Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsprinkles | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin’s success would be the greatest victory for human liberty since the creation of limited democracy, the emancipation of slaves, or woman’s suffrage.

The Bitcoin community needs a serious check. I didn't even make it past that because fuck you for putting your cryptocurrency in the same class as those historic human moments. Who the hell do you think you are?

----

Since everyone is running up to criticize me for coming up against BitCoin let me make clear that I vehemently disagree with any kind of assertion that BitCoin is on the same level as the aforementioned triumphs of humanity. I think BitCoin has potential and I even dabbled in mining them.

Feel free to attack me as an enemy of liberty but know that you really suck at disagreeing. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Di... (I'm just as guilty of one of the lower ones, here, but Christ - emancipation? Seriously?)

View on HN

Let's put it this way... who knows whether Bitcoin will amount to much at all. But the horrors of inflation are just as serious as the horrors of tyrannical governments and slavery. Inflation causes capital miss-allocations in the hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly even trillions. Eventually you have to put a price on this and say that millions of man years worth of effort are either out right wasted or lost in opportunity cost.

This is hard to grasp, because it's the productive output you don't get and will never see that's at stake. What are you missing out on? Things real people want: better healthcare, cheaper/healthier food, more time away from work with their families. What did you get instead? Multiple housing booms, useless dot com companies, acres of useless tulips fields. I am not saying the latter have no value, but rather that they are pursued because of inaccurate market signals and come at the cost of non-investment in more valuable, life saving and life improving pursuits.

Inflation is just as deadly serious as mass graves, because at massive scale that's what it quietly causes.

> But the horrors of inflation are just as serious as [...] slavery.

Do tell me how. That is a hilarious assertion. I really hope you're kidding.

Somehow, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer doesn't quite have the same ring to it of publicly lynching people because their skin is a different color. Problems with a market aren't even on the same level as buying and selling humans because they are a minority.

I'm not a member of a race that generally suffered from forced slavery, and even I am offended that you would draw the parallel.

Longterm economic servitude under the rule of banking-government complex has a small chance to be broken with this tool. Recall that the shortsighted among us also were fussing and fuming when email went from being in the domain of academic geeks to the unwashed masses.

Some people just dislike change for the better, I guess.

I was born in 1969. The US went off the gold standard when I was about two years old. I remember news reports of the rate of inflation going above 15%. I remember the economy being one of the reasons Carter lost the Presidency. I remember the rate being brought down, not by going back on the gold standard, but by the Federal Reserve following the standard Keynesian prescription, i.e., cranking up interest rates and causing a recession that brought unemployment up to about 10%.

I think I was more politically aware than the average ten-year-old, but somehow I missed anything comparable to mass graves.

jsprinkles - Just looked at your pyramid. So are your attacks ad hominem or name calling? You definately are not at the refuting the central point section. I laid out an argument why that is true, you have failed to address it at all. I maintain that it would be the biggest win for liberty since those events. Can you think of a better example?

And yes. I am being serious.

Someone who understands currency, liberty, history, and cryptography better than you.

Thank you for proving my point with an ad hominem. Clearly because I disagree with minimizing the emancipation of an entire race by comparing it to a software project, I am unqualified to make such a remark. What a fantastically logical argument you have there.

The important part that all this circlejerking seems to miss is that BitCoin has not accomplished ANYTHING yet. However everybody is ready to chalk it up as a humanity-changing experience with the article's comparison the most nauseating fucking example of worth inflation I have ever seen. If BitCoin ends up disrupting every currency in the world you MIGHT, repeat MIGHT, be able to make that claim.

But not a single moment sooner.

This stuff is legitimately important. Being so dismissive of it is dangerous. We have a real shot at solving a problem thusfar unsolved. Also, its not just a software project, any more than the push for those things were just paper being signed. If you end up reading the article and disagreeing with my points, let me know.

Also, I am clear in the article that it is only if it succeeds will it be considered that.

