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Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. If anything, limited supplies of anything, including bitcoin, are a likely to spark wars, not end them.

Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. If anything, limited supplies of anything, including bitcoin, are a likely to spark wars, not end them. If you truly wish to help stop wars, join a peace-loving organization, attend marches, lobby politicians. You'll find all of the real work on this are in leftist organizations, which fight against the real foundations of war, such as inequality, ideas of exceptionalism, corporate greed and others. Fiat currency is well down on the list of the world's problems.

solosoyokaze 6y ago
> Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. Quite the contrary. You'll find that many currencies were created specifically to support an army or war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency
- simiones 6y ago
  Oh yes, ~400 years ago many things worked differently. In particular, currencies were less tied with states than they are today, leading to many kinds of financial manipulations that no longer happen, at least outside open conflict zones. If the US government wanted to go to war, was lacking money for this, and for some reason didn't want to seize the entire bitcoin network (which it could pretty easily do, make no mistake), it could simply issue its own cryptocoin, just like in 1652. And people will buy it, because they know the US is good for it, for the same reason that dollars don't particularly devalue even if you print another hundred billion of them today. It's important to understand that you can't fight social problems with technical solutions. The disgusting amounts of power that big states have make it impossible to oppose them with fun projects like bitcoin. If you are truly serious about combatting US imperialism, try reading some Noam Chomsky - that is a man that has spent his life fighting against these things, but also understanding the levers of power. Financial games are in the end games; they may seem important because it is where the rich spend their time, but if push comes to shove and the system is threatened, the game is quickly stopped and any necessary controls is asserted. Just look at what happened with the GME stock (and we haven't even seen the end of that). Make no mistake, if BTC ever becomes a real threat to any monetary system, you will see much worse than that. This can only be combatted in the arena of politics and democratic control, by changing the rules, not playing the game.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    1. Seizing Bitcoin is not as trivial as you think it is. 2. Fiat is not a social problem but a technological one that crypto is well poised to take on. 3. BTC is well on its way to passing gold in aggregate value. It's safe to say, it's no longer a "toy". 4. I'm left of Chomsky but in general, a big fan.
    - simiones 6y ago
      1. It's not trivial, but it's certainly not impossible for the US government. 2. I don't understand how fiat is a technological problem. Fiat was a solution to the problem of a fixed supply (gold-pegged) currency. Crypto is generally a step back. 3. The value of bitcoin is irrelevant to its impact on global financial systems. It can handle 7 transactions per second, while consuming more power than the Czech Republic. That people are willing to bet good money on it for now is does not mean that is should be taken seriously as an alternative to anything in the financial system. 4. Interesting, I honestly expected from your arguments that you were more in the area of a more-socially-conscious-than-average Rand Paul fan, glad to hear I was wrong.
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        1. I don't agree, it's also a great justification for why BTC uses so much power: to protect takeover from things like the US government. 2. Fiat is a technological solution, as is Bitcoin. Really though, the dichotomy between "social" and "tech" solutions is false. Technology and society are one and the same. 3. BTC has moved billions of dollars into crypto. That crypto can be pegged in smart contracts on more appropriate tech stacks (like ETH) to enable currency use-cases with alt coins. It's early days here, but very exciting. 4. There's not many leftist libertarians but it is an actual philosophy. Individual liberty + social and humanitarian thinking + acknowledgement of the role racism and exploitation has had in today's power structures. I believe in radical decentralization and leveraging technology and automation to make life better for all.
        simiones 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ashtonkem 6y ago
> Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. Arguably currency is a consequence of wars, as are markets[0]. Markets and currency (fiat & hard specie) are usually the consequence of states needing to raise armies, equip and pay for armies, and do something with the tribute collected from vanquished foes. Small scale agriculture can work on either physical barter or interpersonal debt systems, it's only when you need to equip and train men to fight full time that you need actual coinage and markets to produce arms for them and do something with whatever they seized abroad. Assuming that one accepts this, this is actually a pretty big problem for the "bitcoin will stop wars" crowd, as arguably currencies are a consequence of wars and not vice-versa. If one wants to stop wars, one has to tackle the root causes, not the side-effects. Furthermore, it's also clear that it's possible to organize and fund wars on the back of several different types of currency. We've seen wars funded with hard specie (early Roman Republic/empire), diluted hard specie (late Roman Empire), wheat backed coin (Sumaria), lead (Sparta), paper notes backed by land (French directory), gold backed paper (America pre-1971), fiat (everyone nowadays), and probably more still. There's really no clear reason why one couldn't use a cryptocurrency to organize and fund a war. Heck, if they actually worked it would probably make modern wars a bit easier. Modern conflict often involves the funding of proxy groups with a variety of openness and plausible deniability. This usually requires the actual transit of physical money, which is dangerous and expensive. The ability to just digitally wire a bunch of currency to your proxies without the need to fly pallets of money and gold to your proxy fighters would simplify things significantly for current world powers. The ultra-private currencies would be a pretty good way to send money to terrorist and rebel groups you don't want to be seen visible funding too. 0 - For more on this see David Graeber's Debt, the First 5000 Years.

