10 ms·

The simple fact is, the men with guns can always coerce you. 'Fixing money because governments suck' is never going to work.

randomopining 6y ago
Yeah lol. That's my argument against full on crypto. It's able to exist because of the safety bubble provided by centralized government and all the complex systems of safety (law, police, army, regulations, etc) that it has created. You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum.
- gruez 6y ago
  >You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum. This seems like a strawman to me? You can be for replacing the world's monetary system with cryptocurrency, and still believe in having a government with police, roads, and schools.
  - littlestymaar 6y ago
    It's not really a straw man because the most vocal advocates of cryptocurrencies tend to be libertarians[1]. Obviously not everyone is like that, but it's still the vocal crowd. That being said, I'd be curious to here pro-crypto arguments from someone “believ[ing] in having a government with police, roads, and schools”. This is especially interesting to me, because “school” appears in this list. [1] which cannot really be qualified as anarchists IMHO, but that's another topic.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >I'd be curious to here pro-crypto arguments from someone “believ[ing] in having a government with police, roads, and schools”. This is especially interesting to me, because “school” appears in this list. Is there something inherently contradictory between "a government should collect taxes and provide police, roads, and schools", and "the government shouldn't be entrusted with the ability to print money and/or dictate monetary policy"?
      - littlestymaar 6y ago
        Kind of, because people believing that schools should be provided by the government are usually in favor of some government intervention in the economy (even if limited, nobody's talking about Marxism-Leninism here). And monetary policy is a key part of what government intervention means, especially if you don't want the government to run the businesses directly. And respectively, most people being against government controlling monetary policies do so because they don't want the government intervening in the economy at all (and many of them are in favor of private school). BTW, in most if not all developed economies, the government don't control the monetary policies, the central banks do (and they are independent from governments, by design because people against government intervention made it this way).
  - caffeine 6y ago
    It’s not a straw man. There is a substantial faction that believes in the dream of replacing traditional trust based society with trustless executable contracts. Those people discount just how much underlying social stability matters, and how meaningless an executable contract would be in a violent environment.
    - gruez 6y ago
      > There is a substantial faction that believes in the dream of replacing traditional trust based society with trustless executable contracts. >Those people discount just how much underlying social stability matters, and how meaningless an executable contract would be in a violent environment. How did we go from "let's use smart contracts to enforce business contracts, rather than the courts", to "abolish the entire justice system"?
      - the_local_host 6y ago
        If paying taxes becomes voluntary, people are only going to pay for policies that benefit them, rather than what is in the public interest. Social stability, and fairness, would be likely to suffer.
        gruez 6y ago
        But why would they be voluntary? You still have corporations that have to file annual reports. They pay salaries to their employees, which would be reported. The sales they make would still be subject to VAT/sales tax.
        dnautics 6y ago
        nobody ever does anything in the public interest unless it is beneficial to themselves, or they are threatened with jail.
        the_local_host 6y ago
        Exactly, which is why neutering tax authorities would lead to plutocracy, where the rich stay rich and the poor have no recourse. A fair society can't rely on the goodwill of the wealthy.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Given the number of takes I've seen that are "but you haven't included the cost of aircraft carriers for fiat" (when you talk about Bitcoin's energy consumption problem), it isn't all that much of a stretch.
  - randomopining 6y ago
    With a truly crypto/defi setup, nobody would have to pay taxes. Everything would be zero-sum and no one would be incentivized to have to pay taxes to a central party to ensure the things you just listed exist. If you are rich and have 1000 BTC in various wallets, able to avoid capital controls, etc... why would you pay the 45% biden cap gains? Thus society loses out and rich whales get to hodl
    - Jiocus 6y ago
      You describe a problem that is beyond any particular technology of choice in tax evasion. These problem already exists in society, and has existed since before the advent of cryptocurrencies. Tax evasion, in the individual style you describe, can be detected in lifestyle choices and consumer habits. Generally, the burden is on you to explain how you've been able to spend more than your official tax records report.
      - randomopining 6y ago
