This is a new view of the new monetary system I have been attempting to describe. To be more specific, it is a new point of conceptual entry to the system that facilitates understanding the system. To a great extent I have found this to be true: When we fail to understand something because of its complexity, the point of entry to understanding it simply did not facilitate subsequent learning and comprehension. Change the point of entry to a better one and all of a sudden: We Get It!
Try this point of entry to the problem:
Uniquely serialized Digital Dollars in my proposed monetary system are, in the macro analysis, the aggregate of all Digital Dollars that all money transactions in the system map to. It is the centralized macro address to which all money transactions make a call (send a message) that tells each individual dollar called: Change your owner from me to a different owner.
At the micro level which is a uniquely identified, serialized financial entity user of the system, called "Me" this is how it works:
I originate a call to the Digital Money System with a device or means that allows me access to the network. The device itself (because it is mine, identified to me and only me and securely in my possession) validates my entry to the system. Otherwise I validate my entry with something stored in my head that nobody else knows. Either way, I become connected online with the system, gain access ready to do business using all of its resources that available to me in general and those resources that are mine alone: My Digital Dollars.
When I buy something I send a message to the Digital Dollar system to change the ownership on a required number of my Digital Dollars (dollars with my user ID on them) equal to the total amount of money I am spending in the transaction.
The new owner of the dollars exchanged in the transaction is identified by a link between our two means of entry to the online system and therefore us as two parties to a financial transaction.
The Digital Dollar (DD) system takes the total amount of the transaction and applies it to the individual uniquely serialized dollars in the system with my user ID on them and changes ownership of those dollars to the ID of the new owner. Every message that I send to tell the DD system to do something must reply to me as well as the financial entity that I am doing business with that it has been done. This provides verification that action related to amount of money that was the payload of the message was executed by a method that the DD knew how to perform and therefore the transaction was completed.
Done Deal!.
This point of entry is an interesting academic exercise example of what the new DD system is and how it works. It is a good one but what makes it do its job of turning on the light (and maybe even producing an A Ha! Eureka! moment of getting it in a paradigm shift) is the comparison to a system that we already understand by the way we look at it as well as how we interact with it.
If we know how one system works and an new system is presented to us that operates in the same way then we readily understand the new system is probably only new in essence because the names of objects in the system have changed. Drive one car and you can readily drive them all...unless there is a basic difference like automatic or stick shift. Then it takes some understanding how one of the details works as well as how to interact with it to get the desired result. Stick shift is old school for those that do not know what it is.
So.....What old system we know (as well as how it developed to be the system it is) that looks like this new system?
At the root, the core of the conceptual system the new DD monetary system is the same as all the conceptual systems we have created. It is an Object Oriented System. Yes but if the essential abstract concepts of all systems are expressed by the the Parent Object that gave birth to all its Child Object Systems that do something for us in this real world then what kind of a Child Object System is this new "Digital Money System" What kind of a thing is this thing? Is there anything like it to use as a model to get a leg up on seeing what it is?
Yes, the "Telephone System" The Parent System system that gave birth in some way to all its Child Systems in our Information Age Society today.
It is all about calling up somebody, identifying yourself and communicating to them a message in real time.
Everything old is new again!
Used to be that if somebody did not answer the telephone call then they did not get the message. Nobody home.
Prior to that (in the time line of progress) people did not get a message unless is was written down and handed to them.
Prior to that they did not get the message unless it was spoken to them.
Prior to that, messages and languages to convey them were not a conceptual thing.
Where we are today is just a line of progress enabled by technology.
It is the same old story with money.
Used to be that if there was not somebody with hand extended into which to put the money held in our hand they did not get the money.
