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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

> It's a fiat currency based system that persists simply on the belief that it's too big to stop (i.e., fail). Just keep your head stuff in the sand, keep pushing forward and pretend there's no cliff ahead.

Any social contract operates on that principle.

Government only exists because most people believe in its legitimacy. Law only works because most people follow most of it. Property rights only exist because most people respect them most of the time. Contracts only work because most signatories follow them most of the time.

It's weird how fiat money is the one thing that gets singled out, here, when all the social agreements that actually make our society work are also artificial.

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When a financial tradition (i.e., money) carelessly morphs into being a "social contract" red flags should be flying. Instead, we close our eyes and pray?

Money has always been a social contract. Just because it's a "financial tradition" doesn't change that. Shiny metals are no more valuable to hungry people than numbers in a database. The myth of King Midas shows this is nothing new.

Noah. That's simply not true. Lyn Alden's "Broken Money" does a couple+ chapters on the history of money. "Cross cultural" transactions are essentially. You can't have a "social contract" across sometimes conflicting cultures. Long to short, this is why we eventually ended up using gold.

You absolutely can have a social contract across conflicting cultures. You just gave an example: commerce valuing gold is a social agreement. Another example is countries at war each other following the rules of war (not always, but even one instance makes your claim false).

What would a money look like without any social contract? How would we even enforce the basic principles of fungibility, durability, etc?

All money is a social contract as far as I can tell. They're always based on the expectation that we as a society will continue to value an intermediary at a predictable price relative to things we may want yo buy or sell later.

Real money? Or fiat money?

Real money would likely look like gold, or perhaps Bitcoin.

Fiat money would be strictly social contract based, in a Bernie Madoff sorta way.

> or perhaps Bitcoin.

Why would it look like bitcoin, and not any one of a trillion near-identical forks of bitcoin?

(Because there's an social contract, that by fiat decides which one is the 'real' one, just like how vkoubux aren't considered legal tender.)

I'm not sure what would make some money "real", is that the same concept as hard money?

Bitcoin isn't real money and no one actually tries to use it as money today. At best its a security, though realistically its more of a gambling chip than anything else.

Bitcoin fundamentally won't work as money, even if it can be a store of value. Second tier networks like lightning are required, but those only work by abandoning core pieces of the bitcoin protocol and avoiding actually using bitcoin at all.

You don't think traditions are social contracts?

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