Least volatile measure of value. What could it be?

[merivercap]

Thanks for your kind words! This post is actually a bit outdated as I (and the Bitsapphire team) have simplified and extended the system considerably.

The IOUs would be based on a specific delivery of XYZ good or service correct?   This is the same model for the DigitalCoin &  Ripple system.  Your personal trust network or supply chain can better evaluate your 'credit rating'.  The supply and demand of the specific IOUs as well as the risk is decentralized/distributed.  The major failure in modern banking is that bad debt is centralized and effectively collectivized by government bailouts, guarantees, and money printing.  Hence collective public debt grows to unmanageable levels beyond the level that would represent productive credits, and eventually can lead to currency collapse.

The IOU represents the debt of the issuer in terms of an external unit of account (which in our model is the Perpetual Coin). It does not represent any good, service, hour, or anything of that sort that currently is in use with LETS.

Ripple has an in-build commodity money (XRP) which cannot function as a stable unit of account. It is the same as Bitcoin in this regard, or any commodity money. Our proposal creates a stable unit of account similar to bitAssets, but which track an internal ratio rather than some arbitrary commodity or basket of commodities. Rather, it tracks all goods and services on the market.

One of the major modifications to the system we've made so far is that the bitAsset (i.e. the perpetual coin) is not created as a CFD, but rather through simple contracted collateralization. In our current model any percentage of collateralization can happen. We calculated that at about 300% collateralization (all based on IOUs, nothing else) is the maximum statictically significant security that can be had.

We have also been able to form a very new and I think elegant definition of money and credit:
"Credit is a time-delayed split barter contract. Money is credit without counterparty risk." It's that simple really.

Interesting.  Look forward to seeing how it works. 
Yeah from what I recall XRP is the intermediary asset without counterparty risk between user-issued IOUs that have counterparty risk so it seems to have a somewhat similar function, but your perpetual coin idea doesn't involve IOUs of anything specific like dollars/gold/time...  Interesting.  Just like Bitcoin & Bitshares and other blockchains can be seen as a global ledger or DACs that can satisfy subjective value theory/Mises regression theorem because it is a piece of something tangible (ie. ledger or company) I can see how  a perpetual coin DAC can be similar, but wouldn't the value depend on how useful it is and wouldn't adoption increase value just like Bitcoin/Bitshares and wouldn't that make value unstable? What makes Bitshares much easier to value is because it can be seen a stream of dividend payments from transaction fees.

I like your elegant definition of money.  I like simple and it does make sense when using 'credit' & 'exchange' as the main reference point.  The 'store of value/commodity/asset' aspect that is typically associated with 'money' can be put in a different category because that is not necessary for exchange whereas the narrow definition you have confines the definition to the 'exchange' aspect of money.  A broader definition may include the 'wealth/asset/store of a value' aspect of money.   If you build a boat and I build a house and we exchange the net 'wealth' in the world is increased by a boat + house and so wealth is not a zero-sum game (in case you include Mother Earth than it is zero-sum..lol).... Exchange & credit and a narrow definition of money is a zero-sum game.  Anyways...fun to think about.  Look forward to your progress. 

[luckybit]

What BitShares is doing with BitAssets is great. It's a way to avoid the crazy volatility present in the crypto world but the BitUSD only pegs to the USD, which is controlled by the FED. BitGold only pegs to Gold which like all commodities can be tampered with.


Are there any projects out there, or thinkers, philosophers, that have an idea how to get a stable measure of value. Something that's barely, if at all, volatile.

I say this because we could create a BitAsset that tracts just that.

Not that this is a priority of course, BitUSD is one hell of an leap forward from any other crypto out there, but it would be interesting to have a crypto that is stable AND free from the FED price controls and market manipulation of gold and silver.

I read an E.C.Riegel book a few weeks ago. He has an interesting approach to money. His approach is an anarchistic, volatility free, IOU approach that looks like it would be a perfect fit with blockchain technology. I have no idea how strong his theory is. I haven't really had the time to think it through and research it more in depth yet. Not with the PeerTracks project!
I'm wondering if there's anything insightful out there on the internet about this very subject.

What would make the perfect crypto unit of account?

The human population. This could be represented as a coin which has a value of the total amount of humans on record. It should go up or down in predictable ways.

