You are making a lot of assumptions about me, and boxing me in quite a bit. I’m not some ardent defender of capitalism, generally. I’m an ardent defender of property rights and individualism/autonomy.
The predominate concepts that I believe apply most to economic systems are incentive structures, scarcity, and human behavior. If those three things get plugged in as variables into any of or mix of economic systems that humans have applied in complex markets, capitalism by comparison has had objectively better results than collectivism. Which I’m not saying that you’re even advocating for, I understand your position is a bit more nuanced, as is mine.
Pure capitalism has ills and faults, too. 💯 acknowledge that. But the idealism you are projecting hasn’t occurred yet in a complex human society with enough historical record and/or participants to contrast it with say capitalism or socialism.
I don’t believe that profit is synonymous with exploitation as you do, we definitely part company there. Having a higher output than input when providing a good or service aligns the incentives to continue to provide that good or service in a valuable and consistent manner. If that is a hallmark of capitalism then I would say that is one objectively positive aspect.
We can go on and on, ultimately we’d be talking in circles. To me, it’s all a moot issue if the money is broken, money is the foundation of the incentive to provide anything of value to the world outside of your immediate tribe. In complex systems we need a medium of exchange that fairly represents value.
If one of your contentions is that capitalism itself is the cause of the fiat system I would disagree as fiat is dependent on the power of centralization and authority, hallmarks of collectivism and communism. The capitalist ideal is that the people/market decides on what the best monetary good(s) will be, not a central/collective few.
A lot to discuss. A few things…we disagree on the fundamental risk profiles of being an entrepreneur and being an employee. An employee has options if they lose their job. It’s at-will employment, they will find another job if they don’t feel appreciated or compensated enough. Employers will replace employees if they feel they are entitled and not bringing enough value to a business, that’s the beauty of autonomy.
I wasn’t intending to describe a “boss” mentality. I work alongside plenty with my crew. My work is usually much different than theirs, however. Our employees are good tradesmen, not good estimators, salesmen, or accountants, etc. The difference in roles automatically creates a dichotomy. I pursue the projects, submit to try to win them, coordinate everything in between in order to provide work for our people to do their job and earn their living.
If something goes wrong, I get the call, not them. If there’s an emergency, I represent the business, not my employees. They don’t want that stress, they don’t want the responsibility. There are perfectly good reasons that more people work for someone rather than starting a business of their own.
Paying off a house is a contractual transaction. You and a bank agree to terms beforehand. A house is a static economic good, a business is dynamic. They aren’t comparable in the sense you described.
A business of your own is indeed an investment. Profits are simply the way to realize a return on your original investment, usually reinvestment is what occurs if one is trying to build/scale the business. Reinvestment manifests in many different ways, profit-sharing being one of them.
Most of the great luxuries we enjoy today by way of goods, services, and inventions exist within the context of capitalism. I’m sure we disagree there.
I wouldn’t ever claim 100% credit for a successful business, obviously. It takes many different people and skills to build and scale a successful business model, and then a little luck on top of that. What is interesting is that this tiny little niche of a business would nonetheless not exist if it wasn’t for the work and risk I put forth and continue to put forth. Fact is, if I go under tomorrow (for any reason), my crew will have new jobs at a new company within days while I’m left picking up the pieces.
I know I didn’t directly address everything you mentioned. Just a few of my immediate thoughts about it. I’m not trying to defend anything, or even be right about anything in particular. It’s simply my belief that capitalism and free market (no mandates, quotas, price controls, wage controls, etc.) autonomy provides the best economic incentive structures for a prosperous economy IF the money is sound. Without sound money, we get the rot and decay that we see in developed countries these days. My opinion is that you are conflating capitalism with corrupted money and that the issues you’ve identified as being products of capitalism are indeed products of the fiat currency system.
I learned a valuable trade, starting at a young age. Learned it quickly and efficiently. Traveled the world applying my skills. Did it hands on for 18 years. Started my own business built on my knowledge and experience in that trade. I own and operate my small business with a partner and we employ 4 other people.
We pay those employees for their skills, labor, and time. We pay our suppliers and other overhead costs. As a partner in a business I get a chunk of whatever is left after a project or at the end of a quarter or end of the year for myself and my family, if we did a proper job as a team.
I took the risk to organize and set up the business, paid the upfront costs, spent 18 years building my skills and knowledge, exposed myself professionally and financially to attempt to create profitable business. Our employees are well paid and well taken care of. They are completely risk-off in the equation. They go to work, then go home with not a care in the world about what happens after-hours. Meanwhile, on the backend I’m constantly hustling on the business aspect. Just for the chance to earn a little bit of profit for the business and possibly myself.
Do you, with your worldview, see some issue with this scenario? Genuinely wondering what The socialist take would be here…
I run a knots node, and that’s great. I can configure my defaults as I wish. The issue is core v30 exists and nodes running it comprise about 12% of the total nodes talking on the network at the moment, about 2,900 nodes.
These nodes, because of v30 updates, will ultimately be relaying transactions that could include large amounts of arbitrary (possibly illegal or malicious) data via OP_Return to one another’s mempools.
If these transactions get mined into a block, it will remain on-chain forever. Then every other node on the network will have to store that block (and its contents) as well. Doesn’t matter which node software or defaults you have for your node.
That is the most condensed way I could put it..It affects the entire network if large amounts of arbitrary data regularly finds its way onto the blockchain, which core v30 not only makes likely, but basically encourages. Who knows what data/spam will be used to exploit this, time will tell.
Unfortunately, the entire #bitcoin network is now vulnerable to an attack vector that never needed to exist.