Before that the conceptual exchange was one of gift giving to establish credit for return of gifts. Some say that instead of that there was barter of physical object trade goods instead of money. All depends on how you look at it. Which came first? An exchange of concepts or an exchange of physical goods. We are what we are because we have a concept of who were are which makes us unique. I prefer to think that the concept of money originated with an exchange of gift creating obligations and that money was not debt owed by expectation assets owned. The greatest gift being the one that is given being the one that also has no expectation of return. Is that still true today? Let me modify that: The greatest gift is the one that is given anonymously which means that there is no possibility of return in the physical world. Heaven becomes the place where settlement is made in eternal terms.
Ooops, back to the main line of thought here!!!!!
I will come back to that and expand on it in the next entry.
What was that line of thought? The new DD monetary system is a child of the Communication System. A child of that parent system with a sibling called Money System born much earlier but having a level of development more or less equal to that of a sibling called the "Telephone System" born much later birth. Born at different times one progressed because it applied technology in new and wonderful ways to give us the communication system we have today. The other did not progress but used technology to entrench and perpetuate and enhance its established system and its objectives.
Monetary System --- Telephone System. Both communication systems. In the prior paragraph do you see which one applied technology to to extend itself in a manner that benefits (or does not benefit) our society today?
The Monetary System should have advanced like the Telephone System. Separated in a great amount of time regarding their birth but standing at the same start line in the early 1900's. The race was started December 23, 1913. How did each use technology to get where they are today.
Where are each of these systems today in the benefit to our society?
The Monetary System should have progressed to serve us like our Communication System. It did not because of what fundamental difference?
It is my contention that without that difference they would be much the same as would their benefit to society today. I am not sure exactly what the key difference is but suspect that it is in the basic design approach of money continuing to be a Functional System Design Problem Domain while Communications transitioned to an Object System Design Problem Domain.
The two systems diverged since 1913 as each proceeded on trend line of utilizing serialized units as the base of its structure.
The result today is:
The Communication System today is structured on the serialized packet unit. It got there by increasing the the control and scope of its domain through segmentation of its medium of exchange to increasingly smaller physical units in an analog system. When segmenting units in a physical world reached limitations, that barrier was crossed by switching to a digital world where units of communication could be controlled through serialization at the lowest possible conceptual level as well as the lowest possible physical level.
The Monetary System should have progressed in the same manner. If it had done that then we would have a monetary system today where each and every Digital Dollar unit in the system was serialized. Actually, each penny, but that is real world implementation of the concept that only moves a decimal point. It is better for me to talk in terms of dollars.
So.....Where did the money system go in terms of using serialized units of money as money since 1913. Those were the days of the serialized dollar bill in its various denominations. Our money supply was largely serialized physical units except for the fractional units of coins. Our Small Change.
The nation's Money Supply System went from highly serialized monetary units in 1913 to highly unserialized monetary units today.
The nation's Communication system went from unserialized communication units in 1913 to highly serialized communication units today.
If it was presented as a chart showing the progression of use of serialized units in each system then what would the chart look like over time from 1913 to now?
It would be easier to show the chart as average progress rather than plot it for each year since there is no metric on this in the first place so I will just speculate on how the average progression of each system would be and I think it would look like a big X on a chart axis.
One system going from a high degree of serialization to a low degree. The other going from a low degree to a high degree of serialization until it reached the packet switching network.
The more we attach unique identity to our logical conceptual creations at lower and lower granular levels the better we can apply them in real world implementation and application with associated benefits to our lives. The same is true of uniquely identifying existing physical things and giving them collective names and recognizing the their existence as discrete, unique individual identities in space and time at their lower and lower granular levels.
In the physical world we discover identity of physical things.
In the conceptual world of our minds we assign identity to create conceptual things and their structures. In this unlimited conceptual symbolic we assign unique identity to a conceptual object we create is the same way we assign identity for the things we discover in the physical world. Names and numbers.
Money is a unit with a name and unique number. Since 1913 there has been increasingly less money by that definition until there is very little of it today, about 3 percent and in the future there will be none as we go to a cashless society.
That is the problem. We can't understand it, can't control it, can't begin to solve the related problems at the social society level until money at the granular level unit of exchange is made to be a uniquely discrete object building block of the system.
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