The is much talk these days about inequality and wealth distribution. Hearing about how much wealth to top 1% of people own and how the system is rigged to keep the little guy down is typical conversation. But what people don't realize is that this the tip of the iceberg. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of societal stratification. The future will bring more inequality that you can imagine.
Future game changers include longevity treatments and aging cessation. When it is possible for a single person to accumulate enormous wealth and pay for medical treatment enabling them to live twice the normal human, that is seriously going to change society. Imagine entire generations of people laboring in corporations run by the same man. The way that we think about what human beings are will change. Looking down from the high-mountain at your fellow man with the ephemeral lifespan will change the people on top and those on bottom view each other.
Further stratification will happen as we take the first timid steps into making the human race extra-terrestrial. Barring some major technological leaps in science, it will always be expensive to lift mass out of Earth's gravity well, and thus only a limited number of people will get the opportunity to live beyond Earth and found the new colonies. Who will get to go is a function of two things: how much money you have and what skills you have.
For the poor, the only ticket out of the gravity well is becoming a specialist in one or more of the fields that a colony needs. Surgens, botenists, engineers, chemists, biologists, all these will have the opportunity to join the colony if you at the top of your class.
For the rich, they lend value to the colony by enabling the purchasing of ships, material, and equiptment before launch. Whilst on the colony, they must continue to contribute either by adopting a specialty, or continuing to enable the shipping of resources to the colony from Earth. For those first colonies when resources are slim, those that do not contribute should expect to bunk in the cold next to the airlock.
For those that are in the top of their class, opportunities will arise which enables them to leverage their expertise in the aforementioned technical specialties on the colony. Today we understand little about how to pass on mental aptitude from parent to
child, thus, it is more reasonable to rely on children become better than average than to rely on them being the best in their field. However being a top performer will not be enough to secure a spot. What will sweeten the deal is if they have capital to invest in the venture.
Investing for the future is therefore the most important thing that one can accomplish with your life. The energy you spend to invest now will magnify over time and hopefully leave your offspring with the capital they need for the voyage beyond Earth. It will ensure that your progeny is not left behind. Don't you want to give them the opportunity to explore the infinite horizon of space and marvel at the cold beauty of the universe?
I know I want to...
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
Geeks benefit long-term from cypto adoption
US, lawmakers are debating how to create backdoors into cell
phones for law enforcement. This discussion will extend to
crypto currency due to the ease of transferring assets without legal purview (ref p7). The geek class stands to benefit the most during the transition period from fiat to crypto, as new wealth-preservation options open up. This comes at the expense of shifting the debt burden to non-geek taxpayers.
Extracting Value:
Debt fueled democracies seek to grow short-term spending at the expense of future generations (ref pg579). They appear to grow to consume as much resources as possible, limited only by the following abilities: taxation, debt issuance, debt avoidance (haircut), and currency issuance (inflation). A decrease in any of these stats will shrink the government over the long-term. Crypto currencies are a direct threat to taxation and currency issuance abilities. Without a healthy tax base, debt issuance capabilities also decrease. While legislators may want to regulate and tax crypto, their ability to implement anything workable without international community consent is doubtful. This brings a new meaning to "...deriving their powers from the consent of the governed."
Current Tax Implementation:
Taxation in the US is nominally progressive, because the rules say: 'as you make more, you are taxed at a higher percentage'. This differs from the actual implementation where the wealthy can afford tax experts that use complex rules in the tax code to squirrel money away and pass it down to heirs (ref). This leaves the middle class paying the highest percentage of tax and the poor receive more value than they paid in through subsidy programs.
Wealth Preservation:
Crypto will enable the geek class to effect similar tax avoidance strategies without paying for high-priced tax advisers. Some of these strategies such as 'buy crypto and hold' until bequest to heirs, may even be legal! The advent of smart contracts will enable smooth wealth transitions between generations. The prospect of being able to pass wealth down uninterrupted to heirs in the same manner as the 'one percent' will create a generation of little wealthy geeks.
