The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: WalMart

Community Organization On The Block Chain

The potential for articulating smart contracts between local business entities using the Block Chain Protocol (BCP) is truly staggering. While the BCP may not be ready for general population and would be largely unnecessary within a corporation, certain contract types and certain business structures may offer an excellent environment for widespread development. 

Cooperative businesses (Co-ops) may be the “more able” organization structure to introduce smart contracts because of specialized governance that allows for the pre-sale of goods and services for the purpose of general financing.  The pre-sale agreement may take the form of products, services, cash, or shares of future production.  For the purpose of this discussion, let’s consider “shares” as a community commercial currency between co-ops.

Community Currency

The objective would be to circulate shares between co-ops as widespread and comprehensively as possible only converting back to dollars when necessary.  The incentive would be that shares, in many cases, may be exchanged tax-free as long as certain conditions are met.  Further, by eliminating transaction costs, speed and efficiency may be achieved without banks or double entry account reconciliation, until necessary for interacting with the end user.     

Most people are familiar with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) contracts from observing services such as Amazon.com, WalMart, or Zappos.com.  Electronic Data Exchange can be formally defined as the transfer of structured data, by agreed message standards, from one computer system to another without human intervention. Companies have used EDI since the mid-1990s to execute orders, renew inventory, warehousing, tracking, and even merchant banking.  The EDI acts primarily within the structure of the corporation and their contracted suppliers. 

The trick now, would be to use EDI protocols outside the construct of the corporation. The Block Chain protocol provides an important set of tools, which may allow organizations to interact with each other in a secure form of EDI that can be articulated among a community of integrated cooperatives. 

The 3 Building Blocks of Smart Contracts

There are 3 basic types of contract protocols that may be deployed through the Block Chain; these form the basis of smart contracts:

  1.  “Self-enforcing” protocol, which is like an electronic P2P handshake agreement that is fully activated between two parties.
  2.  “Mediated” contract that would include a third part intermediary such as an escrow or an oracle that would verify compliance with the agreement and pass the transaction between parties (or not).
  3. “Adjudicated contract” which places the oracle either in front of or behind the electronic handshake to filter or check transactions based on certain conditions.

An example given by Nick Szabo (reference article) would be that of, say, keys to an automobile where the owner could selectively allow access to family members but exclude other third parties.  There would be a backdoor to let in a creditor that is algorithmically switched on upon non-payment during a specific time (for repossession), or permanently switched off after the final payment is cleared.

The 3 Fundamental Particles of Cryptography:

Cryptographic keys that act in a variety of ways may activate each of these smart contract protocols.

  1. “Secret key” encryption, which is loosely analogous to common passwords that most people use.
  2. “Public key” encryption device acts like a one-way trap door that moves an agreement in only one direction.
  3. “— bit key generators” create keys that unlock transactions after a task is completed.

Controls: 

In order to duplicate the controls that large corporations hold over EDI processes, smart contract protocols should be structured in such a way as to make agreements:

  1. Robust against naive vandalism such as accounting errors,
  2. Robust against sophisticated, rational attack such as intentional fraud.

Cooperatives are quite adept at deciding how “shares” (thus, smart contracts) are activated using different types of authentication devices such as digital stamp, public signature, blind signatures, etc.  Likewise, “Privy Authentication” means that certain persons have the privilege of interacting with the contract.  Additionally, quorum control refers to a condition where a group of people may interact with the contract by election, threshold (like a kickstarter) or almost any quantitative function such as algorithm or time function.

Common electronic contracts (EDI’s) include the following (1): 

Administrative functions:

  • Product code and price catalogs
  • Catalog updates
  • Forecasts and plans
  • Deals and promotions
  • Statements

Pre-purchasing:

  • Requests for quote (& response)
  • Inventory inquiry/advice Purchasing
  • Purchase order & acknowledgment
  • Purchase order change & acknowledgment of change
  • Material release
  • Point of sale/inventory on hand Shipping and Receiving
  • Shipment status inquiry & response
  • Advance shipment notification
  • Bill of Lading
  • Freight bill Warehouse
  • Inventory inquiry & status
  • Shipping notice
  • Receipt confirmation
  • Shipment order
  • Shipment confirmation

Customs

  • Declaration
  • Release Billing and Paying
  • Invoice
  • Payment remittance
  • Credit and debit memos
  • Receipts

Conclusion:

The Boogie man of the Co-op movement is Big Box Corporate America such as WalMart and their digital siblings such as Amazon who provide consumption value often at the cost of community resilience.  Corporations have the resources to automate internal processes, suppliers, and labor.  Co-operatives, and localized producers in general, are at a severe disadvantage every time they must cross the transaction gap.  Large corporations can easily trade value within their systems paying taxes only when necessary.    

The knowledge and technology exists today for Cooperatives to accomplish the same thing using smart contracts and the Block Chain protocol.  To do so would create similar economies of scale with the added benefit of improving the distribution of wealth, manufacturing social capital, and storing value in resilient communities.  Further, crypto-currencies in general still suffer from that fatal flaw where they are not backed by any form of productivity.  To give the crypto-currencies a place to store value backed by community productivity would benefit all who anticipate such technologies.    

Primary reference for this article is from: Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks – Nick Szabo

 

 

 

 

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Twitter Me Elmo

Dorothy the goldfish is imagining Elmo reading his Twitter stream… and what would it say? Who would he follow? And who would follow Elmo?

