[FRIAM] rhizo narratology

Thu Mar 24 23:20:45 EDT 2022

These are simply protocols, and protocols can evolve.  Ethereum is in the process of  (fundamentally) changing from Proof Of Work to Proof Of Stake.  Democratic policy changes have also been made to the money supply as well.   Making government imposed policy changes manifest as precise public code changes seems like a good thing.  No ambiguity..  https://blog.coinbase.com/the-technical-benefits-of-eip-1559-c41bb85f5924

On Mar 24, 2022, at 7:20 PM, David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:

 The Pod Save America guys did an interview with Elizabeth Warren, which crossed over into the creation of a federal digital currency, which I didn’t even know was A Thing at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYzP2Ax2cHQ

While digital cash was an application of cryptography, which I read about through Bruce Schneier, long before I ever went to SFI or met Martin Shubik or Duncan Foley or any of the others, the whole blockchain thing broke while I was there, and inevitably our way of talking about it got drafted into our conventions at the time.

At least as first advertised, the whole point for bitcoin was to create digital gold — a commodity whose scarcity would be existential and reliable, and thus anchor its definition as a medium of exchange.  But Shubik’s whole thing was that gold was a terrible money, precisely because its supply wasn’t variable, whereas the demands for money under stable prices vary all the time.  If one can’t separate the two, then every change in demand for quantity-in-circulaation destabilizes the price system, impairing its service as any meaningful “store of value".  Shubik sent me to read the old classic Lombard Street to understand that this had already been recognized as the reason the invention of fractional-reserve banking would inevitably take over from the Real Bills Doctrine of the mercantilist era:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Lombard-Street-Revised-Updated-Charter/dp/1907347070

The whole problem of making a money system usable, even _absent_ any problems that it was also being used for a speculative horserace, is having a reliable set of algorithms to vary its supply so as to maintain price system stability against purely monetary shocks, while allowing price systems to vary as reflections of changes in “real” relative economic valuations for underlying goods, services, or risks.  The tools for that were what Shubik used to refer to as a collection of “near-monies” (“commercial paper” and the like), and more familiar credit instruments.  My negligent not-really-understanding was that a digital gold would become s real tool of service when it was embedded in a fairly elaborate economic system capable of separating out the different streams of demand from price-system structure.

In the EW interview, she talks (naturally, given her expertise) about the need for regulation against either exclusionary or predatory practices, and I guess it is fine that that must be the zeroth-order start.  But I have never heard it come up, in the economic popular press or gab-o-sphere, that a control system over supply and exchange across monies and credits is equally essential, and understood perhaps more at a craft level than with any real theory.  If a federal digital currency were just added to the existing economy alongside all the rest that is there, maybe none of that other stuff needs to be invented.  There just need to be sufficiently liquid exchange markets.  If one wanted to take blockchain currencies seriously as wholly independent monies, however, it seems all the other stuff would need to be created, and we would be back to seeing a need for the services of a state to an economy.

Eric

On Mar 25, 2022, at 6:58 AM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:

e.g. one invests via Coinbase and gives them a picture of a passport, in order to register a bank -- a source for USD exchange -- then the high order rules related to detection of money laundering impinge on that investment.    I'm so crippled by particulars.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com<mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of ? glen
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2022 2:53 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] rhizo narratology

I am whipped into a state of enthusiasm by that phrase! 8^)

https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fblog.keithwhamon.net%2f2022%2f03%2frhizo-narratology-decentralized.html%3fm%3d1&c=E,1,yiRJUEshE3lYYIU1-nX1ml8C-lMv6taJcstvkaJNcpxtTW9H8vVhqQIB7XrhW24T3sf3xas0kA472aGj9WJv0yqdQg2ezW45wEd3r3hoX0akyid0V_4_OVj3kIU,&typo=1

But it raises an issue I've had with distributed ledgers (ala cryptocurrencies) for awhile. When fanbois use the word "decentralized", it smacks of (technical) bullshit. Sure, the ledger may be decentralized. But the only thing that makes the token decentralized is the market wherein I can exchange one token for another. That raises (yes I know I'm a broken record) the idea that higher order objects impinge, top-down, on their lower order constituents.

--
glen ⛧

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