Ideal Currency
This is an explosion of ideas and thoughts that's not likely to be enjoyable or useful to most people. It deteriorates at the end with no coherent prescription on how to implement anything.
Capped quantity coin stifles growth. Currency is the life-blood of an economizing system. A body can't grow if the amount of blood doesn't increase. Capping it enables old adopters to gain control of new adopters. Under what circumstances does the past have the right to own and control the future? You can't have a future without a past, so it might be a lot. I would think it's not more than the past contributed to the future. That's difficult to define and measure. If it's abusive, the future will reject it. But what's abuse if you created it? My concluding thought is that the past has the right of control only to the extent it increases the power of the future, or maybe the future's future. By that I mean if the future estimates that letting the past retain control will be beneficial to its future, then that control is justified. In other other words, if the end game isn't to be the most powerful, an economic system that makes it the end game will win. I believe physical law is the driving force behind evolution and that economics economizing (and continually expanding) control of the physical world means "might is right" to the extent it continually seeks more might in the future.
Survival and expansion via reproduction with modification appears to be physical law's primary ethic. Biology learned how to control ions to send signal and do chemical reactions. In the generation of phytochemical and ATP energy, it can even control electrons (see photosynthesis and the electron transport chain in mitochondria). The advancement of metals and silicon has put the control of electrons on steroids. These hard material have very low entropy per atom compared to biology (which the exception of the DNA crystal that forms our hard memory) due to being very rigid and pure materials. This enables them to control electrons much better than biology, enabling much more efficient solar energy capture (than photosynthesis) to move matter with incredibly efficient electrical motors (compared to muscles) to create very hard and durable structures, all now under the control of A.I. brains who can model the world with the storage and movement of electrons instead of ions and chemical bonds that weigh 50,000x more then electrons. Instead of ions representing and predicting (in a virtual world) the movement and future grams and kilograms in the physical world, A.I. can use electrons. The next stage might be photons, but I don't think there's a known way for photons to have memory.
Economists from all walks have always said the ideal currency is a basket of commodities. Gold is a substitute (but not ideal even by von Mises' comments). To be more precise, the ideal currency might be proportional to the amount of commodity-producing infrastructure. This is because the commodities being per time is the life-blood and sustainability of society's strength, i.e. power in a vague and sometimes literal "Watts". To say the ideal currency should be a commodities is to express it as a type of "Joules", but I think saying it should be the commodity-producing infrastructure is more to the point and goal. Notice that in the quantity theory of money MV= PQ where MV can be seen as Watts. MV is the actual value of the money. M in units of Joules is the value of money only if velocity is constant.
In this view, a fix quantity of coin would mean owning it is a percent ownership of the commodity-producing infrastructure, divorcing it from being like "Watts" and turning it into percent control. This reeks of centralization which in many contexts means increased efficiency. But efficiency from centralization is due to aligning and focusing resources for a goal. The whole point of currency is to decentrally align and coordinate varied interests through the price signal. In short, I believe the price signal should retain some sort of Watts unit, not percent ownership of the total Watts. Getting back to my original analogy, a certain volume of blood (being produced per time by organs) contains a certain amount of mass (needed materials) and energy. We know what it is and what to do with it. A percent of total blood volume being produced is too nebulous as a price signal. But the brain finds a percent ownership useful: it makes the decision of where to send a percent of available resources (the "blood") when conditions change. This may be a justification for a dual coin system. Several projects have used a "gold-like" coin to make decisions (govern/investment) and a "cash", "gas", "stable-value", or "utility" coin as a currency. Difinity, Meter.io, MakerDAO, and the Intelligent Internet are examples.
The brain has an economy with price signals of it's own and based on the movement of ions instead of blood. This signals are meant to monitor, model, and predict the future of the external world's mass and energy and how it affects the body and blood-producing organs. So the second coin should have units of ion signals produced per second instead of blood produced per second. In other words, neurons. Increasing the number of efficient neurons (if only by having children) is aligned with increasing blood production. To go above the neurons in the way the neurons are above the blood, we have the money we use between us to coordinate economic activity to control our neurons.
