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Objective Criteria for Any Money Design
By Marc Gauvin in Support of the Passive BIBO Project
Copyright 2013
Reproduction expressly granted provided attribution and original link is provided
Unfortunately and as we might expect, the alternative money world being something not easily ignored, comes with a plethora of agents and entities that, some openly and many not openly, work to influence the design of so called "alternative" and "complementary" systems. Of these, there are few that are willing to subject their proposals to the rigour of objective standard scientific and mathematical criteria, most invoking their own logic and inconclusive beliefs, definitions and dogma. Proposals are often driven by group think assumptions as for example, "everything is subjective anyway", "money is not a science because the economy is too complex", "money has to be local to serve the local community", "the problem is not the money design but rather that it is centralised" or "money is not a problem and neither is centralisation, the problem is that it is not public but private". All of these claims, apart from being logically incoherent, stem from not recognising a science common to all and any money system design, that is subject to existing and well proven science such as control and stability theory. The motive behind such statements is often benign and arises because it is difficult for most to fathom the extent to which most economic theory from where much of these notions arise is simply false. Following is a table that can serve to orient readers with regards to some of the most frequent claims that are being used to delimit local currency design on the basis of subjective and often group think driven criteria, rather than objective reason and logic.
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Group Think Criteria | Claim | BIBO Currency counter claim |
| 1 |
Money is not an objective science |
Any clear theory of money is obviously false because the economy is just not that simple. |
A money system is not the economy just like a ruler is not the house (good or bad) that was built using it.
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| 2 |
Emotion and cause driven |
Currency must influence people in a positive way it must serve a function of improving behaviour. |
Any money must be stable and ONLY serve as a measure of value, that social governance can be informed by data should not convert money into an active tool for control. The moment money is a tool of control with a function other than to measure value, it generates arbitrary limits that produce scarcity of units thus undermining the sine-qua-non function of measure.
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| 3 |
Uniformity is bad |
To standardise money is to destroy the local flavour of local currency and serves to make communities divest their identity, autonomy and culture. |
Just as freely adopted universal standard measures (meter, kilo etc.) do not divest local communities of their autonomy, culture and identity but do facilitate interoperability for when communities choose or need to interoperate, so too, there is no reason that a free common open standard unit of measure of value need impose any limits or exigencies on any local implementation, but to the extent that it should be desired or required, the use of a common unit greatly facilitates streamless interoperability.
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| 4 |
All must be local |
The more local in every aspect the more the money stays and circulates locally in support of local communities. |
A free open standard specification for stable measure of value has no impact on where and between whom trade takes place. Such a standard unit of measure does not "circulate", just like athlete scores don't "circulate", each instance of money is specific to a particular transaction and as a measure each transaction generates its own INDEPENDENT units that correspondingly create and/or cancel existing positive and negative balances as the case may be. Not being a "supply", each transaction need not rely on other transations for units in order to represent any particular instance of wealth being transacted.
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| 5 |
Centralisation vs Decentralisation is the key |
The problem is not the technical design of money but that that design is centralised in the hands of a few, so a new peer to peer design like BITCOIN is the best way to go, because that way users will take it up, which is the biggest hurdle to overcome. |
The root problem is the design and the fact that money is misconceived to be both a measure and a scarce resource, this is the force that is pyramidal no matter how decentralised the so called "mining" is. The system effect does not change by varying the source of scarcity of money but by eliminating that scarcity while maintaining stability.
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| 6 |
Public vs Private is the key |
The problem is not the technical design of money but that the system is in private hands and not public ones. |
As stated in 5, the root issue is the fact that money is misconceived to be both a measure and a scarce resource, this is THE root issue, if this is not addressed the problem will not be resolved. What must be public domain is the full standard specification for stable money, and given the need for administration of public projects and works, it is logical that public entities provide money administration services for their own business with suppliers in the name of the public at large. The public sector would also be required to provide adminsitration on a competitive basis to communities that require these facilitaties but are not able to do so on their own.
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As the world moves towards new propositions for the representation of value in the form of new money system designs it is crucial to base those proposals on objective criteria and clear unambiguous requirements and standards. In this regard, Passive BIBO Currency provides such criteria that embraces established formal definitions of control and stability, proposing a first draft of an open specification for such value representation that satisfy clear Requirements. Any suggestions corrections and improvements are welcome providing that the result is provably Passive BIBO stable.
