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> You take your fiat and you invest it and nothing you say below the first paragraph matters. If only. The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fi

> You take your fiat and you invest it and nothing you say below the first paragraph matters. If only. The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fiat, but that is in the hands of the government who knows not how to exercise constraint and inflates it at will to "pay" for things, more realistically, to promise to pay for things that if it had to actually pay for it will never be able to afford. > The issue is that people don’t have money, and they don’t have wealth. This is strictly a social problem. What do you think money is? Money is how societies choose to interact with each other; in a sense, money IS society, at the very least money is the first brick on which to build one. The government printing money and using it to pay for political favors (via military or natural resources contracts, monopoly markets, etc.) is at the core of the wealth gap. > Replacing one inflationary currency with a worse distribution than a banana republic, with a different deflationary currency with a worse distribution than a banana republic changes nothing. You don't understand what bitcoin is. Bitcoin's advantage is that the inflation rate is not controlled by the government, ie. they can't print money to buy stuff they can't afford, With bitcoin, governments can't print the wealth gap.

arcticbull 6y ago
> The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fiat, but that is in the hands of the government who knows not how to exercise constraint and inflates it at will to "pay" for things, more realistically, to promise to pay for things that if it had to actually pay for it will never be able to afford. If economic growth outpaces debt growth then it does not ever have to be paid back. > ...what do you think money is? Money is an intentionally lossy temporary store or value and a medium of exchange. Interact, yes. Store long term, no. If you have problems with monetary policy vote in a new government, just taking your ball to the BVI isn’t a solution. > ...you don’t understand what Bitcoin is. I understand full well, and I believe those are bad things. Deflation is bad, for the reason I stated, and an inability to print means an inability to respond to geopolitical shocks (like COVID, for instance Canada has been paying everyone $2000/month this whole time). Not to mention an inability to grow supply with the entry of new market participants. Bitcoin cannot and will not change the wealth gap when it’s overwhelmingly spoken for already. The best you can do is sentence your children to fight for scraps while the new moneyed class of criminals and lowlifes continues to grow in relative wealth as a fraction of economic activity by doing literally nothing with their money - backed on an inflation schedule created and managed not by economists or experts but a narcotics smuggler and a bunch of random GitHub contributors. If you really want to change society for the better, run for office, don’t shill magic beans.
- georgesC 6y ago
  The fact that so many people don't know that cash/fiat is losing value over time makes it somewhat of a problem. Furthermore the creation of cash/fiat creates high benefits to those that benefits from the newly created money first, before the money spreads and devalues its value due to inflation over time. Inflation vs deflation debate is a complicated one, I don't know which is best in terms of enabling technical progress. One is more short termist, another is more long termist. But fiat/inflated currencies won't go away. It's just that those kinds of currencies just tends to blow up at some point because of inflation and human nature. It's more than nice to have other options, especially digital. The idea to have some kind of worldwide standard that is open and won't change is also nice.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Not changing is nice conceptually but very bad in practice because the real world changes. It doesn’t map. It’s one of those software engineering tendencies to rewrite instead of understand and improve. One side note though. Consider that inflation doesn’t affect the poor as the poor live paycheck to paycheck and wages in the US have kept pace with inflation. The wealthy don’t hold cash, they invest. Even cash tends to be held in a savings account with at least partially offsets inflationary pressure. Has it impacted anyone materially? I’d love to see some quantification.
    - georgesC 6y ago
      In practice, I'd say "selected" lower level standards aren't changed but built upon. Standard tools also tends to not change much. web protocols, C, C++, php, those are not getting away despite many attempts to reinvent the wheel. Maybe someone will make a better wheel one day, or maybe not, but for me it's nice to have a starting point in the domain of p2p "exchange" that may or may not be adopted as a standard. As for inflation, it makes it harder for the poor workers to become wealthier, but the issue is more when it stops being sustainable. Inflationary fiat has proven that it could fail. I personally don't trust those persons handling it and I feel that such sentiment is growing among people. There's reasons behind that. That is terrible for a currency. Governments may or may not start having a better monetary policy. We don't have guarantees and much control over it, that's the issue for me. I'd rather avoid an economical disaster and keep a business running than having to deal with the failure of others.

arcticbull 6y ago

> The problematic part of a fiat system is not that is fiat, but that is in the hands of the government who knows not how to exercise constraint and inflates it at will to "pay" for things, more realistically, to promise to pay for things that if it had to actually pay for it will never be able to afford. If economic growth outpaces debt growth then it does not ever have to be paid back. > ...what do you think money is? Money is an intentionally lossy temporary store or value and a medium of exchange. Interact, yes. Store long term, no. If you have problems with monetary policy vote in a new government, just taking your ball to the BVI isn’t a solution. > ...you don’t understand what Bitcoin is. I understand full well, and I believe those are bad things. Deflation is bad, for the reason I stated, and an inability to print means an inability to respond to geopolitical shocks (like COVID, for instance Canada has been paying everyone $2000/month this whole time). Not to mention an inability to grow supply with the entry of new market participants. Bitcoin cannot and will not change the wealth gap when it’s overwhelmingly spoken for already. The best you can do is sentence your children to fight for scraps while the new moneyed class of criminals and lowlifes continues to grow in relative wealth as a fraction of economic activity by doing literally nothing with their money - backed on an inflation schedule created and managed not by economists or experts but a narcotics smuggler and a bunch of random GitHub contributors. If you really want to change society for the better, run for office, don’t shill magic beans.

georgesC 6y ago
The fact that so many people don't know that cash/fiat is losing value over time makes it somewhat of a problem. Furthermore the creation of cash/fiat creates high benefits to those that benefits from the newly created money first, before the money spreads and devalues its value due to inflation over time. Inflation vs deflation debate is a complicated one, I don't know which is best in terms of enabling technical progress. One is more short termist, another is more long termist. But fiat/inflated currencies won't go away. It's just that those kinds of currencies just tends to blow up at some point because of inflation and human nature. It's more than nice to have other options, especially digital. The idea to have some kind of worldwide standard that is open and won't change is also nice.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Not changing is nice conceptually but very bad in practice because the real world changes. It doesn’t map. It’s one of those software engineering tendencies to rewrite instead of understand and improve. One side note though. Consider that inflation doesn’t affect the poor as the poor live paycheck to paycheck and wages in the US have kept pace with inflation. The wealthy don’t hold cash, they invest. Even cash tends to be held in a savings account with at least partially offsets inflationary pressure. Has it impacted anyone materially? I’d love to see some quantification.
  - georgesC 6y ago
    In practice, I'd say "selected" lower level standards aren't changed but built upon. Standard tools also tends to not change much. web protocols, C, C++, php, those are not getting away despite many attempts to reinvent the wheel. Maybe someone will make a better wheel one day, or maybe not, but for me it's nice to have a starting point in the domain of p2p "exchange" that may or may not be adopted as a standard. As for inflation, it makes it harder for the poor workers to become wealthier, but the issue is more when it stops being sustainable. Inflationary fiat has proven that it could fail. I personally don't trust those persons handling it and I feel that such sentiment is growing among people. There's reasons behind that. That is terrible for a currency. Governments may or may not start having a better monetary policy. We don't have guarantees and much control over it, that's the issue for me. I'd rather avoid an economical disaster and keep a business running than having to deal with the failure of others.