Or perhaps the formula for the total amount of storage space of the Internet itself. The value will increase each year at a predictable rate.

Or electricity usage. Make an asset around electricity demand and you'll get something extremely stable but which always increases.

I would say since we don't have electricoin we'll have to invent some energy assets. The other stuff would be too experimental.

[bitsapphire]

Thanks for your kind words! This post is actually a bit outdated as I (and the Bitsapphire team) have simplified and extended the system considerably.

The IOUs would be based on a specific delivery of XYZ good or service correct?   This is the same model for the DigitalCoin &  Ripple system.  Your personal trust network or supply chain can better evaluate your 'credit rating'.  The supply and demand of the specific IOUs as well as the risk is decentralized/distributed.  The major failure in modern banking is that bad debt is centralized and effectively collectivized by government bailouts, guarantees, and money printing.  Hence collective public debt grows to unmanageable levels beyond the level that would represent productive credits, and eventually can lead to currency collapse.

The IOU represents the debt of the issuer in terms of an external unit of account (which in our model is the Perpetual Coin). It does not represent any good, service, hour, or anything of that sort that currently is in use with LETS.

Ripple has an in-build commodity money (XRP) which cannot function as a stable unit of account. It is the same as Bitcoin in this regard, or any commodity money. Our proposal creates a stable unit of account similar to bitAssets, but which track an internal ratio rather than some arbitrary commodity or basket of commodities. Rather, it tracks all goods and services on the market.

One of the major modifications to the system we've made so far is that the bitAsset (i.e. the perpetual coin) is not created as a CFD, but rather through simple contracted collateralization. In our current model any percentage of collateralization can happen. We calculated that at about 300% collateralization (all based on IOUs, nothing else) is the maximum statictically significant security that can be had.

We have also been able to form a very new and I think elegant definition of money and credit:
"Credit is a time-delayed split barter contract. Money is credit without counterparty risk." It's that simple really.

[merivercap]

Cob, I see you're thinking about our Houston discussion

For others you can catch up on some stuff here http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/properties-of-token-money/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWfUqEyIZc

Without reiterating everything, bitAssets are capable of tracking the relative value of a data feed. The best data feed would be internal to the DAC so no data manipulation can happen. The most stable crypto assets to back up and collateralize bitAssets would be IOUs which represent something real which is redeemable. IOUs are better capable to create a much more stable bitAsset because people trade the undelrying value of the IOU rather than a commodity-token such as BTS or BTC. The problem with IOUs is of course that both collataralizing tokens on both ends of the bitAsset can completely default, effectively creating inflation for the bitAsset in question. 

Everybody is capable of providing value to the market through production (Riegel's idea: "We're all fountains of wealth") by extending our own credit and backing it up with future production at the future's exchange rate. You effectively get a dual currency system, exactly how money is noted in a ledger anyway: a Debit currency and a Credit currency. Those IOUs would be redeemable for your productive capacity. 

Great read.  I followed your posts after your comment about game theory results of credit money vs. commodity money from your Moonstone wallet thread. 

Yes. Money does not create wealth.  We all create wealth through our productive capacity.   

By using your're IOU as the collateral for one side of the bitAsset you can create somebody else's IOU's as collateral for the bitAsset's other side. This way you create a bitAsset without practical counterparty risk which everybody accepts at par and which can be used for universal pricing and path finding across the value network (very similar to Ripple's XRP being the path-finding mechanism between gateways, but in this case it's a stable bitAsset with flexible money supply rather than a commodity token).

I am a follower of the Ripple/Stellar community precisely for the credit money characteristics (social credit) and LETS (local exchange trading system).  The Ripple/Stellar system allows user generated IOUs in the same way you describe and XRP/STR is representative of the potentially stable 'bitAsset' intermediary without counterparty risk unless I'm missing something.  FYI:  I'm not a fan of the distribution mechanism of XRP, but am a fan of the tech.  Stellar has a much better distribution mechanism, but not entirely sold on the organizational structure.  Much prefer a DPOS/DAC model rather than a for-profit or non-profit corporation for issuing XRPs/STRs.  I would have probably given away 90% of the coins for free and kept 10% + inflation for development. 

Could this somehow fit in with the BitShares UIA model or do you need a separate bitCredit system? 

