144 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 15 Apr \ on: What Would Carl Menger Think Of Bitcoin? libertarian
This was (and probably still is) a big sticking point for many Austro-libertarians. I most often heard Mises' regression theorem invoked by that group of bitcoin skeptics.
Bob Murphy talked about this somewhere and explained why that specifically was misguided. The Regression Theorem is about prices not being arbitrary, so you can't just call something money and assign it a value. Money has to emerge from something and find its value through repeated exchanges.
The manner in which Bitcoin "emerged" was that a couple of nerds were talking about this new application of existing technologies and decided to trade some of it for a couple of pizzas. That set an initial price and from there normal price mechanisms could start working on it.
Yes, I know. I think you have posted about this before in a different context? I just don't know if I buy that argument. For purposes of this discussion bitcoin was deliberately created. I don't see how you can honestly say it emerged.
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I'm not as familiar with Menger, so I'm not sure if there is a great argument that bitcoin "evolved" in the way he was thinking.
It's not clear to me, though, why it's not an evolution of existing money, accounting, and cryptography concepts.
There have been plenty of innovations that required synthesizing several different ideas. That certainly would not be news to Menger. Neither would the idea that big projects often require a lot of planning. That makes me think he's talking about something slightly different.
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I just re read what you said. I think I'm starting to see your point. Is this the standard libertarian bitcoiner argument? Like I said, I've been out of touch for a while.
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I'm not sure if many libertarians care about this and, as we know, many of the Austrians are behind the curve on Bitcoin.
I had heard a bunch of pretty unconvincing arguments, prior to Bob's, that just seemed like rationalization to me.
I guess that's a long way of saying "I don't know."
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I can't help but think that what Menger is referring to is the natural money that emerges in a community, like in Szabo's Shelling Out:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36329520-shelling-out
Sea shells, beads, wampum.
We can agree to disagree.
Ultimately, it won't matter to me. Bitcoin is too important for me to worry about shoe horning it into a philosophy for armchair discussion. It is important to think about, though, when we consider the free market and our own criticism of manufactured fiat.
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what Menger is referring to is the natural money that emerges in a community, like in Szabo's Shelling Out
I have no doubt about that.
I was basically taking your question as whether or not Menger would understand Bob's point, given that Bitcoin has seemingly established itself, or if he would be skeptical of it because of how it originated.
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I see. I guess we'll never know.
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No, but I want to think Menger would get it, because Bob's explanation is so true to Menger's insight about subjective value.
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