It will be called Free Speech Just Pay Shipping and we will play this open-source game, write on this forum using the limited resources of text and optimize the means of producing this text, at FreeSpeechJustPayShipping.com when we agree on what rules the game should have and I build it.
Toward the goal of a global Resource Based Economy, I have a proposal we can do quickly which, if it works, would start a chain-reaction that spreads to the whole world as people see a Resource Based Economy in action and how much better it works. I offer to do all the work setting this up. It will not cost anything. I just want to see what you zeitgeists think about it first. Lets have a debate about the details of this proposal, and then I'll build it and we'll do this experiment.
Physical resources would extremely slow down the experiment. The resources will be information with certain rules for how to add new information and combine existing information, within this system. It will be a text forum, similar to threads, posts, and replies to posts in a tree, but more generally it will be a tree of text where you can add branches anywhere.
For example, to that last sentence, you could add " and a tree is a hierarchy." after "...be a tree of text", so the tree would be:
It will be a text forum, similar to threads, posts, and replies to posts in a tree, but more generally it will be a tree of text where you can add branches anywhere.
AND
It will be a text forum, similar to threads, posts, and replies to posts in a tree, but more generally it will be a tree of text and a tree is a hierarchy.
This would be done efficiently in software without duplicating the common parts of text.
A thread would be the text of its title. A post would be the thread title followed by the text of the post. A reply to that post would be all that followed by the reply. Parallel posts will not include eachothers text. That's how the tree will branch.
This system will have no support for names except you can choose to write your name as part of the text, kind of like in the Wikipedia talk pages.
The tree of text (the forum) is owned by everyone. Specific people do not own specific texts. In that way, its more of a wiki.
There will be the ability for anyone to control text if they choose not to share their resources. That is an important part of this Resource Based Economy. People have to have the ability not to share and to organize their small society into ways of distributing such ability to control the text. They could give it to everyone, but in this experiment its their choice. We will see if the Resource Based Economy works.
I have some rules of this game in mind to make that work, but first I need to explain more basic things and get your reactions to it.
Every text will have a number amount, and anyone who knows certain things will be able to transfer that amount to anywhere else in the game. Everyone can see all the text with amounts totaled for each unique text, but there will be secret things (which can be publicly written if people choose to) about each text which allow some people to control it, to buy and sell it, to move it where they want, and so on.
There will be a thing called money, which is just a number. If you don't like the idea of using money in a Resource Based Economy simulation, we can call it electricity or some other resource which is in limited supply. Its just a game, and the majority of resources are specific texts and amounts of them. They can be traded in a free market by specifying ratios of this money. If anyone can think of a way to do this experiment without this part, I will be happy to debate it, but for now this experiment is the best chance the Zeitgeist Movement has of doing a real experiment with a Resource Based Economy. You can also think of it as how a Resource Based Economy would interact with the existing money system in the process of obsoleting money.
If you want to redesign this game, please write your plans within the game (the tree of text, the forum) which makes it a better simulation since you aren't cheating by using the unlimited text resources of the internet to redesign a system designed to have limited text resources until the players learn to cooperate to create more efficient ways of creating text.
Based on the rules for this game I've already written (but not created as software yet), the cost of creating text will vary depending on which text it is and which other texts exist and in what amounts, and most importantly, the cost of creating text can be extremely reduced only when the players cooperate on a large scale. If even a small fraction of the players act in a greedy way, the cost for everyone else of many texts increases much more than would be expected for such a small fraction of players, so its a good simulation of how to overcome an elite minority enslaving the majority and move toward a Resource Based Economy. It doesn't start as a Resource Based Economy, but as the players cooperate and act less greedy, it can become that. The rules of the game will cause those emergent behaviors.
In reality there are always conflicts and things people lose. We can't have an accurate Resource Based Economy if nothing is lost. Something about the rules of the game (or call it the laws of physics) has to tend to lead to conflicts between the players. If somebody gains something big, somebody else has to lose something small on average, or lose something big if the players don't cooperate on a large scale. The way to win this game is for more players to cooperate and act less greedy which lets everyone have more amount of text to write and more freedom in how texts can be combined. In this game, everyone wins or everyone loses, or you could say that if a minority of the players control a majority of the resources then the game is lost. If a Resource Based Economy emergently forms in this game, everyone wins. Its important that it does not start as a Resource Based Economy and would have to become that as a result of the players cooperating and being less greedy, and its important that there is the ability to withhold resources from the other players. As I've designed the rules, it should do all of this emergently.
But what could motivate such conflicts between the players that cooperation and lack of greed can overcome? Resources will not be excessively scarce, but there will be limited resources, which happens in reality too. The resources are amount of each text, and that amount will decay over time. For example, if there are 20 game objects which each are for the text "The resources are amount of each text", and each game object has an amount, then the amount of 1 of those 20 texts will decrease until it is destroyed, leaving only 19 game objects of "The resources are amount of each text".
