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Money is a social invention, it can never be apolitical. It very much reflects societal structure and contracts, explicit or implicit. This (very early / presc
by nologic01 3y ago
Money is a social invention, it can never be apolitical. It very much reflects societal structure and contracts, explicit or implicit.
This (very early / prescient) critique of bitcoin is not casting a harsh enough light on the inadequacy of its design.
But maybe now that the concept of designed and programmable money is on the table people can think of what type of monetary/credit system befits a good society.
Bitcoin it aint and out bizarre private bank money perennially backed by the collective it aint either.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoreflects -> enforces I suspect you need to create a good society first and then decide on a resource/status hierarchy system for it. Trying to do it the other way around is unlikely to work. Bitcoin was always financial libertarianism. No accountability, no records, and - most of all, but only potentially - no taxes. Inevitably it turned into Ground Zero for anyone with a scam to upsell.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoHow is the block chain "no records" tho? Isn't it an immutable chain of records that inexorably identifies and documents ownership and transactions?
- hinkley 3y agoMagic thinking, that’s how.
- anonporridge 3y agoMore like boogeyman thinking.
- throwaway128128 3y agoLaundering money through mixers is a big part of coin culture.
- hinkley 3y agoA lot of cryptography is based on non repudiation, while contract law is built on repudiation. Trading goods for services or even other goods is an implicit or explicit contract. The people who think cryptocurrency is only for crime are partially right, but not strictly for the reasons they think. Less drugs and more fraud.
- hudon 3y agocryptography is based on non repudiation, but cryptocurrency is just human-written codebases. You can very much fork/modify/influence/introduce bugs in/backdoor/etc. code. It fails to promote cryptography's qualities to a higher sphere, as the more cryptocurrencies become harmful to society, the more they become governed by contract law. This has been the trend for the last decade, at least.
- Canada 3y agoHanding over some bank notes also has the property of "non-repudiation" but that doesn't mean that just because I paid you in cash you get necessarily get away with not upholding your end of our agreement. Bank transfers also have this "non-repudiation" property in practice as well. That hasn't stopped us from using them for payment while also enforcing the terms of contracts.
- hinkley 3y ago> Bank transfers also have this "non-repudiation" property in practice as well. No and that's a nasty, nasty surprise when you find out it's not true. There are plenty of ways for big bank customers to claw back payments made to private individuals, long after you or I would consider the transaction settled. And people get in trouble with their banks when they've spent the money and reversing the charges results in your accounts being overdrawn. The closest thing you have to this power is Visa, which is why the little Robin Hood in my head makes me encourage people to use it whenever they can. There's the old saying, "I'll believe it when I see it." There's a cheeky variant, "I'll believe it when the check clears." There's the experienced, "I'll believe it ten days after the check clears." And there's the jaded, "I'll believe it 30 days after the check clears."
- olalonde 3y ago> Money is a social invention, it can never be apolitical. Seems like the good old "everything is political" argument.
- garba_dlm 3y agoand if everything is political, nothing is political? but politics is just what happens when power interacts in a social context! ...and everything IS social
- olalonde 3y agoYes, it's just not what we mean when we say Bitcoin is apolitical. What we mean is that it's not subject to political influence nor does it require government to operate. In contrast to fiat money.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zaphar 3y agoBitcoin literally uses voting to on which branch to use as it's consensus tie break mechanism. It depends on the value of the network incentivizing people to vote in a way that keeps the network trustworthy. I don't know if you can get more overtly political than that.