HN user
It will be difficult to make any change in this to open up for alternatives like Google; there's so much entrenched interest/power among cable MSOs and telcos. Hence, the best shot at succeeding is just reclassifying. This would be fantastic, and flip a switch to enable significantly more competition.
I'm suggesting that if you believe in the model, and even the most obvious ramifications of such an economy, the value of participating in the system is to be as far upstream as possible. I don't believe in the model, so, I'm not suggesting it has real value now or going forward.
You're also actually assuming something that runs counter to the stated bitcoin model, as described in the FAQ (which seems to be down at the moment). That is that there's an investment in making bitcoins, which they would say is not so. The intent in burning cycles and power is simply to ensure security, while the value comes from faith in the currency. Hence, there is no investment in creation: the investment would instead be in accepting bitcoins in transactions, which iterates the pyramidal nature of the system.
It's not the same as taking early risks; this is a very constrained and artificial environment in which bitcoins are generated. One can be pretty certain that if one generates coins early, one can then make money selling them to others. This is much more similar to a pyramid marketing scenario, where the earlier franchises are inherently worth more, and eventually the value generated for the terminal generation of participants is close to nil.
I'd argue you're not exactly correct about the release path of currency in a fractional reserve system, although I don't disagree that elements are currently implemented in quite unfair ways. I'd also suggest, though, that government fiat currency works very much better than anything commodity based, or indeed than a partially fiat system that functions exactly like a commodity based system, as bitcoin does.
There have been attempts to fix the value of gold for currency purposes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gold_Pool but these tend to simply prove the silliness of bothering with commodities when fiat currency is inherently more elegant and functional.
This would be a significantly better project than bitcoin, and it would be possible, it just wouldn't serve the same purpose. What it would do is value time and effort; what it wouldn't do is waste pointless cycles and energy to make hidden currency. This currency would be valuable because someone put energy toward social good. In contrast, bitcoins are valuable because there's a limited quantity of them and their usage can be hidden. Hence, limitless "bitcoins for good" could be created, in a vibrant and dynamic economy, while highly deflationary bitcoins will simply sit in a miser's coffee can buried in the backyard.
Since bitcoins are inherently deflationary, it's hard to argue that they make a poor investment vehicle. However, it's the inherent long-term lack of liquidity that dooms this usage. To be viable in scale, a cash-replacement like bitcoins needs to be highly liquid, but there are two effective choke points to this specific hidden economy. The first is that conventional retail businesses (as opposed to individuals) must accept the currency _in_scale_, and there are a number of reasons this won't happen, including the trackablity of bitcoin usage over the network (and inevitable IRS issues). The second is that paypal, banks, etc, will shut down conversion sites, as paypal is already beginning to do, and that will severely diminish the usefulness of the system.
superfluid has functionality for commercial (with IRS-reporting, per jambo) and non-commercial efforts. So it handles both the barter exchange and favor-bank sort of model. -The IRS has exclusions for non-commercial services.
superfluid:p2p is international, superfluid:business is US-only, for now.