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> There are modern solutions to transportation that are superior to cars, like rail, frequent busses, and bike infrastructure, Bicycles are nice but have lower

> There are modern solutions to transportation that are superior to cars, like rail, frequent busses, and bike infrastructure, Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and passengers; mass transit is less flexible. So they aren’t strictly superior. > Bitcoin does not solve any problem that any other transaction network technology can't solve, How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation?

heterodoxxed 6y ago
| How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? A deflationary distributed ledger has yet to prove itself as having any kind of real utility in the first place.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Its got utility to the people who use it, which is what matters.
  - heterodoxxed 6y ago
    A speculative store of value is not utility. Everybody gave up on it as a currency years ago.
    - solveit 6y ago
      A speculative store of value that everyone has coordinated upon is utility, and this has little to do with the quality of the underlying technology. The fact remains that I can pay merchants of varying degreees of shadiness in BTC much easier than I can send them a wire transfer. Now, you might not think this is good for the world, but it certainly is utility.
      - heterodoxxed 6y ago
        | pay merchants of varying degreees of shadiness Why use BTC instead of an anonymized crypto like Monero?
        solveit 6y ago
        Because BTC is what they take. The coordination is more important than the tech. Granted, this is only because I don't patronize the super illegal Go To Jail Go Directly To Jail Do Not Pass Go type of merchants, but the point stands. If you just need unfreezable funds and pseudonymity, not total cryptographically secured anonymity, you'll use Bitcoin instead of a dozen better methods (which are all crypto anyway, so wouldn't really count as a point against crypto, just BTC) because everyone else is using it.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        So it's utility is for sketchy (but not too sketchy!) merchants in which a much cheaper wire transfer or free visa/mc payment would be unacceptable, but not illegal because it's a permanent public record of the transaction. Got it.
        solveit 6y ago
        I mean, yes, they exist. And the public record is fine because you just create a new address for every transaction and cash out. Just because phone companies keep a record of who's calling who doesn't mean phones aren't useful for crime. You just use a burner phone in the full knowledge that the police can track you down, but won't because you're small fish doing minor crime.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        That seems like so small of a market as to be virtually nonexistent. How much would you say you spend on these markets in a month?
    - wonderwonder 6y ago
      To be fair that argument could be made about any speculative asset. Art, classic cars, watches, etc. With btc currently the barrier to entry is lower. I can buy some satohis for a few bucks in hopes that they appreciate in value. I cant buy a piece of a Picasso or a Rolex. It is a speculative investment much like those, just one that has a wider audience.
      - heterodoxxed 6y ago
        So is it a speculative investment or is it a currency or is it a groundbreaking technology with uses apart from either?
        wonderwonder 6y ago
        For me its a speculative investment. For others your answer may vary. Doesn't really matter though, no one is buying it with an expectation that it wont appreciate so it can be a currency and a groundbreaking technology while still being a speculative investment.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        It seems to me that it's a speculative investment for almost everyone, because the case for anything else is extraordinarily weak. And the case for it as a speculative investment is based on the other cases.
- fredfoobar 6y ago
  > deflationary distributed ledger you just mentioned the utility right there. Is this a trick question? Maybe you forgot "censorship resistant". I know paypal works for you or something, but not everybody has that luxury you know.
  - heterodoxxed 6y ago
    What use is a deflationary distributed ledger to anyone? We've had 12 years of Bitcoin and no killer app for a reason. It's simply not a useful technology.
    - ric2b 6y ago
      What's the killer app of PayPal? Let's see how easy this game is to play, now I only need to claim that any advantages you bring up are either irrelevant or not unique to PayPal. At least that's how every argument against Bitcoin usually goes.
hannasanarion 6y ago
>Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and passengers My e-cargo bike with a trailer can hold more stuff than my sedan ever could. Did an Ikea trip with it last year, carried home a filing cabinet, a desk frame, and a small table. > mass transit is less flexible frequent mass transit is plenty flexible. If a bus comes by your stop every 5 minutes, you never need to worry about planning. > distributed multi-node database. Done. > resistant to inflation Not something that sane people should want. Economies grow from commerce and reinvestment, not people jealously hogging every dollar they can find so that they can stash it under a bed to be used at higher value later.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Not something that sane people should want Thats uncharitable, and in my opinion ignorant. Inflation distorts the signals people use to make investments, leading to misallocation of assets.
