The conceptual GeoFlux currency

[Radivis (Michael Hrenka)]

@Elriel

You could, of course, argue that using GeoFlux is in itself a choice to pay that tax and it’s thus not involuntary. This is true, as long as the choice of whether to use GeoFlux or not is voluntary. However, if GeoFlux became the sole currency used in the world, it’d stop being choice.

If GeoFlux was the sole currency used in the world then everyone would have chose to use it instead of any other currency, or instead of setting up any alternative currency, which would be a perfectly fine thing to do.

Don’t like demurrage? Create your own InflaFlux! Nobody will stop you from doing that.

So, comparing reputation-dependent demurrage in GeoFlux to taxes is really a totally inappropriate comparison.

@Elriel

It’d probably work better if there was a special “fund” in GeoFlux that was used to pay the basic income and reputation income.

I’ve considered the fund solution as early concept in QP. The point about flux currencies is that you don’t need a centralised fund. It becomes unnecessary, because everyone automatically generates their own money. What would be better about having a fund as intermediary? I can tell you what would be worse about a centralised fund:

• It would be a single point of failure
• It would create a huge number of unnecessary transactions
• It could be abused by those who have control over that fund

Anyway, it’s true that it makes a difference whether you do

1. pay into a fund that pays everyone a basic income
2. pay into a fund that pays everyone a reputation income
3. burn GeoFlux

Let’s see how those cases actually differ from one another:

1. In this case, everyone gets the same share. It’s a totally egalitarian approach.
2. Here, those with a lot of reputation get more GeoFlux. It’s a reputation based meritocratic approach.
3. Finally, burning GeoFlux rewards all holders of GeoFlux, except the one who burns the GeoFlux, of course. This could be seen as some version of “proof of stake”.

Anyway, it may be worth considering creating funds that allocate GeoFlux like in 1. and 2. That would create new possibilities for people to give back to the system. Anyway, it’s important to note that 1. and 2. don’t solve the inflation problem. Only getting money out of the system can do that.

@Elriel

If the demurrage is there to make burning more attractive, it erodes the freely chosen aspect of the act. Free choice is pretty important to many people.

Ah, I see. This relates to my thread

https://transforum.fractalfuture.net/t/what-does-voluntary-actually-mean/890

Anyway, it’s a weak point against a currency which requires voluntary adoption to work in the first place. If people hate demurrage so much that they can’t stand it, they will create something like InflaFlux.

@Elriel

Just bear in mind that this is the most vulnerable part of the whole system. Everything else is meaningless if this part has bad flaws. There’s also the potential problem that our ideas of identity might change, rendering the whole system obsolete. For example, if we become able to duplicate minds… or merge them. It could be challenging to make this future proof as well as fraud proof.

Yes, the “authenticity” system is the most “critical” part of the system. If it can’t be made to work, the conclusion might be that allocating value to agents is a fundamentally flawed concept – which would be a really crucial insight, if it was true.

Hmm, that makes me think about an interesting approach: What about designing some kind of “proof of difference”? Every new user of the system has to prove that they are different from all the other already existing users of the system. This will most likely become increasingly difficult as the number of users in the system increases.

I am aware that QP is based on a strong notion of “identity”. The future might become weird indeed with minds merging and splitting, or just connecting with one another in very deep ways. It’s not only reputation systems like QP which are threatened by such “fluid” notions of identity. Any (formal) (economic) exchange between two parties becomes problematic, if it’s not clear who those parties are, or where their boundaries lie. However, there is a system which can deal with a really huge amount of uncertainty: The human brain. I suspect that future social systems will have to resemble increasingly the operation principles of the human brain itself.

@Elriel

I don’t currently have any suggestions for this part. It’s at the same time the most crucial as well as the most difficult part of this system to get right. Backfeed doesn’t have this problem since it bases things on it’s Proof of Value concept.

But doesn’t Proof of Value need to be tied to a specific identity? Every system that is based on identities is at the very least prone to identity theft, and to confusion from future identity mindfuck. Nevertheless, you are right: Backfeed seems much more resistant against Sybil attacks than QP. The main reason for that seems to be that your influence in the Backfeed system is porportional to your reputation. In QP influence is distributed pretty equally, in contrast.

@Elriel

If GeoFlux had just the reputation income component and no basic income, it might actually share this property.

You are talking about PrestigeFlux here. It would be quite possible to have different versions of GeoFlux running at the same time. In the end, the people decide which currency becomes widely accepted.