6 ms·

It's in it's infancy. In two decades we will know what it means to us as mankind. Cars were also dangerous, unregulated, expensive and excessively polluting. I

by cies 6y ago

It's in it's infancy. In two decades we will know what it means to us as mankind. Cars were also dangerous, unregulated, expensive and excessively polluting. It got a lot better on all these points, and not all due to the cars: some of it was a mind shift that mankind had to make. Same will hold true for cryptocurrency.

mdoms 6y ago
> and not all due to the cars: some of it was a mind shift that mankind had to make Mostly it was due to regulation.
ta9999 6y ago
I would argue cars are still mostly a disaster. They're not good for the environment, they partitioned neighboorhoods, they're very dangerous (the biggest non-disease killer of younger people before drugs), and they're another thing poor people end up having to buy and owe payments on every month.
- willtim 6y ago
  So true! I once told my kids about the beautiful car-free bicycle cities, they replied something like "wow, I wish we could live there".
IiydAbITMvJkqKf 6y ago
Regulated, cheap, mostly environmentally friendly currencies exist, they're called USD, EUR, etc.
- svachalek 6y ago
  A lot of people are not comfortable with the fact that a secretive club of bankers can produce more of these at will, and give them to who they like. The moral hazard here is off the charts, and it's too much to expect that they won't keep producing more and more until it's worthless as has happened to every fiat currency in history. See the current prices of stocks, bonds, real estate, and education for examples, and yes even the current crypto market. Crypto may not be the answer, personally I'm sure Bitcoin is not. But the problem is real.
  - IiydAbITMvJkqKf 6y ago
    Bitcoin does not solve this problem at all, since 71% of the global hashrate is concentrated in China [1]. Instead of a currently controlled by central bankers, you get a currency which can be controlled at any moment by a totalitarian government which currently attempts to expand its territory using military means. Ironically this is also why gold-backed currencies are not an acceptable replacement for dollars either - just substitute China with Australia (which is of course politically a far more benign country than China, but you're still outsourcing control of your currency). The problem of currency stability is real, but crypto is not a solution at all. [1] https://cbeci.org/mining_map/ https://cbeci.org/mining_map/
  - danaris 6y ago
    The answer to that concern is introducing and voting for policies that make the control of the global financial system more transparent and accountable, not introducing a new form of speculative commodity the (unintentionally-aptly-named) mining of which is, even now, contributing materially to global climate change that will, if left unchecked, devastate human civilization as we know it.
elite_hackers 6y ago
What are you talking about? Cars are an absolute disaster for humanity... one of the biggest mistakes humans ever made. Maybe try another analogy
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  "one of the biggest mistakes humans ever made"? come on.
  - acdha 6y ago
    I’m not sure I’d go that far but there might be more to it than you think: they’re directly one of the most common causes of death and lowered quality of life, and indirectly contribute to multiple others (carcinogens, respiratory diseases, everything related to lack of exercise and unhealthy eating, etc. both directly from usage and indirectly from suburbanization), a significant source of financial pressure for many people, and a non-trivial climate change contributor.
    - baggy_trough 6y ago
      "they’re directly one of the most common causes of ... lowered quality of life" - what is the basis of this statement? It seems like a manifest absurdity.
      - acdha 6y ago
        It makes more sense if you don't trim the quote. Cars directly cause a large number of injuries and fatalities every year, and that's mostly premature — people who had decades of healthy life ahead of them until a vehicle incident, as opposed to someone in their 80s who died of cancer before heart disease got them. I included lower quality of life because while safety and medical improvements have reduced the number of people dying (although trucks & SUVs have reversed that trend for people who aren't inside cars) it's common to hear people who didn't die but have a significant downward spiral after an accident: whiplash, back injury, inactivity, problems with chronic pain (a common path into opioid addiction) and becoming less active to the point of having health impacts. In the U.S. this is especially likely to put severe financial strain on people and their families because health care is tied to work and many of the long-term effects make it harder to work while insurance settlements are often not enough to cover more than a short time out and there are many reports about the difficulties of getting things like chronic pain taken seriously in court or by doctors (if you lose an arm, nobody argues that it happened — if your back hurts in a non-obvious way, you might be accused of faking it to get money or drugs, especially if you weren't starting from a high social status).
knorker 6y ago
But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. Cryptocurrencies just don't. It's all smoke and mirrors, where everything would be better without the blockchain. Without irreversibility. Without everything about it. There are whole books about how terrible and useless it is. And please do what the article said: How much of your own money is dependent on you selling the lie of cryptocurrency or smart contract to the next level in this multi level marketing? I sold my BTC when it was at $15k, because I felt disgusted in participating in this super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech, so my balance is 0. I made a profit, sure, but regret touching it at all. > Same will hold true for cryptocurrency. By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning.
- cies 6y ago
  > But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. You dont get to decide what has value. The market does. Crypto apparently has value. > By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning. Worst argument I've read all month. If you dont see potential in crypto: feel free to do without. Others do. Thankfully we have some freedom.
- dTal 6y ago
  I have to say I am very impressed by your moral compass's sense of market timing!
  - knorker 6y ago
    I sold at the peak of a bubble, so I can be happy about that. Sure, it's higher now, but I also don't invest in payday loan companies for the same reason. I hear it's very profitable too, but it's just too evil.
- acdha 6y ago
  > But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a use for them, and the warehouses needed to burn coal continuously.
JBorrow 6y ago
What is your stake in crypto?
shkkmo 6y ago
Cars are still extremely dangerous and are have caused massive damage to the planet, cars also solved significant and real problems and did so without waiting decades. Cryptocurrency has had plenty of time to find a legitimate use and has completely failed. It is not a functional currency and it does not solve any real problems for non-criminals. Not only does it waste energy and computing resources, it has helped fund a significant amount of the digital threats that the average person will encounter.
ninju 6y ago
And we're only now addressing the excessively polluting nature of the internal combustion engine.
015a 6y ago
Crypto miners buy a slab of silicon, plug it in, and its profitable. If this weren't the case, no one would mine it. Cryptocurrency is a fungus; either it will die, or it will eat up as much electricity & high-powered silicon as miners can get their hands on, diverting both from more economically interesting and productive applications. If I have one or two computers; that's enough. I don't need anymore. There is never "enough" computers for miners; they will always want more, because more electricity & computers means more money. This is not theoretical. This is happening. Its destroying any service which dares to offer free tiers of generic compute. Its had a significant impact on a global silicon shortage the likes of which we've never seen, impacting products from graphics cards and work computers to cars and defense hardware. That's it; there's no other correct opinion, only incorrect ones. If you support cryptocurrency, you support the environmental collapse of our planet. We don't need it; its die-hard supporters are either profit-motivated or have nothing beyond a grade-school understanding of historical macroeconomic trends and the broad, undeniably negative impact immutable currencies like Gold & Silver had on the average person's standard of living during economic downturns.
nullsmack 6y ago
Cars are at least useful for something. Cryptocurrency invents value out of nothing. It's a scam, a fraud, a ponzi scheme, and nothing more than counterfeit money. And it should be treated as such by the governments of the world.

