[Karrot_Kream]

> Well, yes,you have rediscovered a core theme of criticism against the capitalist, consumerist mode of production anarchists and other leftists tend to raise, together with commodification.

I think this is a much more fruitful (if ultimately tautological due to its very definition) form of argument; you're a modern socialist and modern socialist mores drive your criticism. That brings up two questions for me:

1. What's the point of bothering with commenting or thinking about cryptocurrency at all? Cryptocurrency is all about a belief in some market, which socialists reject. It would be like a market libertarian criticizing the Soviet Union on the basis of not having a market; ultimately fruitless.

2. Do you voice similar opinions on all capitalist issues in which marketing and commodification are present? It would seem from a perspective of utility that cryptocurrency is probably one of the least harmful examples of this phenomenon. Do we disagree on our utility metric? Does utility not factor into your ethical judgement (e.g. are you a virtue ethicist)?

[igorkraw]

First of all, it's simplistic to say socialists reject markets see

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

>Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for co-operative enterprises operating in a free-market economy.

Second, just because you reject something still means you are allowed to present arguments against it. Otherwise only those who hold crypto would be allowed to think or criticize it. You aren't giving arguments against the critiques presented right now, you are just going "ah, you are a socialist, that's why". If you disagree with the critique I'd love to hear your reasoning, but what does labelling and rejecting add?

Third, yes, I do in fact. Marketing, exploitation and hostile business practices are my main problems with the current system, I don't have a moral problem with property, capital etc. If we can configure a capitalist system to be non-exploitative I'm down. One way (not realisable, semi-joking) could be to impose a hard cap on individual wealth (say 100 million, or a multiple of the median to make it timeless) with the excess poured into a UBI (land would need its own treatment but I'm just being funny right now). This would even out power dynamics, avoid dynasties and allow market forces to take hold. We can add a form of new-game-plus for those that need extra motivation, if you build up more wealth and hit 500mil, 1bn , etc you get a progressively more impressive Roman-style triumph as recognition - you still don't get to keep it though.

Fourth, you are making a nonsequitur going to utility now without taking the time to define terms. I don't think of myself as a virtue ethicist nor a utilitarian, but I do think there are some things people want that a utilitarian would still say has negative utility. Is selling crack, fixing up people to opiods or drawing them into cults providing positive utility for you? How about adding extra sugar, salt, MSG and fat to food to make it more palatable with cheaper ingredients, and possibly more unhealthy and addictive? Is it positive utility to use marketing to create a perceived problem and then selling the solution?

[Karrot_Kream]

> First of all, it's simplistic to say socialists reject markets see

Yes I am familiar with this fact. That's why I said "modern socialist mores" in my above post, which was admittedly probably doing too much work in my head and not explaining enough. I find that libertarian socialists, market socialists, minarchists, and market anarchists are not really popular leftist positions anymore. Most socialist spaces I encounter these days mostly consider communism, socialism, anarcho-communism, or anarcho-socialism.

> Second, just because you reject something still means you are allowed to present arguments against it. Otherwise only those who hold crypto would be allowed to think or criticize it. You aren't giving arguments against the critiques presented right now, you are just going "ah, you are a socialist, that's why". If you disagree with the critique I'd love to hear your reasoning, but what does labelling and rejecting add?

Imagine if someone in the comments critiques the West's decadence and ascribes it to the West's consumption of pork. To many ethical frameworks, the reasoning would be odd; why pork of all things? In Islamic ethics, however, that is in fact a reasonable line of criticism. Likewise your positions seemed to reject a lot of things taken for granted in everyday life in many developed countries which is why your remark about being a socialist makes more sense. I'm not rejecting socialism; knowing you're a socialist makes your critique more understandable.

> Is selling crack, fixing up people to opiods or drawing them into cults providing positive utility for you? How about adding extra sugar, salt, MSG and fat to food to make it more palatable with cheaper ingredients, and possibly more unhealthy and addictive? Is it positive utility to use marketing to create a perceived problem and then selling the solution?

I don't believe it's the role of the State to police any but the most deleterious mores. I believe that humans can form social mores against the excesses of vices and that having the State enforce social mores often results in more negative than positive externalities. When there's a large collective action problem, say environmentalism, I _do_ think in terms of utility, which is why I was asking about utility. I largely think the negative utility imposed by cryptocurrency scams upon the environment is far outweighed by the negative utility of other things so, much like the renter that uses more water than they should because their management pays for water, I consider it one of the many tiny sources of negative utility out there that is only worth tackling once bigger targets have been tackled.

[igorkraw]

Thanks for the clarifications on your first two points. On the last:

You are using very wavy forms of utility. How do you define utility? I was thinking on the utility of the individual, asking about whether something like getting lost in gambling addiction after someone caught you in their funnel is truly positive utility because you "want" it.

In the same vein as your 2nd point, I'm also gonna guess you are more of a libertarian/minarchich bent because of this because while in my experience statist tend to oversimplify and wishful-think the impact of the state and anarchists tend to oversimplify and wishful-think the willingness and ableness of a group to self-organise in an anarchist way, libertarians in the US style/minarchists tend to oversimplify the question of self determinism and have inconsistent thought on what exactly the role of the state should be (it should exist because otherwise you can't have private property, but everything else...) and don't consistently acknowledge predatory behaviour that preys on human vices exists and works (AGAIN: I don't want to police the vices, I want to curtail profits on it. Self-organised vices without additional motivators are fine with me).

I also find it interesting that you claim you think term of utility and externality on collective action problems but then don't consider price of action - we don't lose anything big with crypto right now, but we would gain at least a finlands worth of energy to blow on other things ( https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco... ).