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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

There's some good data here - that being said, even if the carbon footprint were literally zero, I couldn't personally support cryptocurrency.

Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Say whatever you will about all forms of government, but ultimately no matter the form, there's some level of accountability. Some governments use elections to facilitate this, others use the threat of rulers being killed. One way or another, there's accountability.

The fundamental political issue with cryptocurrency is now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression.

Even if what I'm saying doesn't come to be, at a minimum you've introduced yet another layer to our financial systems for no benefit - our current system isn't here by accident. It's here due to learnings - learnings about human nature, markets, and so forth. Because cryptocurrency doesn't exist in a vacuum, no matter what you're either enriching early adopters, leading to what I described earlier; or you are subject to the same flaws as fiat that it's trying to replace.

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> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy.

What is this even supposed to mean? Strict state controls on economic activity are more within the realm of authoritarian regimes, rather than democracies.

Democracies depends on transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Cyrptocurrencies are fundementally more anarchic than democratic.

Hmm... They are anarchic in theory but in practice there's a strong hierarchy - few rich guys control the majority of coins.

Democracy is primarily about representation and individual freedom. "Rule of law" is one of the main selling points of authoritarian ideologies. Are you sure you didn't drop a minus sign somewhere?

I prefer laws over guns.

Laws are enforced with guns.

Except in crypto.

Authoritarian regimes don't have "rule of law".

The entire point is that all institutions in an Authoritarian country are under the control of the authoritarian leader/party.

If the judicial system has independent power and can hold the rulers accountable when the violate the law, it isn't an authoritarian regime.

This is precisely why the US has a system of checks and balances and why the judicial system is an important part of that.

Public blockchains have way more transparency than existing systems. Please provide an example of an existing democracy you consider to be more transparent, i.e. every single action that is made is public.

Transparency is a part of accountability, but accountability is not transparency.

Let's say, hypothetically, that voting for the president was done on a public blockchain, that anyone can audit, and there were cryptographic guarantees that the people voting are who they say they are. Does that not make that voting system more accountable? In this case I think transparency does lead to accountability.

You don't need a blockchain to do that, and there's a reason voting records for individuals are not made public. It's to protect against coercion, among other things.

Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity. It could be a public key that they generate from their private key. We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly, i.e. making sure people cannot vote twice, but that's possible to figure out.

I don't think there's any way to do this without giving trust to some central entity without a public blockchain. The public blockchain does become the source of trust, but you need a resource (like energy), that is finite, to secure that network.

However, going back to your original comment, you said we are assuming a zero carbon footprint, so that would assume some future where this trust could be put on a network in a way that would be environmentally sustainable. All I'm saying is that there are more possibilities to this technology than I think you are acknowledging.

> We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly

Good luck with that.

> Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity.

If that idenifier is unlinked to their identity, how do they cryptographically prove their identity when voting? How do you audit voter rolls?

This is a red herring anyway since I was specifically talking about cryptocurrency. In a purely decentralized cryptocurrency economy, taxation becomes impossible. You can't prevent pseudonymous economic transactions and the existence of privacy orriented cryptocurrenciesean that transactions can always route through that layer to turn that pseudonymity into anonymity.

The entire current use case for cryptocurrencies is literally evading the rule of law (and speculation.)

I have sympathies with anarchic ideals and issues with democratic processes, but please don't try to pass one off as the other.

Cryptocurrencies advertise themselves as democratic, but in reality they're only as democratic as a corporate shareholder vote. Only those with shares can vote, and more shares = more votes.

You may view state control on economic activity as authoritarian, but that's a pretty extreme view. I personally think that a democratically elected government should be able to control the economy when necessary, even if I don't always agree on how that control is applied. Otherwise, power will inevitably accumulate in increasingly large corporations, to the detriment of everyone else.

> Only those with shares can vote, and more shares = more votes.

Only in Proof of Stake. This is wby Proof of Work is still considered the most secure against centralization.

> Otherwise, power will inevitably accumulate in increasingly large corporations, to the detriment of everyone else.

Pot --- kettle.

How then, if democracy and state authority can check the concentration of power, did we end up here?

People think PoS is "the future" of crypto, but don't understand that you have to lock something of value in the network worth staking.

A PoS crypto only works if there is an initial pre-sale (many of the ICO cryptos), or starting with a PoW period (like Ethereum did, there was also an ICO) and then moving to PoS.

Without one (or both) of the above the tokens at stake are worth nothing

Propaganda, regulatory capture, government gridlock, corruption—we got here not because democracy and state authority are worthless and cannot do the job, but because they are imperfect and people found ways to undermine them for their own benefit.

If we can get back to democracy and genuine state authority, as opposed to increasingly-gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, and "state authority only when it suits the moneyed interests," which is more or less what we have now, then we'll be in much better shape overall.

> You may view state control on economic activity as authoritarian, but that's a pretty extreme view.

Is it really? Throughout history it seems to go hand-in-hand with massive human rights abuses. Case studies include the USSR, DPRK, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc.

"State control on economic activity" is extremely broad, and can encompass everything from a USSR style planned economy, to the US government breaking up Standard Oil, to even food safety regulations. Given the context of the post, and the general user makeup of HN, I assumed you were discussing economic control based on places like the US or EU. I'm not entirely sure how North Korea or Cambodia fit into the previous arguments.

Places like the DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela are especially relevant when discussing cryptocurrency because it's a technology that allows people in those locations to escape economic totalitarianism. What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It's possible that the same tool can be used either for, or against, democracy, depending on the environment. That's actually what most tools are like. Using cryptocurrency in an authoritarian state can help democratize the state, while using it in an already democratic state has a potential to do more harm than good. It's similar to violence: using it to kill off the ancien regime can (potentially) pave road towards democracy, while using it to put a non-elected person in charge in an already democratic state will shift the state away from democracy.

Disclaimer: I don't have any opinion on this, just reacting to the "completely illogical" comment.

I agree with this and it's a good line of reasoning to explore but unfortunately top-level discussions on this topic never contain this much nuance.

> What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It depends on whether the word "democracy" has any meaning. In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

> In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

Do you consider the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to be a democracy? The people in that country vote overwhelmingly in favor of authoritarian policies there. I believe it's reasonable to argue that true democracy is incompatible with authoritarianism.

other case studies: Belgian Congo, British East India Company, US chattel slavery, etc.

>Cryptocurrencies advertise themselves as democratic

only in matters of that cryptocurrency.

>more shares = more votes

Yeah, people without shares have no business (and no interest) in decisions concerned with that cryptocurrency.

It's like saying a game community is not democratic because only players of that game can make decisions about the future of the game and the hardcore players (early adapters) get more votes than the newbies.

I think crypto tech is exploring ways to reinvent democracy/society, but cryptocurrencies are not meant to do it (as the name cryptoCURRENCY suggests).

Those "matters of cryptocurrency" matter a lot. A lot of advocates hate inflation. That's a policy position. And it may be reasonable to want democratic control over those policies rather than miner control.

The Bitcoin block size hard fork showed that full nodes and validating nodes have the power to censor miners who don't follow the consensus rules. And the amount of Bitcoin needed to run a node is zero.

> Strict state controls on economic activity are more within the realm of authoritarian regimes,

This is a wildly extreme viewpoint, given that every single country has strict controls on economic activity, where almost every transaction of size needs to be reported.

Democracies can control the economy deliberately. Democracy without economic control is near anarchy and the democracy is debilitated, subject to the whims of the people that own production.

The US currently has a high degree of economic control AND is still subject to the whims of the people that own production.

That's true, and why the real answer is to depose the owners and have common democratic ownership.

Governments exist to prevent/fix market failure. The only problem is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure

Governments have existed before capitalist markets and they will exist after them too.

I would generally agree, and have brought up my concerns in regards to accountability before. (not in the context of crypto)

And while this is true in theory, the reality as far as I can tell is that we already have a system of no accountability - for a certain privileged sub-group of society. All crypto does is to level the field, and that's a big net win in my book.

Now if panama and paradise papers had lead to anything other than journalists getting killed, trillion dollar corporations didn't keep buying up and stifling competition, insider trading by CEOs and politicians wasn't rampant, politics as a whole was not a money game and celebrities and high ranking officials didn't get off scoff free for crimes that would put lesser fortunate or connected individuals behind bars for years if not decades, maybe, maybe then accountability would be a valid point.

