HACKING EXCHANGE RATES to an indication in DEMOCRACY TERM

Hello dear reader,

It is Hu, a freedom enthusiast software developer, who believes in Privacy, digital rights and human equality as well. I implemented an innovative mixed technology to cover some drawbacks in internet privacy and center-oriented services as well as wipe out some flaws in economy, hoping more people feel happiness. I do not want to fit project in a particular “ism“ or a certain ideology, doctrine, regime or school of thought, simply because the project is a comprehensive infrastructure of human knowledge and experiences. It belongs to whole humankind, hence my intention of that strive is human prosperity and I hope your intention is human prosperity as well.

Probably you already get I am not a native English speaker, so excuse me for language shortcoming, Although I tried to do my best.

The proposal synthesized different concepts such as blockchain, free(libre) software movement, and some economic doctrine and formed a software with different ecosystems.

In simple words, I created a software that lets every group of people establish an online community. The community is practically decentralized and no one can not censor the community, stop it or cut its voice. These features are critical pillars of the software. Furthermore the software helps communities to run their customized rules and having their money and monetary system. Software also supports uncensorable messenger, forums and wiki. The software called “Comen”. Community Maker Engine.

You may ask “What is the use of all this?”.

Let me draw a future in which you vote hundred times in a single day, and your vote impacts immediately. You are not limited to vote only for a person or for a vague plan of a party, instead you can vote for every single decision and appreciate it or condemn it immediately. And more importantly this voting doesn’t take your time or energy.

Presently we vote for some political party or economic change promises (can we really influence it?) every 4 or 5 years (if we believed in election yet). After election, generally we can not do much in order to control what are doing the congress men or the president or the parliament -despite the fact that it is not an affair for mass, and most simply do not interested in-. Even if -for any reason- an individual (or a group of people) monitors politicians or government decisions and find something wrong, practically she/he/they can not do something effective, unless waiting for next election to not vote for that party or person and select another one. Something like selecting one kilo potato from one kilo potato! How can people express, “we prefer apples to potatoes”?

Lets go back to our software.

Imagine different group of people, have installed the software and established their online communities. Each community governed by different set of rules, some are pure democratic and some other communities have totalitarian rules. Each community has its customized economic systems for monetary, interest rate, inflation rate, wealth distribution and taxation. Eventually we will have different communities. Some communities follow market economy, whereas other communities are pure socialist and have some kind of coupons for managing “necessity of life”, and some another communities seeking gift-economy model and they do not have any form of money at all. By our software all of these different types of communities can be created and established in couple of hours. Even by a newbie software developer.

Inevitably communities need to trade in between, since it is almost impossible one community doesn’t need the goods or services of another community. This need to trading between communities (more precisely trading between a person who has money of community1 and a person who has money of community2) creates the concept of exchange-rate between community’s currencies.

Take a look at schema:

“For any reason” there are communities that their money is more valuable than other communities. Later we will go into detail about “Why the money of a community is valuable than other ones”.

Now lets assume the exchange-rates are set fairly and did not manipulate by speculators or conspiracy activities. Later we come back to this in details as well.

Recap:

- They are different communities with different currencies.

- They have different governing rules and economy system.

- There are exchange rates between communities currency.

The exchange rates between different communities can be set or pegged, but most of them are flat, and are determined by supply and demand on the open market between communities. There are several technical and fundamental factors that determine what people perceive is a fair exchange rate and alter their supply and demand accordingly. Despite the classical factors such as interest rate, inflation rate, commodities, etc… the value of a community-based currency comes form “the community’s tendency of supporting community’s money”. The community regularly attempts to keep its currency price favorable for inter-community trades. We should accept this assumption, Otherwise community would never have been formed. These mechanisms together provide a concept of “exchange rate as a prosperity measurement”, and what I mean for prosperity is a combination of all SPI(Social Progress Index), HEWI (Human Economic Welfare Index), GDP, etc…

We can see this measurement -in a very loosely form- already exist in our real world exchange rates. The big difference between new community’s currencies and fiat currencies laid in how they are managed. In one side we have currencies, managed by governments and most often in a non democratic ways, and the other side the currencies that are powered by people. Certainly there will be online communities that are not democratically managed and they have their currencies as well, but ultimately, they are the people who determine the value of a currency.