Elmo; “Computer, who’s following me on Twitter? Starbucks, Microsoft, and WalMart? Hey wait, Twitter is selling advertising. What’s up with that? Let’s ask Mr. Noodle.”

Mr. Noodle (in mime) “Everyone is promoting something on Twitter otherwise nobody would use it.”

Murray Monster: “Hey, I thought that Twitter was supposed to give everyone an even playing field. Otherwise, nobody would go to school to learn how to actually produce anything. Ovejita!!!

Ovejita (translated from Spanish): “Yeah, everyone spends time and energy building social capital in their community. Now Twitter lets rich guys can come along and just buy access. Why then should the rest of us work so hard?”

Big Bird: “Sponsored Tweets allow Brands to buy a seat at the head of the line. What about my Tweets? Does this build or diminish my social equity?”

Grouch: “Yeah, isn’t that great, Twitter is built on social currency. Now you don’t have to produce social capital, you can just buy in. Watch the social currency devalue!!”

Count Von Count; “ah ah ah, I can count the people leaving Twitter, ah, ah, ah… 50, 40, 30, 20 million,… ah ah ah”

Abby Cadabby; “I’m comfortable with who I am in a pink dress and can just cast a barrage of nasty Tweet spells on those unfair Tweeters”.

Baby Bear: “The only ones who really benefit are National and International Brands – what do they care about what happens here on Sesame Street, let alone in the forest where grandpa bear still lives?”

Grouch: “Quit complaining, the big Twitter moments will be revolutions, airplane crashes, assassinations, natural disasters, celebrity indiscretions, political extremisms, etc. I know that only the most respectable Grouchy brands will jump into any trash can that’s burning with eyeballs….can you say Voyeur?”

Burt and Ernie: “Who said Voyeur?”

Gordon the Shopkeeper: “Then there is the subject of conflict of interest. Can a brand dispel, displace, or disproportion negative Tweets by purchasing out the social media space? Will Mr. Hooper’s store have to buy tweets just to be stay in business?”

Elmo: “Thanks guys. If Twitter makes a little bit of money and goes public, they will eventually want to make more money and more money and more money until people are fighting over the next Christmas Toy Craze. Will this invite a competitor, a disruptive technology, or speculators? Let’s ask a Baby.”

Baby: [confused look]

Elmo: “Thanks baby, What does the future hold? Even Elmo has to worry about profit margins on character marketing. It’s only a matter of time before I will Tweet and my tweets will be followed – but the question becomes; by whom?”

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Is Virtual Currency a Problem?

Editor’s note; The following analysis by Daniel Indiviglio from The Atlantic regarding a NYT article is foreboding of an unknown future.  Half insightful synthesis and half tongue-in-cheek, this article suggests that virtual currency may impact the current monetary system.  The conclusion is brilliant suggesting that the national debt could be paid in virtual currency.  It seems quaint now, but what would happen if the dollar fails?  During the Mexican Crisis, citizens emptied WalMart because today’s peso would be buy fewer Levies tomorrow – and it happened very fast. Get this and get it well: currency is a social agreement. People will trade what ever people agree to trade.

by Daniel Indiviglio

Is Virtual Currency A Real Problem?

All that time spent playing video games may finally be paying off. Literally. According to a fascinating New York Times article today, virtual currency — credits to buy stuff in video games — is being taken very seriously. China worries that make-believe video game money could affect its ability to control its money supply. As a result, it’s slapping limits on virtual currency. I’m not kidding.

From the NY Times:

Some people have even traded virtual currencies in China, and exchanged them for clothes, cosmetics and other goods. Last year, nearly $2 billion in virtual currency was traded in China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Some experts say they believe there is a much larger underground economy in the virtual world.

And it gets wackier:

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Will Facebook Currency Intermarry with the US Dollar?

Facebook is testing a virtual currency, because it’s cool and they can do it. They are not alone, the gaming industry has been at it for a long time for people who want to be more “productive” in the game space.

There is no mention, however, whether a Facebook currency could be used as a medium of exchange in the event of hyperinflation and the crash of the US dollar.  I can find nobody, writing anywhere today, that is willing to cross this proverbial line in the editorial sandbox.

I personally witnessed a devaluation in Mexico. Like a tsunami, the “adjustment” happens relatively fast as values ’snap’ fluctuate relative to other currencies.  Then very interesting things start to happen in the community. People will literally empty WalMart because most goods will be cheaper today than tomorrow.

As with other hyperinflation events, black markets form around various items such as gasoline, cigarettes, or Levis as people require some medium of exchange in order to buy necessities such as groceries and cooking fuel.

A Facebook currency may just be what communities will use to get through the event.  However, a Facebook Currency would likely be temporary because it could not be used in Banks to capitalize assets – or, by government who can’t figure out how to tax it.

Now the question becomes, what type of social currency could be intermarry with dollars?

Here is a hint; the dollar is backed by debt which is a promise to be more productive in the future. Conveniently, “innovation” is also a promise to be more productive in the future. Two such currencies are of the same species and can intermarry yielding new economic life.

The degree to which any ‘virtual’ currency is interchangable with the dollar is the degree to which it represents human innovation. Chew on that, Facebook.

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