#meme #memestr #nostr

I think it's primarily the capability to explain it that you lack. And yeah, the world's most advanced supercomputer can't steal your bitcoin, but you're still vulnerable to the old fashioned $5 wrench attack. Or being jailed until you make the payment or give up your keys. Or seizure of physical assets. Or denial of access to benefits or services. Or a dozen other things. It's true the government can't just seize your bitcoin, but they still have the power to make life extremely miserable until you do what they want.

I've been watching bitcoin since before Mt Gox collapsed. Stop telling me to study bitcoin. I've almost certainly been in this space longer than you, which is why I understand both its potential AND its limitations.

Again, companies got by without a money printer for centuries, and it never stopped them from acting extremely selfishly in the past, so removing it isn't suddenly going to make them altruistic. It's just going to bankrupt some of them. The money isn't even free for most of the businesses, it typically goes to banks who loan it out fully expecting to be repaid, and they won't throw bad money after the good forever. You only get free goodies if you don't fuck with another rich guy's profits.

Governments will be forced to act differently, true, but this will mainly be from inability to grow debt forever and, if forced to transact exclusively on chain, transparency. Even just using the lightning network as a government agency threatens the potential transparency gains. Plus, the government can't easily seize it, but they're still quite capable of coercing you to pay up. Again, I agree it will induce positive change, but I think you expect more than we'll get from it.

That's like saying to acquire more gold, you have to benefit others. Even if you ignore theft on the basis of the cryptography, it doesn't forbid or discourage exploitive working conditions. It doesn't forbid or discourage using slave labor to produce your goods. It doesn't forbid or discourage dumping toxic waste into ecosystems. It doesn't forbid or discourage wage theft, which is by far the most common form of theft in the US. It doesn't forbid or discourage price gouging, even on critical, life saving goods like medicine, food, or shelter. How is it supposed to encourage mutually beneficial behavior when it can't do anything about these selfish behaviors?

I did not say such indirectly. I explicitly and directly said it simply augmented existing powers.

How do you see bitcoin changing people's behaviors in this way? As I said before, we used to have hard money, and it most certainly did not force people to support others to enrich themselves. We waged wars for profits. We established monopolies. We crushed workers' rights. We enslaved peoples. We destroyed communities. We did all these things under capitalism when we had hard money that transacted primarily in cash. How is bitcoin going to prevent that?

The root cause of what? Again, read carefully, I don't think I'm saying what you think I'm saying. I never said fiat was the root cause of anything. I said it was an augmentation of the powers of the uppermost class. It takes the nature of the system to the extreme. Bitcoin will help remove those augmented powers, but as I said in the last thread, the ruling class was still very much capable of abusing the hell out of us when they only had hard money.

I don't think it's a cure all. It can help solve a lot of problems, but it won't change human nature and how we leverage power dynamics. This is another of those borderline religious idealizations. Bitcoin is amazing at what it does, but it can't fix *everything*. It can only fix the things that directly stem from the quality of the money.

Okay, that actually sounds like a reasonable distinction to make. I'd agree that'd constitute some new system if that was all there was to it, but I don't think it's fully correct here. The important distinction, I think, is who gets close to the money printer and how.

It comes down to how a self interested actor with access to the money printer will behave. They'll seek to enrich themselves, which means using the printer for their own good. They can't get away with just printing money for themselves, so they have to resort to allocating the printed money to someone with the capacity to reward them. They're unlikely to receive much extra power while maintaining power over the printer, so they'll mostly pursue financial rewards. This means allocating the printed money to people who have the capacity to reward them handsomely. In effect, those who receive the free rewards are those who already have resources free to reward the printer, and they receive those rewards as a direct and exclusive result of the resources they already hold. So ultimately, they're still generating as a result of resources they already own.

