With cbdcs control over every aspect of everyone’s life, it’ll probably come down to a revolution or AI warfare.
I just don’t see any means of undoing that form of control. Organizing will be difficult or impossible. Very dangerous path ahead.
Discussion
CBDCs would be the end of FIAT
CBDCs are the end of everything as fas as I’m concerned
CBDCs would get the masses used to “digital currencies” and bitcoin would always be there to acquire them
Nah. Very easy at that point to say sorry your currency is no good at these businesses.
They say that today as well, in fact it’s easier to do it today, it’s completely banned in China, and China is still the worlds 2nd largest country in terms of bitcoin transactions.
We’re be one manufactured terrorist incident away from all bitcoin enablers must be blocked from transactions
It would just create a risk of a parallel economy, that would set themselves up for a huge FIAT rugpull. It doesn’t matter what your government restricts, it just makes it harder for them to control. Exactly like the “war on drugs”.
I don’t think you can draw parallels between war on drugs and CBDCs. With a CBDC you could say, sorry we no longer take payments in cash or anything other than our CBDC, in fact, if we find you accepting anything else, we’ll suspend your money. Good luck taking Bitcoin and paying taxes with that… With a war on drugs, it’s true it was not possible to control, but at the end of the day you can still buy drugs with cash and redeem that cash into the current system. In a CBDC -only world that would be impossible.
What happens when people just stop declaring their assets? Just exit the system? Since the government was so harsh on bitcoin they wouldn’t know who owns what keys? If they’re smart about it they wouldn’t do it, they’d find a way to incorporate bitcoin (like whitelisting pubkeys or something). If they aren’t smart about it, they’d fuck their own economy. It’s not like people don’t have a choice anymore.
The means of production would rest entirely on CBDCs if that is the only way to pay taxes. No tax payment… well, you know what happens then. Sure, you could decide not to sell your products for fake digital money, but you’d quickly find yourself out of resources to buy the things you need to live.
People could still have btc and still have some of whatever CBDCs the state is giving out, not declare their btc and pay taxes only on the CBDCs they make? That’s what so cool about bitcoin, it’s ALWAYS an option? It would be like a black market larger than the size of your official economy, and that already happens in a lot of countries.
That’s exactly why I said CBDCs would be like economies shooting themselves in the foot.
CBDC’s should be fought as hard as possible. They’re not humane; you can’t have other people decide if the time you spent working is valid in the future or not. Time is time. Rewarded time is rewarded time. Taking away the reward of rewarded time is inhumane
CBDCs are only going to make the case for bitcoin.
But they will restrict newcomers from entering easily
CBDCs will be like FIAT on steroids
Far worse. It would be an evolution of fiat that makes already disgusting fiat a thousand times worse.
Which would be the end of it. I think people here are assuming that people are stupid and they will go along with whatever the govt throws at them, I don’t think so, especially when you have an alternative that’s as easy as bitcoin.
Sadly, COVID has shown very clearly that people are indeed stupid and do indeed comply with anything the government says.
Furthermore, people do not think that Bitcoin is easy and many don't think that it is a viable alternative.
Seems likely
Two parallel and competing monetary regimes vying to be the majority world reserve currency. The opt in world of CBDC government control & "benefits" vs the opt out world of Bitcoin & freedom
#[0]
A few reflections on central planning:
All central planning systems are unstable at their heart. One defining feature of authoritarian regimes is a lack of error-correcting mechanisms. This is partly caused by the prevention and crippling of individual decisionmaking. Without local decisionmaking based on local data and experience, the system becomes further and further removed from any semblance of reality alignment.
We know what happens to a complex computer code without error-correction; the code becomes increasingly vulnerable. There's a point of no return when even obvious errors must stay in place or you risk a breakdown of the system. From there you have a downward spiral preventing course correction.
As a central planning system progresses without error-correction, it causes increasing amounts of harm. The dependencies on a few central chokepoints also makes the system frail; the slightest problem reverberates with expanding consequences.
The inevitable harm caused by the system leads to protests and exposes novel cracks in the architecture. This in turn triggers the government to wield lies, gaslighting and rigging of data to cover up and deflect responsibility from the harm caused by central planners and to keep their narratives in control of public perception.
As the data becomes increasingly manipulated, to support failed policies that are hammered into place as a child would hammer a square peg into a round hole, the assumptions drawn from the corrupted data becomes so removed from reality that they represent a reversal of facts.
War is peace, liberty is tyranny, up is down, et cetera. Policies based on assumptions drawn from the incorrect and manipulated data increases the destruction caused by the system, which in turn leads to widespread protests and further instability.
This is how the path toward 'total order', based on the application of force, coercion and false narratives, in actuality leads to instability and fragmentation.
As instability worsens, we can expect internal fights for power among the leadership strata, combined with defections of competent personnel. We can also expect programmers and engineers, being among the first to grasp the ramifications of obvious negative systemic downstream consequences, to go on strike in a variety of manners. They will demonstrate their disapproval from the simple act of ignoring flaws and bugs in various systems, to introducing vulnerabilities in an act of defiance.
It seems clear that the downfall of tyrannical regimes is inevitable from their dislodging from reality.
Bitcoin, in combination with decentralized communication channels allows us global tools to turn the tide and hopefully reduce the damage that central planning systems will cause in their hopeless quest for ultimate power.
The universe favors decentralization, variety, competition, options and sovereign decisions; hence the proliferation of life and individual consciousness.
The characteristic pattern of life involves complex self-regulating eco-systems and emergent order based on autonomous decisions. There are no top-down central planning machinations to be found in either nature or the universe.
We have a prime example for how things can go - China, and it’s not hypotheticals. Things can go very badly for a very long time under total control. Even organizing protests or any sort of pushback would be impossible. As I said, the only way out of that that I see is war (revolution) or state vs privately created AI systems. In any case, it’s a bad spot to be in.
It’s much easier to fight to avoid that situation now than to get out of it later.
The Very problems, our systems tried to solve were all in shortsighted Solutions… and we now knew feeding fish will not last, teaching how to fish will solve farsighted problems🫡🟠🟣⚡️
Absolutely, central planning can go on for a long time under the worst circumstances. Cultural differences may also play a role.
Tragically, China have a history of over 70 years of communism, that's over three generations who have been born into a dictatorship. Yet even Xi Jinping had to back off his most extreme policies last year in the face of mass demonstrations.
Communism in the West has been dramatically less successful and the countries of Eastern Europe are relatively inoculated against Marxism. It is not at all certain that we will have totalitarianism everywhere and at the same time.
As many of us have been saying for years, it is far easier to exit totalitarianism before its infrastructure is in place. However, I don't share your sense of impossibilities. Technology is still far away from being all-powerful.