You point out yourself that money is (in this context) is just a measure, an medium of exchange. It is NOT the same thing as the underlying value. Now, to "get more" I would want to get more value and you're promising me just more money. The point is that an economy produces some amount of value and that's all you have to redistribute. You can make money spin faster, but that will not increase the value produced -- all you'll do is increase inflation.
Do you think that the current economy is ginning at an optimal output? How much slack would you guess there is? How much GDP is currently left 'on the shelf'? Maybe you think we are very close to optimal. If that is the case then I'm tilting at windmills. If it is suboptimal, the the next questions is 'why?' Is it a lack of tech. A lack of resources? A lack of time? I'm not sure but I think it is very sub optimal.
If increasing the flow of money would not bridge the missing value, what would? I think that a lot of actors in our economy get stuck 'waiting for the check' to get started on production, finish production,procure the capital necessary to build, etc.
Is there some data/study you can point to that says that faster velocity doesn't increase production? Maybe I should run the model with mv > 1 transaction a month and see what happens.
Essentially, if I buy a loaf of bread from a baker and the baker knows he'll have to pay me "dividends" in the future, the baker will raise the price of bread to compensate for these future dividends. Your hopes remind me of "free energy" mechanisms in physics -- if only we could set up sufficiently clever loops we can get more energy that we put in! Um...
The difference is that there isn't a law of conservation of value. We regularly see massive exponential movements in the ability of human beings to produce amazing things. Would you argue that we should go back to barter because money is just a clever way of abstracting away coincidence of wants? Energy is physics. Money is an artificial construct.
Also don't ignore the fact that a consumer may be willing to pay the increased price charged because the consumer will be getting that value back in the future. I understand that this may seem like a clever loop, except that people die. So the loop breaks down and you have to have a system for legacy. The system has a consequence of corporate death as well so you don't end up with supercorps sucking in all the economic decay. Legacy and transition are in the details of the book, but basically, this isn't a system that jives with immortality...it is a system to get us there.
My current understanding of your idea is that you basically want a tax on wealth (or, specifically, on money wealth) with a very complicated scheme to distribute its proceeds directly to the population bypassing the government. Is that a reasonable approach?
It isn't really much more complicated than the fractional reserve system we have now. I have no delusions about the ease of bootstrapping such a system, but it really can be a fairly straight forward and simple system.
I would also like to point out that I think your fears of wealth accumulation are overblown. Look at empirical data. Is there, in reality, old old money dominating everything? Does the Medici family rule Europe? What happened to the Vanderbilts? The oldest rich family I can recall offhand is the Rothschilds and while they are not poor by any means, how do they do compared to Gates or Brin or Musk?
I think the empirical data is there for the r > g problem(http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/r). I think most of use here probably fall on the side that assumes technology will keep g > r, but with no promises, I think doing something is better than nothing.
What about the traditionally most valuable kind of capital -- land, also known as real estate? What about technology? or non-agricultural commodities like oil, coal, copper, etc?
Certainly somethings have more or less carrying costs. The closer you get to stable elements, the more you can decrease these (Gold, Silver). Carbon is an element but tends to be a slippery beast that takes all kind of crazy forms that break down or change in some way. Land does have a carrying cost of some form of maintenance and most has an artificial carrying cost in the form of property taxes. Gesell had some pretty crazy ideas about land that I don't exactly buy into. I don't have many super strong ideas about it because I think(hope) we are going to be moving past the point where land is that big of a deal for most of us.
The current inflation is controlled to best of central banks' abilities. You are not controlling it any better, you're just setting a floor as to how low can it go.
Actually the theory is that we can hold inflation at 0 by printing decaying dollars when we need them and decaying them faster when there is too much. Tech is always going to bring about some deflation, but the general goal is for there always to be enough money to buy all the things that are being produced.
I'll take the standard capitalist approach -- if the robot down the block can sell me the same shirt cheaper, I'll buy it from the robot. If it can't, I'll buy it from the Vietnamese. I am not willing to pay extra for feel-good fluff.
I'm a humanist...I guess you are not...agree to disagree? We can't do that on a rationality discussion board can we? If you aren't willing to pay for the feel good fluff, do you at least want it to happen? By what means if so. If not, are you cool with the status quo going forward as long as prices always get smaller?
Do you think that the current economy is ginning at an optimal output?
I don't know what "optimal output" is. Can the economy produce more? Of course it can. What's stopping it? Ah, an interesting and complicated question. There are a lot of constraints, both local and global -- I would say the biggest is the level of technology -- and they are binding in different places. As I mentioned earlier, I do not think that the availability of capital is a major constraint at the moment. In fact, we have a glut of cheap money.
...I think that a lot of ac
I posted a stupid question a couple of weeks ago and got some good feedback.
@ChristianKl suggested that I start building a model of hypercapitalism for people to play with. I have the first one ready! It isn't quite to the point where people can start submitting bots to play in the economy, but I think it shows that the idea is worth more thought.
Analysis:
http://www.hypercapital.info/news/2015/4/19/a-published-model-of-hypercapitalism
Runnable Code - fork it and mess around with it:
http://runnable.com/VTBkszswv6lIdEFR/hypercapitalism-sample-economy-for-node-js-and-hello-world
I'd love some more feedback and opinions.
A couple of other things for context:
hypercapital.info - all about hypercapitalism
Overcoming bias about our money
Information Theory and the Economy