Furthermore the counterparty collateralizing your IOU takes on risk but also reaps the benefits by having more buying power with you. So your collateralizers, or in other words -lenders- would in most cases be your immediate supply-chain (or market makers, i.e. Credit Rating Agency). Your "credit limit" would be equal to the total demand for your IOU (or in other words total demand for your future production), however the more IOUs you issue the more interest your supply chain will require from you for their larger risk. Hence you get a very liquid and true market-based credit market and access to cash flow. 

The perfect bitAsset would be, as stated above, and internal price feed. If a lot of producers use this IOU system (as a kickstaerter it needs a minimum viable market, or in other words minimum viable liquidity) then you can use the point where the average total supply and demand curve of all IOUs in circulation meet as the univeral pathfinding point. In theory that point would be by definition perfectly stable as it mathematically represents the abstraction of all supply and demand of all relative values in the system. As such the -price- of money (i.e. Unit of Account) is not just decoupled from money itself as with bitAssets, it goes much further than that, it becomes a *universal non-cumulative* value unit. 

The IOUs would be based on a specific delivery of XYZ good or service correct?   This is the same model for the DigitalCoin &  Ripple system.  Your personal trust network or supply chain can better evaluate your 'credit rating'.  The supply and demand of the specific IOUs as well as the risk is decentralized/distributed.  The major failure in modern banking is that bad debt is centralized and effectively collectivized by government bailouts, guarantees, and money printing.  Hence collective public debt grows to unmanageable levels beyond the level that would represent productive credits, and eventually can lead to currency collapse.

BTW after many years of study, my revelations of modern money mechanics via Austrian economics & money-as-debt literature were confirmed with the following Bank of England quarterly reports:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q101.pdf
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf

After so many years of secrecy.... the BofE just spilled the beans on how modern banking works, and most economic professors don't understand this and it's not taught in most academic institutions.  Essentially banks create money out of thin air via lending.  They do not practice fractional reserve banking in the way most people think.  Banks do not lend their reserves nor is there any money multiplier effect.  All they do is create bank notes that represent the credit of people just as you described above with IOUs.  However credit evaluation & credit money creation is not distributed and favors large financial institutions & governments & corporations and overtime can lead to systemic currency collapse when the default risk of the entire system becomes too high.   It seems one efficiency with modern banking is that they don't have to deal with multiple IOUs.  Everyone's IOUs are treated as equal and so no one has to deal with IOUs of fish vs IOUs of getting a hair cut.  They all use the same bank notes.  That may be why fiat 'credit money' can seem relatively stable and is similarly why a liquid credit money like US Federal Reserve notes may tend towards the stability of a *universal non-cumulative* value unit you described.  However according to Mises regression theorem and subjective theory of value it seems you need a starting point of value whether it's a 'dollar' in 'grains' of silver or 'ozs' of gold.  The US Federal Reserve note initially had gold backing as a starting reference point so without that I don't believe you ever could have a relevant unit of account. 

Fascinatingly this special and unique bitAsset (I'm calling it Perpetual Coin (PC) for now) by definition has no counterparty risk as a whole, but statistically a certain percentage of it's underlying IOUs will default on both ends of the contract, as such it is as inflationary as the total failure rate of both ends of the bitAsset of the producers. However, because this is a DAC we can make sure that the price feed of the PC always matches the internal price point by including demurrage equal to this failure rate, effectively we're introducing entropy into the system which always matches the entropy of the underlying value market, something which never existed before. This way we stabilized PC as a Unit of Acocunt as a point in time, but not as a store of value. That's the next step. 

Great stuff!  Yes.  Essentially the default risk of the entire system can be used as a price feed to stabilize the unit of account. 

Due to demurrage PC holders who want to store their value will want to invest their PC as a loan to above average producers. They in tern give you their PC IOUs for a future date, in which case you have again counterparty risk which at average should be smaller or equal to the demurrage/entropy rate of the PC as all these factors are in theory counter-cyclical and self-stabilizing to one another.

As such we have effectively splt money into its 3 core functions:

• Medium of Exchange - Producer IOU
• Unit of Account - Perpetual Coin (bitAsset)
• Store of Value - P2P Credit Perpetual Coin

I've got to write this down more clearly somewhere.

Again great read.  I like how you summarized the core functions.   I think a lot of it is consistent with social credit/LETs systems, but I like the added dimension of using a DAC to account for demurrage.  Have you had further thoughts on this?  I've really been interested in distributed social credit money systems as well. 

