Payment options on the (SF) frontier

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Now that's clever hard science based sfnal thinking. I approve. Does that mean that asteroid mining will make catalytic systems substantially cheaper?

That is certainly one possibility. What is looking more and more likely, though, is that alternatives to platinum group element catalysts will be found (like nickel nanoparticles or carbon-based systems ... nanotubes, enzymes ... or systems based around a substrate or nanoparticles of titanium dioxide). Whether these alternatives would be cheaper compared to asteroid-mined elements is an open question. Either way, catalytic systems will get cheaper - the question is the reason for it.

You might find that gold replaces lead for a lot of applications requiring density and malleability, because it is so much less toxic. In the future, people might use gold bullets.

Luke

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

That is certainly one possibility. What is looking more and more likely, though, is that alternatives to platinum group element catalysts will be found (like nickel nanoparticles or carbon-based systems ... nanotubes, enzymes ... or systems based around a substrate or nanoparticles of titanium dioxide). Whether these alternatives would be cheaper compared to asteroid-mined elements is an open question. Either way, catalytic systems will get cheaper - the question is the reason for it.e

As I understand it, one problem with titanium dioxide is that the band gap is wide enough so you need UV to push electrons across it, and very little of sunlight is UV. I keep seeing articles about trying various secondary catalysts to get useful conversion down in the visible.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by whswhs

As I understand it, one problem with titanium dioxide is that the band gap is wide enough so you need UV to push electrons across it, and very little of sunlight is UV. I keep seeing articles about trying various secondary catalysts to get useful conversion down in the visible.

Basically. Titanium dioxide works great for a lot of stuff if you can expose it to unfiltered sunlight. If your colony is on a world around a K or M type star, you might not have the UV in the sunlight for the stuff to work at all.

Luke

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Futuristic enough that it was the assumption of the star frontiers game more than 30 years ago. Star Frontiers was actually kind of retrotech even then.

The idea didn't actually wo0rk out that well even then. This was even though PCs had no way to ever actually generate energy themselves. They could only buy it from NPCs and store it.

As a general hint if choosing a commodity to base your means of exchange on don't choose one whose supply is easily expandable when that becomes desirable.

Compare this to the real world. The global reserve currency is the US dollar, that since 1971 became a fiat currency with no intrinsic worth just a perceived worth because it is backed by the US government. And all other major currencies are fiat currencies so it's not like the US dollar is special in that regard. The attraction of fiat currency for governments is that it is easy to control the money supply and objects of real value (like metals) can be utilised for other things rather than being used to represent money. The downside is that the perceived value of fiat currencies inevitably falls until it matches the intrinsic value of zero. We are seeing that happen now with all major currencies (apparently the average life for a fiat currency is 27 years).

Maybe future governments will recognise that fiat currencies are temporary and unreliable but they won't want to commit to assigning otherwise valuable metals as currency so they will opt for units of energy as currency instead.

For me there is a particular elegance (for lack of a better word) in using energy as currency. Energy is universal and it quite literally powers the economy regardless of what type of money is in place. Oil price tends to correlate with inflation for example. Taken to the extreme, if energy becomes so abundant as to be effectively limitless then you don't need money because everyone can be self sufficient. There is no quantity of gold, silver, titanium or any other commodity where that is the case.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Compare this to the real world. The global reserve currency is the US dollar, that since 1971 became a fiat currency with no intrinsic worth just a perceived worth because it is backed by the US government. And all other major currencies are fiat currencies so it's not like the US dollar is special in that regard. The attraction of fiat currency for governments is that it is easy to control the money supply and objects of real value (like metals) can be utilised for other things rather than being used to represent money. The downside is that the perceived value of fiat currencies inevitably falls until it matches the intrinsic value of zero. We are seeing that happen now with all major currencies (apparently the average life for a fiat currency is 27 years).

Maybe future governments will recognise that fiat currencies are temporary and unreliable but they won't want to commit to assigning otherwise valuable metals as currency so they will opt for units of energy as currency instead.

For me there is a particular elegance (for lack of a better word) in using energy as currency. Energy is universal and it quite literally powers the economy regardless of what type of money is in place. Oil price tends to correlate with inflation for example. Taken to the extreme, if energy becomes so abundant as to be effectively limitless then you don't need money because everyone can be self sufficient. There is no quantity of gold, silver, titanium or any other commodity where that is the case.

One problem is that while energy is easy to move around, it its hard to store. For example, the most energy that can be stored in the form of chemical bonds is about 10 to 15 kW-h/kg. Incidentally, that's also about how much heat energy you can get from burning 1 kg of gasoline (or crude oil, propane, Diesel, wax, or other hydrocarbon) with oxygen, not counting the mass of the oxygen. So lets assume a super-battery capable of storing 12 kW-h/kg. Last time I checked, the going rate of electricity where I live was about $0.06/kW-h. So a 1 kg battery would hold a grand total of $0.72 worth of electricity. Meanwhile, the battery itself would probably cost somewhere in the range of a few $100. The value of the energy is negligible compared to the value of its storage medium. Going by the price of energy alone, I would need to cart around something like 8 kg of batteries to afford one hamburger. Buying a low-end car (new) would require giving the dealer 35 tons of batteries. For a medium of exchange, you probably want something a bit more compact than that.

