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Comment by roc | Hacker News Reader

> "how shall I maintain my faith that bitcoin has a value these others don't"

If you believe currency value derives from scarcity, you should never have believed bitcoin had any particular value. If you believe value derives from the network of other people who agree to use it for transactions, then scarcity was little more than a marketing bullet-point for the early adopters.

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And cryptocoin proponents stumble upon the rationale underlying yet another feature of fiat currency.

Well, they would, if they weren't fiercely denying any fact that might undercut the pitch that got them on board: "fiat currency bad. mathematically-enforced deflation good!"

The main pitch of bitcoin is electronic transactions with no central coordinating system. If bitcoin didn't heavily favor early adopters, no one would have gotten on board.

It's even still technically possible for bitcoin users to agree on a code change that would keep making coins forever (like dogecoin). It would result in a hard fork of the blockchain, but if most clients agreed to it, it would work just fine.

I think they're more against institutionalized violence that is necessary to make these fiat currencies sustainable [1]. If consenting adults want to trade in monopoly money, knock yourself out. Just don't hold me at gunpoint and make me trade in your monopoly money.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

edit - typo, link

You know, one of the things I've learnt from libertarianism is that institutionalised (and therefore restricted) violence is actually necessary to the operation of society. The alternative is unregulated, private violence, possibly by external actors (qv Ukraine)

On the other hand, the executive order power is not very democratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 was a much more serious human rights violation. But the gold confiscation order was preapproved by congress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Banking_Act immediately after an election had happened.

Would you agree that the ideal number of gangs to occupy a territory is 1? Because if you had two, they would fight each other, and if you have 0, you might get something worse than the last gang? While I'd disagree, I can't really fault that logic.

I think it's simplistic to call a democratic government a "gang", but even within the analogy, the danger of having zero is that the resulting power vacuum isn't a stable system. Gangs will spontaneously arise as people who have the talent and skill to lead men in organized violence realize that doing so is the rational course of action in a world with no higher power to stop them.

Interestingly, all the Bitcoin heists are great examples of this. What are they other than (digital) violence? I think they clearly demonstrate that when people are unrestrained by some power, that many people will realize it is advantageous to take rather than to transact in mutual ways. Now, I'm willing to entertain the idea that there are solutions to this problem that don't involve centralized power, but I disagree with libertarians who throw around the word "violence" as if it's some creation of government rather than something intrinsic to and widespread within society. It's not something that can be taken off the table with a declaration, but a problem that must be managed through some mechanism.

Of course it's simplistic. A gang is made up of criminals and criminals are defined by the largest occupying gang. Gangs are like government startups if you will. They offer protection and services and represent themselves with flags and other branded accessories to distinguish themselves from competing enterprises. Fortunately in this market customer consent isn't entirely necessary. It's an industry where the market share is determined only by what you can extort or point a gun at. Taking neighboring turf is risky, but highly profitable. The higher ups will send the low ranking gangsters to serve a higher cause such as brotherhood and civility, and ultimately serve bullets to the neighboring gangsters (as identified by their distinguishable uniforms). Sure they may die, but they did it serving a greater cause. Of course, all parallels drawn here are merely coincidental.

What is it called when hank paulson puts the members of congress in a room and tells them to write him a blank check? Somehow, I don't really think 'we the people' are running things, or ever have.

Anyway, this is a great thread on all sides.

No, I'd go with Montesquieu; it's beneficial to have multiple power groups provided that they generally prefer to compete peacefully adnd procedurally. If one group or actor decides to do something unacceptable, they get defeated by the others.

Their "stumbling" upon it is no doubt why they've worked to increase the network of people who use it for transactions from the start.

by definition it is fiat

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