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Comment by chowells | Hacker News Reader

Nope. That's the sort of argument that makes your position weaker. You see, USD has a government that asserts it is legal tender for all debts within its borders and military power to back up those assertions.

These are the sort of real-world constraints that you can't just ignore. Attempting to do so makes me less charitable towards other assertions you might make. You come across as an idealist talking about their perfect dream world, not someone describing reality. Now don't get me wrong - it's important to have a perfect dream world. If you aren't working towards something, what are you doing?

But at the same time, you have to accept that "this system is perfect, if you also change these thousand other things" is not compelling to someone who doesn't share your idea of utopia. To convince someone like me, you have to explain how the system improves the world as it exists now.

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> These are the sort of real-world constraints that you can't just ignore.

These constraints were drafted by a handful of rich white bankers in a secret meeting. I have no problem ignoring their constraints. It seems you do.

Can you imagine all the hot-takes HN would generate if email were invented today?

"You can't just encroach on the sovereignty of USPS like that" "Electronic Mail doesn't do anything the pony-express can't do" "If we allow Electron Mail then how do we attach a postage stamp"

Email adoption, like Crypto doesn't require convincing the entire population. The laggards will join eventually.

While it's tempting to conflate the beneficiaries of our problems with those who created them, reality is not that simple. Blaming things on an all-powerful cabal of bankers is nearing QAnon levels of seeking a small number of people to blame for systemic issues. That sort of reductionism isn't useful. Action taken based on it is going to never touch any real problem. At most it'll change who benefits from them.

I think we can do better.

(As for your email counterfactual... Why? Do you find it an effective rhetorical tactic to imagine what people might do instead of looking at what people have done?)

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies," Jefferson wrote. "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

This Jeff guy, what a radical. Probably will never amount to anything.

That is not even a real Thomas Jefferson quote.

I remember when email became a thing.

No one said those things. Why would they?

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