Quote from: TCraver on February 26, 2014, 06:10:16 AM

Quite simply, it is not true that giving a basic income to everyone would drive the currency's value to zero. That would only happen if the distributed coins were not withdrawn from the economy. This proposal withdraws TheCoin at a rate such that the number of TheCoin in circulation quickly approaches a constant per capita.

Quite simply, I have not made the point that giving a basic income would drive your currency to zero. I have said that if you give everyone in the country $1MM, the price of milk jumps to $40K, everyone AND the poor become millionaires, and the poor, while millionaires, are no better off in standard of living than they were before your scheme. That's great that they now have millions, but they still cannot afford much beyond basic subsistence.

It doesn't matter whether you give them your currency or dollars or anything else, nor does it matter if you only gave everyone only $100 a week. Your coin value doesn't drop to zero, the prices of everything very quickly adjust under upward pressure to equilibrium via supply and demand, meaning net result to the poor is zero.

Quote from: TCraver on February 26, 2014, 06:10:16 AM

Do you think so many economists would have seriously proposed a universal basic income, if it were trivially obvious that it could not work?

It IS trivially obvious that it cannot work, but that doesn't mean economists (or anyone else) accepts that because it ends their ignorant world view. Many economists still don't accept simple, basic principles in economics, because that isn't how they think the world should work. Think Keynes, or Paul Krugman, for example. They WANT to believe (like Mulder) and they will perform all sorts of gymnastics to do so, hence the relatively recent development of over-mathematicalizing economics. Go back to ancient Rome and see what Augustus, Diocletian, and Constantine didn't learn about taxes and economics and what few have learned since.

Quote from: TCraver on February 26, 2014, 06:10:16 AM

And the identity problem is not nearly as simple as you think, provided only voluntary action (no government) is involved.

Sure it is. Think Underwriters Laboratories, no one has to get their products certified as safe by UL, yet companies worldwide line up to do so. They are not a gov't organization, nor created by law, so using the certification is entirely voluntary. You would have the YourCoin Certification Association and that is what it would docertify that x person is who they say they are and then generate public/private keys or whatever for them.

Voluntary action just means you arent forced by the govt to do something. That you have the YCCA doesnt mean they are forced to do something, they voluntarily choose to get YCCA certified in order to participate in your scheme.