On 23 Dec 2013, at 20:12, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/23/2013 9:07 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Crypto-currencies, like cryptography, can surely help to save the
freedom of privacy and privateness.
Crypto-currencies does not need to be a pyramidal con, like Quentin
suspects. They just allowed to create new independent banks
which can do their work "honestly" or not.
"honestly" is not moral here, but it means that it is attempted, at
the least, to not base economy on lies (which often happens to keep
jobs despite they became obsolete).
Money is both the most wonderful economical tool and the most
horrible life goal.
When money is used honestly, every one (good willing enough) win
and is enriched. But the longer the play, the bigger the liars can
win, so "those who make money the main goal" crack, and corrupt the
system, which at that moment become pyramidal.
It is basically a confusion between meaning and use, or goal and
tool.
Today, a part of the economy relies on lies, so it is more the
actual bank system which seems to lead us (partially) to a pyramid.
The existence of crypto-money can help by providing different
competing economies, and can help in making transition (and
awakening from the lies) more smooth.
I don't see it as any different than gold or silver. Banks used to
have reserves of gold or silver and they issued their own script
money that was redeemable in gold or silver. BUT they always loaned
much more script than they had gold or silver. They relied, quite
reasonably, on the fact that in any given time interval, only few
people would want to redeem their script in gold or silver.
Now you may say this is "lying", but so long as not done to excess,
it makes for good economics. Consider and extreme example: Suppose
the 'banker' has no gold or silver at all but he's prepared to loan
script anyway. Someone comes to him and wants to borrow $1000 to
build a bridge over small river near the town. The banker loans him
the script. He pays for material and labor, which he can do because
people believe the script is backed by gold. The bridge gets built
and so farmers can come to town much more quickly, productivity is
improved and the town thrives, so more people deposit money in the
bank and the banker can actually buy some gold to back up his
script. "Artificially" increasing the money supply can be very
useful; but just as with all kinds of interactions it depends a lot
on trust. If nobody trusts anybody else, as now so many people
automatically distrust their government, then the economy is dragged
down.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/in-no-one-we-trust/?_r=0
I agree. All is in the trust, which means investment in the truth. In
your case here, there was a real need of a bridges.
All what I say is that the banks today cannot be trusted, as they
based a lot of money on lies. So any bank competitor, with some means
of independence is welcomed. Namecoin seems to approach that, but only
the future will decide. Bitcoins are not a priori immune to the lies.
We need trust, but once the government is suspect of lies, it
dissipates. That's normal.
Bruno
Brent
Such competitor money can help to follow the "non-monopoly rule".
But they can be swallowed by other money, and they are not immune
against new lies per se. (risk can be diminushed by investment in
"real" education (≠ brainwashing)).
When the bandits got power, count on them to exploit
(disadvantageously for *you*) any solution you could find on the
economical problem. You might need to encrypt it :)
Bruno
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