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Comment by winstonsmith | Hacker News Reader

These quotes are not just Orwellian, but straight out of Animal Farm:

>He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen.

"Four legs good, two legs bad."

>Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond measure. "I made a small investment in Bitcoin and it is actually enough that I could now retire if I wanted to," Andresen says. "Overall, I've made about $800 per penny I've invested. It's insane."

"Four legs good, two legs better!"

Apparently, early adopters are "more equal than others" -- the Gini coefficient of bitcoin is near .9.

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The analogy to holding bankers' keys in bitcoin is holding 51% of mining power, and not a percentage less. Just having a lot of bitcoin gives you the ability to affect the price of the currency, but again this is directly proportional to how much you hold, not because of an artificial power like legal authority to take advantage of fractional reserve, or being a member of the Fed.

> not because of an artificial power like legal authority

This is like saying "natural" foods are inherently better (or alternately, that processed foods are inherently worse).

There's nothing inherently wrong with "artificial" power as it may very well be superior to the idea that shit will just "naturally happen" and whatever will be, will be.

Militaries since the dawn of history adopted artificial power early, not because warriors around the world somehow converged on the same artificial Kool-Aid, but because organized armies were much more effective in combat.

This is not to say that "command & control" is always inherently better (and indeed modern armies tend to practice German-style "centralized planning, decentralized execution"). Likewise the free market is a fairly widely-acknowledged success story as opposed to a planned economy.

The point is rather that "no artificial power" is not a selling point or way of winning an argument on its own. On its own, it's nothing more than a suggested policy option, like saying Ethernet is better than Wifi or that CLI arguments should start with / instead of -.

The effectiveness of such policies can only be determined in light of all the evidence of each case in question.

Well yeah, I am just saying that "bankers keys" are like having administrator access. It's built into the system, it's not hacking. But you can still abuse it. "bankers keys" don't have an analogy in bitcoin because there's no defined administrator role, your power is proportional to your holdings. Well, there is a soft administrator power, which is, being a primary developer on it.

He didn't get rich by just holding the keys, he got rich by getting involved in new tech early. In fact, he helped build something he believes will change the world.

Entirely different scenarios.

He (the banker) didn't get rich by just holding the keys, he got rich by getting involved in new tech early (credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities, stated income loans, MERS, etc.). In fact, he helped build something he believes will change the world (easy credit for borrowers, safe high yield investments for teacher's pension funds). Never mind that these innovations lead to a housing bubble, a global financial crisis, the borrowers bankrupt and the teachers eating cat food in their retirements, the banker and all his accomplices think he is a cross between George Bailey and Albert Einstein.

The banker blows a housing bubble, Satoshi blows a bitcoin bubble. I would concede that so far the housing bubble has done far more damage, but if bitcoin "succeeds", that could change.

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