Growing Inequities:
Sadly, this type of wealth preservation will initially only be accessible to the minority of citizens that makeup the geek class. And thus, like schemes that disproportionately help certain classes build wealth in yester years (ref), our society will be left with additional growing inequalities. This will be further exacerbated by the need to repay or discharge the government debt. The price of paying these loans will disproportionately fall on those that have kept their money within reach of the government by not divested into cyrpto.
Last Thoughts:
The geek class stands to benefit disproportionately through cyrpto-currency investments because such investments create facilities of long-term wealth preservation that are immune to government efforts to extract wealth, thus leaving a larger burden for the rest of society to eventually repay.
Extracting Value:
Debt fueled democracies seek to grow short-term spending at the expense of future generations (ref pg579). They appear to grow to consume as much resources as possible, limited only by the following abilities: taxation, debt issuance, debt avoidance (haircut), and currency issuance (inflation). A decrease in any of these stats will shrink the government over the long-term. Crypto currencies are a direct threat to taxation and currency issuance abilities. Without a healthy tax base, debt issuance capabilities also decrease. While legislators may want to regulate and tax crypto, their ability to implement anything workable without international community consent is doubtful. This brings a new meaning to "...deriving their powers from the consent of the governed."
Current Tax Implementation:
Taxation in the US is nominally progressive, because the rules say: 'as you make more, you are taxed at a higher percentage'. This differs from the actual implementation where the wealthy can afford tax experts that use complex rules in the tax code to squirrel money away and pass it down to heirs (ref). This leaves the middle class paying the highest percentage of tax and the poor receive more value than they paid in through subsidy programs.
Wealth Preservation:
Crypto will enable the geek class to effect similar tax avoidance strategies without paying for high-priced tax advisers. Some of these strategies such as 'buy crypto and hold' until bequest to heirs, may even be legal! The advent of smart contracts will enable smooth wealth transitions between generations. The prospect of being able to pass wealth down uninterrupted to heirs in the same manner as the 'one percent' will create a generation of little wealthy geeks.
Growing Inequities:
Sadly, this type of wealth preservation will initially only be accessible to the minority of citizens that makeup the geek class. And thus, like schemes that disproportionately help certain classes build wealth in yester years (ref), our society will be left with additional growing inequalities. This will be further exacerbated by the need to repay or discharge the government debt. The price of paying these loans will disproportionately fall on those that have kept their money within reach of the government by not divested into cyrpto.
Last Thoughts:
The geek class stands to benefit disproportionately through cyrpto-currency investments because such investments create facilities of long-term wealth preservation that are immune to government efforts to extract wealth, thus leaving a larger burden for the rest of society to eventually repay.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Diversity vs. Consensus in the Primary Process
The US primaries are in full swing with Iowa and New Hampshire about to start voting. In this post we will examine the peculiar way that the primary process is conducted and how this process is optimized for consensus building as opposed to diversity.
Diversity has as many meanings are there are people in this world, so let's throw down a definition which will hold for this article: Diversity is including everyone's ideas. Lots of business justifications for diversity revolve around this concept. This theory is built off of the wisdom of crowds. Now a simple example of this is to ask 17,205 people how much a cow weighs. Ask allot of people, and you'll get really close to the true answer. You don't want to leave anyone out of the decision making process or bias them, because you'll eventually arrive at a suboptimal answer.
Now the primary process interestingly enough favors consensus over diversity. What do we mean by consensus? We mean people agreeing with each other on what candidate to vote for. In the cow example, this would be shown by everyone guessing very close to the same value (not necessarily the right value). How does the primary process favor consensus you ask? In a typical ideation session, where you're trying to come up with new ideas and select the best ones, you have people write down their votes before announcing them to the group. This prevents the first few voters from skewing the results through social norming.
