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Controlling your own wealth as a basic human right

106 points by aminok 10y ago

anilgulecha 10y ago
> but it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth of the poorest people. This is a blatantly incorrect statement (that shows the bias of the author). Old currency could be turned into bank accounts, and then out to new currency. The inconvenience was around the logistics of getting new notes into circulation (which was indeed managed badly in many parts), but no way can this be conflated with 'wiped out a large percentage of wealth'. The author's bias is making that leap.
- sleepychu 10y ago
  You're right but the author isn't totally incorrect.[0] >But with the note shortage in India, cash is precious and the queue-jumping jugaad has a dark side. As banks quickly run out of cash, many have to go hungry if they cannot make it to the front of the line. Others have to take days off work to wait in line. One man, standing in the queue at the bank, who does odd jobs for a launderette, says he will phone his boss when he reaches the front, so that he can come and make a cash deposit. “Every man, whether he’s rich or poor, has a mouth to feed. But somehow, only ordinary folks like us end up standing in line,” he says. [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-lines-controversy-cash-for-queuing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-lin...
  - notahacker 10y ago
    However counterproductive India's change might have been, I don't think you can call statements like "it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth of the poorest people" and "One could argue that the Indian government recalling bank notes had a positive impact on citizens (more tax revenue for education, roads, etc). Yet it also harmed millions by eroding their wealth" anything other than a misrepresentation of what the Indian government actually did. I don't think it serves the Bitcoin ecosystem well when CEOs of some of its most trustworthy platforms make such flatly wrong statements on basic finanical issues. More generally, it's a counterproductive line of rhetoric to take when the average person in the developed world is several orders of magnitude more likely to suffer significant wealth loss through BTC volatility, platform malfeasance or government crackdown on domestic bitcoin use than hyperinflation or generalised currency seizures by Western goverments.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > The inconvenience was around the logistics of getting new news into circulation (which was indeed managed badly in many parts) 86% of the currency in the market was wiped out to target 6% of unaccounted income in cash. There is no way to even justify such a policy forget manage it.
  - anilgulecha 10y ago
    > wiped out. Another example of misrepresentation. (The value was not wiped out.)
    - addicted 10y ago
      And it's also absolutely incorrect. The reality is that the vast majority of the bank notes were actually deposited and did not get wasted. Actually, some who have a slightly darker view of the actual reasoniwho behind why this was done contend that one of the biggest reasons behind "demonetizabehind was that the govt expected a significant chunk of money to NOT be deposited into banks, thereby helping the govt's finances (cash is essentially a loan owed by the govt. Cash that was not converted and therefore made valueless meant the govt owed less money). If this view is correct, one of the biggest failures of demonetization was that such a large percentage of cash was converted that the govt didn't benefit from this avenue. Furthermore, all the articles about how day laborers go without food ignore the fact that day laborers routinely went without food even before demonetization. The question should have been how much worse it made things for day laborers, something which few articles even attempt to answer. Finally, it's hard for Westerners to recognize how much more integrated digital services through cellphones are in the daily lives of poor people in Asia and Africa compared to NA and Europe.
      - scott_s 10y ago
        Are you aware of stats for how many of the cancelled currency was deposited? I heard stories of families losing significant fractions of their savings, but of course that's anecdote, not data.
- solatic 10y ago
  It is a statement which is de jure incorrect but de facto correct. The timelines were completely unrealistic from a logistical standpoint. India is not yet at a stage where poor people can make their day-to-day transactions with debit cards instead of cash. Being able to deposit their savings in time by the deadline is a pointless irrelevancy if the bank cannot give them enough valid currency in return for their daily needs. One needs only look at the downturn in India's recent economic figures to see the macro results.
justusw 10y ago
Talking about pragmatic human rights: Fiat money exists as legal tender in many countries in one form or another. No shop keeper can turn you down for wanting to pay with Dollars. With Bitcoin that's a different story. While I wholeheartedly agree with all the benefits a currency like Bitcoin can offer, I think we're a long way from being able to use Bitcoin as an embodiment of basic human right.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  No shop keeper can turn you down for wanting to pay with Dollars. I do appreciate your point, although 'legal tender' is generally only a relative term with regard to payment of debts. A seller is not otherwise obliged to accept dollars.
  - otheotheothe 10y ago
    That's not true, my local german bakery simply doesnt accept big euro bills with the premise it could be fake money, which is nonsense as the smaller bills get faked more often, shit like this can't happen with bitcoin. They also dont accept debit cards so u can be screwed if u have only a 100 eur bill with you..
    - krallja 10y ago
      I think you responded to the wrong comment.
jonathanstrange 10y ago
