My general objection is the underlying appeal to authority or tribalism that I see so often. IMO stuff is too quickly labeled to be "shitcoinery" or "fiat" that have absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin- they just don't fit in with that poster's local echo chamber (even when I agree with them more often than not). The underlying assumption is that if you don't agree with X line of thinking you must be a shitcoiner, so fall in line. I think most of the time, stuff attributed to fiat thinking or fiat mentality is much better attributable to flaws in human nature to which we are all susceptible. Nothing intrinsic to economic policy or hard money.

I think my reflexive distaste for tribalism is that so many people seem to have decided their stance on political topics based what their tribe has pre-determined be "liberal" vs "conservative", when I think an alien looking at these topics from a distance wouldn't have picked the same labels on a topic by topic basis.

One of the things I notice in people is a lack of interest in why. As a very curious person I have never understood this. I see this most dramatically in crypto people. Often they find out I'm into "crypto" only to discover I'm bitcoin only. The exchange usually goes like this.

I ask, why do we need the crypto they like? They never have good answers. I know some people do have good answers, I'm speaking of my personal experience. Then they usually say they like bitcoin too. I will ask them what problem it solves. They usually don't have good answers there either.

I really dug into bitcoin when it dawned on me that it was designed from a very Austrian economics perspective. The more I dug the more I found that bitcoin was designed as a response to the problems in the world. For me personally it was pretty eye opening. Now, most people are not coming from a background reading about economics. Especially not Austrian economics and those crazy libertarians. NGU gets most people into it. They may not trust the state, or not like one team but they usually aren't coming from the angle that bitcoin was designed from. I think this is the disconnect. In the end, I don't think it matters. Bitcoin wins because it follows the incentives that win.

For those of you that are curious though I recommend going down the Austrian economics rabbit hole if you want a deeper understanding about why we need bitcoin. If not, you don't need to. Just stay humble and stack sats.

I would say it a little bit differently.

Monetary policies have differential impacts on people based on their time preferences. Inflationary monetary policies relatively benefit those with high time preference, while deflationary monetary policies relatively benefit those with low time preference.

You're absolutely right, though, that it isn't that one time preference is better than the other, just like different preferences for desserts aren't better or worse.

Where that gets a little murky is that low time preference generally leads to greater prosperity. Since pretty much everyone prefers greater prosperity, that sort of makes it seem like low time preference is morally superior.

The Bitcoin adoption curve also drives a form of a high time preference.

When waiting for a fiat payment (e.g. from a customer, for a product you sold or service your provided), you want it to arrive ASAP; it's better to get it now than in, say, a month. And Bitcoin makes this preference more pronounced, because while in a month from now it may not buy you much less food, it's likely to buy you much fewer sats. Or in other words, because you expect bitcoin to rise in purchasing power.

It may seem at first that this is because the payment is denominated in fiat, but it has nothing to do with fiat. If the payment was in cows, it would be the same, because cows, too, are going to zero against bitcoin. Fiat < cows < bitcoin.

You wouldn't care as much how soon you got paid if you were paid in bitcoin itself, but people prefer to pay in (= dispose of) weaker things first.

If anything, the classic fiat "save money using compound interest for retirement" method is the epitome of low time preference.

Why does it be 'fiat'?

That's a definition rest you can understand.

Everyone complains about fiat, but you cant have bitcoin without it. If you dont have a medium of exchange, it doesnt work.

What are your thoughts on these two clips ¹² - Eric Voskuil on Time Preference.

Seems his underlying understanding of time preference is that it sets the interest rate, therefore hodling is actually High Time Preference.