On 20 Nov 2001, at 22:54, Greg Broiles wrote:
> Very early in its lifetime, the Autonomous Zones/Mojo Nation people said > that maybe Mojo would someday be exchangable with real cash, though the > assumption was that during the early stages of software development, people > were playing with worthless currency for proof-of-concept, and that at some > point the old Mojo would be useless or disabled, and people would start > using New Mojo instead, where New Mojo might have real value. > Here's my recollection as to how this was supposed to work: 1) people who participated in the beta got free mojo as a reward for participating (they'd keep their mojo when the beta period was over) 2) In the non-beta, people would have to pay (or something) to get a starting stash of mojo 3) I don't think the "Evil Geniuses" ever expected to act as mojo-cash brokers; rather, anyone who had a supply of cash and mojo could act as a cash-mojo broker, and mojo would find its own price. > > And that problem seems to be at the center of Nomen Nescio's sotto voce > suggestion that some unnamed cypherpunks work up a currency which can be > used to "pay" people for providing information which is of value - I get > the impression that s/he is imagining some magic fairy would mint up piles > of the currency, and assign it equally to every subscriber, who would then > be empowered to pay it to the content providers they liked best. > > That's very warm and fuzzy and hippy-like, but if these tokens are handed > out for free, then what, exactly, is their value? > Right. If the tokens are EVER going to be worth anything, there can't be a way to accumulate then for free. If people have this psychological block against paying "real money" for tokens, maybe it's a good idea to make them trade CPU time for them in one of the seti-like projects. Somebody mentioned something about one involving protein-folding that sounded like it might actually be useful. George > I think the Extropians did something like that, which ended in some sort of > fiasco which some cypherpunks were involved in, though I don't know the > details and was never a participant in that list/social circle. > > > -- > Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 > 5000 dead in NYC? National tragedy. > 1000 detained incommunicado without trial, expanded surveillance? National > disgrace.