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First, libertarians can't be taken seriously. Roads and courts are like kryptonite to libertarianism. Keep pressing and they'll either wave away any issues or s

by jmyeet 2y ago

First, libertarians can't be taken seriously. Roads and courts are like kryptonite to libertarianism. Keep pressing and they'll either wave away any issues or slowly reinvent everything we have now. Second, most people pushing crypto simply don't understand the financial system. That's sort of the "disruptor" mentality run amok. But thing slike reversible transactions are a feature not a bug. Third, crypto has a lot of former gold bugs who bemoan the death of the gold standard. It's necessary to point out that the US dollar has never been 100% backed by silver and/or gold. What really backs the US dollar is the US military. Lastly, to tie all of this to together with the topic at hand: it would take one law (possibly just one regulation) to completely kill the crypto ecosystem. If the US government decides to use its power against the crypto ecosystem, crypto will collapse like a house of cards. The decentralization will mean absolutely nothing. For example, if the US said today that a requirement for access to the US financial system was to bar converting fiat currency to and from crypto of any kind thencrypto would die. Yes, the blockchain can technically survive but it's the utility in the real world that gives it value. What initially drove Bitcoin was wealthy Chinese people using it to escape China's capital controls (ie mine Bitcoin in China, cash out the Bitcoin outside China).

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
> it would take one law (possibly just one regulation) to completely kill the crypto ecosystem Instead, the newly elected US officials will very likely create a "strategic bitcoin reserve" where the US government buys bitcoins, enriching the whales who will finally have a large enough buyer to absorb all their mounds of coins. It'd be like if they had created a 'strategic beanie baby reserve' in the 90s.
duxup 2y ago
I wish there was a libertarian type system / political party that did operate with some sense of reality. That whole space though is either completely unrealistic / absurd, or owned by folks more interested in corporatism.
lolinder 2y ago
> First, libertarians can't be taken seriously. Roads and courts are like kryptonite to libertarianism. This is a very sweeping statement about a political ideology that varies as much as "liberal" and "conservative" do. Believing that roads and courts shouldn't exist isn't baked in to some official libertarian Bible—all libertarianism necessarily signifies is that someone believes that both personal and financial freedoms should be given roughly equal consideration, where a liberal might prioritize personal freedom and a conservative might prioritize financial freedom. Where someone falls on the spectrum of how much government involvement is appropriate in either type of freedom can vary quite a bit. (The average libertarian who runs for office as a Libertarian does seem to be extreme in the way that you describe, but I think that's a side effect of our FPTP voting system—only a fanatic would truly believe that it's better to run on their own than get behind the least-objectionable candidate—than it is a result of libertarianism as a philosophy.)
- jmyeet 2y ago
  I'm sorry but libertarianism is deeply unserious. Part of the problem here is that so many Americans (in particular) simply haven't done the reading. Take, for example, your labels of "liberal" and "conservative". Classical liberalism is a hyper-individualistic philosophy that enshrines "private property" as a basic right. Really nobody is a classic liberal anymore. They're neoliberals. What's a neoliberal? Someone who deeply believes in deregulation and capitalism as well as being a liberal. In that sense, anyone labelled "liberal" or "conservative" is a (neo)liberal.. There are only aesthetic differences around social issues. There is no sunshine between the foreign policy of the two major parties in the US, for example. Libertarianism is really just a flavor of neoliberalism where deregulation is taken to the extreme yet somehow it's believed that free markets can still exist. But start probing the details: what do you do if you pay someone to build a house for you and they just don't? Or they do and it collapses 3 months later? Or what if someone just comes along and steals your stuff? "Free markets" are largely an oxymoron anyway but such as they cann exist, they require a strong government to exist. Building codes are necessary. Courts to enforce contracts are necessary. The ability to enforce court rulings is necessary. People are often attracted to the idea of libertarianism through a misguided desire for "freedom". This is a consequence of not being paid fairly for one's labor. In other words, you're being exploited. Well, if you're being exploited in the current system, what makes you think you won't be exploited in a system without some government-provided safeguards?

by jmyeet 2y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago

> it would take one law (possibly just one regulation) to completely kill the crypto ecosystem Instead, the newly elected US officials will very likely create a "strategic bitcoin reserve" where the US government buys bitcoins, enriching the whales who will finally have a large enough buyer to absorb all their mounds of coins. It'd be like if they had created a 'strategic beanie baby reserve' in the 90s.

duxup 2y ago

I wish there was a libertarian type system / political party that did operate with some sense of reality. That whole space though is either completely unrealistic / absurd, or owned by folks more interested in corporatism.

lolinder 2y ago

> First, libertarians can't be taken seriously. Roads and courts are like kryptonite to libertarianism. This is a very sweeping statement about a political ideology that varies as much as "liberal" and "conservative" do. Believing that roads and courts shouldn't exist isn't baked in to some official libertarian Bible—all libertarianism necessarily signifies is that someone believes that both personal and financial freedoms should be given roughly equal consideration, where a liberal might prioritize personal freedom and a conservative might prioritize financial freedom. Where someone falls on the spectrum of how much government involvement is appropriate in either type of freedom can vary quite a bit. (The average libertarian who runs for office as a Libertarian does seem to be extreme in the way that you describe, but I think that's a side effect of our FPTP voting system—only a fanatic would truly believe that it's better to run on their own than get behind the least-objectionable candidate—than it is a result of libertarianism as a philosophy.)

jmyeet 2y ago
I'm sorry but libertarianism is deeply unserious. Part of the problem here is that so many Americans (in particular) simply haven't done the reading. Take, for example, your labels of "liberal" and "conservative". Classical liberalism is a hyper-individualistic philosophy that enshrines "private property" as a basic right. Really nobody is a classic liberal anymore. They're neoliberals. What's a neoliberal? Someone who deeply believes in deregulation and capitalism as well as being a liberal. In that sense, anyone labelled "liberal" or "conservative" is a (neo)liberal.. There are only aesthetic differences around social issues. There is no sunshine between the foreign policy of the two major parties in the US, for example. Libertarianism is really just a flavor of neoliberalism where deregulation is taken to the extreme yet somehow it's believed that free markets can still exist. But start probing the details: what do you do if you pay someone to build a house for you and they just don't? Or they do and it collapses 3 months later? Or what if someone just comes along and steals your stuff? "Free markets" are largely an oxymoron anyway but such as they cann exist, they require a strong government to exist. Building codes are necessary. Courts to enforce contracts are necessary. The ability to enforce court rulings is necessary. People are often attracted to the idea of libertarianism through a misguided desire for "freedom". This is a consequence of not being paid fairly for one's labor. In other words, you're being exploited. Well, if you're being exploited in the current system, what makes you think you won't be exploited in a system without some government-provided safeguards?