        Yeah so? Crypto improves the ability to evade. You must agree with that. Thus it will increase the problem of people benefitting from society but not paying back into society. Taking resources that would never be able to grow in a vacuum.
        Jiocus 6y ago
        No, I don't share that view. I think cryptocurrencies seem, at most, equal to conventional evasive techniques, maybe even less useful when factoring in the hoops and overhead in actually translating the funds into real world goods and services. It's also unknown what the future holds in regard to effective tracing capabilities, retroactively, by law enforcement and agencies. My view is based on crypto and society ‘as is’ today. I would have to imagine a different society, with a radical adoption of crypto, to support your argument. But I would if that was the case.
- dboreham 6y ago
  > You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum. This seems a little non-obvious to me. Can you expand a bit on why?
  - randomopining 6y ago
    Crypto works because the internet is ubiquitous and open. Govs (mostly western) guarantee that. With nation-states in conflict, they would close their networks and it wouldn't work
    - dboreham 6y ago
      I see. I'm skeptical that a government can close off internet connectivity sufficiently well to block cryptocurrency packets. Do we have evidence that this can be done?
- nightski 6y ago
  There is a lot of powerful institutional & corporate money tied up in crypto at this point. Not to mention the politicians themselves holding crypto and crypto related companies. It's not the government vs. a bunch of fringe individuals at this point.
  - randomopining 6y ago
    Yeah i'm not disagreeing that individuals in gov or buisnesses are benefitting from the run up. But I'm saying that crypto is built on the stability and infrastructure that was created by fairly well-run and well-intentioned centralized govs etc.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      > But I'm saying that crypto is built on the stability and infrastructure that was created by fairly well-run and well-intentioned centralized govs etc. That's a trivially true statement for anything that exists at all. 200 years ago you could have said "democracy is built on the infrastructure that was created by monarchies". Ok. So what? That doesn't ipso facto delegitimize the potential of democracy as a viable alternative to monarchy, and history would have proven you wrong.
      - randomopining 6y ago
        Lol you use too many pseudo-intellectual words. Democracy is self-sustaining. Crypto is not self-sustaining, it requires institutions to be able to exist and provide the stability and infrastructure for it to exist. Crypto detracts from gov/institutions because it enables individual actors to hold on to "their" wealth more easily and evade paying back into the system that allows the wealth to thrive in the beginning.
        dnautics 6y ago
        social-democratic government detracts from society because it allows people to not give a shit about their neighbor's well-being because taking care of that becomes government's responsibility, enabling individual actors be spared the responsibility and instead figure out how to make rich people pay for it. Or something. If it doesn't work or if it's mismanaged, it's everyone else's fault because they didn't vote the right way.
- RhodoGSA 6y ago
  your evidence seems to indicate the exact opposite of your conclusion. State-backed Fiat can never exist in an anarchist vacuum, but you could have crypto since it is inherently decentralized and impossible to steal unless i somehow find where you keep your keys (Which could be the size of a thumbdrive)
  - randomopining 6y ago
    How does crypto operate? On an open network that was build by agreements and collaboration between govs and entities. How do they build/maintain power/network lines between villages, cities, satellite connections, underwater fiber routes? Thus if everybody locks in their "wealth" with crypto, none of it would go to the commmons - these commons are used to run the crypto network.
    - RhodoGSA 6y ago
      I see your point, but i believe the social construct of a government can fail before key infrastructure fails. People can lose faith in the US Government and still go to work. If all the infrastructure failed that you describe above we'd have mass starvation on a large scale. Also, crypto wealth isn't 'Locked'. I can buy synthetic assets with my crypto with a guarantee that an equal amount of stock has been purchased. I can bond or trade my tokens for different cryptos to be developed that may have fecundity in supply chain, banking, pay for compute time, store, read and write to files, etc. None of that seems 'Locked' and if you think none of that goes to the commons than AWS, all the world banks, financial software, google and pretty much every other tech companies are 'locking wealth away'.
dcolkitt 6y ago
The state has the resources to prosecute any crime. The state does not have the resources to prosecute every crime. Even the most totalitarian surveillance states have thriving black markets. Nearly anywhere in the Western world, one can find highly illegal drugs with no more than a few phone calls. Cryptocurrency is far easier to smuggle and conceal than cannabis. If governments have repeatedly proven hilariously incompetent at the War on Drugs, why would we possibly expect any government to be capable of stomping out cryptocurrency by its citizenry?