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    And deflation, where the value of your cash increases constantly if you do literally nothing with it, leads to good allocation of assets? There have been two major periods of deflation in the history of the US dollar. 1930-1933, and 2007-2008. When the value of money increases, people don't spend it, they hoard it, commerce stops, and the economy grinds to a halt. Just look at your beloved bitcoin, who is actually using it to buy and sell anything (besides illegal goods and money laundering)? The price is entirely propped up by speculation and fake Tethers, and because it is increasing, everyone who has any knows they would be a fool to use it, which is the whole point of currency.
- Twirrim 6y ago
  > frequent mass transit is plenty flexible. If a bus comes by your stop every 5 minutes, you never need to worry about planning. I never once missed my car when I lived in London. Pop along to the end of the street for a bus every 5-10 minutes, or just a little bit further away and I was at a tube station where I could be on a train within 10 minutes that took me right across London far faster than any car could. The one or two occasions I needed a car, I could rent one, and still be better off than if I'd been paying the month-to-month expenses of keeping a car on the road (insurance, MOT etc.) Car rentals are even easier these days than they were back then.
troycarlson 6y ago
Move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  *proof of waste.
  - fredfoobar 6y ago
    This comment is a proof of waste of my time reading your replies. Also, hey! we meet again!
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Is proof of waste not a suitable name? It's proof a huge quantity of resources were wasted on deriving some random garbage you can append to a piece of data to obtain a certain number of leading zeroes on a SHA lol. 600kWh per transaction. Horrifying. And of course, always a pleasure haha.
      - fredfoobar 6y ago
        I'm sorry you are horrified
        arcticbull 6y ago
        I'm sorry you're not :) you have however failed to address to substance of the comment in a meaningful way.
        fredfoobar 6y ago
        I'm sorry, but how is you being "horrified" an objective measure of goodness? You described the process and just said it's horrifying, what do you expect me to respond with?
arcticbull 6y ago
> Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and passengers; mass transit is less flexible. So they aren’t strictly superior. Mass transit in much of the world is perfectly acceptable. You build cities around transit, walking and biking instead of giant chasms between buildings. This is not a problem that exists in Europe. You don't have to get rid of all cars, just most of them. And the best way to start is by getting rid of free parking, which is a regressive tax on the poor. > How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. Again inflation is easy: once you obtain money, purchase assets. So long as wages keep pace with inflation, which they do, this is not an issue. In fact if you purchase your necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your bill comes due makes inflation work for you.
- kenniskrag 6y ago
  >> How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? > That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. The distributed ledger isn't even secure. Just look where the cheap electricity is, create a network partition and all the other transaction will vanish after the network partition doesn't exist anymore.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Bitcoin isn't exactly running rampant in North Korea heh
  - ric2b 6y ago
    What makes you think you alone will find that cheap electricity, that is so much cheaper than anywhere else that it allows you to beat everyone else that is also mining?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Mass transit in much of the world is perfectly acceptable. Thats a good demonstration of ignoring the interests of everyone who doesn’t share your opinion, but it’s not how representative government is supposed to work. > That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. Then you can go back to ignoring bitcoin. > Again inflation is easy: once you obtain money, purchase assets. Again, this is not an answer for the problem, and pretending it is just ignores the reality that billions of people live with every day.
nutshell89 6y ago
There are cargo bikes (https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/12/03/breaking-city-to-announce-cargo-bike-delivery-pilot-with-amazon-others/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/12/03/breaking-city-to-anno...) A single car lane can move 600-1600 people per hour while a two way bike lane of the same size can transport 7500 people per hour (https://nyc25x25.org/#report https://nyc25x25.org/#report)

