Be nice, y'all. Todd emailed me directly and I steered him here because I don't have time to talk about economic theory with everybody who emails me these days.
Todd: if you were designing a new currency, what would it look like? Are you imagining a LETS-like system of credit?
Bitcoin is designed to be like a scarce natural resource, which is pretty conservative, really-- scarce natural resources have a long history of being used as currency. I don't know enough about the alternatives to know whether or not they could work as an Internet currency-- the LETS systems I've heard about all rely on local interactions and trust to keep people from cheating.
PS: I'm going to move this thread to the Economics forum.