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                               CFJ 931

"A unit of the currency 'Payment Orders' is a Nomic Entity."

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Judge:        Kolja A.

Judgement:    FALSE

Eligible:     Blob, Chuck, (Elde), (elJefe), General Chaos, Kolja A.,
              Michael, Morendil, Murphy, Swann

Not eligible:
Caller:       Harlequin
Barred:       Crito, Steve
Disqualified: elJefe, Vanyel
On hold:      Andre, Antimatter, Oerjan, Zefram

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History:
  Called by Harlequin, Wed, 16 Jul 1997 16:33:36 -0400
  Assigned to elJefe, Thu, 17 Jul 1997 11:44:22 +0100
  elJefe defaults
  Assigned to Kolja A., Fri, 25 Jul 1997 17:59:28 +0100
  Judged FALSE, Wed, 30 Jul 1997 12:40:20 +0200
  Published, Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:53:28 +0100

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Judgement: FALSE

Reasons and arguments:

1586 defines a Nomic Entity (NE) as

      A "Nomic Entity" is any entity which has no discernible
      existence without the Rules, only existing by virtue of the
      Rules defining it to exist.

It does not matter whether the _creation_ of an entity depends on
other factors than rules only (the creation of the currency "Payment
Orders" depended on a message to the public forum by Morendil, in
addition to the relevant rules).

It does matter, however, whether the possible _destruction_ of an
entity depends only on rules. The currency "Payment Orders" can be
destroyed at any time at its mintor's whim (1722), and it will be
automatically destroyed when the mintor ceases to exist or ceases to
have mint authority (1579). So it is not true that the currency
"Payment Orders" _only_ exists by virtue of the rules defining it to
exist as required in the definition of an NE.

To back up this interpretation of the NE definition I would like to
point out that the rules call four entities "NEs" explicitly in the
rule defining the entity: The Virus (1454), Theses (1369), the Bank
(1470) and the Frankenstein Monster (1671). No rule contains explicit
provisions for the destruction of these entities by any means. So the
only way they can be destroyed is via repeal (or other sufficient
changes of) the rules defining these NEs. This is what "only existing
by virtue of the Rules defining it to exist" means.

--
Footnote, concerning an argument raised by the caller of this CFJ.

This may seem to create a contradictory situation: "Currencies in
general only exist because of rules defining them, thus they are
NEs. Particular currencies not created by the rules, but by other
entities with mint authority, are not NEs according to this
judgement."

I agree that there is a contradiction. In terms of entity classes this
means that the overall class of "currencies" is an NE, while some
members of this class (non-rule defined particular currencies) are not
NEs and others (rule-defined currencies) are.

However, I think this contradiction does not ivalidate my arguments;
rather it shows another weakness of the current NE system that
deserves attention in any future NE reform.

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(Caller's) Arguments:

I've given my arguments all over n-d, so I won't repeat any of them
here.  The relevant Rules are: 1467, 1591, 1586.

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