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There's the argument that fiat money enables wars because nobody pays for them directly. The rise in bitcoin could bring this to an end. The wars in Afghanistan
by johndevor 12y ago
There's the argument that fiat money enables wars because nobody pays for them directly. The rise in bitcoin could bring this to an end. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq supposedly matched as much oil as India uses each day to run. I think in order to examine Bitcoins Co2 impact you need to look at the alternatives in great detail.
- dalke 12y agoThat argument doesn't make sense. I think about the wars of Alexander III of Macedon, the Mongolian wars, and the wars of Rome, and wonder how they could have existed without fiat money. Or is the argument that they would have been more successful with fiat money? For that matter, how would the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incans been enabled by fiat money when the accumulated wealth of those empires effectively gave Spain the ability to mint its own commodity money? In "Debt: The First 5, 000 Years", David Graeber makes a convincing argument that the introduction of commodity money helped the king raise larger armies. The king pays soldiers in gold or silver, then requires people to pay taxes in the same. Otherwise the soldiers, who are effectively strangers, don't have access to the credit economy of small communities.