First off: I'll gladly apologize for
this post. I obviously went a few steps to far there. Not that it's an excuse, but I was rather pissed off about your response to a clear and concise argument being
utterly dismissive and condescending. I guess we can both do that. I still shouldn't have let that knee-jerk reaction be posted, though. You say you were tired of arguing the same points over and over again at that point. That's fine. My issue is that you didn't actually react until I tried to take the discussion to an actually productive level, presenting actual arguments. I understand that seeing a post like that for you might trigger the "here we go again..." response. Still, your response was neither productive or polite, nor did it serve to bring the discussion forward in any way. Sadly, I can't find anything related to the arguments I presented there on page 2 of this thread - or any page, really.
The problem is, you said you never tried to stop me discussing anything. What, then, was the point of
this post?
Also, you're right that I quoted you first. I quoted
this post and responded with a simple, entirely on-topic counterargument. You responded to that with, essentially, "here we go again." Is it any wonder that I take issue with that?
I'll also gladly admit that
is rather flippant, and I could have used a much better tone there. But for the remainder of that post, I explain exactly why I disagree with you and that line of argumentation. Once again, you never address that afterwards. Of course, this does boil down to our seemingly diametrically opposed political views, which could easily lead the entire discussion off-topic. It's still entirely possible to keep it on-topic while responding to my arguments, though, yet you haven't until now.
Seriously? Wow. Okay then.
But back to the core of your argument here:
Have I called your intelligence into question? No. I've said that your tone and wholesale dismissal of even the possibility of discussing this subject is a bad approach to this (and any) discussion. I probably did use the word "stupid" about it, but if so, that's not a characterization of
you but
your way of arguing. Those are not the same thing. Saying "your tone and way of arguing is stupid" is not the same as saying "you are stupid." I have also questioned your motivations to some degree, but we've pretty much cleared that up by now: you were tired of doing what to you is rehashing the same old arguments. As for me "accusing you" of
projecting your insecurity onto me when describing arguing against you as
I'd still call that a reasonable reading of that response to my post. Outside of personal insecurity, I really can see no reasonable way that me arguing against you can be read as "forcing my opinion on you" (unless I were to ... say, stalk you in real life while yelling arguments at you, it would be exceptionally hard for me to force an opinion on you). If you still disagree, I'll gladly hear why, and of course I'll accept any other reasonable explanation for using that formulation.
Well, at least I'm happy we're more or less back to actually discussing the matter at hand.
How, exactly, is it not susceptible to manipulation? Can the oligarchy not simply become users, or pay multitudes of people to become users? And unless there are very specific checks to power involved (including monitoring systems and some sort of "police" to enforce sanctions on abusers), do they not generally have the resources/means to become very significant users, at least if ownership of a good (cryptocurrency in this case) is the key/sole determinant of who has power? Unless the system is arranged so that you only have one vote no matter how much currency you hold (which is a fundamental principle of democracy, even if it's been significantly undermined in the US), it's fundamentally antidemocratic and a red carpet invitation to the oligarchy. Some would argue that that would be an illiberal system (as it forces a form of equality onto users), but is not the alternative significantly more illiberal, telling users their vote counts less than others' simply due to their lack of wealth/resources (which is again largely determined by where and when you were born and to whom)? This, as I see it, is one of the key paradoxes of libertarianism: that most libertarians refuse to see that without checks on accumulation of power, power
will be accumulated by those with the means to do so - and this will inevitaby lead to
less freedom for those with less means.
You're not factually wrong, but miss a key point: "Those who control it" are, in a functioning democracy,
the people. Of course, various forms of democracy have various in-between stages (representatives and hired government officials of various kinds) but ultimately, in a well-functioning system what these intermediates decide is an attempt at an optimal interpretation of the will of the voters (who rarely agree, so compromise is necessary), informed and regulated by experts in the field. A key thing here is that - at least in a reasonably non-corrupt society - greed (or, to be nice, "profit motivation") does not play a part in government reasoning. The government does not exist to make a profit, but to ensure a stable and functioning society. To the contrary, any "free market" (as in an unregulated one) is dominated by profit-seeking forces, which makes greed and personal/corporate profit the chief determinant of the direction of these markets. That only benefits those in power - and unlike democratically elected officials, the people have
no means whatsoever to remove these people from power if they're hurting them. You can't vote a greedy CEO out of office, after all, even if he makes a living by harming other people.