This is why I see fiat as simply an augmentation of the powers of the ruling class in whatever system it operates under, NOT a wholly new system. If we lived under a feudal system, the free rewards would all go to royalty and their vassals. If it was idealistic communism (i.e., that wasn't captured by authoritarians, which is very unlikely), it'd be used to secure the needs and wants of the people. None of these radically change the structure of the systems that fiat occurs under, it just bestows additional free rewards to whoever is in the uppermost class

You didn't even try. You made it clear what you think the distinction is between capitalism and the current system. You made it clear that this allowed and even encouraged certain behavior. You didn't even attempt to explain why this deserves to be considered a separate system from capitalism. Maybe you have a decent reason, maybe not, I dunno since you never actually mentioned it.

I think you should read what I'm saying more closely and spend less time trying to fill in the perceived gaps. You're repeatedly putting words in my mouth that I don't agree with. You assume that just because I had the gall to question your definition of capitalism, I must also hate capitalism want communism. If you'd been paying attention, I never suggested ditching capitalism *or* adopting communism. You treat capitalism like a religion, where even basic questions are branded as heresy, and it prevents you from properly discussing the subject.

Please explain, you were unable to do that last time. You explained what fiat allows people to do, but you never even attempted to explain why that means it's not capitalism.

#meme #memes #capitalism #conservative #conservatives

Yeah, I did, after your smug attitude made it clear you thought I was an idiot. I may have said it in plain words first, but don't try to act like I was the only one being insulting. And again, all you've explained is what fiat allows them to do, not how that means this is anything other than capitalism. Your inability to do so suggests you don't know what you're talking about.

You dense bastard, I already said I'm not advocating for communism. I'm pointing out the inconsistency in what you're saying. You've explained what fiat allows the owner class to do, but you haven't explained how that means it's not capitalism.

Dude, you can't even explain yourself, don't try to tell me what I do and don't understand. Maybe consider the possibility you're the one who doesn't understand if you can't articulate your reasoning. Nothing about the quality of the money changes the fundamental structure of the economy. It changes the fairness, yeah, definitely, but it doesn't fundamentally restructure the economy or society. It just adds another perk to being in the owner class.

Dude, you can't even explain yourself, don't try to tell me what I do and don't understand. Maybe consider the possibility you're the one who doesn't understand if you can't articulate your reasoning. Nothing about the quality of the money changes the fundamental structure of the economy. It changes the fairness, yeah, definitely, but it doesn't fundamentally restructure the economy or society. It just adds another perk to being in the owner class.

Dude, you can't even explain yourself, don't try to tell me what I do and don't understand. Maybe consider the possibility you're the one who doesn't understand if you can't articulate your reasoning. Nothing about the quality of the money changes the fundamental structure of the economy. It changes the fairness, yeah, definitely, but it doesn't fundamentally restructure the economy or society. It just adds another perk to being in the owner class.

Lmao I'm not advocating for communism, I'm asking you to explain how we don't live under capitalism, and you can't seem to do it. You've set a seemingly arbitrary distinction and won't explain why it's a reasonable one to make. I understand bitcoin well enough, I just don't understand what *you're* saying.

We had hard, gold backed money in the Gilded Age of America, and it sure as shit didn't stop capitalism from abusing people. We hard, gold backed money when people fought for union rights and the government BOMBED its own citizens. We had hard, gold backed money when we sent children to work because their hands fit in the machines better so they could be maimed for life to save the capitalists a few bucks. We had hard, gold backed money when we had fucking slaves, when you could own and trade in living human beings. Abusing the money printer is just one of many, many ways the capitalist class exploits us, but the fact they're doing it doesn't change the fact we live under capitalism. You can't even explain WHY fiat means we don't live under capitalism, you just insist it makes a difference that you don't explain.

I don't think that makes the system not capitalism, though. I think it just makes it a special subset of capitalism. None of this changes the fact that true value belongs to those with the means to buy and own the means of production. It's just capitalism in which the capital class has the means to pervert the language of value transmission.

In what way is it not capitalism? You've got people owning the means of production by virtue of having the wealth to buy them. That's textbook capitalism.