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I'm genuinely glad crypto enthusiasts spend more time defending their position than they do being as obtuse against fiat as this comment is towards crypto (in m

by toolz 4y ago

I'm genuinely glad crypto enthusiasts spend more time defending their position than they do being as obtuse against fiat as this comment is towards crypto (in my opinion). If they were as unnecessarily hostile, I imagine it might sound something like this: It takes nearly half of the US budget with their military to secure the USD value by destabilizing poor countries and exploiting them for their crude oil, which is the most traded commodity in the world by fiat. In relation it's trivial to dissociate your identity from crypto you own, making it impossible for someone to prove you have crypto to steal, even with a gun to your head. All secured by harmless nerds using fractions of a percent of the worlds electricity usage, which doesn't even begin to approach the electricity the military utilizes from even a single one of the largest militarized nations. It's obvious to me that neither of these are honest positions to take in a debate about the benefits and costs of these classes of assets.

nojito 4y ago
>USD value by destabilizing poor countries and exploiting them for their crude oil The US is a net exporter of oil and has been for years now.
- toolz 4y ago
  Was this intended on negating my comment about crude oil being used to establish USDs relative stability? Because I don't think this fact does anything of the sort, although it's still informative and interesting, I'm just not sure I understand the point you might be trying to make in this context.
  - nojito 4y ago
    The USD isn’t pegged to oil.
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      USD is just pieces of paper https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322 https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-natio...
      - thaway2839 4y ago
        I don't understand your link to the Onion here. Are you joking or do you not realize that the Onion is satire?
hash872 4y ago
>It takes nearly half of the US budget with their military to secure the USD value The US spends a little less than 12% of its annual budget on its military https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170
- toolz 4y ago
  sorry, I was confusing that with the US spending nearly half the worlds budget on defense - thanks for the correction.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  52% of it's discretionary, no?
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    Which is like saying "That family is spending 52% of the money it doesn't spend on rent/mortgage, food, and fuel on guns and ammo." Doesn't really tell you a lot if you don't know how much they're spending on rent/mortgage, food, and fuel.
  - thaway2839 4y ago
    Also, discretionary here is entirely a political/legal term. I think one would find it very hard to argue that military spending is discretionary for any major nation in the layman sense of that word, even if the US's military spending is beyond control (on the flip side, the US also gets much less value for its military spending relative to say the value China gets for its military spending).
ipython 4y ago
What fantasy land do you live in where a military’s only job is to secure … the national currency?
- toolz 4y ago
  I intended for that to be an example of an obtuse, divisive argument - it is not an argument I'm actually attempting to defend. Sorry if I didn't make that as clear as I could have.
- bena 4y ago
  This is one of those things where it's very general. The value of a national currency is a reflection of the rest of the world's confidence in that nation to meet its obligations. The money is essentially a marker for future goods and services. The US military's reason for being is to protect the US from other nations, thereby keeping the US's resources available for its own use, its citizens capable of performing services, etc. It is also used to secure US interests abroad. Having its current resources, a populace capable of processing those resources, and the ability to acquire more is the reason the rest of the world is confident in our ability to provide future goods and services. A marker for US resources is a solid bet. That marker is called the US Dollar. Ergo, the military's job is to secure the dollar. That's the rough train of thought that leads you to claiming that every dollar spent on defense is a dollar spent on defending the dollar.
  - ipython 4y ago
    Right but just like every square by definition is a rectangle, that does not also imply that every rectangle is also a square. How would thousands of computers spinning in circles computing useless sha hashes protect your national borders, coasts, and other physical assets, resources and people?
    - bena 4y ago
      I'm not defending the position, I'm explaining it. And it's not the defense that's the issue, it's the money spent on the defense that they're comparing. They're saying that while crypto may cost $X to support, it's less than $Y where $Y is the total expenditure of the US Army.
danShumway 4y ago
I've had this conversation in the past, but our military doesn't exist just to stabilize the USD. The USD is one of the tools the United States uses to exert control over other markets and to stabilize US markets in general. That goal exists independently of what currencies are involved. Even if the USD vanished completely and Bitcoin took over, there is basically no reason to believe that the US military would go away or that the US would stop interfering in foreign markets. And banking regulation/enforcement would just switch to targeting exchanges/platforms, blocking specific coins, and move on. Independent of the whole cryptocurrency thing, there are good reasons to want better payment methods that give people more freedom/privacy, but "this will dismantle the military-industrial complex" isn't really one of them. Last I checked, there's nothing in the Bitcoin protocol that says it can't be used for bribes, oil, or guns. It's just a wild fantasy. Imagine going back to the Cold War and thinking that if the USD wasn't around that the US and the Soviet Union would have stopped building nukes.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >The USD is one of the tools the United States uses to exert control Why should we "exert control"? Maybe if folks didn't think they needed to build a bunch of aircraft carriers they'd stop building coal plants. We should adopt a second strike nuclear policy, decommision our silos, and shift to an array of submarine and other movable launchers for a smaller set of nuclear weapons rather than the old cold war model, now that we live in a multipolar world.
  - danShumway 4y ago
    Okay, but Bitcoin won't make that happen. We didn't build nukes because we wanted to protect the USD, it was a fight about ideas like Communism, national control, etc...
- thaway2839 4y ago
  Next thing you will be telling everybody is that Bitcoin was promoted as a hedge against inflation.