I am not dismissive of the problem nor of BitCoin's potential. I am dismissive of you comparing BitCoin to some of humanity's greatest achievements like it has actually earned such a distinction. Maybe someday it will. Until then do not dare to put BitCoin in the same league as emancipation or women's suffrage.

Good grief. That is the most offensive thing I've read on Hacker News in ages. That you would even consider drawing the parallel is nauseating regardless of how you qualify your forward-looking statement. Simply by mentioning it you have already made the assertion and you know that. You are not stupid and you did it on purpose.

Disruption of currency will NEVER be an achievement for humanity on the scale of ending the suffering of a gender or a race. That opinion is seriously flawed.

> Disruption of currency will NEVER be an achievement for humanity on the scale of ending the suffering of a gender or a race.

Modern day fractional reserve currency is THE main tool being used to enforce our current servitude, a servitude that most people are unaware that they're in. Running into our fourth or fifth generation of inherited servitude makes it difficult for people to recognize their condition.

What is it said by Goethe?:

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."

Your points might be interesting if they weren't the basic talking points for every whacko "banks are the problem" BitCoin discussion that seems to be coming up.

You are not going to find much sympathy in a community of people that society is rewarding well for programming ability. I hardly consider what I like to do at a healthy salary servitude, but if you want humanity to revert to hunter-gatherers in chaos, knock yourself out.

Meh. I agree with you that so far BitCoin hasn't changed squat, but even so, I'm not particularly interested in hearing you spout about how incensed you are.

The world would be a far better place if people spent less time being offended.

Hey Sprinkles, I'm reading your comments and trying to figure out if you support freedom or not...

If the government is robbing its citizens, and forcing the poorest of them to pay a monstrous inflation tax, why is a FREE CHOICE alternative to fight government oppression a threat to you?

"I'm reading your comments and trying to figure out if you support freedom or not..."

It's shit like this that makes it difficult to take libertarians seriously.

It's not even libertarians. Here's what's happening for those playing along at home:

- Article about Bitcoin appears praising it for being as important as emancipation.

- I disagree with that comparison, strongly, including a personal "fuck you" to the author for being so obtuse.

- Community reviles me as an enemy of change and liberty.

It's clearly a logical progression, is it not? Obviously, I hate BitCoin due to my position. I had better agree with everything said about BitCoin or I am standing in the way of freedom.

Wow, didn't really realize you were issuing a personal F-bomb. I think you should stick to the issues, as have I (this is the author).

...it was in my original post. To which you replied that you know more about the topic than I do - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2553572

How is that sticking to the issues again? Does that only apply to those disagreeing with you and not you?

How can someone logically say they support freedom for some causes but not others... Sensationalism aside, you are not a supporter of freedom if you pick and choose which issues you think people should be free to choose for themselves.

Even someone disagreeing and not wanting to use bitcoin should at least support other's freedom to use it.

None of this has anything to do with what OP was saying. This is the problem, taking an argument about anything and twisting yourself into a mental knot until you see it as an argument over FREEDOM.

"How can someone logically say they support freedom for some causes but not others..."

I'm against your having freedom to take my stuff. Are you saying I can't logically support other freedoms?

Inflation is not a tax.

Furthermore, a rise in the dollar-denominated price of gold is not inflation; inflation is a rise in the nominal price of things we actually buy.

Inflation is one of the worst taxes of all because the government can hide how much of the value of the dollar they take from us!

Further, inflation is an increase in the money supply (ie printing new money). It is NOT an increase in price of goods, although it usually causes price increases as producers and consumers react.

“The value of the dollar” is a meaningless term. A dollar only has value relative to something else. And in that sense, if I want to know what the value of a dollar is, I just look at what I can buy with it. (I suppose if the government were regulating wages and prices this technique wouldn’t work, but the last President to try such a thing was that famous socialist, Richard M. Nixon.)

Virtually every document that I have seen talking about “inflation”, in the economic sense, defines it as “prices going up”. You can define it as “an increase in the money supply” if that makes you happy. And I could define it as “mint-chocolate-chip ice cream”. Hey, I wish I had some more inflation....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com