Detailed Example: Everyone brainstorms ways to improve the company. At the end of an hour you've identified 30 different ways and you have to select the top 4. Now if everyone writes down their votes first, before telling the rest of the group (simultaneous voting), you'll have quite a different spread than if say Lisa, whom everyone likes goes first and tells you her top 4 (sequential voting). If you let Lisa go first before you've written down what you think your top 4 are, you'll social norm to some of Lisa's choices. This will cause Lisa's selections to be overly popular compared with the case that everyone wrote down their vote first. This is completely independent of how good Lisa's choices were overall.
Now why is sequential voting used in the primary election process? Because it's an effective means to leverage social norms and get people to vote for a popular candidate, even when they would have preferred a different candidate. And the most profound part of it all, is that you convince yourself that it was you're idea to vote for that candidate all along!
Diversity has as many meanings are there are people in this world, so let's throw down a definition which will hold for this article: Diversity is including everyone's ideas. Lots of business justifications for diversity revolve around this concept. This theory is built off of the wisdom of crowds. Now a simple example of this is to ask 17,205 people how much a cow weighs. Ask allot of people, and you'll get really close to the true answer. You don't want to leave anyone out of the decision making process or bias them, because you'll eventually arrive at a suboptimal answer.
Now the primary process interestingly enough favors consensus over diversity. What do we mean by consensus? We mean people agreeing with each other on what candidate to vote for. In the cow example, this would be shown by everyone guessing very close to the same value (not necessarily the right value). How does the primary process favor consensus you ask? In a typical ideation session, where you're trying to come up with new ideas and select the best ones, you have people write down their votes before announcing them to the group. This prevents the first few voters from skewing the results through social norming.
Detailed Example: Everyone brainstorms ways to improve the company. At the end of an hour you've identified 30 different ways and you have to select the top 4. Now if everyone writes down their votes first, before telling the rest of the group (simultaneous voting), you'll have quite a different spread than if say Lisa, whom everyone likes goes first and tells you her top 4 (sequential voting). If you let Lisa go first before you've written down what you think your top 4 are, you'll social norm to some of Lisa's choices. This will cause Lisa's selections to be overly popular compared with the case that everyone wrote down their vote first. This is completely independent of how good Lisa's choices were overall.
Now why is sequential voting used in the primary election process? Because it's an effective means to leverage social norms and get people to vote for a popular candidate, even when they would have preferred a different candidate. And the most profound part of it all, is that you convince yourself that it was you're idea to vote for that candidate all along!
Thursday, January 28, 2016
BigM #47
Ok, the IMF just released this great report on crypto and it's just too good not to make a joke out of all of it, so here' goes the terrible 1-slide comic. Somewhere deep in the political apparatus ...
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Proof of Stake and Stake by Proxy
With the inevitability of PoS mining on Ethereum, and the possibility that the total number of staked nodes may be limited, it is important to develop alternative approaches to ensure a robust decentralized staking system. We explore one of those alternatives in this post.
The problem with creating a pool for a Proof of Stake (PoS) system is you're basically giving someone else control over your money, and no one likes that. Instead, of transferring your hard-earned ETH to an individual, we suggest that a smart contract can be used to deployed to enable pooled PoS mining. This will allow a single account / machine to stake for multiple individuals. This is important because currently, there is the possibility that only 16^2 nodes will be allowed to participate in the PoS process. This is alarmingly small compared to the number of nodes mining on the Ethereum chain in the Proof of Work (PoW) system. Smart contracts and stake-by-proxy, however, should provide an answer on how to successfully concentrate staking nodes without severely sacrificing the decentralization process.
The basic elements of a smart contract to make this type of system work are as follows:
A smart contract 'A' is setup which holds an array of who has contributed to the pool, and how much, if they want their earnings to be reinvested, and when should their deposit be automatically sent back to them and destaked. There is also a base setting for monthly pool fees, which is deposited into a separate account under the pool owners control. A final value is the pool earnings.
