pull down to refresh
529 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 2 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 3 bitcoin
I can imagine the US government trying to confiscate bitcoin. But most of us would flee if it were nonvoluntary.
They'd support it because most of them won't hold bitcoin. Or, the amount of bitcoin they do hold is so little they'd prefer to gamble on the government's promises.
Much of the world became a better place to live. It became more connected. Most of us wouldn't bat an eye moving to a foreign country today.
I think the public would support btc confiscation, because they would fall for whatever propaganda campaign was used to justify it. I'm sure we can all easily imagine what that would sound like.
reply
Yes, definitely, propaganda is powerful. See Gold "hoarders" were persecuted in the 1930's, what will happen with bitcoin?
Though it's hard to know what people really felt, since all we have easy access to now is old newspapers, etc.
reply
That's a brilliant thread, thanks for refreshing it.
reply
This is an interesting opportunity, I think -- I suppose the world is just as liable to propaganda as it always has been; but it also seems like people are also deeply suspicious and constantly on the alert for it, so only certain bandwidths of propaganda (the kind aligned with their tribes) can get through.
It seems plausible that btc anti-propaganda (or perhaps more explicitly and less comfortably: propaganda in a direction that I approve of) could defend against the new 6102 in a way that wasn't feasible in 1933.
reply
I suppose the world is just as liable to propaganda as it always has been
This is something I really wonder about. When we look back at WW2 propaganda, for instance, it's easy to laugh at how stupid it is that a Donald Duck was convincing adults to buy war bonds.
Does that mean we're getting more savvy? Maybe, it just means that propaganda is well tailored to its environment.
I do think there are many people who have built up immunity to regime propaganda over the past few years, so the situation might be more hopeful than 1933.
reply
Does that mean we're getting more savvy? Maybe, it just means that propaganda is well tailored to its environment.
I think both are true -- part of what propaganda is tailoring itself to is our media-savviness. And the way that seems to be manifesting is that the effective propaganda for the age where people don't believe anything is a denial-of-service attack on the truth, because, as we are in the process of discussing, the world is complicated and doesn't lend itself cleanly to simple answers, usually. So then literally every utterance gets attacked, until nobody can say anything, it's all dunks and straw-man takedowns.
I've started to become quite interested in cyclical theories of history, which I find to be incredibly over-extended in a million ways; but which contains core truths that are thought-provoking. The Donald Duck thing strikes me as potentially one such -- the susceptibility to that particular do your part for the war effort vibe could have a generational component that seems idiotic to us bc we're the wrong generation. But we will have our own stupidities. Certainly I do.
reply