solosoyokaze 6y ago

> Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. Quite the contrary. You'll find that many currencies were created specifically to support an army or war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_American_currency

simiones 6y ago
Oh yes, ~400 years ago many things worked differently. In particular, currencies were less tied with states than they are today, leading to many kinds of financial manipulations that no longer happen, at least outside open conflict zones. If the US government wanted to go to war, was lacking money for this, and for some reason didn't want to seize the entire bitcoin network (which it could pretty easily do, make no mistake), it could simply issue its own cryptocoin, just like in 1652. And people will buy it, because they know the US is good for it, for the same reason that dollars don't particularly devalue even if you print another hundred billion of them today. It's important to understand that you can't fight social problems with technical solutions. The disgusting amounts of power that big states have make it impossible to oppose them with fun projects like bitcoin. If you are truly serious about combatting US imperialism, try reading some Noam Chomsky - that is a man that has spent his life fighting against these things, but also understanding the levers of power. Financial games are in the end games; they may seem important because it is where the rich spend their time, but if push comes to shove and the system is threatened, the game is quickly stopped and any necessary controls is asserted. Just look at what happened with the GME stock (and we haven't even seen the end of that). Make no mistake, if BTC ever becomes a real threat to any monetary system, you will see much worse than that. This can only be combatted in the arena of politics and democratic control, by changing the rules, not playing the game.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  1. Seizing Bitcoin is not as trivial as you think it is. 2. Fiat is not a social problem but a technological one that crypto is well poised to take on. 3. BTC is well on its way to passing gold in aggregate value. It's safe to say, it's no longer a "toy". 4. I'm left of Chomsky but in general, a big fan.
  - simiones 6y ago
    1. It's not trivial, but it's certainly not impossible for the US government. 2. I don't understand how fiat is a technological problem. Fiat was a solution to the problem of a fixed supply (gold-pegged) currency. Crypto is generally a step back. 3. The value of bitcoin is irrelevant to its impact on global financial systems. It can handle 7 transactions per second, while consuming more power than the Czech Republic. That people are willing to bet good money on it for now is does not mean that is should be taken seriously as an alternative to anything in the financial system. 4. Interesting, I honestly expected from your arguments that you were more in the area of a more-socially-conscious-than-average Rand Paul fan, glad to hear I was wrong.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      1. I don't agree, it's also a great justification for why BTC uses so much power: to protect takeover from things like the US government. 2. Fiat is a technological solution, as is Bitcoin. Really though, the dichotomy between "social" and "tech" solutions is false. Technology and society are one and the same. 3. BTC has moved billions of dollars into crypto. That crypto can be pegged in smart contracts on more appropriate tech stacks (like ETH) to enable currency use-cases with alt coins. It's early days here, but very exciting. 4. There's not many leftist libertarians but it is an actual philosophy. Individual liberty + social and humanitarian thinking + acknowledgement of the role racism and exploitation has had in today's power structures. I believe in radical decentralization and leveraging technology and automation to make life better for all.
      - simiones 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ashtonkem 6y ago

> Warmongering has next to nothing to do with currency. Arguably currency is a consequence of wars, as are markets[0]. Markets and currency (fiat & hard specie) are usually the consequence of states needing to raise armies, equip and pay for armies, and do something with the tribute collected from vanquished foes. Small scale agriculture can work on either physical barter or interpersonal debt systems, it's only when you need to equip and train men to fight full time that you need actual coinage and markets to produce arms for them and do something with whatever they seized abroad. Assuming that one accepts this, this is actually a pretty big problem for the "bitcoin will stop wars" crowd, as arguably currencies are a consequence of wars and not vice-versa. If one wants to stop wars, one has to tackle the root causes, not the side-effects. Furthermore, it's also clear that it's possible to organize and fund wars on the back of several different types of currency. We've seen wars funded with hard specie (early Roman Republic/empire), diluted hard specie (late Roman Empire), wheat backed coin (Sumaria), lead (Sparta), paper notes backed by land (French directory), gold backed paper (America pre-1971), fiat (everyone nowadays), and probably more still. There's really no clear reason why one couldn't use a cryptocurrency to organize and fund a war. Heck, if they actually worked it would probably make modern wars a bit easier. Modern conflict often involves the funding of proxy groups with a variety of openness and plausible deniability. This usually requires the actual transit of physical money, which is dangerous and expensive. The ability to just digitally wire a bunch of currency to your proxies without the need to fly pallets of money and gold to your proxy fighters would simplify things significantly for current world powers. The ultra-private currencies would be a pretty good way to send money to terrorist and rebel groups you don't want to be seen visible funding too. 0 - For more on this see David Graeber's Debt, the First 5000 Years.