False choice. Bitcoin mining isn’t going to replace military force as they address different problems.

No one here is arguing for replacement of military force, your brain got stuck by a common fallacy it seems.

Notice how displacing some military force usage by changing the motivation or capability for intervention (for example to maintain a currency advantage) might be in itself a Good Thing (tm) and how it does not require replacing armed forces entirely.

"You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force"

That was literally a quote from the post being responded to.

Not sure what you are going for here. Indeed, reading a single sentence without considering context typically leads one to faulty conclusions. Note that the previous sentence in the parent post is "Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free."

'You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force' to solve the consensus issue.

Bitcoin doesn't solve, for example, hate crimes or something like this.

Yes it is truly amazing how bad people are at reading and how fast they are at reaching (bad) conclusions from they already bad read.

Military force and law enforcement provide solutions for consensus across great many domains, so they're marginally near-free to use for consensus in any single area of interest. You could say, they are consensus factored out and made incarnate.

Conversely, if all money suddenly become Bitcoin, military force and police would still be needed, in mostly the same amount they are today.

It's odd to me that people think Bitcoin can be free of "force" long term. Bad guys can point a gun at your head and demand you login into Coinbase to transfer coins to them. What happens if the government makes Microsoft give them admin accounts to the Bitcoin repo? What happens if there is a fork and China doesn't like it and prohibits miners from adopting it? BTC is way more susceptible to traditional military and government might then people make it out to be.

I don't think it will eliminate the need for the military or police force entirely. I have seen a lot of bold bitcoin claims but I don't think anyone really does.

My post was referring to how the US has killed lots of people to keep strong dollar. I think its feasible that a true global currency (possibly bitcoin) could prevent violence like this.

People will kill each other over the energy resources needed to run the Bitcoin network.

Exactly. Fossil fuels and rare earth metals are already considered to be a national security risks. Depending on a currency with huge energy requirements only multiplies this risk, which further incentivizes war.

Energy scarcity is a thing of the past for anyone who wants it to be. Between solar and nuclear, it's a helluva lot easier to get basically unlimited renewable energy than it is to go to war. Malthus hasn't been right about the way the world works in 200 years

Keep in mind that the US government has an incentive to keep the US dollar as the currency used for most of the international trade.

If Bitcoin would become a risk to that status, would the US government just give up and admit defeat or would it outlaw usage of it?

I doubt they would just roll over yeah. If you consider the dollar as a weapon/tool for US hegemony, bitcoin functions as almost like a terrorist entity. Not clear what to do with this information

It's just a risk that the value of it drops to near zero if it's outlawed.

Or it could become highly regulated and be much less useful for trade due to onerous compliance requirements. For example, how do you prove that wallet X that one is sending money to isn't going to someone who's in an embargoed country?

It's a big risk. But, to answer your second question, its a public ledger. Its significantly more conducive to surveillance than cash. Just punish people if they send money to an unverified address.

I think that's a gross possibility, and I hope no governments take this measure, but I don't think it would be difficult.

I don't disagree with you, I just don't personally believe that it will become a major instrument of trade due to it removing a major component of economic policy. I believe that most countries would rather have their citizens use their national currency as opposed to a foreign or electronic one, since that allows them a lot more control on inflation.

From that perspective, it seems to follow that most governments would want to regulate cryptocurrencies, and probably not in the way that Bitcoin bulls would like it to be.

I could definitely be wrong on this though. I thought in the past that the ad model of Facebook and Google would go nowhere, and look where they're at now.

I don't really know either. Maybe you're right, but as a (maybe ridiculous) counterpoint, what benefit does it give a government to have their own currency? I think the main benefit is not having to rely on another government to keep it stable... or to avoid the subservience that follows from having to rely on acquiring said currency from another government. For most countries now practically I think this means 'not giving the US complete control over our politics and not having to buy USD from them'.

Are there any other benefits? If not, wouldn't adopting bitcoin be an easy solution to monetary policy while avoiding this issue? Or am I missing something?

This would be a pretty long topic to discuss, but in general monetary policy is something that governments really do want to control. If a national economy is not doing well or there is little demand for their goods or currency, the value of their currency is lower, making their exports cheaper and allowing them to participate in the global markets.

One example of having monetary policy out of a country's control is the EU, which has both strong economies (eg. Germany) and weaker ones (eg. Greece). A strong Euro works well for Germany, since they get more effective purchasing power out of their trade surplus. For Greece, a strong Euro means that their exports are probably not competitive price wise.

If these countries had their own currency, the Deutsche Mark would be a strong currency (making their exports relatively more expensive) and the Greek Drachma a weaker currency (making their exports relatively less expensive), giving them a push towards a more even trade balance. As citizens tend to transact in local currency, this also encourages Greek citizens to seek more local goods (eg. Greek tomatoes grown on Greek soil with Greek labor) as foreign goods are more expensive, hence further stimulating their economy.

I grant the other points, but if the government took over the bitcoin repo and changed it, why wouldn't people just keep using the old version of the software?

I doubt the US oil wars would have happened if Bitcoin was the de facto global currency and we had decentralised renewable energy grids deployed.

Wow. What? This may be the worst false dichotomy I've ever seen.

How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.

/u/nindalf this honestly made me laugh out loud and spill my drink. The next time I am trying to explain the concept of a false dichotomy, I am absolutely using this example. XD

I stand corrected.

I'm enjoying the idea that launching a violent invasion of the store still counts as "paying" in this scenario.

But did neither due to the high transaction costs?

You forget about the violent invasions that allowed the USD to maintain its value while you were paying for groceries lol

Can you name some that wouldn't have happened if the world ran on Bitcoin?

Quite to the contrary, it was obviously part of their point. :P Poster is definitely not endorsing violent invasions.

why present a false dichotomy? it's more like you choose bitcoin mining and military force or just military force

Better just to stick to military force that is useful for many other problems.

If surveillance is increased a bit more, the government won't need to use force to get your money.. they'll just use some rootkit chip on whatever device to get your private key.

I am also doubtful of PoS but perhaps there's a way to make a greener coin using some amount of trust and regulation?

See XRPL.org its nether PoW nor PoS its decentral ordering by voting named FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement)

Many projects and tokens use it by now.

This is a false dichotomy.

Absolutely true!

Proof of Work vs Proof of Violence.

Well, technically you only need the threat of violence. Potential-but-unrealized violence is arguably much better for humanity than proof-of-ever-escalating wasted energy.

Maybe true depending on the energy source. I've heard it argued also that bitcoin will become the 'purchaser of last resort' for energy. For example, fracking companies often just burn off natural gas they find while looking for oil... instead, this gas could be used to mine btc. Also well documented that a lot of bitcoin operations in china are fueled by hydroelectric sources.

The promise of violence is free until realized though.

Hydroelectric sources that could be best used on homes, businesses, etc. Anything but Bitcoin, really.

Did everyone forget that the best goal we can achieve with power usage is by reducing consumption outright? Just because some of the mining is done on greener solutions doesn't mean it's a net positive.

Global warming isn't exactly going away if we keep this experiment up.

Yeah but good luck convincing people to move next to sources of energy so cheap it would be wasted otherwise (rural west texas, rural china). If bitcoin becomes the dominant global financial system, securing it will be a worthy use of energy.

I really hope you're wrong about that. Bitcoin becoming something like a world reserve currency will only make the problems infinitely worse. Be careful what you wish for, because future generations are going to be left holding the bag.

Promise of Violence.