Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think the author realizes how expensive it is to abandon society. I certainly would love to live in the middle of the forest with my own little hobby farm and pasture (and internet connection, of course) but for me to continue to work in a tech field, even remotely, I need things from the outside, like shingles, nails, plywood, hard drives. All together I probably need about $100k to $400k, depending on what type of living conditions I want, and that is with me still working as a knowledge worker on contract.

"Encrypted Digital Currencies" psshh. If the courts are not their to enforce ownership, the currencies will never take hold. It my as well read "Encrypted Digital Monopoly Money". The only type of currency that could possibly hold value for an semi-extended enough period of time would be some really stable MMORPG, but even there I'm grasping at straws.

> If the courts are not there to enforce ownership, the currencies will never take hold.

That's probably solvable.

Another problem, which I don't know how to solve, is that the US govt doesn't agree with the idea that transactions in other currencies are not taxable. If you're trading favors, the govt wants its cut.

You can argue that your expenses equal your revenues, so there's no profit, but they're pretty good at dealing with that dodge. (If you're consuming anything, they'll see its cost as profit, even if you acquired it with clams.)

I could see something like Facebookbux taking hold. Assuming FB actually launches a payment system, and their effective fees aren't too high.

I think one reason FB's payment system has been so long in coming is that they've been thinking through all the implications of being a parallel currency.

I'm guessing at that, but it seems likely.

They already exist and are called facebook credits: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1038

Hey, I'd missed that Farmville is accepting FB Credits now. That's pretty big.

They hadn't truly launched the credit system in a real sense. It existed, but was so low profile as to be non-existent, which I assumed was intentional. But with Farmville signing on, that's a pretty real launch.

The fee structure is still exhorbitant, though. Again, maybe intentional, to prevent it from being a practical parallel currency.

Probably intentional because that's their estimation of the demand curve -- their customers are app-writers who have to make a living off of facebook.

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