David Friedman and Bitcoin

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Context? Just two weeks ago David Friedman said he knows "a little" about bitcoins. (http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2013/01/thank-you-jim.html?m=1)

[flix]

The pic was taken in Madrid, Thursday 24th Jan, so pretty recent.

He knows more about Bitcoin than he lets on, but his knowledge of the Bitcoin ecosystem is off by about 6 months... things are just moving very fast, and he is almost 70yrs old.

[Anon136]

Fractional reserve banking. Fiat money. Central banking.

All key causes of the business cycle and its latest iteration. None result of "unregulated" markets, but rather of regulations designed to give banks special privilege.

Read about regulatory capture please...

Precisely. Unfortunately 21after2 is focusing on the symptoms instead of the actual problems hence his false diagnosis.

It's okay for us to have a difference of opinion. We can just call each other liars and be on our respective ways.

you are probably correct in your assumption that *if* we had the perfect regulations than they could have countered the problems (which were caused by government intervention but that is neither here nor there). The problem is that no such omnipotent perfectly wise uncorrectable regulator gods exist to create these perfect regulations. So even if we assume, for the sake of discussion, that the housing bubble would have occurred naturally in a free market, it still isnt clear that regulations (created by real people not imaginary regulatory gods) would have improved this situation. This is of course assuming that the regulators are not perfectly wise but do have noble intentions. If we assume (and i think this is a more realistic assumption) that regulators pursue their own agenda and so are likely corrupted by the same institutions that they are intended to regulate than it is almost certainly the case that they made things worse.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Is he meaning to endorse Bitcoin here? If he is, it would be major ammunition for libertarian audiences. Unfortunately, whether coincidental or not, the photo isn't clear enough to tell it's not shopped.

[flix]

Is he meaning to endorse Bitcoin here? If he is, it would be major ammunition for libertarian audiences. Unfortunately, whether coincidental or not, the photo isn't clear enough to tell it's not shopped.

Photo is not shopped. I was present when it was made. But ask DF himself what he means by it, he is quite responsive to comments in his blog:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com

[matonis]

Photo is not shopped. I was present when it was made. But ask DF himself what he means by it, he is quite responsive to comments in his blog:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com

Great photo, flix. Thanks for posting.
Next time, please let me know and i'll try to get there and join you guys.

[minorman]

The pic was taken in Madrid, Thursday 24th Jan, so pretty recent.

He knows more about Bitcoin than he lets on, but his knowledge of the Bitcoin ecosystem is off by about 6 months... things are just moving very fast, and he is almost 70yrs old.

Cool. I didn't find any bitcoin-realted posts on his blog, though...

[memvola]

you are probably correct in your assumption that *if* we had the perfect regulations than they could have countered the problems (which were caused by government intervention but that is neither here nor there). The problem is that no such omnipotent perfectly wise uncorrectable regulator gods exist to create these perfect regulations. So even if we assume, for the sake of discussion, that the housing bubble would have occurred naturally in a free market, it still isnt clear that regulations (created by real people not imaginary regulatory gods) would have improved this situation. This is of course assuming that the regulators are not perfectly wise but do have noble intentions. If we assume (and i think this is a more realistic assumption) that regulators pursue their own agenda and so are likely corrupted by the same institutions that they are intended to regulate than it is almost certainly the case that they made things worse.

Thank you, came here to say exactly that.

More generally, when you look back at things after you have knowledge of failures and having pondered about how to fix them, it's natural to dream about a force that would execute those actions to result in a better now. If only someone had taken control and did this and that... This creates false trust in regulatory systems, and the fact that they don't work just leads to a snowball effect. In the end, you still have the same problems plus a bunch of side-effects caused by the newly invented rules you have to live by.

[flix]

He wrote this:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com.es/2011/06/bitcoins-considered-as-virtual-gold.html

some time ago, but his thinking has evolved a lot since, as he has learned more about bitcoin.

