We need altcoins as long as we interact economically over the net, with people we do not know (or simply with people outside our local communities). If we try to imagine what qualities a “solarpunk coin” should have, what are your thoughts? Do we know any existing coin, checking all boxes? This question is more about political economy of Solarpunk, then its technology.
Why not just trust people?
I think you are implying a false dichotomy here, like money and trust are opposed. Anyway, trust in people doesn’t scale at all, it’s trust about platforms that can kinda scale. I do not trust a random person on the other side of the ocean i’ve never seen but if we use paypal and ebay i can kinda trust those 2 platforms
OK let’s say you owe me a dollar and I just remember that. How is an altcoin superior to you trusting me?
So you do think it’s a real dichotomy?
If they are paying paypal, you are leveraging paypal to create a threat of violence on them. That’s not very Solarpunk of you.
This message is very ironic after having watched just yesterday the sociology lesson about socialization.
First you express that threats of violence are bad and then you express yourself a threat of violence to me. Because violence is actually used at every level to enforce rules and norms. Your attempt of relying to the menace of getting (at idealism level) kicked from the solarpunks is violence itself.
It’s not very solarpunk to immediately rely on violence while discussing ideas :P
I can trust people without trusting their, and mine, ability to remember everything. When a friend lends me money (trusting that I won’t just take them and ghost them), I keep a txt for every time I give back part of the money. Not because we don’t trust each other and are scared to steal to each other but because we are humans and don’t want to keep everything in the active memory of the brain when we can just write it down.
It’s a tool that has some functions on the microsociologic level and others at the macro one. On a macro one, yes trust can be a part of it if the platform bears some of the refunds part etc.
Trust is a choice. There will always be people who choose not to trust - that is their right and they should not be alienated because of that.
I’m more than happy to alienate them. They don’t trust me, why should society work according to their whims?
Values are not a disability.
Do you really ONLY see disability on this picture? I see different people with different needs. It’s about needs. People have different needs. IF you are more than happy to alienate them, because their needs offend you, you are giving them the right to alienate you. And finally everyone gets alienated. Is THIS Solarpunk for you?
Because that’s not how human nature works. Trust starts to weaken with scale. In a small village you’d be accountable and your life would be made harder for taking advantage of someone, but if you don’t know the person and will never see her again, people feel very safe to risk and make an extra. The consequences of social life differ widely in small and big scale. Plenty of old tales of travelling merchants selling junk for gold, profitting on ignorance.
Solarpunk is optimistic. You’re probably looking for Green Growth or Cyberpunk.
You don’t need to use an altcoin, you can use the real legal tender of many countries you “don’t trust” to buy stuff. Buy Argentine currency and use it to trade. You need to trust something at some point, and what you’re (maybe unknowingly) doing is trusting authoritarian institutions. Code cannot substitute for that.
Your argument seems to be “Authoritarianism is a reasonable thing to sacrifice in order to enable trustless purchases” in the same breath as “But also I don’t even trust the authorities”, assuming you’re arguing for an altcoin.