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A comment on Bitcoin ‘Ought to Be Outlawed,’ Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz Says. Parent comment

Re:Bitcoin ‘Ought to Be Outlawed,’ Nobel Prize Winner Stigli... by WalterBright on Thursday November 30, 2017 @01:37AM (#15813900)
The rivers weren't remotely good enough, which is why the Erie Canal was dug. For the first 70 years, commerce east to west had to go around the horn of S. America, and the economy still boomed.

The explosion of the railroad system solved those problems, but that was around 1870.

Massive oil, gas and coal reserves are hardly unique to America. Oil, for example, has made Saudi Arabia very wealthy, but not an economic powerhouse.

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Re:Bitcoin ‘Ought to Be Outlawed,’ Nobel Prize Winner Stigli... by maoistinquisitr on Thursday November 30, 2017 @02:08AM (#15813976)
The canals and rails are the expected endogenous result of a unified european or east asian people blessed with such land, after being formed by a thousand years of scarcity and warfare. It's not a monetary policy or tax thing.

These people just don't get that civilization is energy flows and culture, not laissez-faire economic policies.

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Re:Bitcoin ‘Ought to Be Outlawed,’ Nobel Prize Winner Stigli... by WalterBright on Thursday November 30, 2017 @03:52AM (#15814333)
Why didn't it happen in S. America, Central America, Africa, etc.? The only consistent pattern distinguishing prosperity from poverty is free markets.

Anyhow, my point was fiat money was not a necessary condition for such prosperity.

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