Glen (et al) - I wonder if we (collectively) can discuss *how* smart contracts as being built on top of blockchain implementations can be independent of "money" as you properly (IMO) apprehend it (and it's limits).
I've been studying the Cardano ecosystem (weakly by the standards of more astutely technical of you here) *because* it is not conceived or designed to (merely) be the vehicle for managing an aspiring cryptoCurrency Bubble as the others seem to be (with smart-contracts an afterthought or inner-machinery exposed for civilian use. As I understand it, cryptoCurrency (ADA in this case) is the "reference app" of choice on Cardano for lots of reasons (explicitly) other than creating and inflating a crypto¢bubble, though I can't articulate them well myself. My NREL colleague and I are exploring how the Ouroborous <https://cardano.org/ouroboros/> (protocol/blockchain machinery) of Cardano and the Smart Contract language/environment (Plutus <https://developers.cardano.org/en/programming-languages/plutus/overview/>) and other fairly *technical* things about collaborative problem-solving environments. FWIW, his design/implementation environment of choice is Haskell. His teenage son taps the family $$ resources via a webapp which implements a smart-contract that captures the family values around "allowance" or more aptly "allowable expenses". I share this only for "flavor", not with an indication that it is anything more meaningful than a novelty reflecting his investment in understanding-by-application. However... I'm fundamentally *more* interested in how the same concepts (and machinery ultimately) can help us move on past a post-capitalistic socio-Economy toward something closer to it's close cousin Ecology which I believe would have a much stronger flavor of reciprocity, gifting and gratitude vs the nearly *required*??? U-O-Me nature of Money (conceived as IOUs, but distorted to UOMes by ?greed?). - Steve On 5/10/21 12:13 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > No, I'm not *quite* complaining about the reduction of money to a quantifier. > My objection extends further to the ability of any particular money (e.g. > wooden chits) to stand in, as a mediator, for what it helps trade. Your > espresso machine is not *merely* worth $1000. That is the reduction I'm > complaining about, a reduction that the accumulation of capital relies on. > > And, as I've qualified several times, mediating value stores *do* facilitate > transactions, perhaps even to an extent that we will *never*, could never, > eliminate it. As I've said since the beginning of the UBI thread, I don't > *know* if we can eliminate money. But it would be useful if we could > reintroduce more diversity into our media of exchange. > > But, I object to your assertion that we have contracts, laws, etc. to flesh > out the details that money doesn't cover. That's not *why* we have contracts, > laws, etc. We have those things to support the larger *foundations* of > society. That they support money-facilitated transactions is a symptom, not a > cause. > > Socially responsible mutual funds are one example of reintroducing variables > into the calculus by which we accumulate capital. Pressuring Georgia-based > corporations into making public statements about voter suppression in Georgia > is *another* example. Actually attending annual shareholder meetings for > publicly traded corporations, and expressing your opinions about the > company's activities is yet another way. Carbon offsets are yet another > example. Dave's mention of shunning is another. The examples of introducing > these variables are everywhere. That you don't acknowledge them when they're > pointed out is worriesome. You asked how we can trade contracts without > money. I provided an answer. You go on to cite a definition of money. Weird. > It's like a laser-focused attention on money to the exclusion of all else. > > Anyway. My only point, here, is to push against the tendency to do what > you've just done. By saying the purpose of contracts and laws is to spell out > additional details of money-facilitated transactions ... that that's the > purpose of laws, etc. is putting the cart before the horse. We've gone too > far, put too much emphasis on the money and not enough emphasis on the > otherwise mediated relationships between various parties. Money is a means, > not an end, a tool, not the purpose to which a tool is put. And like any > tool, it sits in a (large) equivalence class of particular tools, each of > which can play the role. And which tool you choose biases what happens as a > result. And if you don't deliberately *choose* the tool, just fall into using > it by accident, then you'll be biased in a cryptic way. > > If you still don't see how a complex society can get along with *fewer* > money-facilitated transactions, then I'm tilting at windmills. How many > fewer? I don't know. But some, at least. Asserting that because we can't > eliminate it all doesn't argue that we can't eliminate most of it. The > perfect is the enemy of the good. > > > On 5/10/21 10:34 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: >> As a medium of exchange, I think of money as something like a ruler. You can >> use it to measure things, to compare the measurements, and to exchange >> things for tokens of units of such measurements. Certainly, such a >> measurement is not a complete description of the thing measured. Is claiming >> that a measurement of a thing is equivalent to the thing itself what you are >> referring to as reduction? I doubt that anyone would take that position. So >> if you are arguing against that, I think it is something of a red herring. >> No one seriously takes such a position. >> >> Still, money is extraordinarily useful for facilitating exchanges that would >> be very difficult to arrange otherwise. Of course, if it's a complicated >> exchange one generally needs more than a ruler. That's why we have >> contracts, laws, etc., to spell out the additional details. I certainly >> agree with you about that. But I still don't see how a complex society can >> get along without something like a money-like ruler as a way to establish >> basic comparisons as at least the starting points of many if not most >> exchanges. >> _ >> _ >> __-- Russ Abbott >> Professor, Computer Science >> California State University, Los Angeles >> >> >> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 9:21 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> Using wooden chits *and* US dollars limits overly reductive conceptions >> of money. It's fine to play word games and point out ambiguity in the usage >> of the term "money". But it should be clear that, like with languages, >> having diverse types of money is less reductive than 1 type of money. I'd no >> more want to rid the world of Yen than I'd want to rid the world of, say, >> Farsi. Here lie many of our disagreements about hooking one nation's money >> to another nation's money. >> >> Options are contracts. You can trade contracts without money. We do it >> all the time with, say, "quit claim" deeds. While the overwhelming majority >> of these trades use money, my claim is that money isn't *necessary*. Of >> course, it may be effective and efficient. >> >> This conversation is about the accumulation of capital and UBI as a >> band-aid to help maintain a society under the tendency to accumulate >> capital. In that larger conversation, reduction to a singular, grand unified >> measure like a single money, like USD, washes away the variation in ways to >> store value. Storing value in Yuan, as opposed to Euros, actually means >> something (at least Putin thinks so). Similarly, storing value in a .25 acre >> plot of land with a fairly maintained building on it is different from >> storing value in gold. Although they can all be *thought of* as money, only >> a capitalist does so. The rest of us think, say, our espresso machine, is >> different fundamentally from our pickup truck. >> >> On 5/10/21 8:22 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: >> > As you say, your alternatives are "money writ large." So how does that >> eliminate money? It just changes its form. >> > >> > I don't understand how options further your position. How do you trade >> them without something like money?
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