7 ms·

The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems. They never are. And never has this been more true in the h

The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems. They never are. And never has this been more true in the history of our species than with the technology of money. Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will.

ivank 11y ago
What makes you think money didn't exist before the state? http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html
- lukeschlather 11y ago
  What makes you think there weren't governments in the Americas guaranteeing the value of wampum prior to the invasion from Europe? Here's an article from what remains of one such pre-colonial state detailing how wampum formed the basis of their international treaty laws: http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/ http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/
droffel 11y ago
Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Money solves the "Coincidence of Wants", that is, it acts as a collectively agreed upon medium of exchange. Cowry shells, beads, feathers, and gold have all previously been used as money. I don't believe those were artifacts of the state, they were an emergent phenomenon that arose to solve a very real problem. Can you elaborate on why you believe that money always has been and always will be an artifact of the state? Because I'm really not seeing it.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  There are examples of it being emergent phenomenon, yes, but when you look closely at how the cowrie shells moved around, you'll see the behavior of state actors. The vast majority of the shells were stored in a single dwelling in the settlement with thick walls and often below ground. These dwellings were guarded by warrior-class members of the societies, The dwellings were connected to a single family or even just a single person: a warlord or monarch. If it walks like a duck...
  - droffel 11y ago
    Okay, so money follows a power law distribution (like many natural phenomena), where wealth tends to concentrate. And early people who used money needed a bank (safe/guarded place) to store it in. Your argument seems tautological, "The state uses money, therefore money is an artifact of the state". This feels like a "Wet sidewalk causes rain" situation.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It's not tautological, it's just observing the thing a lot of people with libertarian mindset tend to forget - that state is a natural step in evolution of groups. When your society grows bigger than several dozen members, you no longer can have everyone deal with everyone else personally. You can't spontaneously coordinate larger groups of people, so a mechanism of coordination naturally arises. This mechanism pretty much always is a form of state.
snitko 11y ago
>Money is an artifact of the state; always has been always will. Nothing can be further from the truth. You don't have to go too far for the example. Cigarettes in prisons are used as money. People use all sorts of things as money. State wants to control it because it wants to collect some of the value produced by other people. That is all. Bitcoin is about not giving states these powers.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Prisons exist because of the state. In most countries AFAIK it is illegal to mint your own "currency" and call it as such, hence artifact of the state. Bitcoin lets non-state actors create currency.. incidentally, those most equipped to fund the processing power, are state actors, hence artifact of the state.
  - genghisjahn 11y ago
    7 Cities that have their own currency... http://mentalfloss.com/article/55414/7-cities-have-their-own-currencies http://mentalfloss.com/article/55414/7-cities-have-their-own... You can make your own currency all you want. You just can't make currency and pass it off as state sponsored currency without permission from the state.
    - lingben 11y ago
      Also the much beloved and hated Canadian Tire 'money': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money
    - nickbauman 11y ago
      Ever heard of a CityState?
- lingben 11y ago
  > Cigarettes in prisons are used as money. No. That's barter. Money has very specific characteristics. Cigarettes in prison fail these three: divisibility, durability and uniformity. https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcast-series/episode-9-functions-of-money https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcas...
ybx 11y ago
> Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. This is patently false. Money has existed before states, and it has existed without states.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  There is almost no archeological evidence to support your claim. There is ample evidence supporting my claim. Money (specie: often in the form of coinage but not limited to such) was invented when a warlord or monarch captures riches (mines, cities), strikes coins with his visage, uses the coins to pay his soldiers (who are otherwise awful credit risks), then demands taxes from the free peasantry, creating a market economy in the process. States create markets. Markets require states. If for no other reason than to provide protection over the transaction with the threat of coercion. Before money existed, the free peasantry used credit. The historical evidence shows that first came credit, then came money, then came barter. The exact opposite of what Adam Smith and most economists believe.
  - droffel 11y ago
    The historical evidence shows that first came credit, then came money, then came barter. Can I get a citation on this? Literally any citation that money came before barter will work.
    - nickbauman 11y ago
      David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 years page 49-50. He has a bunch of citations in that manuscript which are fascinating as well.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - droffel 11y ago
        So I just read the pages you cited, and everything there is talking about recorded history. Barter has been in use since at least 12000BC, according to archaeological records. Your citation doesn't really refute my statement. (For anyone who wants to follow along, the PDF can be found at https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf)
slg 11y ago
>The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems. They never are. This seems to be a mistake repeated routinely throughout the tech world. You see it today's Netflix announcement about proxies. You see it with the software/media industries reliance on DRM. You see it with people trying to halt the NSA with stronger forms of encryption (or with the NSA's mass surveillance in the first place). Technology is not a cure-all and unloading an army of computer scientists on a problem isn't usually the answer.
rodgerd 11y ago
> Money is an artifact of the state I would suggest "money is an artefact of societies" would be a better way of expressing this - people will otherwise get hung up on whether complex societies, with currencies, that don't look like modern nation-states, disprove this statement.
polemic 11y ago
Heh, the last sentence is debatable (as demonstrated). But to debate it misses the wider point of the first sentence: > "The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems." This. Or, to restate it, to mistake social solutions to 'money' as technical problems that need fixing.
SatoshiRoberts 11y ago
"Information is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will." - people before the Internet
- krapp 11y ago
  I don't remember any "people before the internet" ever saying anything of the sort. I am aware of plenty of people saying it about the internet now - both that information has become an artifact of the internet and that the internet has become an artifact of the state (specifically, of American cultural and political hegemony.)
CyberDildonics 11y ago
Uhhh what about gold, which had been the world's currency for thousands of years up until Nixon was forced off the gold standard in the 70s.
clarkmoody 11y ago
> Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. Gen 23:16[1] This silver transaction that occurred thousands of years ago was weight out based on merchant standards. Abraham was a nomad at the time, not belonging to any state. The merchants seem to be the ones who set the weight of the silver currency. [1] https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gen/23/16/s_23016 https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gen/23/16/s_23016
- fineIllregister 11y ago
  Such a claim requires the Bible be taken at face value, which is not at all certain. It very well could have been written much later than the date it supposedly occurred by political authorities to promote a specific ethno-religious order.
narrator 11y ago
>Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Money is an artifact of the state because you have to pay taxes in the state's money. If you could pay state and local taxes in bitcoin it would be possible to use bitcoin exclusively for all transactions.

