Re: ECON: Eliezer's calls

From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Mar 03 2000 - 13:48:26 MST


Dan Fabulich wrote:

> > But the cost of using money declines just as fast. Look at the labor
> > savings of web transactions vs cash sales, for instance - and this doesn't
> > even take e-cash into account.
>
> Actually, it's e-cash that makes the complex barter scenario appear most
> likely. A big draw of e-cash is its potential ability to render central
> banks irrelevant by allowing individuals to create their own tradeable
> currencies and allowing the market to figure out the appropriate money
> supply. But when there is no standard currency to appeal to, all money
> exchanges of this kind operate on a kind of barter. (Notice that Eliezer
> was particularly thinking of futures barter when he made his "calls;"
> futures are, IMO, the most likely commodity to be turned entirely into
> e-cash first.)
>
> Nonetheless, this is barter in a weak sense. It's a money market with
> many currencies, a la the international money market, but nobody calls
> that barter.

With current computational abilities, its not a problem at all to abandon fiat
type currencies alltogether and make commodity based currencies: The Hog, The
Silver, The MegaByte, The Soybean, etc. all tied to their respective
commodities.

--
TANSTAAFL!!!

Michael S. Lorrey Director, Grafton County Fish & Game Assoc. http://www.lorrey.com/gcfga/ Member, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Member, National Rifle Association http://www.nra.org "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - General John Stark



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