====================================================================== CFJ 911 "A Currency directive of the form 'One Voting Token shall be placed in each Treasury for each 200 marks in that Treasury.' shall, for a negative value of Marks (less than -200) in a treasury, place a negative amount of Voting Tokens in that treasury (assuming that Voting Tokens exist and are a currency)." ====================================================================== Judge: KoJen Justices: Michael (C), Andre (J), Steve (S) Judgement: FALSE Appeal jdgmt: FALSE Eligible: (Andre), Antimatter, Blob, Chuck, Crito, elJefe, favor, General Chaos, Harlequin, KoJen, Macross, Michael, Morendil, Murphy, Oerjan, Steve, (Vanyel), Zefram Not eligible: Caller: Swann Barred: - Disqualified: Vanyel On hold: Andre ====================================================================== History: Called by Swann, Mon, 17 Mar 1997 18:11:54 -0500 (EST) Assigned to Vanyel, Thu, 20 Mar 1997 09:43:32 +0000 Vanyel defaults Re-assigned to KoJen, Fri, 4 Apr 1997 09:27:59 +0100 Judged FALSE, Wed, 9 Apr 97 16:13:37 -0400 Published, Mon, 14 Apr 1997 09:30:39 +0100 Appealed by Oerjan, Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:12:38 +0200 (MET DST) Appealed by General Chaos, Mon, 14 Apr 1997 08:08:16 -0500 Appealed by Morendil, Mon, 14 Apr 1997 16:31:26 +0200 Appeals process begun, Thu, 17 Apr 1997 09:15:04 +0100 favor (J) appoints General Chaos, Fri, 18 Apr 97 10:02:03 EDT -0400 Steve SUSTAINS judgement, Wed, 23 Apr 1997 16:09:34 +1000 (EST) Michael SUSTAINS judgement, Wed, 23 Apr 1997 12:00:00 +0100 General Chaos defaults Andre appointed as Justice, Wed, 30 Apr 1997 09:28:10 +0100 Andre calls for REJUDGING, Fri, 2 May 1997 20:41:22 +0200 (MET DST) Final verdict to SUSTAIN judgement of FALSE Published, Tue, 6 May 1997 11:44:13 +0100 ====================================================================== CotC's judgement: SUSTAIN The Judgement of the CFJ is incorrect because it neglects to address the fact that a Currency Directive does not (more correctly, did not; Currency Directives are now a thing of the past thanks to the "Power to the people" reforms) induce a change to the state of Treasuries directly. Not all changes in Currency holdings need to be as a result of Currency creation or transfer. The relevant rule is that which specified the action of Currency Directives. This states that a Currency Directive has "the effect of specifying the Currency holdings contained in an Entity or Entities' Treasury or Treasuries." There is no other restriction on the form of what a Currency Directive's specification of currency holdings might be. Note that a Currency Directive might have even specified that a Treasury hold some irrational number of a Currency. (The MUQ rule for Currencies would then round the holding to be a (possibly negative) multiple of the Currency's MUQ.) So, given our normal understanding of English, how do we interpret the specification "One Voting Token shall be placed in each Treasury for each 200 marks in that Treasury", given that the Rules do not constrain it in any way? I argue by analogy with the real world. If one received a message from one's bank saying that one was to receive 1 FroBozz for every $200 in the account, then those people with negative balances would not expect to receive negative FroBozz. This may seem loose and rather woolly, but we have no precedents in the game for this sort of wording. Currency Directives allow a great deal of latitude to their proposers; indeed they seem quite a prescient foreshadowing of the ideal embodied in the 'Power to the people' reforms: proposals should take effect as they specify. In my opinion, if one wanted a Currency Directive to bring about postiive and negative totals of VTs, the correct wording would be: "Each Treasury's Marks are converted to VTs at a rate of 200:1." The MUQ rule would then ensure that VTs were held in multiples of their MUQ. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Speaker's judgement: SUSTAIN In the matter of the Appeal of CFJ 911, my ruling is to SUSTAIN Kojen's Judgement. However, I do not support KoJen's reasoning for his Judgement. I agree with Morendil's objection that Currency Directives are not bound by the Rules for transfers. Hence Kojen's argument that the specification of a negative balance by a Currency Directive would have been impossible because it would have required a transfer smaller than the MUQ (because negative) is specious. It is my view that a Currency Directive could in theory have specified a negative balance. The question is whether the one in this CFJ would have succeeded in doing so. My view is that it would not, for the reasons set out below. As a number of Players have remarked, we are in need of a clearer metaphysics of Currencies than we currently possess. Two views seem to me to be on offer, one which I call the Poker Chip view, and another which I call the Numbers on Paper view, which General Chaos calls the Bookkeeping view. These views are closely related, but they suggest slightly different ways of thinking about the questions raised by this CFJ. The Numbers on Paper view emphasizes the numerical nature of Mark balances. This makes it easier to see a balance of -200 Marks as a multiple of 200 Marks, because of our familiarity with arithmetic for negative numbers. This is a more abstract metaphor for thinking about the metaphysics of Marks, and it tends to