[eagleeye]

Cob, I see you're thinking about our Houston discussion

For others you can catch up on some stuff here http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/properties-of-token-money/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWfUqEyIZc

Without reiterating everything, bitAssets are capable of tracking the relative value of a data feed. The best data feed would be internal to the DAC so no data manipulation can happen. The most stable crypto assets to back up and collateralize bitAssets would be IOUs which represent something real which is redeemable. IOUs are better capable to create a much more stable bitAsset because people trade the undelrying value of the IOU rather than a commodity-token such as BTS or BTC. The problem with IOUs is of course that both collataralizing tokens on both ends of the bitAsset can completely default, effectively creating inflation for the bitAsset in question.

Everybody is capable of providing value to the market through production (Riegel's idea: "We're all fountains of wealth") by extending our own credit and backing it up with future production at the future's exchange rate. You effectively get a dual currency system, exactly how money is noted in a ledger anyway: a Debit currency and a Credit currency. Those IOUs would be redeemable for your productive capacity.

By using your're IOU as the collateral for one side of the bitAsset you can create somebody else's IOU's as collateral for the bitAsset's other side. This way you create a bitAsset without practical counterparty risk which everybody accepts at par and which can be used for universal pricing and path finding across the value network (very similar to Ripple's XRP being the path-finding mechanism between gateways, but in this case it's a stable bitAsset with flexible money supply rather than a commodity token). Furthermore the counterparty collateralizing your IOU takes on risk but also reaps the benefits by having more buying power with you. So your collateralizers, or in other words -lenders- would in most cases be your immediate supply-chain (or market makers, i.e. Credit Rating Agency). Your "credit limit" would be equal to the total demand for your IOU (or in other words total demand for your future production), however the more IOUs you issue the more interest your supply chain will require from you for their larger risk. Hence you get a very liquid and true market-based credit market and access to cash flow.

The perfect bitAsset would be, as stated above, and internal price feed. If a lot of producers use this IOU system (as a kickstaerter it needs a minimum viable market, or in other words minimum viable liquidity) then you can use the point where the average total supply and demand curve of all IOUs in circulation meet as the univeral pathfinding point. In theory that point would be by definition perfectly stable as it mathematically represents the abstraction of all supply and demand of all relative values in the system. As such the -price- of money (i.e. Unit of Account) is not just decoupled from money itself as with bitAssets, it goes much further than that, it becomes a *universal non-cumulative* value unit.

Fascinatingly this special and unique bitAsset (I'm calling it Perpetual Coin (PC) for now) by definition has no counterparty risk as a whole, but statistically a certain percentage of it's underlying IOUs will default on both ends of the contract, as such it is as inflationary as the total failure rate of both ends of the bitAsset of the producers. However, because this is a DAC we can make sure that the price feed of the PC always matches the internal price point by including demurrage equal to this failure rate, effectively we're introducing entropy into the system which always matches the entropy of the underlying value market, something which never existed before. This way we stabilized PC as a Unit of Acocunt as a point in time, but not as a store of value. That's the next step.

Due to demurrage PC holders who want to store their value will want to invest their PC as a loan to above average producers. They in tern give you their PC IOUs for a future date, in which case you have again counterparty risk which at average should be smaller or equal to the demurrage/entropy rate of the PC as all these factors are in theory counter-cyclical and self-stabilizing to one another.

As such we have effectively splt money into its 3 core functions:

• Medium of Exchange - Producer IOU
• Unit of Account - Perpetual Coin (bitAsset)
• Store of Value - P2P Credit Perpetual Coin

I've got to write this down more clearly somewhere.

You went from currencies bitUSD, bitCNY now go to Bonds that pay a fixed coupon rate (yield/interest-rate).  You can start with Government bonds as they have the biggest market, perhaps do European PIIGS bonds (excluding Greece as it may go bankrupt) but you will get a market.