Until then I will celebrate the fact that the odds are a little more evened out now than they were before.

> And while this is true in theory, the reality as far as I can tell is that we already have a system of no accountability - for a certain privileged sub-group of society. All crypto does is to level the field, and that's a big net win in my book.

This isn't true at all.

What you describe isn't really relevant to cryptocurrency. You might as well advocate for the abolition of taxation to "even the playing field." The resulting societal disaster be darned.

> You might as well advocate for the abolition of taxation to "even the playing field." The resulting societal disaster be darned.

No, not at all. Taxation is another broken system that needs to be fixed, not abolished. Voting has proven to do nothing. The act of protesting has done little, and continues to be attacked with nonsense bills.

All that's left is what everyone has been repeating for the past five decades: To vote with our money.

Now people are creating ways to remove their money from systems that are controlled by regulators that continue to disappoint. It's a consequence more than it is anything else. Obviously this, too, has its own set of drawbacks, but "societal disaster" really is not the one I'm worried about, because we're already headed that way with what he have right now.

"...for a certain privileged sub-group of society. All crypto does is to level the field, and that's a big net win in my book."

Is the thinking of some people that problem today is that some very wealthy/powerful have a vast, unfair, advantage over ... other very wealthy people? Or something.

The concept is bizarre. Have you not thought that a process that facilitates unlimited, unbridled competition tends to produce a few winners, the wealthy and powerful, and those winners, having more power, squash the competition following the rules of this unbridled competition, which isn't going to prevent them from using their wealth and power for competition.

Why don't the provisions in the bill of rights lead to an amorphous group of oligarch gangsters and cartels who can escape prosecution because they are protected against searches/seizures/etc? Are those provisions a regression to democracy too? Why does democracy need checks and balances at all if the government is fundamentally accountable?

> our current system isn't here by accident.

Is cryptocurrency here "by accident"?

Bitcoin at least was a deliberate response to what I would paraphrase as the "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest" policies of the last global financial crisis.

I'm not going to say it will be successful in that aim, but the idea that governments can simply create currency by fiat, donate it to their powerful, insolvent friends, pass the cost along to your grandchildren and/or degrade the value of your savings is not what I consider to be a democratic system.

> Bitcoin at least was a deliberate response to what I would paraphrase as the "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest" policies of the last global financial crisis.

Was it actually, though?

Ostensibly, yes, with the genesis block containing the string "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

Ostensibly, ya. But really, I don’t think so.

> Bitcoin at least was a deliberate response to what I would paraphrase as the "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest" policies of the last global financial crisis.

And ironically it works the same way in crypto. I bet the traditional financial markets wish they could "roll back" financial calamities like the Ethereum DAO hack - the founder of ethereum lost money so oops, hit the undo button, roll back every transaction on the whole network. That's the exact same sort of "socialism for the elites, capitalism for the rest" as crypto boosters complain about with USD.

Why does democracy need checks and balances at all if the government is fundamentally accountable?

Some portion of the answers to the objection that cryptocurrency increases the level of unaccountable power seem to be being met with "but look how unaccountable power is now", which misses the power. Boy, yes, power is pretty unaccountable and those with their hands on the levers of power seem to be the wealthy.

Those who benefit from cryptocurrency are also the wealthy, who can use this along with the other levers of power to increase their influence and increase their wealth. There's counter balance to the power of Fed here.

Personally, if not for the real world resource usage, I would be extremely supportive of cryptocurrencies replacing the traditional financial system for reasons that overlap with your reasons for opposing crypto.

Essentially, the financial sector has succeeded so wildly in regulatory capture that we have lost any semblance of democratic control over banks and are unable to dispense punitive consequences for large scale criminal behavior in finance. There have still been no consequences for large banks issuing known bad mortgages in the early 2000s and then reselling those mortgages in bundles with artificially inflated default rate claims. This "trick" was deployed by most major banks and lead to disastrous consequences for people far removed from finance. Having a route to opt out of traditional finance for e.g. savings accounts, loans, and basic investments, feels like it actually improves the health of our democracy.

Wouldn't the solution be to educate people and get more people to participate in our democracy? Why do you think cryptocurrencies are better?

Any "solution" that rests on "educating people" is not going to work.

What works is incentives and design that makes it hard to misuse or obvious how to use.

> Any "solution" that rests on "educating people" is not going to work.

This is not true at all, lol. How do you think modern civilization came to be?

Man, I think our premises are incompatible, I view "civilization" as regression and arrogance (read the Wikipedia intro or dictionary definition and tell me otherwise).

It doesn't solve anything for anyone, it's just an effective system of slavery.

Honestly, for the same reason that we place regulations on businesses instead of just "educating people about their harms". While I'm interested in cryptocurrencies, I'm not an anarcho-capitalist myself, but I do understand the perspective of having an alternative to a (perceived) corpo-state where economic _and_ political actors are all in thrall to large corporations that form an effective oligopoly. Moreover cryptocurrencies aren't forcing you to do anything as much as a new fashion trend doesn't force you to wear the new fashion. There's been a rich history of debate within democratic states about how much power the government should have on its people, this certainly isn't some cut-and-dry affair.

Democratic governments understand that the solution to _everything_ isn't committees of citizens and votes on everything. Democratic governments rely on experts, private businesses, and regulation to bring welfare to their people. Real democratic governments have to balance many factors for the welfare of their people. I feel your view of democracy is a little too naive and unrealistic.

There have still been no consequences for large banks issuing known bad mortgages in the early 2000s and then reselling those mortgages in bundles with artificially inflated default rate claims.

I'm not sure how a cryptocurrency based financial system, designed so that there can be never be criminal justice consequences for any financial action, is supposed to be an answer to particular abuses without consequences in the ordinary financial system. The state doesn't do a great job regulating bad actors in the financial system - how can "let them do whatever they want" be the answer to that?

If we had an ethereum based loan system, in the ideal, home owners could not get relief for the most abusive contract and those who made those contracts could remain anonymous and inherently immune to consequences.

"designed so that there can be never be criminal justice consequences for any financial action"

I don't see why that's true at all, cryptocurrencies are public ledgers with mostly KYC'd on/off ramps. You can pursue criminals, but it's harder to create collusion-based regulatory monopolies. Users of financial products have more choices through self custody and the diversity of decentralized financial products. The merger of decentralized finance with a better regulatory/taxation framework (+ a few safety features) will significantly dis-intermediate mainstream finance and deal a major blow to Wall Street. It's going to be great.

>If we had an ethereum based loan system, in the ideal, home owners could not get relief for the most abusive contract and those who made those contracts could remain anonymous and inherently immune to consequences.

Smaller scale crimes may be harder to track down but large scale institutional crimes will be easier to prosecute since e.g. Aave will never have the regulatory clout of Bank of America. Decentralized finance institutions adding systemic hazard to our financial system will be more vulnerable to governmental actions and individuals will have more choices to not participate in an opaquely corrupt system of finance that manages to ensnare everyone through savings and retirement funds.

I don't want the money I save to be funneled to the investment banking arm of a mega-corp which then destabilizes the entire country with impunity.

I don't see why that's true at all, cryptocurrencies are public ledgers with mostly KYC'd on/off ramps.

Explain how bitcoin has become the go-to tool for ransomware gangs.

Moreover, the intent of cryptocurrency creators and substantial number of cryptocurrency users is to be immune to regulation. You can read the number of posters here who view bitcoin as answer to the power of the Fed. Maybe crypto can be so controlled by regulators that it won't anything, in which case there's no idealistic argument for its existence. Or maybe crypto could make it's users immune to consequences, in which case there are good arguments to follow China's lead and make the system point-blank illegal.

They use a shrinking pool of non-KYC off-ramps, recently they have been having worse luck at staying anonymous and their centralized exchanges are getting shut down. The era of crypto for ransomware is ending, the anonymity of the blockchain is a fading peculiarity of its early days. In practice, your transactions are even more traceable once enough of the centralized exchanges are brought into a regulatory framework and the bad actors are shut down (all happening now).

Recent news: * https://www.voanews.com/a/us-treasury-slaps-sanctions-on-cry...

* https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/colonial-pipeline-ra...

The type of payment rail has nothing to do with criminal prosecution. Ask Ross Ulbricht and the federales who were convicted of stealing from him.