[justusranvier]

He wrote this:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com.es/2011/06/bitcoins-considered-as-virtual-gold.html

some time ago, but his thinking has evolved a lot since, as he has learned more about bitcoin.

I can't get past this idiocy:

The other disadvantage of a commodity money is that someone has to produce the commodity. Labor and capital are expended in locating and mining gold, a real cost. David Ricardo, writing about two hundred years ago, pointed out that a tax on gold mines whose output was used entirely as money in the taxing country and provided all of its money was a burden-free tax—not only did it impose no excess burden (cost to taxpayers above receipts to government), it imposed no burden at all. A smaller amount of gold was mined but the value per ounce was greater, resulting in the same total value of gold money at a lower production cost—and it is the value, not the weight, of money that mostly determines its usefulness. Fiat money represents the limiting case, where "production cost" is in effect all tax.

David Ricardo's argument is the kind of magical thinking that a 5 year old should be able to debunk.

[Monster Tent]

Bitcoin and unregulated financial markets just leads to massive scamming.

Unlike our heavily over-regulated fiat trash based financial markets.  Oh wait, S&L crisis, dotcom bubble/crash, housing bubble/crash, bond bubble/crash.  

And Madoff, plus MF Global and LIBOR, etc. etc. etc.

Can't you go be a blithering statist in some other thread?  

Exactly how does having complete anarchy  deal with corruption ? For that is the real issue that neither full regulation or anarchy can deal with in any way. Telling people that removing all rules will sort out the mess is the thinking of a retarded child.

If there was any effective measures in place the corrupt would be in jail right now but that hasn't happened. Just as with bitcoin you can scam and get away scott free so I dont see complete unregulation as the answer either.

[flix]

Exactly how does having complete anarchy  deal with corruption ? For that is the real issue that neither full regulation or anarchy can deal with in any way. Telling people that removing all rules will sort out the mess is the thinking of a retarded child.

If there was any effective measures in place the corrupt would be in jail right now but that hasn't happened. Just as with bitcoin you can scam and get away scott free so I dont see complete unregulation as the answer either.

I'm sorry.. are you worried about corruption or fraud? They are two different things.

To corrupt or bribe a politician, they need to have power. They need to be able to decide over other people's money. Take away the power and you reduce the incentive to corrupt and the possibility to be corrupted. By definition.


As for "private corruption" (ie: bribing an executive to decide against the best interests of his own company) there are powerful ways, both positive and negative, to fight it, as well as strong incentives to do so... as companies where corruption is rife tend to be a bad investment.

Fraud and scams are a completely different issue and there are a number of answers, none perfect, but many arguably better than "let's put someone in charge who will punish the wrongdoers" precisely because that "person in charge" immediately becomes the perfect target for corruption.

That you have never even heard about these probably marks you as a victim of government brainwashing aka "education".

[caveden]

Exactly how does having complete anarchy  deal with corruption ?

Err... by making it irrelevant, since corrupts can't control you through force any longer?

Or, putting it another way, by internalizing corruption costs. Organizations that allow corruption and those voluntarily related to them will be the ones paying the costs of such corruption. Those unrelated to the such organizations are not touched by it.
In a monopoly like we live now, you cannot choose to cut your relations with the monopolist.

Btw, I'd argue that corruption is far from being the greatest issue we face. Actually, quite frequently, corruption is what saves people. In many situations, the ruthless application of the law would bring much worse consequences. For example, being able to bribe a corrupt cop in order not to go to jail for a joint is definitely better than actually having the law respected. I wonder how many business would have already been shut down if it weren't for corrupt public servants... Brazil for example would have no brothels if it weren't for corrupt cops!

[Monster Tent]

Exactly how does having complete anarchy  deal with corruption ? For that is the real issue that neither full regulation or anarchy can deal with in any way. Telling people that removing all rules will sort out the mess is the thinking of a retarded child.