Pool Owner's Deposit is sent to smart contract 'A'. The pool owner's deposit is used as a 'skin-in-the-game' mechanic, to ensure that if the pool owner is delinquent in their duties of maintaining the server system for the trust, they will loose out just as much as everyone else. The pool owner's deposit can only be refunded once all other contributers to the pool have been paid (thus if there is a loss, the pool owner will feel it first).
Depositors can match the owners deposit, or contribute less, but not more, which ensures that their risks are equal or less to that of the pool owner.
Deposits placed in the contract can be set with a refund date, at which time they will automatically be removed from staking and refunded to the contributing account number. If you follow the axiom of never contribute more to a pool than the pool owner, you should feel fuzzy and warm.
The pool owner draws upon the pool fee to setup server systems and pay for electricity, internet, and ddos protection etc..
At this point, the PoS system needs to support stake-by-proxy. This will enable contract 'A' to stake the funds it contains, but also assign a proxy account 'C' which is controlled by the pool owner, to sign on behalf of contract 'A'. This way, the pool operator can setup their machine, and have it perform the betting required by PoS, while not actually having withdrawal privileges on contract 'B', where all the money is kept.
The problem with creating a pool for a Proof of Stake (PoS) system is you're basically giving someone else control over your money, and no one likes that. Instead, of transferring your hard-earned ETH to an individual, we suggest that a smart contract can be used to deployed to enable pooled PoS mining. This will allow a single account / machine to stake for multiple individuals. This is important because currently, there is the possibility that only 16^2 nodes will be allowed to participate in the PoS process. This is alarmingly small compared to the number of nodes mining on the Ethereum chain in the Proof of Work (PoW) system. Smart contracts and stake-by-proxy, however, should provide an answer on how to successfully concentrate staking nodes without severely sacrificing the decentralization process.
The basic elements of a smart contract to make this type of system work are as follows:
A smart contract 'A' is setup which holds an array of who has contributed to the pool, and how much, if they want their earnings to be reinvested, and when should their deposit be automatically sent back to them and destaked. There is also a base setting for monthly pool fees, which is deposited into a separate account under the pool owners control. A final value is the pool earnings.
Pool Owner's Deposit is sent to smart contract 'A'. The pool owner's deposit is used as a 'skin-in-the-game' mechanic, to ensure that if the pool owner is delinquent in their duties of maintaining the server system for the trust, they will loose out just as much as everyone else. The pool owner's deposit can only be refunded once all other contributers to the pool have been paid (thus if there is a loss, the pool owner will feel it first).
Depositors can match the owners deposit, or contribute less, but not more, which ensures that their risks are equal or less to that of the pool owner.
Deposits placed in the contract can be set with a refund date, at which time they will automatically be removed from staking and refunded to the contributing account number. If you follow the axiom of never contribute more to a pool than the pool owner, you should feel fuzzy and warm.
The pool owner draws upon the pool fee to setup server systems and pay for electricity, internet, and ddos protection etc..
At this point, the PoS system needs to support stake-by-proxy. This will enable contract 'A' to stake the funds it contains, but also assign a proxy account 'C' which is controlled by the pool owner, to sign on behalf of contract 'A'. This way, the pool operator can setup their machine, and have it perform the betting required by PoS, while not actually having withdrawal privileges on contract 'B', where all the money is kept.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
From Alchemy to Blockchain
In past generations,
rulers saw that people were easily directed when they were offered a
chunk of material mined from the Earth's core. This meant that rulers
with many of corechunks, could hand them out to people and those
people would do whatever was asked of them. Tasks typically involved
forcibly confiscating life, property, virginity, and other people's
corechunks.
Now rulers soon
realized what mystical power of these corechunks. To harness more
people to do the ruler's bidding, more corechunks would be required.
Thus the profession of Alchemy was born. The alchemist was tasked
with creating corechunks out of anything, ideally something useless
and easily available. For many years these alchemists tried to create
this magical material, but the Earth would not yield it's secrets to
them.
