Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness). It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans.
> the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans
As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha [usually translated as “suffering”]. The first kind is physical and mental pain from the inevitable stresses of life like old age, sickness, and death. The second is the distress we feel as a result of impermanence and change, such as the pain of failing to get what we want and of losing what we hold dear. The third kind of dukkha is a kind of existential suffering, the angst of being human, of living a conditioned existence and being subject to rebirth.
> How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
That's a pretty good indicator of a civilization's state. For an advanced one, the answer to your question would be "it's nowhere near the top worries". All human-made horrors (war, climate change, etc.) would be left far behind.
If we were as smart as we think we are, our biggest problems would be rogue asteroids, solar storms and aggressive aliens, not human geopolitical bullshit, poisoning our water, or destroying our own ecosystem.
True, but also the other way around: A less advanced civilization would have much more trouble with elephants, sea urchins, bacteria, and other natural factors than with humans.
Stepping on a sea urchin is no beuno. I remember one time snorkelling and I was being pulled by a rip tide and I was like no big deal, I can just slowly head a different direction until I started being pulled barely past sea urchins on corals and then I was freaked out. They are dastardly.
By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment.
It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute (and even made children's toys in their image)
> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute
I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).
What is nature different from the environment? Is nature not the environment? Is it truly aggressive and competitive or does it seek balance and evolution, or maybe it is and does not seek? Does applying those adjectives personify and build emotion into nature where none exists?
Again, question the premise holding in your mind’s hand a momento mori. All those things can and likely will happen. If the key advancement of human civilization was in virtue, would those things be a cause for worry or suffering?
I'm not sure I buy that. There's not any proof that a more advanced civilization exists. Even if we assume that one does exist, why does it follow that they are immune to war, oppression, power struggles etc? The only data point we have suggests otherwise.
Or maybe the aliens are all holding hands in a circle singing kumbayah?
Imagine you are an advanced civ with weapons hardly imaginable to current humans. Anti-Matter bombs, GRB strength energy weapons, etc, who even knows what is possible. With weapons like that even a run of the mill rogue political group, terrorist or whoever could probably trivially destroy an entire planet. It stands to reason that if they are able to continue to exist as some kind of multi-planetary species they have figured out a way to avoid killing themselves.
Nature often seems idyllic, when it has reached a stable equilibrium. But what it really is, is a ruthless and absolute class system, where each species "knows" its place, and has settled in to make the best of its lot.
The disruptions to equilibrium that we witness are almost always man-made. But there have been others, caused by new species, ice ages, asteriods, the Great Oxygenation Event, etc.
Alien civilization might be at equilibrium. Or, if we meet them, they may more likely be in an expansionist phase.
But I think a civilization that harnesses its conflicts - as we try to, with competing businesses, scientists, olitical parties, sporting teams - will have greater long-term success than a destructive, exploutative culture, by definition. It's not that competition is "good", but they we have aggressive aspects seeking dominance, and we are better off shaping them than having tribal warfare, raiding parties, etc which is more our natural state. And something like it is part of the nature of life itself.
As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was dominated by these problems.
I would have thought the opposite would be true, hunter gatherers are generally well fed from a variety of food sources, would have lived in low densities and would have been highly mobile, so in the event one food source become scarce they could move elsewhere, or switch foods. Early agriculturalists would have been stuck in once place reliant on a single, or few, food source/s and therefore vulnerable to failed harvests for a variety of reasons, droughts, natural disasters, theft (of stores, if they are lucky enough to farm food that can be stored) etc.
> "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains"
I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance.
Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wouldn't populations thin out and stabilize accordingly if starvation was such a problem?
[1] - _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ and _Sex at Dawn_
That same book claims that the agricultural revolution was responsible for human specialization. We were able to feed larger families/tribes and develop non-food related skills. Without agriculture, those extra people would've died aka "thin out" as you mentioned.
Agriculture encourages large families since children can help out in the field. Meanwhile with a hunter gatherer lifestyle the amount of food that can be acquired is not limited by labor but rather by the local environment. The effect is that you have lots of people doing backbreaking work every day.
Was it? I wasn’t aware of that? Is this also the case of non-human omnivores? If not, at which point in our evolution did this start to be the case, e.g. during Australopithecus or Homo Erectus? And is it also the case for humans that don’t live in agricultural or industrial societies today (such as tribes deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea)?
One year into a worldwide pandemic affecting every aspect of life and you have a hard time finding examples of really bad things not caused by human? That's some committed misanthropy, I got to give you that.
