Police, banks, the military, the Fed all provide many more services than bitcoin does and do more than just protect the dollar. What an incredibly dumb comparison.
Your assertion is that it's dumb to compare two competing financial systems?
The dumb analysis is to talk about Bitcoin energy usage in isolation, without comparing it to the present system. The present system would not work without police officers and military. Bitcoin replaces these things with servers and decentralization.
There is no military protecting the internet. You would need to bomb every country in the world to destroy the internet. The same is true for Bitcoin.
US military is 100% necessary for the dollar-based world order. The fact they do other things is not important. You still need the full US military to protect the dollar, even if they didn't do other things.
> Bitcoin replaces these things with servers and decentralization.
This is totally absurd. We would still need police and military even if the USD stopped existing and we switched over to Bitcoin. You cannot replace them with servers because servers can't protect a nation or enforce laws.
> The fact they do other things is not important.
It is important, because it means they must exist anyway. So it makes no sense to factor in their cost if the cost would still need to be paid regardless of which financial system we use.
I don't think so. It's not like we have a branch of the military dedicated solely to maintaining the dominance of the USD. It protects our national security interests as a whole. The fact that it also scares everyone into using the dollar is just a bonus.
And while there are police dedicated to investigating financial crimes involving dollars today, we would still have them. They'd just be investigating crimes involving BTC.
> It protects our national security interests as a whole.
The emphasis of those interests is on ensuring that the US remains the dominant global superpower, particularly economically. Only a modest portion of our "defense" spending actually goes toward defending our own territory; most of it goes toward global force projection.
> And while there are police dedicated to investigating financial crimes involving dollars today, we would still have them. They'd just be investigating crimes involving BTC.
A lot of avenues for financial crime become impossible in a post-dollar world, and said world doesn't really introduce any new avenues compared to cash; that's a strict reduction, and therefore a strict reduction in the need for police on that front.
There's also a considerable reduction in demand for police to investigate robberies when there's a lot less to rob. Banks get reduced to loan centers and safe deposit boxes, armored trucks moving cash around stop being a thing, nothing in cash registers to steal at gunpoint... yeah, criminals will probably try to commit robberies, but will quickly find out that the reward ain't worth the risk.
Police corruption also becomes trickier, especially when it comes to civil asset forfeiture. No cash to steal during traffic stops means less motivation for said traffic stops in the first place.
My dude there is a whole lot of public security infrastructure protecting the internet. Just because the basic internet protocols are public doesn't make it magic.
Haha. It is, but I always found it funny, the south park song. But yea, bitcoiners will push the military of just being this evil force of violence. And trust me, it can be. I was in the Navy. But we also did so much more. We did search and rescue for civilians missing at sea regardless of their nationality. We did evacuations for scientist and researchers on islands in the path of a really bad storms. Used our hospital on board to respond to calls for helps from smaller ships that needed assistance with emergency medical situations, etc. Provide disaster relief, etc. Had a fellow sailor at the time who was on an air craft carrier that responded to Fukushima by flying all their food on board to the ship to feed victims of that disaster.
Still, considering the tiny amount of Bitcoin transactions per day, and the large number of speculators, hardly anybody can be using it for real things, anywhere.
In which case the question of "to whom?" still applies. As it stands, the primary beneficiaries of American police and military operations are the very same wealthy elites at the helm of the dollar-based global economy.
The dumb analysis is to talk about Bitcoin energy usage in isolation, without comparing it to the present system. The present system would not work without police officers and military. Bitcoin replaces these things with servers and decentralization.
There is no military protecting the internet. You would need to bomb every country in the world to destroy the internet. The same is true for Bitcoin.
US military is 100% necessary for the dollar-based world order. The fact they do other things is not important. You still need the full US military to protect the dollar, even if they didn't do other things.