by cies 6y ago

mdoms 6y ago

> and not all due to the cars: some of it was a mind shift that mankind had to make Mostly it was due to regulation.

ta9999 6y ago

I would argue cars are still mostly a disaster. They're not good for the environment, they partitioned neighboorhoods, they're very dangerous (the biggest non-disease killer of younger people before drugs), and they're another thing poor people end up having to buy and owe payments on every month.

willtim 6y ago
So true! I once told my kids about the beautiful car-free bicycle cities, they replied something like "wow, I wish we could live there".

IiydAbITMvJkqKf 6y ago

Regulated, cheap, mostly environmentally friendly currencies exist, they're called USD, EUR, etc.

svachalek 6y ago
A lot of people are not comfortable with the fact that a secretive club of bankers can produce more of these at will, and give them to who they like. The moral hazard here is off the charts, and it's too much to expect that they won't keep producing more and more until it's worthless as has happened to every fiat currency in history. See the current prices of stocks, bonds, real estate, and education for examples, and yes even the current crypto market. Crypto may not be the answer, personally I'm sure Bitcoin is not. But the problem is real.
- IiydAbITMvJkqKf 6y ago
  Bitcoin does not solve this problem at all, since 71% of the global hashrate is concentrated in China [1]. Instead of a currently controlled by central bankers, you get a currency which can be controlled at any moment by a totalitarian government which currently attempts to expand its territory using military means. Ironically this is also why gold-backed currencies are not an acceptable replacement for dollars either - just substitute China with Australia (which is of course politically a far more benign country than China, but you're still outsourcing control of your currency). The problem of currency stability is real, but crypto is not a solution at all. [1] https://cbeci.org/mining_map/ https://cbeci.org/mining_map/
- danaris 6y ago
  The answer to that concern is introducing and voting for policies that make the control of the global financial system more transparent and accountable, not introducing a new form of speculative commodity the (unintentionally-aptly-named) mining of which is, even now, contributing materially to global climate change that will, if left unchecked, devastate human civilization as we know it.