Why should 1 of the 20 game objects decrease in amount (decay over time) instead of all 20 equally? Its a way to motivate conflicts between the players, conflicts which only cooperation and lack of greed can overcome. Each game object has a "product price". For each unique text, like "The resources are amount of each text", the one with the lowest Product Price pays the entire decay amount until its amount gets to 0 and its destroyed, and then the 19th game object starts to pay the decay of "The resources are amount of each text". When all game objects for a certain text are destroyed, that text is destroyed, removed from the text forum, until some player chooses to create more of it by paying the "money" (described above). The amount of money it costs is calculated this way:
Each text in the game has a certain Product Price which is chosen by a median-vote of all game objects of that text, like there could be 20 game objects of "The resources are amount of each text" which each have a different Product Price. Weighted by the amount of each of those 20 game objects, the median is taken of their Product Price, and that is the Product Price of "The resources are amount of each text".
Find all the substrings (part of the text, a software word) starting at each letter/symbol/space (which we will call "char" which is a software word) and ending at the end of the original text, we must buy permission to use that substring.
The substrings of "The resources are amount of each text" include:
"The resources are amount of each text"
"he resources are amount of each text"
"e resources are amount of each text"
" resources are amount of each text"
"resources are amount of each text"
"esources are amount of each text"
...
"h text"
" text"
"text"
"ext"
"xt"
"t"
To buy permission to add some amount of "The resources are amount of each text" to the game (the tree of text, the text forum), permission for each of those substrings must be bought.
For each same-end-substring, it can be bought from any of the same-start-substrings of that same-end-substring. For example, permission for "h text" can be bought from "h text" or from "h tex" or from "h te" or from "h t" or from "h " or from "h" or from "" (the empty text, which is the same as the "money" described above, the common currency all others are traded between).
Whichever of "h text" or "h tex" or "h te" or "h t" or "h " or "h" or "" has the lowest Product Price, the permission will automatically be bought from that game object. If, for example, "h tex" has the lowest Product Price, then some amount of money is paid to all game objects whose text is "h tex". There were 20 game objects of "The resources are amount of each text", and to add another one we buy permission from "h tex" to satisfy the permission requirement for "h text" which is the last 6 chars of "The resources are amount of each text".
There are 37 chars in "The resources are amount of each text", so to add any amount of "The resources are amount of each text" to the game you would command the game to do that (type in the text and the amount you want) and it would automatically search the free market and buy permission from 37 other texts. It may buy permission for "The res", "he", " reso", "resources are", "esou", and so on. It will automatically find the cheapest Product Prices (which are decided by median-vote of all relevant game objects) and get you the lowest price for adding "The resources are amount of each text" to the game. That is called the Permission Price of "The resources are amount of each text" and is multiplied by the amount of "The resources are amount of each text" you want to add to the game.
The Permission Price of "The resources are amount of each text" is an average sum-of-squares calculation. Weighted by the length of each text squared (like "esou" is length 4 and "The res" is length 7), the amount (chosen by the player) of each of "esou" and "The res" etc are multiplied by their text lengths squared, and the total of that is divided by the total of the text lengths squared, so the Permission Price for any text is always between 0 and 1.
The squared part is so the Permission Price is affected more by longer strings, since longer strings are harder to find that occur in any arbitrary string you want to add to the game. If you're adding "xThe resources are amount of each text" (length 38) to the game, and if "The resources are amount of each text" (length 37) offers a low Product Price, then that price would have up to 37*37/(37*37 + 1*1 + 1*1 + 1*1 ... 37 total 1*1s) fraction of the control over the Permission Price of "xThe resources are amount of each text", which would happen in the case when all other permissions were bought from "" (the common currency) instead of longer substrings. That's 37/38, which is almost 1.0. This is needed to make it profitable to add long strings to the game, since money can be made when others add bigger strings containing your big string, since your big string will have more control over the Permission Price of those bigger strings, proportional to its squared length. This is needed for it to be capitalisticly practical to use the text tree as a forum.
The Permission Price for any text is always between 0 and 1 because its calculated as an average-of-squares of the Product Price of many smaller texts (which are each substrings) and the rules are designed to influence Product Price to be always less than 1 and to be smaller for longer texts. If you control (by knowing the secret information about it) a certain game object, and you want that game object to make the most money, you would strategicly set its Product Price a little less than the Product Price of shorter texts which could be used as a replacement for your longer text. Remember that permission can be bought from "h text" or "h tex" or "h te" or "h t" or "h " or "h" or "" to satisfy a permission requirement for "h text", so if your game object is for "h te" then that game object would make the most money by setting its Product Price lower than "h t" and "h " and "h" and "".
