With the recent development on systems such as freenet and Mojo Nation, the trading of pure computer resources comes closer to a reality.
Many of the things bought and sold over the internet can exist
entirely inside a computer: music, movies, content and books (at least
the text) It's obvious that once paid for, these things can be
transferred anywhere. (I'm ignoring the intellectual property and
piracy arguments in this node)
The premise of Mojo Nation is that anything can be paid for using
Mojo, a currency that gives value to computing resources. One gains
Mojo by renting out their computing power - a fast pentium 4 will gain
it's user more Mojo than a slow 486. I have been thinking about how
such a system will work, purely on a trading or economic basis
(disclaimer, please don't beat me up - I'm not an economist and I
don't have any qualifications in that area)
What will motivate the transfer of Mojo? If I want to listen to a
music track by Beck (say it's the fabulous "Nicotine and
Gravy"), I would pay Beck some of my Mojo. But what use could he
possibly have for my Mojo? By selling his music for Mojo (at a profit)
he could, for instance, use the Mojo to pay for engineers to
help him record new music. OK, so far this is working much like
legacy money.
I suppose the problem I have with Mojo is that I can't figure out
when or where this economic system closes or recycles itself. The
amount of Mojo in the economic system will increase as more and more
people rent out their resources to the system and get paid for their
trouble. Can an economic system survive with that kind of growth of
resources? It will be easy to become "rich" within this system simply
by having the most powerful system... Will the Mojo Nation spark an
Arms Race, with the richest people sustaining themselves at the top
of the tree by using their Mojo simply to gain more resources?
Again, much like our current economic climate ;-)
How much Mojo will be used to pay for a piece of music? Will you
need to run your system for days to listen to 4 minutes of music? Most
of your Mojo will be earnt by providing resources that keep the nation
going - You pay to use the network, which in turn pays you. But will
this cut it? I suppose this returns again to the question of
motivation; who will trust the system enough to start selling
their wares for Mojo?
Will there be Mojo stock exchanges?
Are there any circumstances under which Mojo could be invested? It
could be possible for someone to store Mojo with a large
broker and they would use it in such a way as to grow your investment
better than you could yourself.
Again, much like this money stuff we all use at the moment :-)
I should add more to this later when I can think straight