It was not until
ages later the that alchemists succeeded in creating something not
quite unlike a corechunk. The item was a special bark derived from
trees and on it was inscribed a magical charm called 'Promise'. The
alchemists believed that the charm worked by making the holder
believe that they would receive a corechunk if they gave the ruler
the enchanted bark. People slowly started accepting bark in lieu of
corechunks. Now the only thing limiting the ruler's power was their
ability to hire alchemists to enchant bark.
Almost two centuries
after the introduction of enchanted bark, a wise being shared with
the people the secret of the 'Promise' charm. The charm does not work
because of some enchanted in the bark, it works because the people
themselves were imbued innately with essence of 'Trust' which they
were channeling into the bark. With the veil of knowledge lifted for
all to see, it became clear to some that there was no need to use
bark or corechunks. People were free to exchange 'Trust' via whatever
means they chose: on the wind by eagles, or through the ether borne
by spirits, or by a packmule over land.
And that leads us to
today. The knowledge that 'Trust' exists is the Apocalypse, the great
unveiling of knowledge. While alchemists attempt to reassure people
that 'Promise' is in the enchanted bark, the self-evidence of innate
'Trust' provides a heavy counter claim. Rulers grow uncomfortable as
they realize that harnessing man will become more difficult with each
coming year as more people cast their corechunks and bark aside in
favor of gathering more essence of 'Trust' inside their soul.
Knowing all this, I
have one question for you. Are you still ensnared by corechunks and
enchanted bark? Or do you believe in that you have the essence of
'Trust' inside of you?
Commentary:
If you have enjoyed
this story and would like me to keep writing in a similar style,
please feel free to send a beer to:
BTC:
14eE5cVKyKjzR1Kcu6BGPvBTb7Up4J26YA
or
Eth:
0x8e61bf5a2e46d15774172781cf100ed0962cbb63
In our story,
corechunks refers to gold and silver. Alchemists refers to a wide
variety of professions from alchemy to economists and central
bankers. Rulers range from the regional warlord to kings and queens
of yesteryear, to the elected officials of today. Enchanted bark is
any type of promissory note or fiat currency. The essence of 'Trust'
is in fact real and it resides inside of you. In this story it is
used as an aphorism for blockchain-based currencies which allow
'Trust' to be exchanged between people without the use of corechunks,
enchanted bark, or any other enchanted objects. Satoshi Nakamoto
appears in this story as the wise being. Apocalypse literally means
the great unveiling of knowledge, not whatever else you think it
means.
Disclaimer:
Any claims of the
abandonment of corechunks and enchanted bark are vastly exaggerated
because people are lemmings. Bark is the primary means of exchange to
acquire drugs, alcohol, or virgins that haven't read this story.
From Alchemy to Bitcoin by skithuno is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://spacience.blogspot.com/2016/01/from-alchemy-to-blockchain.html.
From Alchemy to Bitcoin by skithuno is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://spacience.blogspot.com/2016/01/from-alchemy-to-blockchain.html.
Friday, December 11, 2015
The Gold Arbitrary
Lots has been written about the gold standard, how it was good, how it was bad, it had some fundamental flaws that prevented it from surviging for the long haul. They are as follows:
1) The rate at which one could convert from paper notes to gold was arbitrarily set and reset, based on how much money was printed and how much gold was in the vault of the treasury. As a central bank, you can print as much money as you like, with the caviat that if you print too much, you'll have to change the value at which your currency is pegged to gold.
2) It's easy to abandon the standard, the central bank just say, "nope, we're not giving out any gold anymore". This was one of the elements that caused the great depression in the US. Since the US was selling agricultural products on the global market, and since several currencies abandoned the gold standard, all of a sudden, the labor in those countries was cheaper than in the US, which still had the standard. This caused US good to be more expensive, and thus less competitive, which lead to massive defaults and economic collapse which ended when the US abandoned the gold standard with FDR.
