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To: marcos who wrote (69804)	6/27/2008 3:34:36 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

They said my amazing invention of CDMA breached the laws of physics too, but you probably now use it: <...a fiat money that works as both medium of exchange and store of value, our failure to accomplish this is shocking, embarrassing ... nevertheless, we haven't, and aren't about to, and that's the way it is> That's the way it was, not the way it will be, but it is the way it is. But "is" is an ephemeral period of time. 100 years ago, how many of the things which are taken for granted today would have been considered not just absurdly impossible but totally off the planet, of which many literally are? The achievement of space flight and Globalstar's telecommunications, GPS and hand-held mapping would have been scoffed at as ridiculous science fiction if anyone could even have imagined it. I was going to issue the first Qi a few weeks ago, but I get side-tracked easily [playing with grandchildren, fiddling with Zenbu and one thing and another, such as ranting in cyberspace]. The prototype is ready to go, so I'll do a beta issue and make sure it works as expected before scaling up. On the beauty and horror of value created out of thin air, it's really not that horrible at all. In fact, it's pure beauty. To create another mind is very simple. Get a sperm [a dime a dozen], turn it loose on an egg [not much more expensive], give the zygote some nutrients and oxygen, provide a low cost environment for a couple of decades [the stupid costly things people provide are not only mostly unnecessary but often counter-productive] and hey presto, a brand new mind, out of thin air, worth far more than its weight in gold, which can bootstrap further value out of thin air [by, for example, inventing/discovering, some new way of twisting reality to make gravitons spin backwards] The input costs are totally trivial compared with the output value [if done right] and comparable with printing a bunch of fiat currency. Many valuable things have almost zero cost. Some Mozart can be copied for zero cost. Another copy of Linux can be downloaded, no charge. The abstract is highly valued by people. Works of art can be copy/pasted. Temples made of rocks and coated with gold leaf were from an age of materialism and alpha male tribal dominance hierarchy, territorial conquest, and found wealth. <We still don't have a fiat that works, and there's a reason we don't - any construct of human beings will be subject to whims and fashions of human beings, and we've learned through hard experience not to trust each other to quite this extent, without an external framework for guidelines > The reason is not that any construct of human beings ... etc..., it's because the philosophical foundations on which the efforts were founded were in conflict with the laws of harmony, because they were based on said tribal, alpha male, territorial...etc etc. principles. Mq the Amazing has solved the conundrum. I'll cut you a cheque! You will love it. [Hmmm, I should ask Google what "cut" a cheque means. Why does a cheque [check in American] get cut? Google will tell me. That's a minor detail. ] Mqurice

To: marcos who wrote (69804)	6/29/2008 3:23:23 PM
From: pogohere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

"It is a sad commentary on our species that we haven't been able to design and maintain a fiat currency that adequately serves the function of money over any length of term" It is true that modern times have not seen any examples of long lasting fiat currencies that serve the function of money. The Romans managed to do this for hundreds of years with bronze. "We still don't have a fiat that works, and there's a reason we don't - any construct of human beings will be subject to whims and fashions of human beings, and we've learned through hard experience not to trust each other to quite this extent, without an external framework for guidelines …" Adam Smith may have thought money was crucial, but he doesn't shed much light on this subject with stuff like this: "After the fullest explication which I am capable of giving it, appear still in some degree obscure … and after making the utmost pains that I am perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject in its own nature extremely abstracted." "The Wealth of Nation," p.13. Thank you, Adam. Next contestant, please. According to Benjamin Franklin, the colonists of colonial Pennsylvania managed to create a successful fiat currency. So did the Continental Congress and the French with their Assignat during their revolution. The British, who understood these things quite well, counterfeited both mercilessly and into oblivion. The US Congress created the Greenback during the US Civil War and it performed quite well. It, too, was finally torpedoed by the European bankers through their agent, August Belmont. see: Message 24239713 The Germans in the 1920s and 1930s also succeeded in unwinding the disasters caused by private ownership of their central bank during Weimar and then created a true fiat currency under Hitler. see: Message 24568048 Message 24568905 They had to abandon the Anglo-Dutch tradition of money-as-debt to accomplish this. We are not congenitally incapable of creating a fiat currency that works well. But we are prone to ignoring history, being greedy and are heir to all the failings of the flesh. Money has a history and is a science, as Stephen Zarlenga has documented beautifully in "The Lost Science of Money."