Kind of sad when people make such suggestions, not because it's alright if the government interferes with ones wealth, but because they thereby implicitly water down the concept of human rights. Basic human rights are being treated as an equal to other human beings and with human dignity, being allowed to live, prohibition of slavery, being treated equal in front of the law and getting due process, and not being tortured. Everybody should be able to agree on them. Yes, maybe controlling your own wealth should a right. But please don't put it on a par with basic human rights.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Property rights are basic human rights. John Locke wrote of "life, liberty and property".
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    Those three things are not equal. Life is more important than liberty. Liberty is more important than property.
    - ominous 10y ago
      Opinions may differ, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...!
      - aninhumer 10y ago
        Fixed link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...
        ominous 10y ago
        Thanks, didn't notice it. Url encode? Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...
ommunist 10y ago
Bitcoin or any "cryptocurrency" has nothing to do with "human rights". You can keep it, but you also can choose not to. Human right is something you cannot easily revoke. For example, slavery was historically recently prohibited in the UK. Since then, you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are willing to.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are willing to. That's because human rights are inalienable, meaning they can neither be taken nor given away.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - ommunist 10y ago
    "Human rights" were introduced historically very recently, including concept of their inalienability. Concept of "justice" is much older. Thank you for clarification, I really like the word "inalienable".
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      Human rights have always been there, it's just that recently they were discovered (not invented).
      - ommunist 10y ago
        Cant find any human right on me, or with microscope. Guess this is pure speculation, used for human resources management.
- humanrebar 10y ago
throw2016 10y ago
Money is an integral part of a social system and stability. You can't 'disrupt' money without disrupting governance, rule of law, accountability and systems. We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to us to varying degrees than self appointed shadowy crypto currency cliques with zero transparency and accountability. The monetary system certainly cannot be in private hands. The 'solution' peddled in a frenzy by early adopters is tainted by self interest and infinitely worse than any problem with central banks and current monetary systems.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to us to varying degrees Ah, but there's the rub. How accountable are they, really? In the software industry, you find out that if "everyone" is responsible for something, then all too often, no one is. And even if they are accountable to people in general, what happens when they fail individuals? Like this guy who had £440,000 of lawsuit-settlement money seized by Barclays on money-laundering suspicions: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-took-my-440000-customers-caught-up-banks-de-risking-money-laundering-laws https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-took-...
js8 10y ago
I am not sure how is that supposed to work. If someone steals or cheats and then launders the money into Bitcoin or whatever, should he have the right to keep it? Presumably, no. That would mean that right itself would depend on the legality of the process with which the wealth was obtained, and that's kinda circular. I could however imagine supporting right to control your wealth up to the point of the average wealth of a human being on the planet. That would be within the spirit of human equality and universality of human rights. And in practice, I wish I had at least a right to count my money in public, and publish my salary (without annoying my employer).
nikolay 10y ago
Most human beings don't have any wealth - or it's negative!
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  Human capital is wealth. Indeed, it's some of the most valuable stuff around, though notoriously illiquid.
  - nikolay 10y ago
    True, but I don't think that's what they mean here. Talking about wealth to the poor is like talking about intelligence to the idiots... I think Coinbase are too full of themselves!
- gjm11 10y ago
  Global median net wealth is about $2200. Most human beings have positive, not negative, wealth, even if not an awful lot of it. For global wealth info, go to https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/resear... where you'll find a nicely presented Report and a Databook with more numbers in it. The Databook has a table (Table 2-4) giving estimated median wealth per adult for all the world's countries (or something like all; I haven't checked). Many of the figures are small, but not one is negative. I'm fairly sure these figures are net of debt, but it's not 100% clear. So, just in case, compare those figures with the ones in the previous column, listing debt per adult; the only countries where the debt figure exceeds the wealth figures are (unless I missed some) Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany (!), Malaysia, Maldives, Sweden, the US. (I believe from other sources that US median net wealth is comfortably positive, which is one reason why I am pretty sure the figures in the "median wealth" column of Table 2-4 are net of debt.)
  - jly 10y ago
    Half of all adults own < USD $2,200. The bottom 20% (something like 1 billion adults today) own < USD $248. Inequality is increasing - the top 1% own almost 51% of global assets. These statistics show that most humans have very little accumulated wealth to control, and very few humans have a lot of the total global wealth.
