Bitcoin's Dystopian Future

[thoughtfan]

It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south....

Thank you for coming and commenting.  I have to admit I really struggle with in particular the Greek and Italian electorates' mentality.  I see now you truly believe your problems are caused by northern Europe and have nothing at all to do with decades of insane spending and deep political corruption in cahoots with the very wealthy whose activities were turned a blind eye to and who have by now escaped with their wealth and invested it in London properties.

Of course it was all the nasty industrial northern Europeans' fault!

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[thaaanos]

Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....

Are you implying if I suggest it's not OK to rob savers by inflating a currency that it's OK to directly rob from their bank accounts?  If not, I don't get what you're saying?  As Rassah is pointing out there are actually more options than those you are putting forward.

I am refering to that the "stiking plaster" of inflation would hurt savers, and that the rapid deflation of Cypriot economy *saved* them

Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines,

That I am aware of.  Around London over the holidays I noticed how 20 years ago bar and serving staff were Australian, then South African.  Ten years ago more eastern European.  Now Italian and Spanish.  It is terrible the young people there have so few options other than to leave if they wish to work.  As for the root causes we'll have to disagree.

well until we get to the root north taxpayers will bailout northern banks both blaming the south for being greedy

But at least with Euro there is a slight possibility for policy change cause despite all there is room for discussions and maneuvres. In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions...

Right.  And what ires you is what attracts others to Bitcoin.  It being hard wired from day 1 means everybody knows what the score is.  The 'disadvantage' is it offers no flexibility irrespective of economic circumstances.  The advantage is it can not be dabbled with supposedly 'for the good of the economy/people' usually at everybody's expense.  You don't like it?  Don't use it.  Support an alt or a fork.  I kinda like it and look forward to seeing the outcome

it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Would you really buy a car without steering wheel cause some guy sold you that the road is straight, and that way none can change direction at the expense of another?
But I seriously doubt that I will have the option off due to Network effect.

And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?

I have no idea.  Unlike politicians and central bankers I would hate to be in the position to have to make those decisions.  Fortunately with Bitcoin neither I nor anyone else needs to make those decisions any more.  We all know the score from day one and can plan accordingly.

well satoshi did.

[justusranvier]

Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.

[thoughtfan]

And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?

I have no idea.  Unlike politicians and central bankers I would hate to be in the position to have to make those decisions.  Fortunately with Bitcoin neither I nor anyone else needs to make those decisions any more.  We all know the score from day one and can plan accordingly.

well satoshi did.

Nope, he just made his creation as an experiment, putting into action his ideas that those who follow may chose to participate or not, you included.  I don't go with the car analogy because I don't believe a currency should steer itself around the 'corners' of an economy, rather that it is a tool that serves its purpose better for being predictable.  But you notice I don't state that as fact.  I don't know.  I look forward to finding out.  On the other hand you appear to be immovable and refusing to listen to any opinion other than your own.  Good luck

Oh, and whilst it is true no lone ranger is likely to be able to counter the network effect of Bitcoins if you have valid arguments and can persuade enough people (I suggest you engage differently or look elsewhere) there are plenty of options with different economic models e.g. Freicooin.  Go support them

[thaaanos]

It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south....

Thank you for coming and commenting.  I have to admit I really struggle with in particular the Greek and Italian electorates' mentality.  I see now you truly believe your problems are caused by northern Europe and have nothing at all to do with decades of insane spending and deep political corruption in cahoots with the very wealthy whose activities were turned a blind eye to and who have by now escaped with their wealth and invested it in London properties.

Of course it was all the nasty industrial northern Europeans' fault!

lol as if Spain, Italy and Greece were born yesterday and all these problems you describe just suddently appeared the last decade and caused the crisis, while north is pristine clear without corruption and this is why they are in better shape, get real. Those problems are/were factored in in the economy for ages and took their toll, nobody claimed that it was optimal and it can be are why we can't put 2 and 2 together and find a way out of the hole we are in, It's not what put as there.
 
