The car is in the shop so I had time to surf. One thing that always irked me was the Internet “money” system. PayPal, which to me is a terrible outfit, only dominates because it was the one picked by eBay. PayPal’s biggest failing is that it is not a cash system (as was originally promised). Every transaction is recorded. I’ve often felt there is a huge market for a truly anonymous system, where both the purchase and the purchaser remain unknown unless they care to make the revelation. Online, has two bad choices. Credit card information with all its attendant evils, or a system of online tokens that only authorized dealers can redeem for cash. This reminds me of early Europe, where the money had to travel overland and highwaymen had a heyday. I reckon that is really because the transaction always took place where the seller resided. Somebody finally came up with the idea of “setoff”, where the financial transactions took place where the buyer resided. The remote parties only exchanged scrip (otherwise worthless pieces of paper) instead of gold. Then once a year, they met to set off each other’s scrip, and pay out any remaining difference.
This wheel needs to be reinvented on the Internet. It is necessary for the remote parties to survive on their own until the first “convention”, but that is tempered by the fact they really need only enough cash to cover the difference in balances. This role was once filled by banking houses. Modern “banks” are a joke by comparison, no laughing matter to anyone who has tried to cash a check without having an account at the branch.
Is there a third Internet option, one that requires neither credit cards or tokens? Where the only thing transmitted is electronic scrip? This requires very deep thought, but there is an answer just one step beyond what anybody else has thought of. Instead of wracking my brain about the Internet, I could accomplish the same effect by moving the transaction close to the buyer. Nobody seems to be thinking about this. Get back to me later. Meanwhile ask yourself if there was ever anything you were tempted to buy online, but decided against due to lack of privacy. I say this happens all the time.
The radiator hose. The mechanic motioned me into the cage to show me the special tool ($119) required to make the repair. I told you it needed something fancy. The $56 labor I spend shows that. I only test drove the car as far as Jimbos where everything seems to have worked out just fine thereafter. I watched the videos Arnel published on youTube and I recommend you take a look yourself. (Go to youTube, and search on [Arnel Dayrit video]). It will give you a definitive idea concerning my concept of a band stage show presentation, a show which has little to do with being the perfect musician. Very little, indeed.
Later, I have more information about Internet purchasing. There are some ingenious methods, one of which I’ll describe in a moment. All known methods in use are enhancements to standard purchasing procedures, that is, they still use an existing system. That means they all lack the key feature: Anonymity. Of what is available, the best thought-out is a system called SET for “Secure Electronic Transmission”. When you place an order, you never send your credit card number over the Internet. Instead, you send a code to the seller that identifies you and indicates which card you will be using.
The merchant receives this data, and sends a message to your credit card company. Then, get this, the credit card company, not the merchant, sends you a request to confirm you placed the order. If so, the merchant gets the final go ahead from the credit card company, not from you. In essence, it takes three parties to make each transaction. All this happens in a few seconds.
Still, it is but an adaptation of the credit system, which few people actually like. It is also finicky and I suspect highly vulnerable to inside jobs. It produces a paper trail and the probability of abuse is 100%. I smell the first billion dollar rip-off in. Why? For openers, only the transaction that uses the Internet because the credit card company doesn’t trust the web worth a damn. The actual funds transfer will still use the secure private network the credit companies had in place long before Internet shopping came along. Now you know.