- the_local_host 6y ago
  Why is the threshold set at "stomping out cryptocurrency"? The state as the resources to prosecute a lot of crimes. The US has a huge incarceration rate. Even if cryptocurrencies weren't completely stomped out, shouting "Bitcoin lives!" from a prison cell wouldn't be that helpful to the person serving the sentence. The "many-headed hydra" isn't much use to the severed heads. Moreover I don't think the failure of the "War on Drugs" provides a relevant example. The inability of the government to stamp out illegal drugs doesn't indicate that it would be a reasonable risk for many (or most) people to maintain their wealth in cryptocurrencies, if cryptocurrencies were to become illegal.
  - RhodoGSA 6y ago
    because unlike cannibis, bitcoin has a limited supply and cannot be created outside of the rules of the system. If the government banned crypto, prosecuted those who it could find and confiscated the crypto it would only succeed in tightening the supply and increasing it's price.
    - mullingitover 6y ago
      > If the government banned crypto, prosecuted those who it could find and confiscated the crypto it would only succeed in tightening the supply and increasing it's price. This assumes that demand is going to remain the same while supply goes down. More likely the demand goes to near-zero when the legitimate investors exit the market.
gruez 6y ago
You can fly out of the country with $100M in bitcoins stored in your head. Can you do the same with cash/stocks/gold?
- postalrat 6y ago
  Bitcoins aren't stored. In your head or any where else.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Seems like a pointless nitpick? It's a figure of speech. In the context of this discussion, there's no meaningful difference between "you store bitcoins in your head" and "you store the keys allowing you to unlock bitcoins stored at an given address in your head".
  - nightski 6y ago
    Seeing as you can start a node yourself and download the full blockchain it's clearly stored somewhere.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Yes they are. They're stored in the replicated database hosted by the current network of mining nodes. If there isn't state in that database representing your possession of coins, then you can't spend them.
    - tromp 6y ago
      not just mining nodes, but all full nodes.
  - tromp 6y ago
    bitcoins are knowledge of private keys to spend utxos. private keys are stored in wallets, while the utxo set is stored on thousands of full nodes all over the world.
- pradn 6y ago
  Money transfers are highly regulated for a reason. Money can be used to do all sorts of negative things. Advanced democracies all put heavy restrictions on such activity to prevent tax evasion, prevent money laundering, and control capital flight - these aren't illegitimate. There is a balance to be struck between state control and surveillance and laissez faire, however.
dustingetz 6y ago
read the book Blitzscaling for how private efforts defeat regulations
game_the0ry 6y ago
What happens when the state can't pay the men with guns when the fiat currency becomes increasingly worthless? Will the men with guns continue to protect the state?
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Absolutely they will, just look at Venezuela. The state still has resources to sell in international markets. And they keep the military fat and happy. The same is true of North Korea and many other totalitarian states.
  - game_the0ry 6y ago
    That comment was just a hypothetical worth thinking about, my friend. Re: Venezuela - Libya would be an example where the fragile relationship between economic resources and guns can go very bad for leadership. Same for France right before the revolution and Russia's tsar Nick's family. Venezuela for sure is in a fragile state, and Maduro has the sword of Damocles over his head. Do you think Western politicians and "elites" have the stomach to handle that pressure? I don't.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
I like the sentiment even if i don't agree with the conclusion. On the flip side of this, you can only keep value you create if you can defend that value. Crypto seems to be the easiest way to protect yourself from the man with the gun is I can keep $1B written on a piece of paper. I'm not sure if i entirely agree with this next sentiment eithier but it's one that i've heard and i find interesting. The first capitalist was the caveman1 who dug a hole in a wall to protect him from the elements. The worlds first socialist was the caveman2 that demanded caveman1 share or give over the cave, since he also had a right to the products of his labor.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  The problem is, your assets are always visible in some way via your spending. And if you have to commit to spending none of your assets, what’s the point of having the asset? My general sentiment is, fix government. Serious capitalists in the US need to work on serious policy; housing market and healthcare deregulation, not figuring out how to bury their digital gold. A happy and productive population is much less likely to care about your wealth.