The cause is that when they created the euro it was not perfect, they did all they could do, and let future generations (of politicians) handle the problems as they arise. The rest is simply market dynamics, capital flowed from the north creating bubbles, entrenching trade deficits, and cheap debt postponing design faults to the future. Sounds familiar?

[thaaanos]

And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?

I have no idea.  Unlike politicians and central bankers I would hate to be in the position to have to make those decisions.  Fortunately with Bitcoin neither I nor anyone else needs to make those decisions any more.  We all know the score from day one and can plan accordingly.

well satoshi did.

Nope, he just made his creation as an experiment, putting into action his ideas that those who follow may chose to participate or not, you included.  I don't go with the car analogy because I don't believe a currency should steer itself around the 'corners' of an economy, rather that it is a tool that serves its purpose better for being predictable.  But you notice I don't state that as fact.  I don't know.  I look forward to finding out.  On the other hand you appear to be immovable and refusing to listen to any opinion other than your own.  Good luck

Oh, and whilst it is true no lone ranger is likely to be able to counter the network effect of Bitcoins if you have valid arguments and can persuade enough people (I suggest you engage differently or look elsewhere) there are plenty of options with different economic models e.g. Freicooin.  Go support them

Sorry for beeing *maybe* pedanting but euro started as an experiment, so did the internet, the atomic bomb, but we all know by whom and to what ends. Conducting an experiment in the wild and after it goes viral you dissapear doesn't sound very responsible.

I for one like to always be in a position that maximizes my degrees of freedom. I can't understand the choice of pegging the parameters.
It reminds me of papers that start to create a model of reality and end up doing a fairly good job at it only to find the model too complex and unsolvable. Then in the conclusions they start simplifications, hidden assumptions, pegging parameters to make it solvable. But its not reality anymore. Here only to work bakwards get a solvable? simple model peg its parameters, make that a reality. But reality is known to be a bitch and will hack and slash.

And I have yet to listen to a single argument that deflation is good, all I hear is inflation is bad.

[thaaanos]

Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.

+ this,

While perpetual sobriety guarranties free beer

[BlueNote]

Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.

You are persuming that goverments will go against their citizens' will against bitcoin? It will be their citizens that demand it.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that people will always support the government view that its systems are just fine and that alternatives like Bitcoin are the villains? You tell me. You say you're from Greece. Do Greeks think the government monetary and financial system is just fine?

[spooderman]

To the OP:

This thing about children being kidnapped. You're way paranoid. Bitcoin enters the fray. It does not replace everything in existence. Internet exists, yet people still buy books. Chat rooms exist, yet people still meet afk.

Your argument could be made by someone seeing the worlds first webcam and microphone thinking "no one will ever have a real person to person meeting again! Humans will forget what eachother feel/smell like! This will lead to the rise of robot looking machines who become intelligent and (the Matrix for the rest of this analogy).

You should (or maybe have) watch Adam Curtis' "The power of nightmares." In today's world, he who has the darkest imagination wins, or more specifically, gets government contracts.

You have nothing to worry about, or more accurately, nothing WORTH worrying about.

(Also, you say it's un-taxable, this is not true, every legit business would make its addresses known, and this would make it much HARDER for them to avoid tax (given that BTC is a public ledger.))

tl;dr you may not be wrong (although a little inaccurate), but you are a person who sees a glass that contains 50% air, 50% water, have decided that it's half full, and that someone will definitely drown as a result of its existence.

[Adrian-x]

Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.

+ this,

While perpetual sobriety guarranties free beer

I had to cross post after reading this : 

Dr Michael Hudson talks about the earliest attempts at
money:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=yQZGv2xL-fw
Ancient Sumer and Babylon - money was created to allow ale to be drunk and
paid for later. What went wrong?

[kisa2005]

And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes...

Kisa, can you explain the ethics behind that statement?

Well, what I imply is that philantropic attitudes could help to prevent democracy devolving into ochlocracy. With regards to ethics behind my statement, i am not that skilled in philosophy to answer this yet, apologies.

[thaaanos]

Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.

You are persuming that goverments will go against their citizens' will against bitcoin? It will be their citizens that demand it.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that people will always support the government view that its systems are just fine and that alternatives like Bitcoin are the villains? You tell me. You say you're from Greece. Do Greeks think the government monetary and financial system is just fine?

