<div dir="ltr">Steve,<div><i><b><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif">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?).<br></font></b></i><div><br></div><div>I think not. <br><br>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. <br><br>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". <br><br>Let me add some detail in support of this.<br><br><b>First let me address cryptos and smart contracts.<br></b>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. <br><br><b>Now let's address post-capitalistic socio-Economy. </b></div><div>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:<br>* personal trust between all, <br>* to do things without expecting anything in return,<br>* use a handshake rather than a math formula for contracts and <br>* to have a trusted central government enforcing an accepted social contract that is almost universally accepted </div><div>* to not have money<br><br><b>Conclusion</b></div><div>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? </div><div><br>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?</div><div><br>If it turns out that there is a system that "fixes the world " without money or capitalism, good.<br><br></div><div>But if it turns out that the best system to "fix the world" includes capitalism, also good.<br><br>IMO Scandinavian countries are very both capitalist and also relatively good for "fixing the world"<br><br><b>Now my very last word (for now). What do I support?<br></b>I support a strong but very limited central government with the following functions:<br>a) Have and enforce rules to protect individuals and the environment. <br>b) Raise taxes for this and for UBI <br>c) Within these constraints, the government should not be involved in the economy<br>d) The government should not protect people from their own stupidity.<br>e) The government should allow smart contracts and crypto currencies.<br>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.<br>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.<br>h) Society could be woke and put pressure on others to also be woke, but government should keep out of it.<br><br>Pieter<br><br></div><div> </div><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 03:19, Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>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.</pre>
</blockquote>
I think this would be a good early application. I will keep my eyes
open in the <a href="https://cardanocataly.st/" target="_blank">Catalyst</a> 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.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>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.</pre>
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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.
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>A similar *feeling* project was GitLaw, where laws were written with explicitly detailed, traceable revisioning.</pre>
</blockquote>
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).<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre> 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.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>It is satisfying that such projects are underway even if/when/as
I cannot (logistically) participate (fully). <br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>On 5/10/21 1:36 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>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 <a href="https://cardano.org/ouroboros/" target="_blank"><https://cardano.org/ouroboros/></a> (protocol/blockchain machinery) of Cardano and the Smart Contract language/environment (Plutus <a href="https://developers.cardano.org/en/programming-languages/plutus/overview/" target="_blank"><https://developers.cardano.org/en/programming-languages/plutus/overview/></a>) 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
</pre>
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<pre></pre>
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