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A Response to Paul Krugman from a Keynesian Bitcoiner

21 points by the-Duke 4y ago

hartator 4y ago
> “from each according to his ability, to the miners according to their hashpower” Satoshi Nakamoto never said that.
- nwatson 4y ago
  It's probably just an attempt to twist Satoshi's organizing incentive into an existing economic axiom, should probably lead with "as if Satoshi had said ... <<...>>".
- trevelyan 4y ago
  It's paraphrasing Marx. Satoshi did comment on the need for the network to provide a better incentive to P2P network nodes. He was well aware that a major class of essential nodes is expected to do work for free while miners are handed the profits from consensus operations.
causality0 4y ago
I didn't think people still took Paul "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" Krugman seriously anymore.
- dctoedt 4y ago
  Yes we do — he freely admits when he gets it wrong.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  I wondered if he was ever taken seriously, since he's so (narcissistically?) outlandish, then saw he's got a Nobel prize in economics. I must misunderstand something about him, clearly, or about the Nobel prize process.
  - smaddox 4y ago
    The "Nobel prize in economics" isn't a real Nobel prize. It wasn't funded by Nobel, and it isn't issued by the same committee.
    - mananaysiempre 4y ago
      At the same time, as an “economics topics worth reading about” detector it works pretty well as far as I can see. (Some of them will turn out to be rubbish a couple of decades later, but that’s experimental science for you.)
    - throw0101a 4y ago
      > The "Nobel prize in economics" isn't a real Nobel prize. The Nobel Prize people seem to think it is: * https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/ > It wasn't funded by Nobel, and it isn't issued by the same committee. It is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: > Every year, the academy awards the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the Crafoord Prize, the Sjöberg Prize and several other awards. The Academy maintains close relations with foreign academies, learned societies and international scientific organizations and also promotes international scientific cooperation. The Academy of Sciences is located within the Stockholm region's Royal National City Park. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Scien... * https://www.nobelprize.org/about/the-economic-sciences-prize-committee/ https://www.nobelprize.org/about/the-economic-sciences-prize... The same folks who do physics and chemistry.
      - smaddox 4y ago
        Keep reading. > Each September the Academy's Economics Prize Committee, which consists of five elected members [...] > Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandnephew of Ludvig Nobel. [...] saying that "There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize", and that the association with the Nobel prizes is "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econ...
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > I didn't think people still took Paul "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" Krugman seriously anymore. "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" ? What is this in reference to?
- diego_moita 4y ago
  Oh yeah! We should definitively trust in random dudes posting on the internet instead. You know, the kind that say that vaccines cause autism, global warming is a hoax, evolution is just a theory, Covid-19 is a scam by the globalists to better control people, ... Wake up, sheeple! /s
astoor 4y ago
The author repeatedly refers to Bitcoin as a "public good", "dependent" on a "volunteer-layer", like the crypto bros such as the article author are putting all their time and effort into running a public service for the greater benefit of society out of the goodness of their hearts with no expectation of profit. That is clearly the exact opposite of reality - they are trying to extract maximum personal profit in the shortest time irrespective of the damage they are doing to our society and environment.
- javert 4y ago
  Bitcoin people are not "crypto bros." Bitcoin people hate "crypto." You are conflating two opposing movements. edit: but it turns out the article author is a crypto bro, not a bitcoin person.
- monkaiju 4y ago
  Well said
- randomhodler84 4y ago
  No way, it is these things. Do the maintainers of SMTP do so as a public good, eg: provide us with decentralized email systems? Encryption protocols? ECMAscript? Internet protocols are maintained as a public good. The Bitcoin developers are certainly not trying to extract profits, they are trying to deliver the world an open source monetary system.
  - kibibu 4y ago
    Perhaps that's the core developers' goal. What they are trying to deliver and what they are actually delivering are two wildly different things. They've built a platform that destroys the environment faster than the entire banking sector, enables scams and ponzi schemes at unprecedented scale and anonymity, meanwhile delivering a whopping transaction throughput of around 20/s - enough to support a few moderately busy supermarkets in a single small city.
    - drcongo 4y ago
icefloe 4y ago
> "Bitcoiners are trying to create a public good (a non-excludable and non-rival data network) that is also self-sufficient (pays for its own provision)." What is the economic benefit of Bitcoin, net of the environmental cost of powering its provision mechanism? If in the long term the cost of energy expenditure to generate a new coin surpasses its value, then society is in the red.
icefloe 4y ago
javert 4y ago
The author doesn't seem to have much in common ideologically with most bitcoin people or to have a similar analysis of bitcoin to that of bitcoin people. So calling himself a "Keynesian bitcoiner" seems incorrect. It seems that he disagrees with certain fundamental intellectual premises of bitcoin. You don't get to call yourself a member of a movement if you fundamentally disagree with it. No; you're somebody criticizing it from the outside. That's fine, but don't conflate the two. You can't be an anti-bitcoin bitcoiner, an anti-left leftist, or an anti-Nazi Nazi.
randomhodler84 4y ago
Bitcoin as a concept is philosophically opposed to the philosophy of Keynes. What is a Keynesian Bitcoiner anyway?
- mattwilsonn888 4y ago
  Maybe read it and you might find out.
obarthelemy 4y ago
Gist of the article: Bitcoin has issues because people are out for profit. Everything would be peachy if volunteers had control. Goodluck with that. It's funny when a pro-X convinces you more that X is doomed.
- mattwilsonn888 4y ago
  That is not correct. It's more like the volunteer layer should have incentives to run well and the reason it can't scale is because it doesn't.
mywaifuismeta 4y ago
What I really want to know is, why is this flagged? HN full of low quality BS semi-technical Medium articles, but once something about crypto comes up it gets flagged.

