Bitcoin, or rather the bitcoin ecosystem, strikes me as the existing system on steroids. Let's cut out the few checks and balances we have and see the resulting clusterfuck.
The monetary system we have today enables politicians to tax us without our consent -- they have the ability to print money.
In the past, if a government wanted a war (such as Vietnam), they'd need to find a way to pay for it (usually taxes). Unpopular policy was frequently met with protests because the policy was explicit. Now they can just tax us via inflation. We all know inflation is there, but we don't realize what it's doing to our savings and wages (especially because no one can agree on how to measure inflation).
In 2008, the government was able to bail out financial institutions and prop up an unjust housing market by printing enormous sums of money. Had they not had the ability to print, politicians would have needed to seek the public's consent to accomplish their policy proposals.
Some people believe the 2008 financial crisis was caused because of de-regulation, rather than regulation; and that the bad guys were mostly untrustworthy/incompetent/greedy types in financial institutions.
Cryptocurrencies, famous for helping people evade regulations (e.g. ransomware) and untrustworthy/incompetent/greedy institutions (e.g. exchanges "accidentally" losing deposits), seem worse on these rather than better.
I don't understand this at all. Can you explain?
The monetary system we have today enables politicians to tax us without our consent -- they have the ability to print money.
In the past, if a government wanted a war (such as Vietnam), they'd need to find a way to pay for it (usually taxes). Unpopular policy was frequently met with protests because the policy was explicit. Now they can just tax us via inflation. We all know inflation is there, but we don't realize what it's doing to our savings and wages (especially because no one can agree on how to measure inflation).
In 2008, the government was able to bail out financial institutions and prop up an unjust housing market by printing enormous sums of money. Had they not had the ability to print, politicians would have needed to seek the public's consent to accomplish their policy proposals.