3pt14159 10y ago
From the article: > I list [the lack of wealth redistribution] as a con because I think most people view it as one, but it’s not clear that it is one. It is widely clear that its a con, especially in the advent of the current forces in the world. Global warming has made some places on the planet impossible to live on without wealth redistribution and technology gains largely go to the extremely talented or the extremely wealthy. Furthermore "controlling your own wealth" is basically translatable to "doing whatever you want with stuff" which is so clearly a bad idea. Can I "control my wealth" towards bribing a politician? Can I "control my wealth" by burning a bunch of methane on a boat in the middle of the atlantic? Property / wealth is an important institution for many reasons, and crypto-currencies should be tolerated for now, but if the world starts to show signs of regular kidnappings for BTC ransoms then we should use political action to put an end to the anonymity or lack of state control that they provide.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
The misnomer in "own wealth" is in the word "own". The only reason that wealth exists is because of history and society. The only reason that its yours to control is because capitalism is a relatively efficient and natural way to allocate and control wealth. Thought experiment: a world without history & society. 7 billion people, with the resources of the world fairly divided amongst those 7 billion, but these people come into the world as blank adults without any knowledge of the past. They'd quickly starve. Even hunting and gathering requires a surprising amount of training to do successfully, and the world cannot support 7 billion people in a hunter and gatherer lifestyle. Even if your Mom & Dad taught you the skills of subsistence farming you'd still starve; we don't have enough farmland to grow enough food for 7 billion without modern farming techniques. But for the sake of this argument let's suppose your parents taught you how to farm and make your own tools, shelter, etc and you have enough land to live on. Subsistence farming is something you can do on a heavily populated world without the knowledge or cooperation or interference of any others. And it's pretty much the only thing. Anything else requires history & society & cooperation forced or unforced. We've the inheritance of Aristotle, Newton, Watt, Einstein, Borlaug, Caesar, Washington, Confucius and innumerable others. We control the wealth because they're all dead and we've inherited it. We're mice standing on the shoulders of giants. Certainly we have all done something to be granted our wealth. Some of us may have inherited it, but most of us do our 9-5 or more. But what we do is such a small part compared to what came before. We spent 12-20 years in school being taught by society, protected by society, enabled by society and learning from history, given to you by your employer or your customers. It's efficient and natural for you to control the wealth that comes into your hands; taxation and government implies a certain amount of waste. But society has just as much of a claim as you do. At least on any part more than that of a subsistence farmer.
- narag 10y ago
  The only reason that wealth exists is because of history and society. That is a bit extreme. You can hoard basic goods (wheat, lumber, livestock) or build infrastructure (house, barn, pipes) for your own use in the future, without involving state or society. Society can more or less work without private property but a free society can not. We tend to think of the State as an abstract law infrastructure, but it is not. Who does make, apply, execute the laws?
b3lvedere 10y ago
"51% of more of the participants on a network must agree to a change." "Governments exist to serve their citizens." In a democracy you also need 51% or more of the votes and everybody is equal. We all know the real world works very very differently.
codingdave 10y ago
Not that the points are invalid, but this is posted on a site hosted by a company that profits when people switch to digital currencies. Good marketing uses truth, and you may agree and use their product.... which is what makes it good marketing. But it is still marketing, and it is good to be aware of that.
whack 10y ago
Interesting that the article talks about wealth but not income. After all, today's income is tomorrow's wealth. If control over your wealth is a "basic human right", then shouldn't control over your income and cash flow also be a"basic human right" for all the exact same reasons given? And if control over your income is a basic human right, and nations like US and Canada have tax rates approaching 40% on high earners, does that mean they are violating basic human rights? At what tax rates do we go from economic-policy to human-rights-violations? I agree with the other comments here. The whole point of human rights is to enshrine the things that we absolutely need for our physical and psychological needs. Water, air, housing, safety, education. To claim that taxation, inflation and demonetization are a violation of human rights, devalues the term itself.
- meanduck 10y ago
  If something is being done against someone's will ==> Basic Human Right is being violated. Thus Taxation by the definition, is a human right violation for many.
  - whack 10y ago
    So your opinion is that every major nation in the world, by having mandatory taxes, is violating basic human rights. It's exactly statements like this which dilute and devalue the power of terms like "human rights." If you are a hardcore libertarian, and want to claim that every major nation violates libertarian principles, more power to you. But don't appropriate the term "basic human rights" towards a political ideology that it was never meant to represent.
    - meanduck 10y ago
      "Dont do somthing that you dont want to be done to yourself." is probably the reason that give birth to every basic human right. So yes its absolutely appropriate. You dont have to be even a libertarian to realize that.
