DeeLoaf

Today on "Lets see what happens" we're going to interrupt the US military supply lines. No more MREs for the boyz (n'girlz). So. Now we've got a million hungry soliders roaming around with guns looking for food! ......

LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

Use case for inter network trading in the simplest way I can imagine that could work

Bob is a member of The Warehouse Network (TWN)
Bob spends most of his days overseeing canning machinery at a local soup canning facility.
Bob prefers to be paid for his work in KJ currency offered by TWN.

Alice is a member of Farmers United (FU)
Alice spends most of her days overseeing fieldwork machinery at a local permaculture farm
Alice prefers to be paid in Human Hours of Work (HOW) currency offered by FU.

Alice needs some finished manufactured goods for personal needs. She goes down to the nearest BigBoxMart (storefronts operated by TWN). Everything in BigBoxMart is priced in TWH-KJ currency.
Fortunately for Alice there is a pre-existing relationship between FU and TWH.
Lets throw this out there: when 2 networks establish a relationship, or a link, the link should follow some standard protocol.
- each end of the link must specify the currency being used by the partner on that end
so for a link between TWN and FU lets say
TWN is going to be holding the inter-network account in KJ
FU is going to be holding the inter-network account in HOW.

Alice wants a can of soup from TWH. At the checkout, Alice needs only to have an account with a recognized trading network. If she does not have an account with a recognized network she can choose to open an account with TWH or link to her home network through GETS (_everyone_ is linked to GETS, and a few other different international clearing houses as well though GETS is the most popular and therefor the defacto), for the usual fee (GETS charges a small fee for taking on the liability when parties who dont know/trust each other use it to trade with each other).
So anyway Alice is a member of FU and TWH recognizes FU so the transaction goes like this:
The exchange rate* that will be used for this transaction is determined and must be agreed upon by parties of tx. (otherwise stop tx right now)
TWH will ask FU for Alice's public key.
TWH will ask Alice to sign a message stating the exchange of resources (can of soup to Alice in exchange for KJ value)
TWH will verify the signature Alice placed on the tx message.
TWH will communicate to FU using the standard protocol** that Alices account must be reduced by the agreed upon exchanged value. (computed in HOW for FU side entries)

On the TWH side, this transaction will move KJ out of the TWH<->FU account and into the BigBoxMart management account. (note all tx pushed through the till will either remove funds from particular TWH member account or from a inter-network account, and transferred to BigBoxMart management account)
On the FU side, this transaction will move HOW out of Alices FU account and into the FU<->TWH account.

* exhange rate is readily computable using a variety of means that will all yield some very similar result. My proposed method is to identify a basket of commodity type or comparable goods between two networks and compute their value on each side in each networks exchange currency. The difference in value of the two baskets will then determine a usable exchange rate.
**the OpenTransact protocol with a few small extensions to deal with real world problems, likely including the value of the tx in the agreed values of both inter-network exchange currencies

I _think_ this should address the problem of how networks inter trade. Really this is just an extension to OpenTransaction protocol which someone has already created.

Please identify flaws with this and propose your method of attack, so I can propose solutions to your imagined problems and countermeasures to your attacks!

Interesting. I was just thinking about this kind of stuff earlier :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww7OUUfjoBQ

.... But we have entered a new era of information sharing that allows the possibility of a stable, self-directed global economy.

This has never before been possible without the very real risk of mass famine due to natural or man-made calamity.

Now with the power of instant long range information sharing available to all we can absolutely and with total certainty solve the complete logistical needs of all humanity. All production can be tailored to precisely meet demand with carefully calculated amounts of spare capacity available to bring online in case of production shortfall(s) in any region(s) that we might be able to ship to.

Surplus was once good. But now in a resource constrained globalised trade context, surplus will be our undoing. Unfortunately surplus is engineered into the current world economic system as a fundamental requirement through the requirement of interest on banking system loans.

Time for some new ideas.