If there was any effective measures in place the corrupt would be in jail right now but that hasn't happened. Just as with bitcoin you can scam and get away scott free so I dont see complete unregulation as the answer either.

I'm sorry.. are you worried about corruption or fraud? They are two different things.

To corrupt or bribe a politician, they need to have power. They need to be able to decide over other people's money. Take away the power and you reduce the incentive to corrupt and the possibility to be corrupted. By definition.


As for "private corruption" (ie: bribing an executive to decide against the best interests of his own company) there are powerful ways, both positive and negative, to fight it, as well as strong incentives to do so... as companies where corruption is rife tend to be a bad investment.

Fraud and scams are a completely different issue and there are a number of answers, none perfect, but many arguably better than "let's put someone in charge who will punish the wrongdoers" precisely because that "person in charge" immediately becomes the perfect target for corruption.

That you have never even heard about these probably marks you as a victim of government brainwashing aka "education".

No, I just dont see any solution to get from where we are to a better place. All I hear on this forum is extremism with no answers to the transition.

People advocating removing everything all at once dont see how disastrous it would be.

[flix]

No, I just dont see any solution to get from where we are to a better place. All I hear on this forum is extremism with no answers to the transition.

People advocating removing everything all at once dont see how disastrous it would be.

Well.. read "The Machinery of Freedom" for starters.. it has a full chapter on transition called "How to get there from here". The book is available for free online.

[Monster Tent]

No, I just dont see any solution to get from where we are to a better place. All I hear on this forum is extremism with no answers to the transition.

People advocating removing everything all at once dont see how disastrous it would be.

Well.. read "The Machinery of Freedom" for starters.. it has a full chapter on transition called "How to get there from here". The book is available for free online.

There is a vast gap between theory and actual practice. Bitcoin has no regulation and its ended up demonstrating that zero regulation = scammers paradise with no way for victims to be made whole. I wouldnt recommend bitcoin to my worst enemy at this stage because this "community" has no support for victims of scamming and prefers to blame the government for its woes.

Exactly how is regulation at fault for the massive scamming and lack of restitution in bitcoin ?

[flix]

Exactly how is regulation at fault for the massive scamming and lack of restitution in bitcoin ?

Please indicate where anything remotely similar to this was stated in this thread.

As we said above corruption =/= fraud. Two separate problems. With different solutions.

Reputation, escrow, blacklists. All partial solutions to fraud. There are many others... but I get the feeling that you are changing the subject.

Nevertheless the Bitcoin economy is the perfect experiment of how those solutions will be tested and implemented (with a great deal of trial-and-error), and prove superior to the alternatives... which is not a perfect world without wrongdoers, but Paypal, Credit cards, bank wire transfers and the traditional banking system and financial world, which are not fraud-proof or scam-free as far as I can tell.

We'll see which one works best once Bitcoin matures (it takes time) and the dust settles.


But please let's be fair and compare between real world alternatives, not between imperfect reality and ideal/imaginary perfection. Remember that Bernie Madoff's scam was overseen and regulated by the SEC and was bigger than anything that has ever happened in the Bitcoin world.

[flix]

Also don't forget that Bitcoin is 100% voluntary. If a high % of the Bitcoin economy are scammers, nobody will want to use it and all bitcoin-holders will lose value.. so the incentive to fight fraud is huge.

You cannot say the same thing about the US dollar, the US banking system, social security, taxes and many other things...

[thoughtfan]

Bitcoin and unregulated financial markets just leads to massive scamming.

Unlike our heavily over-regulated fiat trash based financial markets.  Oh wait, S&L crisis, dotcom bubble/crash, housing bubble/crash, bond bubble/crash.  

And Madoff, plus MF Global and LIBOR, etc. etc. etc.

Can't you go be a blithering statist in some other thread?  

