a fixed value, they'd be circulated 52x a year, and the summed value received over that year would be 52 coins.
But their value decays, so let's consider the equivalent in terms of "new" altcoins.
Over the life of 1 coin being circulated, at 5% decay per transaction (i.e. per week), the summed value to all receivers of that coin is equivalent to about 20 fresh full value coins.

In any given week everyone receives a coin.  But after that, all the value of the coins go into the hands of the employed.
Over time, this means that each week a poor person will get 1 new coin, while the upper half receive the value of 21 new coins.

Assume a family of 4 with at least one employed person has on average an income equivalent to $42K in today's dollars.
Then the family of 4 with no employed persons would be getting $2000 worth of coins. 
At 52 coins/person per year, the family of 4 would get 208 coins, each worth ~ $9.60.

If the decay rate were increased to 10% / week, the upper half would receive about 11x as much as the unemployed half.
That would give the unemployed family of four about $3800 worth a year.

Also, note that the coin probably can't start with more than 1% to 2% per week decay rate, in order to be accepted.