Since PGP and Bitcoin are speech, they are difficult technologies to stop.

Accountability could be even easier in cryptoassets in the form of smart contracts and public ledgers.

Imagine if the wallet addresses of every politician were public and we could all see every donation -and- large donations would be automatically rejected by a smart contract unless they are signed and identified by the keys of a public notary they have disclosed their identity to.

(There is already one public Notary in Washington that can certify identity with their registered RSA key as a form of seal)

Cryptoassets can allow us to write our financial laws into code so we don't have to rely on the honor system as much.

I love this idea! But there's no way politicians are going to vote for it. This points to part of the problem, that politicians are first and foremost for themselves, not for their people.

> now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs

Only to the extent that the coin is premined or that the emission is heavily concentrated on the first few years. This should be much less of a problem with a purely linear emission (never changing block reward), that takes a century to get yearly supply inflation to under 1%.

Nobody cares about supply inflation.

What about the idea that it acts as a balancing weight to the perverse incentives for countries to debase their currency? Radically if the relationship to taxation was more of a voluntary customer relationship it could lead to better outcomes, ignoring how many more problems it might bring. Thoughts?

Focusing on democratic nations specifically for a moment - I don't see how it could be a balancing weight. Presumably all issues with a country and its handling of their own currency could be resolved solely through democratic political means.

No technical solution - cryptocurrency or otherwise - necessary.

I don't really understand your second point. Taxation by definition is involuntary. I won't discuss the merits of taxation (vs. detriments) but a "voluntary taxation" system would result in a prisoners dilemma where no one would pay taxes. Eventually the government that implements such a thing would be no longer able to fund itself and in quick succession find itself literally bankrupt.

For example, Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system. Otherwise the whole thing collapses. Keynsian economics has dominated the last 100 years of politics. Crypto gives you an escape which puts a check politicians who would be forced to be less spendy. The only other way of enforcing this would attack the ways in which politicians trade favor which seems impossible.

I can't see a single reason to stop spending as a politician if you can print money. Your political time horizon is shorter than the detrimental effects of your spending so the voting population is unable to de-obfuscate the cause of their purchasing power falling rapidly. I usually hear people blame the rich as a knee-jerk reaction instead.

Oh, why would they be less spendy when they can just take your crypto escape away by physical force?

Can they?

If people buy P2P without KYC, how can force be applied?

Further, is there the will to have people's property confiscated via violence? If so, where are we democratically? Where does state power end? Why does state power make sense against non violent non consenting citizens, but not against true oligarchs manipulating our political system?

At some point it becomes obvious the whole system is a farcical power hierarchy. Crypto is one thing this system will struggle to steal.

> is there the will to have people's property confiscated via violence?

...yes?

This has been a fairly common practice since the dawn of civilization. If you do bad things, you get your stuff taken away.

The idea that this can be circumvented by creating cryptocurrency, whether or not it can ever be made a de jure currency, is libertarian techbro wishful thinking of the highest order.

>For example, Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system.

Where did you get this strange idea from? You can literally buy anything with your money to save in real assets or at least non monetary savings like bonds. If anything, low interest rates tell you you should stop saving in money but they don't force you to save or stop saving in money. Nobody is here to tell you what you should do as an individual actor.

The money exists in a closed system controlled by a central banking system. You might move your money around but the control remains. I didn't mean to imply that my free will is at risk with our current system. Only to point out that the Keynesian model has a hard time existing if the money supply is determined by a gold standard. And back then I could buy the same things. I'm also not disavowing the great tools we have to control our economy. Just exploring ideas outside the narrow focus on greater and greater taxation in a world becoming more resistant to it every year.

If the US were forced back to a gold standard could they continue being Keynsian in the way they have been over the last 20 years?

> Keynsian economics requires everyone to be forced to save through a central banking system

Utterly bizarre...

Voluntary tax is charity. The whole point of tax is that it applies to everyone by some set of rules that democracy has arrived at.

A customer relationship is different in that the feedback loop between your wants/desires and the governing body is more immediate. The rules that were arrived at seem to be less about effectiveness than about special interests. Not to say the ideas I was asking everyones opinion on are a panacea but taxation as ideology is not beyond reproach. Are there alternatives that curb the bad incentives and force a better game with better outcomes?

No ideology is beyond reproach. That doesn't mean any single person has the right to circumvent the law at will; instead, we discuss it and make a change as a society. Taxes are no different from other laws in this respect. Just because someone doesn't like them doesn't mean they should get to disregard the law. If that were the case, we should be free to ignore any law we don't like.

Right. But every change in the societal order will be illegal by definition. Its more that our capabilities to rebel are increased over time. We would all be in feudal bondage if machines didn't reorganize our relationship between workers and the state. Women would not have the rights they do without birth control, etc...

Taxes work because we can (imperfectly) enforce them. What happens when we can't?

What happens? A failed state.

So... citizenship and rights only for those who can afford it?

Or is the voluntariness of the "customer relationship" one way?...in which case you would really just be arguing for a global decrease in immigration restrictions.

The fundemental difference between a citizen and a customer is that it's much harder to citizenship status.

Markets are some of the best tools we have at coordinating behavior in a decentralized way. I wouldn't advocate some capitalist wasteland.

For example if we added market dynamics to a wealth tax we could make it viable and fair for all participants. Lets say there is a 7% tax on all assets over 25k USD. You decide the real value of the assets but the rule is they must be on public auction at all times. Most homeowners would price their homes above the market's rate so they are not at risk of being bought out. Large land holders would price close to the market price or below to avoid the tax. Governments could buy up large tracts of land at once without the common problems of putting in the first stake and the next home being worth 3x what it was yesterday. The end result is a truth on assets you couldn't get from central regulation (good luck avoiding taxes when it gets bought by someone else for cheap).

All of these ignore the pragmatics of whether or not people want their homes auctioned 24/7 but the dynamics of the system are better and self regulating from a taxation perspective. That's the thing about these ideas is of course they go against platonist sensibilities that things remain more or less the same forever. The dynamics change so it should be in everyones interest to explore alternatives that don't just assume people will remain as a doscile tax base until we all perish to dust.

To answer you more directly: citizenship as it stands also has a barrier to entry. I'm trying to make the government more reactive, and give people more power to decide what society should spend its money on. I'm not so certain everyone would just vote to stop protecting those around them, we all know someone who needs help.

Wow, that's a ridiculously silly idea.

1) Markets aren't magic coordinators, they take large amounts of human effort to maintain in a functional state. Your system would destroy productivity because it would require a huge increase in market oarticipatio

2) Economic activity needs stability and your system would almost entirely eliminate that.

3) Markets require information to function accurately so to constantly have accurate markets for everything means that you have completely eliminated privacy.

4) Price is not the only important aspect is many transactions. Reputation matters and this system would result in the inability to trust any economic partner because their assets could be bought at any time.

5) You would still need to have massive government regulation to prevent fraudulent collusion. Lets say you seriously underprice your assets to avoid taxes and whenever someone moves to buy the asset, you have a friend who would bid on it until they win. That friend can then sell the asser back to you. Now raise this basic idea by the power of the massive legal and financial efforts that have histoy been put into tax evasion and you have a regulatory problem that dwarfs existing tax enforement problems.

So you would basically tax stability while creating tools that would enable massive fraud and speculation.

Inflation (at levels that it happens in developed countries) is good, as it forces people to spend on goods and services or invest in productive enterprises. It is actively bad for the society if one can just sit on money.

Taxation is as voluntary as it can be in democracy given that you elect the government which sets the rate and then pay into commons. You can’t rely on purely voluntary contribution as then people would simply not contribute. Society gets into tragedy of the commons all the time where the global optimum requires contributions that are locally disavantageous, this is why we must have contribution to commons.

You will have your money's value stolen from you through inflation. You will be forced to consume. And you will be happy.

Society grows through investment. This comes either through capital inflow or consumption, and honestly success of the US lies in the “consumption.” It’s the thing that brought so much convenience and material well-being to our lives. So “consume and be happy” is unironically true. In as much as the entire concept of money is purely intersubjective we should shape it for societal good.

Again, you won’t lose real value if you keep your money invested (and for example do TIPS if you want low risk).

