Re:Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up
by maratd on Thursday February 01, 2018 @10:46PM
(#16288247)
Really? That’s depressing. Money can be anything you want it to be, so how about this.
Money = thank you points
You give it to people you’re thankful to, who either did something nice for you or gave you something you wanted.
Re:Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up
by zackmorris on Friday February 02, 2018 @12:35PM
(#16292355)
Ya I like that better too. I'd like to see us move beyond a world of artificial scarcity to one where everyone's basic needs are met and people can focus on self-actualization. If people want a mansion, great, they can work for it. But if people want to be left alone so they can explore the meaning of life, then they should be free to do so and whatever money is used at that point should go to things that are special. Kind of a Burning Man philosophy maybe?
Re:Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up
by nickbauman on Saturday February 03, 2018 @12:18PM
(#16298464)
Interesting thought experiment! One things that's missing from this is — historically — any economic endeavor that has a continual increase of efficiency ends up being highly volatile in the marketplace. So when prices have this continual downward pressure eventually the market collapses altogether.
In an ideal world where you drive a solar-powered car with a dozen moving parts built by robots from recycled materials, costs would fall to a fraction of what they are now. With the same automation applied across all industries, prices would fall to the point where the opportunity cost for humans to be in debt/servitude to rent-seeking financial institutions would exceed the benefit of using money in the first place.
This is basically what happened on Star Trek and is likely to happen in coming decades with Tesla, Amazon etc as humans can no longer compete with machine labor. Things will cost less but incomes will be so low that we won't be able to afford them anyway. Personally I would argue that that started happening sometime after the late 1960s and has gotten to the point where the status quo can only be propped up by every-growing absurdities on a global scale.
An oldie but goodie:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm