Topic: Thoughts for an awesome future (Read 628 times)

To the OP,
Most here are already fighting each other on other forum under diff avatar/name for years. Left, right, libertarians, communists, anarchists. Same ol' same ol'.
Bitcoin is a paradigm shift on so many levels of "what could be", but it is hard to predict using the same tools, philosophies and mindset of the last century. We, all of us, see bitcoin as the solution and answer for the validation of our ultimate personal political beliefs, but i have a feeling it will not be. You see bitcoin is not alone and many other technologies are converging to a future Singularity. What then? We are merely witnesses.

But yes also knowing Economy 101 never hurts.

You've got some good ideas, there, but nix the social engineering.  For that you need 'enforcers', and things get ugly pretty fast.  For a quick intro to economics, try looking at Youtube, there's interviews with Milton Friedman there.

I suggest you take the opposite route, and look at 'greed as good'.  Everyone that strives for something better - a better job, education, house, etc...is motivated by the self interest that disparagingly may be called greed.  When you create government enforcement against 'greed' you only empower the greed of the enforcers.  The evil that you believe lies with the greedy capitalists in the socialist/communist model, is transferred to evil of government.  Of the two, it's far better to have the greed as a motivating factor in the private business sector.

And you don't want to take away peoples' incentive to improve their lives.  In fact, you don't want to limit it.

The book Atlas Shrugged was not a manual on how to run socialism....

Are you trolling? There's absolutely nothing automatic about it. You can't make money from interest if nobody's willing and able to make the interest payments. Money lending is a business like any other.

Education can't be free. Teachers won't teach if they don't get paid.

So, instead of making loans and charging interest, you propose... making loans and charging interest? You realise that's exactly the same thing, right?

So, you expect the employees to pay for the cost of running the business? Maybe you misunderstand the whole purpose of employment in the first place. Businesses pay for employees, not the other around. Who the Hell would pay to work?

Why would anyone invest in a business if they're not allowed to get rich off the deal?

We live in a world of finite resources. Unfortunately, there isn't enough food available to sustain the whole world. Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor doesn't change that fact. In fact, it worsens the situation by discouraging the rich from investing in productive businesses.

That 5 million is just some number. Could be 20 million or 200 as well.

But eventually there is a point where it doesn't make sense for an individual to own more money. So people start wasting it on huge car collections, five houses etc...

Of course the very rich people are not gonna agree with it because people care most about themselves, that's our nature.
But I am talking about democracy and the few rich people wouldn't have much say in that i guess...

the 5 million $ limit per person for a start
a nice car and a nice house maybe 5 million where you live so nobodys going to agree with that
if they have or expect to have more than 5mil

Yes I know it sounds utopian and that a lot of thinking needs to be done but it's very important to keep it out of the box.

Care to point out some things that strike you most?

Another thing you have to take into consideration is that just because someone gains interest on their money doesn't mean that they have gained VALUE. Money alone isn't backed by anything, and tons more of it is printed every year. This constantly devalues the dollar.

So just because your interest makes a bigger number in your bank balance also doesn't mean you're richer, over time. Bitcoin differs in this way, and will be a good experiment to see how a digital deflationary currency functions in our society over many years of use.

I think your ideas need a lot more thinking through. As utopian as they sound, there are so many factors you aren't taking into consideration (or, as it sounds, aren't aware of) that it's difficult to take seriously.

Keep reading and learning.

Well yes thats how it works but that doesn't change the fact that a lot money automatically becomes a lot more money. So the gap between rich and poor can only get bigger and bigger.


First of all education has to be free. No student loans. For the other stuff imagine a monetary system with built in demurrage that kicks in when you hold your money. So lets say I want to build a house and you have 1000 spare dollars. If you keep them under your pillow they will lose value. If you give them to me and I build a house I'll have to give you back 1000 in a year. That saves you from losing money and enables me to build my house. It also boosts the economy because people don't hoard money but invest it.


Yes businesses. But businesses don't have to be owned by one person. Businesses should partly belong to all the people who work there. And to the investors of course. That gives motivation and identification to the employees. The bitcoin protocol could be very helpful in that.
I could go and issue a new coin, let's call it Facebook coin. In the initial phase I give away and sell coins to people. With the money I now have I found a company called Facebook. It belongs to all the people who own coins now. Much like a combination of stock market and crowd funding.
I know this limit of personal ownership is hard to pull off in reality because greed is the prevailing motivation for people.


You do realize that you don't have to eat your money right? You can buy stuff for it like food, water filtration systems, start micro economies, educate people and so on... 

Okay, kiddo.

Actually it doesn't. You see, kiddo, when you put your money in the bank, the bank doesn't just keep your money in a vault. They loan your money out to other people, and these people pay interest on these loans, and the bank passes on some of this interest to you, and keeps the rest for itself as profit. That's how banks make money, and it's how you make money if you put your money in the bank.

Well, what does it mean to have a negative balance in the first place? It means you've spent more money than you actually own. But how can you spend money if you don't own it? The answer is that you borrow money from the bank. Now, the bank can't just give you this money for free (they're not a charity, after all), instead they have to charge you interest for it. This interest is the price you have to pay for spending money that doesn't belong to you. Do you understand now, kiddo?

But what will people do when they want to spend more money than they have at the moment? How will people buy homes if nobody will provide mortgages? How will people get an education without student loans?

Let's say a factory costs more than 5 million dollars. Who will built it if nobody owns more money that that? Who will sell a factory if they can't get more than 5 million for it? If there are 100 people working at a factory for $50,000 per year, who will pay their salaries? What will the consumers buy if the factory can't make and sell more than 5 million dollars worth of product? Clearly, businesses have a very real need to own gazillions of dollars, and employees and consumers have a very real need for businesses.

Sorry, I didn't realise half of the world could eat money. That changes everything.

Hey guys.

Not just since I got involved with BTC I have been thinking a lot about our monetary system worldwide and the system in general.

It seems like there are a lot of bright and kind-of-like-minded people around in this forum so I would like to share some thoughts to see what you think. I am gonna throw in my ideas about how stuff could be done in a better way that is more social and democratic. I don't have a degree in economics or anything, these are just ramblings. Any input is welcome. A lot of the good things to come will be achieved through technology that still has to be invented I think.

1) Financials

Our societies run on greed. Capitalism depends on greed because that's what drives everything forward. The situation at hand is deeply anti-social. Try explaining this to a little kid:

- We think wealth should be shared in a fair manner

BUT

- If you have money it automatically becomes more money without you doing anything
- If you have no money (debt) your balance will automatically become more negative leaving you with less money

How does this fit together?

--> The whole system of interest and debt needs to go. Also what about the 1%? There is no need for any person to own gazillions of Dollars, Euros, Rubbels, Yuan, whatever. Private property should be limited to some degree. Let's say nobody is allowed to own more than 5 million dollars. With all the money left over from the rich people who own more than that you could probably feed half of the world. With 5 million there would still be enough incentive to get busy and make something nice to earn money. I know that this is impossible to control right now so it's just an idea.

Bitcoin is a good start and it can do a lot of amazing things, like take power from the banks. But even if it gets widely adopted the underlying system still stays the same.

2) Democracy

The democratic systems are overly complicated and easy to cheat or influence. Technology will enable us to install a new form of democracy, the real stuff this time. The reason why there is no direct vote by the public for a lot of stuff is that the logistics for that used to be overwhelming. You have to send a letter to everybody and have people come to a place to drop their vote and so on. In Switzerland they actually do a lot of public votes on important questions and it works because it's a really small country. Now with the internet this should also be possible for large countries with a big population.
What's needed is a technology that is somehow locked to individuals but still anonymous. Let's say your DNA pattern was a public key and you would use that to cast your vote. I have no clue if something like this is possible but you need to make sure that everybody can only vote once without having to identify people. Maybe someone who knows a bit more about tech stuff has an idea...

3) Media

The media can't just throw shit at people and force them to consume it, as in traditional TV. It has to be streamed on demand and also produced on demand. It has already changed a lot, there is so much good stuff available on the internet.
One important idea I think is peer-funded content where you really support the stuff you like instead of paying a flat fee to some network. This also flattens the hierarchy and makes it harder for someone to own or influence the whole network. Just look at how many awesome documentaries were made possible through Kickstarter and the likes...

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I'll probably add to this later, maybe you have some ideas as well how to awesomize our little planet so that when someday the aliens land they won't laugh at us too hard but maybe give us a high-five.