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
The prohibition of other people controlling your wealth as a negative right (as is simply represents inaction of others interfering), therefore I must consider it a basic human right. "Rights considered negative rights may include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, life, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
d--b 10y ago
"my product as a basic human right"... sigh... Putting all one's money in a bitcoin account doesn't sound like the best solution to hyperinflation and cash confiscation in poor countries. Why not buy US dollars or gold?
- ssharp 10y ago
  Because US dollars are controlled by the evil US government and not the not-at-all-self-interested Chinese bitcoin miners and speculators \s.
twoquestions 10y ago
I disagree with the notion that property ownership should be provided as a right, for free, and that any regulation or control over the property the State protects is an atrocity on par with slavery. Don't get me wrong, in general I very much like the concept of private citizens managing capital rather than the State (though I wish workers had a bigger say in how capital is managed, but I digress), but there are times when States have to exercise some control over the property they protect in order to protect itself and the property it guards. Keep in mind, the Draft is a thing the State can do, the trick is to use such controls as lightly as possible. Private control and ownership of property, while important, must necessarily be secondary to the stability and protection of the society it inhabits. Also read bryanlarsen's comment, they go into good detail on how the State enhances private citizen's ability to create and accumulate capital.
- hacknat 10y ago
  Also individual property rights have not been the norm for most of human history, and in much of the world they still aren't. Obtaining mining rights to land in Papua New Guinea is incredibly difficult because the state recognizes historic communal land ownership rights. One member of a tribe can veto mining rights. The possibilities for wealth creation are enormous when you enforce individual property rights strictly, but it comes at the cost of a more egalitarian society.
  - mseebach 10y ago
    > Also individual property rights have not been the norm for most of human history, and in much of the world they still aren't And those places can be easily recognised by their widespread abject poverty. Papua New Guinea has a GDP per capita of $2k, Australia $42k. PNG has a 40% poverty rate and it's ranked as one of the worst places for violence against women. Life expectancy is 62, a full 20 years behind Australia. But, hey, they're more egalitarian, so that's great.
    - twoquestions 10y ago
      I don't think hacknat disagrees with you, and I certainly don't. What I read is that what we call "property rights" is a fairly new idea, and we shouldn't treat it as "natural" or as a fundamental law of the universe as some do. For the record, I'm in full agreement that excessive restriction on property and capital has costs. Creating and maintaining the idea of "private property" has costs too.
Bartweiss 10y ago
As usual, I find Paul Graham's comments on economic theory incredibly frustrating. This piece just uses the pull quote "a great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace." Graham's article about that goes on to theorize that this might be sufficient, and if so that only guild monopolies prevented earlier industrialization. This is, in a word, stupid. Stability is a necessary component of industrialization - though stability to invest is even more directly required than stability to profit. This is not a breakthrough idea, I learned it in high school. Graham just hasn't read enough of the "great deal" he references to discover that. Stability is thoroughly insufficient - there's a laundry list of other requirements, with agricultural advances driving most of the other keys (especially, concentration of capital for investment and displacement of workers from food production). All of this is well-studied, heavily-analyzed content. It's not new to this article, or Graham, they're just reworking theory from scratch. It's not especially egregious here, and I'm not attacking the conclusions of the article by pointing this out. But it's a problem that crops up a lot (ever read pg's thoughts on the Edict of Diocletian?) and it's exhausting to read ground-up recreations of basic theory.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
user150987 10y ago
Since the article is about Bitcoin and human rights I think it's worth mentioning that Monero is the only crypto currency that protects your financial privacy. Privacy is an important part of controlling your own wealth not least because it makes money fungible and doesn't allow discrimination against where coins have been spent previously.
jly 10y ago
> everyman has a property in his person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hand, we may say, are properly his - John Locke Locke wrote this envisioning people producing a measured but fair output from their labor - growing food, making durable goods, etc - and the modest property and wealth that could be obtained from this effort. In modern times, the true value of goods and services is skewed drastically in favor of those that own means of production, increasing exploitation of those that don't. Locke saw the potential but then less fully realized problem of unlimited accumulation and concentration of property and wealth and he wrote the government should moderate this and more equally distribute wealth. Allowing one to fully control their wealth may increase innovation, but there are downsides to this without some controls in place to control dangerous unchecked accumulation of wealth. I disagree with the premise that "smartphones and steam engines" are a justification for this because they improve the human condition. They improve it for some, at a huge cost to others.