The virus either originated in a human lab (unlikely) or jumped cross-species in an environment created by humans (exotic animal markets with poor hygiene controls). So...yeah this one is kinda on us.
> maybe we should have been much smarter about preventing or containing it.
That doesn't mean humans were responsible for the pandemic, though. That means humanity might bear responsibility for not as effectively containing the pandemic.
If an asteroid strikes the earth, and causes a mass casualty event that doesn't mean humans caused the asteroid strike (even if we maybe should have invested more in preventing the asteroid strike).
I think it's reasonable to expect more effective human preventative measures, without confusing the disaster for ones caused by human activity.
Is a virus a problem or is it a new challenge for humanity to take on, just as our understanding of molecular biology has become ready to address it? I respect the loss of people just as I respect the loss of all who have gone before, soldiers, explorers, pioneers, even those who did not intend risk but lived unknowingly under risk that existed nonetheless.
It's always important to remember that we live in a thin sheet of self-sustaining complexity in a cold, hostile universe, perhaps unique and if not incredibly rare. The "human" problems are a luxury when our fragile existence seems like little more than an accident.
TBH the perspective that humans will learn to control meteorites is a bit frightening.
Because I would like to believe that this capability will only ever be used to protect the Earth from them, but our history says otherwise. Anything that can be used as a weapon will ... well, at least enter the arsenals, and only fear of devastating retaliation will stop people from actually using it. Or has, so far.
The cause of most problems for any biological creature on earth is external. All animals compete fiercely for survival among the elements, among other creatures, among each other. Survival is the biggest problem for all animals.
Except humans. More humans die each year due to other humans, or due to things other humans have created (for example humans ignoring mask mandates).
Point is, we are the only specie who has become its own worst enemy.
Idk, what am I saying? I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.
Evolutionists like Dawkins pose that most organisms are in fiercest competition with members of their own species. You and I compete for identical resources: mates, jobs etc.
Other species have mostly arranged not to kill one another in these competitions. E.g. vipers & komodo dragons don't bite while wrestling. Walruses get pretty ripped-up, but usually don't die.
Ganging up to kill seems to be mostly a primate thing.
Male lions will kill cubs fathered by another male without remorse. It is not the same as our primate instincts of war, but remarkably close to ethnic cleansing.
> I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.
What other species creates scalable, global solutions to large scale problems? Example (not real, but realistic) - a group of scientists in India create a vaccine that a company in Germany manufactures, so that people in the US can avoid a deadly virus.
Only one I can potentially think of is Fungi, as they appear to have large scale symbiotic relationships, but nothing is comparable to humans.
>How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
Think in simpler terms, like a technology used at work, or a tool used at home; I've been in enough changes in the former that tell me many people believe a new thing will be better than the old thing, even after going through that same process several times.
The introspection needed to understand that people will break the process if they want or need to is hard to come by.
> As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
Dinosaurs' biggest problems was asteroids. There are plenty of externalities outside of human control, or that humans are only marginally responsible for (asteroids, gamma ray bursts, volcanic eruptions, famine due to crop diseases, pandemics, etc).
The value is providing the ownership of a digital scarce fixed-supply item that can be transferred and traded.
That's the product. And the market gives it a price.
Also, it has everything to do with monetary policy.
There are 8000+ cryptocurrencies, some (or a lot?) of them are bitcoin clones. Most of them issue millions and billions of those digital items. It's not scarce at all.
There is a difference between short term utilitarian value and long term utilitarian value.
BTC might have no short term utilitarian value, but in the long term the utilitarian value is to create a globalized monetary policy.
1. BTC is speculative because it may not actually achieve the goal of a single globalized monetary policy. Some other crypto might become the defacto denationalized currency instead, or maybe nothing changes.
2. A single globalized monetary policy may not be useful. However, no one really knows. People investing in any crypto seem to believe that a denationalized monetary policy will be better functioning.
Speculation alone doesn't imply no long-term utilitarian value exists.
Nobody accepts it as payment, because its value is too volatile, speculation-driven, and nobody wants to spend it, because it is deflationary.
And that's not even considering the fact that it can only be transferred at around 6 transactions per second, less than 1/10,000th of the transaction volume of Visa.
> Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Presuming Satoshi did this out pure altruism, I wouldn't say perfect. However, if Satoshi still has 10% of the Bitcoin supply, then I couldn't agree more. Given the fact that most of us don't know, we're simply projecting whatever believe we have on that particular matter, which definitely votes for "an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws"
Thought question here. What if we hyped up bitcoin to 10X its current value? Wouldn't that mean that per real-world transaction / per unit dollar value it would use 1/10th of its current amount of energy? For example something that would normally cost 0.1 BTC would now cost 0.01 BTC.
The block rewards issued to miners would be worth 10x as much, so more equipment would be pressed into use for mining, until the expenses of mining roughly equal the current value of the block rewards (plus transaction fees, for the nit pickers out there).
10x price increase equals 10x mining expenditure, mostly on energy.
Agree. It would not be easy to know which has wasted more GW-hrs, but my bet would be on Windows. Remembering decades of overnight flying toasters.
As recently as 2012 I was going around the office, before leaving, turning off the monitors left on because Windows did not default to doing that itself. On CRTs it was even worse.
But it is not a competition. Bitcoin and Windows together are clearly much worse than either alone.
Fun and joy in and of themselves are worthy pursuits. That's completely aside from considering video games as an artistic medium that can be used to learn and share about the human experience.
Bitcoin does none of that. At its very very best it's a way to buy hallucinogens on the internet with massive external consequences.
I think understanding bitcoin from a systems point of view is of great value. Although proof of work is problematic, the idea and manifestation of a censorship resisten electronic monetary system is just amazing. Bitcoin is actually working for more than 10 years... There are alternatives to PoW, e.g. ethereum 2.0, let's see if this works and than judge again...
I feel sorry for anyone that expects bitcoin to actually be anonymous. Given that we can use statistics and timing to determine the memory contents and instructions run on different cores in a CPU, anyone that uses a currency that keeps public global transaction log and thinks they can anonymize themselves by just mixing their money in a pool is in for a rude awakening at some point. For any useful amount of usage, my guess is they're just kicking the de-anonymization can down the road a few years.
Its an alternative finance system bringing inflation resistant digitally accessible and transferable assets to an unbanked and inflation exposed populace. Many are ignorant of the challenges that face people in contries that don't the most sophisticated financial system on the planet with a local currency that acts as the worlds reserve currency. It takes up way too much power, but I am not going to let this key opportunity to much of the worlds less fortunate, be under appreciated.
At best its an alternative finance system that works around the captured, corrupted, and rent seeking finance systems of the world.
The amount of energy required to rescue a single princess does not increase exponentially over time. In fact it pretty much stays constant. Furthermore, gaming energy expenditures are probably minor compared to the amount spent on Bitcoin these days (last I heard it had an energy footprint equivalent to the Netherlands.)
There are also other cryptocurrencies that don't have the same problem as Bitcoin with being increasingly energy intensive to produce over time.
75twh/year only PC gaming and that was year 2015! And PC gaming is smaller market. Now add the whole industry or creating them and the servers running the online parts. And add consoles. And creating all the hardware, mining minerals for them, transportation.
The industry is growing like crazy as well.
Bitcoin was 122 twh/year I believe.
Both gaming and bitcoin kill the planet and are not necessary until global warming under control.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect the reason people did is that for gaming, energy usage is a cost and for bitcoin energy usage is the point. They are completely different systems. Bitcoin's energy usage expands more and more as Bitcoin gets more valuable and/or energy gets cheaper.
If game consoles/PCs get more efficient, they use less power for the entertainment value delivered to the world. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, the fixed amount of energy gaming uses becomes less of a big deal.
If ASIC miners get more efficient, difficulty and hashrate goes up, and they use the same amount of power for the same amount of security delivered to the blockchain. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, miners will use more of it.
The "W" in PoW means work but it could equally mean "waste". The whole reason it's secure is that you look at the total hashrate of the network and go "wow, that is so expensive, nobody would ever burn so much energy just to double-spend some bitcoin". No matter how good hardware gets or how freely available energy gets, it must always be incredibly costly to operate the network, because that's the premise its security is built on.
Yeah I'm well aware. Despite not being a fan of bitcoin I'm sure many can claim entertainment value from it as well. Either tech or gambling.
So I guess its a matter of taste and for me they are both useless industries.
Fiat currencies are an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Fractional reserve lending are an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Deflationary currency is useless currency. There is a reason that every deflationary period in modern monetary history was immediately followed by a catastrophic depression.
Contrary to the dollar-sign-eyed bitcoin hacks, the purpose of money is to be exchanged for goods and services, not to sit in an account forever while you watch numbers go up.
