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Interesting Link

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Merle Lefkoff-2

Interesting Link

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Interesting Link

Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Nick Thompson

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Hi Merle,

Can you give one or two sentences to suggest why it interests you?

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 1:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.

The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Hi Nick,

Visit our web site: www.emergentdiplomacy.org, click past our landing page, and read about Bretton Woods 3.0 that we're convening next year in Santa Fe. It will tell you all.

Where are you?

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Merle,

Can you give one or two sentences to suggest why it interests you?

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 1:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.

The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Guardian on alternative currencies.docx (42K) Download Attachment

Steve Smith

Re: Interesting Link

Good observations Gary, and good resources Merle...

I recommend David Graeber's "Debt: the first 5000 Years" by DAvid Graeber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

Whether the end-all of perspective on our current conditions, I find that his grounding as an Anthropologist rather than an Economist or Politician makes all the difference.

In the spirit of "what you measure is what you will optimize", An anthropologist is studying (measuring) a broader range of the human experience and therefore her ideas will be more oriented toward optimizing the "human experience" rather than "efficient and powerful economies or governance"...

I am guessing that you (Merle) are already familiar with this work?

- Steve

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.

The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Ahhhh. Now I see what this is all about. Thank you Gary.

It seems to me, oddly enough, that bitcoin has to do with our odd, species-specific tendency toward [what evolutionary biologists call] altruism. There are, of course tremendous non-zero sum gains that flow for trust but he who trusts, always runs the risk of being cheated. And people HATE to be cheated. I like the way your note threads its way between these two tendencies.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.
The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Interesting Link

So you think altruism is "odd"? I feel so sorry for you, Nick!!

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ahhhh. Now I see what this is all about. Thank you Gary.

It seems to me, oddly enough, that bitcoin has to do with our odd, species-specific tendency toward [what evolutionary biologists call] altruism. There are, of course tremendous non-zero sum gains that flow for trust but he who trusts, always runs the risk of being cheated. And people HATE to be cheated. I like the way your note threads its way between these two tendencies.

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.
The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

Gary writes:

“As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin.”

An obvious motive would be population control, and secondarily as a new surveillance mechanism. Displacing cash with digital currency could be a tactic to keep closer tabs on how money is used. What explanation do they give?

Marcus

Nick Thompson

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Merle,

Well, it is odd from an evolutionary standpoint. I taught a course for 20 years entitled “The Paradox of Animal Sociality”, so it must be odd. One could, I suppose, argue that it’s not odd at all, since the organization of any individual body, indeed of any complex cell, implies the suppression of the reproductive tendencies of the components that make it up. Perhaps “odd” is wrong? Theoretically problematic?

In deciding whether or not to feel sorry for me, please take into account the whole picture. I think that people are constantly teetering on two knife edges, one between good and evil, and the other between selfish and altruistic. So you have your evil altruism and your good selfishness, as well as your others.

By the way, I hate that word problematic. It suggest to anybody as old as I am that there is somewhere in NYC a cafeteria, called a Problemat, where one can purchase a juicy problem by putting a few coins in the door of the problem you like, and pulling it out, piping hot and ready to chew on. I have gone looking for that store in NYC, and never found it.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 4:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

So you think altruism is "odd"? I feel so sorry for you, Nick!!

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ahhhh. Now I see what this is all about. Thank you Gary.

It seems to me, oddly enough, that bitcoin has to do with our odd, species-specific tendency toward [what evolutionary biologists call] altruism. There are, of course tremendous non-zero sum gains that flow for trust but he who trusts, always runs the risk of being cheated. And people HATE to be cheated. I like the way your note threads its way between these two tendencies.

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.
The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
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President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Sorry, I don’t get the connection to population control. As to their motives for making competing currencies illegal, I haven’t read enough to find out why. By the way, don’t most countries make it illegal to use alternative currencies, or even bartering? I suppose the motive there is to enforce tax collection.

Many here in EC accuse the government of wanting to use digital currency as a way of monitoring people, but again I don’t know enough about it yet to comment intelligently.

Gary

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Gary writes:

“As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin.”

An obvious motive would be population control, and secondarily as a new surveillance mechanism. Displacing cash with digital currency could be a tactic to keep closer tabs on how money is used. What explanation do they give?

Marcus

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Steve Smith

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Merle -

So you think altruism is "odd"? I feel so sorry for you, Nick!!

I believe Nick's point was that humans have a capacity for a kind of altruism not seen in other animals.

