Thursday, May 23, 2013

Physical Money and Virtual Money

Virtual things (objects) exist in the conceptual world just like physical things (objects) exist in the natural world.  When real things are modeled in the virtual world their properties are extracted to the conceptual level but equal to its properties in the physical world and applied to its virtual thing.  Relationships among virtual things are also extracted and modeled in the virtual world.  This is called a virtual model of a real thing. 

Once real things are modeled exactly in the virtual world they can be managed exactly like the real objects with results equal to managing the real objects or they and their relationships to other objects can be manipulated to any degree of connection to their physical object association relationships.  Actions between virtual objects may also be manipulated to any degree not possible in the physical world.

Virtual reality opens a world of new doors to conceptual management of real things as well as increased management of purely conceptual things.

For example:  What if all the money in the USA today was paper money (this is all "what if" so coins are not considered).  Money we call US Dollars.  US Dollars that we acquire and spend as legal tender.  Denominations on a single piece of paper in the amounts of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 make it easier to carry around.  Ahh....but: That is a leap into the virtual world of a single piece of paper having a variable virtual value!  To develop the example, let's set it up so things in the physical world relate as directly as possible to their existence as modeled virtual things.

In this example of modeling the physical dollar to the virtual dollar, all dollars have the value of One Dollar.  Makes it simple.  All the dollars we acquire and spend are One Dollar Bills.  The number One would not even have to be on the dollar.  That is the only kind of dollar.  One is a virtual concept that is not necessary.  The dollar is simply a single piece of paper that cannot be duplicated (legally or actually) with a serial number on it that makes it unique among all the dollars in the world.  Since it cannot be duplicated, there is no other dollar in the world with the same serial number.

To be continued when I have time..........but if you read any of my prior stuff then you know where this is going.........

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Its the Money---Stupid: Pigs Can't Fly

The problem with money is..........the Money!  It is the Money, stupid!

It is the Money.    The thing called money.   That is the heart of the problem.  Not what money does, in other worlds, what is done with the thing called money.  For those that do not get the point:  It is about the noun thing called money, not about the verb stuff that money does.  If a thing does not have the inherent capability to do something incorporated in the essential nature of its "thingness" then it cannot do it.  For example:  Pigs can't fly!

In an attempt to make it really, really simple:  A pig is a physical thing.  It does not have the ability to do something like fly as does a bird because it does not have that capability to fly.  It was not designed into the nature of a pig by......guess who?  Nature!  Or, whatever pseudonym you prefer for "Nature"

Money is not a pig, even if piggish things can be done with money.  Money is a conceptual thing, not a physical thing.  A fundamentally conceptual thing that we associate with a physical media.  In the evolution of money it is increasingly associated with a representation of a physical thing.  Its mostly all digital now.  Associated with the last vestige of physical representation of an electrical charge of plus or minus in an electronic digital system.

We the people have created the conceptual thing called money.  We designed into its nature its inherent capabilities as a thing in its evolutionary developmental progress since the concept was born as an original idea in the mind of the first person to have that wonder of creation of something from nothing flash in their mind.  Might have been the first person to invent the wheel.

The capability of money to do something (or not do something) depends on the inherent nature of its design as a conceptual thing.  If we don't like what it does or does not do then we change that by changing what money is, what it does or does not do then is a simple result of its inherent nature.

If money does or does not do what is desired to be done and what it does or does not do  is systemically contrary to its most basic purpose but beneficial to a sub set of special interest the only way to change what it does/doesn't do is simply change the nature of what money is to preclude the negative possibility of what it can do.

The negative result of what money does is obvious by its very result and our evaluation of the common good.  Money is as money does.  However to connect what money does to the nature of what it is and changing that nature in some ways (removing its wings or adding them) is complicated.  Not just complicated.  Impossible.

Impossible.  Impossible.  Something that cannot be done because money is not defined as a thing, a conceptual thing associated with some essential thing with unique inherent attributes of its own.  The concept of money has been defined as  the transaction and the nature of of traded things involved in that transaction giving "value" to the medium of exchange. Money is therefore stripped of any inherent unique attributes other than value derived from an action.  The supreme definition of what money "is" therefore becomes what money "does".

