Creating Your Own Loom Currency

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:39:38 GMT <== Loom ==>

This is the third in my series of articles about the Loom.cc Electronic Accounting System. Click the "Loom" category at the bottom of the article to find the others.

One nice thing about Loom is that it allows you to create your own asset types, your own private currencies. In a comment to his Digital Money World article, A Brief Loom Instructional, Mark Herpel described one unusual "currency":

(1) The Boy Scouts of Amerika, set up their own Loom to trade and transfer between their Scout region. Their unit of value is "Scout Hour" and each hour is worth one Boy Scout visiting your establishment and working manual labor, your choice, for one hour. Perhaps they have a money raising campaign, selling hours in their community, cash comes in and Digital 'Scout Hours' go to each person or business in the community who buys one or two for charity. Once the work is accomplished, the 'Scout Hour' is moved back to the 'Scout Account'. As long as everyone in the community realizes that one Scout Hour is the equivalent of a Boy Scout sweeping their warehouse or raking their lawn for exactly one hour, everyone could use the units and envision exactly what that value = one hour of work.

If I wanted to set up a digital currency backed by gold stored in my gun safe in my basement, I could easily do that in Loom. First, I'd create two new asset types, "Gun Safe GoldGrams" and "Gun Safe GoldGrams Reserve". The former will be what I issue to people, and the latter will be to keep track of how much actual gold I have in my safe. Then I can easily see if I'm about to give out more Gun Safe Gold than I have in reserve, and buy more gold (or decide to risk being a fractional reserve banker, which no self-respecting Loom trader would do).

Here's the screen creating the "Gun Safe GoldGrams". I clicked on the "Random" link to generate the asset type, and typed in the Nickname, Scale, and Min Precision:

Adding a Loom Asset

Next I created a "Gun Safe" location to hold my "Gun Safe GoldGrams Reserve":

Adding a Loom Location

Finally, I recorded my two-pound gold nest egg by transferring grams of "Gun Safe GoldGrams Reserve" to the "Gun Safe":

Adding a Loom Location

Now I'm ready to start selling Gun Safe GoldGrams, and moving them to transfer locations for my customers (well, I would be ready if I actually had a two-pound gold nest egg). As long as the number after the minus sign in the "Gun Safe GoldGrams" row remains smaller than the number in the "Gun Safe GoldGrams Reserve" row, my reserve is sufficient to cover my currency in circulation, and I'll sleep well at night.

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Comments (2):

Patrick keeps track of his real gold in a different folder

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:41:15 GMT

Patrick keeps track of his real gold in a different folder. That folder is the issuer of the real gold asset type. He issues, to a location shared with his transaction folder, the amount of real gold in his safe.

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Gold Standard

Submitted by Gun Cabinets on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:26:49 GMT

If only we all had to the wisdom to do save on a gold this long ago, we could making a lot of money right now. The gold standard is the most stable form of currency, no doubts. Looks like the Loom System would be the way to keep track of that gold. I'll have to dive into that some more.

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

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-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair