Talk:P2P Energy Economy
CHANGE IN DIRECTION
Digitally produced goods and services exist in a world of their own that can be thought of as separate from our physical world in that it's almost infinitely more efficient.
For example, building a house in Second Life takes dramatically less in work energy than building a house in the physical world and the gap makes the difference between abundance now and abundance in 200 years.
A house built in the physical world using a high degree of automation, e.g. with robots and open architectural plans can be sold at the cost of work energy it takes to build it (assuming it's made from renewable materials and its production process meets the conditions for sustainable abundance) but when will we have such high physical production efficiency?
There is a lot that needs to happen in terms of dramatically increasing production efficiencies for physical goods _before_ we need an economy to sustain and enhance the abundance.
When it comes to digitally produced goods and services, we can start with an example of why a new kind of economy and currency is needed.
If I can get 10 "cpu hours" a day from my PC, i.e. 10 X (1 gigaflops processor running for 1 hour, as assessed by the Linpack benchmark Rmax), and if it costs me less than 0.2 "man hour" a day on average to maintain my PC (general PC maintenance) then I have 10 cpu hours and e.g. 7.8 man hours a day (based on an 8 hour work day) to produce some digital goods (e.g. open source music, open CAD designs, open Second Life models, or open software etc) and if I invest in faster and/or more efficient PC I will have more CPU hours and/or more man hours to make more digital goods.
So given that I'm limited in my resources it's not sustainable for me to give away the digital goods I produce or exchange them in expectation of a potential return (in other digital goods) that may or may not happen or that may happen only partially with a net loss to myself. If I don't get any return (in cpu hours or man hours or both) I can not produce more digital goods, so my production will be limited and that cannot lead to abundance.
I can sell both surplus cpu hours and surplus man hours I have in return for cpu-hour tokens and man-hour tokens and I can also lend and borrow both cpu-hour tokens and man-hour tokens. I can also invest more man-hour tokens, i.e. hire someone with the tokens, or invest my own man hours, and cpu-hour tokens, i.e. use someone else' machine (or my own PC's cpu hours) to create more efficient production processes for my digitally produced goods and services so that I get back more than I put in when exchanging those digitally produced goods and services for cpu hour tokens and man hour tokens. That's the only profit that can be made and it drives the whole economy toward higher and higher efficiency, i.e. otherwise, i get back roughly the same as I put in in cpu hours and man hours.
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This model synopsis below is far less ambitious but far more effective than the P2P Energy Economy that I've been working on. While it taught me a lot as far as the principles of a sustainable economy, the P2P Energy Economy, in attempting to apply itself to the physical world outside of the computer, was aiming at a future when we have physical abundance in essential resources.
For now, it seems that the only abundance we have is in computational power and our own creative energy.
A lot of the ideas from the P2P Energy Economy are directly applicable and will be reused but the model will become far less complex as it changes trajectories from aiming to reinvent the world decades or centuries ahead of the world naturally getting there (see prior comment on the current "efficiency gap" between the digital world and the physical world) to aiming at fixing the inequitable exchange model for digitally produced goods and services.
One key difference between this model and the P2P Energy Economy (besides the absence of smartgrid) is the existence of two currencies: the cpu-hour token and the man-hour token. Like machine money and human money.
Neither type of currency is meant to enable ownership. Both are meant to enable production, not ownership.
So, I'll take the P2P Energy Model apart and compress it/remold it into this new model that can be applied today to give us a sustainable abundance economy in digitally produced goods and services.
Marc
MarcFawzi 17:46, 16 February 2009 (PST)
Old comments:
The section Energy Price Regulation says (shortened):
This value of Peer Dollar is regulated relative to the value energy, so that as energy becomes abundant its price will drop ... while preventing speculative boom and bust cycles from making the price of energy ... drop too low (in periods of low demand) as to make energy production economically unfeasible.
By "economically unfeasible" are you talking about Profit?
If so, would you consider an alternate view - where Price can safely approach and even equal Cost indefinitely without the organization needing to close?
Thanks, Patrick Anderson AGNUcius 12:32, 12 December 2008 (PST)
In the section Peer Energy Bank you say:
New money is only created by "Peer Bank" when the P2P energy production capacity becomes larger than the currency in circulation (i.e. more energy than there is money.)
and
At the start of the economy (as a process), Peer Bank would create new money in return for energy supplied by the participating peers, so it creates new currency that it gives to those peers. Then peers start trading using that currency, and when new energy surplus exist then new money will be produced.
This seems to say that there should be times where the Peer Bank issues new money in return for energy it buys and times where instead it doesn't. If I understand correctly, at startup of the system, enough money needs to be created to "fill the pot" so economic exchange between peers can happen. Then, there should be a time when Peer Bank only issues money for "surplus" energy.
What are the criteria for knowing when Peer Bank should issue new money and when it shouldn't? Ref: Money is only created by "Peer Bank" when the P2P energy production becomes larger than the currency in circulation.
How will you measure 1) How long the first period should last (creating enough money for the economy to run on) and 2) when to issue more money as energy production is larger than currency in circulation.
What would be the objective criteria for this, which the system can implement?
Thanks - Sepp Hasslberger --Sepp 02:53, 27 December 2008 (PST)
Please allow others to access this original work by making your modifications/remixes on a different wiki page.
Does this mean that I can not add anything on the original page? ( like I just did by adding at Category + related links ? ) Thanks, User:Dante
Patrick: energy price regulation does not exist anymore
Dante: it means you can add anything outside of the main text of the page...
Sepp: Sorry for the delay. This is the first time I look at the discussion tab :-) There is a better description of how money is created. It's in sync with increase in electric energy flow from peers with surplus to peers with deficit, and the money is created only for increase in the flow. It can be further explained with a diagram, which I plan to add.
MarcFawzi 13:06, 16 February 2009 (PST)