Scarcity is not optional. This is the Blockchain not Bitcoin argument. You're saying the important bit is that we have a decentralized blockchain managed money, whatever the rules are. There's a fair amount of economic theory involved in the design of Bitcoin that you're not understanding.
Discussion
lol, it absolutely is not the blockchain not bitcoin argument.
If the bitcoin protocol was created with a 1% perpetual inflation rate, I would still be here.
Are you saying you would hold out for a shitcoin copy of bitcoin with a fixed supply?
I'm saying in the age of private money we're entering, monetary policy will compete over the long haul, 100s of years.
When all the governments of the world are targeting 2% inflation, a Bitcoin with 2% inflation would not be sufficiently different in this competition, once the governments upgrade their network tech stack.
A different Bitcoin without that 2% inflation would win the monetary policy competition, so yes, I would 'hold out' for a Bitcoin copy that has the right monetary policy.
How could Bitcoin be modified to guarantee x% inflation? Inflation is when the money supply grows faster than production. (Deflation is the opposite.) Where is the measurement of the growth of production going to come from? Some sort of Ethereum-style oracle?
In these types of conversations, people generally use the more accurate definition of inflation; growth in money supply.
Production is not really relevant
Yes, I was speaking strictly about inflation of the bitcoin supply not relative inflation in price of a CPI basket or something like that
The comment about was about as far away as you can get from supporting the “blockchain not bitcoin” argument. It was “not only is bitcoin the only one that matters, but it would still be the only one that mattered even if designed differently”.
I believe that there is a lot of economic theory that went into bitcoins design but there are many ideologies within economics. Economics is far from a hard science and the fact that bitcoin is the way it is doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only way it would have worked.
That said, I do think the scarcity narrative has helped bitcoin adoption from a game theoretic standpoint. Just wondering if we will se unforeseen consequences of those choices down the road.