ivank 11y ago

What makes you think money didn't exist before the state? http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html

lukeschlather 11y ago
What makes you think there weren't governments in the Americas guaranteeing the value of wampum prior to the invasion from Europe? Here's an article from what remains of one such pre-colonial state detailing how wampum formed the basis of their international treaty laws: http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/ http://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/

droffel 11y ago

Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Money solves the "Coincidence of Wants", that is, it acts as a collectively agreed upon medium of exchange. Cowry shells, beads, feathers, and gold have all previously been used as money. I don't believe those were artifacts of the state, they were an emergent phenomenon that arose to solve a very real problem. Can you elaborate on why you believe that money always has been and always will be an artifact of the state? Because I'm really not seeing it.

nickbauman 11y ago
There are examples of it being emergent phenomenon, yes, but when you look closely at how the cowrie shells moved around, you'll see the behavior of state actors. The vast majority of the shells were stored in a single dwelling in the settlement with thick walls and often below ground. These dwellings were guarded by warrior-class members of the societies, The dwellings were connected to a single family or even just a single person: a warlord or monarch. If it walks like a duck...
- droffel 11y ago
  Okay, so money follows a power law distribution (like many natural phenomena), where wealth tends to concentrate. And early people who used money needed a bank (safe/guarded place) to store it in. Your argument seems tautological, "The state uses money, therefore money is an artifact of the state". This feels like a "Wet sidewalk causes rain" situation.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's not tautological, it's just observing the thing a lot of people with libertarian mindset tend to forget - that state is a natural step in evolution of groups. When your society grows bigger than several dozen members, you no longer can have everyone deal with everyone else personally. You can't spontaneously coordinate larger groups of people, so a mechanism of coordination naturally arises. This mechanism pretty much always is a form of state.

snitko 11y ago

>Money is an artifact of the state; always has been always will. Nothing can be further from the truth. You don't have to go too far for the example. Cigarettes in prisons are used as money. People use all sorts of things as money. State wants to control it because it wants to collect some of the value produced by other people. That is all. Bitcoin is about not giving states these powers.

