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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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