106 points by aminok 10y ago

> but it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth of the poorest people. This is a blatantly incorrect statement (that shows the bias of the author). Old currency could be turned into bank accounts, and then out to new currency. The inconvenience was around the logistics of getting new notes into circulation (which was indeed managed badly in many parts), but no way can this be conflated with 'wiped out a large percentage of wealth'. The author's bias is making that leap.

sleepychu 10y ago
You're right but the author isn't totally incorrect.[0] >But with the note shortage in India, cash is precious and the queue-jumping jugaad has a dark side. As banks quickly run out of cash, many have to go hungry if they cannot make it to the front of the line. Others have to take days off work to wait in line. One man, standing in the queue at the bank, who does odd jobs for a launderette, says he will phone his boss when he reaches the front, so that he can come and make a cash deposit. “Every man, whether he’s rich or poor, has a mouth to feed. But somehow, only ordinary folks like us end up standing in line,” he says. [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-lines-controversy-cash-for-queuing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/28/india-bank-lin...
- notahacker 10y ago
  However counterproductive India's change might have been, I don't think you can call statements like "it also wiped out a large percentage of the wealth of the poorest people" and "One could argue that the Indian government recalling bank notes had a positive impact on citizens (more tax revenue for education, roads, etc). Yet it also harmed millions by eroding their wealth" anything other than a misrepresentation of what the Indian government actually did. I don't think it serves the Bitcoin ecosystem well when CEOs of some of its most trustworthy platforms make such flatly wrong statements on basic finanical issues. More generally, it's a counterproductive line of rhetoric to take when the average person in the developed world is several orders of magnitude more likely to suffer significant wealth loss through BTC volatility, platform malfeasance or government crackdown on domestic bitcoin use than hyperinflation or generalised currency seizures by Western goverments.
denzil_correa 10y ago
> The inconvenience was around the logistics of getting new news into circulation (which was indeed managed badly in many parts) 86% of the currency in the market was wiped out to target 6% of unaccounted income in cash. There is no way to even justify such a policy forget manage it.
- anilgulecha 10y ago
  > wiped out. Another example of misrepresentation. (The value was not wiped out.)
  - addicted 10y ago
    And it's also absolutely incorrect. The reality is that the vast majority of the bank notes were actually deposited and did not get wasted. Actually, some who have a slightly darker view of the actual reasoniwho behind why this was done contend that one of the biggest reasons behind "demonetizabehind was that the govt expected a significant chunk of money to NOT be deposited into banks, thereby helping the govt's finances (cash is essentially a loan owed by the govt. Cash that was not converted and therefore made valueless meant the govt owed less money). If this view is correct, one of the biggest failures of demonetization was that such a large percentage of cash was converted that the govt didn't benefit from this avenue. Furthermore, all the articles about how day laborers go without food ignore the fact that day laborers routinely went without food even before demonetization. The question should have been how much worse it made things for day laborers, something which few articles even attempt to answer. Finally, it's hard for Westerners to recognize how much more integrated digital services through cellphones are in the daily lives of poor people in Asia and Africa compared to NA and Europe.
    - scott_s 10y ago
      Are you aware of stats for how many of the cancelled currency was deposited? I heard stories of families losing significant fractions of their savings, but of course that's anecdote, not data.
solatic 10y ago
It is a statement which is de jure incorrect but de facto correct. The timelines were completely unrealistic from a logistical standpoint. India is not yet at a stage where poor people can make their day-to-day transactions with debit cards instead of cash. Being able to deposit their savings in time by the deadline is a pointless irrelevancy if the bank cannot give them enough valid currency in return for their daily needs. One needs only look at the downturn in India's recent economic figures to see the macro results.

justusw 10y ago

Talking about pragmatic human rights: Fiat money exists as legal tender in many countries in one form or another. No shop keeper can turn you down for wanting to pay with Dollars. With Bitcoin that's a different story. While I wholeheartedly agree with all the benefits a currency like Bitcoin can offer, I think we're a long way from being able to use Bitcoin as an embodiment of basic human right.

matthewmacleod 10y ago
No shop keeper can turn you down for wanting to pay with Dollars. I do appreciate your point, although 'legal tender' is generally only a relative term with regard to payment of debts. A seller is not otherwise obliged to accept dollars.
- otheotheothe 10y ago
  That's not true, my local german bakery simply doesnt accept big euro bills with the premise it could be fake money, which is nonsense as the smaller bills get faked more often, shit like this can't happen with bitcoin. They also dont accept debit cards so u can be screwed if u have only a 100 eur bill with you..
  - krallja 10y ago
    I think you responded to the wrong comment.

jonathanstrange 10y ago

Kind of sad when people make such suggestions, not because it's alright if the government interferes with ones wealth, but because they thereby implicitly water down the concept of human rights. Basic human rights are being treated as an equal to other human beings and with human dignity, being allowed to live, prohibition of slavery, being treated equal in front of the law and getting due process, and not being tortured. Everybody should be able to agree on them. Yes, maybe controlling your own wealth should a right. But please don't put it on a par with basic human rights.

