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When you say "inherent fools" what I think of is "some people are too stupid to be in charge of their own lives." Call me an optimist or a utopian, but I don't
by betwixthewires 5y ago
When you say "inherent fools" what I think of is "some people are too stupid to be in charge of their own lives." Call me an optimist or a utopian, but I don't think that's true, and even if it is they still have a right to try, and even if they don't, the onus is still on them and nobody can change that. If they're inherent fools no amount of nerfing is going to protect them from tanking their own lives. It's like mandating tags on chairs that tell you not to eat the chair fabric. It's catering to the lowest common denominator. Do you want to live in a world where all of us, even you, are herded like cattle in some futile attempt to prevent people from behaving in ways that aren't good for themselves?
Some speculative vehicles are not zero sum games because they have one or more of the following characteristics: they are an experiment in some technology or tool that can benefit all people, or the simple fact that they exist is useful, or they enable capital to be allocated more efficiently. Almost all speculative assets have the last trait, all currencies have the second trait, and right now as far as speculative assets go, only cryptocurrencies have the first trait.
When you say "benefit" you mean to get profit. But "benefit" can mean much more than that. The benefit of the invention of electricity cannot simply be attributed to the amount of profit made from it, or the amount used by the purchaser. It has a myriad of less tangible yet more impactful benefits, such as it helped humanity understand electromagnetism and it helped humanity get out of the mud. The same applies to new ways to abstract value. Would you say the concept of money has value beyond simply who has how much?
- inteoryx 5y agoI think there is a compromise between nerfing the whole world and herding everyone like cattle, and allowing people who aren't well equipped lose more than they can afford in speculative gambling. As I mentioned before, I don't think I have this compromise worked out, and I don't know what the answer is, but it feels wrong to leave things at "Caveat emptor". One idea might be some kind of test. Can you pass a basic financial literacy test? If so, then maybe you should be allowed to gamble even on high risk things. If not, maybe finance isn't for you right now. When you pass the test you get a license and need to provide that license when doing KYC checks with financial institutions. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on the question of whether all people have sufficient mental equipment to handle risky financial decisions. I do think the concept of money is valuable. To put it in my earlier framework, I think the people who are consuming the value are the people who use money to exchange it for goods or services. I don't think dogecoin innovates on money though. In many ways, I think dogecoin is a step back from money. For example, our current systems have vastly greater throughput.