10 sats \ 6 replies \ @drdoom 30 Aug 2023 \ on: Does Bitcoin have any negative tradeoffs or is it just all positive? bitcoin
It further encourages idolotry of money.
Money is not used in nature by any other living organism yet humans use it everyday and many worship it. Lot's of people lead a life of following one belief system to another without doing the work to understand the underlying premise or proofs and many of those kind land on Bitcoin. The maxis become their new priests telling them what to think and what to do.
In 30 years if Bitcoin overtakes fiat as the common currency we are still at square 1; same dillemma with fiat: a mass of idolotards using a system they don't understand but use based on belief.
If bitcoin overtakes fiat we have killed a huge source of issues. Surely you can see that. It doesn't solve greed but fiat sure has made a mess of things. Much worse than before fiat. Bitcoin cannot fix the human heart but it can remove a tool of control and oppression used by evil men.
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Oh for sure, this thread is about negative tradeoffs so it is simply the first thing that jumps out to me on that regard. Totally Bitcoin is far better solution to currency than fiat. I think the gig is still out on whether or not it will become extremely monopolized (by those who will corner the market via buying up the available quantities while fiat still has purchasing power and likewise investing/gaining majority receivership of newly minted coins by doing the same to mining) in the meantime today it represents an exciting propsect of shift in financial dominance. Evil men will at least have less levers to pull even if they do gain a monopoly control.
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Humans are nature too.
Besides, one of the points of money is to store value for later. Bodies work similarly with fat, nutrients etc. You don't really see anyone being a "priest" of fiat in the same way bitcoin maxis communicate. Saying "many worship money" does not mean people spend their days shilling online on the benefits of inflationary, centralized systems. Other people obsess over stacking sats, there is no difference in this regard.
I do nonetheless agree the idolatry is toxic, but I imagine it is inevitable in the beginnings of something really gamechanging. And you can't expect that everyone understands every black box of technology honestly, I don't think not completely understanding blockchain is a major hurdle to adopting the tech, as long as the UX is good and the system just works better.
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Yeah the body is a great analogy there. I guess to nitpick the issue is collection/storage of things that are not necessarily needed for the body to function as intended. Too much of something will kill the body. Adding things to the body it does not need (ie- that you want ) hastens our inevitable path to death.
So as you might agree then belief is like a festering cancer to the mind. Rejection of all belief might then result in being better adapted to the reality of one's situation such as an approaching predator or a sky being contaminated with metallic particulate.
If indeed rejection of all beliefs is the most prudent path then we could apply that to trade as well and thus remove all currency units from the equation since they represent a belief that the units will exchangeable at some point in the future. This takes us 'back' to a traditional real goods/services based barter system. And before someone says this is stoneage behavior what's to stop us from building sophisitcated technical improvements to an otherwise ancient tool like we did with money.
Anyway props to your last point as well - it's true no-one can understand-all and if the car drives faster, safer, smoother it's probably a better car regardless of what's under the hood.
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Human civilization stands on belief though. Belief can be very beneficial in many scenarios. Removing it from money is helpful, but I'd find it hard to live without believing in anything – be it in my partner, family, culture, and so on. A society where all trust / belief / values / whatever are automated is a society of robots.
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Imagine if nobody 'believed' the media. So it's not just money where this would be useful.
In fact, human civilization as we know it seems to be crumbling around us - while being consolidated by a few.
Those few are managing the collapse. How do they do that? Because they have the masses believing things detrimental to their own potential. If the masses did not believe in things the few would not be able to manage the many.
I too would like to 'take a leap of faith' to my partner - you're right on that it's the one person you should believe in when it counts - and hopefully he/she will always be there to lend that hand. Not sure however I would believe a 6 year old or an alchoholic cousin so even amongst family belief is always a potential for detriment.
A society where all trust / belief / values / whatever are automated is a society of robots.
Agreed, belief in automation or delegated systems of trust is just as detrimental - removing belief entirely doesn't turn us into robots it makes us resilient to self destruction via third party.
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