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>“And in 2019, when you hear people complaining about Bitcoin and warning about it, what you are hearing are the voices of people in 1637 saying: you shouldn’t
by deadmetheny 7y ago
>“And in 2019, when you hear people complaining about Bitcoin and warning about it, what you are hearing are the voices of people in 1637 saying: you shouldn’t be involved in this trade. You’re the wrong person, you don’t know enough.”
Why would you torpedo a good article at the very end with such a stupid paragraph?
- dmos62 7y agoI had a similar qualm, but this summarizes it better: "The story of the tulip bubble boils down to a story of fools and greed, Goldgar says. And that’s why it sticks with us." There's something about reducing this to just greed. What I personally want, is a story that can contextualize that greed better, explore it more, and not just end with "that's greed for you" (paraphrasing).
- logicx24 7y agoExactly. It's a complete mischaracterization to call every stock market boom and bust cycle a result of "greed," and yet people refuse to stop doing so. I guess it creates a sense of moral outrage, and makes readers feel righteously justified.
- dmos62 7y agoI was having trouble putting this into words, but now after having a think, I liked when Goldgar got into the historical context of the crisis. To heavily paraphrase, in that stratified society, speculation appeared to be a way to climb the social ladder. The article's author, the one quoting Goldgar, obviously didn't interpret it this way. I'm not saying Goldgar sees the tulip bubble that way, or that it's a historically accurate narrative, but it's miles better than saying it was caused by "fools and greed", which is similar to saying that something was caused by evil. I guess my principal point is that stupidity, greed and evil are fundamentally socioeconomic symptoms, in that they are not explanations of themselves.
- spelunker 7y agoBuy bitcoin, got it.
- woah 7y agoUh oh, this doesn’t match up with the narrative that Hacker News was hoping for. The reporter must be stupid!
- dang 7y agoPlease don't post shallow dismissals here. It's in particularly poor taste to diss a community that you belong to. You're as much a part of HN as anyone else is.
- 781 7y agoOn HN every article about Bitcoin has someone saying "tulips" and another one "beanie babies"
- fiatCurrency 7y ago"Fiat currency."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neilv 7y agoExcepting the ambiguous last sentence, the article transitions from the click-friendly topic, into a strange demagoguery spin of pushing Bitcoin speculation. Summary message: The wealthy are discouraging the lower classes from speculating in Bitcoin, saying the lower classes don't understand it, only because they fear the undesirables will become rich like them. The last sentence doesn't undo that.