Most cultures seem to have a strong potential for altruism beyond family and clan. Some animals *do* seem to show spot examples of it, but I believe a great deal of our anecdotal reports are more about our projection onto animals (e.g. Tarzan, Mowgli) than actual observation. I once watched a flock of Pinon Jays drive one of my cats to release the Robin she had grabbed... and while it *looked* like they were rescuing the Robin, at best they were rescuing "something that looks a lot like a member of our own species/flock" and they might not have acted as quickly or assertively if it had been a sparrow or even more to the point, a mouse? There is also the possibility that they might have just been responding to the Cat's predatation as a threat to them "by proxy"... clearly a higher instinct, but Corvids are known for their advanced intelligence among birds. I really doubt that Robins would exhibit the same behaviour... or that a snake would attack a Robin for pulling a worm out of the ground!

On the other hand, maybe (as Libertarians might hold) all of what passes for "altruism" humans could be "enligthened self-interest"? At least motivated by survival of the germ-line and possibly by extension, the clan or "the people".

It certainly isn't "odd" in a perjorative sense except for the most died-in-the-wool Libertarian sense I don't think. I suspect this is the use of the term you take exception to Merle?

I'm a big fan of altruism, even when I suspect it's roots being more selfish than we want to believe.

- Steve

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Prof David West

Re: Problemats

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

my own connotation would be late night television infomercials - "it slices it dices, and more..."

However I love the word. When I hear it today, because of Friam, it evokes to memory our resident Welsh physicist, raising his finger with a knowing smile on his lips, saying, "...aaah, but it is more complicated than that!"

davew

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015, at 02:45 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Nick wrote:

By the way, I hate that word problematic. It suggest to anybody as old as I am that there is somewhere in NYC a cafeteria, called a Problemat, where one can purchase a juicy problem by putting a few coins in the door of the problem you like, and pulling it out, piping hot and ready to chew on. I have gone looking for that store in NYC, and never found it.

And I always thought Problemats were similar to Bureaucrats... people who made a life's work of either creating or perhaps solving Problems... or more likely *creating* problems so we have something to *solve*! All of us on this list are therefore Problemats of one stripe or the other, the only disagreement is who is who!

I like your apprehension of the word better, it is somehow... ahem... "less problematic" than mine! Oh... and can you break a buck, I see a two-bit problem there in the machine I'm interested in!

- Steve

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

I wonder if altruism is more prevalent among women than men? It’s my impression that this list is pretty heavily loaded with dorky, geeky guys (speaking for myself :-). At least from an evolutionary standpoint, it seems that we XYs may have less to gain by caring about anything but sowing seed across the veldt, so to speak. Of course, even if that is true true, we are a heck of a lot more complex than that, and altruism has evolved in our species. Still, I wonder if it is more prevelant among women.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

So you think altruism is "odd"? I feel so sorry for you, Nick!!

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ahhhh. Now I see what this is all about. Thank you Gary.

It seems to me, oddly enough, that bitcoin has to do with our odd, species-specific tendency toward [what evolutionary biologists call] altruism. There are, of course tremendous non-zero sum gains that flow for trust but he who trusts, always runs the risk of being cheated. And people HATE to be cheated. I like the way your note threads its way between these two tendencies.

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.
The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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skype: merlelefkoff

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David Eric Smith

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

<base href="x-msg://1387/">Hi All,

I was going to try to write something brief that avoided ideological questions (which I have no wish to get involved in on email threads), and said something I hoped would be useful that follows from being careful about consequences of mechanism. But it looks like it turned into a TLDR. Rather than just dump it, I guess I will send with the TLDR caveat.

I do think that there is an interesting economics to be thought about here, and I don't know how much of it is being done. It seems to me to bear on questions of economic theory that are poorly developed. It would be nice if the resurrection of disputes about regulatory mechanism and goals, raised by bitcoin et al., were a gateway into a conceptual advance in economic theory.

<Anyway...>

0. Let me not talk about "digital currencies" in general, because they can have different properties that matter. Let me instead refer to bitcoin, because its particular algorithm which designs in limits of supply-rate is the starting point for the line in I want to take.

0a. Let me also suppose that the bitcoin algorithm performs as specified, and that it has the cryptographic security features specified. That permits a discussion of what a specific defined algorithm can or can't do socially.