WalterBright 10y ago
Property rights are basic human rights. John Locke wrote of "life, liberty and property".
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  Those three things are not equal. Life is more important than liberty. Liberty is more important than property.
  - ominous 10y ago
    Opinions may differ, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...!
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      Fixed link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...
      - ominous 10y ago
        Thanks, didn't notice it. Url encode? Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death%21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_de...

ommunist 10y ago

Bitcoin or any "cryptocurrency" has nothing to do with "human rights". You can keep it, but you also can choose not to. Human right is something you cannot easily revoke. For example, slavery was historically recently prohibited in the UK. Since then, you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are willing to.

WalterBright 10y ago
> you cannot sell yourself as a slave even if you are willing to. That's because human rights are inalienable, meaning they can neither be taken nor given away.
- deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
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- ommunist 10y ago
  "Human rights" were introduced historically very recently, including concept of their inalienability. Concept of "justice" is much older. Thank you for clarification, I really like the word "inalienable".
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Human rights have always been there, it's just that recently they were discovered (not invented).
    - ommunist 10y ago
      Cant find any human right on me, or with microscope. Guess this is pure speculation, used for human resources management.
humanrebar 10y ago

throw2016 10y ago

Money is an integral part of a social system and stability. You can't 'disrupt' money without disrupting governance, rule of law, accountability and systems. We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to us to varying degrees than self appointed shadowy crypto currency cliques with zero transparency and accountability. The monetary system certainly cannot be in private hands. The 'solution' peddled in a frenzy by early adopters is tainted by self interest and infinitely worse than any problem with central banks and current monetary systems.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
> We are far safer with governments and central banks that are accountable to us to varying degrees Ah, but there's the rub. How accountable are they, really? In the software industry, you find out that if "everyone" is responsible for something, then all too often, no one is. And even if they are accountable to people in general, what happens when they fail individuals? Like this guy who had £440,000 of lawsuit-settlement money seized by Barclays on money-laundering suspicions: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-took-my-440000-customers-caught-up-banks-de-risking-money-laundering-laws https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/22/barclays-took-...

js8 10y ago

I am not sure how is that supposed to work. If someone steals or cheats and then launders the money into Bitcoin or whatever, should he have the right to keep it? Presumably, no. That would mean that right itself would depend on the legality of the process with which the wealth was obtained, and that's kinda circular. I could however imagine supporting right to control your wealth up to the point of the average wealth of a human being on the planet. That would be within the spirit of human equality and universality of human rights. And in practice, I wish I had at least a right to count my money in public, and publish my salary (without annoying my employer).

nikolay 10y ago

Most human beings don't have any wealth - or it's negative!

fennecfoxen 10y ago
Human capital is wealth. Indeed, it's some of the most valuable stuff around, though notoriously illiquid.
- nikolay 10y ago
  True, but I don't think that's what they mean here. Talking about wealth to the poor is like talking about intelligence to the idiots... I think Coinbase are too full of themselves!
gjm11 10y ago
Global median net wealth is about $2200. Most human beings have positive, not negative, wealth, even if not an awful lot of it. For global wealth info, go to https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about-us/research/resear... where you'll find a nicely presented Report and a Databook with more numbers in it. The Databook has a table (Table 2-4) giving estimated median wealth per adult for all the world's countries (or something like all; I haven't checked). Many of the figures are small, but not one is negative. I'm fairly sure these figures are net of debt, but it's not 100% clear. So, just in case, compare those figures with the ones in the previous column, listing debt per adult; the only countries where the debt figure exceeds the wealth figures are (unless I missed some) Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany (!), Malaysia, Maldives, Sweden, the US. (I believe from other sources that US median net wealth is comfortably positive, which is one reason why I am pretty sure the figures in the "median wealth" column of Table 2-4 are net of debt.)
- jly 10y ago
  Half of all adults own < USD $2,200. The bottom 20% (something like 1 billion adults today) own < USD $248. Inequality is increasing - the top 1% own almost 51% of global assets. These statistics show that most humans have very little accumulated wealth to control, and very few humans have a lot of the total global wealth.

