Great+Chain+of+Numbers+A+Guide+to+Smart+Contracts,+Smart+Property+and+Trustless+Asset+Management+-+Tim+Swanson

Such a system, if implemented, would be a more accurate rendering of the Big Mac index. 92 The Big
Mac index is an annually published currency-comparison tool created by the Economist that measures
the purchasing-power parity (PPP) of each country. That is to say, a Big Mac is a relatively consistent,
quantifiable good that irrespective of jurisdiction should cost the same relative to the local currency.
However, since 1986, due to internal monetary policies a Big Mac is visibly overvalued or undervalued
relative to chained US dollars. While merchants and entrepreneurs do not necessarily need to know
every available global price point for haircuts, oil changes, or even in-flight training these indices could
help provide price discovery, enabling Argentinians to trade their goods and services at roughly marketrate
prices without using local currencies. In fact, just as globalization acts as to arbitrage wage rates of
low-skilled employment between regions (i.e., ceteris paribus, the process of making textiles should cost
roughly the same irrespective of locality), ultimately a decentralized system could enable entrepreneurs
to coordinate economic investment to or from certain regions.
In one speculative example, Bob the mechanic in Buenos Aires could create a variety of “colored” tokens
to represent tune-ups, repairs, and oil-changes and place them on decentralized exchanges that track
those specific services. Alice from the suburb of Avellaneda is an airline pilot and could similarly create
tokens to represent certain amounts of flying time (e.g., two hour in-flight training) and also place the
tokens onto a decentralized exchange. Each exchange could list both the local rate for service (i.e., what
the supplier is charging in fiat) as well as various cryptocurrency rates. While inflation may erode
purchasing power of fiat currencies such as the peso, decentralized platforms could enable both goods
and service providers the ability to retain and exchange value in a decentralized manner that negates
the need to use a repeatedly devalued intermediary. Alice and Bob could use price-matching services to
transfer service tokens directly redeemable for the said service to one another, or even exchange for
other intermediary cryptocurrencies. To exchange between specific cryptoledgers, a consensus-based
DAC may require “smart contracts” to provide for escrow and arbitration mechanisms before contracts
are allowed on a ledger or exchange. Or users may be willing to accept contracts without such clauses
(i.e., caveat emptor), helped along in their commercial decision by independent decentralized
autonomous agents which could provide a feedback, reputational mechanism (e.g., credit score) to
allow market participants to see whether either Alice or Bob is a risky merchant.
But what a cryptoledger makes up in quantitative sophistication, it lacks in the qualitative – bartering in
times of economic stress might work, but a real consumer economy might not. According to Stephan
Kinsella, “tens of thousands of formal and informal contracts are used every day between individuals,
small companies and large institutions – and each of these may contain different nuances and subtleties
relevant to the local setting. Even hiring someone to be a temporary assistant may require qualitative
language – some formalized legalese – and it will be difficult to automate those things. In fact, most
contracts outside the financial industry may not have clauses that are entirely mechanical; thus while
smart contracts and cryptoledgers create a full-proof method of tracking ownership of assets, more than
likely in some instances you will still need judgment calls involving humans – and there is already a
subsidized public system in place for that which many market participants may be reticent to give up. 93
Thus not only do you have to provide educational outreach but also consumer buy-in.”
Another question that both Stephan Kinsella and Sean Zoltek (chapter 6) brought up: how do we inform
market participants that the benefits and advantages of switching to a new system outweigh the costs
of using the existing infrastructure? For instance, homeowners in many developed countries can
already sell property without a realtor by using websites. Similarly, homebuyers can purchase a deed
and register it themselves. And if you want to sell it quickly you can simply use a real estate agent.
Furthermore, while apartments, condos and townhomes are typically homogeneous units, not all
houses are fungible, as they usually have some unique attributes that need to be quantified. While this
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