> Society grows through investment. This comes either through capital inflow or consumption

Society grows through production. People invest their time and effort in the first place, not money. Consumption is the final non-efficient cause of production. The efficient cause is savings, which represent unconsumed goods and values. Consumption is the end of production, a dead end, as far as the productive process is concerned.

Does a rotting apple steal itself from you? Maybe you should think about eating it before it spoils? Ever thought about how human labor cannot be stored and money is basically a labor coupon via debt? Alternatively, if you truly insist on maintaining value, then you should try to buy the most durable good you can get your hands on because human labor spoils very quickly during unemployment.

>You will be forced to consume. And you will be happy.

That's literally how the damn economy works. If you don't want to buy anything or save in real assets then why the hell did you work for the money? Have you thought about working less instead of piling up green pieces of paper? Money that is saved cannot be earned by other people, it's that simple. It doesn't drive investment or business activity, it's just dead money doing nothing.

Oh so savings is dead money doing nothing? How about you make something that is worthwhile to invest in? How about we save up to produce capital goods instead of fueling consumption for no reason?

The main purpose of money is saving. That's hard to do since they steal it from you if you do that.

Keynesian economics has done so much damage to people and the world.

How do you explain the trillions of dollars invested in global stock markets and elsewhere, if people are forced to consume?

My first thought is you can share your thoughts with the armed people at your door if you decide to push your voluntary taxation idea.

They'll probably listen to you as they're giving you a free ride to your new home.

Point is, it's not a balancing weight when the state has the actual power.

Broader point: instead of focusing on changing and improving the actual social/political system, people build fantasy escape solutions through technology.

But it's all based on the assumption that the current liberal, democratic society is an immutable right for everyone. It's not.

It is a balancing weight because the states military power depends on a landed citizenry that is easily taxed. If you remove the easily taxed part you also remove the military power part. Not advocating a lawless return to strong man tribalism. But I don't follow the idea that changing the abilities of a government to easily enforce taxation means they will remain effective at enforcing through more expensive means.

Cryptocurrencies do not exactly make it harder to enforce taxes on a landed citizenry. The government is what enforces land property in the first place, and if you're late on your taxes they'll just put a tax lien on your land and ultimately stop enforcing your property rights on it.

Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms. That's how the dynamics are changing. Peter Thiel and New Zealand are a small picture of the future to come. Countries will compete. How much of wealth is really tied up in land? If I can zap my wealth from one side of the world to another without anyone being able to stop me is it really easier to stop capital flight?

> Assuming you can't also choose to move yourself and your assets to another country offering better terms.

Better terms are always very appealing, but the "terms" are about governance as a whole, not just paying taxes. That's what attracts assets from outside. Taxes are just a predictable cost of doing business, but bad governance can easily be a showstopper.

Radically if the relationship to taxation was more of a voluntary customer relationship it could lead to better outcomes

The fundamental outcome of this "voluntary taxation" scheme would be that the wealthy would gain an extra layer of control over the actions of the state, aside from the vast influence this group already has (and the wealthy no doubt would be the ones able to make taxes voluntary in this way, notably).

Which is to say argument accept the fundamentally antidemocratic direction that bitcoin pushes society in but tries to paint a prettier face on it.

Voluntary taxation might be taken as just asking people to pay taxes which I am thinking is a bit of a strawman. If instead you chose to pay for the services you wanted and subsidized services for others you could end up with the same system we have in total expenditure but with an added layer of feedback where government services "compete" for the polity. Naturally reducing the overall bloat of our institutions.

I don't think that re-engineering the incentives around taxation means we have to go full Ayn Rand. I also don't think any of these ideas will come about from people deciding. The natural advantage the wealthy have in choosing where to locate their capital will force this outcome with governments coming kicking and screaming the whole way down.

What incentives do countries have to debase their currency in your opinion?

> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy.

No one is forced to use crypto. No one is forced to mine it. No one is forced to use it at all. Is this not democratic? The users choose whether they want to use it, miners choose whether to mine it, and the "lack of accountability" you suggest, I just don't agree with at all.

Crypto removes the need for government fiat. There is no need for a central authority any more over money supply. If you don't like it, fork it, or create a new crypto, and market it. See if it catches on. The democracy of the people will decide whether to use it or not.

Some cryptos also have voting / governance rights, so the users can democratically vote on protocols, directly. In comparison, if I want a law to change at the federal level in the US, first of all there has to be a bill created in support of it (which I have almost zero control over), and then I can call my senator and ask that they support that bill. At that point they can choose to listen or not. I assume they will just do whatever is in their interest to stay in power and support their friends in government that supported them before, not to mention the lobbyists. Even my vote for president in the US in the end is decided by the electoral college, not by the popular vote. How is all of that democratic?

I understand the energy concerns with crypto, but since you are figuring in a zero carbon footprint, I disagree and think you completely miss the benefits that crypto offers over existing systems.

In the end, time will tell and I think there's almost no way that blockchain and crypto won't play a major part in future economies and governance.

Only reason people jump on cryptocurrencies is their pyramid scheme type nature, get in first or lose out.

They're not currencies, they're speculation.

People want to spend currencies, why would you ever spend bitcoin when it's designed to always increase in value?

Governments are their citizens, they're just people we picked. If you hate the people that are running, there's a built in solution, get someone better to run. That's the fundamental part of democracy, anyone can run for office.

Why is a central control over money supply bad? Lets you attempt to control the boom/bust cycle.

> Only reason people jump on cryptocurrencies is their pyramid scheme type nature, get in first or lose out.

Or they see benefits in the technology?

> People want to spend currencies, why would you ever spend bitcoin when it's designed to always increase in value?

It's possible some of the other cryptos are more suited for currencies. Bitcoin may be more of a store of value like gold, or maybe it's volatility will decrease over time and it would be more suited for a currency. Right now we don't know, but I'm not going to write off the whole sector due to that.

> Governments are their citizens, they're just people we picked. If you hate the people that are running, there's a built in solution, get someone better to run. That's the fundamental part of democracy, anyone can run for office.

I think the normal citizen is so far removed at this point. At least in the US, it's essentially a two party system, and they are both rather full of shit. I still vote though, because why not? But I don't think the system is working well.

> Why is a central control over money supply bad? Lets you attempt to control the boom/bust cycle.

I hold USD. I'd like for it to stay valuable. I have a government that seems to value equities more, and wants people to spend their USD. They print and borrow money like there's no tomorrow. I think this is a bad option, and I'd like there to be alternatives.

The idea that a product (e.g. bitcoin) can be designed in such a way as to always increase in price has to be dismissed as crackpottery.

Everything that has a fixed quantity will always increase in price (assuming the Fed continues inflating the currency 1-5% /yr)

Land, collectibles, natural resources, Bitcoin: as long as they are priced in USD and USD is constantly devalued year after year - prices will rise.

A fixed quantity only means that the supply is inelastic, it doesn't —by any stretch of the imagination— mean that the price will always increase. The only thing that is guaranteed to increase in price, assuming a positive rate of inflation, is a large basket of goods and services. Anything else is a gamble.

a) There's a limited supply of bitcoins b) The amount of bitcoin you get decreases as more are made c) The larger the network the more it costs to make a bitcoin d) Some bitcoin are deleted forever, accidentally.

So a) Bitcoins become harder to make, and b) The total possible number of Bitcoins goes down.

We should also note that we can build contracts into the network itself. For example algorand built a contract to offset emissions through transaction fees (they are POS so have a lower footprint than POW). But there's no reason we couldn't build taxes into such a system as well.

I think a lot of people are missing that cryptocurrency is still a very new concept. Both the bulls and bears. It's going to take some time to work it all out and that's okay, just like with any technology. We're talking about something invented in 2008, that's 12 years. It's unsurprising that there's a lot of kinks to be worked out. It typically takes 20 years for a technology to start to mature. I mean hell, the internet is a lot older and we still have a lot of things to work out.

Will crypto be useful in the long run? Who knows. I think it holds some promise but I do think people vault over sell it and people also dismiss it too quickly.

You aren't forced to use crypto because fiat exists. If fiat would be replaced by crypto, you would be forced. Crypto is not democratic, it's redundant and it heavily biased towards the one with most resources. It's an oligarchy.

Anyone can create a crypto now and it could become a predominant one, if it provides enough benefits or has the right marketing. To me that's the difference. It's essentially technology, that iterates, and the market decides.

