John, productivity is irrelevant. The Q is simply the number of Q required to get somebody to do something you want done. Be it a useless worker who is subsequently fired or as a brilliant performer who invents and produces millions of units per hour while he sleeps on a couch. It is the person's time that we buy. NOT their productivity. The standard is time. Not production or productivity.
I don't get it that it's such a difficult concept.
It's going to be a tough sell if you can't get it.
At present, it's almost the same thing, but time is converted to goods and services and how much people are paid to produce those is used as the standard. I'm suggesting climbing back up the chain to what really matters to people, which is their time. It is far more immutable than the price of a calculator or piece of software. There's no point in an infinitely intricate attempt to value people's time by using goods and services. Just cut to the chase and measure the value of the person's time.
Time is money. That's an idea that most people can relate to. Time isn't hedonically priced software and neither is money. Time is money. How much time we have to forfeit to get a certain amount of money is what matters to us.
At least I suppose we can agree that currencies don't have to have backing. The US$ is a free-floating trust in the USA's ability to hold it together and not go nuts printing too much [or letting it collapse into a black hole]. The Q is similarly a free-floating currency, based on the trust that the keepers of the servers will not pixelate more Q than demand can absorb. The trust would come because the current holders of the Q would be the owners of the company and servers running the Q. Mutual self-interest would dictate, just as in a democracy, that the shareholders don't vote to destroy themselves. Democracies seem to be universally keen on not self-destructing. They don't vote for their own doom.
Re the progression up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's very common that people who have all their needs satisfied become charitable and volunteers and otherwise do things without need for payment. It's not so common these days, but in previous decades, public service [without pay] was a tradition of the well-off, retired and otherwise able and inclined to do something for nothing [other than satisfaction and to 'give something back' - and perhaps some status in the community].
You are quite right that 'good enough' is not bad. But the nature of competition in capitalist systems is that 'good enough' is not always as good as can be and people see the opportunities and develop technologies and businesses to make things 'as good as can be'.
When, 'good enough' involves many tins holding various currencies, much exchange rate loss, waste of time, hassle, delays, and sneaky confiscation via inflation, not to mention the political implications of who owns the currency, there seems to me to be a large enough space for an interloper. Especially one where the holders own the currency itself [not just the money, but the company backing it]. The Kremlin concept of 'good enough' didn't seem to satisfy many - "Hey, we have several different shoe sizes - what do you mean you want different colours, materials and shapes? Are you mad? Different shoes for men and women too? The standard shoe is good enough".
I think there is plenty of room between the US$ and currency perfection for a Q to take a very large market share. There's even more room in the trash currencies [which blow up with remarkable regularity, leaving the holders with nothing].
It the US$ goes supernova, the fallout would be horrendous. The Q can save the world. Literally.
Mqurice |
