We will never forget that Parliament burned the tally sticks.
We will never forget that FDR banned private ownership of gold.
We will never forget that Kennedy killed the silver certificate.
We will never forget that Nixon killed Bretton-Woods.
We will never forget that bankers and financiers repeatedly take advantage of moral hazard, producing bubble economy crashes, such as the 2001 dot-com bomb and the 2007 subprime mortgage bust. Remember tulip mania? That was in the 1630s. Cleverfolk have been running market-wide financial scams for 400 years of recorded history, from a position of leverage near the controllers of money.
The problem is that governments everywhere have always been taking away control of money from the public, and transferring it to parties that either operated with complete impunity already, or became effectively unchecked once they controlled the money.
The function of money in civilization is too important to allow any one party to put a fence around it, to start collecting tolls whenever it so much as twitches.
While current cryptocurrencies don't yet do it well, it is theoretically possible that everyone in civilization could issue their own scrip, circulate it in trade via a trust web, and later redeem it for the goods and services that they provide, without anyone ever physically printing onto forgery-resistant notes. The credit function of trade would no longer belong to banks and their credit scores, but whether the people who know the people you know believe that you can honor your commitments. The futures, trading, and securities function of markets would no longer belong to financial firms.
We don't need to lobby anybody. We just need to use money that destroys itself if too few of the participating entities can collectively control too much of the system. If anybody tries too hard to be Visa or Mastercard, they end up with x% of nothing instead of x% of everything.
...So cryptocurrencies definitely have an advantage as fertilizer for bullshit libertarian pipe dreams, if nothing else.
Are you quoting me? Cryptocurrencies appeal to more than just libertarians. Richard Stallman, who is a downright socialist recgonizes the anti-censorship properties of cryptocurrencies as important.
We will never forget that FDR banned private ownership of gold.
We will never forget that Kennedy killed the silver certificate.
We will never forget that Nixon killed Bretton-Woods.
We will never forget that bankers and financiers repeatedly take advantage of moral hazard, producing bubble economy crashes, such as the 2001 dot-com bomb and the 2007 subprime mortgage bust. Remember tulip mania? That was in the 1630s. Cleverfolk have been running market-wide financial scams for 400 years of recorded history, from a position of leverage near the controllers of money.
The problem is that governments everywhere have always been taking away control of money from the public, and transferring it to parties that either operated with complete impunity already, or became effectively unchecked once they controlled the money.
The function of money in civilization is too important to allow any one party to put a fence around it, to start collecting tolls whenever it so much as twitches.
While current cryptocurrencies don't yet do it well, it is theoretically possible that everyone in civilization could issue their own scrip, circulate it in trade via a trust web, and later redeem it for the goods and services that they provide, without anyone ever physically printing onto forgery-resistant notes. The credit function of trade would no longer belong to banks and their credit scores, but whether the people who know the people you know believe that you can honor your commitments. The futures, trading, and securities function of markets would no longer belong to financial firms.
We don't need to lobby anybody. We just need to use money that destroys itself if too few of the participating entities can collectively control too much of the system. If anybody tries too hard to be Visa or Mastercard, they end up with x% of nothing instead of x% of everything.
...So cryptocurrencies definitely have an advantage as fertilizer for bullshit libertarian pipe dreams, if nothing else.