How could wages in Bitcoin work? | Bitcointalksearch.org

dree12

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Quote from: CountSparkle on February 12, 2013, 12:07:04 AM

I believe dominance should be determined by how independent the employees are - having transferable skills, not being dependent on a single job, being able to ask for increased job compensation without fear of being laid off, and if they are laid off, being able to find another job or resort to starting a business themselves - and that it should NOT be determined by how much power and force the employee can exhert over the employer, either through threats of union strikes, or legal controls and regulations.
I feel completely comfortable with my employees working on side projects, learning new things, and ask them to update their resumes at least once a year with whatever new skills and tasks they have picked up recently. I WANT them to feel like they don't depend on me, because them not feeling tied to me and their job actually keeps us on friendlier, more open, and more even terms, and keeps the business more productive and innovative. If my employees were in a union, or had some sort of control over keeping their job against my will, the work environment would have been a lot more stressful, with "me vs you" tensions rising often.

Suppressing a voluntary union is asserting dominance. I don't support mandatory unions, but trying to eliminate all unions is effectively bullying your employees.

CountSparkle

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I believe dominance should be determined by how independent the employees are - having transferable skills, not being dependent on a single job, being able to ask for increased job compensation without fear of being laid off, and if they are laid off, being able to find another job or resort to starting a business themselves - and that it should NOT be determined by how much power and force the employee can exhert over the employer, either through threats of union strikes, or legal controls and regulations.
I feel completely comfortable with my employees working on side projects, learning new things, and ask them to update their resumes at least once a year with whatever new skills and tasks they have picked up recently. I WANT them to feel like they don't depend on me, because them not feeling tied to me and their job actually keeps us on friendlier, more open, and more even terms, and keeps the business more productive and innovative. If my employees were in a union, or had some sort of control over keeping their job against my will, the work environment would have been a lot more stressful, with "me vs you" tensions rising often.

dree12

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Quote from: CountSparkle on February 11, 2013, 12:39:44 AM

Quote from: dree12 on February 10, 2013, 04:14:55 PM

In our current inflationary system, the bulk of the power is granted to the business owners. Owners are free to bully their employees, refuse to give wage increases, and attack unions.

And employees are free to leave and find a job elsewhere. The job isn't the employee's, it's given to them by the business owners.

The job is taken by the employees.

Quote from: CountSparkle on February 11, 2013, 12:39:44 AM

Quote from: dree12 on February 10, 2013, 04:14:55 PM

With a deflationary system, the power is reversed. The employees can choose to decline wage decreases if they do not consider them fair—leaving the owners to negotiate properly with the unions.

The employee can decide to decline a wage decrease, and the owners will just fire them. Especially if the business doesn't make enough money to afford them any more. The power is still will the one who owns the business, and gives the jobs.

The business can decide to decline a wage increase, and the employees will just leave.

Employees and owners are a symbiotic relationship. Neither can live without the other. The more dominant in the relationship depends on which one maintaining the status quo benefits (owners in inflationary economy, employees in deflationary one).

CountSparkle

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Quote from: niko on February 10, 2013, 03:22:28 PM

Example: majority of people involved decides to hire a new engineer. Everyone's share is reduced to accomodate for the new hire's sallary of 1.23% of the net profit. The net profit is expected to increase due to increased productivity, so everyone's happy.

Pay based on company performance could definitely work, and is already done with stock options today, however, co-op management and your example likely won't. Employees often don't have management skills, and can't see the whole of business operations from the top, and thus can't make business changing decisions like where to concentrate resources or whom to hire.

Quote from: dree12 on February 10, 2013, 04:14:55 PM

In our current inflationary system, the bulk of the power is granted to the business owners. Owners are free to bully their employees, refuse to give wage increases, and attack unions.

And employees are free to leave and find a job elsewhere. The job isn't the employee's, it's given to them by the business owners.

Quote from: dree12 on February 10, 2013, 04:14:55 PM

With a deflationary system, the power is reversed. The employees can choose to decline wage decreases if they do not consider them fair—leaving the owners to negotiate properly with the unions.

The employee can decide to decline a wage decrease, and the owners will just fire them. Especially if the business doesn't make enough money to afford them any more. The power is still will the one who owns the business, and gives the jobs.

johnniewalker

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I think the simplest way this could be done is just by tying them to the dollar. Otherwise fixed BTC salaries I think are wayyy down the line.

bullioner

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Quote from: notme on February 10, 2013, 03:31:16 PM

Quote from: bullioner on February 10, 2013, 03:00:07 PM

[...]
Bitcoin, in conjunction with contracts using commodity price indexes, can thus come fairly close to what Hayek envisages in The Denationalisation of Money. Bitcoin on its own can't.

[...]

[...] If you tie the wages directly to the commodities, you have a whole lot of people interested in increasing the price of commodities without actually wanting to consume them. You'll get manipulation and false signals all the time and things will be way more volatile than they need to be.

