Background
We all know how a transaction happen between two parties. If one party gives 10 dollars to the other, then the other party should also give 10 dollars or something of equal value back. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair, right? In other words, the transaction has to be symmetric. This is the most fundamental principle of economics/ social sharing that had existed since the time man began to share things with one another.
All the modern economic systems, theories, studies and ideologies are based on this prehistoric principle. Whether we exchange goods, like in the past or buy things with physical or digital money, the same principle applies. This idea is so basic, that we even take this for granted and treat it as a universal law, never noticing its existence, like the air we breathe.
That value of the exchanged goods or services are always decided by the two parties. (But in the real world sometimes (more often than not) one party get more power at deciding this value.) When it is overpriced, the receiver is unsatisfied and when is it underpriced the giver is unsatisfied.
And not only that, the economic systems that we have today have many errors such as bribery, corruption, transparency problems, wealth inequality and so on.
The idea
As you may have guessed by now, the idea that I’m proposing is a system that is different than all the economic systems that we have today or had in the past. It’s as the name of this article suggests, a monetary system with “asymmetric transactions”.
Let me explain the idea. In an asymmetric transactional system, the values for the goods or services exchanged between two parties will not be decided by the same two parties, but by an independent, neutral third party. And the paying amount and the receiving amount may be different. These amounts may not be related to each other, but be related to the behavior of the two parties and to the goods or services exchanged.
In an asymmetric transactional world there isn’t a fixed amount of currency in existence at a given time. Because currency is both created and destroyed at the point of the transaction, namely by the third party (i.e. the one that handles the transaction between the 2 parties).
Let’s try to understand this with an example. Let’s say John and Kate want to make a transaction. Kate buys something from John and Kate pays money to John for it. And let’s say that this transaction is handled by Lee, who is a trusted, independent and neutral party to both Kate and John. So what happens is, Lee analyses the attributes and the circumstances of the transaction and the two parties involved (Kate and John) and decides on an amount that Kate should pay and an amount that John will receive, if they carry out the transaction. The amounts that Kate should pay and John will receive may be different. For instance Kate may have to pay 10 dollars while John receives 8 dollars or 15 dollars or the same 10 dollars. This will depend on the criteria that Lee analyses about John and Kate and the transaction they are making.
When everything is ready, Kate gives the money amount that was decided to Lee. Then Lee destroys the money received from Kate. And finally Lee creates a money amount to be given to John and gives it to him.
It is not necessary that John and Kate is aware of the amount of money that the other gave or received. They may be made aware or not; it’s up to the implementation (in my personal opinion it’s better that they are not aware).
It should be noted that the money amounts that Kate pays and John receives are decided at the point of the transaction; it is not predetermined. So the amounts may (or may not) be different it Kate and John decided to do the transaction on a different time or a different two parties other than Kate or John decided to the same transaction. This all depends on the criteria that Lee uses to make the decisions.
Implementation
This idea can be implemented in many different ways. One way would be to decide the amount that “the receiver” (John) should receive, based on the effort and the skill level of “the receiver” that had gone into creating the product or the service, the overall quality of the product or service, the importance of the product or service, the risks associated with the production, the local and global demands, the local and global supply and etc. (Just go crazy with criteria.)
And the amount “the giver” (Kate) should pay may be based on the level of necessity of that product or service to “the giver”, the economic power of “the giver”, the overall quality of the product or service and etc. (Same here, go crazy.)
Since this idea is difficult to implement with physical money, the money will be digital and the decision maker (Lee) would very well be a computational system (an AI of course, maybe “Skynet”, just kidding) that have access to the data that are needed, that can process them instantaneously and can be accessed by anyone anywhere. And most importantly, security should be paramount, privacy should be a priority, and the system should be open and unbiased.
This, as it is does not seem to be possible with the today’s settings. But with the ever increasing mountains and mountains of data on basically everything and the ever increasing power of computers and the improvements on algorithms and with the ever increasing reach of global connectivity and the Internet, this may very well be possible in the near (somewhat) future.
Implications
One example would be a critical patient may get a very low price on a same medical device that he/she needs while a person who just wants to see what it does (maybe out of curiosity or some other reason) may have to pay a higher price while the manufacturer of that medical device makes the same amount of money from both sales.
Another example would be say a company creates a digital product and sells several digital copies of it. Different people may buy it for different prices but the company would receive a certain amount of money for their creation and effort, and the amount may not depend on how many people have bought their product, since making copies of digital content takes zero to nearly zero effort. They may (or not) receive less and less money per copy as they sell more and more copies, depending on the deciding criteria.
Another interesting thing would be that the current employer-employee work model may not be valid in an asymmetric transactional world. It will be more like a buyer-seller or a collaboration model. This is partly because the service receiver (employer) does not have power over the salaries and other payments to the service provider (employee).
Among other things, a transactional system like this would eliminate (or minimize) the unnecessary and harmful accumulation of wealth for ones that does nothing or close to nothing.
As you may have understood by now the idea of profit works very differently in asymmetrical transactions than in the symmetrical transactions we are very much used to. In a symmetrical transaction, profit is an anomaly. If the idea is to pay an equal amount of money for the product or service you receive, then someone having a profit means that someone is getting more than he or she gives and that is the transaction’s symmetry has been forcefully broken. In my opinion, this is a major reason for the problems in our economies, because we are forcefully breaking the symmetry in transactions that are meant not to be broken. But in an asymmetrical transaction, there is no symmetry to begin with and these problems would not simply arise. (But yes, there may be other problems that are unique to asymmetrical transactions.)
You may (or not) get the wrong idea that this is either capitalistic or socialistic. But in reality, this does not belong to any. Rather this can be implemented in both capitalistic and socialistic environments.
It is possible that some types of transactions and businesses in the world today are possible only in a system with symmetrical transactions and in a world with asymmetrical transactions, they would be not possible. And the vice versa, that there are types of transactions and businesses that are only possible in a world with asymmetrical transactions could also be possible.
Every transaction will be transparent; no shady stuff. You will reap what you saw; no inequality. No overpriced or underpriced stuff; you pay for what you get and you get paid for what you offer.
Yes, this is crazy. Yes, this may have many errors, inconsistencies and pitfalls. And yes, this may very well be impractical. And to be honest, I haven’t still figured about the process of hundreds of different types of things that involve one party giving, and another receiving money such as loans, charity, tax and etc. Some of them maybe only be possible in a symmetric transactional world, and we may have to either abandon them or find alternative methods in an asymmetric transactional world for them or in an asymmetric transactional world they would be trivial or just impossible. The idea is still very raw and there is still a very long way to go from here.
It is important to note that an asymmetric transactional system will not solve all the problems of a symmetric transactional system. But rather it will solve some problems while introducing new ones of its own. What we have to do is identify them and try to find ways to eliminate or minimize them. And if the pros outweigh the cons we may someday can adapt to an asymmetric transactional system.
So, that’s it from me for now. And I invite everyone to have your say on this. If you have an idea to improve, if you want to criticize, or just want to comment, go for it.
Note from author:
I’m not in any way an expert in economics or any related field. I haven’t even had any kind of formal education on economics or any related field. So these ideas may very well have many mistakes and pitfalls, so be advised.