No. Are you telling me that a bitcoin economy is going to remedy that?

[Rassah]

USA and EU would propably rather shutdown Internet than lose control over Euro or Dollar.

That would be pretty fun to watch, as every single citizen in the country protests to the point where the politicians who did that are literally dragged out of their government buildings and shot.

Well do you expect their citizens watch their hard earned assets vaporized so bitcoin whales come to scoop them up, and not demand their Gs to fence-double-firewall their net and if that fails to shutit down?

In our current system, citizens don't have hard earned assets. They have tons of debt. So they won't care. And those who do have hard earned assets in the form of cash will likely keep converting them to dollars. The only ones who will be SEVERELY hurt by this are the lenders holding the debts of the citizens, since fiat losing value against bitcoins and eventually inflating like crazy means citizen's debt is shrinking into nothing. Citizens will support this, wealthy asset holders who know what they are doing will support it, and banks who lend money to citizens will get screwed, if not wiped out.

The only way for a merchant to stay in bussiness is to offload the risk to ... B) producer to delay payment until sold.

This results in a regression of risk down the chain of producers, but the risk is ultimately taken on by the bank.
...
Chances are, the merchant and the bank will be the same, or rather the merchant will be operating on savings instead of on debt.

In bitcoin there is no Bank hence merchant opperates on savings which translate to goods that depreciate both against bitcoin as well as against "errosion" so why a merchant to even bother stock up? So the risk is eventually offloaded to either consumer or producer.
The producer will have to invest savings to equipment, assets, and general means of productions that depreciate, have to deal with merchands that promise to pay when and if they sell, takes all the risk of faults cause none will insure him, so why bother? He will wait for preorders and possible advance payments and only them begin producing. So the consumer will have to preorder/prepay goods at execive prices in his view and wait unknown time until delivery, so he will buy only what he absolutely needs: byebye to consumerism?
Hell Im in, if only I wasn't that brainwashed to need all the shit that are on TV

1) There can still be banks. Loans will just have to be short-term, and for things that are actually worth something, as opposed to for anything at all just to beat inflation. Less garbage for sale, more durable high-quality products, and less impact on environment from resource use and garbage. 2) Just In Time production is already almost a gospel in our economy. Inventory depreciates way faster than money inflates already, so it won't be that much of a difference if that inflation changes to deflation. 3) Once deflation is stable, preorders, or sale prices, can be set to account for that deflation. Also, if you preorder, aka invest, in someone doing something for you now with inflationary money, the money they receive will keep losing value, and they will be working for less and less as time goes on. If you invest in someone using a deflationary currency, such as giving 20BTC to OpenTransaction developers, as time goes on, that 20BTC ($2,000 at the time) will keep going up in value, giving them more and more to work with if they only use small amounts of it at a time.

I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now.

The euro is not deflationary, so that's bullshit. Greece problem is not deflation, it's excessive borrowing.

Right now within greece the functional problem is deflation. Borrowing is the kludge.

Deflation is a shrinking amount of currency, or the economy expanding faster than the money supply (depending on whom you ask). Euro is not shrinking in supply, and Greece's economy is not expanding at all, from what I know. So your problem is that Greece took on too many loans, became way too risky, and now no one wants to lend anyone any more. The problem is entirely from debt and it's risk, not from any money supply issues (deflation).

Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....

Did the confiscation of wealth in Cyprus from the savers make Cypriots better off? Cause op was saying at the expense of, and you seem to be disagreeing with something...

Yes because the cypriots were *NOT* alleviated and *yet* the savers were fukced

That's what thoughtfan was saying. Taking money from savings to pay for government's debt mistakes doesn't help anyone, especially not the savers.

It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south, just as bitcoin will create opportunities for new mercantilistic policies globaly, and that *never* ended in War.

