On 22nd April I had the pleasure of addressing Google staff on money, money’s digital future but also on the dangerous fantasy of apolitical money.
Addressing Google staff on digital money & politics
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Category Archives: Digital Economies/Money
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD, UC Berkeley, Friday 7th November 2014
An Academic Conference, sponsored by the Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, November 6–7, 2014
- Featured Speaker: Yanis Varoufakis
- Featured Artist: Danae Stratou
Contact sferguson at usf.edu and jordanrose at berkeley.edu for more information.
(The image is Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills, 1962)
Economic lessons from video game communities – Le Monde
Le Monde featured this piece on my research of social economies that emerge in video game communities. Readers may profit from reading the Reason interview on which it was based – and this recent keynote I delivered at the 2014 CFA Institute’s Conference in Seattle.
Ce que les jeux vidéo nous apprennent de l’économie
DIGITAL ECONOMIES: Markets, Money and Democratic Politics Revisited
Audio and transcript of the keynote I delivered on 5th May 2014 in Seattle in the context of the CFA Institute’s Annual Conference entitled The Future of Finance. Continue reading
Interviewed by REASON magazine on virtual worlds and the future of economics
“A Multiplayer Game Environment Is a Dream Come True for an Economist”
On Bitcoin’s potential: Q&A on what Bitcoin can and cannot offer a troubled world
Foll
owing my debate with Andreas Antonopoulos on ABC Late Night Live, graduate students of mine (at the University of Texas) were kind enough to piece together a related Q&A reflecting my views on BTC. Read on… Continue reading
Debating Bitcoin on ABC Late Night Live, with Phillip Adams and Andreas Antonopoulos
In this lively debate, on ABC Radio National’s excellent Late Night Live (with Phillip Adams in the chair), we discuss what makes Bitcoin a fascinating technology, whether it is a genuine currency, its parallels with the Gold Standard and what I have called previously the dangerous fantasy of apolitical money.
Can the Internet democratise capitalism?
Technological fixes to time-honoured problems are all the rage these days. Bitcoin is meant to fix money, social media are seen as an antidote to Rupert Murdoch and assorted tyrants, networked robots are to help countries like Japan deal with demographic declines etc. Perhaps the largest claim is that the Internet has helped (or is about to help) democratise capitalism. Ten years ago that claim struck me as both fascinating and dubious. So, I sat down and wrote an article about it (circa 2004). Its gist: The Internet is a wonderful leveller. But democracy requires a great deal more than mere ‘levelling’. Primarily, it requires political institutions that enable the economically weak to have a decisive say on policy against the interests of the rich and powerful. Ten years later, I am re-visiting this question, under the shadow of a global crisis that made it even harder to convert an e’Demos into genuine e’Democracy. What follows is an updated version of the original paper.[1] (Click here for a pdf version or just read on.) Continue reading
BITCOIN: A flawed currency blueprint with a potentially useful application for the Eurozone
The responses of many to my post on Bitcoin reveal a powerful tendency to underestimate the ill-effects of deflation on a social economy. This tendency to underestimate deflation’s deleterious impact matters beyond debates on Bitcoin per se. For example, in Europe the incapacity of the European Central Bank (ECB) to act in the face of deflationary forces has revealed the same type of misunderstanding, as many commentators fail to recognise that deflation is a very serious threat and that the ECB’s lack of weapons against it constitutes a major weakness. In this post I return to the problem of deflation in a Gold Standard-like monetary system (e.g. Bitcoin or, indeed, the Eurozone itself) but conclude that, almost paradoxically, the technology of Bitcoin, if suitably adapted, can be employed profitably in the Eurozone as a weapon against deflation and a means of providing much needed leeway to fiscally stressed Eurozone member-states. Continue reading
War spikes in the Eve Online universe: A political economist’s account
Vicious, intense war broke out the other day. Hundreds if not thousands of people, in New York, in Chicago, in the great capitals of Europe, in China, rushed home on the news that hard-earned assets they were keeping in an inhospitable far away place had been placed under sustained, brutal military attack. By the end of the day, or more like it in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted by the battle’s intensity, the defenders took stock of the material damage: it amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Continue reading
Bitcoin and the dangerous fantasy of ‘apolitical’ money
The Crash of 2008 has infused our societies with enormous scepticism on the role of the authorities, both government and Central Banks. It is quite natural that many dream of a currency that politicians, bankers and central bankers cannot manipulate; a currency of the people by the people for the people. Bitcoin has emerged as the great white hope of something of the sort. Alas, the hope it brings to many people’s hearts and minds is false. And the reason is simple: While it is true that local communities have, in the past, generated successful communitarian currencies (that enabled them to improve welfare in their midst, especially at a time of acute economic crises), there can be no de-politicised currency capable of ‘powering’ an advanced, industrial society.