21 points by the-Duke 4y ago

hartator 4y ago

> “from each according to his ability, to the miners according to their hashpower” Satoshi Nakamoto never said that.

nwatson 4y ago
It's probably just an attempt to twist Satoshi's organizing incentive into an existing economic axiom, should probably lead with "as if Satoshi had said ... <<...>>".
trevelyan 4y ago
It's paraphrasing Marx. Satoshi did comment on the need for the network to provide a better incentive to P2P network nodes. He was well aware that a major class of essential nodes is expected to do work for free while miners are handed the profits from consensus operations.

causality0 4y ago

I didn't think people still took Paul "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" Krugman seriously anymore.

dctoedt 4y ago
Yes we do — he freely admits when he gets it wrong.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
I wondered if he was ever taken seriously, since he's so (narcissistically?) outlandish, then saw he's got a Nobel prize in economics. I must misunderstand something about him, clearly, or about the Nobel prize process.
- smaddox 4y ago
  The "Nobel prize in economics" isn't a real Nobel prize. It wasn't funded by Nobel, and it isn't issued by the same committee.
  - mananaysiempre 4y ago
    At the same time, as an “economics topics worth reading about” detector it works pretty well as far as I can see. (Some of them will turn out to be rubbish a couple of decades later, but that’s experimental science for you.)
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > The "Nobel prize in economics" isn't a real Nobel prize. The Nobel Prize people seem to think it is: * https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/ > It wasn't funded by Nobel, and it isn't issued by the same committee. It is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: > Every year, the academy awards the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the Crafoord Prize, the Sjöberg Prize and several other awards. The Academy maintains close relations with foreign academies, learned societies and international scientific organizations and also promotes international scientific cooperation. The Academy of Sciences is located within the Stockholm region's Royal National City Park. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Scien... * https://www.nobelprize.org/about/the-economic-sciences-prize-committee/ https://www.nobelprize.org/about/the-economic-sciences-prize... The same folks who do physics and chemistry.
    - smaddox 4y ago
      Keep reading. > Each September the Academy's Economics Prize Committee, which consists of five elected members [...] > Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandnephew of Ludvig Nobel. [...] saying that "There is nothing to indicate that he would have wanted such a prize", and that the association with the Nobel prizes is "a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econ...
throw0101a 4y ago
> I didn't think people still took Paul "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" Krugman seriously anymore. "The Bigger the Bubble the Better" ? What is this in reference to?
diego_moita 4y ago
Oh yeah! We should definitively trust in random dudes posting on the internet instead. You know, the kind that say that vaccines cause autism, global warming is a hoax, evolution is just a theory, Covid-19 is a scam by the globalists to better control people, ... Wake up, sheeple! /s

astoor 4y ago

The author repeatedly refers to Bitcoin as a "public good", "dependent" on a "volunteer-layer", like the crypto bros such as the article author are putting all their time and effort into running a public service for the greater benefit of society out of the goodness of their hearts with no expectation of profit. That is clearly the exact opposite of reality - they are trying to extract maximum personal profit in the shortest time irrespective of the damage they are doing to our society and environment.

javert 4y ago
Bitcoin people are not "crypto bros." Bitcoin people hate "crypto." You are conflating two opposing movements. edit: but it turns out the article author is a crypto bro, not a bitcoin person.
monkaiju 4y ago
Well said
randomhodler84 4y ago
No way, it is these things. Do the maintainers of SMTP do so as a public good, eg: provide us with decentralized email systems? Encryption protocols? ECMAscript? Internet protocols are maintained as a public good. The Bitcoin developers are certainly not trying to extract profits, they are trying to deliver the world an open source monetary system.
- kibibu 4y ago
  Perhaps that's the core developers' goal. What they are trying to deliver and what they are actually delivering are two wildly different things. They've built a platform that destroys the environment faster than the entire banking sector, enables scams and ponzi schemes at unprecedented scale and anonymity, meanwhile delivering a whopping transaction throughput of around 20/s - enough to support a few moderately busy supermarkets in a single small city.
  - drcongo 4y ago

icefloe 4y ago

> "Bitcoiners are trying to create a public good (a non-excludable and non-rival data network) that is also self-sufficient (pays for its own provision)." What is the economic benefit of Bitcoin, net of the environmental cost of powering its provision mechanism? If in the long term the cost of energy expenditure to generate a new coin surpasses its value, then society is in the red.

icefloe 4y ago

javert 4y ago

The author doesn't seem to have much in common ideologically with most bitcoin people or to have a similar analysis of bitcoin to that of bitcoin people. So calling himself a "Keynesian bitcoiner" seems incorrect. It seems that he disagrees with certain fundamental intellectual premises of bitcoin. You don't get to call yourself a member of a movement if you fundamentally disagree with it. No; you're somebody criticizing it from the outside. That's fine, but don't conflate the two. You can't be an anti-bitcoin bitcoiner, an anti-left leftist, or an anti-Nazi Nazi.

randomhodler84 4y ago

Bitcoin as a concept is philosophically opposed to the philosophy of Keynes. What is a Keynesian Bitcoiner anyway?

mattwilsonn888 4y ago
Maybe read it and you might find out.

obarthelemy 4y ago

Gist of the article: Bitcoin has issues because people are out for profit. Everything would be peachy if volunteers had control. Goodluck with that. It's funny when a pro-X convinces you more that X is doomed.

mattwilsonn888 4y ago
That is not correct. It's more like the volunteer layer should have incentives to run well and the reason it can't scale is because it doesn't.

mywaifuismeta 4y ago

What I really want to know is, why is this flagged? HN full of low quality BS semi-technical Medium articles, but once something about crypto comes up it gets flagged.