Actually, it was inflationary currency and easy credit that enabled those things.
You were asking for anyone to say it, so I will: Deflation is good, inflation is bad:

In an inflationary economy, it is cheaper to borrow than to save. It's better to buy something now with a loan, and pay the loan off over time, since even though you are maying more in numbers, you are paying less in actual value. A $600 a month mortgage on a new house now will feel like a $250 a month mortgage 30 years from now. As a result, we now have an economy where 3/4th of people who reach age of 65 have less than $100,000 in their savings and retirement (making them dependent on government), average credit card debt is around $15,000 per person, almost no one has a positive net worth (they owe more than they have), and governments are to the point where most of their tax income is going to pay off debt instead of to pay for infrastructure and actual government services. I would even propose that much of the enormous economic growth over the last 50 years is fake, sustained by borrowiing that will have to be repaid later, and if it can't be, will result in the economies of the governments with massive borrowing dropping right back down to where they would be if no one ever borrowed (i.e. to the level of the country's net worth).
On the other hand, in a deflationary economy, people are incentivised to save and become self-sufficient, instead of relying on government. People would likely be more picky in what they spend their money on, and won't be buying as much. Yes, that will slow our economy considerably compared to what it is in our inflationary system, but as I mentioned above, our current booming inflationary economy many not be "real" to begin with, and may be a giant cycle of global-sized boom and bust. We're just now getting to the bust. In a deflationary economy, there will be booms and busts as well, but more frequent, and much more shallow. Plus less coonsumerism will be much better for the environment. Oh, and don't forget that poor people don't have access to the stock market. Cash is their only means of saving and "investing" for the future. Right now, our inflationary system is robbing their wealth, and giving it to the banks that "print" the new money. A deflationary system will actually allow many poor people to save, invest, and get themselves out of poverty.

[Wekkel]

A major aspect of inflationary policies is the ability of politicians to tax fake asset appreciations. Consider a house that goes up in value from 100 to 200 due to inflation. The government coyld chose to tax the profit of 200-100 upon a sale while nothing of value was created.

[Misesian]

And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes...

Kisa, can you explain the ethics behind that statement?

Well, what I imply is that philantropic attitudes could help to prevent democracy devolving into ochlocracy. With regards to ethics behind my statement, i am not that skilled in philosophy to answer this yet, apologies.

Democracy will always devolve into ochlocracy (actually it's the same thing) and I believe philanthropic attitudes is one of the reason why that happens. All politicians have philanthropic attitudes especially when it's with taxpayer money, they love giving money to the poor in exchange for their votes.

[thaaanos]

USA and EU would propably rather shutdown Internet than lose control over Euro or Dollar.

That would be pretty fun to watch, as every single citizen in the country protests to the point where the politicians who did that are literally dragged out of their government buildings and shot.

Well do you expect their citizens watch their hard earned assets vaporized so bitcoin whales come to scoop them up, and not demand their Gs to fence-double-firewall their net and if that fails to shutit down?

In our current system, citizens don't have hard earned assets. They have tons of debt. So they won't care. And those who do have hard earned assets in the form of cash will likely keep converting them to dollars. The only ones who will be SEVERELY hurt by this are the lenders holding the debts of the citizens, since fiat losing value against bitcoins and eventually inflating like crazy means citizen's debt is shrinking into nothing. Citizens will support this, wealthy asset holders who know what they are doing will support it, and banks who lend money to citizens will get screwed, if not wiped out.

It may be a cultural gap, but in Greece most households are invested in their own house first and in cash second, and believe me they had a hard time aquiring that asset especially in the Euro bubble. Our experience even before the crisis was that Euro was expensive and questioned the sustainability, but we trusted the powers that be especially EU that they had it under control and gave little attention, we used to call it EU-Autopilot. So when the crisis came if we inflated the economy "sticking plaster" we would have all assets and debts equally loosing value and a balance would be kept while diverting value to promote growth. Intead we tried to deflate the economy and the result is that while assets lost value (and in the cypriot case even the savings), while the debts are not only stable but mounting as goverment increased taxation. So if we now magicaly switch to bitcoin even at a constant rate, situation will not revert only accelarate.
BTW Banks dont have reason/opportunity to exist in an deflationary economy anyway.

The only way for a merchant to stay in bussiness is to offload the risk to ... B) producer to delay payment until sold.

