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Comment by streamofdigits | Hacker News Reader

I feel the despair in your comment

but you can not fix a broken thing with another, even more broken thing (which is this greedy cryptomania)

it is broken government that is the problem and it causes far more ills than monetary inflation

what needs fixing is government. you cannot have a stable meaningful life, society, economy without a semi-decent government that is accountable, democratic and somewhat competent

if the financial system still needs fixing after you fix government it would probably be a marginal patch and not starting from zero

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I understand your argument, but while we try to change our government we still need a way to save money and get paid without being robbed, cryptos are a way to avoid that, it's as simple as that.

Please understand that people like me who live in third world countries have third world problems, worrying about the climate change is sometimes not in the top of our priorities when we don't even now if we'll have 50, 100 or 30% of anual inflation. And I find unfair how sometimes we are told and scolded by the first world when they didn't get there via green policies, really.

The climate change thing is overspoken, most of these people are fine with someone using 10 graphics cards to do AI training or whatever other task that is resource intensive. It's just that climate change is a big political and cultural point for a certain segment of US and Europe so those against crypto have found a convenient propaganda point by making people feel guilty for using computation cycles in an unapproved manner.

There may be a case for tactical use of whatever tools are available to achieve a positive result. Who am I to condemn people to sub-par living conditions on the basis of conceptual arguments...

But please take at heart my previous comment. Climate change may sound like an elite concern but it is not. It is actually representative of our deepest global problems.

The reason that the so-called "third world" still has third world problems is that political and economic systems everywhere ignore environmental and social conditions, focus on resource extraction, enriching a few elites etc.

Some form of digital technology would surely help us solve those very difficult problems or at least make them less painful and unsustainable, but cryptocurrencies is nowhere close to do so. It is simplistic, economically more than naive, has the wrong builtin assumptions about society (complete lack of trust) etc.

In any case, good night and good luck

Crypto isn't built on lack of trust, it's lack of centralized trust. It's a trust that the majority of the PoW hash-rate (or stake, for some cryptos) is reflecting genuine transactions.

This actually better reflects the way man is, where society works when most people are relatively honest and a minority of criminals and sadistic politicians, bankers, police, tax authorities should be distrusted.

I'm all for people using crypto to use a little less A/C, heat, or drive less to balance it out if those in a warm (or cool) comfy house are a bit upset about it. Probably shouldn't be compelled though unless you're gonna create a Watt Police.

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