[bitsapphire]

Cob, I see you're thinking about our Houston discussion

For others you can catch up on some stuff here http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/properties-of-token-money/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWfUqEyIZc

Without reiterating everything, bitAssets are capable of tracking the relative value of a data feed. The best data feed would be internal to the DAC so no data manipulation can happen. The most stable crypto assets to back up and collateralize bitAssets would be IOUs which represent something real which is redeemable. IOUs are better capable to create a much more stable bitAsset because people trade the undelrying value of the IOU rather than a commodity-token such as BTS or BTC. The problem with IOUs is of course that both collataralizing tokens on both ends of the bitAsset can completely default, effectively creating inflation for the bitAsset in question.

Everybody is capable of providing value to the market through production (Riegel's idea: "We're all fountains of wealth") by extending our own credit and backing it up with future production at the future's exchange rate. You effectively get a dual currency system, exactly how money is noted in a ledger anyway: a Debit currency and a Credit currency. Those IOUs would be redeemable for your productive capacity.

By using your're IOU as the collateral for one side of the bitAsset you can create somebody else's IOU's as collateral for the bitAsset's other side. This way you create a bitAsset without practical counterparty risk which everybody accepts at par and which can be used for universal pricing and path finding across the value network (very similar to Ripple's XRP being the path-finding mechanism between gateways, but in this case it's a stable bitAsset with flexible money supply rather than a commodity token). Furthermore the counterparty collateralizing your IOU takes on risk but also reaps the benefits by having more buying power with you. So your collateralizers, or in other words -lenders- would in most cases be your immediate supply-chain (or market makers, i.e. Credit Rating Agency). Your "credit limit" would be equal to the total demand for your IOU (or in other words total demand for your future production), however the more IOUs you issue the more interest your supply chain will require from you for their larger risk. Hence you get a very liquid and true market-based credit market and access to cash flow.

The perfect bitAsset would be, as stated above, and internal price feed. If a lot of producers use this IOU system (as a kickstaerter it needs a minimum viable market, or in other words minimum viable liquidity) then you can use the point where the average total supply and demand curve of all IOUs in circulation meet as the univeral pathfinding point. In theory that point would be by definition perfectly stable as it mathematically represents the abstraction of all supply and demand of all relative values in the system. As such the -price- of money (i.e. Unit of Account) is not just decoupled from money itself as with bitAssets, it goes much further than that, it becomes a *universal non-cumulative* value unit.

Fascinatingly this special and unique bitAsset (I'm calling it Perpetual Coin (PC) for now) by definition has no counterparty risk as a whole, but statistically a certain percentage of it's underlying IOUs will default on both ends of the contract, as such it is as inflationary as the total failure rate of both ends of the bitAsset of the producers. However, because this is a DAC we can make sure that the price feed of the PC always matches the internal price point by including demurrage equal to this failure rate, effectively we're introducing entropy into the system which always matches the entropy of the underlying value market, something which never existed before. This way we stabilized PC as a Unit of Acocunt as a point in time, but not as a store of value. That's the next step.

Due to demurrage PC holders who want to store their value will want to invest their PC as a loan to above average producers. They in tern give you their PC IOUs for a future date, in which case you have again counterparty risk which at average should be smaller or equal to the demurrage/entropy rate of the PC as all these factors are in theory counter-cyclical and self-stabilizing to one another.

As such we have effectively splt money into its 3 core functions:

• Medium of Exchange - Producer IOU
• Unit of Account - Perpetual Coin (bitAsset)
• Store of Value - P2P Credit Perpetual Coin

I've got to write this down more clearly somewhere.

[matt608]

As people have mentioned once thee are lots of high volume bitassets an asset that tracks the average value of all of them, or just of the most stable ones, should be super stable. 

[kisa]

So, you need to find something that does have value everywhere.. and is available to buy in the currencies you want to compare.

Erm, yes. That's basically the question in the OP.

perhaps all measures are relative and all value is an illusion..

Exactly. (The illusion of value *is* a subjective value.)

most constant for the U.S. is the value of some stable basket of goods and services for an "average" family / "average" enterpreneur
- such basket has to be amended now and then for innovative products
- should include certain financial assets, commodities and real estate (as opposed to current measures used by FED)

for other countries, perhaps a somewhat different basket should be used...

so the least volatile index in terms of real value would be a weighted basket of world currencies, each adjusted for local inflation as defined per respective country's basket of goods and services.

[pc]

So, you need to find something that does have value everywhere.. and is available to buy in the currencies you want to compare.

Erm, yes. That's basically the question in the OP.

perhaps all measures are relative and all value is an illusion..