randomopining 6y ago

Yeah lol. That's my argument against full on crypto. It's able to exist because of the safety bubble provided by centralized government and all the complex systems of safety (law, police, army, regulations, etc) that it has created. You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum.

gruez 6y ago
>You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum. This seems like a strawman to me? You can be for replacing the world's monetary system with cryptocurrency, and still believe in having a government with police, roads, and schools.
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  It's not really a straw man because the most vocal advocates of cryptocurrencies tend to be libertarians[1]. Obviously not everyone is like that, but it's still the vocal crowd. That being said, I'd be curious to here pro-crypto arguments from someone “believ[ing] in having a government with police, roads, and schools”. This is especially interesting to me, because “school” appears in this list. [1] which cannot really be qualified as anarchists IMHO, but that's another topic.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >I'd be curious to here pro-crypto arguments from someone “believ[ing] in having a government with police, roads, and schools”. This is especially interesting to me, because “school” appears in this list. Is there something inherently contradictory between "a government should collect taxes and provide police, roads, and schools", and "the government shouldn't be entrusted with the ability to print money and/or dictate monetary policy"?
    - littlestymaar 6y ago
      Kind of, because people believing that schools should be provided by the government are usually in favor of some government intervention in the economy (even if limited, nobody's talking about Marxism-Leninism here). And monetary policy is a key part of what government intervention means, especially if you don't want the government to run the businesses directly. And respectively, most people being against government controlling monetary policies do so because they don't want the government intervening in the economy at all (and many of them are in favor of private school). BTW, in most if not all developed economies, the government don't control the monetary policies, the central banks do (and they are independent from governments, by design because people against government intervention made it this way).
- caffeine 6y ago
  It’s not a straw man. There is a substantial faction that believes in the dream of replacing traditional trust based society with trustless executable contracts. Those people discount just how much underlying social stability matters, and how meaningless an executable contract would be in a violent environment.
  - gruez 6y ago
    > There is a substantial faction that believes in the dream of replacing traditional trust based society with trustless executable contracts. >Those people discount just how much underlying social stability matters, and how meaningless an executable contract would be in a violent environment. How did we go from "let's use smart contracts to enforce business contracts, rather than the courts", to "abolish the entire justice system"?
    - the_local_host 6y ago
      If paying taxes becomes voluntary, people are only going to pay for policies that benefit them, rather than what is in the public interest. Social stability, and fairness, would be likely to suffer.
      - gruez 6y ago
        But why would they be voluntary? You still have corporations that have to file annual reports. They pay salaries to their employees, which would be reported. The sales they make would still be subject to VAT/sales tax.
      - dnautics 6y ago
        nobody ever does anything in the public interest unless it is beneficial to themselves, or they are threatened with jail.
        the_local_host 6y ago
        Exactly, which is why neutering tax authorities would lead to plutocracy, where the rich stay rich and the poor have no recourse. A fair society can't rely on the goodwill of the wealthy.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Given the number of takes I've seen that are "but you haven't included the cost of aircraft carriers for fiat" (when you talk about Bitcoin's energy consumption problem), it isn't all that much of a stretch.
- randomopining 6y ago
  With a truly crypto/defi setup, nobody would have to pay taxes. Everything would be zero-sum and no one would be incentivized to have to pay taxes to a central party to ensure the things you just listed exist. If you are rich and have 1000 BTC in various wallets, able to avoid capital controls, etc... why would you pay the 45% biden cap gains? Thus society loses out and rich whales get to hodl
  - Jiocus 6y ago
    You describe a problem that is beyond any particular technology of choice in tax evasion. These problem already exists in society, and has existed since before the advent of cryptocurrencies. Tax evasion, in the individual style you describe, can be detected in lifestyle choices and consumer habits. Generally, the burden is on you to explain how you've been able to spend more than your official tax records report.
