Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

This is both awesome and hilarious at the same time.

The whole point of bitcoin was to decouple currency from institutions (banks/governments etc.).

Instead they're right back where they started - only they've replaced gold/currency with bits that can be easily copied and stolen.

> "Oh but the government can't inflate us away!"

No, but they sure as hell can take away your "safety" deposit box.

> "But private property rights! Rule of law!"

Ever heard of the quote: "The guy with the gun make the rules"?

Rights don't exist separate from external force (aka the government, corporations, military, mafia etc.). Neither do laws. They are merely useful abstractions - but don't mistake map for territory.

Rights/laws are, quite simply, power group sanctioned specific use of deadly force for the benefit of one or another specific group (dictator/oligopoly/the people etc.).

They don't actually exist. Like money, land titles, contracts and bitcoins.

Actually, now that I come to think of it a lot of things in society don't actually exist - honour, respect, gods, free markets, meritocracy, a just world and oh so much more - but let's not get ahead of ourselves shall we.

I'm limiting myself to shattering only one illusion per day.

>"The whole point of bitcoin was to decouple currency from institutions (banks/governments etc.).">

The above statement is incorrect.

The "whole point of bitcoin" per http://bitcoin.org/about.html : >"Bitcoin is designed around the idea of using cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities."

As you can see - the intent is not to decouple the currency itself from institutions, but the creation and transfer of the currency from central authorities.

To address your other points:

Bitcoin is on equal footing compared to other currencies with regard to many things including: government confiscation, individual risk, and institutional risk.

Other currencies have the advantage of: far greater acceptance, low barrier to use (you just physically hand something to someone else)

Bitcoin has the advantage of: no central bank, no central banking inflation (by design, creation and transfer is via cryptography)

Centralization of control is often useful, but it should be optional. That's what Bitcoin gets us. It's simplistic to say we're "back where we started".

Control by definition is centralized to those with power.

What you mean is the delegation of control by those in power should occur - e.g. Let people make their own choices for houses, clothes, food, land, family and work to make our economies more efficient.

I agree.

But don't ever think that control can ever be decentralized.

It can only be delegated and it can be revoked at any time (see the Internet).

You possess the zeal and subtlety of a young revolutionary.

I don't understand - what part of what I have said has anything to do with a) being a zealot or b) revolutionary.

My statements were firmly on the side of the status quo police/militarily enforced liberal/social/democratic/capitalist western societies, and are, in and of themselves, neither surprising, controversial nor patently false.

Power itself is decentralized. Even totalitarian regimes are often deposed. And even in the top, there's often a balance of power between multiple groups (see military coups).

There's no such thing as perfectly decentralized power or control, but it's certainly not centralized either.

> The whole point of bitcoin was to decouple currency from institutions (banks/governments etc.).

This may have been the goal, but if so, it's implementation was bad. The value of a bitcoin steadily appreciating as time marches forward gives it the properties of an asset, not a fiat currency [1].

Like a currency, there is a trading market that forms around the asset, but as fiat currency tends to slowly depreciate over time, it leads to much more fluidity.

> They are merely useful abstractions

Why are things which are useful and abstract of lesser value than things which are non-useful or non-abstract? Can you give an example of a non-abstraction using your definition of abstraction?

> a lot of things in society don't actually exist

For what reasons should someone accept your personal ontology regarding what exists and what doesn't exist as the objectively correct one?

I don't see how the discussion of rights is relevant, though I basically agree with what you said.

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