3 ms·

Frankly, when you describe PoW that way, it sounds like something you'd get by giving an investor a monkey's paw. If you had a source of power, you had to use

by hakfoo 2y ago

Frankly, when you describe PoW that way, it sounds like something you'd get by giving an investor a monkey's paw. If you had a source of power, you had to use it, either directly or indirectly, to make goods and services-- satisfy actual needs somewhere-- to exchange it for stored value. Your model cuts productive economic activity right out of the loop, Why would anyone bother using their hydro/solar/nuclear resources to run a factory when they can just use it to grind for Bitcoin directly? Well, at least until the economy becomes so wrapped around this delusion that we end up with real-world scarcities, and all the Bitcoin in San Francisco won't buy you one taco. I arch my back at trying to restore "physical value" to economic prominence. Fiat currencies are a socially progressive tool. It gives us the chance to decide as a civilization whether and how much to incentivize those who hoard, those who invest, and those who spend. Conversely, physical, undilutable wealth reassures only the existing wealthy, who can ossify their position with no fear of inflation undermining their treasuries.

motohagiography 2y ago
responding because your first argument is analogous to Sachs' "resource curse," where if you can make money in energy, why do anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse it's a good argument, but essentially presumes a nation run by public sector unions and their committees of planners is a desirable end state. 75 years ago dubai was a bunch of tents, and it is now diversifying its economy in a very short time. the reason they would run a factory is because they need something to spend the revenue from the money they're exporting on. also, why do they need factories, it's pretty sustainable to just import everything and then leave no trace afterwards. anywhere with hydropower is a potential PoW mini-dubai, if perhaps a bit more godless. the ossification critique reflects a scrooge mcduck understanding of wealth, where it assumes people sit atop a pile of it counting it or fill pools with it to swim and luxuriate in it, with no understaing of what capital is. the only scarcity in the world is freedom from fear and corruption to build, absolutely everything else is abundant.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  >but essentially presumes a nation run by public sector unions and their committees of planners is a desirable end state. I get that this is an typical perspective for the HN crowd, but "where do I sign up?" An aspirational goal of civilization is that we should be able to cooperate and efficiently distribute labour, so we aren't all spending all our time trying to outhustle each other. Public sector unions and planning committees seem a bit more interested in that goal than VCs and and startup devs. Dubai is an interesting example. It's not just "we have to spend the money on something", it's "our entire economy has a best-by date, whether it's via the ooze running out, or just the march of renewables and EVs, so we'd better diversify while we can afford to." Even assuming that transport is free and 1000% green, local manufacturing capacity is important just to ensure you have some control over your needs-- look at the shipping fracas in the Middle East, and ask what products you want on the far end of a 10,000km container-ship journey? Perhaps Scrooge McDuck is an exaggerated model, but when I see "trillion dollar companies" next to "the middle class household is typically 2+ incomes these days", I'm not sure that taming 10% inflation is what really fixes the latter.
  - motohagiography 2y ago
    inflation doesn't impact the wealthy because their assets are productive and diversified, whereas inflation destroys middle and working classes because their savings are in cash and houses, and there are no productive assets cheap enough or risk adjusted for them to afford other than money market funds. this exchange we are having reinforces that the objections to PoW and bitcoin are exclusively objections to free and counter-socialist economics, and as a category, their presumptions disqualify them from a basis in reality. if the problem is PoW is not socialist enough, it begs the question in regard to why it should be in the first place- implying it's not actually a thing. if you model the world as a closed loop, zero-sum, finite redistribution problem, the 10k km container ship journey seems like a risk, but if you have money or something of value, you just hedge it and pick the next supplier. in markets these are solved problems using futures contracts, and even when it crashes, nobody reverts to cannibalism. I can't say the same for planned economies[1]. Dubai, las vegas, the moon and mars will have similar economies based on currency production whether it's oil or gambling risk or bitcoin, they're the same kind of local resource-based economies. To put this to rest, there is no niche HN worldview, like most of humanity does to get-by, people who post here generally make stuff. If it weren't it would be Comrade News, where people post about What Is To Be Done, sort of like tumblr and reddit, where nobody does anything and still mainly complains. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933#Cannibalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

by hakfoo 2y ago

motohagiography 2y ago

responding because your first argument is analogous to Sachs' "resource curse," where if you can make money in energy, why do anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse it's a good argument, but essentially presumes a nation run by public sector unions and their committees of planners is a desirable end state. 75 years ago dubai was a bunch of tents, and it is now diversifying its economy in a very short time. the reason they would run a factory is because they need something to spend the revenue from the money they're exporting on. also, why do they need factories, it's pretty sustainable to just import everything and then leave no trace afterwards. anywhere with hydropower is a potential PoW mini-dubai, if perhaps a bit more godless. the ossification critique reflects a scrooge mcduck understanding of wealth, where it assumes people sit atop a pile of it counting it or fill pools with it to swim and luxuriate in it, with no understaing of what capital is. the only scarcity in the world is freedom from fear and corruption to build, absolutely everything else is abundant.

hakfoo 2y ago
>but essentially presumes a nation run by public sector unions and their committees of planners is a desirable end state. I get that this is an typical perspective for the HN crowd, but "where do I sign up?" An aspirational goal of civilization is that we should be able to cooperate and efficiently distribute labour, so we aren't all spending all our time trying to outhustle each other. Public sector unions and planning committees seem a bit more interested in that goal than VCs and and startup devs. Dubai is an interesting example. It's not just "we have to spend the money on something", it's "our entire economy has a best-by date, whether it's via the ooze running out, or just the march of renewables and EVs, so we'd better diversify while we can afford to." Even assuming that transport is free and 1000% green, local manufacturing capacity is important just to ensure you have some control over your needs-- look at the shipping fracas in the Middle East, and ask what products you want on the far end of a 10,000km container-ship journey? Perhaps Scrooge McDuck is an exaggerated model, but when I see "trillion dollar companies" next to "the middle class household is typically 2+ incomes these days", I'm not sure that taming 10% inflation is what really fixes the latter.
- motohagiography 2y ago
  inflation doesn't impact the wealthy because their assets are productive and diversified, whereas inflation destroys middle and working classes because their savings are in cash and houses, and there are no productive assets cheap enough or risk adjusted for them to afford other than money market funds. this exchange we are having reinforces that the objections to PoW and bitcoin are exclusively objections to free and counter-socialist economics, and as a category, their presumptions disqualify them from a basis in reality. if the problem is PoW is not socialist enough, it begs the question in regard to why it should be in the first place- implying it's not actually a thing. if you model the world as a closed loop, zero-sum, finite redistribution problem, the 10k km container ship journey seems like a risk, but if you have money or something of value, you just hedge it and pick the next supplier. in markets these are solved problems using futures contracts, and even when it crashes, nobody reverts to cannibalism. I can't say the same for planned economies[1]. Dubai, las vegas, the moon and mars will have similar economies based on currency production whether it's oil or gambling risk or bitcoin, they're the same kind of local resource-based economies. To put this to rest, there is no niche HN worldview, like most of humanity does to get-by, people who post here generally make stuff. If it weren't it would be Comrade News, where people post about What Is To Be Done, sort of like tumblr and reddit, where nobody does anything and still mainly complains. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933#Cannibalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...