Anyway, yes, non-discriminating electronic money movement is a great product that improves the lives of many people. Blockchains are a very bad implementation of that concept and remove a lot of its potential value. If we are able to get some other one working, it's for the better.
What is a good reason that cryptocurrencies have seen practically zero real-world adoption in the same approximate timespan that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, et al managed to integrate deeply into our societies? And of course by adoption I don’t mean HODLing, I mean cryptocurrencies being used as the currencies they are claimed to be.
The debt that was imposed on you is inhumane and you shouldn’t have to pay it. The resulting attempts to solve it by selling public infrastructure only makes it worse.
Throwing crypto into the mix is pure insanity. It’s just gambling at a crippling ecological cost.
Let me guess... have you mostly experienced life in developed countries with relatively stable financial system, non-fluctuating consumer goods prices? There are a ton of people living under extremely corrupt and dysfunctional financial systems, whose #1 concern in life is to make sure their purchasing power does not disappear the next day. For them, land, gold, and bitcoin solve a problem. Americans with simplistic "I <3 Bernanke" opinions sure assume that will "worsen" stuff; true or not, it is irrelevant to the individual in such countries who will keep on trying hard to accumulate every non-cash asset they can get their hands on.
Those aren't the people using crypto, though. And to the extent that people are using crypto as alternative to their local currency, they're almost all using it for some form of laundering (e.g. wealth extraction from the PRC).
Objectively, crypto has been far more volatile than fiat currencies as a whole, not less. BTC is literally down 16% over the last three weeks! If you want stability just buy a bunch of diverse money market or national bond securities; that strategy survived the great depression and WW2, it can surely handle a pandemic recovery.
How do you know?
>>And to the extent that people are using crypto as alternative to their local currency, they're almost all using it for some form of laundering (e.g. wealth extraction from the PRC).
Laundering in a country like the PRC with extreme capital controls is not necessarily a moral evil. It could very well just be an attempt to guard wealth from a repressive government that is known to confiscate the wealth of those who fall out of favor with the political elite.
By arguing against crypto, you are arguing for the PRC having more control over the people of China. But I guess that's par for the course for the anti-crypto crowd.
>>Objectively, crypto has been far more volatile than fiat currencies as a whole, not less.
Stablecoins are not volatile, and their usage is skyrocketing:
https://techstory.in/inflation-jumps-to-36-in-turkey-liras-v...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
The spread of private property and contracting rights, and the consequent rise in wealth, is credited for the largest reduction in poverty in human history:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-pol...
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end...
Extreme poverty is a much greater evil than inequality.
In most situations, money is a zero-sum game. Any wealth you make is by taking it from others. That's not fair or desirable.
For a fixed money supply, money is zero-sum. Wealth is not. If more stuff is made, and you're envisioning a system where that money commands all the goods, then same money commands more goods. That is desirable. But regardless of money system, if you make more goods and services then there are more goods and services.
Inheritance acts against this principle.
What I think you mean is a fair world socializes the success by removing the ability for consensual trade/gifting of resources from a person of one generation to another. But that is also unfair because it uses coercion on individual success.
If you remove the ability to pass on success, I would just quit my job and abandon my children. Why try if they gain nothing.
Scientific knowledge usually goes into the public domain through patents and other information-sharing techniques. We didn't lose Newton's, Einstein's, and all our other scientific forebears' knowledge because they died. Come on.
> But [socializing successes] is also unfair because it uses coercion on individual success.
Coercion isn't always necessarily unfair. It depends on context and on what your society's values are. If one of your children takes all the candy away from their siblings, and you redistribute the candy to your other children, that's a type of coercion to enforce fairness.
If you believe that a fair and just world is one where, by the sheer luck of being born to wealthy parents, you get advantages that others don't; and that you get to build on that wealth by keeping everything you accumulate based on that and get to pass it to your children, where the cycle repeats endlessly -- well, then, you have differing values than the rest of us. But that doesn't mean that alternatives are "unfair."
> If you remove the ability to pass on success, I would just quit my job and abandon my children. Why try if they gain nothing.
Or, you could not be a dick and instead spend it while you're living on your children's education, or give your excess earnings to charity.
But if I use it it is unfair. You said to be fair, I quote, "the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work." That means I can't use Newton's work because that is not my own action or work. If I use it my sucess depends on his action and work too.
> If one of your children takes all the candy away from their siblings, and you redistribute the candy to your other children, that's a type of coercion to enforce fairness.
I don't follow how that is fair. One child just robbed another child, that seems the essence of unfairness. This is even more apparent when I say "one farmer worked hard and bred 9 cows while the lazy farmer barely fed his one. I took 4 cows from the hard working farmer and gave them to the lazy one so both had 5."
> instead spend it while you're living on your children's education
But that would be unfair as the child would benefit unfairly from my success rather than solely his/her own.
No it isn't; everyone gets to use it by nature of it being public knowledge.
> You said to be fair, I quote, "the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work."
I said no such thing.
> I don't follow how [redistributing candy among siblings] is fair. One child just robbed another child, that seems the essence of unfairness.
Usually, when a child gets all of everything compared to their siblings, it's because the first child got it unfairly in the first place. Redistribution in this case is correcting for the original unfairness. Note the fact pattern I stated: one child "took the candy away."
> This is even more apparent when I say "one farmer worked hard and bred 9 cows while the lazy farmer barely fed his one. I took 4 cows from the hard working farmer and gave them to the lazy one so both had 5."
So what you're telling us is that you don't actually have children and this whole thread is just some libertarian claptrap. Okay then.
Your rebuttal is outrage at the number of children I have?
