From a9ba4a661e36297764aa4f3f74474f7da2da25cf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: andytudhope <13001517+andytudhope@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2024 20:44:55 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 1/2] evolving monies --- content/en/learn/module-2/banking.mdx | 2 ++ content/en/learn/module-2/shelling-out.mdx | 8 +++++++- src/modules/web3/constants.js | 3 ++- 3 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/en/learn/module-2/banking.mdx b/content/en/learn/module-2/banking.mdx index 462dcedee3..f22ce252a8 100644 --- a/content/en/learn/module-2/banking.mdx +++ b/content/en/learn/module-2/banking.mdx @@ -21,6 +21,8 @@ this course from Perry Mehrling and the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Som initially included in Kernel are no longer public, but you can find most of the MOOC if you look through the new playlists on the INET youtube channel linked above. +> This course was found thanks to Ethan Buchman, co-founder of both Cosmos and Cycles. [cycles.money](https://cycles.money) is based on the realisation - partly implicit in Mehrling's course, that what really drives the action (and hence the power) in the banking system is the **liabilities** side of the balance sheet, not the assets. Banks have - for a long time - participated in clearing houses, from which most people are excluded, and through which they settle enormous amounts of debt with very small amounts of actual money. We invite you to consider this little-known and wonderfully powerful inversion as you wander through the history of modern banking. The best place to start is [this video](https://www.youtube.com/live/HqJ5oicJOME?t=745s). + ## How this fits into Kernel diff --git a/content/en/learn/module-2/shelling-out.mdx b/content/en/learn/module-2/shelling-out.mdx index 8bfc1f6c04..b7af617479 100644 --- a/content/en/learn/module-2/shelling-out.mdx +++ b/content/en/learn/module-2/shelling-out.mdx @@ -47,6 +47,12 @@ not have occurred. +## A Balancing Note + +Szabo is influential, but there are other thinkers who disagree with his theory. We'll read David Graeber next, who turns the story about barter on its head, based on anthropological data rather than economic theory. There are others, too, and - if you find Szabo's theory here too instrumental or limiting in the way it describes other culture's experperiences of trade - then you might enjoy the work of [Arthur Brock](https://www.artbrock.com/2020/07/29/currencies-are-records-of-currents) and the [Metacurrency Project](https://metacurrency.org/about/). + +The ideas in this module in general, given the culture from which cryptocurrency has sprung, present a predominantly masculine view of money. We hope that the pieces in [the converse section](/conversation) help to balance this, and encourage you to begin imagining how we can use programmable money to implement very different approaches to wealth, sharing, debt and - ultimately - time. [Robin](/learn/module-7/giving#further-afield) Wall [Kimmerer](/conversation/reciprocity) is a wonderful example of this kind of more balanced way. + ## Brief > "The precursors of money, along with language, enabled early modern humans to solve problems @@ -147,7 +153,7 @@ The value measurement problem. This should be a question that you're becoming increasingly familiar with. Szabo quotes Carl Menger's theory that money arises from a sufficient volume of commodity barter and discusses -the issues with barter that couldhave led to the further development of money as an abstraction. Contrast this with the David Graeber brief, up next, to get a sense for the different approaches to this question. We tend to side with Graeber, but don't take our word for it! In any case, Szabo makes an underappreciated point in discussing the problem of scale which arises with barter: +the issues with barter that could have led to the further development of money as an abstraction. Contrast this with the David Graeber brief, up next, to get a sense for the different approaches to this question. We tend to side with Graeber, but don't take our word for it! In any case, Szabo makes an underappreciated point in discussing the problem of scale which arises with barter: > "With money, there are only **n** prices – 500 products, 500 prices. Money for this purpose can work either as a medium of exchange or simply as a standard of value – as long as the number diff --git a/src/modules/web3/constants.js b/src/modules/web3/constants.js index 269751f70d..7a6144b03d 100644 --- a/src/modules/web3/constants.js +++ b/src/modules/web3/constants.js @@ -5,7 +5,8 @@ const proposer = '0x4Daf7C338134C0Bf9aaB7C4D7dEa6e8418385c29' const apiUrl = 'https://propose.honour.community' // The