1. With those assumptions, I think the main mechanistic feature is that bitcoin becomes a kind of not merely digital cash, but more particularly digital gold. The important mechanistic consequence being that the mechanisms for altering its supply are extremely limited (hoarding by powerful agents), compared to any form of money that has a fiat element, or to any form of credit in variable supply. Indeed, bitcoin is more-gold-than-gold, in that the supply rate of gold involves unknown factors, such as discovery or extraction innovations, whereas the supply rate of bitcoins follows a defined algorithm. The power to run cycles of the algorithm may involve unknowns, but they are probably of a slightly more limited range than the power to extract gold.

2. We are, of course, off the gold standard, in part, because governments (and by proxy, societies), have decided they want regulatory flexibility over the money supply that gold makes impossible. Who decided, why they decided, whether their motives are noble or sinful, is of course another infinite tree of emails, which I will not open because I am a mechanic.

3. HERE AN OPINION: I THINK the reason any digital currency with these properties is appealing is that there are groups within society who either don't like the forms of regulatory control that governments have over other available monies, or they don't like the ways those controls are used. (This is the way I think "mechanism specifies a large part of the available incentives"). For simplicity and brevity, I will lump several other things in with regulation-proper. Other social forces that come with centrally-controlled monies include the concept of legal tender and taxation (as Gary rightly emphasizes). I lump these with regulation because they are in a sense the context that makes regulation possible, even though they are different. We could use off-line currencies (cigarettes, tea, bits of paper with Elvis's unforgeable signature, jade) as money, and if we did, the government's ability to regulate its own currency and thereby influence economic conditions would be diluted or eliminated. Therefore governments promise to give legal protection to exchanges transacted in their tender, and not to others. In addition to regulatory control, by directing the economy through their money, they can increase the amount on which they claim taxes owed, and although this is a separate problem of identification and enforcement from regulation, it does depend on the magnitude of trade that goes via the money system.

3a. I believe there is some overlap in the discourse of those who advocate bitcoin-like digital currencies and those who want to go back onto the gold standard, though the two groups are not identical. If I don't mis-read, that is part of the evidence for my claim 3. above.

4. Back to mechanism: If the above are correct, then any sub-system of the economy that depends on a bitcoin-like digital currency will be subject to the stresses that come from an inflexible-supply money such as gold, and those will need to be addressed somehow. You may not like the way your government practices monetary policy for its money, but I think there is reason to believe that if you respond to that by shifting into a currency where that (or any comparably flexible) monetary policy becomes impossible, you will re-live some of the problems that led to the current situation. Hence one should recognize that a different response would be to try to get some control over your government and improve its monetary policy if you genuinely understand that the current methods are broken and you have a better algorithm. If you don't know how to do that, then you have admitted that the world contains HARD PROBLEMS and THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND. I often favor that conclusion, in many areas.

4a. What this means, if bitcoin operates within a system that also has flexible government currencies, is an interesting question. It sounds to me like a question with the flavor of a public-goods problem. The presence of a parallel digital cash will dilute any government's ability to provide flexibility that can be used for regulatory control or stabilization, and thus will put further stress against the money system and monetary policy through which that fiexibility is provided. Conversely, the regulated money will be providing "elasticity" (as the economists call it) that the digital cash lacks, perhaps buffering some of its tendency to transmit shocks through the economy, which a pure-digital (or pure-gold) system would generate in severe forms. That is a public service that, because its worth is hard to put a good metric on, it would be hard to charge a fee for, even if the holders of the digital cash weren't a bunch of ideological libertarians hell-bent on getting out of paying any fees or even admitting that they are the recipients of the services of publicly provided goods.

4b. In one way, a digital-gold-only system working within a fiat-currency system resembles a country that remains on the gold standard, operating in an international arena in which other countries also use fiat-monies, fractional-reserve banking, and other such modern mechanisms. In another sense, however, the two must be different. There was a period when the question of whether or not to use fractional-reserve banking as a mechanism to vary money supply was under active experimental exploration. London did it; it was forbidden in France, Germany, and Russia. The result was that what wealth could be accumulated by the powerful in France, Germany, and Russia was all deposited in the London banks. There are those who claim this was an important factor in the rise of England as a world economic power. See the bullet point below re. Lombard Street. So in a sense, selective forces seem to advantage systems with more flexibility over those with less. If one wants to argue that a digital-gold layer is like one country among many, one would have to ask why it has the capacity to free-ride on the buffering services of other currencies, to what extent this has analogues in extant international trade, and what would then keep the digital-gold system from being driven out of usage, as seems to have happened to other banking systems in the international arena.

