27. Lorxus Favors Etc. (Extra Bits)
As promised, here are a few short extra bits about Lorxus Favors that I don’t think I’ve shared much elsewhere and certainly have never written down.
(What Favors get exchanged for) Here are a few of the things I’ve spent Favors on, or that I’ve heard of others spending Favors on: Laptop repairs, driving for multiple hours to events and bulk grocery stores, help accessing medical care, willingness to make fair-sized (USD) loans, car jumpstarting, ritual work and organization, furniture assembly, purchase of antiques, gambling stakes, temporary housing, small coding projects, specialty silverwork, metalcasting help, and community organization. This is obviously not remotely a complete list, and I probably can’t put a complete list together, but this is the cross-section of Favor economy activity of which word has made it back to me.
(4D sculpture) I have this mental image of what the kinetic sculpture comprised of all the silver alloy that has ever been in a Favor coin must look like. If we take as read the block universe model of time - at least for the past - and also adopt for convenience the inertial frame of the Earth, then the surface of the Earth traces out a near-perfect spherinder. Within this spherinder, Favor coins bloom yellow-hot now and again, visible in bunches within their plaster shells as they cool and are quenched; then are clipped free of each other, a few stray motes of silver remaining on the floor and workbenches. Chicago is a distinguished point from which all Favor coins to date originate, tracing out the very start of a treelike graph. They spread out from there; many to Seattle and to the Chicagoland area; others to San Francisco or upstate New York or to central New Jersey. Some make it as far as Germany or South Korea. I myself am visible by implication in the sculpture from the thick bunches of Favors sitting in reserve, or most especially by a few strung on a chain necklace, tracking my motions carefully. Other people who are important to me become briefly visible; some fade away in time, while others remain visible in much the same way. Loops and consistent arcs and cycles emerge, the record of socialization and coordination and a gentle sort of trade. Some make their way back to the central mass I carry; others sit in drawers, never seeing the light of day. Moment by moment, more of the sculpture comes into view, some of it becoming slowly tarnished or quickly polished; the tree of silver grows and diffuses upwards through the growing spherinder as time passes.
(Nanoscale reserve banking) Consider the following premises. First, the fact that just as the Fed is the final sovereign authority over the US Dollar, so too am I the final sovereign authority over the favor. Second, that there is some actual quantity of money that the Fed exercises that sovereignty over; there’s some subtlety in how to define that, but for a decent approximation, the M1 supply - the literal total monetary-mass of physical currency, plus savings accounts and some other minor components - is ~$20Tn as of 2024, somewhat less than the 2024 GDP of ~$30Tn. Third, there is a USD-denominated quantity of economic mass that I exercise sovereignty over through the Lorxus Favor economy; there’s also some subtlety in how to define that, but for a quick pair of bounding estimates, there are 77 Favor coins in existence (of which 68 are in circulation) as of 2025; the floor value is currently ~$85 and eight hours’ worth of highly skilled work might reasonably expect to be paid $400, giving bounds of ~$6.5k to ~$31k, averaging out to ~$18.7k - that is, pretty much exactly 1/10^9 the amount of economic mass of the US Dollar economy. That makes me a nanoscale reserve bank(er). Many macroeconomic phenomena show up in this tiny scale model of an economy - helicopter money is an experiment I’ve tried with some success, savings sitting around inflict major deadweight loss, and I’ve observed a very rough power law in the number of transactions per person. I can tell you from personal experience that running a reserve bank is quite challenging, especially without full-time staff, added logistical constraints, fewer legal affordances, much less chartalist sway, next to no meaningful banking, much less information, and the need to set economic policy by hand and in large blocks as compared to a major national reserve bank, but it’s been a satisfying experiment nonetheless. At the least, I can appreciate counterintuitive-looking economic measures the Fed takes, and equally well criticize a certain AG for gross incompetence with the weight of nonzero experience.
31474/32768
(What Favors get exchanged for) Here are a few of the things I’ve spent Favors on, or that I’ve heard of others spending Favors on: Laptop repairs, driving for multiple hours to events and bulk grocery stores, help accessing medical care, willingness to make fair-sized (USD) loans, car jumpstarting, ritual work and organization, furniture assembly, purchase of antiques, gambling stakes, temporary housing, small coding projects, specialty silverwork, metalcasting help, and community organization. This is obviously not remotely a complete list, and I probably can’t put a complete list together, but this is the cross-section of Favor economy activity of which word has made it back to me.
(4D sculpture) I have this mental image of what the kinetic sculpture comprised of all the silver alloy that has ever been in a Favor coin must look like. If we take as read the block universe model of time - at least for the past - and also adopt for convenience the inertial frame of the Earth, then the surface of the Earth traces out a near-perfect spherinder. Within this spherinder, Favor coins bloom yellow-hot now and again, visible in bunches within their plaster shells as they cool and are quenched; then are clipped free of each other, a few stray motes of silver remaining on the floor and workbenches. Chicago is a distinguished point from which all Favor coins to date originate, tracing out the very start of a treelike graph. They spread out from there; many to Seattle and to the Chicagoland area; others to San Francisco or upstate New York or to central New Jersey. Some make it as far as Germany or South Korea. I myself am visible by implication in the sculpture from the thick bunches of Favors sitting in reserve, or most especially by a few strung on a chain necklace, tracking my motions carefully. Other people who are important to me become briefly visible; some fade away in time, while others remain visible in much the same way. Loops and consistent arcs and cycles emerge, the record of socialization and coordination and a gentle sort of trade. Some make their way back to the central mass I carry; others sit in drawers, never seeing the light of day. Moment by moment, more of the sculpture comes into view, some of it becoming slowly tarnished or quickly polished; the tree of silver grows and diffuses upwards through the growing spherinder as time passes.
(Nanoscale reserve banking) Consider the following premises. First, the fact that just as the Fed is the final sovereign authority over the US Dollar, so too am I the final sovereign authority over the favor. Second, that there is some actual quantity of money that the Fed exercises that sovereignty over; there’s some subtlety in how to define that, but for a decent approximation, the M1 supply - the literal total monetary-mass of physical currency, plus savings accounts and some other minor components - is ~$20Tn as of 2024, somewhat less than the 2024 GDP of ~$30Tn. Third, there is a USD-denominated quantity of economic mass that I exercise sovereignty over through the Lorxus Favor economy; there’s also some subtlety in how to define that, but for a quick pair of bounding estimates, there are 77 Favor coins in existence (of which 68 are in circulation) as of 2025; the floor value is currently ~$85 and eight hours’ worth of highly skilled work might reasonably expect to be paid $400, giving bounds of ~$6.5k to ~$31k, averaging out to ~$18.7k - that is, pretty much exactly 1/10^9 the amount of economic mass of the US Dollar economy. That makes me a nanoscale reserve bank(er). Many macroeconomic phenomena show up in this tiny scale model of an economy - helicopter money is an experiment I’ve tried with some success, savings sitting around inflict major deadweight loss, and I’ve observed a very rough power law in the number of transactions per person. I can tell you from personal experience that running a reserve bank is quite challenging, especially without full-time staff, added logistical constraints, fewer legal affordances, much less chartalist sway, next to no meaningful banking, much less information, and the need to set economic policy by hand and in large blocks as compared to a major national reserve bank, but it’s been a satisfying experiment nonetheless. At the least, I can appreciate counterintuitive-looking economic measures the Fed takes, and equally well criticize a certain AG for gross incompetence with the weight of nonzero experience.
31474/32768
Comments
Post a Comment