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RE: [ox-en] Threads "The Fading Altruism of Open Source" on <nettime>




As usual, I enjoyed reading Kermit's post and agree with most of Keith
Hart's ideas, but I see some real difficulties, conceptual and practical,
with their realization. First, the main agreement is that open money and
national money is complementary, in the same way that open and closed
source software are complementary. If Stallman and Thorvalds had demanded
to abandon all proprietary code before we could begin to use open source
software, nothing would ever have happened. If we demand a leap from the
old to the new, only few people will follow (for very good reasons, I must
say).

But the main issue is see concerns the question of trust. I agree with the
Keith that there must be multiple LETS systems, because their main
advantage is that they can be highly flexible and adapted to their
community's specific needs and characteristics.

However, that compounds the problem of trust and reputation management. If
I'm member of a lot of LETS communities, defaulting in one is less of an
issue than if I'm only member in this one. Peer pressure and incentives are
strongest when the community comprises many aspects of a member's life,
which is the case in local communities, but much less the case in virtual
ones. In order to trade reputation between communities, there must be some
kind of reputation super structure, similar to the way certificate
authorities are envisioned in PKI systems, or Moody's rates corporate debt.

Cash solves the reputation problem elegantly, by transferring the trust
from the person to the token. Credit cards solve the problem horribly with
an incredible invasive global authenticating infrastructure which is
queried virtually every time one uses the card.

I cannot but imagine this reputation trading between LETS communtities as
incredibly privacy invasive. How you behave in different LETS communities
tells even more about you than how you spend your national currency. I
remember that during a side conversation at the Wizard of OS conference
last year in Berlin, Keith not being particularly concerned about the
probleme of privacy invasion, saying something, if I recall correctly, that
a true global citizen must be responsible and accountable for his/her
actions. This reminds me of the argument that if you got nothing to hide,
then you do not have to worry about surveillance.

Then there is the practical argument. Keith and Michael Linton seem to put
much hope into smart cards and their ability to process multiple currencies
efficiently. Sure chip catds can do this, technically. But, the economic of
smart cards are so prohibitive, that introducing them will be restricted to
organizations that can afford incredibly high up-front costs, hoping to
recoup these costs by later selling "real estate" on the chip. I don't see,
for merely practical reasons, how LETS systems would get access to that
pricey real estate. That might change over time when smart cards are widely
available and issuing another yet another one is a minor project, but I
would not bet on that happening anytime soon.

Felix






--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://felix.openflows.org


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