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Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing as "equal exchange" - respect instead of money



Hi all,

I further researched on the topic of "peer to peer money" which led me
into thinking about money in general. The thing that bugged me most is
the definition of "value" - I found that the concept of "value" is
actually just the outcome of the concept of "equal exchange". But
equal exchange is - at least for me - nothing that is necessary. For
me it is okay to give without direct exchange - neither real stuff nor
paper that has a "value" on it that gives me the illusion of security
that i can exchange that paper later. so clearly for me peer to peer
money has the same egoistic flaw that it follows the principle of
giving only for direct exchange. however, it still has some advantages
over the current system and _might_ be a step in the right direction.
however, i have something more interesting:

What just came to my mind was the idea of another - i think new -
concept. what if we replace money and value by "respect"? let's assume
that person A provided goods or services to person B. In our current
economy as well as in what i saw in p2p money implementations there
would be the need for a "value" expressed in some currency that is now
transferred from B to A. However i failed in finding a good way how A
and B could decide on that value in a way that A could do an equal
exchange with person C based on what he got from B, just because C
could have completely different ideas of what's valuable and what not.
So my idea is to drop the idea of immediate and equal exchange. The
only thing that A gets from B is a signed certificate that states what
goods or services he provided. Collecting those certificates can
create respect. Respect has no defined value and is anything but a
guarantee for something. However, C can now decide to support A just
because he thinks that what A did was good, and can now get a
certificate from (the highly respected) A. seeing C'scertifiate from A
could now animate D to help C. This would be a highly democratic
system because people could directly support good actions. If someone
does something he gets nothing but the certificate that he did that.
But if he does something that many people think is good this is
everything he needs to get something back.

So imagine - I am a programmer. Let's assume i coded some useful
plugin for mozilla firefox and people who like what i did start
signing me certificates. Now i go to the bakery. The baker of course
cannot directly evaluate what i did but he sees my certificates that i
got from people who liked what i did and gives me some bread. so i
give him a certificate of mine and he has gained respect, too.
but a larger impediment is that _everyone_ needs food. every day. so
the baker cannot check everyone's respect - this would take too much
time. so what if i were a baker? i would do the following: i'd start
the initiative myself. i'd start baking bread and giving it to others,
accepting certificates from everyone. theoretically feeding a person
should give me respect independent of who this person is. problem
solved. i could now use my gained respect for some extraordinary
things.

hm.. still no one could stop me from requesting much stuff from
different people or from spoiling goods, the system cannot prevent
this because we already dropped the illusion of "equal exchange".
acting selfish would be easy - but dangerous! if someone discovers my
bad behaviour, people would not like to accept certificates from me
-which would be very bad for me.

this idea seems quite solid. what do you think?

Best Regards,

Stefan
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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