I just think arguing about this stuff from the perspective of normative ethics to demonstrate the folly of the system is severely misguided. I think people can say "fractional reserve banking is fraud" until the cows come home, and unless governments outright banned it, the incentives to do it will persist indefinitely. Because there's actual productive efficiencies to be found in time arbitrage markets, even though they contain obvious tail-risks.
And as I've said previously, I think Bitcoin is a wondrously promising tool to add to the mix that puts back pressure on our tendency to fall into these authority structure traps. I don't want to speak for #[5]β, but I think when he's talking about bitcoin as a democratizing force, he's more or less saying the same thing.
The way I think you see something like this being likely, is just by carefully evaluating human behavior in social groups. Look at people's political attitudes, their attitude towards states, etc. What you find is, the vast majority of people consider taxation and some semblance of the welfare state either a good thing or necessary evil. Everywhere. There's differences in opinions on how big or small the state should be, and how generous or minimalistic welfare programs should be. But when you add it all up, it turns out, it's a very very small number of people who think the idea of being a fully self-sufficient individual -- responsible managing their own security, contractual relationships privatized public goods, and all the stuff that anarcho-capitalists claim represents a perfect ethical society -- is an attractive idea, and compelling reason to disintegrate the modern state.
Humans organize into hierarchal power structures repeatedly, even when small societies are set up to try and deliberately avoid them. It still happens.
This tells us something important about what to expect from human nature in the future.
It's a big part of why I think political liberalism and democracy are very important -- to mediate the dangers of the human predilection for falling into these patterns into something that stays relatively aligned with the interests of the maximum number of people possible.
Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control https://a.co/d/4aFk1No
Some counties will try, yes.
But there won't just be a value-for-value economy. Because people will always create markets for time arbitrage. Saying doing so is fraudulent or unethical, is really not going to stop it from happening, because massive production efficiencies can be gained that way.
Maybe. I think all bets are off beyond a 50 year time horizon. For almost everything. AGI and hyperautomation of production, human expansion into space, commercialization of fusion reactors ... all these things makes uncertainty clime to 100% for me on that timescale.
Many people will only self-custody. Nature of banking is ultimately going to be about yield on savings and credit.
I didn't say it's only going to be a reserve assets, though. It will be a fully functioning currency, and plenty of stuff will be priced in it.
Yeah, it that's all nexuses of distribution monopolies. Those are going to get nuked hard by all this decentralization tech coming.
You'll be taxed in local currency. Most available credit will be available to you in local currency, and that will maintain significant markets for state currencies. Physical goods will be priced in national currencies, to allow for stable trade to persist through trade imbalances. For digitally native goods and services, bitcoin denominated pricing with be common, and usually the default.
Also, I think digital assets like music, and creative content will be commonly priced in bitcoin, because digital-native assets will just have global reach by default. Physical goods, will have pressure to be priced in local currencies. But in the same way many non-Americans are used to things being priced in USD, people will be used to things being priced in BTC for digital goods and services.
Lightning will carry stablecoins. And Bitcoin Lightning payments would still have plenty of insane utility in this world. I also think all such local currencies, tokenized representations will be secured by bitcoin, and the exchange markets will be insanely deep and efficient. I just think there will be competitive currencies. And ubiquitous liquidity between them.
Maybe!
Itβs more that the vast majority of people *want* a government and *want* that government to provide some modicum of a safety net, security and a provisions for general welfare, so there is an in-built market for taxation by which the government can induce demand for its own currency. I predict this dynamic will persist.
