What if rather than taxing bitcoin, we just tax carbon usage?
That this craze receives so much attention and funding while we face very real existential challenges is maddening.
On net, was it welfare enhancing for our species though? If I make $1 off of emissions that cause external harm worth $2 distributed among the 7 billion people on this planet, I'm basically just laundering money through a loophole in what the law today considers to be harming someone else.
To be honest the sports industry uses tons of energy in lighting stadiums, streaming them, training players, it goes on and on. Entertainment could be done much more cheaply and effectively. I think society should outlaw sport - so many people are hurt in injuries, and the climate is just utterly demolished through all the energy waste. I can’t see a reason why society would allow sports. It’s ultimately beneficial to a very small amount of owners and their players (who are exploited!) that take all the cream off the top. Completely immoral honestly. The fact society wastes so much thought, effort, energy, focus, when we could instead be going to Mars or training STEM graduates is just criminal.
The most extreme arguments I can muster? There are tons of industries that produce negative net value when accounting for externalities. $1 in profit for $2 in external harm is not at all that ridiculous.
> I think society should outlaw sport - so many people are hurt in injuries
My argument is that we should price carbon usage to account for externalities. I highly doubt sports turns out to be net unprofitable, even once accounting for those externalities.
More importantly, creating new bitcoins is not tied to the creation of new counterparts. Essentially, when someone mines bitcoins, they are not involved in a productive act.
Bitcoin is between high finance and casinos. Both are highly regulated.
There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of deciding for people what might improve their lives and what isn't allowed to try, rather than letting them decide for themselves individually. People decide to allocate those resources, for something they consider worthwhile. Some of them think they'll get rich. Some of them think they're changing how the world does business or exchanges money. Perhaps some of them are right; perhaps none are right but a successor that learns from them will be; perhaps they'll solve a novel problem or perhaps they won't. The world needs room to experiment with interesting ideas.
I disagree, I don't think this at all an a priori wrong. It's helpful to consider the limit case.
If we lived in a world, for instance, where one person owned all of the food in the world and didn't want anyone else to eat it, it would be permissible for the other 7 billion people in the world to "decide for" that one that their food will be redistributed.
What if you are the only one without, would the 7 billion agree the person is morally correct to steal from them?
This is literally the whole point of having law.
I don't believe I did this. What I do, though, is measure the actual positive impact this tech has now.
> The world needs room to experiment with interesting ideas.
Bitcoin is way past the experimental phase.
> rather than letting them decide for themselves individually.
We're talking about something that has systemic impacts. Once individual actions reach such a scale that others get impacted, it's normal for society to get involved and set rules.
So far, the prevalent stories have been about servicing people living in countries suffering from hyperinflation, which is just as easily done with a foreign currency.
Another common point is the promotion of smart contracts. It seems to me that these tools are still anecdotal, and don't really provide a significant competitive advantage compared to standard contracts. Besides, cryptos not using pow and incorporating good tooling are much better suited for that.
The decentralized nature of the ledger is another common selling point, but proponents don't really tie it to a material benefit.
Other impacts, usually not really promoted are its support to illegal activities such as digital racketeering, money laundering, etc. For instance, the financial aspect of ransomware is usually supported by this technology.
If you feel I have missed some impacts, feel free to point them out.
There's a reason companies and major asset holders are putting 1-10% of their portfolios into Btc, and I assure you it's not only speculation.
If at some point the economy gets better and people want to invest back into actual stuff, what happens to the late leavers?
I don't think just measuring the carbon footprint is giving you an accurate measurement.
The track record of “for the people’s good” juntas is poor. When they aren’t venally stripping the populace, they’re squashing any hint of innovative challenge to the incumbency.
In the real world, "utility" doesn't exist unless it benefits a select few.
State governments have had a monopoly on lotteries for my entire lifetime, so if we've granted that crypto is nothing beyond a lottery ticket, then there is no issue with society regulating it to whatever degree we can agree on.
For the utility of decentralized currencies, it's best you get information from more than an Internet comment. Which sources have you used already?
Investments have utility, speculation does not.
Time was Bitcoin proponents would talk about the future of money (investment).
Now everyone just wants to get rich at the expense if the poor fool who comes later (speculation). We're now at the mania stage of this bubble, where crazy things happen and ordinary people invest because of the distorted prices.
yes please, that would be the holistic approach. externalities like carbon need to be priced in. if it's in the price, then the market will adjust accordingly. a $4 [thing] will jump to $12, people will buy fewer until producers figure out ways to reduce externalities in order to bring the price down.
what's free will be overused. price it in to force efficiency and alternative seeking.
* Tax Bitcoin transactions - decreasing Bitcoin transactions wouldn't decrease energy usage
* Tax Bitcoin holdings - this is already accomplished via capital gains taxes, and again, it isn't the holding or usage of Bitcoin that causes the energy usage. It's the fact that Bitcoin has value that causes usage.
> Bitcoin usage from folks fleeing oppressive regimes
Have bitcoin people (I don't know what else to call the people who want to talk about it all the time) actually convinced themselves that this is a substantial share of bitcoin usage?
It's not because this is literally Monero's value proposition. Why would anyone who wants to flee an oppressive regime publicly announce to their government that they bought Bitcoin in the oppressed country and sold it in a less oppressive country?
Information about Monero (don't dare to even think of buying it for speculation) https://www.monero.how/how-does-monero-work-details-in-plain...
why not?
Now all your products are produced in country B, you've changed nothing and country B is probably using coal so you're worse off from your initial goal.
You loose double!
(Also, you mean to use 'lose' here, not 'loose'.)
Tariff based on carbon expenditure.
It's pretty simple, this has been thought out - and it is pretty clearly a welfare enhancing policy.
>It's pretty simple, this has been thought out
You and others alike have clearly not thought this out as the scenario i have layered out is already happening with other tariff-able commodities.
If your argument is that tariffs don't disincentivize behaviors because the government is just that bad at collecting taxes, you're not really in step with reality.
In fact other governments in a game theory like ploy to get ahead of your country may agree to international agreements that they know they can game to their advantage.
The fundamental assumptions are wrong. You're not in this together. All countries are in direct competition, and some a more cut-throat than others. If potential disaster B is coming irregardless, country B can position themselves to come-out on top of country A when it does.
This is happening right now if you haven't already noticed.
This not withstanding the obfuscation of country of origin that can happen If country B and C really wanted to work together.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Country B could tarrif country A in return and some countries cannot afford the cost of what that may do to them.
So you end up with an international treaty without international conformance or a treaty with no real teeth because the signee's have contributed to it what would allow "them" to game the treaty.