If only it was that simple, friend. Core devs gave the #bitcoin network AIDS.
#Bitcoin price action is almost like some compromised software devs deliberately opened up the entire network to spam or something. What gives?
It’s likely that SOMEONE has SOMETHING or can produce SOMETHING that you as an individual need or desire. The beauty of sound money operating in a free market is that you can rightly pursue that with your own efforts and talents, you don’t need to take it from anyone.
When I say “free market” I’m referring to a free market economy; rational human behavior under the influence of scarcity and trade-offs (not influenced by policy or threats) by way of exchanging goods and services with one another. Not anarchism, just to clarify.
Human beings are very good at properly orienting themselves when they live in societies/communities with a sound moral incentive structure, a sense of justice, and the expectation that the fruits of their labor won’t be unjustly seized or confiscated.
They’re very bad at orienting themselves when they have no way to save or plan for the future, have no expectation of justice or property rights, and when the moral incentives are skewed to favor the greedy and corrupt.
Some of the greatest human prosperity, achievements, and innovations have occurred during eras of human history when sound/hard money was being widely utilized. I believe it would solve the issues we are discussing. There is precedent for it.
The umbrella issue is human nature. It’s in our nature to hoard, to plan, to prepare for bad times or bad weather. This becomes greed when one has enough resources to continue accumulation, it’s difficult to stop.
It’s also in our nature to be covetous of what others have accumulated, because we want it for the same reasons they accumulated it. In complex systems like modern economies these behaviors manifest themselves in the obvious ways that we see.
There are those that have accumulated far more than they will ever need for one lifetime, and those that are covetous of that because they don’t have anything to sustain their own life. Greed will never be eliminated from the human condition, neither will envy.
I believe sound, neutral money brings those two conditions in to balance naturally and without any central or collective planning because there are natural limitations to the money supply and an equilibrium of incentives can be achieved.
Simply put, free markets with sound money would result in the best of all systems, it would incentivize work and innovation, saving and planning for the future, preservation of property rights, and greedy/corrupt participants or endeavors would naturally get exposed and punished to the extent it would disincentivize that behavior.
Keep in mind that this is simply my opinion and I’m just some dumb fucking guy trying to make sense of what I observe. I’m not looking for a fight or anything.
Nice, I’ll check these out. I’m of the opinion that capitalism and socialism/communism both fail in practice and concentrate power at the top because the incentive structures are ultimately corrupted by the control of the money. If the money itself isn’t free and neutral, societal incentives in any system cannot align for the benefit of the majority.
The Lords of Easy Money is a solid read…I don’t think any system can be properly or fairly implemented without a sound, neutral, decentralized money first.
I did recommend some. I’ve read some economic and historical books but nothing specifically advocating for the benefits or positives of communism/socialism tbh.
Everything I’m aware of references events such as the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s, for example, as a caution against collectivism policies/economics.
I was just wondering if there was some other version or definition of communism/socialism I could look into as it’s difficult to find books that historically defend those ideas.
I’m getting conflicting answers online, maybe you could tell me:
What exactly is communism, and what is socialism, and what (if any) are the differences between the two?
Isn’t it weird that #bitcoin dumped on the exact day that #core v30 was released (Oct. 10) and has been bleeding ever since? Meanwhile privacy coins without detrimental changes to their code like #zec and #monero have been ripping. Must be some crazy coincidence.
Though it’s fiction, Atlas Shrugged is a classic for portraying many of these archetypes in a philosophical and practical application.
Capitalism in America by Greenspan and Wooldridge is pretty much a must.
So no one has lost any conviction in #bitcoin as a project to replace central/global banking with the #core(rupt) v30 implementation?
#Bitcoin is suppose to be a superior monetary network to the fiat shit show people have had to endure for centuries. It gets opened up to be a polluted dumping ground for any digital sludge to be stored on the network forever and people just carry on with “21 million forever.”
Aren’t bitcoiners low time preference minded? #Bitcoin is supposed to be the people’s MONEY for centuries.
The implications for massive OP_return data to be passed around and mined into permanence are far reaching and now a threat forever, not just today, tomorrow, or next week.
This update was contentious, rushed, ill advised, suspicious, and completely unnecessary. It’s only a matter of time before someone somewhere exploits it and then what? “21 million forever” doesn’t mean shit when it coexists on the same blockchain as illicit material.
What a fuckin shame.
What’s better than buying the dip? Buying several dips multiple times 🫠
#bitcoin
#bitcoin
Yup, also a significant issue for the network to overcome. It’s possible that it may not…
If you’re talking about the core devs, I 💯 agree. They have been compromised, I completely see that. #Bitcoin as a network will still probably survive if enough of the right people do what’s necessary to keep #bitcoin as money, and as money only.
Not that I have evangelized Saylor, but he did say the biggest threat to #bitcoin is human tinkering (with the code). And here we are, douchebag devs and VC interests tinkering with the code (OP_Return limit).
Making changes no one wants, completely unnecessary, suspiciously rushed, and truly a massive attack surface to the very foundation of the #bitcoin network, the transactional layer.
Spin up a #knots node, configure it properly, keep your mempool tidy. Fuck these #core(rupt) people, they are not working in your or #bitcoin ‘s interest. The sooner more plebs understand this, the better chance we have to fight this attack.
If you’re thinking long term with #bitcoin , you and anyone else you can possibly convince need to be running your own bitcoin node using #knots , if you’re not already. Spread the word.
Otherwise, long term, #bitcoin will get spammed into oblivion. Sad to say.
Exactly. Reclamation of one’s time is the ultimate power of #bitcoin.