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The idea that bitcoin will magically make armies obsolete is one of the most laughably silly ideas I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s quite the bar to clear.

• keymone 8y ago
  why obsolete? i never said that. bitcoin will just decouple money security from state security. which is why when you compare energy consumption, you need to include at least some chunk of resources dedicated to army, defence, etc.
  • jcranmer 8y ago
    You said "do these calculations take into account energy equivalent of running all the armies in the world, funding their wars and conflicts?" That's not "at least some chunk", that's the entire cost that you're trying to wedge in there.
    • keymone 8y ago
      ok, feel free to only include partial cost. how does that change my point?
      • village-idiot 8y ago
        The premise of “no fiat, less war” is just asserted without any proof, and is actually quite ahistorical.
        • keymone 8y ago
          i never said nor implied "no fiat, less war".
          • village-idiot 8y ago
            Now you’re just dodging the question. Prove your assertion that a country on bitcoin would need a smaller army. I’ll wait. Edit: saying that the economy would be deflationary and thus couldn’t afford a large army would be a hilarious way to go.
            • keymone 8y ago
              fiat's value is, at least partially, backed by an army that can defend/assert it. not having fiat eliminates the need for as much army.
              • village-idiot 8y ago
                There’s two issues here. First, the logic doesn’t work. Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”. This is a formal logic error called “denying the antecedent”, which means the argument is invalid. (You also don’t support A well, but that’s a side point because your logical assertion doesn’t work). Second, there are plenty of examples of rich fiat countries with small armies (Switzerland, 0.7% GDP defense spending) and non-fiat countries with massive army expenditures (Roman Empire, harder to calculate due to history and lower productivity, but at least 2.5% GDP and 80% of the entire government budget). The presence of both indicates that the form of currency a country uses is secondary to other intangible aspects when it comes to the formation and maintenance of large armies.
                • keymone 8y ago
                  > Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”. those are incorrect presumptions and therefore incorrect conclusion. A is "has fiat currency", B is "needs an army or other means to maintain fiat value". of course army is not the only thing, but it's one of the things in many of the countries. whatever other things other countries have to assert fiat value - those too consume some energy-equivalent of resources. army is just the most obvious and easy to understand example. and yes, there are also feedback loops, there is no strict causal relationship between the components of this system, which is yet another reason why you can't make these energy consumption comparisons without being intellectually dishonest.
        • andirk 8y ago
          I love the idea of "no fiat, less war". I also love the idea of "less war". I don't believe war is a natural human occurrence but instead usually done for gaining fiat. However, I do believe that trading is quite natural and our current fiat implementation often simplifies trade. So maybe a borderless fiat simplifies it even more.
          • village-idiot 8y ago
            Good luck explaining Rome then. No fiat, lots and lots of war.
      • jcranmer 8y ago
        In my opinion, the fraction of the cost of the army that goes to preserving fiat is somewhere in the region of 0%. What maintains the value of fiat is not government coercive action (e.g., having an army that forces people to use currency). Instead, the value is dictated by how much the populace believes it is worth. So it's the general government actions to maintain the health of the economy, and none of that would disappear if the government were to decide not to use fiat. Indeed, to the extent that you'd compare how much the government spends in a hypothetical world where it doesn't use fiat currency versus one that it does, it probably takes more resources in the first case (i.e., fiat currency is a net asset to the government, not a net cost).
• flatfilefan 8y ago
  Read on British debt and it’s relationship to the WWI and WWII.
  • village-idiot 8y ago
    The fundamental problem you’re going to have is that any point you decide is the beginning of debt based fiat currency, well there’s still a crap ton of war before it. If you say that the brits were really using fiat during WW1, a dubious argument, then I’m going to gleefully point out that the Romans conquered the Mediterranean using physical gold & silver coins; no fiat. It’s entirely possible to fund massive wars without fiat currencies. We know this because we’ve seen it time and again. Taxes and bonds can be used even with a hard metal currency, as does the handy expedient of promising a portion of the spoils of war. I see no reason why a bitcoin based country couldn’t just raise taxes and bonds just like the gold backed ones did for literally all of human history. Beyond that, the world hasn’t seen any truly massive multi-lateral engagements since the proliferation of fiat currency. While the Middle East remains a hot spot, there has been nothing to match the scale and hardship of a world war or a napoleonic war. If the theory is that fiat currency enables war, you’re going to have a very hard time explaining the limited scope of conflict since the abandonment of Bretton Woods in 1971.