Comments on: Bitcoin and the fallacy of a non-political currency

By: Tom Crowl

Tom Crowl — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 02:10:05 +0000

Article is correct in my opinion. In my opinion money is inherently political… its roots lie in enablement of a decision chain necessary when a civilization reaches the size where everyone can’t know each other personally. Its very roots lie in politics (the group decision mechanism)

Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/decision-technologies-currencies-and.html

Bitcoin can work as money but it will end up very problematical… because it will face the same fate as all monetary systems in large societies… IT WILL CONCENTRATE IN FEW HANDS.

And unlike an ‘inflatable’ currency… this eventual catastrophic imbalance won’t be addressable by any means other than forced redistribution (made difficult by its anonymity) or abandonment of the currency… or other more disruptive solutions.

By: Paul Hughes

Paul Hughes — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:45:19 +0000

If Varoufakis and who ever else don’t like bitcoin – no one is forcing you to use it. That’s the beauty of it – we finally have choices! Nothing is stopping them from creating something better, as long as no one is forced to use one or the other. Apparently people like Varoufakis are not happy about that kind of freedom, believing true economic freedom is at odds with innovation, prosperity and radical abundance. I could say so much in response to this, about how deeply flawed and wrong headed this is, but the bottom line is you either believe in freedom, and it’s ability to set all things right politically, economically, ecologically, or you don’t. Obviously I am the former, and I believe my copious writings have made that argument convincingly.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating – the mistake the non-libertarian/non-anarchist left continues to make is conflating “vulgar” libertarian “free markets” with true freed markets. When they hear the word “markets” they conflate it with all the wrongs we see today, not knowing that those wrongs are enabled and made possible entirely by state-backed First Tier regulatory protection

By: Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis

Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:01:36 +0000

Bitcoin is good because it allows the exchange of value all over the world.
No authority can block it, thus it is the currency of choice for mediums that try to fight censorship(wikileaks).
It can be anonymous.
The cost of transaction might be small at the moment.

Those are the only reasons one should use bitcoin.

The bitcoin community ,though, has mostly libertarian views, believing that the problem of the economy is the state and that if the economy was let free, the
free hand of the market would make its miracle.

To that extent, having a central bank controlled by the people would be better than no central bank as most of the bitcoin community assumes.
But what is the possibility of the people controlling the state? None.
So both arguments lead nowhere.

It is though important to understand that a state currency is somehow affected by many tendencies, many factors, many economic sectors.
But nowdays, we have currencies that are local in nature, are affected by local factors. Thus these currencies allow for the decentralization of the responsibility of governing that currency.

ex.
Stocks can be treated as a currency. The price of the stock is determined by the profitability of the specific company it represents,not the global economy, and it is governed by its shareholders.

Thus, the focus of the p2p movement should be in creating a multitude of such currencies and that is currently technologically possible.

We need a general definition of a currency to be used by all the new currencies that takes into account how capitalism works, that takes into account the process of exploitation and alienation of the working class and to block that process.

By: Chris Cook

Chris Cook — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:23:08 +0000

Let’s examine some aspects of what money.

Firstly, neither a litre nor a pint are political, and equally a unit of account – in itself – is apolitical. I advocate a unit of energy as a completely objective unit of account/numeraire. The only question is what is the correct size of energy unit to be relevant as a standard unit of measure for value.

eg you don’t measure a room in light years or Angstrom Units.

Secondly, currency or means of exchange – in terms of a Unit returnable in exchange for value – is apolitical if objectively based upon utility defined as ‘use value over time’.

There’s nothing political about merchant A issuing an IOU; B accepting it in exchange for value; C accepting the same IOU in exchange for value and then returning it in exchange for value to A, closing the loop.

Government is nowhere to be seen.

Politics entered into it when States came along as economic intermediaries between citizens by levying taxes and then using these tax obligations as a basis for the issuance of currency.

But Government may be bypassed through the use of:

(a) P2P credit creation and clearing, which need require no currency;

(b) Peer to Asset currencies based upon prepayment of (say) land use value and energy use value;

These require only a mutually acceptable unit of account (which cannot be mandated) and suitable frameworks of trust (which may or may not be a government).

Third and last, there is the ‘store of value’.

For me, this is not so much an aspect of money but of Capital. This function conflicts with the function of Money a a means of exchange.

The scarcer and more valuable a currency the more it will be hoarded and the greater will be the resulting deflation.

Inflation results in a transfer of value from holders of financial claims over the real world to people in the real world. Deflation results in a transfer of value from the real world to holders of financial claims over it.

ie unearned gains to holders of money, purely from the fact of possession, which I see as morally no different to usury.

Both deflation and inflation are are invidious: I prefer my currency/ means of exchange to be stable.