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If sound money gets rid of a lot of BS jobs, financial type jobs and government jobs.

Then one could argue that there would be even more unemployed and homelessness as result of such a transition to btc standard.

That those without bitcoin become enslaved by those with bitcoin.

I agree btc is better than fiat. I hate the current monetary/financial system. Just pointing out good intentions can also have destructive consequences. This is a problem I have with utopian thinking. That magically the world is going to better overnight with sound money overnight.

Guy Swann 2y ago

I’m sorry, but you think that having freed up labor, greater productivity, and greater efficiency will result in more homeless and unemployed?

it’s the unbelievable **waste** of hiring people to do stuff that *destroys resources* and doesn’t actually contribute to anything that anyone wants that causes poverty.

NOT wasting resources is an enormously positive development that would finally get the price system to reflect real value.

If being more productive and developing new technology caused unemployment and poverty, then 99% of the people from the labor force of 200 years ago would be jobless and poor. And it would only ever get worse. 90% of the population were all in farming just 130 years ago. If that common fallacy was even remotely true, then the future would axiomatically always have a higher percent of unemployed than the past. It would never end.

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Discussion

MrDragon 2y ago

Imagine how many bs jobs, industries were created bcs of cheap money...

My generation(millenials) is totally rekt. Will need to learn completely new things

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

It feels like 90% of jobs nowadays are all pointless. They are just cogs in the fiat machine. They only exist only bc of government malinvestment.

Guy Swann 2y ago

Have you ever read “Bullshit Jobs”? If not you might really like it. I think he has the best means of assessment on how many jobs in the economy are actually meaningless and contribute nothing. There’s a reasonable argument for 40% as a potentially conservative estimate.

The Daniel 🖖 2y ago

It’s on my list, I probably heard about it on your show.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Interesting thanks for #bookstr recommendation.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

I have. Have you read his other book, Debt: the first 5000 years ?

Relationships come before money. Money can't fix what culture broke.

Guy Swann 2y ago

Money broke culture. Our economic values and the perception of “success” becomes diverted form all reality when you manipulate the money. It distorts literally all of our value judgements.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

But it was man who broke the money to begin with. No guarantee man won’t do it with bitcoin.

Guy Swann 2y ago

Not really. Man couldn’t break gold. It was when man created a virtual economy that existed a layer above the physical (paper notes and redemption certs) that were simply vulnerable to the most basic form of lie/fraud. It was simply a technology with no really monetary attributes, it only impersonated real money.

The whole point is to create a digital money that *actually* has monetary attributes inherent to its design. It’s not that man corrupted money, it’s that man created an environment where natural money didn’t exist, and we had to invent it in order to get past a massive flaw that was holding us back from real economic communication to stop the astronomical misallocation caused by the breakdown of value transfer.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

This is a far more nuanced argument. I like it. It's more in line with what i think Bitcoiners should be saying and claiming.

Bitcoin is the *first* sound money to exist. Even gold was not sound money.

People like Matt Kratter remind us of this.

We will hopefully come up with better terms and memes than "sound money" and comparisons with gold, or trying to replicate gold (which has along with silver always been centralized).These fiscally conservative memes carry a ton of baggage, especially in the american context.

Bitcoin is something new, and its long term affects are unknown.

You take the strong position for its net positive affects on everything from housing to, morality, to mental existentialism. I simply take a less strong position, skewed towards a preference for your type of optimism. Call it tempered bitcoin optimism.

Fiat did some good things, it did a lot of bad things. The american space program relied on fiat debt and credit promises. So did vietnam.

Bitcoin doing better than fiat for civilization, that is: your strong case for bitcoin optimism, remains to be proven.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Gold is broken, the market is rigged by futures contracts.

Same could be possible to Bitcoin.

Purple Horse 2y ago

True, but when the supply gets to zero, things get interesting…

Nobody knows the real supply of gold.

It will be interesting to see this play out

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Same could be said about bitcoin if in the future mining becomes centralised to small number peole/corporations. They could collude together to increase the supply.

Its very unlikely but it’s possible.

Guy Swann 2y ago

Miners can’t increase the supply. It would be if nodes/validators are highly centralized.

The economic majority would be who determined the rules, even if 95% of the miners switched to a shitcoin fork with increased supply. If none of the nodes did, they’d have zero market to sell to, and all those validators would now have a shitcoin to dump on the market for more BTC. The price would plummet in their fork, made even worse because their blocks are coming in faster, while BTC just sits and waits with a billion person network to sell to.

Mining centralization is a problem, but it isn’t because they can just randomly change the consensus rules.

Ricardo Perez 2y ago

Thank you nostr:npub1fl7pr0azlpgk469u034lsgn46dvwguz9g339p03dpetp9cs5pq5qxzeknp , nostr:npub1kzu0hk2h3tpru7pdj73jk7e6wtx6qas8vy6eh4jkv82zw545py9qu9rf4g for an amazing thread! Learning much! And you did it, when there was disagreement, without insulting each other!🔥✝️🙏😎

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Nostr is the place for free discussion. You can’t really discuss anything on other socials due to the character limit on texts.

nobody 2y ago

Sir, please this is a Wendy’s.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Wendy’s? Huh?

