John, the important point is to separate the production from the time. Productivity out, human value in.
It's a move away from the idea of things, property, possession, land, territoriality and those eons-old biological imperatives bound to the tribal dominance hierarchies of our chimpoid antecedents.
Uncle Al is trying to still tie the $ to those things, via a basket of goods and services = the consumer price index, at a time when it's quite an amorphous entity, with productivity, hedonics and tricky measurements.
I'm suggesting ignoring the production as being the value and moving to the time value of the person. Namely, the median person. How many Q one needs to pay Mr/Ms median human to perform some task, or otherwise give one their undivided attention for one hour. That would be set at 1.
In a future economy, where cdma2000-propelled cyberspace and nanotechnology produces everything material we want, and most other stuff too, it'll be very difficult to keep the US$ constant in purchasing power.
Apart from that difficulty, there is the political problem of the USA taxing non-US citizens via ownership of the currency. Taxation without representation is a bad thing according to the USA. Giggle. There is also the question of why citizens of Earth would want to have a government running their currency instead of doing the decent democratic thing and running it themselves. The politicians, who are inclined to feather their own nest and do some pork-barreling, could be told to take a running jump.
Until genetic engineering really gets going and the definition of what is a human becomes problematic, making the definition of a human hour meaningless, a human hour will remain the most tangible immutable value we can lay our hands on.
Some say gold, but it's hard work digging gold and it seems silly to use something which is so burdensome when something costing nothing to produce can be used. Gold would constantly be produced and there isn't enough of it to act as the Earth's money supply. 6 billion people wouldn't have an ounce of gold each. So the value would be too high, making an absurd frenzy of gold digging. Which is an essentially useless activity.
We all know what it means to work for somebody for an hour. It's an hour where we aren't sitting on the beach, playing tennis, hanging out, snoozing or otherwise being self-determinant.
There would need to be a statistical sampling of pay rates, running constantly, so that the value could be kept constant.
I would be very happy to start trading my QCOM shares [or fractions thereof] for goods and services, via a QUALCOMM-produced cdma2000 gadget.
At present, the QCOM value is jumping around too much to be useful for everyone as a currency. That's because QCOM value is a function of guessing the NPV of a decade or three of CDMA and other cyberspace devices and it's purely guesswork, especially with stock options thrown in. QCOM is not linked to the value of a person's hour.
When it is defined as being an hour, people won't need to guess the value anymore. That's the value it'll be. Then it'll be more stable than the US$, which jumps around all over the place, in Brownian motion, pushed hither and yon by the political vicissitudes of 6 billion people with multiple currencies and conflicting values.
It would take some time to gain acceptance and there would be quite a tug of war. I'm sure the USA would fight tooth and nail to kill it off, because contrary to the Sherman Act, antitrust law, anti-monopoly hypocrisy, the USA is very much in favour of monopoly.
Uncle Sam owns the biggest money-tree in history and Uncle Al would not want to see it usurped by some Johny come lately. It would be We the Sheeple and the United States of Freedom versus Uncle Sam and Uncle Al. I think 6 billion of us could roll 300 million Luddites with a dwindling Greenback, unloved and abandoned.
You missed the point of being a shareholder. One would own shares in the company. Sure, one can live in the bush with 24 hours, but transacting those hours with others is the difficulty. The Q would enable transactions. People wouldn't be issued with a bunch of free Q. They'd have to earn a Q by trading with somebody who has already got them. At present, that's ME!
I worked for them and paid for them and now am increasing their value by coming up with what everyone on earth needs [other than WWII Japanese soldiers still hiding in the jungle somewhere]. That's a means of exchange. A friction-free, secure, no tax [such as hidden Uncle Al pixelation of more = secret stock options for him and his cronies], instant, universal, politics-free, independent, convenient, no forgery, no robbery, profit-making money system.
When people see it's a good thing, they'll want to use it. As people gradually adopt cyberspace, the market for the Q will increase.
Gold had its day. National monopoly paper money was useful, but problematic. Pixelated photons are the way to go now.
It is the 21st century you know.
Mqurice |
