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Most people are grossly incompetent at existing, and a substantial portion of the grief they experience in life is self-inflicted. 60% of the population couldn'

Most people are grossly incompetent at existing, and a substantial portion of the grief they experience in life is self-inflicted. 60% of the population couldn't afford an emergency $500 expense and 50% of millennials earning six figures live paycheck to paycheck. Whether most people even understand (let alone value) something as abstract as monetary autonomy (to say nothing of financial privacy, transaction irrepudiation, resistance to censorship, resistance to confiscation [for the competent], deflationary nature, the resilient distributed architecture, etc) is no indicator of the actual utility of said thing. The things most people do care about (sports, "reality" TV, which carcinogenic cognition-degrading beverage to consume [and which one to fire live ammunition at], parasocial relationships with celebrities, astrology, and other such nonsense) should clear up any confusion about the value of public opinion. To be clear: I'm not advocating for public adoption of crypto - quite the opposite - the public, writ large, is simultaneously too incompetent to perform key management, while also being too incompetent to manage counterparty risk. Centralized exchanges shouldn't even exist, but that's not an argument against the existence or utility of cryptocurrency itself, it's an argument against enabling idiots to harm themselves. FIAT and Crypto are both products of the human imagination, true. The difference is that one exists within an ecosystem tailor-made for restricting freedom through surveillance, control, rampant inflation (USD has lost >97% of value since inception), and the other in an ecosystem that allows for absolute privacy, full control, and deflation, which incentivizes rather than punishes savers. You might not care about any of those properties. The public might not even understand half of them. That doesn't mean those properties in a monetary system have no value to anyone.

Guthur 4y ago
The problem is that we are looking to these systems to solve human social problems. No matter what techno wizardry we put in place if we don't have core values that respect human life, including freedoms such as privacy then it will be for naught. At the end of the day these systems will not protect you if the those with a monopoly on power see human existence as a zero sum game and are hell bent on being the winner that takes it all. We have understood this for millenia, there are countless doctrines that all share an understanding of these and have put in place common laws that aim to bring us together in peace.

Guthur 4y ago

The problem is that we are looking to these systems to solve human social problems. No matter what techno wizardry we put in place if we don't have core values that respect human life, including freedoms such as privacy then it will be for naught. At the end of the day these systems will not protect you if the those with a monopoly on power see human existence as a zero sum game and are hell bent on being the winner that takes it all. We have understood this for millenia, there are countless doctrines that all share an understanding of these and have put in place common laws that aim to bring us together in peace.