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by rantwasp 1859 days ago
whatever happened to the efficient market?

i find views that want to ban anything for energy consumption ridiculous. also what the people advocating for this kind of thing are missing is that it’s all fun and games until something you rely gets banned because of reasons.

here are my proposals:

the entire banking system is obviously using a lot of power. how about we ban banks and go back to using paper money. that’s def more environmental friendly. /s

electric cars run on energy that’s generated with coal. that’s not cool. let’s ban electric cars and keep driving gas cars. they have been around for a long time and the technology is so good that we actually pollute less with a gas car /s

the internet in general and datacenters in particular are using a lot of power. let’s ban datacenters. guaranteed between environment afterwards /s

1 comments

We have banned low efficiency vehicles (CAFE standards), we have banned refrigerants that are bad for the environment (CFCs). We have things that clearly cause massive amounts of societal harm (leaded gasoline). The market didn't solve any of those issues, the government did. I for one am extremely happy that we live in a world that is not poisoned by lead and that still has a functioning ozone layer. Its kind of silly that you are equating bitcoin with the entire modern banking system. The regulations to ban leaded gasoline didn't destroy automobiles, they just made them change. Changes to proof of stake aren't existential to BTC holders, but they are existential to the rest of us.

Also "until something you rely gets banned", what do you rely on bitcoin for besides being a store of value?

yup. it is silly to compare the banking system with bitcoin. bitcoin is obviously better. does it close at 5pm? does it close on the weekend?

my point is that you don’t get to decide what i consume. and banning bitcoin == banning any type of computing that you don’t like. do you understand how much power a modern datacenter sucks? do you also understand that some things that run in a datacenter are straight up dangerous to the fabric of our society?

"my point is that you don’t get to decide what i consume"

I am not making any decisions about your consumption. Our democratically elected government is responsible for making the best choices that balance our societal needs. Our government already regulates a lot of things around computing: Child porn/CSAM, export controls around cryptography, data privacy, the computer fraud and abuse act. This isn't novel stuff, having a computer doesn't mean you can do literally anything on it with zero consequences.

once you compare it to CP it’s clear you have a valid argument.

democracy? data privacy? thanks for the good laugh