The financial system

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One of the necessities of the project is a P2P currency and transaction system which must be able to exchange currency with existing external systems. The project would use a currency model based on energy (see think global, act local). Many people involved in the project in the past have had deep concerns about introducing a currency system. But in fact it has always been there, and its a natural process for any organism to evaluate costs of their available courses of action in terms of various forms of energy.

The problems arise when we introduce corrupt concepts like usury (riba) and fractional-reserve banking, which is why there's so much religious fuss about that concept. And even concepts involving passive income start to cause trouble, such as when a centralised organisation profits from users transactions.

The problem is that only the Source can create something out of nothing, energy out of the void. Man cannot do this (And when He can we won't need Usury or debt any more anyway!), only God can, but usury gives money this Godly power. But because money does not really posses this power of creation it means that the cost of its growth is being balanced elsewhere; by a depletion in natural resource and an increase in the distance between rich and poor.

In the project, currency should simply be a medium of exchange which is an intermediary used in trade to avoid the inconveniences of a pure barter system. In a barter system, there must be a coincidence of wants before two people can trade - they must want exactly what the other has to offer, when and where it is offered, so that the exchange can occur. A medium of exchange permits the value of a good to be assessed and rendered in terms of the intermediary.

Such a medium of exchange is purely in the form of an informational store of value and is handled by a global virtual organisation called Accounts which is composed purely of its users resources and the fact that they share the same system.

There is no profit, only the cost of peoples time and the exchange of resources. This means that there is also no passive income or interest. Of course people can still arrange to work in these "legacy" ways if they like, but these concepts are not condoned by the network because they violate the spiritual principles by creating something out of nothing.

Architecture

Here are some of the key issues which must be considered in developing such a system.

Trust

• The members must trust the architecture and its operation
• The architecture must assign a level of trust to the users and accounts
• Restriction to trust networks

Security

Obviously the system must be very secure and must have the trust of the users in the robustness of its security model. Fortunately a fully P2P system offers new and powerful dimensions for increased security which need not be discussed in detail here.

Decentralisation

The system must not be owned by a centralised organisation of any kind otherwise it is vulnerable to legal attack, is reliant on the survival of the host organisation and puts the members at risk due to the host organisation's own potential for corruption.

Quotes

"Fiat money is the cause of inflation, and the amount which people lose in purchasing power is exactly the amount which was taken from them and transferred to their governments by this process."

-- G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island

"A fiat monetary system allows power and influence to fall into the hands of those who control the creation of new money, and to those who get to use the money or credit early in its circulation. The insidious and eventual cost falls on unidentified victims who are usually oblivious to the cause of their plight. This system of legalized plunder (though not constitutional) allows one group to benefit at the expense of another. An actual transfer of wealth goes from the poor and the middle class to those in privileged financial positions."

-- Congressman Ron Paul, Paper Money and Tyranny

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

-- Henry Ford

See also

• PeerPay - Collaborative document to discuss methods by which a P2P currency system could be developed
• Resource - the fundamental nodal organisation handling resource allocation and valuation
• Accounts - the peerd interface aspect of currency in the network
• Think global, act local - the ability for the network to assess efficiency from a holistic perspective
• Cancerous Capital
• Wikipedia:Unit of account
• Wikipedia:Medium of exchange
• Wikipedia:Money
• Wikipedia:Currency
• Difference