subgraph url to fetch proposalIDs from -const graphUrl = 'https://api.studio.thegraph.com/query/24825/honour/version/latest' +const graphUrl = + 'https://api.studio.thegraph.com/query/24825/honour/version/latest' const goerli = '0x80c25Df6014253FE78f4Ec6258F73855dEe09A6c' const optimism = '0xB123B2d5C0932F2B13Fcf03763004f0800fF29dD' From a0cc8181f17e6a86c594d2761ffc000deade7003 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: andytudhope <13001517+andytudhope@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2024 16:21:41 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 2/2] context > paradigm --- content/en/learn/module-7/no-paradigm.mdx | 10 +++++----- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/en/learn/module-7/no-paradigm.mdx b/content/en/learn/module-7/no-paradigm.mdx index d1cd705098..ebfb228f4e 100644 --- a/content/en/learn/module-7/no-paradigm.mdx +++ b/content/en/learn/module-7/no-paradigm.mdx @@ -79,14 +79,14 @@ Scientific Revolutions* by Thomas S. Kuhn, along with the claims he makes about > "In short: its greatest dynamic power is held by a paradigm while it is not called *paradigm*, but called facts, data, truth, nature, ethics, proper procedures, etc. As soon as a paradigm is -called a paradigm (usually then referred to as a *mere paradigm*), its power collapses."" +called a paradigm (usually then referred to as a *mere paradigm*), its power collapses." Assumed knowledge, like geocentrism or the existence of a particular God, creates the framework for investigation. However, it has throughout most of human history been a taboo to question the existing framework itself: > "It was a sin and crime, punished by law, church, and community vigilance, to ask and probe whether the known was true, whether philosophical thought and scientific research and problem-solving -were based on all one could know."" +were based on all one could know." We cannot sneer at this history, knowing that the people of bygone times acted in accordance with what they knew, and **could not** have suspected that much of their knowledge was based @@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ on flawed interpretations or faulty observations. Of course, this also implies t > "We today can not tell, by definition, within which paradigm we are dwelling, thinking and acting, unless and until we are able to observe us and it from the outside, just as we -recognize it and us from outside the times of Galileo."" +recognize it and us from outside the times of Galileo." Kuhn was the first to use the term ‘paradigm’ in this sense, and in so doing, he trapped himself in exactly the kind of paradigmatic thinking he was trying to escape. Brün points out the self-contradiction in Kuhn’s attempt to carefully explain his leap in ways that would appear reasonable to those still trapped within an old paradigm. In order to bypass this problem, Brün simply defines her stance: @@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ This brings us to the crux of the dilemma faced by authors like Kuhn - and us al from becoming an ideologist as long as I am unable or unwilling to create the suitable language which speaks as I think and not louder than my thoughts. -Overcoming this issue *begins* by facing squarely the human misery and suffering in this world, seeing +Overcoming this issue *begins* with facing squarely the human misery and suffering in this world, seeing how it is largely created as a result of our culture, ethics, morals, beliefs and values and then attempting to join "the problem-solvers" so that we might stand ready for the day when the underlying paradigm can finally be seen clearly as a mere paradigm: @@ -257,7 +257,7 @@ and so that* individual and social problems can and will be identified and solve Brün quotes Karl Marx and shows how his analysis of labour may be applied to language to make a very subtle point about how insidious paradigms truly are. Though we can use Marxist analysis to reveal the contradictions of capitalism, showing that there are contradictions is not -revolutionary. It is the contradictions themselves which are revolutionary because they +revolutionary. It is [the contradictions themselves which are revolutionary](https://theyrule.net/so_what) because they generate the antagonisms which the system cannot resolve without disintegrating. Therefore, Marxist analysis is a great starting point, but due to the inertia of its language, it inadvertently misleads its followers into focusing on the ideology rather than the insufferable contradictions. What it lacks - and what Brün dreams of - is an [economy of signs](https://sign.kerenel.community) largely free from the accumulated inertia of past paradigms.