Not really in anyone's defense here, but the housing bubble crash was caused due to a lack in regulation rather than over-regulation. A lot of people at a lot of banks and firms were doing things that should have never been allowed even if just viewed from a common sense perspective.

Not that I'm a bank lover, but I wouldn't give (at least) the housing bubble to the over-regulation side.

Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.

It had more to do with risky and (quite frankly) idiotic investment practices due to deregulation in commercial and investment banking through the eighties and nineties (Graham-Leach-Bliley, MCA, and Garn-St. Germain in particular). Banks were lending to people who should not have been eligible for borrowing, and their mortgages were combined and shifted around into so many different convoluted securities and investments that no one truly knew the extent of what they were investing in.

The banks setting lower standards weren't doing it because they were victims. They were doing it to get what they could out of the loans before they passed it off to be someone else's problem. There's only so far you can pass the buck before it crumbles.

What astounds me most about the whole property bubble and subsequent credit crisis and 'stepping in' of the authorities leading to the mess we're in today is that people looking at the same facts can come to such diametrically opposed opinions as to its underlying causes.

As a Brit I read up on and watched some programmes about what happened with the RBS, the brink of collapse of which was one of the triggers to the bank bailout.  I can see that they were making irresponsible decisions and I can see why the 'obvious' answer is therefore to make rules that force them to act responsibly.   If rules that were not in place would have stopped them it follows they must have been 'too deregulated' and should be regulated more.

However that ignores the bigger picture, namely the amazing and astounding history of Freddie and Fannie from the 70s and the knock on effects.  My oversimplified understanding of it is of the way in which those government-set-up institutions got used to force lenders to lend irresponsibly to fulfill political agendas.  This then lead to masses of sub-prime mortgages no lenders wanted which is how the ludicrously huge figures were lent with virtually no chance of their ever being repaid.  Sure the private banks jumped on the bandwagon but the bulk of the time-bomb debts as I understand it came into existence as a direct consequence the heavy arm of politics in finance.  Add into the mix the banks' plucking of loans out of thin air and states' monopoly on currency and money supply and we end up with the lethal concoction that brought us to our knees.  And from what I understand the combination of QE with popular support for tying the banks up in even more regulation we're far from out from the forest yet.

Then along comes the knight in shining armour called Bitcoin...

[21after2]

you are probably correct in your assumption that *if* we had the perfect regulations than they could have countered the problems (which were caused by government intervention but that is neither here nor there). The problem is that no such omnipotent perfectly wise uncorrectable regulator gods exist to create these perfect regulations. So even if we assume, for the sake of discussion, that the housing bubble would have occurred naturally in a free market, it still isnt clear that regulations (created by real people not imaginary regulatory gods) would have improved this situation. This is of course assuming that the regulators are not perfectly wise but do have noble intentions. If we assume (and i think this is a more realistic assumption) that regulators pursue their own agenda and so are likely corrupted by the same institutions that they are intended to regulate than it is almost certainly the case that they made things worse.

Thank you, came here to say exactly that.

More generally, when you look back at things after you have knowledge of failures and having pondered about how to fix them, it's natural to dream about a force that would execute those actions to result in a better now. If only someone had taken control and did this and that... This creates false trust in regulatory systems, and the fact that they don't work just leads to a snowball effect. In the end, you still have the same problems plus a bunch of side-effects caused by the newly invented rules you have to live by.

I'll give you both a +1 to your posts. In the end, one way or the other, I think it all came (and still comes) down to greed: people don't tend to have the best interest of others at heart when it comes to business.

What astounds me most about the whole property bubble and subsequent credit crisis and 'stepping in' of the authorities leading to the mess we're in today is that people looking at the same facts can come to such diametrically opposed opinions as to its underlying causes.

It's just different worldviews . Hindsight is 20/20, which I believe is what memvola was getting at. Everyone looks at what happened and what factors affected it, then apply their worldview to the situation. And we all know, of course, that every person on Earth believes the exact same thing.