3pt14159 10y ago

From the article: > I list [the lack of wealth redistribution] as a con because I think most people view it as one, but it’s not clear that it is one. It is widely clear that its a con, especially in the advent of the current forces in the world. Global warming has made some places on the planet impossible to live on without wealth redistribution and technology gains largely go to the extremely talented or the extremely wealthy. Furthermore "controlling your own wealth" is basically translatable to "doing whatever you want with stuff" which is so clearly a bad idea. Can I "control my wealth" towards bribing a politician? Can I "control my wealth" by burning a bunch of methane on a boat in the middle of the atlantic? Property / wealth is an important institution for many reasons, and crypto-currencies should be tolerated for now, but if the world starts to show signs of regular kidnappings for BTC ransoms then we should use political action to put an end to the anonymity or lack of state control that they provide.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

The misnomer in "own wealth" is in the word "own". The only reason that wealth exists is because of history and society. The only reason that its yours to control is because capitalism is a relatively efficient and natural way to allocate and control wealth. Thought experiment: a world without history & society. 7 billion people, with the resources of the world fairly divided amongst those 7 billion, but these people come into the world as blank adults without any knowledge of the past. They'd quickly starve. Even hunting and gathering requires a surprising amount of training to do successfully, and the world cannot support 7 billion people in a hunter and gatherer lifestyle. Even if your Mom & Dad taught you the skills of subsistence farming you'd still starve; we don't have enough farmland to grow enough food for 7 billion without modern farming techniques. But for the sake of this argument let's suppose your parents taught you how to farm and make your own tools, shelter, etc and you have enough land to live on. Subsistence farming is something you can do on a heavily populated world without the knowledge or cooperation or interference of any others. And it's pretty much the only thing. Anything else requires history & society & cooperation forced or unforced. We've the inheritance of Aristotle, Newton, Watt, Einstein, Borlaug, Caesar, Washington, Confucius and innumerable others. We control the wealth because they're all dead and we've inherited it. We're mice standing on the shoulders of giants. Certainly we have all done something to be granted our wealth. Some of us may have inherited it, but most of us do our 9-5 or more. But what we do is such a small part compared to what came before. We spent 12-20 years in school being taught by society, protected by society, enabled by society and learning from history, given to you by your employer or your customers. It's efficient and natural for you to control the wealth that comes into your hands; taxation and government implies a certain amount of waste. But society has just as much of a claim as you do. At least on any part more than that of a subsistence farmer.

narag 10y ago
The only reason that wealth exists is because of history and society. That is a bit extreme. You can hoard basic goods (wheat, lumber, livestock) or build infrastructure (house, barn, pipes) for your own use in the future, without involving state or society. Society can more or less work without private property but a free society can not. We tend to think of the State as an abstract law infrastructure, but it is not. Who does make, apply, execute the laws?

b3lvedere 10y ago

"51% of more of the participants on a network must agree to a change." "Governments exist to serve their citizens." In a democracy you also need 51% or more of the votes and everybody is equal. We all know the real world works very very differently.

codingdave 10y ago

Not that the points are invalid, but this is posted on a site hosted by a company that profits when people switch to digital currencies. Good marketing uses truth, and you may agree and use their product.... which is what makes it good marketing. But it is still marketing, and it is good to be aware of that.

whack 10y ago

Interesting that the article talks about wealth but not income. After all, today's income is tomorrow's wealth. If control over your wealth is a "basic human right", then shouldn't control over your income and cash flow also be a"basic human right" for all the exact same reasons given? And if control over your income is a basic human right, and nations like US and Canada have tax rates approaching 40% on high earners, does that mean they are violating basic human rights? At what tax rates do we go from economic-policy to human-rights-violations? I agree with the other comments here. The whole point of human rights is to enshrine the things that we absolutely need for our physical and psychological needs. Water, air, housing, safety, education. To claim that taxation, inflation and demonetization are a violation of human rights, devalues the term itself.

meanduck 10y ago
If something is being done against someone's will ==> Basic Human Right is being violated. Thus Taxation by the definition, is a human right violation for many.
- whack 10y ago
  So your opinion is that every major nation in the world, by having mandatory taxes, is violating basic human rights. It's exactly statements like this which dilute and devalue the power of terms like "human rights." If you are a hardcore libertarian, and want to claim that every major nation violates libertarian principles, more power to you. But don't appropriate the term "basic human rights" towards a political ideology that it was never meant to represent.
  - meanduck 10y ago
    "Dont do somthing that you dont want to be done to yourself." is probably the reason that give birth to every basic human right. So yes its absolutely appropriate. You dont have to be even a libertarian to realize that.