>No it isn't; everyone gets to use it by nature of it being public knowledge.
The definition of fair presented on the thread we are on specifically said, "In a fair world, the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work." If you want to change that definition then why are you arguing with me? My whole point was the absurdity. Newton's work was performed by Newton, not you or I or any other living person.
>Usually, when a child gets all of everything compared to their siblings, it's because the first child got it unfairly in the first place
That's far from a given. I was an only child but had best friends with a lot of people with siblings who commonly had scenarios with winner-take-all for certain goods because of chores they did, gambling, won a game, whatever. But it's true, unfairness does exist in the world. I never said unfairness doesn't exist at all.
>one child "took the candy away."
Yes it is unfair to take away things that one obtained consensually, like to take away someone's inheritance.
>I said no such thing.
Sorry I was quoting the original quote we both responded to above, I didn't realize you were actually disagreeing with it. If that was not your belief then you aren't really even rebutting against me because my rebuttal was against this statement I replied to and then you replied to me.
[reproduced here ]
In a fair world, the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work. Inheritance acts against this principle.
BUT THE PERSON I REPLIED TO SAID, "In a fair world, the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work". What do you not get about that? You're AGREEING WITH ME that by the OP definition using scientific knowledge is "unfair."
If it's never obtained by the heir in the first place because it's taxed before the property comes into the heir's possession, is that still unfair?
Does that same logic also apply to income taxes that must be paid post-earnings? How about sales taxes? And if taxes are unfair, how do we ensure all the public things we want as a society get funded, if we assume everyone is equally selfish, while avoiding the free-rider problem?
The more you pull on this thread, the more you begin to realize that we can't live in a functioning society without us all sacrificing.
Yes, that's back to one kid stealing from the other kid. Only the kid stealing is the government.
>Does that same logic also apply to income taxes that must be paid post-earnings? How about sales taxes?
Yes
>And if taxes are unfair, how do we ensure all the public things we want as a society get funded, if we assume everyone is equally as selfish as you?
If you want something, you trade for it, obtain it through consensual pact (like insurance or farm co-op), beg, do it yourself, or seek charity. Something that involves not stealing. You don't steal from others.
>The more you pull on this thread, the more you begin to realize that we can't live in a functioning society without us all sacrificing.
Exactly, you sacrifice by performing labor and engaging in trade and you get what you want. It's unfair to say I want a pony or a free CT scan and I'm going to rob that rich guy to get it. Do you go robbing guys in suits to feed starving African children?
I think most of us would prefer not to have to go back to pre-Roman times. We get a lot more done when we as a society (if not necessarily individually) agree to what outcomes we want and what the rules are, and are forced by law to contribute to make it happen.
> You sacrifice by performing labor and engaging in trade and you get what you want. It's unfair to say I want a pony or a free CT scan and I'm going to rob that rich guy to get it. Do you go robbing guys in suits to feed starving African children?
Gee, you caught me!
Seriously, there's a huge difference between an individual robbing someone of something that's rightfully theirs by law, and the law (to which we, through representatives acting on our behalf, have agreed) saying everyone has to contribute their fair share to a common cause we think is just.
I've never voted for a representative who was in agreement with taxation, and I've never agreed to be taxed. If you want to elect to do that voluntarily I have no problem with you doing that. I never even agreed that US government is legitimate. So nah, I don't agree.
>We get a lot more done when we as a society (if not necessarily individually) agree to what outcomes we want and what the rules are, and are forced by law to contribute to make it happen.
I don't take this to be fact. Government monopolies tend to be inefficient and free-rider problem can be rampant.
> has to contribute their fair share to a common cause we think is just.
If something is just and you want to pay for it there's nothing stopping you. Not a big fan of men with guns saying I have to pay to bomb brown in the middle east or fund nun-raping insurgents in Central America. I have looked into waiving my social security rights for instance, but that requires you to file a form 4029 and be part of a religious organization that has been around since about 1960. As an atheist I'm unable to file these forms to waive my rights. I would happily do so if the law is updated.
>Seriously, there's a huge difference between an individual robbing someone of something that's rightfully theirs by law
So which is better, taxing someone to bomb brown people in the middle east, or robbing a guy in a suit and feeding starving children in Africa? To me they're both bad but the robber sounds slighlty better if not because less people are killed with the ill-gotten gains. So yeah there is a difference, I think the child-feeding robber is better than the tax-man.
Please, use this line if you ever end up defending yourself in court! I will bring the popcorn.
Sorry, but you don't get to opt out of democracy because you don't like the tenet that binds everyone to the laws made by our representatives. If you want to change the system, vote for someone who is aligned with your selfish views; but don't expect most civilized, equity-minded people to agree with you. Or if you really don't like it, there are probably other countries that would welcome you.
(To be clear, I also don't agree with many of our Government's policies and actions. There's probably not a single person in our country who agrees with everything our Government does, but disagreement combined with tolerance of imperfection is the price we pay for a system that's proved to be better than all the alternatives we've tried so far. But there's a big difference between trying to influence what we do within our Constitution, and complaining that modern society interferes with my rights to live at maximum individual efficiency -- everyone else be damned -- and that we should all just look out for ourselves.)
At least now we understand you take joy in suffering of others.
>don't expect most civilized, equity-minded people to agree with you
You say that what they vote for represents them. If what represents them is bombing little Afghani kids or staging coup in central and south America (and by your statements, it does), I have no desire to be in agreement with such savages.
>Sorry, but you don't get to opt out of democracy because you don't like the tenet that binds everyone to the laws made by our representatives.