Although I don't believe the goal of evolutionary physics is to make life better for humanity, it's what most sane humans want. This means producing more commodities per time per median person. Knowing and enforcing the units of the coin is crucial to knowing its meaning and value. Doing it per median person is based on the belief that decentralization of wealth (better wealth "equality") is a good thing. It doesn't prevent some from making massive gains and others losing it all. "Per average person" could enable massive returns to a few while leaving everyone else impoverished. There are some commodities we need more than others, so there needs to be a weighting factor for each commodity. Aso, let me extend the definition of "commodity" to include all things that can make life better. This includes things like a cure for cancer and insurance. For example, if we find a cure for a particular cancer and it's basically free, we've achieved something great. Unlike traditional commodities, once we find such a thing, the "producing infrastructure" doesn't deteriorate over time. For these reasons, our societal brain should be marshalling a larger part of our societal blood to work on it, giving it a larger weighting factor in how we define the currency in terms of commodities. For insurance, we want the max coverage for the minimum rates. We want to "produce" coverage more and more efficiently like any other commodity to lower the cost/coverage ratio.
Implicit in the the above is that the brain should decide the individual components in our blood and their weightings to get maximum health per median cell in the body. The things chosen to be commodities and the weightings assigned to them is central to the market being intelligent and acting for the good of the median person. The macro, invisible hand of the price signal needs the definition of the currency to be intelligent.
Since the neurons and the body are aligned, the cells using the blood currency should be able to send pain signals to tell the brain what's going on to direct the neurons using the ion currency. There should be a mechanism for the cells to signal the neurons. Demanding more blood per second would be a sign of improving health and growth. If the market is working perfectly, the blood would expand with the demand. But expanding production takes time, so an increased use of the available blood will use up some of the supply needed by other cells, slowing the economy. This implies a need to get a loan, but that causes inflation, a dilution of the blood metric, causing the same problem. The existence of wage and price stickiness are used to justify the money creation. Either way, it's important the new blood production comes online.
The neurons might be democratic representatives voted into office by the other cells. Their votes might be weighted by their ownership of blood currency. Alternatively, the neurons might be capitalists who sell their store of value currency for the cash currency. That is, someone holding a lot of cash might want to switch it to a store of value and vice versa. The capitalist would sell his store of value only if he thinks he can produce more blood than the current value of his neurons.
GDP is related to the amount of commodity infrastructure. both are often expressed as production per time. But GDP is just a metric for sales that occurred in terms of the currency, not the things or services that they produce. For example, paying for cancer treatments and insurance premiums increases GDP but those are a drain on society, not a metric for the beneficial things the economy is producing.
Ideal Currency
This is an explosion of ideas and thoughts that's not likely to be enjoyable or useful to most people. It deteriorates at the end with no coherent prescription on how to implement anything.
Capped quantity coin stifles growth. Currency is the life-blood of an economizing system. A body can't grow if the amount of blood doesn't increase. Capping it enables old adopters to gain control of new adopters. Under what circumstances does the past have the right to own and control the future? You can't have a future without a past, so it might be a lot. I would think it's not more than the past contributed to the future. That's difficult to define and measure. If it's abusive, the future will reject it. But what's abuse if you created it? My concluding thought is that the past has the right of control only to the extent it increases the power of the future, or maybe the future's future. By that I mean if the future estimates that letting the past retain control will be beneficial to its future, then that control is justified. In other other words, if the end game isn't to be the most powerful, an economic system that makes it the end game will win. I believe physical law is the driving force behind evolution and that economics economizing (and continually expanding) control of the physical world means "might is right" to the extent it continually seeks more might in the future.
Survival and expansion via reproduction with modification appears to be physical law's primary ethic. Biology learned how to control ions to send signal and do chemical reactions. In the generation of phytochemical and ATP energy, it can even control electrons (see photosynthesis and the electron transport chain in mitochondria). The advancement of metals and silicon has put the control of electrons on steroids. These hard material have very low entropy per atom compared to biology (which the exception of the DNA crystal that forms our hard memory) due to being very rigid and pure materials. This enables them to control electrons much better than biology, enabling much more efficient solar energy capture (than photosynthesis) to move matter with incredibly efficient electrical motors (compared to muscles) to create very hard and durable structures, all now under the control of A.I. brains who can model the world with the storage and movement of electrons instead of ions and chemical bonds that weigh 50,000x more then electrons. Instead of ions representing and predicting (in a virtual world) the movement and future grams and kilograms in the physical world, A.I. can use electrons. The next stage might be photons, but I don't think there's a known way for photons to have memory.
