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Authoritarian governments do suck and I would love for them to not exist. But they coexist with oligarchs, who will only be further advantaged by unregulated ma

Authoritarian governments do suck and I would love for them to not exist. But they coexist with oligarchs, who will only be further advantaged by unregulated markets. The life of a tenant farmer in the Phillippines does not only suck because of Duterte; it also sucks because the wealthy family they work for is comfortable with inefficient plantation-based farming. Now, its certainly possible that crypto could give people more access to the world market, and thereby improve their situation. Rural communities in Bangladesh now have YouTube channels showing the amazing talent they have for cooking. Its a weird world. But there's a dark side to global exposure. Some Malaysians got rich from their global stock market in the 90's without having to relocate, but it didn't end well because the investment was in speculative consumer goods like real estate. Crypto doesn't have to end this way - it could enable real invention that would not be possible with rigid, local fiat currencies. But right now, crypto feels like a casino pizza party, and I'm increasingly worried.

rglullis 5y ago
Sorry, but you interjected a lot of assumptions, biases and opinions and are passing them as fact. > oligarchs, who will only be further advantaged by unregulated markets. No one is saying about "unregulated markets". The idea is about having regulations being localized and based on the principles of much smaller communities. Take the principles from Localism applied to "virtual city-states", if you will. > wealthy family (...) is comfortable with inefficient plantation-based farming. Because they have a monopsony on the labor. On a world where you can decouple "where you live" from "where you work", this goes right out of the window. And it goes both ways: it can be either because the locals leave the place because they can find better opportunities, but also because people from other, wealthier places might look at these places as an opportunity for a low-cost of life and cheap labor. Go checkout /r/digitalnomad and you will see how many people are already doing or planning to do such a thing. For a more cynical person, this means "gentrification". For someone looking at things at a wider-scale, it means that people could eventually be able to do something that was only possible for the elites controlling multinational corporations.

rglullis 5y ago

Sorry, but you interjected a lot of assumptions, biases and opinions and are passing them as fact. > oligarchs, who will only be further advantaged by unregulated markets. No one is saying about "unregulated markets". The idea is about having regulations being localized and based on the principles of much smaller communities. Take the principles from Localism applied to "virtual city-states", if you will. > wealthy family (...) is comfortable with inefficient plantation-based farming. Because they have a monopsony on the labor. On a world where you can decouple "where you live" from "where you work", this goes right out of the window. And it goes both ways: it can be either because the locals leave the place because they can find better opportunities, but also because people from other, wealthier places might look at these places as an opportunity for a low-cost of life and cheap labor. Go checkout /r/digitalnomad and you will see how many people are already doing or planning to do such a thing. For a more cynical person, this means "gentrification". For someone looking at things at a wider-scale, it means that people could eventually be able to do something that was only possible for the elites controlling multinational corporations.