I've been tossing this idea about in my own head and among some of my close friends (both online and RL) for a while now, and I've decided it would be a good thing to present it to a larger community.
The idea is basically a website that operates similar to Craigslist, but with a countereconomic theme. The major difference: all exchanges must be straight barter or use non-government currency. The first purpose would be to establish a countereconomic hub for arranging trade, increasing the chances of "coincidence of want", so to speak. Another purpose would be to get some specie moving.
But the greater goal would be to help participants in the countereconomy network and eventually form their own communities not tied to the internet.
The long term goal is that of countereconomics in general: that non-state affiliated banking, insurance, arbitration, transportation and protective services would quietly condense around those markets.
I'm not posting this to spark discussion about agorism or countereconomics in particular, though if anyone would like to have such a discussion I'd be glad to take it up in another thread. This thread is meant to start some discussion about the technical, financial and structural requirements for such a venture. And more importantly: tactical/strategic considerations. If such a thing were to get too big, too fast it might attract the attention of the government who will pretend that it is illegal and act accordingly. So in particular: how to avoid such notice.
Any suggestions, comments or general discussion is welcome.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
MacFall:The idea is basically a website that operates similar to Craigslist, but with a countereconomic theme.
The problem with Napster was that it had a centralized database, and thus an easy target for LEO's. The WikiLeaks situation might also point out some problems. Any countereconomics site must be decentralized and mobile, so that it cannot be easily shut down.
I don't think you (or your users) can avoid notice, but you can choose a host in a country where you sidestep many government prohibitions. One problem with "underground" sites, especially ones that allow financial transactions, is that the are often used in ways people find objectionable. Even if this sort of thing isn't illegal, Google and Yahoo can still decide not to have it come up in searches because they don't like the content. Of course, you can simply enforce some basic terms of service to prevent this sort of thing if you wanted to (like craigslist doesn't allow porn, prostitution, etc).
If you found a complete 'outlaw' host, your IP range would also be shared by people with less just reasons for wanting to dodge Johnny Law, such as spammers, hosters of kiddie porn and fraudsters. So you'd have the issue of being associated with some people you'd probably not like very much; in other words such an IP could be blacklisted. A proxy server from a more 'legit' IP could solve this issue.
I know you didn't want this mentioned here, but I'd think it would be more constructive to focus on areas where the market can solve problems traditionally left up to government. The Internet (with a few exceptions) is basically market anarchism, so I think it has plenty of such opportunities (dispute resolution, fraud protection, id theft protection, etc). Something that really fulfills a need for many consumers (not just ones with e-gold accounts) might be a better choice. The problem with black markets is that its very difficult for them to build up significant capital due to the risks involved, and a lot of industries need heavy capital investment to function.
Have you heard of the Ripple project? It might have the potential to do some of what you are looking for in terms of banking. http://ripple.sourceforge.net/
Anyways, if you know any talented web developers who are passionate about economics and its potential uses on the Internet, please have them PM me. I could use a few.
For the sensorship problem, I've long felt that most people's over-reliance on large search engines like Yahoo! and Google was very dangerous to the freedom of the internet. It's as though their opinion (no doubt they are swayed by government) makes or breaks any site. Are there any decentralized search engines for regular internet sites?
It's easy to envision a program that end-users could install that would just spider the web, running in the background when the computer sits idle, perhaps starting at pages actually visited by the user. Users could even rate pages actually visited by preference. End-user clients could communicate with each other and replicate each others' databases. Some kind of integrity checking and reputation mechanism could be built in to ensure the quality of the databases.
This would at least cover the problem of "counter-economic" sites and users locating each other. Surely programs like this already exist and would be less vulnerable to sensorship than Google/Yahoo!?
Sort of like the torrent community, you mean?
I thought about that idea a bit more - what if a user could download a program that acts as a "market tracker" of sorts. You use the program to make yourself a "for sale" and "seeking" dossier, and the program could crawl, search or browse dossiers. You see something that you want, you click on it and see if any of the listings are asking for something you have in return. Option to meet online to discuss it, etc.
The best part is, that gives any participants in a trade the opportunity to use whatever third party they want to conduct the transfer, who could advertise via the program as well.
Eventually, banks could even offer accounts against commodity money that they hold.
This could work...
You are talking about an ebay-like market inside of a darknet. It would be interesting to use something like Freenet for your idea.
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
The concept of Freenet is excellent, but for the love of science I can't get the damn thing to work. I would be very intriqued by a possible community based on the torrent & craigslist communities though, especially the tracker idea, which reminds me of the increasingly bigger role information is having as a supplemental currency in an increasingly information-oriented world.
"Look at me, I'm quoting another user to show how wrong I think they are, out of arrogance of my own position. Wait, this is my own quote, oh shi-" ~ Nitroadict
I'd never heard of Freenet, thanks for the link.
I think everyone here should check out the Ripple Project. I think it was inspired by the idea of a small, free community-oriented currency, but I think its applicable to exchanges of nearly any size, with banks or whatever. I think its an example of how fiat money could arise naturally as trust between consenting parties. It even handles indirect trust relationships (e.g., A trusts B who trusts C, so A can trust payments from C even if they don't know each other at all).