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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

It is not crypto currencies that are dangerous, it is the idea of crypto currencies that is dangerous. No government is worried about any of the crypto currencies that currently exist (they are all too crude), but the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous. If this idea were to catch on in the public mind who knows where things could end up.

The solution is to let the current crude crypto currencies run wild burning all who touch them creating a hatred in the population towards the whole concept. So much more subtle than just making them illegal.

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> the idea that money could be independent of government (and hence those that own the government) is very dangerous

that's how things were quite recently (before the ~19th century)

Yes and once some genius worked out that you could make money out of thin air (John Law) governments became very powerful. Nobody who has control of this system will give it up easily, certainly not to a bunch of nerds with a cool idea.

Government has been very powerful as long as it has existed. The most powerful political organisation in a given territory is a reasonable definition of government.

Governments were far weaker in the hard currency days. Not only were they limited to a fairly small tax take (10% max), they had huge problems raising the money to run the state. Governments of the past did little beyond protecting you from other governments.

Sure any one individual could end up on the sharp end of the pointy stick of state, but overall most people lived their lives almost completely free of government because the state lacked the funds needed to do much beyond fight wars.

Er no the state could do what it dam well liked one of the things that got Charles the 1st into trouble was the use of Saltpetermen - who where allowed to dig up your property to look for Saltpeter

This is just completely untrue.

It is unclear to me if control of currency had anything to do with it, but looking at the power that feudal governments had over serfs[1] (as an example) it difficult to see how your argument stacks up.

Far from being free, a serf's entire life was dictated by the demands of the government. The size of the family unit was dictated by the amount of labor a serf household owed the lord, and that could be as high as six days of labor per week (hence the size of the family unit was dictated: the if the serf could provide children to do the labor that counted as one person-day).

Another example, English villeins (peasants) in the early middle ages owed their lord (ie, the government) 117 days work per year. Thats a little more than the 10% you claim.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

The "lord" was not the government for starters and the serfs paid no more than 10% tax to the government. The serfs paid the owner of the land (the lord) for their home and business. The interesting thing is how little has changed over time - most people are still paying about the same amount of their labor to their landlord, the only difference is it is paid in money not kind.

The lord certainly was government in a feudal society.

No the lord was the lord. Yes they had powers over their serfs, but they weren't the government and they could not make laws.

Certainly being a serf was not ideal, but most serfs had very little interaction with government. They paid a small amount of tax and beyond that they were left alone by government.

Feudalism was government. It's even listed on the Wikipedia page as a form of government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government

The definition is perfectly government: "In its classic definition.. feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism)

The feudal system filled exactly the role government fills today. It did it differently, but the local lord was just as much a part of government as a state or local government is in the US today (indeed more-so, since they had legal power over life and death).

I think we are arguing past each other.

Forgery had been a thing log before John Law.

Yes but government issued paper money wasn't.

Sorry, but no. Coinage was the right of kings for millenia. According to historians, the entire history of using coins as money started with governments basically inventing the use of coins as a technique for simplifying the logistics of their armies (soldiers would be given coins that they could use to pay local populations for food; in exchange, the government would accept the coins instead of physical goods as payment of taxes).

Even during the period of largely unregulated private banking that reached its peak in the 19th century, the private banks largely just issued paper money that was denominated in coins that were issued by governments.

Those coins the government issued were either gold or silver. The notes the banks issued were a promise to give the bearer a certain amount of a precious metal.

As to the monopoly on coinage that’s just wrong. Best example

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_thaler

There was also an excellent example to be seen in the US during the gold-rush era. This started by the late 1830s with early gold discoveries in Georgia, and exploded in California.

Many private firms would assay gold and strike it into coins. Even though there were many problems with questionable and underweight coins, they circulated because the usability was still far higher than having to manually weigh and test loose gold, and government coinage was scarce, especially on the West coast.

It's interesting that many of the private issues were boldly badged by the name of the issuer. I wonder if the goal there was to establish themselves as trusted third party in other people's transactions. You can't trust this stranger's loose gold, but you can trust it once we've weighed and stamped it.

As the Romans and many others found being able to mint coins doesn't give you as much power as paper money since you need to find the gold and silver to make the coins (debasing the currency is a great way to destroy your economy). This really limited the practicable power of government.

It took a while for the idea of paper money to catch on, but once fully accepted the modern state became possible.

if cryptocurrencies are crude, cash is also very crude... crypto currencies are more secure in some sense if you dont account for the value that is not very stable

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