Getting paid in space

Ryan,

Its not really a direct kilowatt hour to dollars situation but a compromise
between a soft fiat currency and a hard gold backed currency, a goldilocks
currency, not hard, not soft but firm. Those who like hard currencies do so
because of the stability it provides but fail to understand that the very
stability is its its main flaw, they dislike soft currencies because of the
possibility of central banks/governments interfering in the value of the
currency without understanding just how hard that really is and how big the
influence of the markets are, this itself is ironic as many of those that
want a gold backed currency are also avid supporters of the power of the
market.

What I propose is in effect a semi fiat currency, the central
bank/treasury/market sets the value of the unit of currency but are required
to link it to total energy production. This gives you the flexibility of a
fiat currency with the stability of a gold standard. There are a few ways it
could work and in truth I do not know which would be best but I can give you
one possible way and I must stress that it is just one possible way. The
whole thing is based on the concept that the wealth of a society is linked
to energy consumption (ignoring possible new tech that allows a change in
the amount of energy needed to to a task). Energy is easy to measure so
getting a number to represent the total energy usage of the nation is a
simple matter (okay, not that simple but certainly not that difficult, we do
it today, check out
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/world/country/countrybal.html ), from that
number we can figure the amount of money we can have, you can then estimate
the amount of money you can have next year, decide the amount of credit you
will allow and from that you can decide your total currency reserve, this
gives you what you can print/mint and how much you have as virtual money
(bits in the banks computers) and what you will allow the banks to produce
as credit (different from the government credit). As for private companies
producing energy, I see no problem with that, they are only going to produce
what they can sell and this will then go into the total reported to the
government to produce the bottom line figure that is used to decide the
amount of currency units produced, in fact they is no reason that you can
not make power in your back yard and sell it to the grid and make your own
money, after all, how can you counterfeit energy, the ergs you make are just
as good as the ergs the companies/government makes.
Really what we have here is a fiat currency that lacks the one thing that
most hard currency advocates hate about soft money, the government can not
get out of trouble today by printing more money, not without producing the
power and selling it, that is important, you have to do more than just
generate power, you have to sell it.

Hope this helps.

Hmmm...., I cant use the same joke again and nothing jumps to mind, oh
well, how about, with electricity being money, it really could burn a hole
in your pocket.

Darren Brown

On 19/8/06 2:54 PM, "Ryan Lokey" wrote: