Would the failure of Bitcoin lead you to reconsider your assumptions?

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[archangel689]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that fiat currencies are not inheritly evil.


Rather the people who control the currency and inflate with reckless abandon without respect or concern for those who hold the currency that are evil. The rules have to be written in stone... or backed by gold.

And there is nothing I can think of that will provide something more stone-like than a extremely strong hashing algorithm.

So long as the rules are written in stone and cannot be changed, we are far safer.

[AntiVigilante]

Rather the people who control the currency and inflate with reckless abandon without respect or concern for those who hold the currency that are evil.

The IMF trades gold certificates on the market that will never be redeemed effectively dropping the price. I'm not touching gold. Silver is rarer anyway.

[hugolp]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that fiat currencies are not inheritly evil.


Rather the people who control the currency and inflate with reckless abandon without respect or concern for those who hold the currency that are evil. The rules have to be written in stone... or backed by gold.

And there is nothing I can think of that will provide something more stone-like than a extremely strong hashing algorithm.

So long as the rules are written in stone and cannot be changed, we are far safer.

But this is like saying, dictatorships are not inherently evil, its just that dictators abuse. Well, that is the issue, and that is why dictatorships or fiat currencies are bad.

[billyjoeallen]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that fiat currencies are not inheritly evil.


Rather the people who control the currency and inflate with reckless abandon without respect or concern for those who hold the currency that are evil. The rules have to be written in stone... or backed by gold.

And there is nothing I can think of that will provide something more stone-like than a extremely strong hashing algorithm.

So long as the rules are written in stone and cannot be changed, we are far safer.

So we have a State that says "use this paper as money or we will be unhappy."
if you don't do it, they will then order you to do it.
If you still don't do it, they will arrest you.
If you resist arrest, they will shoot you.
If you go to prison and try to escape, they will shoot you.
Meanwhile, they print more money, robbing you of purchasing power.
That's not evil?  That's not inherently evil?

[DrSammyD]

That's not evil?  That's not inherently evil?

Nope, but it sure as hell is something I'm willing to fight against.

[archangel689]

Sorry to wake the dead, but I just saw this now.

A thing, in this case, a "fiat dollar" cannot be evil since morality only applies to beings with volition.

[hieroglyph]

NO it would lead me to a Alt coin, heh. 

[AnonyMint]

the failure of Bitcoin due to competition with a more successful form of crypto-currency would obviously only serve to strongly reinforce my assumptions as to the merits of the basic idea.

Bitcoin's failure due to some kind of unilateral implosion would definitely lead to reassessment.

Since you didn't state if you view the "merits" positively or negatively, your statement appears to be ambiguous.

I assume the first sentence means you view competition as one of the positive aspects of decentralization. I agree.

However, you could also mean that competition means crypto-currencies are inherently inflationary, which is what I hear as a criticism from my silverbug friends.

[AnonyMint]

There are plenty of examples of how price deflationary economies grow and thrive. In fact, it is inflation that stops growth because it creates malinvestments.

The problem is that keynesians ignore the empricial evidences and keep repeating the same nonsense. If Bitcoin works or it does not it wont be due to price deflation.

Economies don't thrive because of the (small decrease or increase in the) money supply, they thrive (and increase productivity very fast causing deflation) because the government is small. Here is the very simple math and QTM model which refutes your popular goldbug delusion.

[AnonyMint]

Will the Bitcoin fiasco make Libertarians realize they know diddly about economics? No, it will not.

http://twitter.com/#!/bramcohen

Not all Libertarians are goldbugs. I am a minanarchist (small government) which is a subset of Libertarian, and I am no longer a goldbug although I was briefly (yet had serious doubts while I was and took me some time to figure it out).

[AnonyMint]

Bitcoin is not deflationary, monetarily speaking. It is always increasing in quantity, at a decreasing rate, until it stops increasing in quantity. Thus, it's always inflationary until it becomes constant - ie neither inflationary nor deflationary.

If the money supply of Bitcoins -shrinks- then it could be considered deflationary. But unless a bunch of people are throwing their wallet files in the ocean I don't see that happening.

Thus, if Bitcoin fails, it neither proves nor disproves that inflationary currencies are superior - it is after all an inflationary currency itself. Clearly, humans are so used to using inflating currencies that when they see one which inflates much slower than national fiat monies, they cry out that it's deflationary!   

Incorrect. Consider the Quantity Theory of Money.

M x V = P x Q

When you distribute in a way that 90+% of the coins end up in <10% of the hands, then you have created deflation, because velocity V is in the equation. Read this link to understand why. Hint: wealthy don't spend much of their net worth, they invest to accumulate more coins (net worth).

[Rupture]

Too big to fail now...

[AnonyMint]

hahaha good one. Note it is only a flea on the USD elephant ass in terms of market cap.