[cortesoft]

I really don't see how crytocurrency is going to solve this problem at all.

It does not prevent the problem of a few people having way more wealth/power than others; at best, it just chooses a different set of people to be the wealthy ones.

[dulse]

I agree with you the current versions I've seen feel this way. But I like to think of it as programmable money: it can be whatever we want it to be.

Imagine an ICO that gives more reward when users provide a proof-of-income, and more tokens go to those worse off (sort of like a graduated income tax, but for ICOs). Not saying it's a good idea, just that it's programable so we can make it do whatever we think is best, it's up to us to determine what's best. The right model would require some iteration and experimentation.

There are hard challenges I don't have an answer for -- eg, the less well off probably overlap with those less likely to be engaged with weird internet experiments -- but they feel surmountable, if we want to solve it.

[manjushri]

While it's not a silver bullet and has a long way to go, advances in alternate models of money distribution such as cryptocurrency do seem to be moving us towards a more decentralized monetary system

[cortesoft]

Right, but the question is what reason do we have to believe that a decentralized monetary system will be more equitable? Being decentralized is no protection against inequality.

[JoeAltmaier]

Yes; I've always been baffled by the idea that an unmanaged currency will be better. Either tragedy-of-the-commons, or some gorilla(s) exploiting it, seems the very likely outcome.

[cortesoft]

Right? Anyone who gains power or wealth can utilize that power to accumalate more and/or prevent others from also gaining power and wealth. It doesn't matter if it is centralized or decentralized.

However, by being decentralized it prevents any mechanism of checking the power gained. Yes, centralization can be used as a means of maintaining power, but it can also be used as a way of checking power. Decentralization has no way of checking power.

[manjushri]

>what reason do we have to believe that a decentralized monetary system will be more equitable?

For the same reason that democracy is more equitable than a dictatorship or a monarchy