    - randomopining 6y ago
      Yeah so? Crypto improves the ability to evade. You must agree with that. Thus it will increase the problem of people benefitting from society but not paying back into society. Taking resources that would never be able to grow in a vacuum.
      - Jiocus 6y ago
        No, I don't share that view. I think cryptocurrencies seem, at most, equal to conventional evasive techniques, maybe even less useful when factoring in the hoops and overhead in actually translating the funds into real world goods and services. It's also unknown what the future holds in regard to effective tracing capabilities, retroactively, by law enforcement and agencies. My view is based on crypto and society ‘as is’ today. I would have to imagine a different society, with a radical adoption of crypto, to support your argument. But I would if that was the case.
dboreham 6y ago
> You could never have crypto in an anarchist vacuum. This seems a little non-obvious to me. Can you expand a bit on why?
- randomopining 6y ago
  Crypto works because the internet is ubiquitous and open. Govs (mostly western) guarantee that. With nation-states in conflict, they would close their networks and it wouldn't work
  - dboreham 6y ago
    I see. I'm skeptical that a government can close off internet connectivity sufficiently well to block cryptocurrency packets. Do we have evidence that this can be done?
nightski 6y ago
There is a lot of powerful institutional & corporate money tied up in crypto at this point. Not to mention the politicians themselves holding crypto and crypto related companies. It's not the government vs. a bunch of fringe individuals at this point.
- randomopining 6y ago
  Yeah i'm not disagreeing that individuals in gov or buisnesses are benefitting from the run up. But I'm saying that crypto is built on the stability and infrastructure that was created by fairly well-run and well-intentioned centralized govs etc.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    > But I'm saying that crypto is built on the stability and infrastructure that was created by fairly well-run and well-intentioned centralized govs etc. That's a trivially true statement for anything that exists at all. 200 years ago you could have said "democracy is built on the infrastructure that was created by monarchies". Ok. So what? That doesn't ipso facto delegitimize the potential of democracy as a viable alternative to monarchy, and history would have proven you wrong.
    - randomopining 6y ago
      Lol you use too many pseudo-intellectual words. Democracy is self-sustaining. Crypto is not self-sustaining, it requires institutions to be able to exist and provide the stability and infrastructure for it to exist. Crypto detracts from gov/institutions because it enables individual actors to hold on to "their" wealth more easily and evade paying back into the system that allows the wealth to thrive in the beginning.
      - dnautics 6y ago
        social-democratic government detracts from society because it allows people to not give a shit about their neighbor's well-being because taking care of that becomes government's responsibility, enabling individual actors be spared the responsibility and instead figure out how to make rich people pay for it. Or something. If it doesn't work or if it's mismanaged, it's everyone else's fault because they didn't vote the right way.
RhodoGSA 6y ago
your evidence seems to indicate the exact opposite of your conclusion. State-backed Fiat can never exist in an anarchist vacuum, but you could have crypto since it is inherently decentralized and impossible to steal unless i somehow find where you keep your keys (Which could be the size of a thumbdrive)
- randomopining 6y ago
  How does crypto operate? On an open network that was build by agreements and collaboration between govs and entities. How do they build/maintain power/network lines between villages, cities, satellite connections, underwater fiber routes? Thus if everybody locks in their "wealth" with crypto, none of it would go to the commmons - these commons are used to run the crypto network.
  - RhodoGSA 6y ago
    I see your point, but i believe the social construct of a government can fail before key infrastructure fails. People can lose faith in the US Government and still go to work. If all the infrastructure failed that you describe above we'd have mass starvation on a large scale. Also, crypto wealth isn't 'Locked'. I can buy synthetic assets with my crypto with a guarantee that an equal amount of stock has been purchased. I can bond or trade my tokens for different cryptos to be developed that may have fecundity in supply chain, banking, pay for compute time, store, read and write to files, etc. None of that seems 'Locked' and if you think none of that goes to the commons than AWS, all the world banks, financial software, google and pretty much every other tech companies are 'locking wealth away'.

