Re: modeling wallets

RE: "By all means we could spend time trying to nail down a definition of
money.  However, I've seen such discussions in the past, go on for 100s of
hours and not make progress, so bear in mind that it may not be the most
productive use of time."

Melvin, what I said was: "You're going to need to point to a general
definition of "money" if you want to arrive at a general definition of a
class of thing which receives, contains and dispatches it."

Just point. Pick one.

I did. Without dwelling on all my reasons for this particular choice (which
would be out of scope for this list) I pointed to a prominent definition by
Geoff Ingham. But choose another one if you prefer. Use Frederick Hayek's.
Or Karl Marx's. Or Milton Friedman's. Or Ben Graham's.

Then spec something (we can call it a "wallet") that serves the functions
of receiving, containing and dispatching money as it is defined by the one
you've picked.

Otherwise you'll be creating specs for something that receives, contains
and dispatches something you've not defined, which doesn't sound very
practical. Presumably because pointing to a reference definition of money
would be too theoretical.

Joseph Potvin
Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 7:14 AM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On 17 May 2015 at 12:49, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:
>
>> RE: "Galbraith ... says it's not important in the grand scheme of things"
>>
>
> That part was the comment from the regulator.  The bit in quotes was
> galbraith.
>
> By all means we could spend time trying to nail down a definition of
> money.  However, I've seen such discussions in the past, go on for 100s of
> hours and not make progress, so bear in mind that it may not be the most
> productive use of time.
>
> By using URIs to name things, it tends to be less restrictive.  Anything
> that can be named can be modeled.  They are just variable names.
>
>
>>
>> But we're not discussing the "grand scheme of things" here. We're
>> discussing technical informatics specifications.
>>
>> In the grand scheme of things, when the technical informatics specifications
>> in the domain of money & payment inherit deep architecture flaws (such as
>> ontological confusion) then the critical systems put in place inevitably
>> need to be sustained here and there with ad hoc work-arounds. Since 2007
>> we've all been witness to quite a few ad hoc work-arounds which have no
>> internal system logic, but which are driven by the need to prevent the
>> global money & payment "kernel" from crashing.
>>
>> Joseph Potvin
>> Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
>> The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
>> jpotvin@opman.ca
>> Mobile: 819-593-5983
>>
>> On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 6:03 AM, Melvin Carvalho <
>> melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17 May 2015 at 04:50, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>> You're going to need to point to a general definition of "money" if you
>>>> want to arrive at a general definition of a class of thing which receives,
>>>> contains and dispatches it.
>>>>
>>>> But let me ask: Do you consider "money" to be an entity, or a
>>>> relationship?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I've spoken to regulators about this.  One that I trust pointed me to
>>> Galbraith:
>>>
>>> Galbraith doesn't really give a hard definition because he says it's
>>> not important in the grand scheme of things... "The reader should proceed
>>> in these pages in the knowledge that money is nothing more or less than
>>> what he or she always thought it was - what is commonly offered or
>>> received for the purchase or sale of goods, services or other things."
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> In the context of IT architecture, the class Wallet is not a container
>>>> "of" money. It's a container of information "about" money. This is because
>>>> the class Money is not an entity, it's a relationship. That's a rather
>>>> critical difference to anyone's wallet ER diagram, certainly.
>>>> (See: "Money is a Social Relation
>>>> http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/29769872?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21106849248993
>>>> )
>>>>
>>>> Money (the relation) might be stored with a tangible, say like gold.
>>>> Aside from looking nice, gold serves as a sort of solid metal "wallet".
>>>> Money (the relation) might otherwise be stored with a tangible like Bitcoin
>>>> -- most will be surprised that I call it a tangible, but the simple fact is
>>>> that it requires tangible human effort, computing resources and electrical
>>>> energy to "mine" and then to manage those units. People may say "gold is
>>>> money" or "bitcoin is money" but that's just colloquial loose language. A
>>>> quanity of Gold, or a Bitcoin, are entities. The connection with various
>>>> useful things you can exchange for a certain amount of gold or of Bitcoin
>>>> express the relationship. That relationship can stay the exactly same while
>>>> the entity varies.
>>>>
>>>> Joseph Potvin
>>>> Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
>>>> The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
>>>> jpotvin@opman.ca
>>>> Mobile: 819-593-5983
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 05/16/2015 08:17 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
>>>>> > "A wallet is a container of money"
>>>>>
>>>>> The Web Payments IG started out talking about "digital wallets" and
>>>>> quickly moved away from the idea since a "digital wallet" can hold many
>>>>> other things as Tim and Jorge point out.
>>>>>
>>>>> There seems to be some sort of consensus around the concept of an
>>>>> 'account' and a 'ledger'. Those terms aren't as accessible to most
>>>>> people was 'wallet', but it may be the right way to model these sorts
>>>>> of
>>>>> things.
>>>>>
>>>>> <Alice> <com:account> <Alice:#account1>
>>>>> <Alice:#account1> <com:currency> "USD".
>>>>> <Alice:#account1> <rdfs:label> "Party Money".
>>>>> <Alice:#account1> <com:ledger> <Alice:#ledger1>
>>>>>
>>>>> -- manu
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
>>>>> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
>>>>> blog: The Marathonic Dawn of Web Payments
>>>>> http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> <819-593-5983>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>


--