Interesting point. This did occur to me when reading the book I mentioned. The risk in general is that by trying to make the purchasing power of a volatile but monetised commodity stable by tying it to a basket of commodities, you cause the unintended side effect of monetising all the commodities in the basket, making them unnecessarily expensive to consume. This wasn't addressed to Hayek in the book. He does talk about an issuer of his hypothetical money buying some of the actual commodities to maintain rates, but he doesn't mention the risks around making whole classes of commodities less consumable in the process.

justusranvier

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Quote from: EndTheFed321 on February 10, 2013, 04:09:33 PM

How would a Manufacturer of goods pay in bitcoin?
Example: would a bed springs manufacturer who takes spools of metal and runs it through machines to create springs pay for raw material and sell it`s products in bitcoin? If so at what price?

Also, would the Company that purchases those bed springs to cover them up
with material before selling them to the furniture stores for bitcoin, pay for material in
bitcoin as well as pay its workers in bitcoin? at what price?

I think we have a very long way before bitcoin replaces fiat money Angry

It will start with the mattress retailer, who will use a payment processor like BitPay to accept bitcoins from their customers and get paid in local currency.

At some point the retailer will start asking its suppliers if any of them are willing to take bitcoins instead of dollars, or perhaps their overseas supplier will approach them and ask for bitcoins because they like the faster clearing time.

In this way Bitcoin adoption starts out on the edges of the supply chain and works its way inward.

notme

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Quote from: EndTheFed321 on February 10, 2013, 04:09:33 PM

How would a Manufacturer of goods pay in bitcoin?
Example: would a bed springs manufacturer who takes spools of metal and runs it through machines to create springs pay for raw material and sell it`s products in bitcoin? If so at what price?

Ask metal supplier for bitcoin address, select send bitcoins, enter address and amount. The price would be set by the supplier, same as it is with fiat.

Quote

Also, would the Company that purchases those bed springs to cover them up
with material before selling them to the furniture stores for bitcoin, pay for material in
bitcoin as well as pay its workers in bitcoin? at what price?

Maybe. Although having the entire supply chain and output chain in BTC has some advantages, each interaction can use a different payment method if they wish. Again, manufacturer/supplier usually sets the price.

Quote

I think we have a very long way before bitcoin replaces fiat money Angry

Duh. However, business to business payments are taking place today in bitcoin. Additionally, a very small group of people do earn a portion of their wages in bitcoin. Personally, I've done several programming jobs for bitcoin.

dree12

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In our current inflationary system, the bulk of the power is granted to the business owners. Owners are free to bully their employees, refuse to give wage increases, and attack unions.

With a deflationary system, the power is reversed. The employees can choose to decline wage decreases if they do not consider them fair—leaving the owners to negotiate properly with the unions.

Paying wages in a deflationary system is more fair, not less so.

EndTheFed321

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How would a Manufacturer of goods pay in bitcoin?
Example: would a bed springs manufacturer who takes spools of metal and runs it through machines to create springs pay for raw material and sell it`s products in bitcoin? If so at what price?

Also, would the Company that purchases those bed springs to cover them up
with material before selling them to the furniture stores for bitcoin, pay for material in
bitcoin as well as pay its workers in bitcoin? at what price?

I think we have a very long way before bitcoin replaces fiat money Angry

notme

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Quote from: bullioner on February 10, 2013, 03:00:07 PM

The answer is that even if wages were paid in Bitcoins, they would not be a fixed quantity of Bitcoins. If wages are paid in a commodity whose value fluctuates a lot (such as Bitcoin), it would make sense to try and define the amount in terms of a fixed amount of purchasing power. One way to do this is to use a commodity price index for a basket of commodities.

Bitcoin, in conjunction with contracts using commodity price indexes, can thus come fairly close to what Hayek envisages in The Denationalisation of Money. Bitcoin on its own can't.

Though the large fiat currencies lose lots of value over time, they're not all that volatile, normally only losing a few percent of their value per year. Wages defined in these fiats thus tend to lose a few percent a year in value in real terms automatically. This tends to be manageable because of the smoothness, lowish annual rate of change, and ability to negotiate new rates from time to time. Bitcoin, gold, or anything with a fixed amount in existence, is unlikely to be suitable for fixing wages in directly, because their value will naturally be more volatile.

Sure, tying bitcoin to commodities via contracts would certainly stabilize bitcoin prices. However, I don't see why it has to be tied in with wages. We need actual commodity producers and consumers trading commodities for bitcoin and bitcoin for commodities. Once this is happening, bitcoin can be used to specify wages. If you tie the wages directly to the commodities, you have a whole lot of people interested in increasing the price of commodities without actually wanting to consume them. You'll get manipulation and false signals all the time and things will be way more volatile than they need to be.

niko

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There is more to Bitcoin than bitcoins.

If a company makes btc profits only, workers can be entitled to a percent share of profits based on their position, hours worked, etc. Call it a co-op, an employee-owned company, or whatever you like. It would take some active involvement of everyone to manage things and renegotiate all pieces of cake when new hires are made or people quit, but there are historical examples where this worked (see worker self-management).
Bitcoin would further enhance things by providing necessary transparency and audit trail.