Heavily biased towards the one with the most resources? You mean like with every asset class?

Yep, that's why crypto doesn't change anything.

> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy.

Good. I never consented to capital controls, property confiscation, drug laws and all the other blessings that “democracy” has bestowed on me. Finally there might be a path to opting out.

hey, I appreciate your honesty - though if you care about those things, you should become more engaged politically.

maybe getting involved in a crypto project is political engagement.

> Good. I never consented to capital controls, property confiscation, drug laws and all the other blessings that “democracy” has bestowed on me. Finally there might be a path to opting out.

And none of that has anything whatsoever to do with monetary policy. This is a quixotic quest.

100 years ago, you would've used the same argument to try ban cars. They're fundamentally antithetical to democracy, as they allow anyone to .. commit crimes and get away with it.

Banning cars 100 years ago would, in retrospect, have clearly been the correct decision.

You have an interesting way of putting it. I pretty agree with your criticism although I would frame it as "having all the same problems that our large wealthy democratic national governments have" rather than "antithetical to democracy."

I suppose the only difference is our opinions of democracy as it's practiced.

Uh, cryptocurrencies can't have "the same problems that our large wealthy democratic national governments" - cryptocurrencies aren't institutions, they don't hold elections, have bureaucracies or have head administrators.

I think you're trying to say that a cryptocurrency fuel regime would have the same problem as current democracies. But just cryptocurrencies added to what exists today and as the gp points out, will act to increase all the problematic qualities of the present situation.

> whose power cannot be really removed

Yes. It may not be too worrisome right now, but what if the cryptocurrency phenomena became several orders of magnitude bigger? Couple that with climate wars, failed states, and malignant corporations. I can imagine some very grim outcomes indeed.

Depends on your perspective, no?

If you're the unwilling vassal of the centralized superpower that controls all the money and financial flows, then the malignant entity is the state that keeps you under boot.

We might hope in theory that the democratic state that controls things has the people's best interest at heart, but an honest study of history shows that's never really been true. The state only cares about the well being on the people (and the environment) in so far as it feeds back into their own power on the global stage.

And it almost necessarily has to be this way. Any democratic state that honestly cared about it's people at the expense of it's power would eventually be destroyed or overpowered by an external (or internal) organization that was more ruthless.

You really think the internet will still be a robust system haven if this apocalypse plays out?

On one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, mistakes made at the federal level are virtually impossible to reverse. Every new change becomes a new layer that’s harder and harder to pull back and fix.

> Fundamentally it's the antithesis to democracy. Really? A small group of people controlling the money supply is democracy to you?? What do you see as democratic in the fiat money system?

> The fundamental political issue with cryptocurrency is now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression. Instead there is some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power can be removed by force. This is an issue to me. When people talk about "removal of power" always sound authoritarian. I assume that you are ok with Jack Ma "vanishing" for some months after saying the wrong thing?

> yet another layer to our financial systems for no benefit Not another layer added to the current system, but a new system

> It's here due to learnings - learnings about human nature, markets, and so forth. Agree. It's also outdated. At some point in time rai/fei stones were good enough for the yap people. Many of the defi apps are built with knowledge from the centralized finance world. It's an evolution. It doesn't look like it now because we are still at a very early stage.

> A small group of people controlling the money supply is democracy to you?? What do you see as democratic in the fiat money system?

Absolutely. The current monetary system is controlled by the people. The Fed was created by an act of congress and continues to operate at the whim of Congress. Its mandate is to maintain a low, fixed rate of inflation and maximum employment - while being at arms length of the executive itself to provide predictability and stability across administrations.

The ruling class of Bitcoiners act to manipulate the price both up and down for their own personal gain.

[edit] Doge co-creator Jackson Palmer's analysis is spot on. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353984617914370?s=...

Not to mention the Fed chair and board is appointed by Congress. It's meant to be an indirect choice, but it is a choice none-the-less. It's just like how Supreme Court justices are appointed. They have similarly broad powers fairly far removed from the will of the people, moment to moment.

> After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity. [1]

Lol look at this dude thinking oligarchs didn’t exist before cryptocurrencies.

It’s not any form of store of wealth that perpetuates the oligarchies, it’s unwillingness and corruptibility of political class that allows them to exist.

Half of fucking london is owned by oligarchs as an investment haven, so until you publicly come out in support of demolishing that atrocity, don’t even utter a sound against cryptocurrencies, that just makes you a laughable hypocrite.

Not to mention that store of wealth is completely orthogonal to political systems and free access to store of wealth and transaction system that isn’t fuckedup-able by “government” should be basic human right.

good luck trying to instill that in the mind of people in crypto

a lot of them are naively thinking "crypto will become the new world, i believe in it, it's obvious, we have to do it, we have to free the people from <bad past>"

I don't understand this. The whole point of the p2p system is that you vote with the software you have installed. If people want to remove oligarchs that control the system they can simply move to a different kind of software, leaving the oligarchs with little or no value of their coins.

In fact that was the whole selling point for me of cryptocurrencies. Anybody can join and shape the system by agreeing on the type of software and creating a system that can be easily shaped (through software) instead of a system that is quite hard to shape (current financial system).

Our democratic leaders killed the gold standard. We decided gold wasn't the best currency instrument. A decentralized currency system doesn't have such democratic flexibility.

> The fundamental political issue with cryptocurrency is now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression.

That's an interesting way of describing open source software, whose existence depends on nodes willingly adopting and agreeing to a set of protocols. I'm guessing its far easier to fork a chain and convince people to join a new network, than it is to overthrow a central bank/government.

It's not about the software, it's about the currency and the people who own it.

By "own" it, does that mean speculators who have coin in wallets, or the open source maintainers whom have influence, or both?

Either way, the only way a coin or chain has value is by people participating in it, whether that's buying, transacting, mining, hosting nodes, or developing.

In fact, the system is so open to competition, you can fork a chain and take all its existing data to support your new network. You can't do that with Facebook, Uber, or Paypal.

No one elected the Fed and they print USD like crazy. They're now proposing to print more money to solve climate change. That's the opposite of democracy.

Bitcoin is a transparent, simple currency. There will only ever be 21m Bitcoins and how they're minted is defined up front and everyone knows.

No one elected the Fed and they print USD like crazy.

The Fed is combination of officials appointed by elected representatives and official of banks, with appointed officials having something of the lead. Representative democracy involves things like this.

They're now proposing to print more money to solve climate change. That's the opposite of democracy.

The printing of money here is effectively a tax. Taxing the population and using the revenues for programs to benefit people is how a state works (in this case, a (slightly) democratic state).

If anything, it seems you're proposing the wealthy not be subject to taxes oriented towards to common good, which is what the gp was (correctly imo) upset about. The only thing here is you're calling the power of the wealthy "democracy".

Printing money functions like a tax, but it's not a tax. It was never proposed and debated by congress and then passed.

> If anything, it seems you're proposing the wealthy not be subject to taxes oriented towards to common good, which is what the op was (correctly imo) upset about.

I'm proposing the opposite. The money printing since 1971 has been one of the major drivers of inequality. If you own a lot of assets like stocks and real estate the last year and half of printing dollars has been tremendously good for you. If you work for a living and your income is mainly your salary, it hasn't. Your rent has gone up while your wages and opportunities have lagged.

>>> our current system isn't here by accident

And dinasaurs weren't on earth by accident. They were part of evolution and then replaced with other species more appropriate for evolving earth and conditions.

Bitcoin is just the gold standard but worse. With gold you can at least dig up more of it as your economy grows. Bitcoin doesn't care about the real economy.

What? There’s a finite supply of gold just like there’s a finite supply of Bitcoin. You can mine more Bitcoin just like you can dig up more gold, up until there’s no more to be mined.

The idea that bitcoin should be the sole currency for a nation is silly and only promoted by shallow-thinking "to the moon" bulls.

Bitcoin (if successful) will serve as an international safe haven from reckless monetary policy. It counterbalances fiat, it doesn't replace it.

Buy some gold coins and then try to move it across the borders.

1. You need to fill-in paperwork and be on a mercy of a local DHS official to be allowed. At any time regulation will and can change without you knowing about it.