Economists from all walks have always said the ideal currency is a basket of commodities. Gold is a substitute (but not ideal even by von Mises' comments). To be more precise, the ideal currency might be proportional to the amount of commodity-producing infrastructure. This is because the commodities being per time is the life-blood and sustainability of society's strength, i.e. power in a vague and sometimes literal "Watts". To say the ideal currency should be a commodities is to express it as a type of "Joules", but I think saying it should be the commodity-producing infrastructure is more to the point and goal. Notice that in the quantity theory of money MV= PQ where MV can be seen as Watts. MV is the actual value of the money. M in units of Joules is the value of money only if velocity is constant.
In this view, a fix quantity of coin would mean owning it is a percent ownership of the commodity-producing infrastructure, divorcing it from being like "Watts" and turning it into percent control. This reeks of centralization which in many contexts means increased efficiency. But efficiency from centralization is due to aligning and focusing resources for a goal. The whole point of currency is to decentrally align and coordinate varied interests through the price signal. In short, I believe the price signal should retain some sort of Watts unit, not percent ownership of the total Watts. Getting back to my original analogy, a certain volume of blood (being produced per time by organs) contains a certain amount of mass (needed materials) and energy. We know what it is and what to do with it. A percent of total blood volume being produced is too nebulous as a price signal. But the brain finds a percent ownership useful: it makes the decision of where to send a percent of available resources (the "blood") when conditions change. This may be a justification for a dual coin system. Several projects have used a "gold-like" coin to make decisions (govern/investment) and a "cash", "gas", "stable-value", or "utility" coin as a currency. Difinity, Meter.io, MakerDAO, and the Intelligent Internet are examples.
The brain has an economy with price signals of it's own and based on the movement of ions instead of blood. This signals are meant to monitor, model, and predict the future of the external world's mass and energy and how it affects the body and blood-producing organs. So the second coin should have units of ion signals produced per second instead of blood produced per second. In other words, neurons. Increasing the number of efficient neurons (if only by having children) is aligned with increasing blood production. To go above the neurons in the way the neurons are above the blood, we have the money we use between us to coordinate economic activity to control our neurons.
Although I don't believe the goal of evolutionary physics is to make life better for humanity, it's what most sane humans want. This means producing more commodities per time per median person. Knowing and enforcing the units of the coin is crucial to knowing its meaning and value. Doing it per median person is based on the belief that decentralization of wealth (better wealth "equality") is a good thing. It doesn't prevent some from making massive gains and others losing it all. "Per average person" could enable massive returns to a few while leaving everyone else impoverished. There are some commodities we need more than others, so there needs to be a weighting factor for each commodity. Aso, let me extend the definition of "commodity" to include all things that can make life better. This includes things like a cure for cancer and insurance. For example, if we find a cure for a particular cancer and it's basically free, we've achieved something great. Unlike traditional commodities, once we find such a thing, the "producing infrastructure" doesn't deteriorate over time. For these reasons, our societal brain should be marshalling a larger part of our societal blood to work on it, giving it a larger weighting factor in how we define the currency in terms of commodities. For insurance, we want the max coverage for the minimum rates. We want to "produce" coverage more and more efficiently like any other commodity to lower the cost/coverage ratio.
Implicit in the the above is that the brain should decide the individual components in our blood and their weightings to get maximum health per median cell in the body. The things chosen to be commodities and the weightings assigned to them is central to the market being intelligent and acting for the good of the median person. The macro, invisible hand of the price signal needs the definition of the currency to be intelligent.
Since the neurons and the body are aligned, the cells using the blood currency should be able to send pain signals to tell the brain what's going on to direct the neurons using the ion currency. There should be a mechanism for the cells to signal the neurons. Demanding more blood per second would be a sign of improving health and growth. If the market is working perfectly, the blood would expand with the demand. But expanding production takes time, so an increased use of the available blood will use up some of the supply needed by other cells, slowing the economy. This implies a need to get a loan, but that causes inflation, a dilution of the blood metric, causing the same problem. The existence of wage and price stickiness are used to justify the money creation. Either way, it's important the new blood production comes online.
The neurons might be democratic representatives voted into office by the other cells. Their votes might be weighted by their ownership of blood currency. Alternatively, the neurons might be capitalists who sell their store of value currency for the cash currency. That is, someone holding a lot of cash might want to switch it to a store of value and vice versa. The capitalist would sell his store of value only if he thinks he can produce more blood than the current value of his neurons.
GDP is related to the amount of commodity infrastructure. both are often expressed as production per time. But GDP is just a metric for sales that occurred in terms of the currency, not the things or services that they produce. For example, paying for cancer treatments and insurance premiums increases GDP but those are a drain on society, not a metric for the beneficial things the economy is producing.