Price everything in terms of its stored energy value measured in Joules. Demur on hand inventory in relation to best-before dates. When best-before date is reached, product mustbe demurred to zero and donated for recycling (donated, allocated to become compost, or whatever is acceptable for the non-saleable commodity). Customer account is supplied with Joules from any number of sources that are participating in the warehouse network. Presumably customer is employed by some operation within the network and thus is able to earn the Joules they require for their living expenses. Land ownership has become land stewardship and therefore all Landlords are now permitted only to charge a break-even "rental rate" to tenants payable in Joules, which will generally only cover the cost of expenses related to operating and maintaning the propertie(s) in question. Corporations will switch into a break-even mode of operation and will not be permitted to make "profits". Shareholders must be content in knowing simply that they are helping to provide for the operations of some required or desired enterprise. All resource inputs and outputs for any produced resource by any individual or organization should (and will automatically be where possible) be reported publicly. Regional services provided to property stewards (water, electricity, sewage, garbage collection, etc) to be financed by operational fees that will directly replace the concept of property taxes.

With a system like this all information is available to everyone and there is no possibility for a parasite class :)

Best of all, if we could implement something like this, it could literally be dropped right over top of the current system. All the software could be written and tested and then on the day of unity action we pretty much just tell the banks and the corporations how its going to be. So in an instant the central banking system goes away. In an instant all your cards (debit, Visa, MC, paypal, amazon, gas station cards, store cards, etc) become switched over and linked to your Joules account. In an instant resource reporting begins to start flowing into the public databases. In an instant all your bank system debts will be forgiven. In an instant your monthly rent will drop perhaps as much as 90%. In an instant the price of food will stabilize. In an instant you'll always get the best price for whatever you are buying, wherever you buy it. And in an instant you'll start getting paid what your market value really is for the work you are doing. The only caveat is that if you are involved in an industry that adds little or nothing of value to humanity then you will likely need to find a new line of work.

Fortunately the warehouse network is happy to provide free high quality education to anyone who opens a Joules account.

If world resource production was designed (intentionally) to exactly meet demand without producing much or any surplus, we could take a stab at a mathematically correct economic system. There would no longer be that pressure and stress of having to appoint anyone to manage the surplus if there is no surplus to manage. All resource production in all regions should have some level of buffer capacity that can be brought online in case there is any reported output shortfall from any neighboring regions. The idea here is that if some natural disaster or whatever takes capacity offline in region X, that information can be communicated to regional neighbors who can bring some additional capacity online such that region X can have resources made available to it for import to meet its shortfalls.

Why shouldnt it make a profit? Because it doesnt need to make a profit. It needs to make exactly enough money to pay its employees. Fuck the shareholders desire for "profits" (surplus). My world doesnt need surplus it needs break even. My world is ready to STOP growing population and resource requirements OK. My world CANNOT TOLERATE the notion of ineterest/usury tied to the means of exchange. Ok your banking system shit is going to have to go away on this planet. You people call me naive but its you who are not seeing the way things are here on earth now in the year 2010 with 7 billion people NOT WORKING TOGETHER and causing a big load of problems for the earth, that if NOT REIGNED IN are going to lead to total destruction of all the life except the bloody cockroaches.

I'm watching a youtube video on the dymanics of the game publisher vs game developer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBg6L4H7WdE) and it strikes me that this relationship really, REALLY does not need to exist any more for anyone. Honestly if you are in the anglosphere you have access to the internet as a FREE publishing and distribution medium. Its important for the conservation of resources and the greater good that publishing companies (such as Electronic Arts) be allowed to die.

Take a file and chunk it out much like bittorrent. Except we are going to base64 the little chunks and upload them redundantly a bunch of public places on the web. Blog comment areas. StatusNet installs. Twitter. Facebook accounts. Gmail accounts. Forums. Anywhere that lets you store data. Scattered across the wild wild web and indexed into a single text file. But, you say, the index will be bigger than the original file with so many small pieces scattered redundantly. Interestingly we can have a layer of source list storage built in. Every addressable space can be given a 128bit address which can be mapped to a full wrapper/handler name and url fragment. These addressible space descriptors can be stored on the web and resolved by anyone participating in the network address resolver (kind of how people participate in DHT). So then the index file is composed of a smattering of 128bit numbers and the network will resolve those to locations where actual information is stored. Or something like that. I think its a really neat idea worth exploring if I had the patronage.