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Comment by trutannus | Hacker News Reader

You have to accept though that just saying "ah, the government will fix it" when historically governments have been a major contributor to wealth inequality, is somewhat glib. There's a reason NGOs and private charity exist.

I think this approach is just as wrong as saying "crypto is the answer".

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And that is another instance where many people part ways, because another big aspect of crypto is that it is partially motivated by a political ideology that most people politely reject and many people think is full of crackpots and scam artists (because it is).

I'm not advocating crypto here, I'm just pointing out that saying crypto is bad because you can "just pass a law" is just as illogical as saying "internet blockchain money will give us freedom".

> saying crypto is bad because you can "just pass a law"

I think you're misconstruing the original suggestion, which was that a legal solution to the problem of the unbanked would be viable. You could pass legislation mandating that banks turn no one away, you could establish a publicly run bank of last resort, etc.

I believe those measures would be "easier" solutions to the problem than replacing the entire financial system, but that's just an opinion about a hypothetical.

Not suggesting we replace the banking, just pointing out how this path you suggest is still not going to be an easy fix. There's no easy fix. Again, not advocating for crypto as a solution. Just asking people to consider more deeply the issues of saying "use the government to solve it!".

GP said "easier", not "easy". Number of people that display an inability to read a few sentences and parse them correctly is frightening.

> You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

This is the one I'm specifically discussing, its from a different user. This is the line that started the thread. Plenty of users are discussing this specific line I believe.

FWIW, I thought the "Easy." you cite was meant sarcastically. The full context is:

> The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

and national health insurance is famously a fiendishly hard public policy issue (albeit one for which several competing models exist and have been put into practice). Working from an existing public policy model (like using France's example of offering bank-of-last-resort services through the postal service) still seems way easier than just deciding to solve it with crypto.

> seems way easier than just deciding to solve it with crypto

Yeah, I don't disagree that crypto won't fix this. I just disagreed that it was "easy". I took them as being literal.

On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments? Look at history, and you will notice that it is rarely better. Those who seek wealth and power aren't created by governments, nor will they magically disappear if governments disappear (or if their power is neutered). At least democracies have some checks and balances, even if they are nowhere near as effective as we need them to be.

> On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments

Nobody here is advocating against democracy. People are just pointing out that blind trust in state institutions is equally as illogical as blind trust in the EVM. States have a track record of serving the powerful first, and sometimes exclusively. Trusting apparatus with a track record like this masks a sort of flawed optimism, just like putting your hopes of change in the blockchain.

Why are you so insistent that the trust necessarily be blind? Having legislation is the first step to getting banks to comply with how we think they should work. What's the alternative method of coercing their behavior?

The initial discussion started with someone saying something to the effect of "just change the law, easy". To me, that reads as "just use the government, it'll be fine". Perhaps it's just me, but that sounds a lot like blind trust in an institute.

crypto is inherently anti-social and antidemocratic, or at least all the ones I know about.

>what would the world look like without democratic governments? Look at history, and you will notice that it is rarely better.

Why would one look at history? Democracy is a modern phenomenon, and many modern states are republics, designed not to be full-blown democracies.

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