Watching the amazing ups and downs of the CryptoCurrencies over this last week (driven, I think, in part by an understanding that the unstable fiat currencies run by the nation states are largely controlled by large banking and investors) has been sobering. Even the likes of Goldman-Sachs have said that investment in them is a better and more secure bet than speculating in gold. People have become overnight millionaires or overnight paupers, businesses have added the more well known of the Cryptos to the pallet of currencies they'll accept online or at the counter, and the nation states have, in general, struggled as to how to respond to these international, uncontrollable, and largely untraceable currencies. The Cryptos have become in recent weeks the thing that we were always told they would never be: Real.
Given that, and given that we're right on the edge of the blockchain revolution, maybe it's time: Time that We, the People, us huddled masses yearning to breathe free, us guys, used that opportunity to create something decent, a way around the dominated economic system to which we all seem enslaved. Something incorporating some of the best elements of social financing like Universal Basic Income, but minimizing the vulnerability to manipulation and monopoly, something like that. None of this is rocket surgery, so to speak. The blockchain programming that underlies most all of the CryptoCurrencies is available free to anyone on the web, and any programmer with a decent knowledge of C++ and yen to do so can make the modifications necessary.
Here's how I think it could work: We create a People's Crypto (let's call it, since I'm an Egotist, Mungobucks for the moment). You download a unique wallet similar to the ones used for Bitcoin and Litecoin and the rest. Here's the difference, though. Instead of the blocks being "mined", at the beginning of every month, your account is automatically charged with 1000 Mungobucks. You don't have to do anything. January 1, you look at your account, and there they are. You are free to spend them on anything you wish: food, rent, videogames, hookers, great literature, base literature, (or, of course, any of my books) education for your kids, tools for your new startups, single bottles of REALLY expensive wine, it's all up to you. Here's the catch: at the end of the month, the Mungobucks expire. You can't roll them over. You can't sit on them, you can't save them, and they can't be used for any financial investment or institution, because those entities can't own wallets for them.
But If I buy your poetry chap for a Mungobuck, something wonderful happens. When it's transferred to your wallet, it gets another month of life, another 30 days added to it's lifespan, and in that time you can spend it on whatever you wish. Spend it on a new bicycle and, voila, the bike vendor's account is credited with new Mungobucks, and those new bucks enter their account with 30 days of usefullness. The money MUST be spent, must be circulated, or it dies. The currency is created automatically (just as current fiat currencies are created by public expenditures) and destroyed by time (just as the current fiat currencies are destroyed, if you buy Modern Monetary Theory, by taxes).
It would spur entrepreneurism, it would fund art and education and child care and any number of positive things attributed to UBI, but without government interference or corporate dominance by financials. Might people set up multiple accounts to get multiple charges of Mungobucks? Probably, though it would be fairly easy to make that complicated and difficult. As long as it wasn't pandemic, it wouldn't matter. Would people accept them as currency? They'd be insane not to. Since I have them and YOU have them, why would we not both accept them for food or work or goods?
It would also do a great deal to address the gap between the elites and the rest of us financially, making it possible for human beings to simply live without selling themselves into slavery to do so. Now, there are doubtless a billion things of which I've not thought. There are probably a hundred pitfalls and potential failings (as well as an equal amount of potential successes and advantages) that I haven't seen, but one thing is, to me, certain: The current economic system, run as it is by the biggest players and the richest accounts on Earth, has ceased to serve the bulk of humanity adequately. Maybe, just maybe, the democratization of the currency system can go some distance in ameliorating that.
Besides, it would be fun to watch the big boys scramble for once.
M
Given that, and given that we're right on the edge of the blockchain revolution, maybe it's time: Time that We, the People, us huddled masses yearning to breathe free, us guys, used that opportunity to create something decent, a way around the dominated economic system to which we all seem enslaved. Something incorporating some of the best elements of social financing like Universal Basic Income, but minimizing the vulnerability to manipulation and monopoly, something like that. None of this is rocket surgery, so to speak. The blockchain programming that underlies most all of the CryptoCurrencies is available free to anyone on the web, and any programmer with a decent knowledge of C++ and yen to do so can make the modifications necessary.
Here's how I think it could work: We create a People's Crypto (let's call it, since I'm an Egotist, Mungobucks for the moment). You download a unique wallet similar to the ones used for Bitcoin and Litecoin and the rest. Here's the difference, though. Instead of the blocks being "mined", at the beginning of every month, your account is automatically charged with 1000 Mungobucks. You don't have to do anything. January 1, you look at your account, and there they are. You are free to spend them on anything you wish: food, rent, videogames, hookers, great literature, base literature, (or, of course, any of my books) education for your kids, tools for your new startups, single bottles of REALLY expensive wine, it's all up to you. Here's the catch: at the end of the month, the Mungobucks expire. You can't roll them over. You can't sit on them, you can't save them, and they can't be used for any financial investment or institution, because those entities can't own wallets for them.
But If I buy your poetry chap for a Mungobuck, something wonderful happens. When it's transferred to your wallet, it gets another month of life, another 30 days added to it's lifespan, and in that time you can spend it on whatever you wish. Spend it on a new bicycle and, voila, the bike vendor's account is credited with new Mungobucks, and those new bucks enter their account with 30 days of usefullness. The money MUST be spent, must be circulated, or it dies. The currency is created automatically (just as current fiat currencies are created by public expenditures) and destroyed by time (just as the current fiat currencies are destroyed, if you buy Modern Monetary Theory, by taxes).
It would spur entrepreneurism, it would fund art and education and child care and any number of positive things attributed to UBI, but without government interference or corporate dominance by financials. Might people set up multiple accounts to get multiple charges of Mungobucks? Probably, though it would be fairly easy to make that complicated and difficult. As long as it wasn't pandemic, it wouldn't matter. Would people accept them as currency? They'd be insane not to. Since I have them and YOU have them, why would we not both accept them for food or work or goods?
It would also do a great deal to address the gap between the elites and the rest of us financially, making it possible for human beings to simply live without selling themselves into slavery to do so. Now, there are doubtless a billion things of which I've not thought. There are probably a hundred pitfalls and potential failings (as well as an equal amount of potential successes and advantages) that I haven't seen, but one thing is, to me, certain: The current economic system, run as it is by the biggest players and the richest accounts on Earth, has ceased to serve the bulk of humanity adequately. Maybe, just maybe, the democratization of the currency system can go some distance in ameliorating that.
Besides, it would be fun to watch the big boys scramble for once.
M
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