dcolkitt 6y ago

The state has the resources to prosecute any crime. The state does not have the resources to prosecute every crime. Even the most totalitarian surveillance states have thriving black markets. Nearly anywhere in the Western world, one can find highly illegal drugs with no more than a few phone calls. Cryptocurrency is far easier to smuggle and conceal than cannabis. If governments have repeatedly proven hilariously incompetent at the War on Drugs, why would we possibly expect any government to be capable of stomping out cryptocurrency by its citizenry?

the_local_host 6y ago
Why is the threshold set at "stomping out cryptocurrency"? The state as the resources to prosecute a lot of crimes. The US has a huge incarceration rate. Even if cryptocurrencies weren't completely stomped out, shouting "Bitcoin lives!" from a prison cell wouldn't be that helpful to the person serving the sentence. The "many-headed hydra" isn't much use to the severed heads. Moreover I don't think the failure of the "War on Drugs" provides a relevant example. The inability of the government to stamp out illegal drugs doesn't indicate that it would be a reasonable risk for many (or most) people to maintain their wealth in cryptocurrencies, if cryptocurrencies were to become illegal.
- RhodoGSA 6y ago
  because unlike cannibis, bitcoin has a limited supply and cannot be created outside of the rules of the system. If the government banned crypto, prosecuted those who it could find and confiscated the crypto it would only succeed in tightening the supply and increasing it's price.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    > If the government banned crypto, prosecuted those who it could find and confiscated the crypto it would only succeed in tightening the supply and increasing it's price. This assumes that demand is going to remain the same while supply goes down. More likely the demand goes to near-zero when the legitimate investors exit the market.

gruez 6y ago

You can fly out of the country with $100M in bitcoins stored in your head. Can you do the same with cash/stocks/gold?

postalrat 6y ago
Bitcoins aren't stored. In your head or any where else.
- gruez 6y ago
  Seems like a pointless nitpick? It's a figure of speech. In the context of this discussion, there's no meaningful difference between "you store bitcoins in your head" and "you store the keys allowing you to unlock bitcoins stored at an given address in your head".
- nightski 6y ago
  Seeing as you can start a node yourself and download the full blockchain it's clearly stored somewhere.
- dboreham 6y ago
  Yes they are. They're stored in the replicated database hosted by the current network of mining nodes. If there isn't state in that database representing your possession of coins, then you can't spend them.
  - tromp 6y ago
    not just mining nodes, but all full nodes.
- tromp 6y ago
  bitcoins are knowledge of private keys to spend utxos. private keys are stored in wallets, while the utxo set is stored on thousands of full nodes all over the world.
pradn 6y ago
Money transfers are highly regulated for a reason. Money can be used to do all sorts of negative things. Advanced democracies all put heavy restrictions on such activity to prevent tax evasion, prevent money laundering, and control capital flight - these aren't illegitimate. There is a balance to be struck between state control and surveillance and laissez faire, however.

dustingetz 6y ago

read the book Blitzscaling for how private efforts defeat regulations

game_the0ry 6y ago

What happens when the state can't pay the men with guns when the fiat currency becomes increasingly worthless? Will the men with guns continue to protect the state?

anonuser123456 6y ago
Absolutely they will, just look at Venezuela. The state still has resources to sell in international markets. And they keep the military fat and happy. The same is true of North Korea and many other totalitarian states.
- game_the0ry 6y ago
  That comment was just a hypothetical worth thinking about, my friend. Re: Venezuela - Libya would be an example where the fragile relationship between economic resources and guns can go very bad for leadership. Same for France right before the revolution and Russia's tsar Nick's family. Venezuela for sure is in a fragile state, and Maduro has the sword of Damocles over his head. Do you think Western politicians and "elites" have the stomach to handle that pressure? I don't.

RhodoGSA 6y ago

I like the sentiment even if i don't agree with the conclusion. On the flip side of this, you can only keep value you create if you can defend that value. Crypto seems to be the easiest way to protect yourself from the man with the gun is I can keep $1B written on a piece of paper. I'm not sure if i entirely agree with this next sentiment eithier but it's one that i've heard and i find interesting. The first capitalist was the caveman1 who dug a hole in a wall to protect him from the elements. The worlds first socialist was the caveman2 that demanded caveman1 share or give over the cave, since he also had a right to the products of his labor.

anonuser123456 6y ago
The problem is, your assets are always visible in some way via your spending. And if you have to commit to spending none of your assets, what’s the point of having the asset? My general sentiment is, fix government. Serious capitalists in the US need to work on serious policy; housing market and healthcare deregulation, not figuring out how to bury their digital gold. A happy and productive population is much less likely to care about your wealth.