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not OP. But the less-buzzwordy argument is this:
the existence of money itself isn't the problem. The problem is that the modern monetary system is built on inflation and supermassive debt, and this combination has a bunch of highly negative outcomes:
-it systematically expropriates poor people. Inflation will make sure your money is worth gradually less, so the only option to save it is though real estate and stocks, which poor people have little access to.
-this goes along with the need for companies, and the economy at large, to keep growing year over year. Our modern infinite-growth mandate, the thing that is actually destroying the planet, is based on the system of money we now have, as saving loses you money: you have to make more, consume more, make more, consume more, or everyone loses the money they have. That is to stay, money is no longer a store of value, which is one of its major functions.
- speaking of destroying the planet, after the end of the gold standard, the current dollar/euro system is backed, in complictaed ways, by their uses in international trade, especially oil. After the fall of their productive capacites (all outsourced), the US now basically exports dollars to finance their internal consumption and worldwide hegemony. Because all nations need USD to trade, esp oil, the US can print and print and sink that into other countries that buy it while keeping inflation mus lower (still there) than it otherwise would be. This is a circle, as it both finances global hegemony, but also needs it: it is that hegemony that enforces the use of USD as a world transactional currency, and US "regime change" operations generally hit countries that try to escape this system.
-a house of cards: central banks don't print most of the money; private banks do. "fractional reserve banking" means that banks only need a fraction of the money that they lend out on reserve, which means that when it has a million, it can make many millions in loans to customers, effectively creating the rest of the money every time it makes the loan. This is margin/leveraged trading on a global and massive scale, and it is what makes banks crash every time a hiccup occurs in that system. It's a time bomb. These are all massive systemic problems, and the -way- central banking is now organized is the problem. Could states organize this without these problems? sure; "gah states are unfreedom" is not the problem here, the capture of states by global corporate capitalism is. Will states change? no, of course not, not without a massive systemic crash or revolution. Do we need bitcoin to save this? strictly no, but bitcoiners see bitcoin as a sneaky trojan horse to destabilize this system, and -one- hope to overcome this massively cancerous state of affairs, for a host of reasons beyond mere dreaming that would double this already long comment in size. All I'm saying s: like everything, this is much, much more complicated than "bitcoin volatile" or "bitcoin energy bad". |
Property only exists insofar as people are able to enforce their claims of it. Under the dominant economic system property rights are enforced by the state via the police and prison system. Without the state, you need to rely on the community to assist you in enforcing your claims. If you want to maintain an imbalance that they might not be willing to tolerate, you'll need a private army (i.e. share some of your property with people willing to protect you in return).
If you hold little to no property, you fully depend on others' willingness to share their property with you or you'll literally die (because even foraging would require accessing someone else's property if they have claims on the territory).
So unless those holding the most property (i.e. the extremely rich) either fail to secure their continued property claims (e.g. by having their army turn against them) or feel extremely charitable for no practical benefit to themselves, you still end up with extreme poverty and extreme wealth.
And honestly, once you have people like Jeff Bezos raising armies to assert their claims on a significant fraction of global wealth directly, you might as well call their claims states because this just feudalism without the mythology of the divine right of kings (yet).
Wealth inequality may be in part driven by fiat currency. But wealth inequality is an inevitable consequence of our understanding of property rights (i.e. enclosure and the commodification of essential life necessities up to and including access to drinkable water).
Abolishing fiat currencies and existing states may create a free market, but it will not abolish or even improve poverty. You can argue that a freer market is better (but again, this needs a better explanation than "more freedom better") but it does not logically follow that a freer market reduces poverty and wealth inequality (ironically most statistics claiming global poverty is massively decreasing do not account for inflation and thus do not demonstrate an actual increase in relative purchasing power).