Although in classical nations “exchange rate did not reflect fundamental economic conditions” or at least governments try to uncoupled those(via FX intervention), but in our new community based arrangement of world population, the exchange rate reflects both the economic conditions and the political governance of a community.

People simply accept currency of some communities in exchange of their goods and service that they believed in the community’s policies, and refuse or devaluate the currency of other corrupted or dictatorship communities. People can be partially socialist and partially capitalist as well as naturalist. It is our human nature and nothing is one hundred percent. You can create a portfolio of different currencies and also be a member of some different communities as well. You most likely will participate in your favorable community’s activities and decision makings, and preferably use that community’s money in your daily financial turnover. Whenever you feel a community doesn’t follow your believes any more, simply you “leave the community by no cost”, unlike the current communities, ideologies, political regimes or countries and territories. You get rid of the community’s money and that’s all. No need to argue, quarrel or fight. No need to war.

We buy and sell million times per day. By each transaction we make an impact on the exchange rate (supply and demand rule). These are our votes. We can vote every day million times for what we stand for, whether a new economic policy or a welfare program in a community or a cultural movement in another community. This is a kind of instant democracy. We express our opinion and impact on exchange rates immediately. In such a way the corrupted community will lose its money’s value and its population very quickly — let alone the fact that this kind of community can not be formed in first place -.

Arbitrage and all kinds of other schemes of speculation and manipulation are not welcomed, but the communities have to deal with. In beginning probably will be chaos and starts an stabilizing curve, which at the end there will be some stable currencies, that are supported by matured community. The survived currencies have very low fluctuate (unlike Bitcoin and all other altcoins) and will be used for some real trading and not only speculating. Remember that we are talking about a community that governs their own money and proper rules in order to expand community members, rise up community reputation and strengthen their money.

Till here I explained roughly the software mission and its functionality. You may come across with some of these questions.

Why would people want to join to a community and why would they want community’s money in the first place?

Individuals would like to join society for a variety of reasons. Some of reasons could be supporting an ideology or some believes, participating in an opens source accelerator project or just economic incentives. As mentioned earlier, same thinker people may establish an online community, and set some rules and economy system that they believed in. Obviously they will try to expand society and invite more population to their community. Depending on the how the community acts good, new people may join to the community or leave the community. The “good act” is an ambiguous term may not explain exactly, but as always the people are the best judge. What they perceive as “good act” can convince them to join the community or leave it. Joining to a community can be done in different level. People can accept the money of a community and do not going further. Or they can involve in community activities and decision making and…

There will be people who observe the community activities and predict the community’s money will be high valued in short term or long run. They may be convinced to buy community’s money as a store of value or an speculative money.

Ok, there are some online communities and some people joined to this or that community. And they have some kind of tokens (you call it money), and they exchange this tokens in between. Isn’t it like an online forums, we already have hundreds of them? What is special in this idea?

The more important feature of this software is decentralization, which means the community can be established and continued to live, while no authority, central-service or third party can not stop them or censor their voice and contents. The community governs its territory and is standalone.

About the community’s money (token), because of transparency as an inherent feature of blockchain technology, every single activity of community will be visible for outsiders. As “good act” community does, the value of their money raise up. Now this money has some value out of online community as well as inside the online community. As a consequence the outsiders will decide to buy the community’s money. Here I can make an example of a “good act”. If a community planned to issue fix number of coins in long time (e.g. 1 million coin in next 100 years), this scarcity helps the raise up coin value. Instead, if a community set a flat money issuing, day by day their money’s value fluctuates, so this could be a “bad act”. Thousands of decisions and rules in a community can increase their money’s value or decrease it. So the community’s money is a severe issue and not a fun feature of an online game.

