Wall of texting.
It seems to me, in the some of the more controversial and technical/academic discussion (ie. economics), it's common for people to wall of text/post lots of massive posts, often bringing up non-relevant tangents .
This obfuscates the the discussion, as people need to then wade through it all, and it's easy to get distracted discussing a tangent, rather than the core issue.
I think it's better try keep your posts focused, and minimal; try keep the discussion to one (progressive) line of reasoning at a time.
Marc Whinery Tue 1 Jul 2014 4:26AM
Threaded replies, where a reply is "below" the previous post it was made in response to, would allow for threads to be collapsed to allow for easier reading. Newsreaders had it 20+ years ago, shouldn't be too hard to have the Loomio guys do it. Then if someone doesn't want to see a tangent take up so much space, it's gone with a click, or back with a click.
Colin Davies Sat 5 Jul 2014 4:27AM
@kennethkopelson @marcwhinery
Threaded replies, ability to share email addresses.
A host of things are missing
I really thought with a name like the Internet Party we would have had at least a useable website.
Kenneth Kopelson Sat 5 Jul 2014 4:52AM
@colindavies Agree with you Colin
Marc Whinery Sat 5 Jul 2014 9:25PM
@colindavies @kennethkopelson
I think we all agree it would be easier if the "incubator" were easier to use. Vikram noted the participation dropped significantly after a few days. But nobody thought that's because the site was hard to use. There's a bit of a disconnect somewhere.
Colin Davies Sat 5 Jul 2014 10:51PM
@marcwhinery @kennethkopelson
Yes, As I don't have the correct OS to run the official App, my contact with the IP is limited to here and the forum. So I do wonder what I'm missing out on. As my primary interest is in the digital currency area. I'd really like to see what the policy writers are putting together. This was in the action agenda so I thought it would be somewhat of a priority. And as real digital currency is likely to be highly controversial, and as yet no input from the policy writers. I am left wondering if it is too hot a potato for the IP.
Marc Whinery Sun 6 Jul 2014 12:37AM
@colindavies https://internet.org.nz/agenda lists "digital currency" as a priority.
We already have digital currency in that not all currency is physical. The actual currency created by the government (or designees) is not always paper (plastic) or coin, but sometimes just an official note in an official ledger. Not "debt money" but with no physical representation. That plus EFTPOS can have us operating at near-paperless , as we are now. A little more NFC in phones, and get the transport systems on a unified toll system (possibly linked with the Northern Gateway Toll system).
But I think they were thinking of something more like NZBitCoin or something.
Bitcoin was designed to be uncontrollable. There are minor tweaks that could be done to make it more practical, and call that version the NZDC (New Zealand Digital Currency). I think that was more in line with the intentions, unless they were thinking of adopting bitcoin as-is for governmental use. But I really don't like that idea.
Kenneth Kopelson Sun 6 Jul 2014 1:52AM
@marcwhinery when I think of digital currency I'm thinking of something that totally eliminates paper/coin currency, relegating it to the pile of out-dated inventions. I agree that we now have electronic money, but because it generally gets destroyed at the same rate it gets created, it isn't currency as I see it. BitCoin, however, IS currency because once a coin is mined, it lasts forever (generally speaking). The same situation exists for the Stateful Money I proposed, since it has "electronic notes" that have a set value, and that exist as separate serialised files.
Also, I'm not wanting to argue about the accuracy of my definitions for money and currency, since we have already covered that territory at length. I'm merely stating why I think we do not have "digital currency" at present, and why we do have "electronic money". These terms are not the same, for reasons I've explained.
Colin Davies Sun 6 Jul 2014 2:41AM
@kennethkopelson , @marcwhinery
Yes, digital currency has been redefined, in this new political sense. I'm sure that what Action agenda is referring to is some form of crypto currency. Which I guess makes use of the peer to peer bitcoin protocols. And agreeing with Kenneth for a change, I see we have electronic money now and not digital currency. A while back I would have disagreed.
"Bitcoin was designed to be uncontrollable"
Exactly Marc, it is great as an Internet Currency or for trading, but I would run for the hills before it became our official countries currency.
Like I have stated before, I still believe NZ is in a unique position to launch a new "digital currency" and if I was to be bold I believe that if well managed, that currency could be NZs main export earner within 3 years.
Marc Whinery Sun 6 Jul 2014 4:53AM
@colindavies Bitcoin is a good start. But restricting the "mining" to the government, simplifying the keyspace to reduce effort to "mint" new crypto currency would go a long way to fixing the issues I have with bitcoin as a national currency (for any nation, not just ours).
There's no reason the keyspace must get arbitrarily harder as more are found. In bitcoin, that's to slow inflation. But in practice, bitcoin has seen massive deflation since creation, something bad for a government currency. Also, the effort to mine increasing so high that it's bad for the environment. It should be "hard" enough to make it hard to break/steal, not hard to create. Especially if the creator is a central government we want creating as cheaply as possible.
There's no reason we can't have $VBE$ be KiwiCoin (tm) Digital Crypto-Currency 1.0. And there's no reason we can't design it to update/upgrade currency. Most crypto has had weaknesses identified. So the best option is always allow upgrades.
Bitcoin is close, but needs a smaller fixed keyspace (or slowly growing, if growth is required), and designed so that transactions and creation is only done by a central authority.
I'd like to see more focus and direction from the party leadership. What do they like or not like from what we are discussing? Otherwise we end up going in circles.
Kenneth Kopelson · Tue 1 Jul 2014 1:39AM
I agree with you David, that this is a very ineffective venue for those types of discussions. It would actually be much better to have all parties in a single room, with a discussion moderator to a) limit each person's time, and b) make sure people stay focused on the point being discussed.