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Comment by leidenfrost | Hacker News Reader

> If the government declares having money as illegal the only solution is to change the government.

I see people from developed nations talking about "changing the government" like we are one french revolution away from prosperity.

There are two problems with that:

- The people need to fight the military. It's not like it's the XIX century where you can face a army with some weapons and horses. Go fight a tank and some drones.

- More often than not, power vacuums are filled with an even more ruthless government that wants to exploit the same corrupt dynamics like the previous one, but for them and their cronies and not the previous government ones.

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The French Revolution might not be the best example, but it did finally find itself a coherent set of human rights and managed to stop at a point that advantaged the majority of the poor, elevating them to the middle class. That itself is an extreme outlier in the history of revolutions.

> Go fight a tank and some drones.

And by pushing for crypto you are helping them obtain those tanks and drones. What now?

> More often than not, power vacuums are filled with an even more ruthless government

That's why democracy is important

> And by pushing for crypto you are helping them obtain those tanks and drones. What now?

Governments have access to many more mechanisms of wealth transfer and commerce than any average person does. The only special thing about crypto is that it's also available to the general public.

> That's why democracy is important

And who is gonna enforce democracy? Remember, we are talking about a new governing body that came to power after kicking out the previous one. And governments "elected" that way tend to be less democratic that governments chosen by the standard process of democratic elections.

Kicking out a government resembles a coup scenario, and if the next government doesn't want to be democratic, you are SOL.

>The only special thing about crypto is that it's also available to the general public.

>And who is gonna enforce democracy?

This is the most important, sane comment I've heard all night. Far too many here are arguing for a police state. What's especially ugly is that they don't even realize they're arguing for one.

> Governments have access to many more mechanisms of wealth transfer and commerce than any average person does. The only special thing about crypto is that it's also available to the general public.

So what exactly other mechanisms do they have that are not sanctioned or radioactive? Duffel bags of cash, like another comment suggested? Please don't be ridiculous about a serious topic.

> Kicking out a government resembles a coup scenario, and if the next government doesn't want to be democratic, you are SOL.

Yes, that's a bit of a gamble. Perhaps another democratic country could help establish a democratic government (it worked in Ukraine) instead of doing the opposite of that and providing technology that enriches the authoritative one.

>what exactly other mechanisms do they have that are not sanctioned or radioactive?

how did they do it before 2010? how did e.g. the soviet union do it?

First we shouldn't underestimate the gravity of sanctions and mood. Pepsi was in USSR since 1971, now they are halting operations even though they are not sanctioned. Putin is just that radioactive

Second let's think where USSR got in the end. Current Russian government should go the same way but any way around sanctions helps it.

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