As a person holding a certain amount of currency, the last thing you want is the govt to print more. That is essentially the govt putting a hand in your pocket and taking away cash by diluting what you already have.
Is land a bad thing to buy because they are not making more of it?
I'm sure you know you can exchange those numbers for other numbers that show up in your bank if you're inclined..
As a person who makes goods/provides services, what you want is for the government to ensure there is enough money for others to buy/hire your good/service.
As a person who wants to buy a house but doesn't have the full purchase price in liquid dollars, the thing you want is for the government to give lenders access to low-cost money so they can then lend it to you at low rates so you can afford the principal+interest on your loan.
As a person with savings to invest, you want to know that the bonds you're buying will be paid back with some interest to balance the risk of higher-yield stocks/bonds.
You don't understand Bitcoin. It is a system to remove human greed from the equation. However, currently we are in the monetization stage. People will get rich. Greed will prevail and it jump starts the system.
The beauty of Bitcoin is that no human can increase supply to address short-term interests, like central banks can. The energy is not wasted. To the contrary, it is used to ensure that the supply is distributed in the prescribed manner and that it is capped. There is no other way of creating a decentralized system that has this feature.
If you want a resource that's limited and can't be created by central banks, why not use something like Gold/Silver like we used to? While not going trying to debate on whether we should
or should not use a limited resource as currency, but if we did Bitcoin seems like a wasteful thing to use.
Not a bitcoin fanboy, but that's a bit strong a statement. What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation? Is innovation rewarded with (taxed, regulated) wealth greed, and if so, is that "bad"? And if it creates Teslas and rockets that land, and robots on Mars that last a year or more analyzing samples, is it a fatal flaw?
Some more questions... So let's say BTC is greed - the many financial instruments out there, derivatives, credit default swaps, funds of funds, the crazy options stuff going on ... and you drew the line at BTC?
"It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans."
Fitting for a city known today for its vast outdoor tent cities of homelessness.
I feel that comments like this are a disservice to HN, for while the comment attempts to sound erudite and logical, it is simply moral relativism in disguise.
"Greed" is neither good nor bad, but instead it is a pathological optimization. Optimizing for profit, by definition, is an "unwillingness to acknowledge externalities", as stated by the GP. Optimizing for profit resulted in many bad situations for Americans (see the Love Canal and the Cuyahoga River) and it was the reason the United States created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so that negative externalities could be converted into dollars.
To bring into the discussion "Teslas" and "rockets that land" changes the argument from the demonstrable "bitcoin is bad for the planet" to a morally relative argument of "yeah, but it got us rockets and Teslas", which does nothing other than prove GPs point: to say that that Teslas and landing rockets are worth the price of Bitcoin is to ignore or disregard the externalities!
And it's hard to imagine that the GP "drew the line" at Bitcoin; to take that as the position is making a straw-man argument. Instead, an interpretation that would lead to valuable discussion should be adopted, like the position that Bitcoin both demonstrates the flaws of greed and that it does so in a way that is simple to understand and demonstrate, especially when it comes to externalities. Financial instruments are complex and opaque on purpose, designed to confuse and obfuscate greed. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a much simpler equation: money versus power consumed versus pollutants produced.
Finally, a suggestion to all: avoid acronyms, or at least spell them out on first use. It's highly likely that "SF" meant "Science Fiction" and not "San Fransisco". Knowing the correct definition of an acronym can help avoid embarrassing situations.
Your response and charges of moral relativism are longer than the comment you're replying to. It's as if you're liberally reading into motivations and even psychology, in order to make your point about externalities.
Don't tell people what their motivations are. The original comment talked about greed, my comment questions our definitions of greed.
Edit: Can't you just reply and make a point about externalities instead of being essentially passive-aggressive?
> Finally, a suggestion to all: avoid acronyms, or at least spell them out on first use. It's highly likely that "SF" meant "Science Fiction" and not "San Fransisco". Knowing the correct definition of an acronym can help avoid embarrassing situations.
Wowzers. How about you design the guidelines for conversations, and we can defer to you if there's ever any ambiguity.
Bitcoin innovated through a blockchain years ago and the world has already adopted that. But the current state of bitcoin makes it bad at its other 'innovation', digital currency.
Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a widespread, standard currency which seems to be the "reason" people say it's worth as much as it is. But it will never be a widespread currency until it has stability. So it's a chicken/egg situation, one of the two has to come first for the other, and both ideas rely on each other.