This results in a regression of risk down the chain of producers, but the risk is ultimately taken on by the bank.
...
Chances are, the merchant and the bank will be the same, or rather the merchant will be operating on savings instead of on debt.

In bitcoin there is no Bank hence merchant opperates on savings which translate to goods that depreciate both against bitcoin as well as against "errosion" so why a merchant to even bother stock up? So the risk is eventually offloaded to either consumer or producer.
The producer will have to invest savings to equipment, assets, and general means of productions that depreciate, have to deal with merchands that promise to pay when and if they sell, takes all the risk of faults cause none will insure him, so why bother? He will wait for preorders and possible advance payments and only them begin producing. So the consumer will have to preorder/prepay goods at execive prices in his view and wait unknown time until delivery, so he will buy only what he absolutely needs: byebye to consumerism?
Hell Im in, if only I wasn't that brainwashed to need all the shit that are on TV

1) There can still be banks. Loans will just have to be short-term, and for things that are actually worth something, as opposed to for anything at all just to beat inflation. Less garbage for sale, more durable high-quality products, and less impact on environment from resource use and garbage. 2) Just In Time production is already almost a gospel in our economy. Inventory depreciates way faster than money inflates already, so it won't be that much of a difference if that inflation changes to deflation. 3) Once deflation is stable, preorders, or sale prices, can be set to account for that deflation. Also, if you preorder, aka invest, in someone doing something for you now with inflationary money, the money they receive will keep losing value, and they will be working for less and less as time goes on. If you invest in someone using a deflationary currency, such as giving 20BTC to OpenTransaction developers, as time goes on, that 20BTC ($2,000 at the time) will keep going up in value, giving them more and more to work with if they only use small amounts of it at a time.

Nope forget about it can<>will, Banks are non entities in the Bitcoin economy.
Christ you cant fucking JIT FOOD, OIL, get out of IT Industry mindset, there are TIME contrains that work against you in that model, that will get populations freezing,starving waiting for philanthropy by the OT devs.
What Incentive is there to JIT produce now rather than wait a day and screw the customers over? multiply that risk against the supply chain nodes and your product price shoots up. Add now a production Cycle into the model and watch it shrink away.
The economy is not a planar graph to distribute the risk evenly accross the chain, It contains cycles, in that model all those cycles will be negative loops and phased out one by one until everyone is disconnected and becoming a single node of Producer-Consumer or a Planar graph with one way flow of capital : Mercantilism, expect peace to ensue

I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now.

The euro is not deflationary, so that's bullshit. Greece problem is not deflation, it's excessive borrowing.

Right now within greece the functional problem is deflation. Borrowing is the kludge.

Deflation is a shrinking amount of currency, or the economy expanding faster than the money supply (depending on whom you ask). Euro is not shrinking in supply, and Greece's economy is not expanding at all, from what I know. So your problem is that Greece took on too many loans, became way too risky, and now no one wants to lend anyone any more. The problem is entirely from debt and it's risk, not from any money supply issues (deflation).

we have shrinking amount of Euros within greece as we have
1. Savings flights (especialy after what happend in Cyprus)
2. Investment flight (none is willing to invest with a negative outlook)
3. Increasing Taxation to cover external loans.
4. No new internal loans by the banks as they are now zombies: no fractional reserve induced inflation (No savings, To many loans)

All those bailout money simply went to debt restructuring, nothing ended up inside Greek economy. Do the math

Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....

Did the confiscation of wealth in Cyprus from the savers make Cypriots better off? Cause op was saying at the expense of, and you seem to be disagreeing with something...

Yes because the cypriots were *NOT* alleviated and *yet* the savers were fukced

That's what thoughtfan was saying. Taking money from savings to pay for government's debt mistakes doesn't help anyone, especially not the savers.

No he was saying that inflating the economy alleviates the Debtors at the expense of the Savers, which is not what happened in Cyprus
as they got deflated and both were screwed

It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south, just as bitcoin will create opportunities for new mercantilistic policies globaly, and that *never* ended in War.