So your response is basically, fuck you do what I say and follow my political system, leave, or get gunned down by government agents if you resist inevitably being ordered to court. You sound like the selfish, others be damned one not I. Wow, how "fair" that sounds on a thread that was originally concerning fairness.
>and that we should all just look out for ourselves
This is a presumptuous and arrogant statement that ignores the charitable and personal contributions I've (and others) made to others without taxation. You think I haven't looked out for others with contributions performed outside of government? Not everyone is so selfish as you may be that they wouldn't help others if not forced at gunpoint.
>there are probably other countries that would welcome you.
Except I would still have to file US taxes and report bank accounts unless I renounce US citizenship, but that cost thousands and has to be done abroad. Even if you leave the US, you can't escape the coercion of US government nor US taxes (either at least filing, or paying the ~$2000 "exit tax" of renouncing). FATCA mean merely having US place of birth many worldwide banks are afraid to take me, US citizen or not.
Well, if you don't do these things, you are a criminal. That's pretty much the textbook definition.
> Wow, how "fair" that sounds on a thread that was originally concerning fairness.
You have a strange conception of fairness. Fairness doesn't mean you get to do what you want regardless of what the law says. Fairness is about having rules apply uniformly to everyone. Some, including me, also believe it means having a level playing field for competition (again, subject to boundaries to protect fairness), where new entrants aren't privileged because of who their parents were and all that entails. (This latter goal is nowhere near achieved yet, and I fully admit I'm a beneficiary of this privilege, as are all American citizens to some extent.)
> This is a presumptuous and arrogant statement that ignores the charitable and personal contributions I've (and others) made to others without taxation.
Good for you. I bet you have a Black friend, too.
> Except I would still have to file US taxes and report bank accounts unless I renounce US citizenship, but that cost thousands and has to be done abroad.
Time to get started! It sounds like it should be worth it to you.
Nah you leave.
>Well, if you don't do these things, you are a criminal. That's pretty much the textbook definition.
I don't have any problem with criminals who operate non-coercively, like people who drop acid or don't pay taxes. I don't equate law with morality (or fairness). To me often to be a criminal is to be the good guy.
> Fairness is about having the rules apply uniformly to everyone.
Nah fairness to me means no coercion. If 51% whites vote blacks have to be their slaves, that's democratic but definitely unfairly and coercive. Same if 2 of 3 siblings vote their house is a country and the law is they get the marble of the third. Democracy here is some people voting for a representative who represents some bombs into others. How many old people do you have to put out on benefits to justify one dead Iraqi, in your opinion?
>Good for you. I bet you have a Black friend, too.
Basically your flippant dismissal of private charity and your smugness of funding social programs at gunpoint. Not surprised though. Why don't you head up to the Red Cross office and tell them "good for you, I bet you have a Black [sic on 'B'] friend."
Did I even tell you what race I am, or are you just racist enough to think me having a black friend means something different? Or is it just you think no one who is black could possibly have an ideology that involves finding taxes illegitimate? Do you see the black mind as different or something? I want to get a real understanding of how deep your racism seeps.
I think we've reached the end of this conversation with a clear understanding of the type of person you are. This is a garden-variety description of egotistical selfishness -- a person who is totally unwilling to follow rules that seem subjectively unfair to him, regardless of objective fairness, and despite the fact that the vast majority of others are willing to follow these rules, even if they disagree with the details.
We create law to reflect what our shared morality and conceptions of fairness are, even though we admittedly don't have perfect laws yet. If you don't understand that, you don't understand the essence of democracy; you are fundamentally an anarchist. Worse, you are a hypocrite: You gladly take full advantage of the protections the law affords you, while expressing disdain for the protections and fairness-guiding that the law affords others.
I'm done with this thread.
Yes, I selfishly didn't want to put a gun to the head of the individual who doesn't want to pay a tax to build a gigantic wall to keep out a former president's perceived boogey-man, the Mexicans. I'm selfish that way.
You'd have fit in great on the slave patrols, calling those running the underground railroad egoistical law-breakers who violate "our shared morality and conception of fairness". Yes Yes we both have a clear picture of each other, don't we?
I understand democracy very well. Two of three children vote to take the third child's marble, that's democracy. The majority whites vote to have minority blacks as their slave, that's democracy. Most Americans support legalizing pot? Nah fuck it we'll keep it illegal anyway; that's American democracy.
>you are fundamentally an anarchist
Wow, you sure found me out. What was it that finally betrayed me, my intense dislike of supporting the tasks that allegedly represent the majority like waterboarding foreign nationals, or my intense disdain for coercion? What if I were gay? Then I'd be double bad.
I am an anarchist. Am I supposed to feel bad about that? I don't, it feels great to not have to justify in my head why I support a system that kills thousands of innocent people worldwide in the last couple decades, many of them innocent children whos last moments were concrete ripping apart and tumbling on top of their heads, smothering their family as the bombs collapse the structure in which they live.
>Worse, you are a hypocrite: You gladly take full advantage of the protections the law affords you, while expressing disdain for the protections and fairness-guiding that the law affords others.
Ah yes, the fairness-guiding of the assets of the marine veteran who had over $80,000 seized by a police officer for no fucking reason by the side of the road [0]. Or the protection for a taxidermist to be threatened by agents for refusing a warrantless search of a wildlife officer. Or how about the amazing protection of Daniel Shaver at the La Quinta where he played an impossible game of Simon Says and won an execution by an officer who was paid pension for life because killing an innocent person hurt his feelings so bad. Your fascination with black friends will particularly make you interested in the great protection the law afforded Breonna Taylor, where the only charge the police received was for the shot that they missed.
I don't wish these protections on myself, my friends, not for anybody.