Most people that hold bitcoin today are doing so because they think it will increase in value, NOT because they care about the stability or viability of currency. That's pretty selfish insofar there are plenty of developing nations that would benefit greatly from a stable currency. Bitcoin might still be more stable than some countries, but that doesn't negate the issues.
So, because many people look at bitcoin as a wealth generator that produces tons of heat and waste, and it starts to look like a perfect marriage of shitty human behaviors.
How do you explain banks and hedge funds putting their money into it? Your explanation is that they want a digital currency, which you're saying is impossible. But it seems like the BTC advocates aren't arguing that, but instead that it's a store of value as a hedge against inflation?
No, I would argue hedge funds and banks are treating BTC like any other investment; They believe it will make money.
Banks and hedge funds don't inherently care about currencies. They care about the currency that governs their lives but beyond that everything is an investment. Banks don't provide mortgages because homes provide a stable economy or a stable currency. They do so because they will make money back on what they lend through interest. The fact that you store your dollars there is just one way for them to collect tons of assets for lending (among other things). This doesn't means banks care much about the volatility or exchange rate of the currency itself.
Hedge funds would only care about currencies insofar that it's an investment vehicle and investing in currencies can be a good investment. Bonds or other currency investments can increase over time without the volatility of BTC. A hedge fund is literally just an investment group, so it's pretty obvious they don't NEED to care about BTC stability or any stability at all.
Now, the question could be why would banks and hedge funds be willing to invest into such a volatile currency when they are usually risk adverse (banks more than hedge funds). And that would be a good question, except BTC has kept going up and now crypto as a whole is just another ETF market. So there are plenty of safe ways to hedge your bets on BTC or crypto generically without actually believing in the underlying philosophical justifications.
EDIT: Also, I don't think that it's impossible to have a crypto currency that is viable and stable. I think Ethereum has a fairly logical approach to their core issues that could solve the issues down the road. We'll see. I do think it'll be hard for BTC to become a viable currency because of how pumped up it is, and people treat it like an infinite money machine. Until the systemic issues of the BTC ethos are solved, I don't see a promising future for BTC as a widespread currency. But, it might have value in setting up the infra that the future crypto that IS viable will use.
I wonder if more mainstream investors waited a while to make sure BTC is liquid. I don't know the details of this - I guess there must be reliable enough exchanges now to serve customers of that caliber.
>What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation?
I don't have exact data, but my gut feeling tells me that 99.99% of the people buying cryptocurrencies today are driven by greed instead of innovation.
> and you drew the line at BTC?
Not really, if you look at the perspective that we already have enough instruments for financial manipulation and greed, why introduce another one that consumes so much energy?
>Fitting for a city known today for its vast outdoor tent cities of homelessness.
I mean...you know that's a completely man-made problem right?
I don't have any but I get the feeling that a lot of people here are just salty that they were thinking of buying and didn't. Just venting that regret..
> many financial instruments out there, derivatives, credit default swaps, funds of funds, the crazy options stuff going on ... and you drew the line at BTC?
That seems like you are putting words into the GP’s mouth.
Nobody is saying these other instruments aren’t also ‘greed’, just that Bitcoin is no better.
That’s relevant because one part of the Bitcoin narrative is that it is actually better in some way, and not just another speculative instrument.
Again, I'm not a BTC fanboy, I don't even own any. But obviously it solves SOME problems - like how to transfer some sort of store of value across borders without using a bank. That's one of them.
It's not tulips and 100% useless. A digital currency is interesting to explore. It's interesting enough that institutions are stuffing their cash into it because they are fearing inflation, and the old school explanations of why we won't get inflation are now being questioned.
Don't ask me to forcefully argue for or against, there are many other people on this thread to argue both positions. But you can't say it has NO utility.
Hi, thanks for the reply, makes sense what you said. I am not looking for strong stances or arguing; I just want to expand my understanding. I get from you that institutions pour real money into it and they rely on bitcoin's scarcity to overcome inflation. Makes sense. However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad? Nowadays there are low fees, way lower than what Bitcoin offers today. And that is just one aspect. It's just an opinion but I feel that money transfer problems caused by banks are exaggerated, especially in developed countries. Can you explain why I might be wrong about it? I also do not own Bitcoin, my employer is not a bank and I do not have any involvement or desire to promote the banking or payments industry.
> However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad?
I've never done it, but when I lived abroad and I had to transfer money, I got fleeced by banks and then (a few years ago) there weren't really any alternatives. I don't have any skin in the game with Bitcoin, but I guess that left a foul taste in my mouth.