I am still unconvinced! Where does the value of these currencies come from?

Lets ask “where does the value of fiat currencies come from?”. The value of “fiat currencies” is grounded in government taxes. The state creates money to pay people to do stuff it wants done, and everyone else must trade to acquire that money to pay taxes or the state will use violence, Whereas the value of a community’s money is created by the free choice of community members whom — by the regard of their own interest — judge whether the service community’s money provide is useful to them or not. If I believe in my community’s money I expect to buy some good or services from my community’s member. Say ten million coin for a pizza (as it happened before). It is the zero day for the community’s money. The money’s value come from the exception of future purchasing power. If community “act good” I expect day by day the purchasing power of the community’s money remains fix or even raise up.

OK, the community members -by the any reason- believed in community’s money, why should the outsiders believe that community’s money worth to accept?

It depends on what the community has introduced to the public as its figure. It is also matter of the community’s money’s features. What I mean for “money’s feature” I will describe in next few lines when I explain the features of money of my favorite community (named “imagine”).

How these online communities will impact on real world? How they can embody their community?

It is really up to community members. Some communities may prefer to continue in cyberspace. Some other may use this system to handle a “collective or cooperative” activity (since you do not need classic internet domain registration and host renting and all costs of create a website and the maintenance, and the users have “data sovereignty” plus “financial sovereignty”, the software is a great alternative for current internet websites. You will not lose domain name and your data of your website will be always accessible for you and your network, without paying one penny), or some will use it as a potential infrastructure for a social movement.

There are many use cases for this system in real world, and I personally use this software to accelerate open source movement and also implement and practically use a “good money” as well.

I am a free(libre) software proponent (someone know it as FOSS or FLOSS). Therefore I established a community to accelerate free software movement and develop more privacy tools for mass as a serious issue in internet era. I set some rules and monetary system aiming to create some incentive to involve more and more people -despite the fact that most of free(libre) developers doing that voluntarily-. The goal is invite as possible as people -and not only software developers- to community. The community called “imagine”, inspired from the Beatles famous song you may know. You can read more about “imagine” community here.

BTW, the imagine members are get payed from imagine’s treasury because of accomplish the tasks that community considered as a good for the world, or as a good for community. Again what the community perceive as a “good” is depends on, what believes and horizons the community has. The imagine community runs polling for every single decision, and all community members can vote in proportion to their shares of community. Eventually the imagine’s community will develop/improve many useful software for mass (including Comen software itself). The imagine’s community does real work to produce real product to solve real world problem. So their money has intrinsic value. This is one of real-world practices, which imagine community is doing. There are many more different types of real-world-problem-solving activities that people can do and earn imagine’s money as well. For details please read the imagine monetary presentation. Few line later I will explain the imagine’s money’s features as well.

How these online communities impact on their members in real world (in economic sense)?

It depends on community’s policy. The Comen software has embedded DeFi features (e.g. loan & lending, interest rate setting, and smart contracts to manage all these stuff in a secure way, with almost zero cost). If community members decide to trade inside community (even an small portion of daily turnovers), community will take benefit of these trades aiming to improve community’s members welfare. The community can also run a kind of “mutual banking system” in community, in order to provide funds for community members. All of these improvements are depends on community’s willingness to doing those. The software and its infrastructure is designated in a highly flexible mode and supports all these optional features. More members convinced to use DeFi, more “financial sovereignty”, more wealthy community.

As an example I want refer to imagine’s monetary and wealth distribution, in which community makes a “good money” for its needs. So let delve into imagine’s monetary system. The monetary works like that:

- the community’s money called PAI.

- every 12 hours 45 million PAI are minting. (numbers are not random numbers)

- the new PAIs right after creating are divided between community’s member in proportion to their shares.

