[candiodari]

Not really. You only have to buy in the premise that given 2 options:

1) a system with a lot of (risky) debt

2) a system in which debt is impossible

Then have competition between these 2 options. There is no doubt about the outcome. System 1 will devastate system 2 (in that the total economy size of system 1 will be a LOT larger than system 2).

Therefore the Nash equilibrium is a debt based system.

Nobody's claiming there aren't any advantages to a system where debt is not a possibility. I guess people are just claiming that not having debt is too expensive, in terms of missed opportunities.

The strength of bitcoin is the inflexibility and general incompetence of government based money systems. It wouldn't be too hard, I think, for a government to make a money system that would trounce bitcoin. Of course, they'd have to be prepared to trounce banks and most of the financial sector to do this.