2. Try to move it without paperwork and risk losing it all

3. Try to store it in the bank and risk of government/bank/courts to lock you out of your gold savings.

4. Try to store it on your own and risk losing it all to crime.

5. Entering another country - same risks with their customs as above.

6. Moving bitcoin across borders is a bit easier

The benefits are that the government isn’t in control of the monetary supply. Period. If that doesn’t seem like a benefit, then of course cryptocurrency seems useless.

Why is that a benefit?

Have you observed the American federal government lately?

Because some people convinced themselves that government is bad, even though democratic governments were the GOAL of almost every nation in the pre-independence days. If people cannot trust the institutions that they themselves built, it says more about the morals of those voting than about those so-called corrupt governments.

Governments are so terrible that every group of people on Earth invented them

What about the benefit to the rest of society? Everyone else will, in theory, have some of the same powers that the oligarchs have.

Trickle down cryptonomics?

You can do that with a democracy. What benefits do crypto bring?

Not a lot of countries are democracies. Politicians listen to lobbyists more than citizens.

With crypto, you don't have to suffer because of them messing up the economy.

When did you suffer because a government messed up the economy?

> With crypto, you don't have to suffer because of them messing up the economy.

So you won't be affected by unemployment? Poor public services and infrastructure? Corruption? Police brutality? Crime? Because you have crypto. Open your fucking eyes.

If you own any money, you also have "some of the same powers" that the oligarchs have. Maybe you can bribe a bouncer to let you into he club, maybe buy nice shoes and impress at a job interview.

It's just so little compared to the oligarchs that it doesn't matter.

The creation of a new gilded class is definitely a valid side effect in the event cryptocurrencies really do extend into a mainstream form of transaction/economic activity. what's doubly interesting is that group, especially as the early adopters are the ones with massive holdings, tend to have fairly intensely libertarian views. a potent combo of "i put my money where my mouth is" and "i was right" and "none of you believed me" is sure to be present in some ultra-wealth people.

the primitives i'd push back on is this though, are these not the anthesis to democracy as well as you've defined it?

- inflation hits the poorest classes the hardest re: devaluing their largely all-cash savings, and they have no accountability measures to change that. who will they call, the fed? their senators who approved the fed chair?

- how do consensus algorithms and the open source nature of cryptocurrencies factor into your judgement? provide provide a visible way for anyone to audit and approve of (via participation in) a currency system of their choice. that's a strong feedback loop.

> - inflation hits the poorest classes the hardest re: devaluing their largely all-cash savings, and they have no accountability measures to change that. who will they call, the fed? their senators who approved the fed chair?

Inflation generally hurts the middle-class the most. Poor people generally don't have savings and are debtors. Debtors benefit from inflation.

Cryptocurrency being open source isn't really relevant to my point.

To your first point, the current views of holders isn't relevant as personalities are certainly not immutable, and as well all know, power corrupts.

> Inflation generally hurts the middle-class the most.

The middle class typically has a mortgage and student loan debt for which inflation benefits them.

The closer you are to the spiket, the more debt based inflation benefits you.

The poor do lose the most.

You're not wrong, the the middle class has far more savings than the poorest quartile. Is it this you disagree with?

I disagree that the middle class is hurt the most.

Whoever can leverage the most debt for assets benefits the most under an inflationary scheme. This tends to be banks and generally wealthy people.

Stated inversly the poorest are hurt the most as they are least a part of this wealth generating scheme.

Cash savings is largely irrelevant. Most Americans are net negative cash wise via credit cards. So stating the middle class is most hurt doesn't follow logically.

I'm basically middle class, but to keep a substantial cash savings would be financial idiocy in this inflationary system.

So who's losing if nobody has any meaningful monetary savings? Sounds like the rich because they will put like 5% of their portfolio into cash and higher wages eat into real wealth.

Basically everything you say is wrong. Inflation is typically priced in and therefore has little effect on debts.

You have no idea what you are talking about lol

There is no inflation Inflation is transitory Inflation is actually good

That was priced in? How about in other countries? Where the next day the currency devaluates 50%?

in short, you're focusing on savings while ignoring purchasing power

yes

There isn’t going to be a middle class left to hurt anyway.

Everything hits the poor the hardest, but I doubt there really is this hypothetical group of people with large cash savings they intend to hold for decades while keeping it in cash. At least in the US. I think that might be a thing in Japan, but not among the poor. The poor are generally debtors, who are helped by inflation because it reduces the real value of what they owe, whereas the goods they purchased on credit appreciate.

Honestly, I don't want to come across like I'm making an argument in favor of intentional inflation, but provided it isn't runaway levels that wreck an economy, I'm not even sure who it hurts. The poor are debtors. The middle class are the biggest holders of 30-year mortgages, which are about the best assets you can possibly hold when there is inflation. The rich hold their wealth in appreciating assets. Issuers of long-term debt and retirees who moved their savings into bonds and cash seem like the most likely to be hurt, but there are so many simple hedges they could have employed. Banks can issue long-term bonds so they're net zero debt holders rather than creditors. Retirees can move their savings into TIPS rather than cash.

Artificially appreciating assets means paying more taxes when exchanging them via fiat even though no actual value was created in the exchange.

> but provided it isn't runaway levels that wreck an economy, I'm not even sure who it hurts.

It gives governments a tool to erode its liabilities while continuing to spend irresponsibly.

This hurts everyone not willing or able to take cheap credit.

You know, it's not even intentional inflation. What the Fed is doing isn't creating inflation, it's moderating inflation downwards. Inflation simply happens through regular economic activities even if the government isn't involved. People borrow and spend their savings faster and faster, that's inflation. What the Fed is doing is like a PID control loop that hits the brakes when the economy is overheating. It needs 2% inflation as a buffer to achieve negative real interest rates. If arbitrary negative real interest rates were possible then the Fed could do price level targeting instead of inflation rate targeting and even in the latter the desired inflation rate could simply be 0% but any inflation shocks are permanent.

The poorest benefit the most from inflation since they get fired first during bad economic conditions. The only exception is housing costs because rent doesn't really flow to low income households.

Their power can be easily removed by larger state actors, not an issue at all. Just imagine the compute power a few 100 billion $ could unleash. And, of course, there is traditional direct action (from stopping all legal uses/on and off ramps all the way to violence).

>whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means

Can't it be removed by just not using the crypto? Crypto only has value if people buy into it making it a democratic system. People vote which crypto is best based on which they choose to use and pay attention to.

Democracy only works in very strict conditions. For the educated and the middle class. For everyone else in the world, it just doesn't work. If the world was under that exact condition, it would be considered dystopian.

it's a good hedge against inflation. A block chain can be fully accountable

Agreed.

I like to make this joke often: What's the difference between communism and bitcoin?

Communism has actually been tried in practice.

With bitcoin, you can get things the government doesn't want you to have. With communism, you can't even get things the government does want you to have.

How effective were the traditional means of removing oligarchs? The US just elected a game show host president 4 years ago.

Is the game show host still president?

25% of all Americans, and 53% of self-identified Republicans believe so.

The fact that he is not does not invalidate the parent comment and your question sidesteps the fact that he left lasting damage that is still playing out on the political stage today.

It literally does. He was democratically removed. The fact he left lasting damage is besides the point, and no system of government can prevent bad actors, only minimize the damage.

He was an oligarch, and then was democratically elected. His supreme court appointees will continue to enforce his policies for the rest of their lives.

> no system of government can prevent bad actors

Everything's the same! So crypto's no worse then?

> His supreme court appointees will continue to enforce his policies for the rest of their lives.

that's not how the legislature works. A motivated majority can undo anything via the passing of new legislation via an election of a majority of the house and senate.

> Everything's the same! So crypto's no worse then?

I already explained in the GP. Give it a read.

Agreed, he was an oligarch, and then was democratically elected, but who's to say what Brett "Devil’s Triangle" Kavanaugh will do in the face of a motivated majority?

Get dragged out his chair by the military?

Shouldn't be a surprise as we've elected an actor before.

Reagan was a former governor whose net worth paled in comparison to Trump's. He was not an oligarch.

> ..The US just elected a game show host president 4 years ago.

^ Was responding to this. He really _was_ an actor prior to becoming governor of California. Actor, media mogul, "game show host", why should it be any different? Even Michael Bloomberg served in politics as mayor of NYC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_filmography

Yes I know. Trump was elected because he was an oligarch, not because of his political experience.

Reagan had (comparatively) none of the wealth and real political experience at the federal level. He was not an oligarch.

