[hnbad]

Oh, I'm fully aware of the problems with our current economic system. I just don't see how toppling fiat currencies and returning to representative (or even commodity) currencies solves any of the problems. Especially if the process involves the full destruction of the state while maintaining our current notion of property.

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).

[bigger_inside]

you're mistaking me for a libertarian. Which is understandable, because you run into so many of those in the bitcoin space, so no hard feeling! :D They irritate me as well.

The problem with the current system is obviously not that it's not "free market" enough. I fully agree with you on property. And fiat currencies are fine with me in principle, the structural underpinnings of our current ones are the horrid part, and the power structures this underpins.

What I try to communicate is that bitcoin can also be a tech for leftist hope, because it uses the greed of the free market people to strengthen something that actually undermines the current corporatist capture of the state, and does so massively. It's decentralized and a real threat to the banking system and its wealth extortion. It's inclusive, as its permissionless nature will bank anyone with a phone. It also undermines US hegemony, as the US control over the banking system through SWIFT allows it to engage in economic warfare against everyone it doesn't like. The fact that bitcoin is an option for sanctioned countries is a medal for it in my book. And I know that's utopian and the US will try to find a way to kill it before it can actually do any f these things, but that's exactly the reason why people with critical attitudes to corporatism and US hegemony should help it along, not participate in the moral panics against it.

[hnbad]

Okay, but at that point from a leftist perspective it's just accelerationism and hoping that the revolution comes down in our favor without laying any of the ground work to prevent a rise of fascism (to "heal" the state) or a decline into feudalism (via stateless capitalism).

There's also no reason to believe that the existing hegemons won't be the ones ultimately controlling crypto if doing so becomes necessary to their survival. Crypto may be digital and out of reach for states, but the humans owning it are physical and very susceptible to physical injury. Capitalism has recuperated anti-capitalism, it will recuperate crypto if necessary (and some may argue it's already happening).

[bigger_inside]

well, I hadn't thought about it as accelerationism, and I'll have to think about it more. It's a good point.

My first reaction would be that it actually does help in steps beyond just strengthening existing structures, like I said, by banking the unbanked and freeing them from banking systems, by giving states ways out from under US sanctions, by whittling away at the hold corporatism has. Empirically, it's not the case that this is only adopted by the rich. Bitcoin use is massive in Africa, especially Nigeria and Ethiopia, among not so well-to-do people, in Central and South America, mostly for remittances and for peer to peer economies among people who have no bank accounts. And those are the first to really jump onto it, the corporate leeches are following, not leading. It's not just a toy for rich people. I'm far from rich by any metric.

But you're correct, the powers that be will absolutely try to capture it. Holders are not out of reach, though holding it can be dome quite clandestinely (as can supporting the network; you can run a bitcoin node, and nobody will know; and if you raid houses to take them, new ones will spring up.) The power of decentralization is rather persistent, as we have learned with filesharing over decades.

Bottom line, I wouldn't reject the idea that bitcoin can be reformist outright, but of course nobody can guarantee that.