the math of p2p economics

Using a relative-value algorithm, SEA (similar to Google Page Rank), social accounting is simply a matter of tracking subjective enumeration. Value is enumerated by each person, and it is not ‘abstracted’ or ‘shared’ or ‘transacted’. Reading this article, for example, you evaluate it as 3 out of 10. This is just one evaluation out of all the evaluations the reader comes up with during a day’s living, whether it is enumerating the contribution of colleagues, foodstuffs, even the weather if they want. Thus, the reader accumulates a ratio of subjective enumerations. By applying the relative-value algorithm, a ‘priority list’ of evaluations is derived — without any external bias. In a pure p2p network, there is no ‘objective’ or ‘externalised’ enumeration, and thus no currency. It really is as simple as this; it worked for google, and made the internet navigable.

how do you go about evaluating?

Let us look more closely at how a person evaluates. In the example above, the reader gives the article a value of 3 out of 10. What are they estimating to have a value of 3?

  • the reader is rating the article
  • the reader is rating the article’s author
  • the reader is rating their reading of the article

These three interpretations derive the quality of economics. In the first, the reader is evaluating a thing, in the second a person, in the third, their own experience. The first interpretation encourages the thinking that all subjective enumerations of the article can be totalled up and an average value derived, much like the totals for eg Amazon seller. The second interpretation is the operating interpretation of ecosquared, which emphasises the importance of a pure p2p evaluation system; things like articles and foodstuffs and so on conform to a resource economy primary based on sharing. The third interpretation essentially tracks gratitude.

All three are valid, and books will be written to share how one goes about evaluating one’s subjective enumeration. After all, some evaluations will lead us to saving this planet from environmental disaster, and other evaluations will continue the degradation. As a pure value-game, it is left up to each and every individual, as it should be for a p2p system.

where does money fit in?

To shift from our current system of an externalised unidimensional accounting system, that is money, to a multi-dimensional social accounting in a pure p2p system, we need to examine the parameters of our current economics. Money has evolved from a basic coupling of number-thing, and yet it is only functional in time, eg using the £10 I received yesterday to pay for something today. Because the basic application of number to social accountancy in money does not contain ‘time’, various ‘add-ons’ have evolved such as interest and compound interest, and with the application of negative number, our current economics is unstable. MTTP, or Money-Time-Trust-Protocol, decouples money-thing and replaces it with money-time, eg £10 is roughly equivalent to an hour. Money thus becomes “well behaved” in a mathematical sense.

Thus, we can invite people to co-create value using the MTTP social contract whether £10 for an hour or £100 for a day or £1000 for a week and so on. It performs the same function as ’employment’: participants have a guaranteed source of income. Notice, there is no bounded entity, no company or government or organisation; MTTP is a purely p2p protocol. The relationships of dyadic p2p contracts constitutes the economic structure of the network. Once the value is produced, and if this attracts money (ie is ‘sold’ using traditional economic parlance), the money attracted is distributed by the ratio of subjective enumeration of each participant member, via the Subjective-Enumeration-Algorithm described above.

the subjective-enumeration-algorithm

The actual algorithm for tracking subjective enumeration looks something like this:

(where V is the value of any person i, d is the “damping factor”, N the total number of people, M the set of people who evaluate person i, the value of Pj at time t)

Check out the math in this document, for both MTTP and SEA.

current p2p foundation engagement

These two protocols/algorithms establish a pure p2p economics, social accountancy with no organisational boundary, no centralised or abstracted authority, and it works for small groups or an entire planet of co-creation. Inherent in this system is the subtlety to educate people to evaluate ‘correctly’ if we wish to engender a sustainable global situation.

Having engaged Tiberius Brastaviceanu of Sensorica, the solutions presented here undercut the level of complexity his community is dealing with. Tiberius is employing a characteristically engineering methodology to the problem of social accounting, attempting to specify all the factors to evaluate an objectively fair % distribution of ‘value exchange’. Who determines the right factors and their evaluations? If there is any ‘externalised’ or ‘authoritative group’, then it is not a pure p2p system and politics rears its ugly head, which is why Sensorica are still struggling with deriving their accounting system that everyone is happy with. Imagine this expanded to the global level. No, the accounting system must be a pure p2p system, as efficient — and perhaps more so — than our current p2p system that is purely based on the unidimensional currency that is money.

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