Example: majority of people involved decides to hire a new engineer. Everyone's share is reduced to accomodate for the new hire's sallary of 1.23% of the net profit. The net profit is expected to increase due to increased productivity, so everyone's happy.

bullioner

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The answer is that even if wages were paid in Bitcoins, they would not be a fixed quantity of Bitcoins. If wages are paid in a commodity whose value fluctuates a lot (such as Bitcoin), it would make sense to try and define the amount in terms of a fixed amount of purchasing power. One way to do this is to use a commodity price index for a basket of commodities.

Bitcoin, in conjunction with contracts using commodity price indexes, can thus come fairly close to what Hayek envisages in The Denationalisation of Money. Bitcoin on its own can't.

Though the large fiat currencies lose lots of value over time, they're not all that volatile, normally only losing a few percent of their value per year. Wages defined in these fiats thus tend to lose a few percent a year in value in real terms automatically. This tends to be manageable because of the smoothness, lowish annual rate of change, and ability to negotiate new rates from time to time. Bitcoin, gold, or anything with a fixed amount in existence, is unlikely to be suitable for fixing wages in directly, because their value will naturally be more volatile.

memvola

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Quote from: markm on February 09, 2013, 10:30:50 AM

Its not about stability, its about saving your precious bitcoins and spending stuff that loses value constantly by design ("demurrage") so as to try to force it to be better for spending than for saving. (Everyone wants to get rid of it as it devalues b y about 5% per year. So give it out to the working class as pocket money for wages, let them (try to) buy bitcoins with it if they want to save, or food clothing shelter with it if they want food clothing shelter...

That's why I'm asking. If Freicoin ends up to be volatile as a consequence of its nature, it won't be suitable for goods, which would make it unsuitable for wages. I think vendors would prefer pricing in BTC rather than freicoins, which defeats the purpose of denominating wages in Freicoin.

Mike Christ

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Quote from: dree12 on February 09, 2013, 05:05:37 PM

You are ignoring that Bitcoin also has demurrage, though far less regular. Every coin will eventually be lost, most of them not purposely. Demurrage in Bitcoin can be minimized, but it will never be eliminated.

Someday in the distant future, we'll all be trading the same bitcoin and will have resorted to the satoshi Shocked

I think that's a ways off tho Grin

Also, I support the idea of working by the amount of work done. However, a lot of jobs in the services industry never have an exact amount of work for you to do. A security guard, for example, would have to be paid by the hour. Considering a lot of our jobs are being sucked up by machines and the only jobs left will be the jobs a machine can't do, an hourly wage or a salary would be only way to go.

From there, I suppose it would work relatively the same as today, except when payday comes around, you'll get sent an amount based on the time you worked to the code you supplied to your employer.

TooCasual

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You can't be Serious?!?

Quote from: oleganza on February 04, 2013, 08:55:33 AM

If you don't know how much the price will change in terms of BTC in the next X days, but have some estimations for the next Y days, then you simply negotiate a price within this timeframe. With an option to renegotiate later.

Another option: use USD (or EUR, or $AAPL or whatever) as a reference point if both parties agree. You can say "I'll pay you next month amount in BTC equal to X USD according to the average price on Mt. Gox".

Exactly.... (BTC's value of the workers country's currency - at the time of payroll)... simple simple.

thoughtfan

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Quote from: dree12 on February 09, 2013, 05:05:37 PM

You are ignoring that Bitcoin also has demurrage, though far less regular. Every coin will eventually be lost, most of them not purposely. Demurrage in Bitcoin can be minimized, but it will never be eliminated.

No, the Bitcoins being lost has the opposite effect than demurrage in that it increases the value of all remaining Bitcoin. The point with demurrage is that there is an associated cost with holding onto currency. By holding it it loses value. From what I understand in the case of freicoin it's as if the coins are slowly seeping out of your wallet to the miners. The purpose is to encourage people to invest and to spend; to give an incentive to its users to keep the money moving. Although I sort-of see why that might be a good idea I don't understand why people would choose for themselves to use such a currency over one that does not lose value. But that's something for another thread

dree12

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You are ignoring that Bitcoin also has demurrage, though far less regular. Every coin will eventually be lost, most of them not purposely. Demurrage in Bitcoin can be minimized, but it will never be eliminated.

markm

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Its not about stability, its about saving your precious bitcoins and spending stuff that loses value constantly by design ("demurrage") so as to try to force it to be better for spending than for saving. (Everyone wants to get rid of it as it devalues b y about 5% per year. So give it out to the working class as pocket money for wages, let them (try to) buy bitcoins with it if they want to save, or food clothing shelter with it if they want food clothing shelter...

-MarkM-

memvola

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Quote from: markm on February 09, 2013, 01:09:15 AM

Maybe employers can use these purported "problems" of paying in bitcoins to argue that wages should be paid in freicoins, with the workers free of course to use those freicoins to buy bitcoins with if they choose to. Freicoin seems to need some lure to lure people into it, maybe employers would be good people to approach about the idea of using freicoin instead of bitcoin, if only for paying employees...

It may not be deflationary in the long term, but is there a fundamental about Freicoin that ensures higher stability than Bitcoin?

Topic: How could wages in Bitcoin work? (Read 3217 times)