Readit NewsI've said this before, but while I know for a lot of people Reader is the axed Google product they miss most, for me it will always be Wave. I know a lot of people didn't get it, and I can't blame them, but I was part of a six-person software team using Wave for a brief project and, despite its faults, it was the greatest communication tool any of us had ever used, and remains so to this day. Slack/Discord/Teams/Trello/whatever still don't come close.
(Which makes it all the more appropriately ironic that it had a bunch of Firefly references and easter eggs inside. It's like they knew.)
Anyway, I'm pouring one out for Wave tonight.
What made Google wave so great to you? (Even better than slack/Discord/Trello)?
edo commented on Decentralized Blockchain-Based Electronic Marketplaces cacm.acm.org/magazines/20... · Posted by u/rbanffy
> We can redistribute value to the people who actually contribute the most value in the network.
Actually that is how I envision people becoming self-reliant in a post-job society. Being jobless and with little money means you got: 1. free time, and 2. needs to fulfil. But jobless people are not without skills - we don't suddenly forget everything we learned when we lose our jobs. There's plenty of skilled people with time and a motive to work.
So why not get services in exchange for services, from jobless person to jobless person? In order to do that we'd need a "human coin". Humans can make a lot of what they need directly - grow food, build houses, repair cars, supervise and educate kids, make clothes. These services should be obtained in the service-for-service system, without money. It leads to a more self-reliant society that doesn't depend on state money, or worse, on transferring money from corporations to people - we all know it's going to be hard to part corporations from their money in the name of social good.
UBI is demeaning and robs people of agency, self-reliance is the exact opposite. Using a "human coin" we could create a marketplace of skills and services without corporate money. Self-reliance should exist at all levels - personal, family, social group, city and country. Each level should be as self-reliant as possible, reducing the need for international commerce and dependence on external factors. When self reliance reaches 100% there would be almost no need to use money, perhaps just for raw materials, so we should be researching new materials that are plentiful and can be produced locally.
Yes! But let's give the human coin a better name; how about calling it the Dollar? And while we're at it, we need to figure out a way how to make the exchange rate fluctuate less, so let's back it with some real world materials that we know are pretty stable in perceived value; how about gold? Oh, and for some tasks and jobs I'm pretty sure we will need bigger groups of people working together. These are more complex tasks/projects that sometimes require hundreds, maybe even thousands of people working in cohort. How about we call those groups startups, and corporations? But who will decide to start these groups when it is deemed necessary? Let's decide anyone can; and we name them founders. And because they will start these groups, they probably get to decide how many of the dollars which contributor in the group gets from customers right? Because who decides how these dollars get distributed among the group? Someone needs to do that right, at least until we get a sufficiently capable AI to determine qualitative value to the end user. And let's call these rights of distribution of these dollars stocks, like a kind of certificate to the future profits.
The phrase "We are facing this together" must sound really hollow if you're one of the people who has been laid off...