Or perhaps here's the part where you allude that because I grudgingly pay my taxes but consider them illegitimate, I don't get to walk on the pot-hole ridden road outside of my house that I unwillingly paid the government to do in a slow, wasteful, and inefficient manner. Yes I am quite the hypocrite for walking on the road I never asked the government to build but they took my money for anyway. How dare I use that which I paid for.
>I'm done with this thread.
That's a shame, I was really looking forward to more of your racist rants alluding about how the color of the friends I have is supposed to mean something. Or how because I engage in private charity and helping of others, I'm less moral than you the moral one who feels great because they were forced to help others through a wasteful and bloated government bureaucracy.
But I really thank you for the laughs. Maybe the next time I spark up a blunt, I'll stop and think to myself "lawless egotistical selfishness" and think back about dear Otterley, who left my company far too soon.
(Not the GP, and don’t necessarily onboard with that perspective, but) this can’t be the only way forward, even if the majority of the time it should be. In fact, to keep it working you need to always consider the existence of the “opt-out lever” you outright reject here. The United States itself is founded on and asserts this principle. Of course you meet with resistance of the incumbent if you try to take that route, but that does not imply impossibility in the long arc of time.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
— Declaration of Independence of the United States
Otterley quote below is very instructive:
>The consumption of alcohol was once forbidden by the Constitution; thank goodness that's no longer proscribed
Have you ever stopped to think about WHY no amendment was needed to ban intra-state produced drugs as done in the controlled substance act even though it was needed to ban intra-state alcohol by federal government? How it could possibly be interstate commerce for the government to control merely where you store non-commercial use goods in your own state a la gun-free school zone act?
The government has long since dropped the charade of following the constitution; they themselves have "opted out of democracy."
But if you follow this thread, most of it is him/her just trying to out me as an anarchist (something I've freely admitted anyway) as some sort of ad-hominem way of disproving my point of the absurdity of the definition provided of unfairness, under which scientific research would clearly be excluded from those acting fairly. It's the political version of suggesting I'm wrong because I'm gay.
The problem here is that some short-sighted people believe, incorrectly, that they don't have to accept the bad parts of democracy along with the good parts; that they are exempt from society's responsibilities; and that anarchy is the solution to the problem that we collectively make decisions that they sometimes don't agree with. They don't make things better; they complain and whinge and don't move the needle in any meaningful positive sense. And they don't see the countless ways in which anarchy is worse than democracy. The human race has tried anarchy; it didn't work long ago, and there's no way it's going to sustain a planetary population of over 3 billion souls.
The Internet has made the problem worse: Whereas these people used to be universally derided as nut jobs who lived on the fringe and communicated via tracts dispatched through the mail, now they can participate in self-congratulatory circle jerks in "safe spaces" on the Internet with hardly anyone sane interrupting them with a dose of reality, history, or common sense. I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Banning and unbanning alcohol was an exercise in democracy in accordance with constitution. The lawmakers recognized for federal government to control intra-state commerce without any other constitutional nexus, they needed to amend the constitution.
Then the government decided to 'opt out of democracy because you [they] don't like the tenet that binds everyone to the laws made by our representatives.' Ever wonder why it took an amendment for federal government to regulate intrastate alcohol trade while no such amendment was passed for controlled substance act regulating intrastate drug trade? It's because the federal government decided to 'opt out of democracy' because it didn't like the 'tenets that bind everyone to the laws made by our representatives.' There's no constitutional nexus for the NFA regulating intra-state produced machine guns nor the CSA regulating pot grown in your own house for your own consumption. It's mere decision to opt-out facilitated between new-deal era corrupt supreme court and politicians who ironically ignore the 51+% in keeping pot illegal.
>he problem here is that some short-sighted people believe, incorrectly, that they don't have to accept the bad parts of democracy along with the good parts;
Well the government has decided that by ignoring the constitution. I've decided we shouldn't accept pure democracy at all; not that we have that.
>The human race has tried anarchy; it didn't work long ago, and there's no way it's going to sustain a planetary population of over 3 billion souls.
I'm not sure any pure political system has been tried if you're going to be pedantic. You don't need aggressive coercion to sustain 3 billion souls. Anarchy is an aim for 'society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.' For instance, I've both been to and fought/volunteered for one of our closest examples to anarchism in Rojava, and it is actually becoming one of the most stable and prosperous regions in Syria. Guess that was just me 'whinging and complaining' though, and it wasn't pure idealistic anarchism so I guess it doesn't 'count.
> that they are exempt from society's responsibilities;
Apparently defined by the 51%, like 1800 era blacks 'responsibility' to be slaves.
> They don't make things better; they complain and whinge and don't move the needle in any meaningful positive sense.
Guess the charity, volunteer teaching, donations, and actual fighting I've done for a more anarchistic-like region of world were all just me complaining and whinging. Oh and my oh so virtuous paying of taxes! If only we were all as virtuous as Otterley.
>The Internet has made the problem worse: Whereas these people used to be universally derided as nut jobs who lived on the fringe and communicated via tracts dispatched through the mail, now they can participate in self-congratulatory circle jerks in "safe spaces" on the Internet with hardly anyone sane interrupting them with a dose of reality, history, or common sense. I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Are you calling HN some safe space for anarchism? I've been derided nearly every time I've defended anarchism here. In this instance it's merely a democratic idealism clap-trap on your end to try and shame by ad hominem my showing the absurdity of OP's definition of unfair. A definition by which any use of others' scientific research is unfair, because fairness is in their words when 'the success of any individual would only depend on their own actions and work.' That's what this thread was about and this deep diving into politics is your own self-congratulations to regain whatever sense of pride you lost due to defending an ignorant and thoughtless statement.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/bitcoin-network-power...
