Bitcoins or Monopoly Money on Mars?

[RichardY]

Hello FDR community from lincolnshire!, had a few thoughts about money was wondering if anyone has some clarifying thoughts on the issue or the appropriatness of the post. 

 

Is Money an embodiment of the profit from work? Should money reflect survival needs, water and salt in a desert, chocolate, soap or cigarettes in a POW camp, or oil in Mad Max.

 

Scaling things up to an interplanetary scale, should money be a form of "easily accessible" potential energy storage?

 

If I spend X watts in energy to obtain X watts in potential energy which would bring in additional money, with an interest rate, reflecting "time preference and physical reality" to bring more energy into a grid, or store it for portable use.

 

Bitcoin, really like better graphics cards and CPUs but is 4K high enough, also would the lag of sending Bitcoins from Earth to Mars and Back be "too" high or rendered useless if computing technology fundamentally changed, say an analogue processor perhaps using chemical transmission, by the magic of somehow. Or EMP activity effected the network.

 

A two tier money system? Gold for aristrocrats. One ring to rule them all, power of gold to display influence, wedding rings, crowns and false grails etc. Copper for peasents to buy bread and ale.

 

Is human ingenuity the ultimate currency and whether it grows or shrinks a question of ethics, rationality and preference?

 

If people have access to large amounts of energy and resources easily say a fusion device how dangerous could that be, might it be a "good" idea to keep the technology hidden perhaps using force to carry that out.

[AncapFTW]

My currency idea I made for games could work.   The basic idea is this:

 

At some point in the future, several smaller countries and international businesses get together to create the International Trade Bank in international waters.  They put money into the bank, and get their self-created cryptocurrency, International Trade Credits, back out.  These ITC are used to trade between the nations and businesses that run the bank, and other companies and countries start to use them as well.

 

When people establish colonies on the moon and mars, these colony groups have ITB accounts which they use for getting shipments from Earth.  Colonists pay in to their ITB account and are given things on Mars or Luna in exchange.  They may also sell things to Earth companies for more ITC.  Luna and Mars use LC and MC for local currency, though.

 

This has the advantage of interplanetary currency exchanges being authorizations for transfer, not actual digital currency.  The worst that will happen then is that the request doesn't go through and you have to resend it.

 

Fuel could be a good basis for a commodity based currency, but it would likely be exchanged with a bank for bank-issued currency, as it would be hard to use in trades.

[Mister Mister]

Sorry but I find it very different to understand any of your questions.

[RichardY]

I was thinking of what would be the "optimal" money to use in the future and whether Bitcoin, would be valuable or something that has a practical physical use, not just subjective value. Instead of perhaps a precious metals standard, link money to some form of energy standard.

[AncapFTW]

I was thinking of what would be the "optimal" money to use in the future and whether Bitcoin, would be valuable or something that has a practical physical use, not just subjective value. Instead of perhaps a precious metals standard, link money to some form of energy standard.

I toyed with the idea of using megajoules or gigajoules as a currency in a sci-fi story, but because power storage is either inefficient (batteries, water, heat, etc.), or bulky (capacitors), it wouldn't be a valid form of currency at our current tech level.  Maybe in the future it could work.

[Mister Mister]

I was thinking of what would be the "optimal" money to use in the future and whether Bitcoin, would be valuable or something that has a practical physical use, not just subjective value. Instead of perhaps a precious metals standard, link money to some form of energy standard.

The answer is that no one knows.  "Optimal" is not really a philosophical term, especially when weighing costs and benefits, different peoples conflicting and diverse values and interests, and the unknowns of future technology.  The energy standard thing is interesting, I've actually had the same idea myself.  How would you see it working?  Like there are central power stations/banks, and/or people have the capacity to generate electrical power in their homes, and people can exchange electricity in and out of the grid, and somehow physically exchange credits which can be redeemed for electricity?  Interesting food for thought.  Such a beautiful future seems farther away than it once did to me however, given what's happened the last several years.

[RichardY]

From a Malthusian perspective to optimal I was thinking perhaps if a person needs, so much energy to sustain a non decreasing material standard of living, an energy standard could perhaps allow people to observe the energy transfers associated with said lifestyle and how income and expenses were changing. Storage could be a problem, although the energy could be used on obtaining various elements from less pure and harder to access ores, which could be priced in the energy required to obtain them. I guess you would be paid in energy credits linked to an amount redeemable in electricity from an energy provider.

 

As for the technology maybe there someway of more directly using solar radiation from the sun as the most efficient energy source? and feeding that into an electrical grid. As for technology available to day or tomorrow I really have no idea, I guess whatever gives the most effective energy output for human labour invested is generally best. The less time someone spends working to get the energy they need to live the more they can spend doing other things. Even though I think technological progress would decrease if the worlds population was smaller there would be less pressure to work more marginal parcels of land and less rich resources intensively which would allow a greater material excess per captia at least in the "short term".