That is a very interesting argument, which, again, boils down to your fundamental view of how to best organize a society for the optimal well-being of its people. I would counter that in any society, a governing body elected by the people seeking to ensure the well-being of the populace has the right to regulate and control more or less anything that has the potential to destabilize any significant part of that society. I'd even say that this is one of the key prerogatives of government: regulating and curbing forces that individuals can never hope to control themselves. Economics is a significant part of any society. As for calling it "aggression" and "use of force" simply shows that you view the government purely as an adversary, and doesn't really add to this argument, outside of underlining your denial of the possibility of a non-adversarial government. Which is another matter entirely.
I agree completely with the second sentence if cryptocurrencies (and not blockchain tech) is ever to have any real utility. The issue is that achieving that alongside the existence of largely-deregulated global investment banks is ... well, impossible. Investors speculate (i.e. gamble) in
anything and everything. Commodities trading literally amounts to buying and selling (virtually, without it ever moving or changing hands)
whatever stuff you can get your hands on at a mind-boggling pace to eke out profits by serving as an intermediary in the otherwise necessary movement of these commodities. If something is for sale, it is likely already being speculated on. The only thing that can curb this is regulation of the financial sector, as telling them "can you please not speculate in Bitcoin" isn't going to help much. Of course, for cryptocurrencies, that aren't actually goods that need to move around and change hands for reasons relating to their own existence (say, factories needing supplies to produce things, or people needing food to live) can simply say "our currency is not available to buy and sell". Of course, that would be regulation, and would require some sort of system to uphold it. And it would cause serious trouble for the actual use of this currency (if you can't buy it, how do you obtain it? If you can't sell it, how do you buy anything with it?). There's also the issue of mining and proof-of-work: is that a necessary component of cryptocurrencies, and if it is, how can we maintain crypto while avoiding doing lasting harm to our planet? What good is a deregulated currency if we're enduring a global extinction event that threatens the ecosystems that we rely on to live?
Agreed.
I doubt "statists" will do any such thing (as that would imply some sort of trans-ideological grassroots movement among people who believe in government oversight (which is common to the vast majority of ideologies, just in various ways), which is highly unlikely), but (over?)protective national governments (through their officials) might. Given the volatility of global markets (ironically largely
caused by lack of oversight and adversarial/protectionist stances by said governments), letting a supranational economic structure gain significant power in a society is something most people are wary of. As they ought to be, really. It can be quite easily argued that wide-spread adoption of crypto in commerce and day-to-day economics would be fundamentally antidemocratic, as it would a) remove voting rights for non-property holders (at least in this field), b) mean that people all over the globe have power over places they don't live, work or have any other relation to, and c) open the door to corporate, for-profit control of the economic building blocks of said society.
For the record: I'm actually quite a proponent of a global, supranational currency - it comes with my belief that we need a global, supranational government (democratically elected, of course, the specifics of which I do not even have the slightest clue of how would work) to avoid conflict and exploitation and ensure an effective and fair society in as many places as possible. I just don't believe that cryptocurrencies have the potential to be this, as they don't seem to be built with the necessary structures to avoid consolidation of power from wealth, and thus for-profit abuse.
Well, yes, as you have probably seen already, I do indeed. However, isn't that what we call a discussion? And no, we aren't back to page 2 - the only real similarity I can find between that post where you first said that, now, and page 2 (and thereabouts) is that they're generally related to the topic of this thread. As such, I suppose you're kind of right, but isn't that also where this discussion ought to be?
This is indeed a common misconception, though one that affects pretty much any tech that rises to significance in society: that people think it will supplant (and thus remove) whatever came before it. Outside of ... Betamax and HD-DVD?, I can't really think of a single case where this has actually happened. Digital documents haven't replaced books or paper documents, but supplemented and nuanced their use. While cell phones have almost entirely replaced landlines (at least here in Norway), they're still phones. One could argue that texting and IM of various kinds has taken over, but those haven't in any way removed voice calls. And so on, and so on. Generally, all inventions supplement each other, and outright replacement is very rare indeed.