hellbanner 11y ago
Prisons exist because of the state. In most countries AFAIK it is illegal to mint your own "currency" and call it as such, hence artifact of the state. Bitcoin lets non-state actors create currency.. incidentally, those most equipped to fund the processing power, are state actors, hence artifact of the state.
- genghisjahn 11y ago
  7 Cities that have their own currency... http://mentalfloss.com/article/55414/7-cities-have-their-own-currencies http://mentalfloss.com/article/55414/7-cities-have-their-own... You can make your own currency all you want. You just can't make currency and pass it off as state sponsored currency without permission from the state.
  - lingben 11y ago
    Also the much beloved and hated Canadian Tire 'money': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    Ever heard of a CityState?
lingben 11y ago
> Cigarettes in prisons are used as money. No. That's barter. Money has very specific characteristics. Cigarettes in prison fail these three: divisibility, durability and uniformity. https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcast-series/episode-9-functions-of-money https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcas...

ybx 11y ago

> Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. This is patently false. Money has existed before states, and it has existed without states.

nickbauman 11y ago
There is almost no archeological evidence to support your claim. There is ample evidence supporting my claim. Money (specie: often in the form of coinage but not limited to such) was invented when a warlord or monarch captures riches (mines, cities), strikes coins with his visage, uses the coins to pay his soldiers (who are otherwise awful credit risks), then demands taxes from the free peasantry, creating a market economy in the process. States create markets. Markets require states. If for no other reason than to provide protection over the transaction with the threat of coercion. Before money existed, the free peasantry used credit. The historical evidence shows that first came credit, then came money, then came barter. The exact opposite of what Adam Smith and most economists believe.
- droffel 11y ago
  The historical evidence shows that first came credit, then came money, then came barter. Can I get a citation on this? Literally any citation that money came before barter will work.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 years page 49-50. He has a bunch of citations in that manuscript which are fascinating as well.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - droffel 11y ago
      So I just read the pages you cited, and everything there is talking about recorded history. Barter has been in use since at least 12000BC, according to archaeological records. Your citation doesn't really refute my statement. (For anyone who wants to follow along, the PDF can be found at https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf)

slg 11y ago

>The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems. They never are. This seems to be a mistake repeated routinely throughout the tech world. You see it today's Netflix announcement about proxies. You see it with the software/media industries reliance on DRM. You see it with people trying to halt the NSA with stronger forms of encryption (or with the NSA's mass surveillance in the first place). Technology is not a cure-all and unloading an army of computer scientists on a problem isn't usually the answer.

rodgerd 11y ago

> Money is an artifact of the state I would suggest "money is an artefact of societies" would be a better way of expressing this - people will otherwise get hung up on whether complex societies, with currencies, that don't look like modern nation-states, disprove this statement.

polemic 11y ago

Heh, the last sentence is debatable (as demonstrated). But to debate it misses the wider point of the first sentence: > "The folly of BitCoin is to believe that technical problems are somehow orthogonal to social problems." This. Or, to restate it, to mistake social solutions to 'money' as technical problems that need fixing.

SatoshiRoberts 11y ago

"Information is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will." - people before the Internet

krapp 11y ago
I don't remember any "people before the internet" ever saying anything of the sort. I am aware of plenty of people saying it about the internet now - both that information has become an artifact of the internet and that the internet has become an artifact of the state (specifically, of American cultural and political hegemony.)

CyberDildonics 11y ago

Uhhh what about gold, which had been the world's currency for thousands of years up until Nixon was forced off the gold standard in the 70s.

clarkmoody 11y ago

> Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. Gen 23:16[1] This silver transaction that occurred thousands of years ago was weight out based on merchant standards. Abraham was a nomad at the time, not belonging to any state. The merchants seem to be the ones who set the weight of the silver currency. [1] https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gen/23/16/s_23016 https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gen/23/16/s_23016

fineIllregister 11y ago
Such a claim requires the Bible be taken at face value, which is not at all certain. It very well could have been written much later than the date it supposedly occurred by political authorities to promote a specific ethno-religious order.

narrator 11y ago

>Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Money is an artifact of the state because you have to pay taxes in the state's money. If you could pay state and local taxes in bitcoin it would be possible to use bitcoin exclusively for all transactions.