Saturday, July 28, 2012

More on Money as Social Media

Money is a social media that exists in the Information Engineering problem domain.

Speech and writing are social media.  They are the result of solving an information engineering problem long ago.  Sounds and letters were devised as a result and placed in the commons for all within a social group to use.  No benefit accrued to those that devised them unless they were controlled in some way like prohibition of certain words to be spoken by those that assumed the power to speak them or control the writing of them and what that writing expressed. Hurrah for free speech.

Social media is now more complex it is computer based and there are benefits to those that can control it.  Like Facebook, password entry.

The money system was created and controlled by bankers for their benefit.  Like free speech it should be free for all to use in our social system where we exchange things of value with the medium.  It costs bankers nothing to create money but when they do they control it.  They have failed to manage it for the common good and done great damage. They misbehaved and we must apply controls to what they do or simply take the power to create money away from them.  It  is a power belonging to the government in the first place.  Banks are children that cannot handle the responsibility or crooks that have no responsibility. We know how to handle that.

The Internet is the model.  Ones and zeros.  But when they are assembled into some order that means something.  all communication is done on a packet switching network that assigns a unique number to every single packet of information then sends it to the destination address.  That is how you are reading this but how it got there is all transparent to you.  I could explain it but......

Rather than sending money around from one place/person to another think about this:  There are only a finite number of  uniquely serialized digital dollars by design.  Always just enough.  Today there is no limit on how many can be created.  As many as needed to bail out banks for bad bets.

Instead of sending these new serialized digital dollars between accounts, they all stay in one place, the Fort Knox of digital dollars and the only thing that changes is the name of ownership associated with each serialized dollar.  We receive and spend the dollars one at a time changing the name of ownership of each single serialized dollar with a value of one dollar.  That however is transparent to you.  As transparent as the packet switching network that carried this email to you.

The small change less than a dollar?  Simply a small detail in the design.  Maybe we can give that detail to the banks as their only authority to design and manage.  Like giving children blocks to play with because they can't handle the bigger toys. 

Now...to condense all that to a simple idea. 

Money is like letters in the alphabet.  We decide how many unique letters there are in the alphabet then everyone uses them to do what speech or writing does.  Money is a trillion ( or whatever is needed) digital one dollar bills on a computer each serialized with a number from one to a trillion.  That is what money is.  Once created they never cease to exist, each dollar is owned by some financial entity.  Then everybody uses them to do what money does and ownership changes. They can use it to buy and sell stuff or just be a store of value.  Get it by cheating and stealing, but in a system where all money is "marked money" and a name of ownership is always on it then that makes it hard to steal or keep by cheating or to buy or do illegal things with it.  People are absolutely free to do terrible things with it.  Just like they are free to kill. However, it is a system where if they do then the crime will not pay in the end when money record evidence is submitted for judgment and the application of justice in accordance with the law.  Whatever laws we choose to apply.

Now ain't that democratic?  Pretty republican too.  What's not to like unless you are a bankster, gangster or some other crook.  Money is our ball to play with.  We can play any game we choose.

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