> Trump was elected because he was an oligarch,

Can you source this or is this your personal opinion of him? I'm trying to understand why you're defining this as a purely oligarchal issue where there are many other such instances of oligarchism in history whether it'd be politics or tech/FAANG.

> ..not because of his political experience.

Well he's certainly no Reagan given his class(ism) progression or upbringing, as described on Wikipedia. Is that really the issue here though, because he lacked "political experience" upon entry into the presidency?

> Can you source this

Trump being a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence? Well, yeah I can.

https://libn.com/2016/09/15/taking-a-peek-at-trumps-foundati...

> why you're defining this as a purely oligarchal [sic] issue

That was the topic of the GP

> Is that really the issue here though, because he lacked "political experience" upon entry into the presidency?

No need for quotes, Trump had 0 experience holding any political office at any level, in contrast to Reagan. He was elected because he was a rich celebrity.

> Trump had 0 experience holding any political office at any level, in contrast to Reagan.

Yeah well he certainly does now, however brief it was.

Yep, we got a great idea of his political acumen handling the pandemic response.

Certainly democracy and egalitarianism are struggling in the present world, to say the least.

But I'd say the gp is correct that bitcoin 100% hinders them and 0% helps them.

They managed to remove him democratically despite a rebel faction storming the capitol. Slightly less dramatic than Yeltsin on a tank, though.

5 deaths and at least 138 police officers injured. I'd argue Trump's Capitol riot was more dramatic. It even resulted in more suicides.

>5 deaths

You fell for fake news. Three of the deaths were from natural causes, one was from a drug overdose: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_a...

"5 deaths (1 from gunshot, 1 from drug overdose, 3 from natural causes)"

It's really weird how these far right "terrorists" all stormed the capitol to "overturn the election" and "hang mike pence" but, somehow, completely forgot to bring the guns that they are so well known for having. Pretty funny way to go about an "insurrection", don't you think?

Makes you wonder why congressman Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) wore body armor to the riot, huh? Maybe to protect against the stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and pipe bombs?

14 suspects in the attack are facing federal charges related to bringing dangerous weapons inside the Capitol, 2 are facing firearms-related charges. Why didn't you tell DC's US Attorney’s Office that they were actually unarmed?!

>14 suspects in the attack are facing federal charges related to bringing dangerous weapons inside the Capito

There hasn't been a single conviction related to insurrection or anything more sinister than rioting or trespassing to date. Don't get your hopes up. Further, note the misleading language used in reporting, "armed", "dangerous weapons", but not guns (save the two facing ambiguous "firearms related charges") which as far as I know had nothing to do with actually bringing firearms onto the premises. The popular idea that the rioters were armed with guns is effectively (and deliberately) misinformation, though you won't find an article outright lying about guns inside the capitol.

As for the alleged pipe bombs, one was found at both Democratic and Republican offices, and there is still no publicly released information as to who planted them.

You'd think with a place as heavily surveilled as the capitol there would be no issue producing images of trespassers with guns on premises, yet you'd be hard pressed to find a single one[1]. Even moreso if you watch the livestreams of the event, where there are no guns brandished. There was one arrest made of a participant who allegedly had a number of guns in his truck.

>Why didn't you tell DC's US Attorney’s Office that they were actually unarmed

If your "insurrection" consists of a population known for owning guns, yet arrives 99% unarmed, then it becomes much more difficult to convince people that they were staging an "insurrection" or "coup". If nothing else, surely we can at least agree that, given the lack of firearms and damage, this was a "fiery, but mostly peaceful protest", right?

This whole story is merely an egregious example of the politicization of our media and justice system.

1. There is to my knowledge a single security video showing a single person wandering into the capitol through a backdoor carrying an AR style rifle for about 15 seconds before walking out.

Thanks for providing evidence of a capitol rioter carrying a firearm. No True Scotsman I guess.

Most of the rioters were armed. There are a couple videos of the riot if you don't believe me. You're moving the goals posts so that beating a cop with a flagpole until he's dead, throwing fire extinguishers, swinging axes, or planting pipe bombs counts as being "unarmed". Christopher Alberts was caught inside with a loaded handgun.

"DC is no guns," wrote an Oath Keepers member on Facebook, "so mace and gas masks, some batons." They had to remind them to only bring certain weapons to their peaceful protest.

Officer Mike Fanone claims Trump supporters reached for his weapon shouting "kill him with his own gun." He must be exaggerating!

> There hasn't been a single conviction related to insurrection or anything more sinister than rioting or trespassing to date.

Oh wow, you really didn't know. Jon Schaffer plead guilty to entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon. Why didn't you remind him he was unarmed before he plead guilty?!

> given the lack of firearms and damage

Damage estimates range from $1.5 to $30 million. Do you read the news?

Your entire post is merely reiterating exactly the sort of misleading information that I pointed out in mine.

The point once again (the "goalposts") was not whether they were armed, but why they would stage an insurrection without guns. And it is an established fact that save for 1-2 out of, what, 300+? There were no guns. Because this was a protest which turned into a riot, not an insurrection.

>that beating a cop with a flagpole until he's dead, throwing fire extinguisher

The original articles referenced an officer being beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Note that if you have been keeping up, they have all since been quietly retracted/deleted because the entire story was a fabrication. The officer died of a stroke within days of the protest, not from injuries.

>They had to remind them to only bring certain weapons to their peaceful protest.

This is pure speculation and its quite a stretch. The vast majority of participants weren't actually part of any of the so called "far right" groups (e.g. oathkeepers, boogaloo boys, or whatever the media's boogeyman of the day happens to be).

>"kill him with his own gun." He must be exaggerating

Yet not a single officer was killed so, again, not much of an insurrection.

>Damage estimates range from $1.5 to $30 million. Do you read the news?

From heavily biased sources. If you watched any of the livestreams you'd see protestors constantly telling each other not to damage anything. Can you find me any pictures or videos of damage on that scale?

>Jon Schaffer plead guilty to entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon

Straight from the horse's mouth[0]:

>admitted that he breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, wearing a tactical vest and armed with bear repellent

So still no guns and guilty of attempting to obstruct certification. Hardly an insurrection, and only one person. Where is the coup?

You have been mislead by political theatre and are spreading misinformation.

0. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/lifetime-founding-member-oath...

I agree, most of the violent rioters were armed. It is well documented that organizers had to encourage attendees to leave their guns at home or in their cars (as you mentioned, several were arrested with firearms in their cars on their way to or from the riot).

> The vast majority of participants weren't actually part of any of the so called "far right" groups (e.g. oathkeepers)

LOTS of self-recorded evidence shows that isn't true.

"wait for the 6th when we are all in D.C. to insurrection [sic]"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/03/24/capitol-attac...

We know many members of the Proud Bois were there (since arrested). The Oath Keepers even had their little logos printed on their hoodies! You linked to an admission of guilt from a founding member of the Oath Keepers, you...do realize that right?

> The officer died of a stroke within days of the protest, not from injuries.

Strange, the medical examiner disagreed, saying "all that transpired played a role in his condition." Hmm he was pepper-sprayed and beaten by a violent mob, only to die of a stroke hours later. What a cowinky-dink!

The other officers had no history of mental illness. After being beaten by a violent mob, their partners described them as acting unlike their usual selves, shortly before committing suicide. Another chance coincidence I guess!

The medical examiner said of Officer Jeffrey Smith that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021." Are you really that gullible?

There's no point in having this discussion if you're continuously going to represent my words.

1. I said vast majority. I didn't day such people weren't present. These are not large groups to begin with.

2. Once again you are twisting the word "armed" to conflate flagpoles and bear mace with guns.

My original point stands. You don't go about an insurrection in 2021 without bringing your guns. The rest of what you wrote is irrelevant. This was neither a coup nor an insurrection, because the vast, vast majority of protestors did not bring guns to the capitol, and in fact I'm not aware of a single such firearms arrest/conviction.

You could say that it was a 99.9% peaceful riot - and again I'm only aware of a single person being shown to have a gun, not "armed" with flagpoles and mace, out of hundreds of protestors.

I have no idea why are you being downvoted. Your argumentation is sound and consistent, and your adversary argues in what looks like a bad faith.