elite_hackers 6y ago

What are you talking about? Cars are an absolute disaster for humanity... one of the biggest mistakes humans ever made. Maybe try another analogy

baggy_trough 6y ago
"one of the biggest mistakes humans ever made"? come on.
- acdha 6y ago
  I’m not sure I’d go that far but there might be more to it than you think: they’re directly one of the most common causes of death and lowered quality of life, and indirectly contribute to multiple others (carcinogens, respiratory diseases, everything related to lack of exercise and unhealthy eating, etc. both directly from usage and indirectly from suburbanization), a significant source of financial pressure for many people, and a non-trivial climate change contributor.
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    "they’re directly one of the most common causes of ... lowered quality of life" - what is the basis of this statement? It seems like a manifest absurdity.
    - acdha 6y ago
      It makes more sense if you don't trim the quote. Cars directly cause a large number of injuries and fatalities every year, and that's mostly premature — people who had decades of healthy life ahead of them until a vehicle incident, as opposed to someone in their 80s who died of cancer before heart disease got them. I included lower quality of life because while safety and medical improvements have reduced the number of people dying (although trucks & SUVs have reversed that trend for people who aren't inside cars) it's common to hear people who didn't die but have a significant downward spiral after an accident: whiplash, back injury, inactivity, problems with chronic pain (a common path into opioid addiction) and becoming less active to the point of having health impacts. In the U.S. this is especially likely to put severe financial strain on people and their families because health care is tied to work and many of the long-term effects make it harder to work while insurance settlements are often not enough to cover more than a short time out and there are many reports about the difficulties of getting things like chronic pain taken seriously in court or by doctors (if you lose an arm, nobody argues that it happened — if your back hurts in a non-obvious way, you might be accused of faking it to get money or drugs, especially if you weren't starting from a high social status).

knorker 6y ago

But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. Cryptocurrencies just don't. It's all smoke and mirrors, where everything would be better without the blockchain. Without irreversibility. Without everything about it. There are whole books about how terrible and useless it is. And please do what the article said: How much of your own money is dependent on you selling the lie of cryptocurrency or smart contract to the next level in this multi level marketing? I sold my BTC when it was at $15k, because I felt disgusted in participating in this super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech, so my balance is 0. I made a profit, sure, but regret touching it at all. > Same will hold true for cryptocurrency. By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning.

cies 6y ago
> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. You dont get to decide what has value. The market does. Crypto apparently has value. > By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning. Worst argument I've read all month. If you dont see potential in crypto: feel free to do without. Others do. Thankfully we have some freedom.
dTal 6y ago
I have to say I am very impressed by your moral compass's sense of market timing!
- knorker 6y ago
  I sold at the peak of a bubble, so I can be happy about that. Sure, it's higher now, but I also don't invest in payday loan companies for the same reason. I hear it's very profitable too, but it's just too evil.
acdha 6y ago
> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a use for them, and the warehouses needed to burn coal continuously.

JBorrow 6y ago

What is your stake in crypto?

shkkmo 6y ago

Cars are still extremely dangerous and are have caused massive damage to the planet, cars also solved significant and real problems and did so without waiting decades. Cryptocurrency has had plenty of time to find a legitimate use and has completely failed. It is not a functional currency and it does not solve any real problems for non-criminals. Not only does it waste energy and computing resources, it has helped fund a significant amount of the digital threats that the average person will encounter.

ninju 6y ago

And we're only now addressing the excessively polluting nature of the internal combustion engine.

015a 6y ago

Crypto miners buy a slab of silicon, plug it in, and its profitable. If this weren't the case, no one would mine it. Cryptocurrency is a fungus; either it will die, or it will eat up as much electricity & high-powered silicon as miners can get their hands on, diverting both from more economically interesting and productive applications. If I have one or two computers; that's enough. I don't need anymore. There is never "enough" computers for miners; they will always want more, because more electricity & computers means more money. This is not theoretical. This is happening. Its destroying any service which dares to offer free tiers of generic compute. Its had a significant impact on a global silicon shortage the likes of which we've never seen, impacting products from graphics cards and work computers to cars and defense hardware. That's it; there's no other correct opinion, only incorrect ones. If you support cryptocurrency, you support the environmental collapse of our planet. We don't need it; its die-hard supporters are either profit-motivated or have nothing beyond a grade-school understanding of historical macroeconomic trends and the broad, undeniably negative impact immutable currencies like Gold & Silver had on the average person's standard of living during economic downturns.

nullsmack 6y ago

Cars are at least useful for something. Cryptocurrency invents value out of nothing. It's a scam, a fraud, a ponzi scheme, and nothing more than counterfeit money. And it should be treated as such by the governments of the world.