Impossible to come to grips with what anything "is" when all that can be grasped is what money does.  It is like trying to herd cats or make pigs fly.

When units of money become a conceptual digital thing with each unit having a unique identifying serial number in a controlled total universe of uniquely numbered digital dollars all associated with a current uniquely identified owner and having knowledge of all past owners and transaction information related to change of ownership then money becomes a thing with inherent abilities that can be defined and controlled to make money do what we want it to do.  We then control money and can therefore control what money does.  In this system, money becomes a fixed object of conceptual substance.  A fixed record with existence that does not pass from owner to owner in transactions.  Only the identity of the current owner changes on the fixed uniquely serialized digital dollar with a value of 1 dollar.

The owner of all dollars?  All of us, collectively.  All our dollars.

Perpetuate the system of defining and controlling money by what it does and we will never solve the problems of that concept of money.  Those that benefit from that definition of money in terms of what it does or changing the nature of money by tinkering with what it is must defend the system from changing the nature and inherent attributes of what money is.   They must defend and perpetuate the failure to define what money is, to make the nature of money as a conceptual thing so obscure that it cannot be touched or defined in terms of a thing but only by what that thing does.  Always a carrot on the end of a stick that we perpetually chase and try to capture control of by what we do.  They control the true nature and attributes of what money is to the extent that nobody really knows exactly what money is.

We may think we know what money is.  It is no thing by design.  It is only the subsiderary conceptual child result of a parent action called a transaction.  We chase the dollar at the end of the stick.  The dollar that was created only by virtue of the fact that we chase it.

At that rate we will forever run in circles to the amusement and enrichment of those that created the money system built upon and defined by what money is and what money does.

The economy is what money does.

Saying "Its the Economy, Stupid"  is both the most stupid or clever thing to say to control the public perception of what money is by spinning or bending that perception to what money does.  What money does is the economy.  What money really is... that is something else but only  the man behind the curtain knows that.....until the curtain is pulled back.

Money is a deception.  A deception of perception perpetrated by the deceivers for their benefit.

The money problem, what money does,  can be solved when money becomes a thing when and where the following system exists:

Money becomes a uniquely serialized digital dollar with a value of one in a finite controlled universe of all uniquely serialized digital dollars in a system where each uniquely identified current owner of each uniquely identified digital dollar is known in real time.  The uniquely serialized digital dollar exists as a fundamental conceptual unchanging thing where the owner of the fixed unique dollar record changes as a function of an exchange transaction between owners.

All digital dollars know the current uniquely identified owner and the owner's related information as well as all past owners and related transaction information.  All owners know each dollar they own by its unique serial number and information about all dollars in the system.  All owners can validate and know the identity of all other uniquely identified current owners of users of the system if and when they choose to make transactions with those owners to transfer ownership of the unique dollar to a new owner in an exchange transaction.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Another View of Printing Money

Printing Money is not a simple thing!

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/05/as-reminder-fed-is-not-printing-money.html

What money is......it is not confusing.

What money does...what can be done with what money is.....now that is very confusing.....

Make what money money is....meaning define the thing, make it a concrete conceptual thing upon which to structure what it does and the entire system become transparent.  As transparent as our computer operating system an the application programs that use it to do something.  Complex, yes, absolutely, but they can be understood, analyzed in detail like a watch and its workings, by those with the ability to do that.

The current money system cannot be understood nor analyzed.  It will not be until what money is....what the money thing is...becomes defined.  Money is not debt.  Saying what it is not is a start to saying what it must be.  Debt is an application of money, not what it is as a thing.


Thursday, May 16, 2013

What is Money? --Steve Roth

First I read this: 

The Fed is not “Printing Money.” It’s Retiring Bonds and Issuing Reserves.

 

Printing money is money creation.  Creation is making some thing out of no thing.  Money is a thing.

Retiring bonds and issuing reserves is shuffling money around.  Moving a thing from one place to another by changing its name related to some aspect of its nature as a thing but it remains money.

