Here are some more details as to what I am imagining this would be like:
One idea for setting the value would be to implement a trading system where bids and asks are published to the network (just like the transactions are), and currency generation rates are based on successful trades.
To give an idea of how this would work I'll use "bananas" as an example currency. Basically there are two ways to go from brick to banana -- either trade, or convert directly.
If there are a lot of successful trades of bricks to bananas at a relatively higher cost (in bricks), the rule would be to increase the value of bananas by making it cost more bricks to create new bananas. On the other hand if a lot of people are dumping their bananas for lower amounts of bricks that means bananas should cost less in bricks to generate.
The quantity of bricks is conserved, so by recycling bananas you can reclaim the cost of creating them. The amount of bricks you get from recycling is based on how much was expended in creating them, with the most expensive bananas always recycled first. Thus if the price ever drops to generate them, there is likely to be a profit from recycling them. For example, say someone generates 1 banana from 1 brick. That event sits in a queue waiting for someone with a banana to recycle it. Even if the rate changes to 2 bananas per brick and someone else generates 1 banana for .5 brick, the next person to recycle bananas will get back 1 brick. (It doesn't care which banana -- they are fungible with each other.)
This gets interesting when you add other currencies. Suppose we introduce coconuts, which are a worth a lot more than bananas. The system doesn't automatically know this, but the traders do. If people tend to generate and buy coconuts with their bricks at higher rates, this tells the peers and thus the system to increase the cost in bricks to generate coconuts. The result is that bricks become worth more, and people will dump at least some of their bananas -- the entire economy is thus connected.
There may be better ways to do this, but this is just what I have so far. I'd love to hear other ideas of a better way to do it. Can we do away with bids/asks as a rate-setting feature of the system and just base the rate on what people choose to create/recycle over time? I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around it because of inferrential distance issues, but it seems like there is room for simplification there. Also, there is the question of whether we would want to add more bricks to the system over time as a reward for solving blocks (like bitcoin does with their currency), or perhaps reward block-solving in some other way (make it a requirement for generating and recycling currency, for example).
It seems that the entire idea of currency is to act as a trusted means of recording exchange and debt. Of all the functions of money, which one is being improved by this proposal?
What's actually different between this and Bitcoin? I don't understand what the benefit of having two non-legal currencies instead of just one. The idea of wasting electricity to generate unbacked currency doesn't make sense to me.
SUMMARY: Let's collect people who want to work on for-profit companies that have significant positive impacts on many people's lives.
Google provides a huge service to the world - efficient search of a vast amount of data. I would really like to see more for-profit businesses like Google, especially in underserved areas like those explored by non-profits GiveWell, Singularity Institute and CFAR. GiveWell is a nonprofit that is both working toward making humanity better, and thinking about leverage. Instead of hacking away at one branch of the problem of effective charity by working on one avenue for helping people, they've taken it meta. They're providing a huge service by helping people choose non-profits to donate to that give the most bang for your buck, and they're giving the non-profits feedback on how they can improve. I would love to see more problems taken meta like that, where people invest in high leverage things.
Beyond these non-profits, I think there is a huge amount of low-hanging fruit for creating businesses that create a lot of good for humanity and make money. For-profit businesses that pay their employees and investors well have the advantage that they can entice very successful and comfortable people away from other jobs that are less beneficial to humanity. Unlike non-profits where people are often trying to scrape by, doing the good of their hearts, people doing for-profits can live easy lives with luxurious self care while improving the world at the same time.
It's all well and good to appeal to altruistic motives, but a lot more people can be mobilzed if they don't have to sacrifice their own comfort. I have learned a great deal about this from Jesse and Sharla at Rejuvenate. They train coaches and holistic practitioners in sales and marketing - enabling thousands of people to start businesses who are doing the sorts of things that advance their mission. They do this while also being multi-millionaires themselves, and maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle, taking the time for self-care and relaxation to recharge from long workdays.
Less Wrong is read by thousands of people, many of whom are brilliant and talented. In addition, Less Wrong readers include people who are interested in the future of the world and think about the big picture. They think about things like AI and the vast positive and negative consequences it could have. In general, they consider possibilities that are outside of their immediate sensory experience.
I've run into a lot of people in this community with some really cool, unique, and interesting ideas, for high-impact ways to improve the world. I've also run into a lot of talent in this community, and I have concluded that we have the resources to implement a lot of these same ideas.
Thus, I am opening up this post as a discussion for these possibilities. I believe that we can share and refine them on this blog, and that there are talented people who will execute them if we come up with something good. For instance, I have run into countless programmers who would love to be working on something more inspiring than what they're doing now. I've also personally talked to several smart organizational leader types, such as Jolly and Evelyn, who are interested in helping with and/or leading inspiring projects And that's only the people I've met personally; I know there are a lot more folks like that, and people with talents and resources that haven't even occurred to me, who are going to be reading this.
Topics to consider when examining an idea:
An example idea from Reichart Von Wolfsheild:
A project to document the best advice we can muster into a single tome. It would inherently be something dynamic, that would grow and cover the topics important to humans that they normally seek refuge and comfort for in religion. A "bible" of sorts for the critical mind.
Before things like wikis, this was a difficult problem to take on. But, that has changed, and the best information we have available can in fact be filtered for, and simplified. The trick now, is to organize it in a way that helps humans. which is not how most information is organized.
Collaboration
Finally: If this works right, there will be lots of information flying around. Check out the organization thread and the wiki.