The island analogy

[grondilu]

Imagine a group a people establishing on a deserted island, trying their best to survive and eventually actually doing more than survive.  They build a mini society with plenty of social interactions and so on.  At some point they'd need to reinvent  many of the things they were used to when they lived on the continent.  In particular, they'd have economic relations between one another and they re-invent money.  They'd use whatever was scarce on the island and pretty much useless and they used it as a token as a medium of indirect exchange.

Now, a sailor arrives in this island and he would find all this perfectly normal.  A group of people organizing each other in order to create their own currency.  Nothing new under the sun, right?


Now tell me:  why is it that for some people it is so much difficult to understand that with internet and the abolition of physical frontiers, such a concept can emerge again?  A group of people with similar cultural background, organizing each other and agreeing about some sort of a token to work as a currency?   Why is is different from the perfectly normal situation of a group of people in geographic isolation?

[mitty]

Bitcoin is new and different from traditional financial systems.  People take a while to get used to new things.  The idea of virtual money may not be that strange to people used to playing MMOs and those who are otherwise familiar with computers, Internet culture, etc. but most people find the idea of virtual "coins" having value completely foreign simply because it's unlike anything they've ever heard of before.

Give it a few years and virtual cash won't seem so strange to the average person anymore.

To answer OP: People find it strange because a virtual alternate financial system is completely different than a physical alternate financial system.  The whole concept of value attached to intangible objects is very foreign to most people.  The island analogy isn't strange because it's essentially a reincarnation of financial systems that people are already used to.

Just my thoughts.

[nameface]

Now tell me:  why is it that for some people it is so much difficult to understand that with internet and the abolition of physical frontiers, such a concept can emerge again?  A group of people with similar cultural background, organizing each other and agreeing about some sort of a token to work as a currency?  Why is is different from the perfectly normal situation of a group of people in geographic isolation?

Money once meant metal (gold, silver, copper), and there was no way for people to mistake the intrinsic value of their money. They knew it was scarce, and they pretty much knew it was was acceptable money everywhere in the world.

People don't understand the nature of money anymore. Either they've forgotten it, or they've been brainwashed. People now think money is government paper, and they even worship it.

Helping someone see the point of bitcoin is about:

- Helping them remember what money really is, and how simple it should be.
- Explaining how the scarcity of bitcoin makes it as good as gold.
- Mentioning how the open source protocol and cryptography make it just as secure and trustworthy as any other form of currency.

[BTCLuke]

Good analogy, I'll try to use it next time I encounter a fiatlover.

Both posters above me are correct; it's a hard paradigm shift for their minds to follow...

Just today an old-school stock trader (who hates the fed and wants competing currencies) was arguing to me that he and people like him will never accept bitcoin until it has it's own bank and central exchange... I tried every way I could to get across the advantages of P2P for him, but he just didn't see the safety in that, which is what he's sought his entire trading career.

So, like all paradigm shifts in thinking, bitcoin and all these P2P, disruptive technologies will be embraced by the young and never used by the dinosaurs more distinguished among us.