When you live in a, for lack of a better word, "shithole country", you don't plan too long into the future; you play it by ear and find a way to live the next day. One thing to note, though, is that once a technology entrenches the black/gray markets in a society, the rulers and their sons and daughters are almost certainly participants too, and that reduces the incentive/ability to shut things down completely.
https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-...
But no one cares about useful traditional financial products, as you can't create a ponzi scheme fueled by money laundering with useful traditional products.
>But no one cares about useful traditional financial products, as you can't create a ponzi scheme fueled by money laundering with useful traditional products.
You can't create a ponzi scheme or perform money laundering with traditional financial products? Really? That's your claim?
I'm not here to defend crypto, but let's keep the discussion factual.
> I'm not here to defend crypto, but let's keep the discussion factual.
You can’t speculate on the currency itself, driving its value up and down as part of your own ponzi scheme.
Or rather, for major currencies you can’t. Maybe you can manipulate tiny currencies of tiny nations that way, but those usually end up using the EUR or USD anyway.
and how is crypto better than gold or equities for this purpose?
(they have to convert it back to fiat in order to spend it is an incorrect assumption, increasingly so even in the US)
They transfer it to someone else/currency exchange location (if not totally banned) and get cash when they need to purchase something, or directly barter with crypto. You don't always need to exchange it with fiat. In such environments, often crypto payment would be superior to cash. (BTW this is not unique to crypto. People could utilize USD/EUR in countries with crappy currencies.)
- can't the government impose whatever rules they want at that step, like the US government does?
I suppose no one does something illegal ever. /s
This is the thing that is hard to comprehend for people in countries where "following the law" is somehow considered absolutely moral and also a reasonable burden. There are jurisdictions that you cannot survive without breaking some law every second. Using VPN to circumvent internet censorship is also illegal in countries with such conduct but regular people do that anyway.
- how is crypto better than gold or equities for this purpose?
Gold and equities, and most importantly land used to partially serve those purposes, depending on the jurisdiction. Crypto is an alternative with pros and cons. The major pro is difficulty of confiscation and ease of transfer across borders if the country destabilizes and you want to immigrate. It helps with geopolitical diversification of assets.
Prices and the financial market all boil down to communication systems. Inflation alone is extremely costly and keeps the poor poorer all around the world. I won't get into the carnage of how bankers live and their consequences to society.
Blockchain is costly to run, but I'd day it's way, WAY cheaper than what we have today.
There's the extreme example of Argentina and many others. Even the U.S. is starting to see the burden of this system.
And for how long do the Chinese people will work for pennies of a dollar to keep the American dream while the U.S. print fictitious money at will?
Talk about sustainability, but how sustainable this is? I don't think this system will evolve to something decent. Something new has got to rise and replace it.
In the end it is Argentinians who vote or not vote, protest or not protest. I was born in Italy after decades of extreme debt that we pay to this date to our creditors. It is the responsibility of the previous generations in the end and it falls on us.
Or rather the country should tell the creditors to get bent, and the private 'owners' of all the public infrastructure and resources that were stolen along with anyone surviving from the ford/carter administration (and anyone who inhereted it) should have all their assets seized and split up between the various countries they looted.
Your grandparents didn't vote for mussolini or almiranti and argentineans didn't vote for pinochet. The debt you 'owe' is likely being collected by the same groups of people as well as some in the UK and the rest of Europe.
If someone colludes with your corrupt government to steal something from you then rent it back to you, don't say 'oh well it's my fault, better pay up'. Take it back and lock them in a cell.
If I beat your parents to death, take your house, then claim you owe me for cleanup and have to be my indentured servant to pay the interest my government should give it back to you along with anything I own to pay for therapy and lock me in a cell. Countries should be no different, and we shouldn't let the murderers off scott free because they signed a piece of paper saying they were collectively 'Shell' or 'The US Government'
Cryto is fixing economic structural problems for the parent poster.
Cotton: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/18/the-d...
Plastic: do you really need a link for this one?
Obviously I stand by the rest of my statement (even if X is better than Y, that doesn't mean that we should oppose proposals to improve X)
I posted to point out that money isn't made out of paper. That's not really the same as condoning the impact of the cotton and oil industries.
100% rag content paper is still paper.
Where do you draw the line between paper and fabric? Is there a meaningful line to draw? Is cotton rag paper? Is spun rayon paper? Rice paper? How about yarn made out of spun recycled paper ( https://spinoffmagazine.com/how-to-paper-chase-spinning-pape... ) or paper made out of non-wood based sources ( https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/69880 )? How about paper made out of calcium carbonate ( https://www.stone-paper.com/en/why-stone-paper/ )?
What I'm saying is: why replacing a bad solution with a slightly less bad solution when you could instead adopt a good solution[1]? Reminds me of those power plants being converted from coal to natural gas "because gas is clean".
[1] e.g. an electronic currency not based on proof of work or, you know, just print on paper, a renewable resource that is not as resource intensive as cotton and certainly better than petroleum based plastics. Hell, I'll even bring compostable bioplastics in the mix of possible solutions. These are all better than cotton and plastic.
Edit: made the comment slightly less snarky in tone. Forgive me it's been a long morning.
China already did, what's to stop yours?
And it's mainly freelancers, IT workers, designers, etc. But the number of people who work this way is increasing every year since we are running out of options as well (no jobs besides delivery apps, working for the state doing basically nothing, etc.).
Kinda related: IT companies from our country are already complaining that there is an "unfair" competition because we get paid, for example 2000 USD, which is a very low sum for IT workers abroad but is a huge number for us while these companies can't even compete with that number for the same employee.