Calling it an (attempted) "insurection" or a "coup" just doesn't check out. I'm not sure, but I think nobody with any power (who could be forced to pass that power to someone, hence making it a coup) even was there in the building during that time? What would be the point of attacking target like this, if the goal was a "coup"?

Anyway, I'm not that interested in this in the first place, but I think your argument is well laid out, it was a pleasure to read this thread.

1. The vast majority were part of the far-right organizations, it was organized by far-right organizations. We have the evidence, we have their communications, they were stupid enough to post everything on social media, we have the video of their little hoodies and logos.

2. They were armed with flagpoles, knives, baseball bats, fire extinguishers, mace, and guns.

Thank you for not even trying to continue pretending the officers that died just happened to die of unrelated causes. Luckily you dropped that the second you were called on it. They died because they were beaten by a violent mob, as confirmed by several medical examiners. You disrespect their lives when you argue in bad faith otherwise, and the Blue Lives Matter bumper sticker on your car.

I never argued there was an insurrection. I argued that an armed, violent riot was staged and organized by the far right, resulting in the deaths of 5 police officers, and the injury of at least 138 more, and extensive damage to The Capitol. Or as you put it, "a 99.9% peaceful riot." The commander in chief of the US military was not powerful enough to stop it.

One officer died of a stroke and the other four died of suicide. You have been mislead and are spreading misinformation by implying that they were killed by rioters. For all we know, some or all of them took their own lives because they agreed with the rioters but were forced to fight them. Blaming the rioters for their deaths is pure, biased speculation. Are you also blaming nationwide BLM riots for officer suicides?

You are fundamentally not arguing in good faith and continue to twist my words and make disingenuous arguments. For the third time, my original point was that this was not an insurrection because the rioters did not bring guns. That they were technically "armed" with flagpoles and mace does not change the argument, nor is it an excuse for you and the media to conflate "armed" with "carrying lethal ranged weapons (guns)". That is my entire argument and everything else you've written is not relevant to this discussion.

Also >They died because they were beaten by a violent mob, as confirmed by several medical examiners

This is one of the many blatant falsehoods that you are regurgitating.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/third-d-c-officer-who-r...

Yeah, getting beaten in the head by a violent mob was probably unrelated to the officer's stroke. You're actually THAT gullible...luckily the medical examiner isn't.

Severe head trauma was unrelated to the suicides of the officers that otherwise acted normally before the "peaceful riot?" Bad faith arguments like that show you have no respect for their lives or the suffering their families are experiencing.

> Are you also blaming nationwide BLM riots for officer suicides

There were no officers that suffered severe head trauma in those riots and then committed suicide, so no. If you read the news you can learn more about that!

>The vast majority were part of the far-right organizations, it was organized by far-right organizations. We have the evidence, we have their communications, they were stupid enough to post everything on social media, we have the video of their little hoodies and logos.

You also have no basis for this claim. Yes, there were multiple contingents of so called "far right" (some/most of these groups are explicitly anti-authoritarian, as evidenced by the Gasden flag in addition to their public statements), but as I've said previously, these groups are not large enough to comprise the "vast majority". Most of these were trump supporters who attended a protest. If you want to argue that the named groups instigated the riot, that's certainly a reasonable position. But claiming that a substantial number of attendees belonged to these "far right" groups is at best unsubstantiated and at worst misinformation.

Further, if their communications contained any evidence of an attempted insurrection/coup, you would have seen corresponding convictions already. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of these communications consisted of politically themed shitposting anyway.

But we've veered quite far from the original subject, the argument that a lack of firearms is enough evidence to conclude that this was neither a coup nor an insurrection, but merely an impromptu riot spawned of a protest.

I agree, Trump supporters staged an armed, violent riot at the US Capitol. If you're so out of the loop you haven't seen the hours and hours of footage and social media evidence that shows that the vast majority of attendees were parts of far-right organizations, which organized the riot, I can't help you.

Thank you again for immediately dropping the idea that the police officers that died as a result died of unrelated causes, what a disgusting, gullible view to take of things. An argument in such bad faith it rivaled your "99.9% peaceful riot" one, you might want to look up what "peaceful" and "riot" mean.

> How effective were the traditional means of removing oligarchs?

Having got the joke out of the way in a sibling comment, a serious one: "Oligarch" is an oddly modern term, usually applied to Russians in the post communist era, and of course they weren't removed. Buying your way into power is highly effective. And can expand into other countries, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev

Prior to the modern era (20th century), even the democratic countries were only partly democratic (restricted electorates). Most were constitutional monarchs, and of course the traditional way of removing a monarch is execution. Democracy provides a way of getting rid of bad leaders without having to have violence .. but that does also rely on them acquiescing in the result.

Many were removed in Russia by government force. Thrown into prison or exiled to London. Speaking of ex-powerful leaders how is Jack Ma doing?

> "now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression."

"With the privatisation of money creation and the proliferation of decentralised currency fiefdoms, it was in many ways like a return to feudalism..."

The Pandora Papers recently released had terabytes of data and 13 million documents of how the richest people and politicians on earth avoid taxes. Bitcoin was used exactly zero times.

By definition, bitcoin transactions are not traceable, right?

Bitcoin transactions are far more traceable and easy to scan than it is to track payments in the offshore world, which involves many jurisdictions, subpoenas, judges, delays, getting stonewalled, etc. Night and day difference in ability to track.

Indeed, once you figure out someone's wallet address it becomes trivial to trace their transactions back to the beginning of Bitcoin.

If they use the same address forever yes.

Literally no. Base layer bitcoin transactions (all the large value ones) happen on the public blockchain.

It's pseudonymous, but if you can attach an identity to one transaction, you have a good chance of tracing everything else they've done.

And even if you don't know who everyone is today, you might be able to deanonymize it at some point in the future, because all the data is public.

I kind of wonder if HN will block me for posting the same comment, but it's so frequently relevant.

> By definition, bitcoin transactions are not traceable, right?

Michael Morell, a former acting director of the CIA, has some things to say about the use of BTC in crime:

> Based on our research and discussions with industry experts, I have confidence in two conclusions: • The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated. • The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transactions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and disrupt illicit activities. Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.

Source: https://casebitcoin.com/story/former-cia-director-finds-bitc...

The opposite. It's a public ledger and all transactions can be viewed.

Ross Ulbricht will be happy to learn this.

> The fundamental political issue with cryptocurrency is now you've created some amorphous group of oligarchs whose power cannot be really removed by traditional means. It's just a regression.

If you're worried about currency falling under the control of an unaccountable group of oligarchs who can't easily be removed, I have some bad news for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Gover...

The most traditional means of removing oligarchs is for an angry mob to murder them and their entire families. Does cryptocurrency prevent that? Maybe if you don't know who the oligarchs are. But cryptocurrency also doesn't really require that, either. A currency is only valuable when enough people believe that it is valuable. If there's an actual problem with a particular coin, people can switch coins--which they can't with fiat.

Oligarchs, or at least powerful elites, are more or less a human universal in cultures of a sufficient size and complexity. The main difference with democracy is that democracy makes it far easier to gain power through demagoguery and propaganda.

> Even if what I'm saying doesn't come to be, at a minimum you've introduced yet another layer to our financial systems for no benefit - our current system isn't here by accident. It's here due to learnings - learnings about human nature, markets, and so forth.

To what ends?

Among other things, fiat currency makes individual human beings more governable. Cryptocurrency makes individual human beings less governable. The more governable the private individual becomes, the easier it becomes for an oligarchy to oppress him.

> If you're worried about currency falling under the control of an unaccountable group of oligarchs who can't easily be removed, I have some bad news for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Gover...

These are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, both of which are elected by people democratically. In addition if any of them were particularly egregious, a motivated populace could amend the constitution via no representatives and kick them out anyway.

So...

> These are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, both of which are elected by people democratically.

Do you know a single person who, in their entire lives, has ever voted for either their President or their Senator primarily on the basis of Federal Reserve Board appointments? Most voters don't even know the constitutional duties of the President. Presidential candidates are (mostly) front men for unaccountable groups of oligarchs who can't easily be removed.

Why would you care? All the Fed is doing is kill inflation as much as it can. The only thing that they should stop doing is QE because it literally does nothing. It's as if we swapped names. My comments wouldn't change.

Yeah expanding the money supply by 50% causes no inflation.

Just like in every country where the printing press has been abused. Literally 0 precedent right?

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