 If I read it a hundred times and mapped out the relationships it describes in a structured information engineering method then I might understand what is being described.  No need to do that.  It describes what money does not what money is.  No need to even read it.  Just read the headline.  Printing, Retiring and Issuing are all verbs!!!!  Can anyone get that??  They are verbs about what money does(All Verbs).  Not what money is A Noun).  After some analysis supporting the headline Steve says:

"Or, I would say, all of the above. I’d actually replace all three: there is something wrong with the (nonexistent) definition of “money.” But that’s another post."

"Another Post" addresses what money is.  The post is excellent

The Money Confusion

 There is no way to really understand what money does without first understanding or defining what money is.  What it is now in fact and what it should be as a basis for the information system design. I think that defining what money is, and that can be done, it is a man made thing, ends the confusion about what money does.  Money is the operating system.  What it does is all the applications that the operating system supports to be done.

Hurray for Steve Roth!  He says:

"I’ve been worrying at it despite (or because of) endless reading spanning centuries of money thinkers, reading that has brought me to the conclusion that economists don’t have an even-vaguely coherent or agreed-upon definition of what money is. No: saying that it “serves three purposes” — store of value, means of exchange, and unit of account — does not a definition make. Not even close. In my opinion, that fumbling tripartite stab at something vaguely definition-like actually takes us farther from, and obfuscates, any useful definition.
It’s not uncommon to find leading economists of all stripes — even deep money thinkers like Randall Wray — using vague, quasi-technical terms like “moneyness” and “money-like.” They don’t seem to have a tight technical definition that they can rely upon others to understand and use synonymously. cf., Decades, centuries of inconclusive argument on the proper definition(s) of “the money supply,” and the various definitions thereof."

This comment by "Paul" on what Steve wrote hits the nail on the head:

"This is a creative approach near and dear to my heart as a mechanical engineer. I generally make arguments myself based on principles of thermodynamics. Economics is after all a system and known systems are subject to relationships that re-occur in all similar systems in one way or the other.
In my view, traditional (read neoclassical) economics is a a farce based on fallcious assumptions has has no value to the vast majority of citizens. 95% of the economics curriculum should be jettisoned and it’s progenitors retired before they do any further damage.
Keynes was a true scientist of economics and his ideas will always prove to be true, although they can be refined and moved forward like any scientific thinking. Your approach can win the hearts and minds of science-based thinkers such as engineers, mathemeticians, physicists, biologists, etc. and future economists must come from people of that background, just as the great tennis players of today are athletes that just a decade or so ago were playing football or baseball.
Modern economists are little more than hacks or as Dan Kervick likes to say, shamanists.
Real world economics is more predictable than shamanism as it is governed by the “tyranny of the arithmetic” as Bill Mitchell would say, not magic."

 

 

  

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Privacy

Johnathon Turley usually says it straight, true and simply.  He does it again here:

Privacy (either more or less privacy) that benefits us, the general population, in any way from simple marketing to serious crime is the last thing that the "new privacy" does.  It principally benefits special interest sectors and segments.  Those sectors have the money and position to create and implement their privacy objectives.  The public has no institution nor funding to combat special interest privacy objectives.  Courts defense of privacy is of little consequence.

Privacy of information is a complex matter.  A technological challenge.  The public will always be behind the curve here, especially since Privacy goes hand in hand with Secrecy.

Washingtonspost talks about surveillance here. 

The Government/Industrial Complex is old school.  The new age way to control government and benefit financially from fears for our security is the Government/Information complex.  Security hardware has reach a peak.  Like peak oil.  In both quality/capability and quantity we have reached a peak.  The quantity peak is past.  Great fleets of aircraft and ships are no longer needed.  Planes and ships can now be built with technological abilities far beyond defense needs.  There is no end to the development of information technology in defense of the country.  No evident result in spending a great amount of money to buy information ability either.  There is no Jane's Fighting Ships inventory record for the technological world.  No parade of troops and weapons to watch graphically demonstrate awesome investment and capability.  On the contrary, awesome investment in information is something to protect with secrecy.  Information capability of means and methods are not something to publicly parade to wow us with might.