If the Internet has the ability to transform the way people do business and engage in social activities, then why can’t holochain transform the current global economic system. Every holover (a person who owns an identity on the holochain ecosystem) should be able to live and engage in economic activities freely without involving physical money (fiat) or a third person. To get rid of the current flawed and corrupt economic system (to be able to attain freedom from coercion) a full fledged economic ecosystem needs to be built on top of the holochain ecosystem where people could take the physical money (fiat) he/she owns and convert seamlessly the value to its digital equivalent and vice versa, in order to allow migrations between the two economic systems, as a first step towards achieving this goal and to build trust among the people.
Are you suggesting another currency besides holofuel when it comes out?
Hey @tjack and welcome to the forum! I reckon @darkenergy probably is suggesting another currency besides HoloFuel… it’s always been the dream of Art, Eric, Ferananda, and the others to create tools and resources that allow all sorts of groups to create currencies that are appropriate for them — and that represent actual value rather than the somewhat arbitrary value that fiat represents. HoloFuel is meant to be merely one among many. Some of the currencies we hope to see won’t even look like money.
@darkenergy moderation/housekeeping tip — we’re intending #watercooler:weekly category for scheduled thought-provoking questions, so I’d like to move this thread to the main #watercooler category. (BTW we’ve already got the first few questions lined up, but we don’t want to be the ones directing the conversation… would love to hear other people’s ideas. Makes me think we should create a category for “Ideas for Conversations That Matter” and have people submit/vote on them.)
Hi @pauldaoust thanks for the suggestion. Appreciated. 
I’ll move this conversation to the main watercooler category as suggested.
The idea that im trying to present here is actually very much the same as what the Holochain Director of Communications Matthew Schutte mentioned in this youtube video
At minute 17:45 he speaks about
freedom from coercion
This is exactly the problem that i want holochain cimmunity to solve, and this will bring us true economic freedom. I really dont know where this will end up but I have this vision.
Not necessarily. But to build an ecosystem where this kind of freedom is realized. We dont want a world where our assets are being controlled by someone else.
Just realized that it’s already in the main watercooler category. Thanks.
And holofuel may not be the right medium to pay for goods and services in this ecosystem. Holofuel is specifically designed for paying hosting of hApps.
ok dark energy, i hope your vision is realized
The challenges are huge. Number one. How to get rid of governments. Why we should get rid of governments is because in some situations they impose rules that are unnecessary and often barriers to free trade. For example why cant some artist creates a song and someone else buy it without paying the government a tax.
@darkenergy This topic is intriguing. To me, true economic freedom would mean that there were enough options and choices that you would not have to go back to a physical currency.
I don’t have the answers, but I would love to hear your thoughts on a few questions:
- What are the systems/apps that would need to be created for this to take place?
- Will building trust among people be enough?
- From an infrastructure perspective, what else is needed for this to work?
Yeah, when talking about economic freedom, as a house-holding question (ecos nomos), that is to talk about how are we managing our personal, regional and global household so that we can thrive as physical beings along side all the other beings present on this earth.
And if we can see that current-sees are a tool in house-holding, like a black-board where you write down groceries and chores with chalk, then true economic freedom seems to me to have much to do with our economic practices leading to ecological regeneration.
As we are fully dependent (as “colonial” cultures, some radical individuals excluded) on things like extractive land management for our food and destructive mining operations for our silicon wafers, true economic freedom is unavailable unless we also go to closed loop, cradle-to-cradle, regenerative human needs fullfillment.
Current-sees are in my view a vital piece of the leap to there, but it is abundance of biological diversity and activity that can give us all freedom to live.
Everything going on here is helping to achieve a post-monetary economy. I’ll highlight in particular valueflo.ws, which is using Holochain for distributed accounting, a big step towards gift-based/circular economics, distributed cooperatives, commons management, and so on.
But there’s a wealth of projects that are helping to blur the lines between economics, governance, business, research, community and even spirituality.
One fascinating route towards true economic freedom could be a mutual credit currency where each individual can create their own currency by going into dept (as in: “I owe you a favour”).
So currency measures the flow of value (goods or services) from one individual to another, making visible the balance within society.
If Alice bakes a pie and Bob eats it, Alice has contributed to society (her account goes up), while Bob has taken from society (his account goes down). Now we have a slight imbalance. Once Bob repairs Charlie’s car, Bob has given something back to society and his account balance goes back up, while Charlies goes down.
In order to prevent people from going into dept indefinitely (only taking from society), we could use some kind of reputation system to define each individual’s credit limit. These could be viable questions:
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Has the person been able to sufficiently re-balance their account (contribute to society) in the past?
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Are they being vouched for by other trustworthy people?
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Do our favourite colors align?
Interestingly, this credit limit could be calculated by each agent individually. Maybe I grant a higher credit limit to people who have a good reputation in terms of their ecological awareness. Someone else might put a higher emphasis on real world assets they provably posess. Yet another person might look at peoples business history to see if they are likely to progress their career.
Such a system is all about how you connect with the world. Currency isn’t being understood as a store of value (like gold), but as a barometer of how much you have contributed to society. The more you give, the more you get back.
Then of course we could talk about additional mechanisms to keep everything flowing; like having all those favours (currency) slowly lose importance over time, as is the case in real life. When I wash your car today, I might ask you to fix my oven tomorrow. But 20 years from now it might be a bit awkward to ask for your help, referring to me washing your car two decades ago.
Lets say all account balances (positive or negative) reduced by 2% every year, we’d have a system tending towards equilibrium. At the same time it incentivises people to give and take, to not let their currency sit there, until its almost gone. It keeps the currency flowing.