So I believe sooner or later the government will take advantage of their complains to try, somehow, to control the money inflow from people who work for companies abroad.
Do you know how much a talented computer programmer gets paid in Argentina (or is that what you mean by IT)?
I'm thinking that Argentina seems like a good place to go to start a startup. What do you think? What problems would I run into aside from language?
Most probably, the average salary here is about 5000-6000USD/year if you're lucky and have a legally registered job(about 5-10% of the population). Most people have informal jobs and make less than that.
> Do you know how much a talented computer programmer gets paid in Argentina (or is that what you mean by IT)?
I have a friend working for MercadoLibre at a senior engineer position and last time we talked he was making almost 1000USD/month. I work remotely for a foreign company and make 4000USD/month having half of his experience.
> I'm thinking that Argentina seems like a good place to go to start a startup. What do you think? What problems would I run into aside from language?
As much as I'd love for this country to move forward, companies are leaving more than coming to the country, it's a TERRIBLE place for startups due to:
1. Aggressive taxing that gets worse and worse every year that passes
2. Terribly slow times for legal processes, like getting your paperwork done to start your company
3. We have a track record of the state wanting to confiscate bank funds
4. Depending on the trade you choose, you might face heavy opposition from the current monopolies, like it already happened with taxi unions against Uber, or MercadoLibre putting pressure to prevent Ebay from coming to the country.
Maybe if you come from a wealthy country it may not seem like too much of an issue as it might look cheap, but I personally tried to have small business multiple times and time and time again some new government measure or tax or government change made it unsustainable.
A government that wants tight control over currency exchange will treat crypto the same way it treats other foreign currency: limit exchange, or ban it, etc.
A ban doesn't mean that something stops, a ban means that it becomes extremely difficult, a punishable crime, and the risk-to-reward ratio becomes significantly diminished.
Likewise, the inverse is also true. CB radio was illegal in the UK, but it was hugely popular, then, overnight, upon it being made legal, it died. Most people lost interest because it was no longer exciting. You see the same thing with legalizing cannabis. Sure, you'll get hardcore consumers and enthusiasts, and people using it for medical reasons, but it's no longer cool/edgy/interesting, and when it is so accessible.
Could really go either way, but when it comes to money, people don't tend to fuck around.
Argentina isn't the US or UK. There was a video an Argentinian pointed out to me of a vendor selling black-market goods right in front of the tax office. No one gives a fuck. Violating Argentina's insane tax code is sport for their populace. Once you become big enough corruption and ol boy network with the tax authorities will negotiate what percent of your income you lie about, usually you keep like 70% off the books by the account of one accountant from a large construction company I interacted with.
"A ban doesn't mean that something stops, a ban means that it becomes extremely difficult, a punishable crime, and the risk-to-reward ratio becomes significantly diminished."
I think I was crystal clear.
It definitely is not extremely difficult. Even tangible stuff like pot that doesn't have nearly the value density (you can fit billions of USD crypto on a wallet stored on memory smaller than 1/8th bag of pot) was extraordinarily easy to obtain for me as a kid in a place where it was illegal both by state and federal government's law. And there's no drug dog to sniff it out.
A chinese citizen could laughably easily obtain crypto.
I know ex-military folks that can survive in the wilderness just fine, but your average person wouldn't, and this is about the 99%, not the 1%.
What next? The phones available in the country have a specific ROM that doesn't offer VPNs? Already happening. Not even accounting for leaks in VPNs, and whether someone can trust a VPN provider. We already know that the major providers sell netflow data.
Learning to read takes way more time and energy than learning to use crypto behind a VPN, but we do it in part because it makes us successful. Basically every child learns this complex task. It actually turns out that just spending time to practice a procedural task is a perfect substitute for intelligence, for many many tasks. I think obfuscating traffic is one of those where maybe some people will take a lot longer than others but almost everyone could learn. If VPN or tor becomes a critical component to someones livelihood they will learn to do it or someone will profit from dumbing it down enough that they're able to.
China outlawed crypto mining early last year, resulting in a two-thirds drop in the hashrate within a month. Even then, the order of magnitude was wrong for it to be "the best way of exporting coal," which by the way China is a large net importer of; https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index estimates the whole Bitcoin network at 14 GW, but China's electrical production averages 850 GW, and overall energy consumption is some 4500 GW, 2500 of which is still coal.
So, at best, China could only have been exporting about 1% of its coal consumption in the form of Bitcoin (though in fact much of its Bitcoin mining was renewables-powered), and now it has mostly stopped doing even that.
The hashrate fell 53%, hitting bottom in July, didn't finish recovering until December, and still isn't consistently above its pre-prohibition peak, so "much of the drop in the hashrate" wasn't picked up by anybody.
Cryptocurrency, fiat currencies, and arguably even metal coins derive their value from the existence of a market which will take them. Bring a bitcoin (as in a wallet private key, not the concept) to 1990 and nobody will pay you for it. Therefore, a government doesn't need to ban you owning cryptocurrency - it just needs to crack down on the businesses you would spend it at accepting your cryptocurrency. And it doesn't really even need to ban that, it just needs to crack down on their suppliers, and so forth.
Your local pizza place that takes Bitcoin only accepts it because that money is in turn spendable by them to buy flour and oil and cheese - either directly, or by giving it to someone who will give them local currency with which they can buy flour and oil and cheese. If the government presses hard enough on those links, your local pizza place will stop taking Bitcoin, and then they won't have to ban you from owning Bitcoin at all, you won't be able to do anything with it.
prohibit any business to accept crypto as payment, ban crypto exchanges from operating in your country, ban banks of your country to accept transaction that they suspect coming from cryptocurrency exchanges
You can still have your crypto wallet, but what use is it if you can't exchange it in your local currency? You can always meet someone in an ally or travel outside the country and bring cash back in but these are solutions that don't scale.
