The obnoxious thing--to me--about this play money trend isn't that people are giving it serious attention and thought, it's the shiny ideals in the eyes of the greedy.
It provokes a reaction in me: how dare any Bitcoin advocate take moral ground against a system that, whatever its flaws, protects its community from the disasters Bitcoin repeatedly faces?
Greed. Greed greed greed.
Unsurprisingly, PG takes Bitcoin seriously.
There are a number of BTC Enthusiasts who I find agreeable. Anyone who is working for the sake of innovation, anyone who is willing to partake in this grand experiment...
But I constantly am surrounded not by technology enthusiasts, but instead by greedy techies who are obsessed with only the PRICE of BTC. Where are the articles about BTC adoption? Where are the articles about "stress testing" BTC services?
When the biggest "news item" of BTC is its price, you KNOW it is driven by greedy bastards who just want to strike it rich. No offense to the true believers out there (and I know the "true" BTC fans out there exist...)... but you guys are in bad company.
Far too many people are speculators... not enthusiasts. I'm hearing less and less about "buying things with BTC", and more and more about "how much money I made using BTC". It is disgusting.
Here's 8 of them https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=accept...
I did. That's why I was wise enough to buy bitcoins very early on.
> take moral ground against a system that, whatever its flaws, protects its community from the disasters
Because the Federal Reserve fundamentally cannot and certainly does not protect people from disasters.
>>> I did. That's why I was wise enough to buy bitcoins very early on.
You take a post complaining about greed, and then RUB IT INTO HIS FACE that you made more money than other people in this venture.
BTC is a grand experiment, no matter what its price. The true enthusiast wants BTC for what it represents, not to use it to make a quick buck.
But I made my point: it's unjust to claim that everyone who made money on bitcon just got lucky and to therefore condemn them.
My personal beef with this whole BTC thing is that it once represented a potential future of money exchange. But today, the big news of BTC is how much money people are either making or losing.
The entire "technocrat" viewpoint of BTC seems to be disappearing beneath a wave of greed. And its a shame too... the technocrat viewpoint is the most interesting to me.
True, but if people are going to say that bitcoin earnings are not deserved because they are based on a lucky guess, I am going to provide the only counterexample I can personally attest to.
Since I can only read my own mind, that counterexample is myself.
The 2008 collapse is ultimately part of long-term stagnation in the economy. It would have been better to just take the medicine and build a healthy economy after that, that to keep living under the fantasy that government manipulation of the economy can help us in the long run.
Hoover tried desperately to solve the problem of the Great Depression in his first (and only) term, but when the Black Friday market crash occurred only 8 months into Hoover's presidency, it is clear who deserves the blame of the famous market crash that set off the Great Depression.
Deregulation of banks, laissez-faire economics, and a complete reluctance to increase the monetary supply are all cited as reasons for the Great Depression of 1930s.
The ideas of Laissez-faire economics should have died in 1930. It is part of the Government's job to prevent such depressions from occurring ever again.
Coolidge did the same thing as all prior presidents in economic recessions, and it always worked for them.
Hoover, incluenced by the Progressive philosophy of "governmnet solves all problems and individuals be damned," tried to "force" a solution to the recession. Unlike every prior case, it got much worse for much longer.
So if you want to assume correlation strongly suggests causation, I win the argument.
If you instead want to say that we need to look at root causes, I say the notion that we need or can solve economic problems with top-down force instead of bottom-up individual pursuit of values is ludicrous.
> It is part of the Government's job to prevent such depressions from occurring ever again
That is just your assertion. And the notion that the government can do that is fantasy thinking. I think they can influence contractions and expansions but the net of it is less economic production in the long run; it doesn't gain you anything. And sometimes they screw up small and cause things like Freddie and Fannie's mortgage bubble. And eventually they screw up big, as any puppet master does, and you get hyperinflation or bank crises.
Pure ignorance of the first (and second, and third...) financial crisis of the US.
Going back to the first US Banking Crisis: the Panic of 1819... then President Monroe set the standard on how financial crisis would be handled. (Its a complicated story because the US was so different back then... there was the Federally-chartered "Bank of the US", among other things)
To solve the Panic of 1819, President Monroe would nullify certain debts, to ease recovery. Sound familiar?? State-level banks then increased the monetary supply, and Congress passed more Tariffs to discourage exports/imports.
The one thing that is constant in this country's 200 year history, is that the Federalists and the Non-Federalists have been arguing the cause and effect of government since the start. Federalists blame the "free market" of 1816 for causing the panic of 1819 (ie: It was inevitable due to Wartime debt from 1812 and a crisis in Europe). On the other hand, the Non-Federalists blame the centralized "Bank of the US" for setting off the panic.
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The one thing that is clear to me, is that the proud history of the US is for this debate to spin up every 20 years as the US hobbles from crisis to crisis. The President will do the same thing and step in and sponsor new laws... he'll also forgive debts, the monetary supply will expand in some way, and Congress will pass something irrelevant to the discussion.
Until bitcoin stops being opt-in, I don't see the problem.
Bitcoin is too unstable for me, and I am not interested in using it as a way to invest my money (either high risk, or as a hypothetical low-risk investment). Therefore, I do not own any bitcoin, and never have^. Nevertheless, it is no skin off my back if others decide that they do want to use bitcoin.
^ Actually, I think I may have gotten a tenth of one from a facet a few years ago... can't really remember. Can't be arsed to look around to see if I did.
It's an unfair comparison between the two systems.
It'd be like being angry at base-jumpers. Base-jumpers can call us "boring ground-whores" all they want, but so long as I am not forced to take up base-jumping then I don't see any reason to become upset. If they eschew the benefits of a life set firmly on the ground, then go splat, it is no skin off my back.
I would not think to ask them how they "dare take moral ground" against a normal risk-adverse lifestyle.