Monday, December 3, 2012

Money Meme to Build On

A meme is a thought fragment at its lowest, simplest granular level.  Its elegance is that an entire conceptual structure can be built upon it if it is good and solid.  For example:  One Man, One Vote.  Good start.  That, of course, was not granular nor comprehensive enough.  It became One Person, One Vote.  Three cheers for granularity and its refinements like 18 years old.  Progress made possible by a simple meme to build on.  Companies are People:  Hiss!  Bad meme. 

I think the meme to build a monetary system on is the uniquely serialized digital one dollar bill.  One dollar, one unique serial number.  Like the old paper dollar we could hold in our hands.  It is now digital but in conversion to the virtual world it lost the serial number, as well the paper it was printed on that gave it real identity and perceived validity.   It lost its singular identity.  A "real" true dollar that cannot be faked.  Good thing there are still a few around to remind us that there was such a concept as hard cash money.

M2 money only has "substance" and existence as a sum in an account and total of all accounts.  It moves from account to account in dollar sum transaction amounts.  What if a new "balancing concept" was introduced where every single digital dollar in the M2 digital universe was serialized at the one dollar level and it was associated by some means with its related bank account number and (total of all discrete single, same account related digital unit dollars) equal to the total sum in the related bank account.  Transaction amounts on the account side would "explode"  to their related serialized unit identities on the fixed unit dollar side.  New owners of the unit dollar would replace current owner.  The rule would be that all single digital dollars must have a related bank account.  A unique serialized dollar could not be related to more than one bank account.  Initially a government account.  Once serialized into existence the digital serialized one dollar lives forever.  Positive idea.  Taxes merely suspend a digital dollar in the government account subject to rules for when it may or may not be reintroduced to the active system by spending.  If there are not enough in suspension new serialized units are created subject to rules.

The uniquely serialized digital dollar meme introduces the concept of a fixed single, central record of money at its lowest micro granular level, the serialized digital unit dollar where the variable bank account owner associated with that dollar changes.  Where the single dollar does not flow but accounts do.  On the macro mirror image fixed record bank account side, dollars in total transaction amounts continue to be the variable that move, flow among accounts.  Both sides balance in a footing and cross-footing manner.  Balance sheet accounting concepts and their applications are entirely downstream on the bank side.  Either side, the money unit or account side, provides a best tool designed to its own purpose for system design, operation and control.  Banks for accounts, a monetary authority for the unit serialized dollars in those accounts. 

This would deal with big numbers of records as well as transactions.  However if you want to relate that to the scale of magnitude and speed of today look at the new IPv6 system.  It has 1 followed by 35 zeros of unique addresses.  Computer trading examples for speed and volume.  The magnitude of our entire system that is doing all this today.

Once money is identified at this unit level it is data, information and knowledge.  We can know where it is, what it is doing but most of all what it is at the lowest level of granular existence.  Accounts are aggregated money and created to serve an accounting system.  Money is not accounting.  The lowest granular level of the unit dollar is a component building block in an accounting system that deals in aggregates of money.  Memes are currently built on that aggregate of money.  National Debt is an account and has its meme.  There is no meme on the unit money side.  Is that what we need to create?

Our National Debt account equals our National Savings account plus and minus stuff.  The debt meme dies when the National Debt is translated to the virtual existence of single uniquely serialized dollar bills at the unit level that support, and is equal to, the total sums in saving accounts plus or minus wherever else money can exist in a balancing account.  I suppose this presumes a Chicago Plan type of asset money based system.

I only have a raw understanding of how economics or even MMT , which is better economics, works.  However I can see and understand how digital money works if it was serialized unit dollars at a central maintenance authority point and related to the owner in the bank accounting system.  I can understand my single digital dollar bills even if they are virtual serial numbers on a screen that I can count if I want to simply validate the trust I have in the system. Each dollar has, in effect, my name on it.  Even if I owe someone for the right to put my name on it.  That is a downstream debt account thing that remains after I spend the money.   I could understand and maybe trust a system built on, or at least academically explained, using the serialized digital dollar meme.   I am as c0mmon in understanding as any common man.  Fortunately I know that this will be read by uncommon minds that might grasp a pony somewhere in it even if it is in the fantasy realm.




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