There is another reason for it always being 1.0 or less. The Product Price of "" (the common currency, "money" as described above) is set at 1.0 and never changes, but the Product Price of any other game objects can be changed by anyone who knows the secret information about them. In text length calculations, "" is calculated as length 1 instead of 0, or maybe we will count every text as 1 plus its actual length, which would be more consistent. Zero length calculations would cause divide by zero, and we can't have that. So lets use 1 plus its actual length. The Permission Price is always at most 1.0 because it can always be bought from many of "" (the common currency) at a Product Price of 1.0 each, but buying permission from longer texts will almost always (unless they're not trying to make money) be cheaper.
The longer a string is, the cheaper its Permission Price will tend to be, which is an emergent effect of the free market of the many places you can buy permissions from. If you are adding a text of length 37, the software must automatically choose 37 smaller texts to buy permission from, but there is a free market of which 37 smaller texts it can be, as described above in the part about "same-start-substrings" and "same-end-substring". Its a hybrid system with some elements of intellectual property laws and some elements of free market and the ability to overcome that and emergently form it into a Resource Based Economy with near-zero Product Prices and therefore near-zero Permission Prices, so the cost of adding any new text to the game will be almost zero, plus the Infrastructure Cost described below.
When the prices of adding new text to the game become almost zero, everyone has won the game. If the prices get larger until its impractical to add new text to the game, everyone loses. Learn to cooperate and be less greedy and everyone wins. Act like a capitalist and a minority of players will crash the economy. This is an experiment to simulate, in an abstract way with text as the resources, the transformation from capitalism to a Resource Based Economy, in a real social context where people value the resources but they're simulated resources.
Why would players value the amounts of these texts? Because of the decay of texts, as described above. For text to continue existing in this game, amount has to be added to it. If it decays to 0 amount, then the text is deleted from the game. Players who write such text or who read it and think its valuable will want to spend game money to pay the Permission Price of that text to keep it around. They will form organizations of players or design automated systems (other softwares that interact with the game) to determine which texts are worth the most so they know where to spend their limited resources. Players will have different opinions on which texts deserve how much resources, so conflicts will escalate from that, leading to simulated wars within the game over how to distribute the resources in this Resource Based Economy. The secret information about each game object will be known only by the players who create such objects, and they can choose to publish this information, keep it to themselves, or the most probable scenario is they tell only certain groups of other players which form into a social organization designed to move resources around the game.
Jobs, businesses, governments, election systems, gangsters, laws, and many other parts of society will emergently form outside the game by the need of the players to organize the resources within the game. A resource is a game object that has a text, an amount, and a Product Price. The other type of resource is "money" which is used to pay the Permission Price and Infrastructure Cost. Those are the only resources in the game, but still it will form emergently into those parts of society.
There will also be an Infrastructure Cost added to the cost described above which pays for storage and calculation of this text, but this will be a very small cost compared to the permission costs described above which are the majority of the game. This is needed to prevent excessive additions of text to the game in cases when players cooperate enough to get the permission prices down to zero. For technical reasons, there must be a cost of adding text to the game. I was planning to implement this system as a modified Bitcoin software, which is a decentralized currency, but then I thought of more rules for it that make it more useful as a simulation of a Resource Based Economy, and I'm not sure if these rules (plus the rules you zeitgeists suggest in this thread) would be compatible with a Bitcoin-like network. That can be a different software I would build later, or maybe a later version of this software. As a Bitcoin-like network, the Infrastructure Cost would be like Bitcoin's "transaction fee" which is paid directly to the network. Nobody owns or controls a Bitcoin network. Its completely decentralized. The "transaction fee" is chosen by the person paying the money. The payer is motivated to donate more "transaction fee" because it motivates other softwares in the network to faster process the transaction and store it in more places so its more reliable. The Infrastructure Cost in this game will be similar. In a Bitcoin-like network, it would be chosen by a free market, but for this prototype I want you zeitgeists to try as a Resource Based Economy experiment, the Infrastructure Cost will be set to some small constant amount per char.
This is not real money. Playing this game is free. But like Bitcoin, if people get into it enough, it could be used like real money, and the Resource Based Economy it simulates could spread to the real world that way. First lets do a small experiment on a website, and depending on how that goes, then create a Bitcoin-like software to use it globally and securely. I can build that.
