Slashdot Mirror
Utility Targets Bitcoin Miners With Power Rate Hike (datacenterfrontier.com)
1sockchuck writes: A public utility in Washington state wants to raise rates for high-density power users, citing a flood of requests for electricity to power bitcoin mining operations. Chelan County has some of the cheapest power in the nation, supported by hydroelectric generation from dams along the Columbia River. That got the attention of bitcoin miners, prompting requests to provision 220 megawatts of additional power. After a one-year moratorium, the Chelan utility now wants to raise rates for high density users (more than 250kW per square foot) from 3 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Bitcoin businesses say the rate hike is discriminatory. But Chelan officials cite the transient nature of the bitcoin business as a risk to recovering their costs for provisioning new power capacity.
You really don't understand the 4 levels of money, at all.
1. Barter of physical good
Before money was invented we used to barter for goods.
Ignore the /Oblg. "Wood for Sheep?" Settlers of Catan joke.
Problem: You can't trade a _partial_ (or "granular") quantity -- you can only trade "course" amounts.
Solution: So we invented a token system.
2.a) Tokens
So instead of trading the things themselves, we abstracted them and used tokens instead. This is extremely more flexible because now we have quantized our money to a small amount -- the penny, and we can easily assign a "multi-value" to things. You may not value Y but value Z instead. I however am willing to pay more for Y.
Problem: I want to trade for non-material things.
Solution: You can trade for services -- the next level of money.
2. b) Time, Experience, and Skill.
I may not have the time or skill to build a house, but I can trade money to someone who does. We both win.
Problem: Greed drives people to just make shit up and enslave others via usury. i.e. Since some yahoo decided we don't even need tokens to represent the things, we can just abstract money one more step and just treat it as a concept of numbers. This is due to a false belief that: "There is never enough." ...
Solution: But what _really_ is money? Money is just another convenient form of reality of
3. ... Energy
At the end of the day we all want matter which is just a different form of energy.
One day humans will spiritually grow up and stop behaving like little 2 year olds -- that day will forced upon us when we have free energy. We already an analogy of this with software and injection molding. Once you have the first "master" it costs almost zero to print X amount of them. So what is the value when you have as much "money" as a society could possible want and it is trivial to produce something??
The Fashion Industry shows us a glimpse:
Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture
* https://www.ted.com/talks/joha...
4. Honor
Sadly here is a word you don't see much more of. In the good 'ol days, a person's word was "literally" their bond. They had honor, acted honorably, and treated others with honor.
The _uniqueness_ of what people bring to the table is the last evolution of money. In a sense, a person's reputation, will eventually determine their worth to others. Hey, this person gets shit done! Or "Don't use that person, he is always late, does a poor job, etc."
Weirdly enough, a philosopher wrote about this when she explained the "logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others." which is even more strangely in this Object-Oriented Programming and Objectivist Epistemology: Parallels and Implications" paper:
As a species we're still at stage 2 of understand money.
Illusion? No, you're the one delusional on what money _really_ is.