[FRIAM] Smart-Contracts: was UBI

Tue May 11 02:12:56 EDT 2021

Steve,

*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?).*

I think not.

Smart Contracts and Crypto Currencies are almost a dream come true for
anarcho-capitalists; you don't need the state to have both secure contracts
and money.

What I say now is not to be take too seriously, I exaggerated to make a
point: smart contracts and crypto currencies are good for peer-to-peer
transactions in the spirit of "fuck the world, this contract/transaction is
between consenting adults, so don't interfere".

Let me add some detail in support of this.

*First let me address cryptos and smart contracts.*The way I see it is
crypto currencies and smart contracts ARE capitalism. It's dna is to
reduce the influence of the state and to have contracts and money that do
not rely on the state and central institutions. One of its main features is
that two or more parties can transact without any personal trust between
them - the personal trust is replaced by mathematics.

*Now let's address post-capitalistic socio-Economy. *
Well we don't have a good model for this yet (that I know of) but the way I
see it is that things like the list below will play a much more central
role:
* personal trust between all,
* to do things without expecting anything in return,
* use a handshake rather than a math formula for contracts and
* to have a trusted central government enforcing an accepted social
contract that is almost universally accepted
* to not have money

*Conclusion*
Instead of focusing on what is bad about capitalism and money, it's maybe
good to drop the labels and ask what is a good system for social good and
ecology. Ask how to fix the world, if capitlism and money plays a role in
it, so be it. What is wrong if it is good for the people and the
environment and there is a strong capitalist component and money plays a
central role?

My point is that money and capitalism are not inherently bad and/or evil.
If you start by accepting that you have to choose between capitalism and a
system that "fixes the world" you might not succeed?

If it turns out that there is a system that "fixes the world " without
money or capitalism, good.

But if it turns out that the best system to "fix the world" includes
capitalism, also good.

IMO Scandinavian countries are very both capitalist and also relatively
good for "fixing the world"

*Now my very last word (for now). What do I support?*I support a strong but
very limited central government with the following functions:
a) Have and enforce rules to protect individuals and the environment.
b) Raise taxes for this and for UBI
c) Within these constraints, the government should not be involved in the
economy
d) The government should not protect people from their own stupidity.
e) The government should allow smart contracts and crypto currencies.
f) Provided I don't harm others or hurt the environment and pay taxes to
support the limited government and UBI, the government should leave me
alone and let me do as I like and engage in activities with others on a
free-to-engage-with-adults-to-do-whatever-we-like-to-do.
g) If you want to be woke, fine, but the government should not be woke and
the government should not force me to be woke.
h) Society could be woke and put pressure on others to also be woke, but
government should keep out of it.

Pieter

On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 03:19, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> Yes! I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable would deign to chip in. As I understand it, smart contracts would do the banal computation showing how various agreements intertwine. So, if I've signed 5 NDAs with 5 different companies, 2 of which were founded by the same yahoo, 1 of which is a deep pocketed hydra like SAIC, 2 of which are mid-sized startups, all of which have different terms, what are the implications of signing a 6th with a new one? Trying to "calculate" all the different domain crossover, especially given that I'm only called to participate in a handful of domains, is a PITA.
>
> I think this would be a good early application.  I will keep my eyes open
> in the Catalyst <https://cardanocataly.st/> portion of Cardano (where
> they solicit project proposals) for anything afoot related to that.   I
> depend entirely too much on good faith, best intentions, and
> low-probability-of-occurence in such things (NDAs) and could easily find
> myself turned into a pretzel if they ever collided.
>
> But I haven't followed the smart contracts area at all. So I don't even know if the current meaning of "smart contracts" means what (I thought) it used to. I know nothing about Cardano.
>
> I would say that smart-contracts are more technical and specific than your
> examples imply, but both *could* be built on top of such...   and as always
> significant adoption would take time.   So far I can barely sign most of
> the contracts I need to electronically...  it feels so absurd to print a
> PDF, sign the paper and rescan it as a PNG.   I was warned by one client
> that I must NOT affix a scanned signature to the signed document, and being
> the scofflaw that I can, "printed to image" the PDF,  gimped my signature
> onto the doc, and sent it back.   If their tech people might have been able
> to see fingerprints of my methods, I was sure the bureaucrats couldn't.
> Of course it flew through.
>
> A similar *feeling* project was GitLaw, where laws were written with explicitly detailed, traceable revisioning.
>
> The late 70's DoD High Order Language effort was trying to initiate this
> with their straw/wood/tin/steelman thing as well as coining Ada (a pun on
> the Cardano cryptocoin).
>
>  The open government project back in Portland was great in the sense that they would hold hack-a-thons to assemble data from various Portland municipal data sources into a kind of dash board for citizens, all open source, of course. I only went to one, though, for logistics problems.
>
> It is satisfying that such projects are underway even if/when/as I cannot
> (logistically) participate (fully).
>
> Today I went "shopping" for seeds at the Tewa Women's Council Seed Library
> in Espanola.   I wasn't sure what they were offering though I did read
> their website thoroughly.   The "contract" I signed to be allowed to take
> seeds from the Library was pretty explicit about a bunch of things that
> could have been considered obvious "norms" and "best intentions" and
> "polite generosity", but the spirit with which it was all handled left me
> feeling good (not merely "OK") about signing it.  My hope was to be able to
> return more seeds than I took at the end of my growing season (or before
> next planting season).   The majority of the seeds were prepackaged from a
> variety of heirloom/indigenous seed companies from the southwest (Seeds of
> Change, Native Seeds Search, etc.), but a few were clearly locally grown
> and hand-packaged.   Even if I fail to grow these out well (I have a brown
> thumb and adobe soil) and return much if any seeds into the (re)generative
> effort, I am very happy they exist and are aspiring to what they are.  Even
> negative results (with me anyway) are a contribution.   It is a good
> example of a "gift" economy where reciprocity is assumed and there is
> enough leverage (one corn seed can yield several ears of hundreds of seeds
> each...) to make it easy for virtuous cycles to emerge.
>
> I don't expect anyone (else) to be familiar with Cardano yet, but I think
> it will become more and more relevant as the myriad *closed* blockchain
> implementations (and cryptos) gain steam based on rampant speculation
> (crypto¢ and shameless promotion (NFT auctions)) and more attention comes
> to smart-contracts, etc.   I am putting my energy into it (Cardano) because
> I suspect it could well be in the same league say as BSD Unix, GNU, and
> Linux in the OS world.
>
>
> On 5/10/21 1:36 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>
> 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/> <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/> <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
>
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