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Comment by telepathy | Hacker News Reader

I thought you said the problem was bad monetary policy. Why not focus on improving that? That's not a tech problem, it's a policy problem.

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If they could just shut down money printing, that would solve the problem... But they won't do that unless there is a way to verify that money printing is not taking place in secret. People who live under corrupt governments are familiar with this reality.

People should be able to have total confidence in the integrity of their monetary system to ensure that they are not unwittingly supporting actions that go against their morals. Blockchain would allow precisely that.

Which governments are money printing in secret? From what I can tell, countries with excessive money printing issues are all too happily to advertise their excessive money printing.

I can somewhat see the appeal of a system like the gold standard in that it tries to imposes a monetary straitjacket on government. Except that the course of history shows that, when faced with the choice of continuing their monetary policy or abiding the the straitjacket, the straitjacket loses very nearly every single time. This includes times where losing the straitjacket meant physical adulteration of the currency--it is, after all, the literal act behind the term 'debasement'.

Are you under the impression that governments lack the technology necessary not to print money? They're in charge, you don't get to disagree unilaterally. That's not an option.

It's really best to do both. People opposed to government surveillance tend to use E2E encryption (tech) and also lobby their government for change (policy). Same with cryptocurrency.

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