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Comment by calvinmorrison | Hacker News Reader

Crypto exists because bad actors exist. The same reason Americans own guns.

And historically the worst bad actors have been governments (in terms of body count). Which is why both guns and crypto help level the playing field a bit more.

Crypto helps level the playing field, because particularly in a democracy the ability to disseminate information is super important; it can help unseat bad people in power.

Guns do NOT help level the playing field. Your government is way more powerful than any number of automatic weapons you might possess. Your government could simply freeze your bank accounts. They could take away your passport. They don't even need guns to hurt you.

fortunate son plays over the sound of helicopters

Narrator: we were In Country, 1972....

That doesn't make them at all the same. Just a few differences:

* Crypto has not killed people, guns cause mass shootings at schools, malls, and movie theaters.

* Crypto makes certain classes of theft impossible. Guns make revenge possible, and threats possible. Guns do not make any classes of theft impossible.

* Crypto increases our civil liberties (freedom of assembly, speech), and overall safety (bank website is trustworthy). Guns decrease our confidence that our kids won't be shot at school, that we won't be attacked at a movie theater or a bar.

* If everyone has crypto we truly are safe. If you let everyone have a gun, would you feel safe? The best you can hope when that one crazy person shoots your family member is that you shoot them back, but you don't get your family member back do you? Guns don't _prevent_ crime effectively but crypto sure does. They can deter, they can administer payback, but they are generally a destructive force vs a preventative one.

Didn't think of it this way but this is spot on.

If people could trust each other, then we wouldn't need crypto in the first place. Just like if we could trust others not to attack us, we wouldn't need weapons for self defense.

Some Americans own guns for subsistence hunting as a source of food.

You can use a non-automatic rifle or shotgun for this. You don't need an assault rifle. And we can talk a lot about carve-outs for folks like this, or just admit that they are rare and like any creature in the free market, they need to adapt to a changing landscape of rules and regulations.

Just wondering, do you think automatic machine guns are easy to acquire in the states?

I qualified with "non-automatic" because semi-automatics are easy to acquire.

Crypto and guns exist because they are possible.

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