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Re: [ox-en] Re: Open Money?



Hi Benja, Ernie and all!

Yesterday B Fallenstein wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
When you create the money in your network or community, you issue a promise
to redeem that money at the rates you set.  Your reputation in that circuit
of exchange is dependent upon you making good on the promise.  Your money
is your word.

So my creation of money is limited by the amount of reputation I have.
And this reputation is scarce.

Um... huh? Calling reputation scarce makes about as much sense to me as
explaining Free Software through an "Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie" (economy
of attention?). Attention is not transferable-- neither is reputation.
Thus it cannot be "scarce," and there needn't be an economy to regulate
who gets how much of it etc.

Wait a minute. We have to distinguish some points here. Ernie - as I
understood - introduced the idea, that in community currencies your
money is based on your reputation in a certain community. On that
basis I was challenging the assumption that community money is not
scarce.

So your comparison to economy of attention ("Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie")
is a bit flawed because by basing *money* on reputation, by
transferring reputation into money, you leave the realm of reputation
and enter the realm of money. This is different from what I understood
from economy of attention where attention if at all is only indirectly
transferred into money.

But that's only BTW. Indeed you're making a valid point:

I understand you're saying that to create useful money, you must have a
reputation;

Well, that's what I understood from Ernie.

everybody has only so much reputation; and therefore money
is limited.

Yes. And you're right in stressing the "limited" here.

In itself, I do not see that this argument in itself leads
to community money being scarce, if we define scarce as "there is not
enough to fulfill everybody's needs." I think it's an important basis of
Oekonux thinking that being limited is *not* the same as being scarce.

That is very true. Good point.

Hmm...

Ok. Let's get back to the example Ernie gave us. He wants to pay
people - in this case: programmers - with some money - community
flavour or conventional stuff. So he has a need for money. Ok.

Now he has the problem, that he doesn't have enough conventional
money. So conventional money is not only limited but scarce to him.

However, the same applies to community money. If it would not be
scarce, he would have enough of it to supply his need. But actually,
as he told, us he has not. So he can't supply his needs with community
money either. It's as a scarce resource to him as conventional money
is. That is what I wanted to point out basically.

The reason for this scarce resource seems to be - as I follow Ernies
explanation - that he needs to have a certain reputation to have
useful money. I.e. he may define community money out of nothing as
long as he want - it's just not accepted by everyone. Basically - as I
understood Ernie - it's his reputation which gives him credit.

I concluded that the basic resource being scarce in fact is not the
community money but *useful* community money - money which is accepted
by a relevant number of people. And the amount of useful community
money is directly based on the amount of credit - oops I meant to say
reputation - he has in his community. So basically the reputation his
a scarce resource.

Does this make more sense?

The question of uni/bidirectional flow seems to be a central one: If I
get something, do I have to give something back? I think it's
interesting to look at money from this point of view: In barter, one
useful good is exchanged for another, forming a bidirectional flow. But
as societies develop, this becomes more and more of a hazzle: The people
I have to offer something to will usually not have most of the things I
desire. Therefore, we need money as an exchange medium. Now, the
bidirectional flow has different qualities: in one direction go the
useful goods (Warenstrom), in the other direction goes the money
(Geldstrom). So the useful goods form a unidirectional flow.

No. What is flowing here are two different commodities. The use value
of one commodity is secondary.

The point in producing things *for* exchange is the alienation
inherent in that sort of activity. This alienation is the very basis
for all the problems we see in societies based on exchange - not the
scarcity of money. And so we basically need to abolish alienation.
That's what is done in Free Software and that's the very basic reason
I think Free Software is so interesting.

money is only going to work
if enough people participate, too (money that isn't accepted does not
buy anything).

You're pointing at a very important point here. Indeed exchange works
best if you have as much as possible partners for exchange - i.e. you
have a market as big as possible. That's the reason why most of
conventional currencies can be exchanged into each other. And that's
what is a problem with community currencies: If I understood Ernie
correct the usefulness of your money is limited to the people of your
community.

The fact that you may be a member of several communities doesn't help
much here. In the opposite it even multiplies the problem because you
separate your potential between different communities.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/


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