Talk:Respect currency

Proposition for pratical implementation of respect currency

The respect currency can be composed of two parts: the respect part and the digital currency part which is exchangeable for real money.

Problems with single component respect currency

The respect currency cannot be realized solely in terms of the digital currency because it does not fulfill two of the requirements of the respect currency given below.

"Once given, respect currency should gradually diminish in time, so that the respect should be gained constantly"
- This can lead to uncontrollable inflation if there is just a digital currency part in respect currency. Respect theory works equally well if the players want to collect more buying power without diminisihing the value of the currency. However, in this case the 'respect' component is washed out of the concept of respect currency. Real respect is something that needs to be renewed from time to time.
"Highly respected people should be able to show more respect (i.e., their respect is valued more by the society)"
- In terms of money, does this requirement read 'rich people can dole out more money' or 'rich people's money is worth more than poor people's money'? If there would be a separate respect component in the respect currency, it could be expected that the words of a respected elder weigh more heavily than those of a new kid in the block.

Digital currency component of respect currency: Bitcoin

Bitcoin is virtual currency. Bitcoin could represent the digital currency component of respect currency. Bitcoin is superior to the normal currencies for the following reasons:

It does not suffer from inflation as normal currencies do (inflation can be controlled and is predictable as what comes to reserves)
Central banks can not control the generation of the currency
Banks are not needed in transactions
Bitcoins are fully exchangeable for real money and products
Bitcoins are virtual, which means that operating the virtual money system is cheap
Bitcoins cannot be traced or forged
Bitcoins can be split into smaller and smaller 'pieces'

Bitcoins can be acquired by 'mining', in exchange for goods, services and real money. At the moment, in the creation phase of the crypto currency bitcoins can be simply earned by dedicating servers to the p2p-network. In the future the reward will be based more on traffice control resources.

Risks with Bitcoins

Possible problems (see also EFF article):

Powerful server providers collect more bitcoins in their reserves (this is balanced to some extent by randomization of the distribution process and by diminishing the reward over time)
At present, small size of bitcoin market can lead to large fluctuations in demand prices (free market philosophy)
if popularity is gained, direct intervention attempt of traditional banking institutions

Even if these risks are real, no harm is done if the bitcoins are not taken out of the virtual system. They can still be used as prototype of respect currency, whose transaction mechanism for real currency has already been established and therefore collecting them as a bonus on top of real salary, for example, would be a motivating factor for many knowledge workers (even if the amounts would be small), because it could be done completely independently of the bureaucrats of government institutions.

Respect component of the respect currency: Onor

This component satisfies the properties of the respect currency not taken care of by the digital currency component. The reward system of Opasnet could function as follows

Opasnet user can earn respect currency by recommendation (based on automated reward or user recommendation). Automated recommendations are activated when a certain standardized task has been performed (creating a new page with content, publishing a paper, winning Noble price etc.). User initiated reward can be a thumbs up apprecitation signal from a reader of a web page or grading of the web page. In this case (similarly to Facebook) it is known who the recommending person is ("user A likes this page") and personalized weight can be given to the recommendation to satisfy the principle 'respected person's respect is more valuable than less respected person's respect'.
The respect part of the respect currency can be defined to decay in time, for example according to the formula given on the main page. When a person accumulates respect currency, over time the respect part may vanish completely leaving only the digital money part which is exchangeable for real currency all the time.
The problem is that the respect part has an infinite reservoir whereas the digital currency part is limited for example to a finite amount of bitcoins. Especially in the testing phase of the respect currency one may want to change the inner workings of the reward system and study the flow of the currency within Opasnet users. Therefore, it is sensible to observe the dynamics over restricted periods of time.
Onors and bitcoins are related to each other by the following procedure: The total onor 'density' triggered during the time period (which may be defined to be an hour, a day, a week or a month, depending on the intensity of the useage of Opasnet) will be denoted by Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle O(N,t) \equiv \sum_n o_{n}(t) } , where the index Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle n} sums over all onors from all sources and the argument Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle N} denotes the Nth time interval Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle t \in [T_N, T_{N+1}]} . The onor function Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle o_n(t) } satisfies Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \int_0^{\infty} \!ds\, o_n(s) = 1 } . It rises sharply when it is triggered and has a decaying tale which may extend over several time intervals. The total amount of 'honor' stored in the time interval is given by Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle O_{tot}(N) \equiv \int_{T_N}^{T_{N+1}}\! ds\, O(N,s) } . Let Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B(N)} denote the number of bitcoins that we can afford to use in the Nth time interval (If we acquired Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B_{tot}} for a test period of one year, then, in a month we can use Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B(N) = B_{tot}/12} . However, if we require more bitcoins from the market in the meanwhile, the $B(N)$s can differ from month to month). Each onor generates and equivalent of Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle B(N)/O_{tot}(N)} bitcoins to the honored person's bitcoin purse within the period N.
Because an unlimited number of onors can be generated within each period, the value of a single onor goes down if more are not obtained from the market. In the testing phase this probably does not bother Opasnet users too much because the bitcoin amounts will be small but in the longer run one could device a way of increasing the amounts B(N) so that the average bitcoin value of an onor stays roughly constant. Alternatively, one may compensate by keeping statistics of onors and say, once a year give a larger bitcoin bonus to the most honorable members of the community.
One may also want to test the effects of the decaying tales on the values of the honors. For example, one can define the time intervals so long that the onors will die off before the next period begins.

Game plan

dedicate a few servers for p2p and earn a few bitcoins by mining, for example.
Since in mining bitcoins are not bought directly, but indirectly (and the amounts needed for testing are very small) there is probably no legal hinderance from THL part to prevent Opasnet users from utilizing a bitcoin delivery system.
device an automated onor distribution system with predefined reward 'quantization'
invent a relationship between onor and bitcoin (see above for an example)
Start distributing fractions of two-component respect currency to Opasnet users. To make the game more interesting, the time intervals should be defined to be no longer than a day, perhaps. The users could also follow the evolution of the bitcoins in the exchange markets against real currencies.