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I'm tired of having to care about digital currencies and I really don't care if the people working with them get treated unfairly. It's a solution in search of
by AndyMcConachie 5y ago
I'm tired of having to care about digital currencies and I really don't care if the people working with them get treated unfairly. It's a solution in search of a problem and I'm tired of people who otherwise don't know shit about technology constantly asking me about it.
Digital currencies have solved none of our social problems, and will never solve any of our social problems. Instead they're just a giant distraction, or worse a not so clever means of facilitating sophmoric scams on the ignorant.
- mypastself 5y agoEven if you think they’re criminals, why wouldn’t you want them to get treated fairly? What other types of crimes do you think deserve unfair treatment?
- ivan_gammel 5y agoI would add to this that they created more problems than solved. Negative environmental impact, criminal activities, robbery of unqualified investors — all that for a few geeks to have a false feeling of privacy.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoHow could you not care if people are treated unfairly? This is not a good baseline value that we can all share. Are we all going to hope that other people, who disagree with us on some social or business issue, are treated unfairly? Is politics going to be relegated to a forum to wage a never-ending battle against each other? How about live and let live?
- aww_dang 5y agoApparently for many here, subjective interpretations of "social good" trump the basic premises of voluntary interactions and natural law. Contrast those views with decentralized and non-violent valuations provided by voluntary consumption.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoI mean, I don't think it advances my understanding of the "social good" for people to consume billions of dollars of pop-culture entertainment in the form of the Kardashians, Youtube reality-TV celebrities etc, but in no semblance of a free society do I express that preference through punitive government measures against the people expending their resources on that.
- aww_dang 5y agoBy allowing a decentralized market based system to ascribe value to these things we avoid the problem of imposing our subjective value judgments on others. It may not be perfect, but it is more humane and productive than central planning. Imagine the democratic alternative, where the masses vote that watching the Kardashians is compulsory. Or that your own niche interests are prohibited.
- asah 5y agoYeah me too. And deep neural nets. And quantum computing. And 4k TV. And smart phones. And drones. Cause nuthin but trouble. Give me my horse and buggy ! /s Seriously, it's both pointless to play Luddite (in general) and there's plenty of legit and exciting applications for crypto, from wildly faster and easier capital allocation to sophisticated artistic rights contracts replacing junky and expensive legal contracts.
- infinitezest 5y agoI think this is a pretty reductionist argument. Just like the other technologies that you mentioned crypto has some good applications. But it really comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. Easier said than done, sure, but I'm not at all convinced by the "oh well I guess you think ALL tech is bad then" argument.
- jl2718 5y agoWhat are some of the social problems that the SWIFT network solves?