MustrumRidcully

Thank you very much for sharing this!

Next Steps : Engineer a virus to mine bitcoin using the brain power.

Said in another way, do you prefer paying for your car in bitcoins, which is likely to increase in the next years, or $, which will decrease?

Bitcoin may be good to store value (gold or land being the best), but isn't adapted for exchange, as no one wants to use it to buy something. Sellers should offer steep discount for the opportunity cost in order to obtain the money, which isn't very likely.

Well you could do the same with paper-gold. But since its value increases over time you have no incentive to prefer it over $, which have a decreasing value. Stop focusing on tech and try to think about underlying market forces.

The problem of bitcoin is that there is a finite amount of it that will be available.

As use of bitcoin is scheduled to grow, the pace of the production of bitcoins needed to support the market does not keep up.

This results in a steady increase of the value of bitcoin, which is good for adoption (more people will buy it to speculate and sellers will accept it), but endangers it as a mean of paiement as buyers are always better of paying in $, which devaluates over time, instead of Btc, which will increase over time.

The reason bitcoin will not be used for daily exchanges is the same as we do not use gold anymore. But since Btc has no intrisic value, I hardly see it as a reserve money.

I have a Ms in Economics and work as an economist. Most of the criticism and debate I see here is quite interesting, and the reflexions of the author of the article are similar to mines after working several years in the field.

You fall in the category of people who think that debate about science should be limited to those who know science theory. The problem I saw in the field is that people talking have to much to loose, hence forbidding a reworking of the fundamental assumption and a trashing of the useless models that we keep producing.

If you want to do real science, go ask the ones who are practicing economics daily about their heuristics. Nightclub owners figured out their economics interest long before two-sided market theory was out there, after all.

I work as an economist at my country's ministry of finance. Since my daily job is to write studies and reports about IT, HN is quite useful to keep in touch with what's happening. I like as well when people submit content about other topics, and I think I learned many things here unrelated to tech.

Otherwise, I think the community here is great, and I really enjoy reading the comments and analysis of my fellow readers!

I was referring to fast-fashion brands such as Zara, H&M, etc... On a large scale in the near past, you can see a drop of quality in the clothes sold on the market. You may say that it is a conterpart of lower prices, but even expensive clothes are degrading quality in order to preserve their margins.

This does not contradicts what I'm saying. Maybe you should mention that in the US this prosperity is financed by debt.

Quality food is cheap? Have you ever lived in a big city?

If you come to Europe, you'll see that building a nice house wasn't reserved to the rich. And anyway, if we believe GDP figures, a rich man 200 years ago had the purchasing power of a middle-class american living in a McMansion.

Capital can depreciate, of course. It did, and wealth went from the rustbelt to the techies and financiers who own the algorithms.

Thanks for the sci-fi, but you underestimate the scarcity of other things : land and natural ressources.

It could if the internet ecosystem wasn't dominated by platforms that concentrate exchange and thus the value created. Linux is very innovative but lacks enough users to endanger the mains OSes of the market.

When was the last time you ate a real tomato? Not the one grown on hydroponic farm and full of water, but a real one coming from an old and tasty variety full of flesh?

Big food processing firms have been decreasing the quality of food over the years to keep the price low. No more yoghurt but "milk preparations". No more raw milk cheese costly but tasty. Biscuits are getting smaller. Fruits are tasteless and full of pesticides. Let's not even talk about swine, which almost no one knows the real taste anymore since it is produced in industrial facilities and then chemically processed to give it the "standard" tase and color. All of these were not happening on such a large scale 30 or 40 years ago.

My point is that there are other variables to take into account other than prices. Quality is one. You think you have more, but is it of the same quality as before?

The problem with this explaination is that it focuses on the technical aspect and not on the economical one : how is the value created shared among the people in the economy?

Technological progress allows concentration of power in the one who holds the capital, as he will be the main one to benefit from a more efficient capital : with the new machine you can make 15 buns whereas you made less with the new one. The employee is not paid more : the capitalist earns the cost saved.

Problem is that the capitalist doesn't spend 100% of his income : he will consume some, invest some and save the rest in unproductive accounts or stocks. He may produce 50% more hot dogs, but the demand will not follow.

Economics theory says that in this case prices may go down, but that would mean a lowering of the capitalist's profits. He may in this case reduce quality in order to lower the prices while preserving his margins.

Hence we see here 3 things : accumation of capital in a few hands, an era of deflation and low yields due to low demand and high monetary stock needed to be invested, and a reduction of quality of the product.

The last one is counter intuitive but may be seen in reality : buildings have reached the point where it's commodity, replaced every 30 years, clothes are worthless and the quality of food has been decreasing for the last 30 years (at least in my country, France).

If we get richer everyday, why can't we make buildings that are aesthical, solid and durable anymore? Why is quality food reserved only for rich people?

René Girard is a joke. His theory about mimetic desire is pseudo-science and does not rely on evidence. Girard is a litterature teacher that got the mimetic idea reading 19th century novels and then proceded to prove it using 19th century novels.

The fact that he taught for so long at a major US university is telling about the poor state of social siences and the coward mentality of the academic world.

If you speak French, read "René Girard, un allumé qui se prenait pour un phare" by René Pommier, it's a very clever and funny refutation of this theory.

Google is a search engine of indexed webpages. Not a universal delivery machine of the TRUTH (tm) nor an annex of your brain.

Besides, this kind of debate is one step away from lyssenkism where only google-friendly opinions will be displayed. If you fight for freedom of speech only in the case of opinions that you like, then it's not freedom of speech.

It's funny how american leftists are using today the exact same witch-hunting techniques as the anti-communists of the 50's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

Lol let's just burn the forests! Organic forest is so bad for the environment!

Here you go about the absence of pesticides : http://www.fermedubec.com/publications.aspx

Basically, french state's scientific body reviewed this organic permaculture farm for 4 years. They do not use pesticides, do not use thermic engines, and are so productive that it allows farmers to earn the median french salary while doing 35h/week on average.

How? No tilling of the soils. Worms do it for you. No weeds, since the soil is always cultivated, leaving no room for them. No need for a lot of fertilisers : the organic soil is actually growing from the constant adjunction of carbon, and beans are fixing the nitrogen in the soil. No need for excessive watering : the soil retains humidity. Etc...

Science, guys.

It isn't necessarly the case : permaculture has very high yields and low costs compared to oil-based agriculture.

Tilling the soil is not needed if you practice organic permaculture farming.

You are not scientists, you are merely technicians understanding little about how nature and especially soils works. GMOs and extensive agriculture using glyphosate slowing sterilize soils by destroying its ecosystem that were protecting it. Thus you are forced to add more and more fertilizer, making the soils more and more acid. At this point, you are only managing your plants' desease.

Until a stronger desease will come and wipe all of your DNA clones. Think about Dedale's fate, the first engineer that lost his son after going from poor solution to poor solution.

A forest is a very productive environment, without the need of GMOs or glyphosate. Why?

This thesis is clearly refuted by the findings of much older (-800 000) remains of humans outside Africa. See for instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_Man . IMHO the most credible origin of man is that there are multi-origins : humans were separated 1M years ago and evolved independently.