Exactly. (The illusion of value *is* a subjective value.)

[davidpbrown]

> .. then you would have a stable sense of the relative value of those dollar and BTS *in terms of light bulbs*.

So, you need to find something that does have value everywhere.. and is available to buy in the currencies you want to compare. No point then looking to the value of land just yet, when you cannot buy all land with BTS. Basket of crypto currencies in terms of their BTS value might work but if you want a sense of the BTS value too, then you need something available to all. Again 1 hour CPU of BTC mining seems accessible but I'm not sure that is stable enough. Until crypto currencies can buy something beyond just crypto currencies, perhaps all measures are relative and all value is an illusion..

[pc]

IMO the problem here is that there is no definition of value. And IMO there can't be such a thing a an absolute, stable measure of value (in the sense of the absolute, stable speed of light). Value is always subjective.

but you can have a stable reference point.. so long as other items are available relative to that.

If you could buy a light bulb in dollar and BTS, then you would have a stable sense of the relative value of those dollar and BTS in terms of light bulbs. What you cannot do is suggest the value of the unit measure because a measure cannot measure itself. Such a relative measure then would help a sense of market direction, certain markets might be overheated and others cool.

You cannot have a stable reference point because there is nothing that has stable value. The value of a light bulb for example is zero in the middle of a desert, just it can climb to silly heights shortly before they are taken from a market that was very much used to them (as recently seen in the EU).

[davidpbrown]

IMO the problem here is that there is no definition of value. And IMO there can't be such a thing a an absolute, stable measure of value (in the sense of the absolute, stable speed of light). Value is always subjective.

but you can have a stable reference point.. so long as other items are available relative to that.

If you could buy a light bulb in dollar and BTS, then you would have a stable sense of the relative value of those dollar and BTS in terms of light bulbs. What you cannot do is suggest the value of the unit measure because a measure cannot measure itself. Such a relative measure then would help a sense of market direction, certain markets might be overheated and others cool.

[pc]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2012/01/26/does-a-commodity-basket-standard-measure-up-to-gold/

Decent article.

tl;dr: historically, it's always been gold. Commodity basket doesn't work, therefore gold it must be.

IMO the problem here is that there is no definition of value. And IMO there can't be such a thing a an absolute, stable measure of value (in the sense of the absolute, stable speed of light). Value is always subjective.

[davidpbrown]

but you could make the same calculation against population more easily.

Divide total dollars by total population to see value of dollar. If total dollars changes, so does the value of a dollar.
You can do that with any item that is universal.. by assuming that it has universal value.. that's what the US dollar does by assuming base currency.

However, of what value is that unit land or single dollar?.. If we want a stable measure, then we need a sense of what that currency can buy.. what the value of it is.

I suppose what you are suggesting is the sum total of all land but again there was a bubble in housing because the value of that was pumped full of money from over leveraging derivatives. If the total money fluxes, so does your measure.. the only strong point is volume dampens volatility.. so, there's that.

[Rune]

..I think bitLand might be a good solution.

erm.. because there's no volatility in land prices!?..

United States housing bubble: Land prices contributed much more to the price increases than did structures.


I would expect the most volatile prices are the most valuable ones.. oil and rare earth and land and other forms of raw wealth. People projecting perception of value, is the source of volatility.. it's the cause of the pump and dump curves and of other bubbles.

Well it's just speculation and isn't really that relevant or possible to predict at this point. But I'll try to explain my reasoning.

The price of land as we currently know it isn't really the price of owning land, it's more like the rent of land from the government that controls it, and it wildly fluctuates whenever the government decides to change that price (observed as changes in taxation/subsidies on resources from that land, or land tax itself). The reason why I think "bitland" would be stable is because ultimately the earth is the only resource from which all other resources are derived and in a situation without governments as we know them today, where you can actually properly own the land itself and thus all the resources contained therein, the prices of everything else will already indirectly be in land (since land is kinda the central bank of all resources).

I believe that the bitshares system itself will take over some of the roles that governments have today, such as being the sovereign of all land and as a result have BTS be a stake in that and thus what all other resources are priced in, but in case that doesn't happen I think a price feed following the aggregate price of sovereign ownership of all land under stable governance would be the most stable.

I bet there are economists out there who would be absolutely thrilled to work on a problem like this... Far out in the future when it becomes relevant.