Oddbean new post about login | logout Question of the day; well my day anyway :) #asknostr. Does #nostr have to be an economy? Is #community not enough for us?
What good is a community if you can't do business together?
economy, community, ecosystem, environment, world…they’re all the same thing.
What I was really getting at is this. If Nostr took off as a social network, but very few people bothered to use #BTC or #lightning would that be a success or a failure? Would we feel it as a growth or an invasion.
i love the idea of everyone here & anyone joining to all come together to just have a nice time. having wholesome laughs together. and so much goodness & benefits can come from people coming together and spreading good vibes — someone can get a new idea that excites them to make something or just feel better about themselves, couples can meet and get married, someone’s business can gain more business, a hobby club can form…etc. (i don’t know what you mean by invasion.) a significant chunk of folks here are extremely interested in bitcoin because they believe it will help incentivize individuals, businesses & the world to be more peaceful and just…increasing the ability to have good vibes with people & any community.
The invasion reference was regarding #mastodon. I've been there for a while and I noticed when a lot of people came on board at once - around the time Musk went crazy with Twitter - the #fediverse natives were wary of the change in #culture. It's calmed down now and the two groups have reached an understanding as the service evolved. But for awhile the natives felt invaded by a lot of people who thought differently to them and outnumbered them. We're in that pre launch stage now. I'm wondering if we'll deal with it better. I think we will because it's a lot more heterogeneous here already so the culture shock will be minimal. I think so anyway. I just wondered how other felt.
that’s such an interesting story about mastodon. so much drama 😂. @rabble mentioned it in his talk yesterday, and i understand what he meant more now. he said too that we’re all fundamentally the same humans from millennia ago sitting around a fire. it’s a nice fire here. and i think you’re right that this place will prove to be resilient, continuing a culture of free, chill vibing. so far, there aren’t any obtuse overlords with unbalanced power manipulating others and using people for their own devious, selfish ends. knock on wood! lol jk. nostr will keep growing and D O M I N A T E E V E R Y T H I N G❕ 😆 …😬
Business are not necessary to communities. Communities are for commonalities. Business can just add some salt 😀
Show me a sustainable community where there is no money involved
You mean a large community I's warrant. I can think of several small communities, from kibbutzim, through amish villages and on to scientific communities in antarctica. I can't think of any larger groups though.
You think accounting doesen't happen in kibbutzs or amish communities? Whether its done with fiduciary media or good-will, its still a form of money involved in exchanges.
Well now we're getting philosophical and that's my favourite place, so I'm wondering, if the most successful blockchain in the future measures people's hourly workrate value, would you call that a currency? I'm imagining this currency could be built in a way where the only capital was the hours banked. So there would be no rich people, only people who were in demand at that moment. I think I might like that world, because a hard working plumber would be doing very well and an entrepreneur who didn't actually do any work would be doing badly. That seems like a very fair world to me. In fact, the way Bitcoin only measures accumulated wealth - because that's all gold and silver can do - might be short sighted. cryptocurrencies can measure things that metal can't and maybe they should? But would that be commerce? Would that be an economy?
An online community?
A community doesen't exist without transfer of value, either you pay for it out of pocket or your participation is being exploited to cover the costs. The socialization that happens there is information exchange, and this is exchange of value. Money is speech, to exclude it from a community is to restrict activities there. The purpose of nostr is uncensorability and this includes exchanging both tangible and intangible value.
Ok, but sometimes, you do want to restrict commercial activities and limit the exchange of values to contributions because value in the form of money can have a corrosive impact to the community (or the opposite depending on the case), because the fact that money can be used to other markets/communities, disturbs the focus of the community, let's say certain religious communities for example. Nostr is the case that commercial activity can have building effects for the community as long as it doesn't disturb other values like decentralisation for example, but money are not necessary to communities in general, although value does like you said...