Not being sarcastic here, but come again? Isn't that also the argument _against_ bitcoin? The extension of that argument being: would people rather they get to _elect_ the corruptible few, or that the select few be just that because they are rich (family, etc) (eg. VC's dumping their money into bitcoin).
Once you invest in Bitcoin, you have a vested interest in the system maintaining and appreciating in value.
I'm not worried about Bitcoin being debased by VCs.
Politicians and bankers do concern me, however, because they can do whatever they want to my fiat currency: inflate it, deflate it, confiscate it, freeze it
and they can always hold those things over my head in order to compel me to take an action against my will.
Mainstream institutions have proven time after time to be more interested in accumulating and preserving their own power, than acting in the public's best interests.
I no longer trust this system, and I actively seek out ways in which to protect myself from its whims. I would never hold any more of its money than I absolutely had to, and I look forward to building a free economy on top of the blockchain.
That's what Bitcoin's about. It's not about being PayPal 2.0.
While there aren't "multiple levels", there are certainly early adopters who bought coins for next to nothing, and those people stand to profit much more substantially than those who come later.
As for the difference between a tech stock and Bitcoin. Holding Bitcoin entitles you to nothing: no voting rights, no dividends. Bitcoin is backed purely by air.
One more aspect of Bitcoin that bears an uncanny resemblance to MLM is the "cliqueness" of the network. There are superstar early evangelists, many of whom are popular for selling the libertarian dream to people, which they buy into. Of course, many of those people have XXX,XXX BTC to their name and thusly stand to profit from their talking points taking root.
Second, that the State would want to allow a free market currency of fixed supply to compete with their own digital currency that can be whimsically inflated and used to fund endless warfare and welfare just doesn't fit the historical record.
Never, in the past hundred some odd years, has any competing currency been adopted by the banking system because of innovative features.
Bitcoin is innovative because it gives people control over a form of globally accepted currency which cannot be debased or manipulated. Bitcoin can be sent and received by any person in the world, in any amount, at any time, for any reason. That's why Bitcoin is important. Bitcoin is _not_ important if it just compliments the existing banking system's functions, or makes it cheaper. It's important because it frees humanity from the arbitrary clutches of the State. It gives power back to the individual at least in matters of money and finance, and everything else can follow from that.