Also just because crypto can't be spent by most local vendors doesn't mean it's not valuable. Stocks can't be spent either but if you had a traditional bearer certificate like in the old days (paper stock with no owner except by merely holding the paper) it was just fine for trade and people did just that in the Weimar Republic when they had hyperinflation.
Worst case you can just spend the crypto in foreign location, import the goods and sell them locally.
As for your trade example I would like to see the details of that. There are not a lot of vendors that accept crypto and those who do, use 3rd parties which then usually require some amount of KYC (even if it's is minimal). Combine that with how many vendors are actually able/willing to ship to the country in question and you are left with a very small set of online stores. Add shipping costs and custom fees that will eat in your margin. So yes in theory you can setup an import/export company empire in order to exchange your crypto into local currency but that is pretty much the definition of "not scaling".
My point is: if a country wants to make cryptocurrency useless they can totally do it.
Is there a reason why no one banks in Paraguay? There is a dude standing by the bank with a shotgun waiting to blow the head off of any robber, I felt very safe there and their service was quite professional and honest. More so than the street exchangers. I wouldn't have hesitated to open an account there if I needed to.
There may be other reasons. Here in Argentina 21 years ago the government confiscated all dollar-denominated bank deposits and replaced them 1-to-1 with pesos, which you weren't allowed to withdraw more than a few at a time, so you had to watch helplessly as your money lost 75% of its value overnight. If I had to guess which South American countries something like that would happen in next, I'd pick Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina again, in that order. But that's not because I have deep knowledge of Paraguayan politics, so I could be wrong.
I can't imagine it would be a warm feeling for someone with tax liabilities in Argentina to have a white-market bank account in a friendly country nearby.
Their ban has the effect of preventing centralized exchanges from providing services in China. But there's no practical way for them to crack down on decentralized exchanges and/or people trading them in-person.
In the above hypothetical case, if his government were to ban use of crypto, he'd still be better off in the sense that the government isn't going to be able to just find the coins hidden in a mattress the way they might with physical money. It'd be illegal either way, but one way would be much harder to trace.
This is of course ignoring the volatility involved in holding crypto, which somewhat weakens the stated benefit given that the goal seems to be to avoid volatility of the local currency.
I believe history will show cryptocurrency to be even more resilient than cash as an international, sometimes private, means of transferring value between individuals.
People will do what it takes to survive. Regulations can slow but never stop “illegal” workers.
Incidentally, your defense of BTC is pretty much "it makes it possible to skirt laws and taxes" which seems to be the elephant in the crypto living room.
Skirting the law is required in Argentina. I can see the appeal for Argentinians.
But it's a silly idea. It's not going to happen, and the point of my comment was to explain why.
But I digress. Mozilla is a US org, but it has worldwide outreach, and the product is certainly used worldwide, so it shouldn't be American-centric in its decision-making in any case.
FWIW I don't think the decision adds up to anything either way, to be honest. It's not going to meaningfully affect global warming, and it's not going to meaningfully affect the usefulness (or not) of cryptocoins. It's just a PR stunt - a silly one, but certainly not something worth getting riled up over regardless of one's stance.
Just to clear something up: I'm not actually all that bullish on existing cryptocoins myself - Bitcoin clearly has many problems, and it's not just energy wastefulness. What I'm interested in is radical political and economic decentralization in general, from an extreme left libertarian perspective. Decentralized money ought to be a part of that, somehow, and blockchain seems like a workable approach in principle, but it isn't there yet. I hope it will be someday.
But in the meantime, something that lets people in, say, Venezuela send or receive money from US - or, for that matter, lets people in US send or receive money from Iran - is a worthwhile tool to have.
I'm inclined to agree.
> But I digress. Mozilla is a US org, but it has worldwide outreach, and the product is certainly used worldwide, so it shouldn't be American-centric in its decision-making in any case.
I agree. But the discussion is about Mozilla embracing cryptocurrencies. The fact that there are parts of the world where cryptocurrencies might be an evil that helps someone locally doesn't mean that Mozilla has to embrace that evil. Mozilla is not operating under the adverse conditions that may rightfully incline someone towards cryptocurrencies.
> FWIW I don't think the decision adds up to anything either way, to be honest. It's not going to meaningfully affect global warming, and it's not going to meaningfully affect the usefulness (or not) of cryptocoins. It's just a PR stunt - a silly one, but certainly not something worth getting riled up over regardless of one's stance.
I think it's entirely reasonable to be upset that an important organization does PR stunts.
> Decentralized money ought to be a part of that, somehow, and blockchain seems like a workable approach in principle, but it isn't there yet. I hope it will be someday.
Decentralized flow of money is one thing. A decentralized supply is another. To me, the latter is giving up on society. Because some governments are evil, we throw out the whole concept of a benign government serving the people – i.e. a well-organized society.
> But in the meantime, something that lets people in, say, Venezuela send or receive money from US - or, for that matter, lets people in US send or receive money from Iran - is a worthwhile tool to have.
Perhaps. But it doesn't excuse Mozilla jumping on it. If someone from Venezuela relies on Bitcoin and wants to donate the Mozilla, and Mozilla only accepts donations in fiat currencies, what's the problem? That person will just buy fiat currencies with their Bitcoin, and donate them to Mozilla. There's no reason Mozilla has to start embracing Bitcoin!