(On a completely different note, it would be fun if the medium of exchange was certificates of partial ownership of Yap rai stones. The stones weigh several tons - you leave them in the south Pacific. You just exchange certificates of ownership. Yeah, sure ... you could come up with a dozen reasons why it wouldn't work, but I love the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

This leads to a related idea - you trade in certificates of items of high cultural or artistic value. Like the Mona Lisa, or the St. Louis arch. Again, the Mona Lisa stays in the Louvre (it's more secure there, you wouldn't want anyone stealing it, would you?), but you can exchange partial ownership for goods and services.)

Luke

[Boomerang]

What TL is this campaign? I thought it was around TL10 so a more useful energy storage medium could be developed.

I agree Rai stones are cool.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

What TL is this campaign? I thought it was around TL10 so a more useful energy storage medium could be developed.

It's a physical limit, unless you're willing to go nuclear (in which case you have the problem of exposure to ionizing radiation, which is pretty unavoidable with nuclear reactions).

For example - superconducting loops? You're limited by the ability of the loop's backing material to resist the forces that the magnetic field generated by the supercurrent exerts on the current itself - and the stuff in the backing material is held together by chemical bonds. So the best you can do is something that stores about 10-15 kW-h/kg before it bursts.

Flywheels? Same problem. You're limited by the tensile strength of the wheel, which comes from the chemical bonds that hold together the matter in the wheel.

Capacitors? If you get more than 10-15 kW-h/kg, the electrostatic forces will squish the separator material so hard that it squirts out the sides, allowing the electrodes to touch and discharge.

With some really exotic chemistry of very light atoms (like metastable states of hydrogen or helium) you might be able to wring out another factor of 2 or 8 or something in the specific energy, but this still doesn't solve the problem - energy storage is way too bulky for the value of its energy to make a convenient currency.

Now trading stock in a generator plant or power distribution grid could be worth something. But its the kilowatts that have value, not the kilowatt-hours.

Luke

[whswhs]

The thing with money is that, on one hand, its value doesn't come from the value of its material. It comes from its liquidity (in the economic sense). If our currency is Easter eggs (the physical ones!), then their direct value comes from your ability to eat them or to look at them in admiration. But if everyone wants Easter eggs, and if someone offers you an Easter egg in payment for a loaf of bread, you may take it, not because you want to look at it or eat it, but because you figure someone else will take it off your hands. And they may be willing to do so largely because they figure someone else again will take it off their hands. By the time Easter eggs get established as a medium of exchange, it will be commonplace for them to change hands many times before someone eats one, or puts it into a collection for guests to admire. For most people, it's worth more as something to pass along than as something to consume. If it changes hands N times, you might model its "exchange value" as N times its "use value" for the average person. (Once in a while you'll get someone hungry enough to eat one of those decorated eggs, but most people will be able to eat plain eggs, or beans, or nuts, or some other protein source.)

And that's going to happen, I think, with anything that's used as money. Which makes using energy as money a problematic idea: It rewards you for hoarding great masses of energy, keeping it unused, and in the process depriving the economy of the productivity it could support.

Consumables in general don't make the best money, because their natural fate is to be used up. Durables are better. And luxuries are better than necessities, both because people put a high initial value on them, which makes them likely to have liquidity at the outset that can launch them toward exchangeability, and because paradoxically it doesn't matter a lot if they are taken out of use. The role of gold in electronics and catalytic chemistry actually makes it less convenient to use gold as money.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

It's a physical limit, unless you're willing to go nuclear (in which case you have the problem of exposure to ionizing radiation, which is pretty unavoidable with nuclear reactions).

For example - superconducting loops? You're limited by the ability of the loop's backing material to resist the forces that the magnetic field generated by the supercurrent exerts on the current itself - and the stuff in the backing material is held together by chemical bonds. So the best you can do is something that stores about 10-15 kW-h/kg before it bursts.

Flywheels? Same problem. You're limited by the tensile strength of the wheel, which comes from the chemical bonds that hold together the matter in the wheel.

Capacitors? If you get more than 10-15 kW-h/kg, the electrostatic forces will squish the separator material so hard that it squirts out the sides, allowing the electrodes to touch and discharge.

With some really exotic chemistry of very light atoms (like metastable states of hydrogen or helium) you might be able to wring out another factor of 2 or 8 or something in the specific energy, but this still doesn't solve the problem - energy storage is way too bulky for the value of its energy to make a convenient currency.

Now trading stock in a generator plant or power distribution grid could be worth something. But its the kilowatts that have value, not the kilowatt-hours.

Luke

I take your point, based on our current understanding of science and engineering portable energy is not very practical.

On the other hand, if we are a bound by all of those restrictions then a portable and convenient source of fuel for space travel, which is required by the setting, is impossible.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Consumables in general don't make the best money, because their natural fate is to be used up. Durables are better. And luxuries are better than necessities, both because people put a high initial value on them, which makes them likely to have liquidity at the outset that can launch them toward exchangeability, and because paradoxically it doesn't matter a lot if they are taken out of use. The role of gold in electronics and catalytic chemistry actually makes it less convenient to use gold as money.

Not much gold is used for electronics or chemistry. Gold would always be my preference as the basis for currency but I think the OP wanted something more exotic.