Does ripple have working point of sale systems?
I don't know. maybe you can ask in the ripple forum.
[quopte]
What you're suggesting, I think, is a hybrid system with money based on debt between trusted parties (ripple's IOUs) and fiat (or electronic commodity backed if you wish) money.
I thought about that too, but finally I decided I don't like it.
well you should say why. There is nothing wrong with the fiat system except for its centralization. Having liquid cash that is accepted by all for clearing debts and for performing instant transfers of value for important stuff such as proof-of-work fees without loose ends is advantageous, especially if the way such currency is brought into being is through doing publicly accepted crypto work and the way the currency is retired is also encoded into the system in a decentralized manner.
[/quote]
Ok, you made me change my mind again.
I said that the issued currency could be rejected by some seller, but if the system allows the use of that currency to clear debts, then that currency would be obviously valuable.
You're view reminds me a post I wrote here before knowing the existence of ripple:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2910.0
Obviously this rubs against the built-in deflation of bitcoin but it is worth examining the economics here. Essentially one can have a node-incentive provided as an IOU redeemed after the fact in which case all transactors (buyers and sellers) give a small part of their purchasing power to the solving node, or you have the same fee charged in the form of inflation to all transactors. Except, not quite because with the latter only holders of debt are charged, not debtors. That can be balanced by having interest fees on outstanding debt, but that would be a matter for individual debtor-creditors to set for themselves.
Lastly, could it be done alternatively such that each time a coin gets used in ANY transaction it has its value decremented. That is, it is clipped and the clipping discarded. Eventually there would be nothing left of it. This would counter the inflationary impact of new coins. It also has the nice side effect that if you don't spend a coin it doesn't lose any value - it just loses value when it circulates. Essentially it has the same outcome as paying fees to the solver, but without all the troublesome loose ends.
To avoid inflation I have another proposal: demurrage.
The bitcoins created can lose value constantly in time so that the amount of bitcoins removed from circulation this way equals the amount created to pay the proof of work.
Obviously, the demurrage would be applied after some quantity of them are circulating (¿21M?).
The demurrage would have another benefits: suppressing interest, stimulating the circulation (that can prevent crises)...
I have posted about it here:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3816.0