self-owning goods

[michielbdejong]

Since LedgerLoops is not based on all-or-nothing payments, it can become hard to buy non-dividable goods from a stranger. But maybe if this good runs a smart contract, then that can be used to make it into some sort of self-owning good:

• at the start, the seller has control over the object, but they voluntarily allow the object to create a keypair and lock itself, establishing a ledger between it and the owner. The owner has a balance of 1.0 on this ledger, and has a special option to buy the object back from itself at that same price, but for the moment, the object owns itself, and is locked.
• the buyer starts streaming money to the seller, and this money flows back to the buyer through the object, thereby lowering the balance of the seller, down from 1.0 at the object's internal ledger, and increasing the balance of the buyer, up from 0.0 at the object's ledger.
• if the buyer reaches a balance of 1.0 on the object, they can buy the object from itself.
• if the sale rolls back, the seller can let money flow back through the object to go back up to a 1.0 balance, and then click 'unlock'.

[michielbdejong]

although I think this could work well, I don't think we want humanity to end up sharing this planet with self-owning goods.

Say I buy your car for 1000 USD. We could use the car's built-in computer for the escrow, but alternatively, I could just use a pen to sign a contract, saying for example that you can buy the car back if I haven't "paid" (settled) 90% of the amount within one week. If after one week I stil owe you 250 USD then you can action that contract, you will get your car back (you can go to the police if i resist), and our debt will change from me owing you 250 USD to you owing me the 750 USD that I did pay.

That might also lead to a difficult situation though, because it might be that I can pay you 750 USD, but after that there is no path for you to pay the same amount back to me.

So probably the easiest way to buy a car over ledgerloops would be with bulk-fulfill?

[michielbdejong]

or maybe just accept that the price of the car depends on the relative solvency of buyer and seller: if I'm very rich (a lot of people owe me money) then i will be able to negotiate a good exchange rate at my peers for paying you. if i already owe a lot of my peers money, then i will effectively have to "cross the spread" to convert me-dollars into you-dollars.

It will be possible to buy and sell bitcoins and US legal dollars via ledgerloops, and that will still make it possible for speculators to extract rent from society. But as ledgerloops replaces the role of such centralized currencies, their value will drop. You can still speculate on your peers (invest in your-friend-the-musician-dollars in the hope they will have a hit song and your credit will become relatively valuable) but then if you get rich by speculation, it will be just extracting rent from your peers and not from society as a whole.

[michielbdejong]

if the owner of capital only cares about investing that capital to maximize profit, and not about how it's invested, then that's already the same effect as anonymous capital. if the capital is controlled by a smart contract, then an algorithm can direct it without the human owner even interfering (and it could continue to invest and speculate after the owner died, so then that's really an autonomous artificial proprietor

[michielbdejong]

should also describe this somewhere on the website as a side-topic