by toolz 4y ago

nojito 4y ago

>USD value by destabilizing poor countries and exploiting them for their crude oil The US is a net exporter of oil and has been for years now.

toolz 4y ago
Was this intended on negating my comment about crude oil being used to establish USDs relative stability? Because I don't think this fact does anything of the sort, although it's still informative and interesting, I'm just not sure I understand the point you might be trying to make in this context.
- nojito 4y ago
  The USD isn’t pegged to oil.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    USD is just pieces of paper https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322 https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-natio...
    - thaway2839 4y ago
      I don't understand your link to the Onion here. Are you joking or do you not realize that the Onion is satire?

hash872 4y ago

>It takes nearly half of the US budget with their military to secure the USD value The US spends a little less than 12% of its annual budget on its military https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170

toolz 4y ago
sorry, I was confusing that with the US spending nearly half the worlds budget on defense - thanks for the correction.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
52% of it's discretionary, no?
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Which is like saying "That family is spending 52% of the money it doesn't spend on rent/mortgage, food, and fuel on guns and ammo." Doesn't really tell you a lot if you don't know how much they're spending on rent/mortgage, food, and fuel.
- thaway2839 4y ago
  Also, discretionary here is entirely a political/legal term. I think one would find it very hard to argue that military spending is discretionary for any major nation in the layman sense of that word, even if the US's military spending is beyond control (on the flip side, the US also gets much less value for its military spending relative to say the value China gets for its military spending).

ipython 4y ago

What fantasy land do you live in where a military’s only job is to secure … the national currency?

toolz 4y ago
I intended for that to be an example of an obtuse, divisive argument - it is not an argument I'm actually attempting to defend. Sorry if I didn't make that as clear as I could have.
bena 4y ago
This is one of those things where it's very general. The value of a national currency is a reflection of the rest of the world's confidence in that nation to meet its obligations. The money is essentially a marker for future goods and services. The US military's reason for being is to protect the US from other nations, thereby keeping the US's resources available for its own use, its citizens capable of performing services, etc. It is also used to secure US interests abroad. Having its current resources, a populace capable of processing those resources, and the ability to acquire more is the reason the rest of the world is confident in our ability to provide future goods and services. A marker for US resources is a solid bet. That marker is called the US Dollar. Ergo, the military's job is to secure the dollar. That's the rough train of thought that leads you to claiming that every dollar spent on defense is a dollar spent on defending the dollar.
- ipython 4y ago
  Right but just like every square by definition is a rectangle, that does not also imply that every rectangle is also a square. How would thousands of computers spinning in circles computing useless sha hashes protect your national borders, coasts, and other physical assets, resources and people?
  - bena 4y ago
    I'm not defending the position, I'm explaining it. And it's not the defense that's the issue, it's the money spent on the defense that they're comparing. They're saying that while crypto may cost $X to support, it's less than $Y where $Y is the total expenditure of the US Army.

danShumway 4y ago

I've had this conversation in the past, but our military doesn't exist just to stabilize the USD. The USD is one of the tools the United States uses to exert control over other markets and to stabilize US markets in general. That goal exists independently of what currencies are involved. Even if the USD vanished completely and Bitcoin took over, there is basically no reason to believe that the US military would go away or that the US would stop interfering in foreign markets. And banking regulation/enforcement would just switch to targeting exchanges/platforms, blocking specific coins, and move on. Independent of the whole cryptocurrency thing, there are good reasons to want better payment methods that give people more freedom/privacy, but "this will dismantle the military-industrial complex" isn't really one of them. Last I checked, there's nothing in the Bitcoin protocol that says it can't be used for bribes, oil, or guns. It's just a wild fantasy. Imagine going back to the Cold War and thinking that if the USD wasn't around that the US and the Soviet Union would have stopped building nukes.

dontbenebby 4y ago
>The USD is one of the tools the United States uses to exert control Why should we "exert control"? Maybe if folks didn't think they needed to build a bunch of aircraft carriers they'd stop building coal plants. We should adopt a second strike nuclear policy, decommision our silos, and shift to an array of submarine and other movable launchers for a smaller set of nuclear weapons rather than the old cold war model, now that we live in a multipolar world.
- danShumway 4y ago
  Okay, but Bitcoin won't make that happen. We didn't build nukes because we wanted to protect the USD, it was a fight about ideas like Communism, national control, etc...
thaway2839 4y ago
Next thing you will be telling everybody is that Bitcoin was promoted as a hedge against inflation.