Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency

Re:Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency by djestrada on Sunday March 30, 2014 @12:36PM (#7496699)

While it's not necessarily true that our exchanges need to account for value in this nonlinear way, I think it's an interesting thought experiment to discuss ways in which our currency can express different aspects of the value of our transactions. I'm not claiming that Strangecoin represents the "true value" of our transactions; I'm simply saying that it's another way to model our economic relations, and looking at the network in this way might reveal salient aspects of the network that are hidden from view with other currencies. So I think Strangecoin really is describing some aspect of our economic relations, and it's a perspective that money often doesn't give you. If you trade me money, I don't know where it came from or what ties it has to the rest of the economy. But if you trade me Strangecoin, the trade itself gives me a picture of your importance and influence on the rest of the economy, and I can use that information to judge the value of the trade we're engaged in.

The low transaction cost of money is partly a result of how deeply embedded it is in our social and institutional practices. I don't think it is an essential feature of money itself; other practices might come to fill similar roles. I would also suggest that the opacity of traditional currencies to certain forms of value also has a crippling effect on our economy. Economics talks about these as "externalities", but they are best understood as values that aren't represented in our trades. I'm not claiming that Strangecoin can capture all externalities, or even that it catches the important ones, but only that it captures some dimension of value that is hidden in traditional currencies.

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Re:Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency by msandford on Sunday March 30, 2014 @10:46PM (#7499272)

You're right of course that the reason money has low transaction cost is because it is widely accepted. But that's kind of tautological; if it wasn't widely accepted it wouldn't be money by definition.

In my mind the low transaction cost is a feature in that you can make snap decisions (or in many cases not make them at all) without having to explain yourself.

What I mean is that if I had to itemize every gallon of water, every kilowatt-hour (or watt-hour) of electricity, every cubic foot of natural gas, every byte I upload or download, etc etc etc to come up with their "true" values I wouldn't have enough hours in the day to do 10% of what I normally do.

So I guess my question is this: at what level of granularity is this being proposed? And if it's anything less than "full granularity" why? What I mean is why should utilities be any less valued than phone apps? I need that first gallon of water WAY more than I need Angry Birds, so it seems to me like that needs to be accounted for. But that would be exhausting. I can't see a way for me to take this proposal really seriously AND not simultaneously want to hang myself.

I think it's an interesting idea to be sure, and it's fun to think about. But I really hope I don't have to tell everyone how much I like water or electricity or whatever.

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