5. How your money works immediately brings in the question of what your credit system is and how it relates to your money. In fiat systems, both money supply and credit supply are variable. I believe all societies are relentlessly driven to provide variability somewhere, and if they can't get it from the money, then it puts more stress on variability of the credit. If they do have variable money, then they have one of the classic problems of how variation of the money supply should be linked to variation in supplies of credit. Switching the two is called the "monetization of credit". It was the problem addressed in the 19th century by the "Real Bills Doctrine", finally put into a semi-functional form by Adam Smith, and beautifully discussed in Walter Bagehot's book Lombard Street:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bagehot/bagLom.html

RBD worked okay for almost a century of the Marine Merchant economy, but eventually became too simple to handle modern credit markets. What to do afterward became the subject of intense (and often, it seems to me, non-sensical) debates between the Monetarists in Chicago (see Friedman: Essays in Positive Economics

https://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC4QFjACahUKEwjl0LWf2-_GAhWGH5QKHbB2Crw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socjologia.amu.edu.pl%2Fisoc%2Fuserfiles%2F40%2Ffriedman-1953.pdf&ei=Mw-wVaXrBYa_0ASw7angCw&usg=AFQjCNEOoVQxqz3Op2NBhHQ_spu1U8_Plg&sig2=9yIIdz9crsuof9E6s9juQA&bvm=bv.98197061,d.dGo

) and the Keynesians of one or another generation.

6. BACK TO AN OPINION: I think the reason we face may of these problems is that they are hard. Money is, among other things, a component in many mechanisms to solve complicated coordination and information problems. It also gives permissions and thus frames the forms of available incentives. Inevitably it therefore becomes a component in social power structures. What its roles can be socially depend on what its institutional and mechanistic features are (tautologically). I would find an analytic discussion, which understands that distinction, and then addresses the different parts, talking about which things we have empirical grounds to think we understand, and which should be viewed as confusions, interesting.

<\Anyway...>

Eric

On Jul 23, 2015, at 3:23 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Hi Merle,

Can you give one or two sentences to suggest why it interests you?

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 1:30 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

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Owen Densmore

Re: Interesting Link

Administrator

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

Interesting point on Greece recently, via Italian language podcast (La Radio Ne Parla, RAI 1).

Italians flock to Greece for vacations. The east coast of Italy (Ancona area) has lots of ferries to get there. A weird problem popped up: the cash economy (which Italy shares).

The banks have been limiting the amount of withdrawals. Apparently this includes ATMs. But travelers have to be able to get a fairly large amount of money out daily. So Greek retailers and restaurants are now accepting credit/debit cards.

Thus the VAT, which is huge, is now easily collected if cards are used.

Another side effect: because its a cash economy, robbery is apparently rising. Any tourist is likely to have several hundred euros.

I really think Greece should stick with their "no" vote and simply stay in the EU, not EuroZone.

-- Owen

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

I wonder if altruism is more prevalent among women than men? It’s my impression that this list is pretty heavily loaded with dorky, geeky guys (speaking for myself :-). At least from an evolutionary standpoint, it seems that we XYs may have less to gain by caring about anything but sowing seed across the veldt, so to speak. Of course, even if that is true true, we are a heck of a lot more complex than that, and altruism has evolved in our species. Still, I wonder if it is more prevelant among women.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
So you think altruism is "odd"? I feel so sorry for you, Nick!!

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ahhhh. Now I see what this is all about. Thank you Gary.

It seems to me, oddly enough, that bitcoin has to do with our odd, species-specific tendency toward [what evolutionary biologists call] altruism. There are, of course tremendous non-zero sum gains that flow for trust but he who trusts, always runs the risk of being cheated. And people HATE to be cheated. I like the way your note threads its way between these two tendencies.