support a Judgement of TRUE. However, my own preference (and it seems in this case that I have little else to guide me), is for the Poker Chip view, which understands a Mark, or any unit of Currency, on the metaphor of a poker chip. This seem to me to be appropriate, especially considering Agora's origins as a face-to-face game, to be played around a table, just like Monopoly. In all such games where money is used, physical tokens are used to represent it. Now consider the situation of someone playing such a game who incurs a penalty greater than the money e has to pay it. Some games have a 'can't go below zero' rule, some allow debts to be incurred. Michael's Judgement of CFJ 912 establishes that Agora is a game of latter kind, at least at the moment. So what happens then? Probably, the player is issued with an IOU. This might take the form of a piece of paper with a number written on it, but that need not be the case. The IOU might just as well take the form of physical tokens similar to those being used to represent the money the game, only with a different colour, or shape. The crucial point is the IUO is a token of a different kind to that being used to represent money holdings of the other players. On the Poker Chip view, debts are of a different nature to currency holdings, and should be treated as conceptually separate. Now we look at the Currency Directive in the CFJ. It states that "One Voting Token shall be placed in each Treasury for each 200 marks in that Treasury." On the Poker Chip view, Mark holdings will be viewed as being represented by a certain kind of physical token, while Mark debts will be viewed as being represented by another, different kind of physical token. The Directive, however, applies only to physical tokens of the first kind. It says nothing about tokens of the second kind. Indeed, on the Poker Chip view, negative Voting Tokens are viewed as being represented by physical tokens of a different kind to those used to represent Voting Tokens. In order to replace a Mark debt by a Voting Token debt, we should want to specify an additional process, that of replacing Mark-debt-tokens with Voting Token-debt-tokens, and the Directive does not say that this should take place. Therefore, it is my Judgement that the Currency Directive in the CFJ would not have the effect of placing negative Voting Tokens in Treasuries which previously had negative Marks. The Statement is therefore FALSE as Judge Kojen ruled, although for different reasons than the ones he gave. ====================================================================== Justiciar's decision (by substitute Andre): As the Appellants, as well as my fellow Justices, whose Judgement I (as well as the other Agorans) have already seen, have already said, the argument of the Judge was wrong, in that the given Directive could work directly, and did not need to include a Transfer. Basically I agree with the Judgement of CotC Michael. The placement in a Treasury of something for each 200 marks in that Treasury specifically only applies to positive amounts of marks. This might be argued from the common-sense meaning of 'for each' (which seems to be the route taken by Michael), but I think it is even more convincing to use the meaning of 'place': It seems very contrary to the meaning of 'place' to place a negative number of things. Even though my opinion here come very close to that of the CotC (not so much that of the Speaker, to me the difference between the two situation is not a qualitative difference in the possession before the placement takes place, but one in the change of currency possessions itself), I will make a different Judgement. In my opinion, this kind of case, in which a point is of central importance that is mentioned by neither the Judge nor the Appelants the right route is to bring the subject back in the normal judicial process to be looked at again. Therefore I will judge REJUDGE, although I know that this Judgement will not be of consequence, as the majority of the Court of Appeal has already decided otherwise. Thus spoken on Friday the second of May, ====================================================================== Original Judgement: FALSE Reasons and arguments: The hypothetical directive says "One Voting Token shall be placed in each Treasury for each 200 marks in that Treasury." So, assuming that a treasury has -200 Marks in it, what does this seem to say? It seems to say that -1 VT is "placed" in that treasury. This at first appears to be OK, because R1600 stipulates the use of real numbers and "standard mathematics", where negative numbers are as valid as positive numbers. But where does this -1 VT (which is a Currency) come from? They have to come from somewhere, or they are created. Since the hypothetical directive does not specify where they come from, we can assume either that they came from the Mintor's Treasury, or they were created. But if created, they must first go to the Mintor's Treasury (R1471). So either way, the -1 VT was in the Mintor's Treasury before applying the Directive, and a transfer is required. However, R1477 says that the MUQ for an Extra Vote is 1. R1577 says that amounts less than the MUQ cannot be transferred. -1 is less than 1. Therefore this transfer is impossible. ====================================================================== (Caller's) Arguments: (none) ======================================================================