What is this "secret information" about each game object that allows players to control it? Each game object has basically a password that depends on the continued existence of other game objects. Instead of just a text as a password, its a set of texts. A set is an unordered list. Whoever pays to add a new game object (for a new or existing text) creates the password, which is a set of texts. Anyone who knows the password has complete control over that game object, able to sell it, move it, change the password, change its Product Price, etc. Strategies will form of giving certain groups of players some of the texts in the password but not others, as a way to enforce social organizations that will form emergently in the game. Different roles, as defined by whatever type of society emerges in the game, will, by the rules chosen by the players and written in the text forum that is the game, have the rights and/or responsibilities to know and use certain parts of these passwords and to do certain things with the game objects. Because of this multi-text password system, where each game object can have a different number of passwords, as I wrote above, "Jobs, businesses, governments, election systems, gangsters, laws, and many other parts of society will emergently form outside the game by the need of the players to organize the resources within the game."
To add self-reference to the game, there are 2 ways to do this... When a certain text is destroyed in the game, all game objects whose password includes that text, could be destroyed, or those game objects could move to a weaker password that simply does not include the destroyed text, eventually having no texts in its password which is complete public access to the game object. I tend to prefer the one where the game objects are destroyed if their password contains a text that becomes destroyed. That will give the players more conflicts to overcome through cooperation and lack of greed. Whatever social organizations they emergently form will have to keep track of which texts are near being destroyed, add more amount to those texts, and if they are greedy then keep their reasons secret for why they are adding amount to those texts. They don't have to tell others the texts are part of certain passwords. They can keep the texts around (paying the Permission Price for them) and not say the reason or be deceptive about it.
Optionally, to add further conflicts that can only be overcome by cooperation and lack of greed, we could add a rule that reversed texts cancel-out eachother, like if 5.5 of "abc" exists and anyone buys 2.5 of "cba" then there would be no "cba" and 3.0 "abc" left. If you then bought 4.1 "cba" then there would be no "abc" left and 1.1 "cba". On strings as long as "The resources are amount of each text", this would only happen when its intentional, so for long texts this would be a way for players to fight eachother, and for short texts it would be an inevitable problem even when they're cooperating (like the laws-of-physics will always present problems for us to overcome), like the conflict between "and" and "dna".
Optionally, we may need to require that longer texts can only be created in amounts equal-or-less-than the smaller texts their permissions come from, so there is more reason to have larger amounts of common short texts, but probably a few greedy players would be enough motivation for cooperative players to want to control important short strings by having the most amount of them and therefore controlling the median-vote of that text's Product Price.
The levels of strategy and complexity that will emergently form in this game far exceed Chess, Go, or any other game. This will be the most strategic game ever imagined, and such a powerful idea that if the players win, the social organizations they formed in the game would spread to the real world and obsolete money and governments gradually over time. The only way to win this game is to really change the world, but to simply play the game and make some progress can be done completely in computers. We have a word for "a game that becomes real"... Jumanji.
The similarities between this system and quantum/multiverse physics are very interesting.
We can think of the text tree like a light-cone, maybe, and in that context this quote of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer explains the squared calculation:
If you measure the three qubits, you will observe a three-bit string. The probability of measuring a given string is the squared magnitude of that string's coefficient (i.e., the probability of measuring 000 = | a | 2, the probability of measuring 001 = | b | 2, etc..). Thus, measuring a quantum state described by complex coefficients (a,b,...,h) gives the classical probability distribution ( | a | 2, | b | 2,..., | h | 2) and we say that the quantum state "collapses" to a classical state as a result of making the measurement.
I'll write more about ways to connect this system to metaphysics later. This is too long already.
Do you zeitgeists see how a Resource Based Economy could emergently form in this game, where resources are amounts of each text in a forum? Do you see how limited resources can be expanded exponentially by cooperation to reduce the Product Prices of the common short texts? Do you see how this experiment would test if you can really move from a capitalist way of thinking to a Resource Based Economy without forcing either of those in the rules of the game? Do you see how conflicts will escalate and simulated wars would form between the players over which texts are more important than which others, since such choices have to be made with the limited resources the game starts with, expanding to much more resources when the players cooperate to reduce Product Prices to near zero? Do you see how this abstraction can be a good simulation of the relevant parts of society, how "Jobs, businesses, governments, election systems, gangsters, laws, and many other parts of society will emergently form outside the game by the need of the players to organize the resources within the game"? Do you have any suggestions, new rules, changes of rules, for this game? Is it too complex (the price calculations are done automatically and the game would inform you of cost before you add text), but is it too complex to understand why the price is what it is at any one time? What do you think of this experiment to create a text forum as a Resource Based Economy where text is resources? Would you play this game if I put it up at FreeSpeechJustPayShipping.com (a website I own but haven't put anything at yet)? This game will be called Free Speech Just Pay Shipping.
If anyone wants to talk on the phone about this, my number is always at HumanAI.net but please also reply here.
--Ben F Rayfield
All my writing, here or anywhere else, permission granted to copy, since redundant is harder to censor.