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interesting Link

Gary, attached is link to another good article about alternative currencies. I personally wish that Greece were out of the EU--they won't have a chance to recover otherwise.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nice candid response, Gary. And I read with great interest your earlier posts about Ecuador.
The thing to pay attention to, I think, is that because of the global failure of the structures in the present Bretton Woods system, some outliers around the world are serious about delving into the idea of alternative currencies for a new, more transparent, participatory economy completely outside capitalism. There is a serious grass-roots movement in Santa Fe around public banking, which may be even more interesting.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Digital currency fascinates a lot of folks, including me. A lot of folks also don’t trust it, including me. I have no reason that I can easily articulate why I don’t trust it. Mostly, I think it’s because I don’t understand it very well, and that, in turn, is because I haven’t put in the effort. Or, perhaps it’s more that I don’t really understand the implications of money, in general. It really is a most un-natural idea, when you come right down to it. It’s just a token that represents agreements among people within this other crazy thing that we have invented, called government, that legislates a monopoly on the creation of this un-natural substance (money). I’ve heard lots of horror stories about hyperinflation in countries that start generating lots of money (I do know that this is impossible with digital currency), and this in turn leads to people not wanting to accept the currency, which feeds into some kind of feedback loop until the whole thing (government, currency) comes crashing down. So, unless people really understand this new thing (digital currency), will they accept it? Will they trust it? I don’t know.

Somewhat pertinent to the thread about Ecuador that I started a couple of weeks ago, Ecuador is strongly pushing its own digital currency. It claims that all of it will be backed in the central bank by American dollars (which it adopted in 2000). As part of the legislation to introduce its own digital currency, it also made it illegal to use any other digital currency, e.g. Bitcoin. Some see it as a way of a backdoor exit from the dollar. I have many unanswered questions myself, including whether the software to generate manage the currency is open source, and if not, has the government somehow added a back door for creating more. Here is one of many articles in English about this.

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://www.coindesk.com/coin-center-bitcoin-advocacy-launch/#

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile: <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype: merlelefkoff

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Interesting Link

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

Eric writes:

Wow, thanks for all that!

“4. Back to mechanism: If the above are correct, then any sub-system of the economy that depends on a bitcoin-like digital currency will be subject to the stresses that come from an inflexible-supply money such as gold, and those will need to be addressed somehow. “

Of course, Bitcoin is the biggest, but still just one of many existing or possible digital currencies (some of them having the properties of gold). Others, like NXT coin, reward holding the currency rather reward mining it. If creating these currencies means little more than creating a protocol and supporting code, and building a community around it, then different systems of governance can be built around the rules, including the ability to have it be a flexible money supply. In principle, trans-national economies could emerge, and they could gain more momentum than the official currencies of smaller nations.

Marcus

David Eric Smith

Re: Interesting Link

<base href="x-msg://1387/">Hi Marcus, and thanks,

“4. Back to mechanism: If the above are correct, then any sub-system of the economy that depends on a bitcoin-like digital currency will be subject to the stresses that come from an inflexible-supply money such as gold, and those will need to be addressed somehow. “

Of course, Bitcoin is the biggest, but still just one of many existing or possible digital currencies (some of them having the properties of gold). Others, like NXT coin, reward holding the currency rather reward mining it. If creating these currencies means little more than creating a protocol and supporting code, and building a community around it, then different systems of governance can be built around the rules, including the ability to have it be a flexible money supply. In principle, trans-national economies could emerge, and they could gain more momentum than the official currencies of smaller nations.

Yes, wonderful. The concepts of ecologies of monies, near-monies, and credit instruments. I would love to see a serious push toward a theory of economic dynamics, driven by the ability to create, and the need to understand, systems of this kind.

I wonder (technically) what would be needed to see a productive direction into doing this scientifically well, and (societally/academically) what would be needed to draw a community to it capable of making some genuine headway.

All best,

Eric

Owen Densmore

Re: Interesting Link

Administrator

Whoa, our bailout was lots bigger:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/22/business/sizing-up-the-greek-and-american-bailouts.html?_r=0

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 5:59 PM, David Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Marcus, and thanks,

“4. Back to mechanism: If the above are correct, then any sub-system of the economy that depends on a bitcoin-like digital currency will be subject to the stresses that come from an inflexible-supply money such as gold, and those will need to be addressed somehow. “

Of course, Bitcoin is the biggest, but still just one of many existing or possible digital currencies (some of them having the properties of gold). Others, like NXT coin, reward holding the currency rather reward mining it. If creating these currencies means little more than creating a protocol and supporting code, and building a community around it, then different systems of governance can be built around the rules, including the ability to have it be a flexible money supply. In principle, trans-national economies could emerge, and they could gain more momentum than the official currencies of smaller nations.

Yes, wonderful. The concepts of ecologies of monies, near-monies, and credit instruments. I would love to see a serious push toward a theory of economic dynamics, driven by the ability to create, and the need to understand, systems of this kind.

I wonder (technically) what would be needed to see a productive direction into doing this scientifically well, and (societally/academically) what would be needed to draw a community to it capable of making some genuine headway.

All best,

Eric

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