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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
      The proponents are making a fallacy that's a little hard to explain, basically mixing up a measurement/indicator with a cause. This comes up in a lot of places, because it can be difficult to tell when the fallacy is happening and when it's not. For example, Linux has fewer desktop viruses written to target it than Windows, which is a big part of why it can be a good security decision to use Linux. And genuinely, regardless of the reason, Linux desktop environments do tend to have fewer viruses targettng them. However, the reason why Linux has fewer desktop viruses is because it's not the OS that most ordinary people use, so it would be incorrect for people to say, "Linux should be the dominant OS for everyone because it has fewer viruses." Because if it was the dominant desktop OS that everyone used, it would have more viruses. Primarily targeting Windows is an effect of malware authors wanting to target as many people as possible. But Windows is not the cause of them writing viruses, they are not writing viruses because they want to target Windows, they want to target people and they use Windows to do so. And in the same way, in theory yeah, you could look at something like Bitcoin and say that it's not being used in the same ways that the USD to fund certain actions/industries. But to argue that Bitcoin is a better currency because it doesn't get used to fund military spending... The military uses the USD to accomplish its goals. The USD is not itself the goal. Like you said: > 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 US would still want to signal and defend that confidence in a world where it used Bitcoin. So really when we talk about the cost and energy use of Bitcoin, we're assuming that in a world where Bitcoin was the dominant US currency those energy costs would be in addition to all of the existing military spending and energy usage. Because when say that the US military is defending a signal of stability/confidence, it's not the signal itself that the US is defending, it's defending what the signal says.
      - toolz 4y ago
        > But to argue that Bitcoin is a better currency because it doesn't get used to fund military spending I don't see anyone arguing that. The contrived argument I made was that USD requires a military to be stable. Bitcoin only requires proof of work. It's not a straight forward argument and I don't think it's quite a genuine argument because the US would have a military regardless (I think?) but it does stand to reason that without the US military the USD would not be the reserve currency of the world and therefore would not be nearly as stable. Do keep in mind the context I proposed the argument was not intended to be a genuine argument, but rather an example of someone making a more all-or-nothing, bad-faith argument.

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
    The proponents are making a fallacy that's a little hard to explain, basically mixing up a measurement/indicator with a cause. This comes up in a lot of places, because it can be difficult to tell when the fallacy is happening and when it's not. For example, Linux has fewer desktop viruses written to target it than Windows, which is a big part of why it can be a good security decision to use Linux. And genuinely, regardless of the reason, Linux desktop environments do tend to have fewer viruses targettng them. However, the reason why Linux has fewer desktop viruses is because it's not the OS that most ordinary people use, so it would be incorrect for people to say, "Linux should be the dominant OS for everyone because it has fewer viruses." Because if it was the dominant desktop OS that everyone used, it would have more viruses. Primarily targeting Windows is an effect of malware authors wanting to target as many people as possible. But Windows is not the cause of them writing viruses, they are not writing viruses because they want to target Windows, they want to target people and they use Windows to do so. And in the same way, in theory yeah, you could look at something like Bitcoin and say that it's not being used in the same ways that the USD to fund certain actions/industries. But to argue that Bitcoin is a better currency because it doesn't get used to fund military spending... The military uses the USD to accomplish its goals. The USD is not itself the goal. Like you said: > 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 US would still want to signal and defend that confidence in a world where it used Bitcoin. So really when we talk about the cost and energy use of Bitcoin, we're assuming that in a world where Bitcoin was the dominant US currency those energy costs would be in addition to all of the existing military spending and energy usage. Because when say that the US military is defending a signal of stability/confidence, it's not the signal itself that the US is defending, it's defending what the signal says.
    - toolz 4y ago
      > But to argue that Bitcoin is a better currency because it doesn't get used to fund military spending I don't see anyone arguing that. The contrived argument I made was that USD requires a military to be stable. Bitcoin only requires proof of work. It's not a straight forward argument and I don't think it's quite a genuine argument because the US would have a military regardless (I think?) but it does stand to reason that without the US military the USD would not be the reserve currency of the world and therefore would not be nearly as stable. Do keep in mind the context I proposed the argument was not intended to be a genuine argument, but rather an example of someone making a more all-or-nothing, bad-faith argument.