heterodoxxed 6y ago

| How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? A deflationary distributed ledger has yet to prove itself as having any kind of real utility in the first place.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Its got utility to the people who use it, which is what matters.
- heterodoxxed 6y ago
  A speculative store of value is not utility. Everybody gave up on it as a currency years ago.
  - solveit 6y ago
    A speculative store of value that everyone has coordinated upon is utility, and this has little to do with the quality of the underlying technology. The fact remains that I can pay merchants of varying degreees of shadiness in BTC much easier than I can send them a wire transfer. Now, you might not think this is good for the world, but it certainly is utility.
    - heterodoxxed 6y ago
      | pay merchants of varying degreees of shadiness Why use BTC instead of an anonymized crypto like Monero?
      - solveit 6y ago
        Because BTC is what they take. The coordination is more important than the tech. Granted, this is only because I don't patronize the super illegal Go To Jail Go Directly To Jail Do Not Pass Go type of merchants, but the point stands. If you just need unfreezable funds and pseudonymity, not total cryptographically secured anonymity, you'll use Bitcoin instead of a dozen better methods (which are all crypto anyway, so wouldn't really count as a point against crypto, just BTC) because everyone else is using it.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        So it's utility is for sketchy (but not too sketchy!) merchants in which a much cheaper wire transfer or free visa/mc payment would be unacceptable, but not illegal because it's a permanent public record of the transaction. Got it.
        solveit 6y ago
        I mean, yes, they exist. And the public record is fine because you just create a new address for every transaction and cash out. Just because phone companies keep a record of who's calling who doesn't mean phones aren't useful for crime. You just use a burner phone in the full knowledge that the police can track you down, but won't because you're small fish doing minor crime.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        That seems like so small of a market as to be virtually nonexistent. How much would you say you spend on these markets in a month?
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    To be fair that argument could be made about any speculative asset. Art, classic cars, watches, etc. With btc currently the barrier to entry is lower. I can buy some satohis for a few bucks in hopes that they appreciate in value. I cant buy a piece of a Picasso or a Rolex. It is a speculative investment much like those, just one that has a wider audience.
    - heterodoxxed 6y ago
      So is it a speculative investment or is it a currency or is it a groundbreaking technology with uses apart from either?
      - wonderwonder 6y ago
        For me its a speculative investment. For others your answer may vary. Doesn't really matter though, no one is buying it with an expectation that it wont appreciate so it can be a currency and a groundbreaking technology while still being a speculative investment.
        heterodoxxed 6y ago
        It seems to me that it's a speculative investment for almost everyone, because the case for anything else is extraordinarily weak. And the case for it as a speculative investment is based on the other cases.
fredfoobar 6y ago
> deflationary distributed ledger you just mentioned the utility right there. Is this a trick question? Maybe you forgot "censorship resistant". I know paypal works for you or something, but not everybody has that luxury you know.
- heterodoxxed 6y ago
  What use is a deflationary distributed ledger to anyone? We've had 12 years of Bitcoin and no killer app for a reason. It's simply not a useful technology.
  - ric2b 6y ago
    What's the killer app of PayPal? Let's see how easy this game is to play, now I only need to claim that any advantages you bring up are either irrelevant or not unique to PayPal. At least that's how every argument against Bitcoin usually goes.