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

It's a meme meant to say you're overhyped or over reacting about something in the wrong context, like screaming about mature bond yields in a Wendy's.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

No idea what you mean but okay lol

nobody 2y ago

Sir, please. Just place your order. There is a line forming.

BOL 2y ago

Getting in the queue of this tasty conversation ... I don't think anybody has mentioned the demographic cliff that is forming in most parts of the world...

All the more reason to expound upon the benefits of gradually demonetizing housing by pointing folks to bitcoin (though I think places like Canada and Australia could be lost to a gradual process at this point)

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

Yeh look at Japan. They been basically in a depression for the last 30 years because of poor demographics. You now have millions of Japanese graduates unemployed living with their parents. A trend that is growing in the west.

BOL 2y ago

Japan, definitely a dark horse to follow El Sal next

BOL 2y ago

Countries that can demonetize housing can potentially attract new immigrants, countries that won't demonetize housing will lose citizens--some long-term game theory here

OgFOMK ArTS 2y ago

Imagine thinking and central planning everything except building, clean water and healthy food production and exchange them by the free market. No wonder you can't purchase your cigarettes, alcohol and shelter. You have zero skills in surviving life.

nobody 2y ago

A lot of planning went into how best to use Japan and ultimately keep them down following WW2. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Japan and the “carry trade” is just one example.

nobody 2y ago

You can’t look at what another country is doing without taking into account who owns the worlds reserve currency.

The US hands are very dirty when it comes to the success/failure of foreign countries.

El Salvador is also another great example. All planned prior to their current breakaway society.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

It’s very unlikely as I have said. But there is tiny probability it could happen.

Just like there is tiny probability space agencies will mine asteroids for Gold.

But still that argument is used to say gold is not scarce as bitcoin.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Same with silver and Nickel.

Bitcoin can be protected from this through education and responsibility. But it's not guranteed. Just look at how much money and man hours was wasted on shitcoins and NFT's.

Bitcoin is not just pure market signal, it reflects the soul.

Steven Day 2y ago

Gold is broken because most of it is in a basement in Manhattan with paper claims.

You and I can’t go and count what’s there and around the world. It’s rife for abuse.

Bitcoin can and has been manipulated in price especially because a smaller market cap means a massive sell can hit the market harder than a much larger asset.

We can account for every single coin and all the clowns who tried to paper Bitcoin more than they have blew themselves up.

That said, there are risks seen and unseen and I never underestimate the powers that be.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

"money broke culture" and "when you manipulate money" are mutually exclusive events. If the best arguments for Bitcoin rely on blaming the sword and not the person holding the sword, we are doomed to repeat fiat. For instance, you blame the great depression on government policy response to private debt. I blame individuals alowing it to happen.

Guy Swann 2y ago

Money is not a tool in that way. It isn’t a sword, it’s a *communication tool,* people are social creatures, and they rely on communication with others to understand how others relate to their lives and time. When that communication becomes a lie, it should be obvious that they will react incorrectly if they have incorrect information.

You seem to fail to understand that money is one of the very few layers *below* culture in the societal stack, because money is a prerequisite to scaling beyond small tribes and families. In those small environments culture can be more reliant on trust, but at the scale of millions, our only option is to rely on money to signal values, because our other communication systems can’t scale or account for that depth of information.

It’s everything to do with incentives. None of this absolves the individual, but pretending that society can just ignore fundamentally broken economic incentives is a fairy tale. It’s not possible, our environment defines our limitations and the pressures that guide us.

A kind of silly, but still apt analogy:

Imagine asking everyone a simple question and then getting them to signal the correct answer by going through door #1 or door #2.

But then you block the entrance to door #1 with barbed wire, and then had someone handing out free coffee and donuts at door #2. Then afterward getting angry at how many people selected the wrong answer.

SMS 2y ago

nostr:npub13wfgha67mdxall3gqp2hlln7tc4s03w4zqhe05v4t7fptpvnsgqs0z4fun

Could you translate nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev's note to Latin

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Allow me to take advantage of our interaction here for a brief aside and to encourage you to debate Paul Storcz about DriveChains on the What Bitcoin Did podcast, as suggested by others on this twitter thread. https://twitter.com/Truthcoin/status/1695444426892439698

We will all be served by your keen, good faith mind taking him on (if you oppose) and at the least communicate its benefits/flaws to the general audience.

Please.

And do not take his tone or delivery personally, stick to ideas and facts he's a bit rough.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

>The door 1 and 2 analogy.

I will work with your simplified analogy. You are claiming that once door 1 has barbed wires removed through Bitcoin, the right answer will be reached.

If i overstand correctly, Door 1 is a stand-in for all the good choices people could make if it were not for a state backed by bad fiat money.