3) The treasury can promise the pay the same gold bar to multiple people. This is one element of the bank rush problem. If you have printed paper that is redeamable for gold, but you only have 30% of the gold listed on your paper, over the long run you'll over promise and under deliver when there is peak demand for redemptions, thus causing your currency to collapse and go off the gold standard.
4) Gold is actually quite annoying to transact in so people preferred to carry around paper notes. Gold doesn't divide easily and it's hard to make online purchases with, so really it was a bad idea to begin with but it was the best that we had at one period in time. This desire not to carry around change and instead carry around instruments that were easier to transact in, lead us to the paper money systems we have today.
Interestingly enough, gold is still the commonly agreed upon store of value, and thus, human beings have consensus that gold has value. Of all the things that humans disagree upon, we agree that gold has value or can be exchanged for value. Gold has little intrinsic value and yet the consensus gives it massive global value.
Really the most interesting thing about the gold standard is that it wouldn't have existed if we didn't have a preference to carry around lighter more liquid instruments. If people had never switched from transacting in gold to transacting in paper, we wouldn't have had the issue where the US is plunged into a recession by falling crop prices because the UK decided to abandon their peg to gold.
Fundamentally, the problem with the standard is that it can be changed arbitrarily at anytime and you as an individual don't have any control over that.Thus it's not really a standard at all, more of an ideal that governments can never achieve because they are constantly trying to spend more money in order to provide more value to their constituents than the last round of politicians.
If a digital currency could replace gold in the public consensus, and be easily divisible, would we ever need federal reserve notes?
1) The rate at which one could convert from paper notes to gold was arbitrarily set and reset, based on how much money was printed and how much gold was in the vault of the treasury. As a central bank, you can print as much money as you like, with the caviat that if you print too much, you'll have to change the value at which your currency is pegged to gold.
2) It's easy to abandon the standard, the central bank just say, "nope, we're not giving out any gold anymore". This was one of the elements that caused the great depression in the US. Since the US was selling agricultural products on the global market, and since several currencies abandoned the gold standard, all of a sudden, the labor in those countries was cheaper than in the US, which still had the standard. This caused US good to be more expensive, and thus less competitive, which lead to massive defaults and economic collapse which ended when the US abandoned the gold standard with FDR.
3) The treasury can promise the pay the same gold bar to multiple people. This is one element of the bank rush problem. If you have printed paper that is redeamable for gold, but you only have 30% of the gold listed on your paper, over the long run you'll over promise and under deliver when there is peak demand for redemptions, thus causing your currency to collapse and go off the gold standard.
4) Gold is actually quite annoying to transact in so people preferred to carry around paper notes. Gold doesn't divide easily and it's hard to make online purchases with, so really it was a bad idea to begin with but it was the best that we had at one period in time. This desire not to carry around change and instead carry around instruments that were easier to transact in, lead us to the paper money systems we have today.
Interestingly enough, gold is still the commonly agreed upon store of value, and thus, human beings have consensus that gold has value. Of all the things that humans disagree upon, we agree that gold has value or can be exchanged for value. Gold has little intrinsic value and yet the consensus gives it massive global value.
Really the most interesting thing about the gold standard is that it wouldn't have existed if we didn't have a preference to carry around lighter more liquid instruments. If people had never switched from transacting in gold to transacting in paper, we wouldn't have had the issue where the US is plunged into a recession by falling crop prices because the UK decided to abandon their peg to gold.
Fundamentally, the problem with the standard is that it can be changed arbitrarily at anytime and you as an individual don't have any control over that.Thus it's not really a standard at all, more of an ideal that governments can never achieve because they are constantly trying to spend more money in order to provide more value to their constituents than the last round of politicians.
If a digital currency could replace gold in the public consensus, and be easily divisible, would we ever need federal reserve notes?
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