I suppose such problems can often be worked around with clever wording and so on. But even then, I believe a "gold standard" or similar thing is far more easy to deal with.
Gold standard is already hammered out of existence by the LBMA mafia. This is a fundamental flaw in commodity standards - they get owned by the richest psychopaths.
Are you saying direct gold ownership is broken? I suppose writing notes based on gold is a messy business, I can write an infinite number of notes based on the same piece of gold.
Yes - and people do double-sell, but not too often. Paper currencies written on gold already exist in places around the world. with serious credibility issues. And always Mafia owned.
I just find that gold still is tangible. The "work for 1 hour" seems even easier to twist and turn into something it is not. For gold I should be able to demand to have my gold.
Yes - tangible goods command premium price. Which how I came to this. Originally I thought we could do it with crypto but crypto can be problematic. Goods in hand are demonstrable.
Btw, there are of course people who have discussed ideas along similar lines before. Info can be found in philosophy of Counter-Economics and Agorism (both have dedicated Memo topics).
Maybe I shouldn't have said that though. All I know is that there are these communities, and they "probably have thought of similar things, maybe not". I don't even believe Agorism...
works well in the real world (except perhaps in very small communities). If it doesn't, the ones pushing it cannot be perfect philosophers, and may send you down a wrong track.
And the idea of a "1 hour" voucher is still an "in hand" Value which can be negotiated. There can be a lot of wiggle room for both parties when negotiating for a "1 hour" Value.
And in theory the gold is in the vault, they cannot say "it's temporarily gone". Work for one hour? "No, this is a busy time for me, and I'm injured, come back next week".
And in the space of a few minutes their credibility is gone, and thereafter, the only people who will trade with them will require goods up front.. The cost of credibility is brutal.
Well, yes, though it could be that they are actually injured, and actually have a crazy week where they are pushed so hard that their extra work would be useless. But only that week.
Hopefully the free market can smell the difference between an circumstance and habit. There are rough edges that cannot be dealt with by rule-making but will involve learning-curves.
The point is not "this guy is reliable/unreliable", it is "this note is unreliable". It could also be that this week is the time that noteholder actually needs some work done.
... in which case the issuer will negotiate for equivalent trade for that Value. The concept is about trading negotiated Values rather than bartering for a specific item or service.
So a peasant from quite far away is in town to sell his cow. It is worth ~100 hours of work. The buyer has 25 notes of 1 hour work, 1 promise of a painting, 15 goat pelts, ... .
Each hour work note is from a distinct person. The peasant must then go to each of them, and find out what kind of work they can do, negotiate some other compensation, all the while
having to know what all these things are worth, and how good quality goods he can get from this particular note-promise-giver. Then he has to calculate the overall value.
I originally thought to peg Value to cryptocurrency, but if the internet goes away that possibility vanishes. The lowest common denominator available to anyone anywhere is Time.
And the lowest common denominator of Time is attendance. That is, not performing work of any sort but simply escorting people for a period of time. That can be an asset of some Value.
In the same way the market discovers a Value on the price of anything, populations can be expected to 'discover' a Value on attendance. This would be exciting fun to observe.
What I think you don't get is that something like gold, which cannot reasonably be considered to lose value, and has real value, is ideal. This is a very useful property for money.
I have for years understood that. It is ideal until people need food, fuel, and shelter. When a loaf of bread, pack of tobacco, and bottle of whiskey is worth more than a gram of gold.
Yea, but it *still works as a measuring rod*. If you need to pay a bar of gold for a loaf of bread, fine, then maybe 2 bars for really good bread. *Now we know the difference in cost*.
Most other things, like attendance-time has a very flimsy value. Does a baby have the attendance value as a reliable, skilled worker? Of course not, baby can have negative such value.
So now you have the problem of deciding the attendance-time value of each person, cause it really does vary. Very useful people do have higher attendance value than slobs.
Such things btw has been tried in history. If you tie value to i.e. potatoes, then people will start growing potatoes that are barely edible, cause they are cheaper to grow.
"Such things btw has been tried in history." ...by predators running government scams. It is a also a tradition with some religious communities, but it fails within cults.
I.e. it sets the wrong incentives. Same with man attendance. Also, if you do find such a standard, it would still be best to just use that standard. I.e. if Gold is chosen, then...
normally you use either gold directly or promises for gold. Not man-hours and the like, because then people need to calculate the difference, know the exchange rate and so on.
For man-hours, I would have to know the reliability of each worker in order to decide gold exchange-rate. It's better to call those "contracts", and have trained economists trade them
For man-hours, anyone would already know the credibility of whoever inked the note. It has zero relevance to the issuers muscle or skill or time. It is all about his credibility.
OK, I think this is the time for me to stop. I find the problems I bring up to make your setup into a mess, one which I would not like, and you don't seem to care. I suppose I should
kind of take your advice here, and judge the credibility of something based on experience. I judge your payment-system not to be credible based on our conversation.
... if you still feel the need to have them as an option for "payment". I.e. normal people will then not have to speculate on such values, but those who want to can.
I mean, some of them may be away when he visits or whatever, this can take a lot of time to sort out. Compare that with getting a stack of cash in his hand, and being on his way home.
Those notes are exactly that - a "a stack of cash in hand" when they are from individuals who have proven themselves with a previous history. There will be lists of names to trust.
Gold in a vault, it must be there at all times, or that should be the demand from the public. There should not be a "the gold does not feel good" day. However, now I think about it...
Thieves can steal from the vault, it is not 100% impenetrable. Vault-owners may seek to maintain the "illusion" it is by replacing the gold, but gold may not be there some days.
This is why notes are signed by individuals and not in the name of "entities". Business Entities are the disguises that malevolents use to prey upon individuals.
Hm, I was thinking more along the lines of "illusion in a good way", as in thieves stole the gold of a customer, let's replace it for him, cause it was our fault it got lost.
You are quite right that the trust that this helps building will be abused sooner or later, but my point was more that at least short term, "gold" is more reliable than "workhours"
One ounce of gold of purity x replaces another similar ounce, and when you got it in your hand you got it in your hand. Workhours depends a lot on who works, and so on.
I mentioned earlier, an "1 Hour" voucher will probably evolve to not be a work hour. It is just intended to be a valuation of someone being present. This has another usage: security.
I have to think a bit more about this, but still it seems to me "gold not stolen from vault" is far more reliable than "human being being able to do work of type x" both at given time.
Understand that the Value staked is never actually redeemed except in default. Issuers would redeem the voucher for some equivalent to "1 hour" job. They may prefer to give gold, or ?
In theory a bank could make sure this does not happen, and its reputation would be reason to trust it (more so than that of one person), but this too only works temporarily as we know.
My idea is for everyone to replace banks with their own offerings. No more banks. just honest folk with their own "promissory note currencies". Banksters may be scarce when 2024 ends.
There are many reasons to not want to be your own bank. And for not wanting a "promissory note" currency. I struggle to see the masses wanting this enough to overcome such things.
I sincerely hope it never comes to that. Unfortunately, collision between hope and current reality trajectories would involve kinetic energies sufficiently powerful to erase doubts.