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

The prohibition of other people controlling your wealth as a negative right (as is simply represents inaction of others interfering), therefore I must consider it a basic human right. "Rights considered negative rights may include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, life, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

d--b 10y ago

"my product as a basic human right"... sigh... Putting all one's money in a bitcoin account doesn't sound like the best solution to hyperinflation and cash confiscation in poor countries. Why not buy US dollars or gold?

ssharp 10y ago
Because US dollars are controlled by the evil US government and not the not-at-all-self-interested Chinese bitcoin miners and speculators \s.

twoquestions 10y ago

I disagree with the notion that property ownership should be provided as a right, for free, and that any regulation or control over the property the State protects is an atrocity on par with slavery. Don't get me wrong, in general I very much like the concept of private citizens managing capital rather than the State (though I wish workers had a bigger say in how capital is managed, but I digress), but there are times when States have to exercise some control over the property they protect in order to protect itself and the property it guards. Keep in mind, the Draft is a thing the State can do, the trick is to use such controls as lightly as possible. Private control and ownership of property, while important, must necessarily be secondary to the stability and protection of the society it inhabits. Also read bryanlarsen's comment, they go into good detail on how the State enhances private citizen's ability to create and accumulate capital.

hacknat 10y ago
Also individual property rights have not been the norm for most of human history, and in much of the world they still aren't. Obtaining mining rights to land in Papua New Guinea is incredibly difficult because the state recognizes historic communal land ownership rights. One member of a tribe can veto mining rights. The possibilities for wealth creation are enormous when you enforce individual property rights strictly, but it comes at the cost of a more egalitarian society.
- mseebach 10y ago
  > Also individual property rights have not been the norm for most of human history, and in much of the world they still aren't And those places can be easily recognised by their widespread abject poverty. Papua New Guinea has a GDP per capita of $2k, Australia $42k. PNG has a 40% poverty rate and it's ranked as one of the worst places for violence against women. Life expectancy is 62, a full 20 years behind Australia. But, hey, they're more egalitarian, so that's great.
  - twoquestions 10y ago
    I don't think hacknat disagrees with you, and I certainly don't. What I read is that what we call "property rights" is a fairly new idea, and we shouldn't treat it as "natural" or as a fundamental law of the universe as some do. For the record, I'm in full agreement that excessive restriction on property and capital has costs. Creating and maintaining the idea of "private property" has costs too.

Bartweiss 10y ago

As usual, I find Paul Graham's comments on economic theory incredibly frustrating. This piece just uses the pull quote "a great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace." Graham's article about that goes on to theorize that this might be sufficient, and if so that only guild monopolies prevented earlier industrialization. This is, in a word, stupid. Stability is a necessary component of industrialization - though stability to invest is even more directly required than stability to profit. This is not a breakthrough idea, I learned it in high school. Graham just hasn't read enough of the "great deal" he references to discover that. Stability is thoroughly insufficient - there's a laundry list of other requirements, with agricultural advances driving most of the other keys (especially, concentration of capital for investment and displacement of workers from food production). All of this is well-studied, heavily-analyzed content. It's not new to this article, or Graham, they're just reworking theory from scratch. It's not especially egregious here, and I'm not attacking the conclusions of the article by pointing this out. But it's a problem that crops up a lot (ever read pg's thoughts on the Edict of Diocletian?) and it's exhausting to read ground-up recreations of basic theory.

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user150987 10y ago

Since the article is about Bitcoin and human rights I think it's worth mentioning that Monero is the only crypto currency that protects your financial privacy. Privacy is an important part of controlling your own wealth not least because it makes money fungible and doesn't allow discrimination against where coins have been spent previously.

jly 10y ago

> everyman has a property in his person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hand, we may say, are properly his - John Locke Locke wrote this envisioning people producing a measured but fair output from their labor - growing food, making durable goods, etc - and the modest property and wealth that could be obtained from this effort. In modern times, the true value of goods and services is skewed drastically in favor of those that own means of production, increasing exploitation of those that don't. Locke saw the potential but then less fully realized problem of unlimited accumulation and concentration of property and wealth and he wrote the government should moderate this and more equally distribute wealth. Allowing one to fully control their wealth may increase innovation, but there are downsides to this without some controls in place to control dangerous unchecked accumulation of wealth. I disagree with the premise that "smartphones and steam engines" are a justification for this because they improve the human condition. They improve it for some, at a huge cost to others.