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Comment by almost_usual | Hacker News Reader

If you think the US military or any military will go away because Bitcoin you’re delusional.

> Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military?

People are willing to pay a high energy cost for safety. Bitcoin doesn’t provide me any safety and it doesn’t have the strongest military in the world claiming it’s worth anything.

If you think Bitcoin will topple governments be prepared for a long future of conflict and casualties. Maybe it will be worth it but I doubt it.

So all in all it’s a massive energy waste thought experiment.

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Erm, there's a good portion of the world's population (I'd say over half) that doesn't think the US military's activities support it's safety.

Of course that’s true, I’m talking about US citizens not the world population.

What makes you think the US wouldn’t put it’s population in front of the rest of the world in a life or death war scenario?

Great, let's just let current trends continue for a few decades and we can live in a world where the most powerful military belongs to China. I'm sure we'll be much safer then.

I know the US military won't go away as long as USD is used as the world's currency. Getting off USD is a prerequisite to ending American imperialism, it's not the only thing that needs to be done by a long shot though.

Why do you think it is a prerequisite? Imperialism can certainly exist without having the reserve currency--consider the world situation on the outbreak of WWI, which was the height of imperialism and yet no country had a reserve currency (everyone being on the gold standard).

Taxes on USD are used to fund the military. I see long term value storage in Bitcoin with operational and privacy focused "cash" like crypto being pegged to BTC as a way to choke the input funds to the US military.

Why do you think it makes a difference whether Americans pay taxes in USD, JPY or wheat?

I'm saying it's much harder for the US government to collect taxes from crypto. It's much easier to work with a bank to directly pilfer your account than for them to force people to hand over their private keys. The latter doesn't scale nearly as well as the former.

I had originally figured that you believed that a government would forego its fiscal policies if a monetary crisis ensued, the general assumption for most aficionados of the gold standard (albeit one that is thoroughly disproven by history).

The way the government forces you to make good on your tax obligations is wage garnishment: they tell your employer not to pay you but pay the government instead because you're in arrears. In general, I think you overestimate the willingness of third parties to become criminals for your sake.

So you're saying that the only benefit of bitcoin is that is is useful for committing crimes. Gotcha.

Sure, and it's even harder to collect taxes from cash transactions. The thing is that with or without Bitcoin you still need financial institutions, so I'm not sure your tax evasion plan is as brilliant as you think it is.

Ending American imperialism is a massive war. It’s possible but it’s not going to happen without millions of casualties.

We can lessen those casualties by working hard to defund the military (which is a multi pronged endeavour).

For instance, I have no problem paying taxes for social services. I have a major ethical problem with my tax dollars being used to fund military action. Bitcoin is not the only piece of the crypto puzzle but if I could keep my assets out of the hands of the US government, I would do it for purely ethical reasons.

Ok, defund the US military now what? China or Russia has a stronger military and guess who is controlling our interests now.

What you’re proposing is that Bitcoin needs a massive shift in thought that overthrows all forms of militarized government. Possible? Maybe but highly unlikely without millions of people dying.

The new Bitcoin power would also need its own military to do this. So we’re back at square one or where we are today.

That is unless you think Bitcoin is also the answer to world peace which seems even more far fetched.

I do see the toppling of the US government having a domino effect on other powerful nations. If the systems are in place to end US imperialism, those same systems can be used by citizens of other oppressive regimes.

You’re proposing Bitcoin will bring world peace. Sorry, I don’t believe this.

Who controls the power grid, the land, the roads, the infrastructure? How is that power enforced? Physical force.

No one gives away power without a fight. If Bitcoin is the future people will need to die to make it so.

I said very clearly at the start that Bitcoin alone will not bring peace. It's one piece of the puzzle to get us off our current government. People are going to die either way, I'm just done using my money to pay for bombs to kill people that have nothing to do with me.

I will be very happy if the US lays down its arms- I can employ former soldiers as mercenaries to seize bitcoin wallets and mining complexes.

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