Low-Level Code
All this tiresome talk about accounting systems must seem too detailed or obsessive,
but that’s where it all starts. Every one of us works for an accounting
system - we’re really that shallow. Because accounting systems are the
baseline for our behavior, it’s the high
order bit for our design study. Again, our definition of an accounting system,
from October 22:
If any set of buyers and sellers reliably moves funds according to published
rules, they are implementing an accounting system, whether or not it's centralized.
If, in addition, those participants establish formal financial relationships
whereby they reward activities that promote their collective goals, then those
helpful activities are rewarded through an accounting system.
We’re not designing an economic utopia because they don’t exist.
Our Xpertweb protocols must work in a world of short-sighted, self-centered
competitive people. People who care most about the how well the money moves
among the participants and how much of it lodges in their account. Once that
confidence is established, people will do what they have to do to get their
fair share. They may work on their quality, if quality is measured and published.
There are 2 kinds of money that fall out of an Xpertweb transaction:
- The price paid for the seller's product or service (cash flow)
- Fees paid by the buyer and seller to their mentor group (cash flow)
(5% of the transaction price paid by each - 10% total)
Both payment types are subject to the payer's rating of the payee
These payments correlate to the 2 kinds of money common in the larger economy:
- Purchases and compensation to employees & contractors (cash flow)
- Capital generated from net profits accumulated by a corporation (assets)
(this ignores government pensions)
There's an interesting distinction here. In the traditional model, everybody's
goal is to receive automatic money - money based on capital that shows up as
a pension, royalty, residual, dividends, stock sales, etc. All of those exist
because some corporation has employed people to generate more cash flow than
the people cost, generating retained earnings. The profits themselves may be
available to generate automatic money but usually it's based on the willingness
of stock speculators to pay more for a piece of the company than the last owner
of that piece paid.
So the interesting money in Ye Olde Economy is not type 1, wages and sales,
but the money that wasn't paid for employees or parts, and was transformed into
assets that can be bought, sold, mortgaged and fretted over. It is frozen work,
generated by capitalizing a vibrant event - production - and
turning it into a static thing. It is the genius of capitalism to develop that
financial alchemy, for it made it possible to turn the fruits of past successes
into the possibility of new success.
The interesting money in our Xpertweb microeconomy is not static but dynamic.
Where in Ye Olde Economy you try to accumulate assets which will pay you a dividend
or might increase in value, Xpertweb wealth is the flow of tens or hundreds
or thousands of people sending you a dollar or ten each month. These myriad
peer-to-peer payments cannot be intercepted or devalued or traded to someone
else like assets can. They are not fungible,
as the lawyers say - not convertible to another form or easily conveyed to another.
Importantly, it is not practical for a clever person to re-direct these myriad
payments to themselves. For the successful mentor, having mentored successful
others who mentor likewise, these payments are incessant, continuous, and cannot
be avoided. Every day, one-thirtieth of their mentee pool deposits a few dollars
into their bank account.
This is a change in kind, not just amount. Where we currently seek to amass
several significant assets, each of which may rise or fall with the market,
Xpertweb proposes to deliver myriad streams of inconsequential amounts.
Next time we'll look at the math behind these payments.
8:41:10 PM 
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