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Comment by acct1771 | Hacker News Reader

Worked great in 2008.

It actually did. The market was on it's way to crashing harder than the great depression, but it didn't, probably thanks in some part to government being able to intervene and control monetary policy

Have you ever heard of the phrase "kicking the can down the road"?

You can play this argument ad infinitum without actually adding anything of value to this conversation.

Central banking is not perfect, but it has a better track record of stability and growth than any other system that’s been tried at a large scale. Try and remember that the alternatives aren’t optimal economic systems that are immune to bubbles, recessions, depressions, hyperinflation, corruption and manipulation.

If anything the Bitcoin experiment is reinforcing why we have existing regulations in place.

How do you know that it has a better track record of "stability" and "growth" than any other system at a large scale? Much of America's growth in the late 19th happened without any central banks in 1913. Most of "depressions" happened prior to that -- and there were 4 such major ones in the 19th century and many of them were directly caused by the govt policy changes -- were nowhere as severe as the Great Depression occurred after the creation of the central banking in the US.

You mean the gov't regulation prevented the GD that it created?

A very large amount of Bitcoiners absolutely insisted we were headed towards hyperinflation due to QE back then. In fact that was the very reason a lot of them were interested in Bitcoin in the first place.

Interesting how things have worked out. They were right about Bitcoin's value, but badly wrong on all of the economic related predictions.

Holder, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, after, well, not doing his job prosecuting banks: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”

Soon after he was done with his effective regulation, according to you, he returned to his job...defending large financial institutions...at Covington & Burling LLP, D.C. law firm.

>> You could say that humanity has repeatedly and organically come to a solution broadly known as government and regulation.

> Worked great in 2008.

Wasn't 2008 at least partially the result of having banking regulations withdrawn/weakened over the prior decades?

If so, isn't it pretty bogus and misleading judge the effectiveness of financial regulation from that event? It's like saying airbags don't help in a crashes, because yours was removed and you smacked your face against the steering wheel in a crash.

You still had a system that decided removing airbags was a good idea. Then, when getting smacked in the face, doing nothing to the people involved in removing the airbags or causing the face smacking.

That doesn't really reflect on the suitability or effectiveness of regulation to address the problem. Greedy, ignorant people who failed to study and learn from the past can be the decision-makers, too.

Then you have a systemic problem allowing greedy ignorant people to be decision makers. Not sure how to fix this, but I believe there is a solution.

You know what? It did. You still have running water. Government employees like cops and firefighters and teachers are getting paid (sometimes not enough).

So yeah, it worked great.

"People in Africa are starving, so you're having a great day!"

Bullshit argument, I'm sorry.

I didn't say it was perfect. I doubt that whatever "organic" solution we're hoping the crypto community will self-enforce will be either.

If something bad happens, it will be the will of the 51%, not the .01%.

It did and it didn't. On one hand, we stopped a panic that would have led to a true depression. On the other hand we did so by actually increasing the power and wealth of many of the people and organizations responsible for creating the conditions that led to the panic.

Do that long enough and you get a civilization run by overconfident incompetents and shielded fraudsters. That build up of delusional bozos at the top is one of the things that eventually leads to collapse.

Bitcoin was in some ways a protest in code form. Why can't we create a software defined monetary system that is transparent and where corrupt and incompetent human orgs can be replaced by algorithms?

I like that idea, but Bitcoin itself was really just a proof of concept. We're not there yet. In the meantime we've gotten a silly bubble that's starting to look like a parody of the project's original goals.

It's like people assume the current financial system is perfect and bitcoin is not. Bitcoin never pretended to be, it's still an experiment 10 years in, but its a fun expierment.

It’s fun while it’s worth a bucketload. When people start losing their shirts and dumpster loads of ASICS are being burned for cooking fires... less fun.

(Some hyperbole engaged above)

There's a massive difference in crypto over fiat. In the US, if you have a debt they can take back your home, you can get harassed and taken to court.

The stakes are not that high for crypto wealth. Its unenforceability makes the stakes a lot lower for tragedy.

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