- the member shares are calculated based on how many hours that member dedicated to accomplish communities task. In early days tasks are all activities about software development. Such as coding, testing, documenting, presentations, design, educational stuff, transcript and translation, reviewing, etc… later, community accepts more types of not-online activities, such as common good activities of all kind of NGOs or non profit organizations, etc…

- if a member dedicates one hour to a community’s activity, she/he/organization will be get payed for 7 years for that single contribute. Two times per day, directly to contributor’s wallet.

- because of that contribution, the member have voting rights as well, for next 7 years.

- every 20 years the amount of minting coins will be half (halving), so eventually the total amount of money supply will be a FIX number. This is the one of the features of a “good money”. imagine doesn’t allowed to print money out of thin air.

Because of these mechanisms the imagine community creates a “good money”. One key feature of a “good money” is “appreciating purchasing power over time” and imagine PAI has this feature. So people willingly accept this money in return of their goods or service, while people can earn this money by participating in community activities as well.

Having fix income for next 7 years (because of share dividend of imagine treasury), adds up another useful feature to imagine PAI, which is “credit”. This credit is real definition of credit and it is not the fractional reserve definition of credit. The credit in imagine means, You have steady unconditional income for next 7 years, despite the all changes in world. It works even better than all insurance a person can buy. You do not have to cut a part of your income in advanced, for an uncertain future, and there is no condition to get it back. It works perfectly if you lose your job or in case of passing away. You just need to save a copy of your private keys in a safe for the heirs.

You can benefit this steady income for installment purchase as well. There are more benefits for this steady income but for the sake of brevity I sop here.

In these lines I explained the economic effect of one particular community. Probably will emerged different communities and different economic impact on communities member.

What advantages have these new currencies over government fiat currencies?

Not necessarily all of new currencies have advantages over fiat currencies. The cheap currencies will not survive and “good moneys” growing over time. I can list what I mean for “good money” and candidate imagine PAI as a good money.

In my opinion, the good money must have intrinsic value. something like “labor theory of value” but do not sticking that too much. The good money must appreciates its value over time. I mean doesn’t lose its purchasing power even after decades. It must be regulated and do not fluctuate. It must be scarce and has utility value, meanwhile it must has efficient granularity. The good money must bring “financial sovereignty” and must not be seize able, also must be transferable cheaply. The good money definitely must have 3 classical factor of money. Unit of account, Medium of exchange, Store of value.

imagine PAI is designated to have all these advantages. It has mechanisms and procedures to make it self-regulated, anti-fluctuation and not-inflationary.

Even if it’s the best money, its market is too thin, so there is no utility or applicability in these new currencies.

Yes it is right, but it doesn’t mean this market forever will not grow. The new currencies gradually prove themselves over the cheap, fiat paper currencies, specially when they will accessible for mass with low cost or zero cost and in return of some useful tasks. The imagine PAI is designated to be earned easily by people having intention to help the others. In a self-regulated mechanism the efficiency and quality of contributor’s task will be increased over time. In long run this money will be distributed fairly and because of real helping the world, which provides huge liquidity as well.

You may have some other technical doubt or question. Here I prepared a useful FAQ.

Recap:

- They are different communities with different currencies and different governing rules and economy system.

- There are exchange rates between communities currency.

- As community “act good”, causes to more demand for community’s money finished in raise up money’s value.

- People simply exchange the different community’s currencies to appreciate their portfolio’s value, meanwhile they express their opinions as well.

- These exchange rates express the people feelings about the communities and impact on communities decisions as well.

- The communities are correlated to real day to day life of their members (in economic sense). The community and real life impact on each other.

- People by less cost, and repetitively vote for every single changes and impact immediately.

That is whole story about “exchange rate as an indication in democracy term” . The Comen software aimed for many other utilities as well. You can read here more details about it.

Money is speech, But don’t get me wrong

An alternative monetary and wealth distribution model

Open Money, a glue for accelerate

Comen Download & installation instruction

Tags: Comen(Community maker engine) software, imagine, assumptions, cryptocurrency, blockchain, cryptovalue, blockgraph, cryptography, free (libre) software, open source, privacy and privacy tools, decentralization, liquid democracy, prosperity