Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

Well, the ripple concept comes from the system's ability to "ripple" payments across networks of different asset holders, at rates set by the users and/or exchange markets that the system permits.

It's pretty amazing to see how well it works in real life.

https://classic.ripplepay.com/about/ https://ripple.com/

Ripple provides a market exchange methodology, among other things. Bitcoin can't do that natively due to the lack of looping in its scripts.

Also, check out Ethereum. If they pull it off, it'll twist your noodle with the possibilities.

Oh, and Ripple is very different from eGold since it's peer-to-peer and open source. Most importantly, Ripple allows payments to "ripple" through people until they reach the end target. All this is very different from eGold, a centralized, closed-source payment processor.

Ripple themselves doesn't hold any currency except for the base XRP (Ripple) unit of account, which they require for opening an account, transactions, and various other actions.

I agree that RippleLabs has poorly distributed this XRP they created as their system's base currency. This has left them open to accusations of scam(not really) and greed(totally), which is too bad given the incredible technology Ripple offers. RippleLabs has also done a pretty poor job marketing their increasingly advanced technology.

In the end, Ripple can happily co-exist with Bitcoin, and offers solutions to many of the problems Bitcoin will soon face (such as transaction load). But I don't see this happening unless the cryptocurrency community decides to approach Ripple with an open mind, and unless RippleLabs puts down the arrogance and actively communicate with the community.

Signed,

A dedicated Bitcoiner since winter 2010/2011

"...A majority of the world is Chinese. So am I. We emphasize the extended family as a unit, we carry a monstrously vast line of traditions, and we even place surnames in front of personal names to show priorities in terms of identity. Certainly, not all of us follow the ways of our ancestors strictly, but this is due to the influence of, you guessed it, the Western world. But having been raised as in the first generation in this nation, I can say for certain that there are immense cultural differences. In particular, honor and shame rather than innocence and guilt are the issue: we do not think in terms of Jiminy Crickets in our heads, but rather base values on the group as a whole.

At gatherings, for instance, a father may yell at his child for being "diu liên"--throwing one's face away, a lovely image for what it means to be, for lack of a better word, shameful. But even in instances of moral guilt, what happens? The same phrase is applied, whether the child was caught cheating on homework, stealing a bicycle, or throwing food across the room in a restaurant. In some cases, yes, manners are the issue, but for some reason, it is not the fact that the action was in itself wrong that one is condemned for--it is the fact that it brought shame, particularly to the family name. For this reason, perhaps, Asians in general have been advocates of stricter discipline, particularly corporal. Modern psychologists may claim that punishment does no good, but for the honor-driven parents, it certainly brings about the desired behavior modification.

Of course, there are more trivial examples. There is rarely a gathering in which people will not "fight" over the right to pay the bill. Of course, each will attempt to claim it first, (not because it is morally right, or because they really want to, but because it is honorable,) and they will attempt to excuse the others by elaborating on how embarrassing it would be to accept it. Then there is the stereotype of the high grades, the good schools, the countless extracurriculars, at least piano or violin, and so forth. For what purpose? To represent the family name. You will never hear the older generation say, "It's for your own good," whether in regard to an order, or a punishment, or anything, because it simply isn't about us as individuals. And you will most certainly never hear, "Don't you feel bad?" The Chinese are notorious for their stoic attitudes. It is sometimes joked that we as a race don't even have emotions.

There is another silly game often played. One might say something intentionally belittling so as to win reinforcing praise from the other party, whether with regard to how a child never studies or how poorly the food is cooked. This, of course, is a cheap way to win, you guessed it, honor. As a result, the principle of limited good shows up all the time. People do not dispense presents or hospitality out of goodwill, but necessity, because it would be shameful to accept it without returning the favor.

Of course, a known tendency in such a society can be to become completely dishonest. So long as one is not caught, any means are fine. There is fierce competition and pressure, which is why it never surprised me that many of my fellow American- born Chinese peers ended up, in fact, doing this. They had become so obsessed with the outward favor that they took a Machiavellian approach to it all. It never once bothered them that they might be doing the wrong thing. It never once occurred to them to live for themselves. It never occurred to them that there was an internal concept of right and wrong. These are ideas foreign to us.

I was once reprimanded for inappropriate behavior during recess back in elementary school. When the teacher tried to explain how I might hurt the other children, how I should feel bad, and how I should say sorry, much of it did not make any sense, because I knew my parents would scold me for making them look bad. One view was individualistic, emotional, and personal. The other was collectivist, pragmatic, and social."

I disagree. What that story means is that the people were left holding paper certificates worth exactly nothing.

It is true that before the loss of gold was discovered, each individual who received a certificate and then spent it suffered no loss.

He did suffer a loss upon receiving a certificate, but he didn't know it because nobody knew the certificates were worthless. He then suffered an offsetting gain when he spent the certificate.

All along the way, people were suffering losses and transferring those losses to others. They just didn't know it was happening.

Similarly, you might receive a counterfeit $100 bill and not know it, and then spend it at a store successfully. Only the poor sap who discovers that he holds a counterfeit and consequently decides not to spend it loses in the end.

I doubt the loss of gold would devastate that economy. Some people holding large quantities of the worthless certificates would indeed be personally devastated. However, I would expect that the wealth of that society would already vastly exceed the value of the lost gold, since the people would no doubt be the owners of other physical commodities, capital equipment, trade secrets, and other forms of value.

Gold, like any form of money, does not have to exist in an amount "equal to" the amount of (other) wealth in a society. That's an infantile notion. A single piece of money can be traded thousands of times per second, and can support far more economic activity than its face value would suggest. Money is traded at the margin.

Therefore I agree that the loss shouldn't gum up the entire economy forever, though it could be very stunning and painful until the people recovered from their very real losses.