The problem with centralized supply of money is that it creates a single point where too much power is concentrated. Even when governance is democratic, concentration of power invites its abuse - and the larger the scope of such a government, the more lucrative the abuse. Within a small, tightly knit community that has direct democratic governance, directly controlling its internal monetary supply is fine, because power can be kept in check at that scale. But you still need some common medium of exchange for those communities to interact economically.
The problem with Bitcoin isn't that supply is decentralized, but rather that it's hardcoded as fixed in the long-term - because the people who created it were gold bugs. But that's not a fundamental problem with cryptocurrencies - you could have one where the supply grows steadily, or better yet, one where such growth is controlled collectively by actual users of the currency.
Breaking the law is a requirement for survival there. Basically all the big employers have to do it, no one seriously pays all their taxes as they can be non-hyperbolically over 100%.
You may want to acquaint yourself with taxation in Argentina. There is a tax just to put money in your bank account. To deposit your money. I recall it being small but above 1% but I can't remember the amount off hand (Edit: 0.6% for business account transaction) [0]. I'm not sure if there's any mandatory exchanging to pesos when depositing, but that may be the case. I'm not Argentinian. If that is the case it makes things way worse.
You have to bring the USD into the country somehow. I think crypto is a convenient way to do that which avoids capital controls imposed when entering the banking system. I guess you can bring in gobs of cash on your person and that works as well, although there's the tradeoff of being robbed or whatever. But bringing in USD sounds OK too for some people and it is very easy to smuggle in border with Paraguay as there is basically no control at the border. For some it may be a personal preference.
[0] https://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/coun...
Governments do such things to try and paper over economy shortfalls, keeping everything running kinda-less-bad-ish than if they just let it fail and start over.
When you are in this situation where a USD only gets half as many pesos as the free market dictates, that means a peso is only worth half as much as the government is trying to pretend it is, and (this is the point of the currency controls) they are trying to allow only the 50% of most productive usages of USD to go ahead, possibly in the hopes of getting enough USD back into the country that they can get the free market value back up to where they think it should be, and then stop pretending.
Not to mention the energy currently used by traditional financial services and banks.
We are talking about a small small fraction of the worlds energy use. Its virtue signaling by wealthy 1st world people who simply dont get it.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/
43,565.51 on January 6, 2022
36,833.88 on January 6, 2021
How's Not Mimblewimble going?
This seems like it implies that a deflationary currency would be better, but it does not, because in a deflationary economy, the behavior of the rich would change. In effect, the rich would keep most of their wealth in cash, while the middle class and the poor would not be able to change their behavior at all. The middle class family that has 50% of their wealth tied up in a house would still have that wealth tied up in a house because they actually need to live in it. A rich investor who owns hundreds of houses in the current economy would, however, move their wealth into cash and sell the houses. It might help the housing market, but it would screw up the currency market in exchange, and would probably not do anything for wealth disparity.
In short, "wealth" is the ability to make a wider range of choices. Both paths, deflation and inflation, favor the wealthy over the poor because of this.
I agree that Bitcoin would be a lot more useful if its value were less unstable.
And nobody should be using common currency as a store of value.
The USD is designed to have a bit of inflation, i.e. it's not supposed to be a store of value on purpose.
Use as a store of value is a significant part of what we're talking about here. You said, "Argentinians who want to avoid their own currency would be 10x better served by USD than BTC." Why do you think Argentines want to avoid our own currency? Part of it is that it's useless for export; nobody abroad has AR$.
But the main reason is that designed-in secular inflation makes it a shitty store of value. This was specifically mentioned in the comment you were replying to: "Not only that, you also are forbid from buying dollars, so if you want to get them to avoid our rampant inflation (50% average, around 100% for groceries) you only have the black market which is around 200 pesos." Bitcoin has its own problems, like volatility, but it doesn't have that one.
Why would you claim that people wanting to "avoid rampant inflation" would be "10x better served by USD than BTC"? We can now discard the hypothesis that you don't know about the secular inflation of the US$, since you explained it yourself in your own words in the comment I am replying to. It seems like you were being, at best, careless with the truth.
Please provide references, even in Spanish will help:
[1] https://www.lonelyplanet.com/argentina/a/nar-gr/money-and-co...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/argentina-central-b...
[3] https://ambcrypto.com/argentina-crypto-adoption-is-high-but-...
Also pos is being worked on. It will be an option soon.
Now go on enjoying living in the first world, we'll keep using the cryptos the way we want.
Crypto got white-washed by many of the masses as something seeking legitimacy when in reality the crypto doesn't care whether you are seeking legitimacy or not, it's just a tool. One the Argentinians are using wisely.
(One exception seems to be workarounds for censorship. Although, the way things are going lately, I suspect that it'll change.)
In any case, not paying taxes can be a perfectly legitimate and moral reason - it all depends on what those taxes are actually used for.
If the robber builds part of a road or whatever with your money that doesn't make me feel any better about it. Especially if I'm at gunpoint an entire 3-4 months of the year to do it (30% of the year).
I'll explain: today our government forbids us from buying foreign currency such as the US dollar (200 tops for a really REALLY small portion of the population) so a black market has been at place since the prohibition started many years ago. In this market each dollar corresponds to 200 pesos while the government states each one costs around 100 pesos.
So, if you work for a company outside, and the pay you 1000 usd, you get 100,000 pesos when you could get 200,000 in reality. Not only that, you also are forbid from buying dollars, so if you want to get them to avoid our rampant inflation (50% average, around 100% for groceries) you only have the black market which is around 200 pesos.
I know about the damages to the cliamte of crypto mining but consider also that there are some beneficial uses of these currencies for people like me who don't live in the first world.