There've been other comments about Bitcoin that are a bit more nuanced and interesting, in one case there was a gentleman from Argentina making an impassioned case for the use over and against the polices of his government.
I think there's an element of institutional mistrust that Bitcoin claims - maybe wrongly, given how centralized it is - to solve.
Certainly the most important value proposition from the companies behind the established cryptocurrencies is the decentralized network for value transfers. No more "brokerage" firms. Getting rid of these feels like an emotional fulfillment; and today this beats pragmatism. Thanks for writing.
This is silly. Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free. You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force. Which do you find less harmful?
Edit: I should clarify. I am saying that the status of the USD as a reserve currency has led to lots of US military action.
No one here is arguing for replacement of military force, your brain got stuck by a common fallacy it seems.
Notice how displacing some military force usage by changing the motivation or capability for intervention (for example to maintain a currency advantage) might be in itself a Good Thing (tm) and how it does not require replacing armed forces entirely.
Not sure what you are going for here. Indeed, reading a single sentence without considering context typically leads one to faulty conclusions. Note that the previous sentence in the parent post is "Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free."
Military force and law enforcement provide solutions for consensus across great many domains, so they're marginally near-free to use for consensus in any single area of interest. You could say, they are consensus factored out and made incarnate.
Conversely, if all money suddenly become Bitcoin, military force and police would still be needed, in mostly the same amount they are today.
It's odd to me that people think Bitcoin can be free of "force" long term. Bad guys can point a gun at your head and demand you login into Coinbase to transfer coins to them. What happens if the government makes Microsoft give them admin accounts to the Bitcoin repo? What happens if there is a fork and China doesn't like it and prohibits miners from adopting it? BTC is way more susceptible to traditional military and government might then people make it out to be.
I don't think it will eliminate the need for the military or police force entirely. I have seen a lot of bold bitcoin claims but I don't think anyone really does.
My post was referring to how the US has killed lots of people to keep strong dollar. I think its feasible that a true global currency (possibly bitcoin) could prevent violence like this.
Exactly. Fossil fuels and rare earth metals are already considered to be a national security risks. Depending on a currency with huge energy requirements only multiplies this risk, which further incentivizes war.
Energy scarcity is a thing of the past for anyone who wants it to be. Between solar and nuclear, it's a helluva lot easier to get basically unlimited renewable energy than it is to go to war. Malthus hasn't been right about the way the world works in 200 years
I doubt they would just roll over yeah. If you consider the dollar as a weapon/tool for US hegemony, bitcoin functions as almost like a terrorist entity. Not clear what to do with this information
I grant the other points, but if the government took over the bitcoin repo and changed it, why wouldn't people just keep using the old version of the software?
How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.
/u/nindalf this honestly made me laugh out loud and spill my drink. The next time I am trying to explain the concept of a false dichotomy, I am absolutely using this example. XD
If surveillance is increased a bit more, the government won't need to use force to get your money.. they'll just use some rootkit chip on whatever device to get your private key.
I am also doubtful of PoS but perhaps there's a way to make a greener coin using some amount of trust and regulation?
Well, technically you only need the threat of violence. Potential-but-unrealized violence is arguably much better for humanity than proof-of-ever-escalating wasted energy.
Maybe true depending on the energy source. I've heard it argued also that bitcoin will become the 'purchaser of last resort' for energy. For example, fracking companies often just burn off natural gas they find while looking for oil... instead, this gas could be used to mine btc. Also well documented that a lot of bitcoin operations in china are fueled by hydroelectric sources.
The promise of violence is free until realized though.
Hydroelectric sources that could be best used on homes, businesses, etc. Anything but Bitcoin, really.
Did everyone forget that the best goal we can achieve with power usage is by reducing consumption outright? Just because some of the mining is done on greener solutions doesn't mean it's a net positive.
Global warming isn't exactly going away if we keep this experiment up.
Yeah but good luck convincing people to move next to sources of energy so cheap it would be wasted otherwise (rural west texas, rural china). If bitcoin becomes the dominant global financial system, securing it will be a worthy use of energy.
As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha [usually translated as “suffering”]. The first kind is physical and mental pain from the inevitable stresses of life like old age, sickness, and death. The second is the distress we feel as a result of impermanence and change, such as the pain of failing to get what we want and of losing what we hold dear. The third kind of dukkha is a kind of existential suffering, the angst of being human, of living a conditioned existence and being subject to rebirth.
https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/what-did-the-buddha-...