Actually, it was inflationary currency and easy credit that enabled those things.
You were asking for anyone to say it, so I will: Deflation is good, inflation is bad:

*On Average* for the Total of the Eurozone it inflates by a small amount. Unluckily the Variation is greater.
Faulty EU treaties/governance, easy credit combined with a empoverished population, lack of due diligence by german banks, corrupted greek politicians hand in hand with corrupt bussiness practices by german firms, persistant greek nepotism both in public and private sector, aggressive takeover and euthanasia of local industries, spaghetti tax laws, FUDed local/foreign investors, Greek-Turkey arms race.
Nevermind the how and why, right now we are deflating and the feeling is that of misery, melancholy, uncertainty and pessimism.

In an inflationary economy, it is cheaper to borrow than to save. It's better to buy something now with a loan, and pay the loan off over time, since even though you are maying more in numbers, you are paying less in actual value. A $600 a month mortgage on a new house now will feel like a $250 a month mortgage 30 years from now. As a result, we now have an economy where 3/4th of people who reach age of 65 have less than $100,000 in their savings and retirement (making them dependent on government), average credit card debt is around $15,000 per person, almost no one has a positive net worth (they owe more than they have), and governments are to the point where most of their tax income is going to pay off debt instead of to pay for infrastructure and actual government services. I would even propose that much of the enormous economic growth over the last 50 years is fake, sustained by borrowiing that will have to be repaid later, and if it can't be, will result in the economies of the governments with massive borrowing dropping right back down to where they would be if no one ever borrowed (i.e. to the level of the country's net worth).
On the other hand, in a deflationary economy, people are incentivised to save and become self-sufficient, instead of relying on government. People would likely be more picky in what they spend their money on, and won't be buying as much. Yes, that will slow our economy considerably compared to what it is in our inflationary system, but as I mentioned above, our current booming inflationary economy many not be "real" to begin with, and may be a giant cycle of global-sized boom and bust. We're just now getting to the bust. In a deflationary economy, there will be booms and busts as well, but more frequent, and much more shallow. Plus less coonsumerism will be much better for the environment. Oh, and don't forget that poor people don't have access to the stock market. Cash is their only means of saving and "investing" for the future. Right now, our inflationary system is robbing their wealth, and giving it to the banks that "print" the new money. A deflationary system will actually allow many poor people to save, invest, and get themselves out of poverty.

Sure if you can withstand 80% UNEMPLOYMENT, Total collapse of the Middle class, Urban centers, Industry, and Return of the Feudal Landlords.
The Feud is a perfect economic system lets go back to it.

Viva la BTC Revolution - Aristocrats no dead

[Bitcoinpro]

SPAM THREAD THE ONLY THING DYSTOPIAN IS THE OP

[thaaanos]

And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes...

Kisa, can you explain the ethics behind that statement?

Well, what I imply is that philantropic attitudes could help to prevent democracy devolving into ochlocracy. With regards to ethics behind my statement, i am not that skilled in philosophy to answer this yet, apologies.

Democracy will always devolve into ochlocracy (actually it's the same thing) and I believe philanthropic attitudes is one of the reason why that happens. All politicians have philanthropic attitudes especially when it's with taxpayer money, they love giving money to the poor in exchange for their votes.

Maybe instead of trying to fix the economic mess, it's better to start with the political? Maybe  Instead of the Bitcoin revolution the world need the BitVote revolution... just saying

[thaaanos]

SPAM THREAD THE ONLY THING DYSTOPIAN IS THE OP

SPAM? no
TROLL? maybe
OP DYSTOPIAN? maybe
YOU SIR DYSOPIAN? Definetly

[dynodog]

Great piece.  I feel that your predictions will play out regardless of bitcoin, as these drowning-in-debt sovereigns will eventually implode. I agree that wealth will run to something, whether that's bitcoin, some other virtual currency, or precious metals, etc.  I wonder more about what future will exist for my children as opposed to the elderly.  These are truly the very best of times (the best that have ever existed IMO) - and that is due to living on borrowed money.  When the debt bubble implodes, and the chickens come home to roost as eventually they must, and there is now no one left to do the bailing out, the future will probably be very ugly, and nothing like we have it now.