Or you mean that the State itself blocking door 1 is payed for by bad fiat money, and that bitcoin allows it to be removed as an obstacle/become irrelevant, by virtue of its property as a gold like digital sound money.

You never mention why the state exists in the first place. Or how the problem it solves goes away with Bitcoin. Why or how does it abandon its barbed wire post infront of door 1 because of Bitcoin ? Or gold ? How does whatever replace it lead tonbetter mental health. Or if nothing replaces it (as in pure ancapistan) a classic monopoly/state just doesn't reform at door 1.

By your reasoning the State itself can be thought of as a technology or under-the-surface cultural tool that both communicates its values and traditions between large scale numbers of people in a societies, as much as the "signal of money" you mention, is.

I for one hope you are right, i hope the signal of Bitcoin is pure, like gold. I hope it can't be manipulated, like a real oz of 24c gold. I hope this purety, along with it's other properties fixes mental health, addicition and homelessness somehow. I hope these really are caused by bad money and not some necessary and essential part of mortal existence, transitory experience, and cultural cycle.

I will not be satisfied, though, until you strong optimist for Bitcoin admit the tempered optimist position that:

Bitcoin is something new, as yet unproven, and while supported by sound technology, game theory and economic principals, it remains to be shown that it will create a better-than-fiat world, or even a better world than the last sound money did, gold. The modern easy credit/fiat world can be argued was better than the "sound money" world of gold, in that it had available credit to waste on such things as military development of GPS, The Space program , ect.

My call to action is: Talk is cheap. Prove Bitcoin is better.

In the time bitcoin has been around, Tesla has gone from no cars to world wide adoption and delivery. Smartphones have changed everything. Dominoes went from shit pizza to hyper customized no click delivery. All under fiat.

We have lightning.....

techfeudalist 2y ago

The transition to hard money will force everyone to be truly productive. Yes, for many people working useless jobs that will be a painful adaptation process. No more sociology degrees ending up on govt payrolls.

AI will also create another painful adjustment for gen Zs who are the last cohort to graduate pre-AI. They have the student debt but none of the skills.

I’m betting that in an AI / robotic world, work shifts entrepreneurial. For example, right now, why would I hire a junior software developer when AI writes software so well?

So basically, to survive the future, you’ll need to be a productive entrepreneur.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

You seem so certain that sound money would make humans productive.

Sure the economic incentives are better. But no guarantee of this future.

techfeudalist 2y ago

You’re right. There are no guarantees that sound money would make people productive, it will just force them to be productive because they can’t just live off of a printing press as many do now.

Presumably strong communities and charity would support those who are unable to be self sufficient.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

I love the Austrian economic school of thought. It’s what made me become a bitcoiner after being a gold bug for years.

I just don’t like the way bitcoin influencer preach that bitcoin is inevitable and if it is inevitable there is no guarantee it will play they way you imagined.

Communism is clearly been historically a massive failure leading famines and mass death of millions just in 1900s. All paved by people believing their intentions were for the best for the collective.

I love the idea of free market capitalism world with perfect information and no barriers to entry where the money cannot be inflated by a monopoly with no middlemen taking a cut via fees.

I believe this is a potential utopian future that may become quickly dystopian if the transition to sound money leaves out billions of people.

techfeudalist 2y ago

I too was a gold bug. I believe bitcoin is inevitable after the world retries a gold backed system and later realizes its fundamental limitations in the internet age.

The future might rhyme with the past. A digital gold standard may have a lot of similarities with the historical gold standard.

The late 1800s in the USA was a highly productive period on the gold standard. Although the period greatly increased standards of living across the country, that historical period could easily appear dystopian to people of today who are dependent on the government or unable to complete in the accelerating technical world.

Inevitably there will be winners and losers and a painful adjustment for many.

Many people are dependent on the government, but the government has nothing that it hasn’t taken with force from someone else.

I think the world moves to a system of numerous small city-states like Singapore or small countries like El Salvador. Large polities like the USA or Europe break up into smaller states and strong local communities develop to help each other.

Sovereign Matt 2y ago

I think world war 3 is forming tbh.

Western world (USA and NATO) vs BRICs.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

either sound money has never existed before bitcoin ( i'm open to that interpretation),

or you mean the past two hundred years of innovation has been fueled by both sound money (gold)

and unsound money (unpegged fiat)

at different times.

Tech has, Despite sound or unsound money meant that innovation is determined by whether or not a new GPU archetecture is 0.01% more efficient than the competitions. Less than 1% of people are interested or work in these niche fields.

I'm not a luddite, i'm simply saying there is a valley between hills. The luddites were right for a time. ATM's created more jobs, i get it, but some, lives , homes, families, were lost along the way never to be found again. Bitcoin, is one technology in a storm of factors leading to the next hill or plateau.

Ignoring the basic factors that lead to the boom bust cycle will just continue, even when/if bitcoinnis the only moneybthat makes sense.

We are in a delicate spot at the moment and i reject completly all narratives that assert bitcoin has already won and is fated.