TcpIpVsTheDollar

Context : AltMoney

The amateurization of an increasingly larger sphere human activity which takes it out of the paid economy. The internet protocol is a rival to money and markets as a way of signalling demand and supplies, so the internet is not an opportunity for economic growth but an alternative to it.

My original blog posts on PlatformWars :

Donna Bogatin : Social Web or Business Web: where is the money?

Naturally, people are fascinated by this question of "where's the money?"

But it's the wrong question. The more interesting one is "why the money"? And it's still gonna take us a long time to get our heads around that. But that's what we're all gonna be asking at some point.

The more effective the internet and the web are at helping us communicate and co-ordinate, the less money will be involved. Because ultimately the economy is a communication network and money is its protocol

The network is not the means to the end of money.

Instead, money and IP are rival protocols in rival networks which are means to the same end : that of articulating human labour to create more wealth for humanity. Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.

And the better the network does this, the less need there is for money to be involved at all.

This is gonna be the ultimate platform war. All the stuff about Windows vs. Apple, or RSS vs. Atom or Google vs. Yahoo are minor skirmishes. This is the biggie : TCP/IP vs. the dollar.

Which will pull your strings in future? Which will motivate you?

See all posts with this tag : http://platformwars.blogspot.com/search/label/TCP%2FIP%20vs%20the%20Dollar

You could argue that CryptoCurrencies are either :

• an attempt to split the difference / find an intermediate between TCP/IP (ie. non-money networking protocol) and more traditional money. A "best of both worlds" (for some value of best). Yes they are like money (ArtificialScarcity) but also, what with the various social schemes attached to them, and DIY mining / baking / money creation etc., not quite like money.
• a demonstration that this is wrong, and that a sign that money just needed to become more internet savvy. And that all the "virtues" of money and traditional wealth are reasserting themselves. (Look how NonFungibleTokens are selling everyone on the idea of scarcity and "specialness")

Think of it this way. You don't pay billionaires to help with internet routing by running a bunch of DNS servers. Why pay them to "allocate capital" where those decisions are largely just made by machines anyway?

Attempts at RegulatingCryptoCurrencies might be the NationStateUnderAttack striking back and defending its own money.

See also :

• FeudalismCapitalismInformationalism / WorkArticulationTopologies

• TheWealthOfNetworks

• AlternativesToCompanies

• FreeSoftware

• OnMarkets