hannasanarion 6y ago

>Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and passengers My e-cargo bike with a trailer can hold more stuff than my sedan ever could. Did an Ikea trip with it last year, carried home a filing cabinet, a desk frame, and a small table. > mass transit is less flexible frequent mass transit is plenty flexible. If a bus comes by your stop every 5 minutes, you never need to worry about planning. > distributed multi-node database. Done. > resistant to inflation Not something that sane people should want. Economies grow from commerce and reinvestment, not people jealously hogging every dollar they can find so that they can stash it under a bed to be used at higher value later.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Not something that sane people should want Thats uncharitable, and in my opinion ignorant. Inflation distorts the signals people use to make investments, leading to misallocation of assets.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  And deflation, where the value of your cash increases constantly if you do literally nothing with it, leads to good allocation of assets? There have been two major periods of deflation in the history of the US dollar. 1930-1933, and 2007-2008. When the value of money increases, people don't spend it, they hoard it, commerce stops, and the economy grinds to a halt. Just look at your beloved bitcoin, who is actually using it to buy and sell anything (besides illegal goods and money laundering)? The price is entirely propped up by speculation and fake Tethers, and because it is increasing, everyone who has any knows they would be a fool to use it, which is the whole point of currency.
Twirrim 6y ago
> frequent mass transit is plenty flexible. If a bus comes by your stop every 5 minutes, you never need to worry about planning. I never once missed my car when I lived in London. Pop along to the end of the street for a bus every 5-10 minutes, or just a little bit further away and I was at a tube station where I could be on a train within 10 minutes that took me right across London far faster than any car could. The one or two occasions I needed a car, I could rent one, and still be better off than if I'd been paying the month-to-month expenses of keeping a car on the road (insurance, MOT etc.) Car rentals are even easier these days than they were back then.

troycarlson 6y ago

Move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake?

arcticbull 6y ago
*proof of waste.
- fredfoobar 6y ago
  This comment is a proof of waste of my time reading your replies. Also, hey! we meet again!
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Is proof of waste not a suitable name? It's proof a huge quantity of resources were wasted on deriving some random garbage you can append to a piece of data to obtain a certain number of leading zeroes on a SHA lol. 600kWh per transaction. Horrifying. And of course, always a pleasure haha.
    - fredfoobar 6y ago
      I'm sorry you are horrified
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        I'm sorry you're not :) you have however failed to address to substance of the comment in a meaningful way.
        fredfoobar 6y ago
        I'm sorry, but how is you being "horrified" an objective measure of goodness? You described the process and just said it's horrifying, what do you expect me to respond with?

arcticbull 6y ago

> Bicycles are nice but have lower capacity for cargo and passengers; mass transit is less flexible. So they aren’t strictly superior. Mass transit in much of the world is perfectly acceptable. You build cities around transit, walking and biking instead of giant chasms between buildings. This is not a problem that exists in Europe. You don't have to get rid of all cars, just most of them. And the best way to start is by getting rid of free parking, which is a regressive tax on the poor. > How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. Again inflation is easy: once you obtain money, purchase assets. So long as wages keep pace with inflation, which they do, this is not an issue. In fact if you purchase your necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your bill comes due makes inflation work for you.

kenniskrag 6y ago
>> How else do you propose to have a distributed ledger that is resistant to inflation? > That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. The distributed ledger isn't even secure. Just look where the cheap electricity is, create a network partition and all the other transaction will vanish after the network partition doesn't exist anymore.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Bitcoin isn't exactly running rampant in North Korea heh
- ric2b 6y ago
  What makes you think you alone will find that cheap electricity, that is so much cheaper than anywhere else that it allows you to beat everyone else that is also mining?
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Mass transit in much of the world is perfectly acceptable. Thats a good demonstration of ignoring the interests of everyone who doesn’t share your opinion, but it’s not how representative government is supposed to work. > That's not a real problem. You solve it by ignoring it and getting back to things that actually matter. Then you can go back to ignoring bitcoin. > Again inflation is easy: once you obtain money, purchase assets. Again, this is not an answer for the problem, and pretending it is just ignores the reality that billions of people live with every day.

nutshell89 6y ago

There are cargo bikes (https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/12/03/breaking-city-to-announce-cargo-bike-delivery-pilot-with-amazon-others/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/12/03/breaking-city-to-anno...) A single car lane can move 600-1600 people per hour while a two way bike lane of the same size can transport 7500 people per hour (https://nyc25x25.org/#report https://nyc25x25.org/#report)