Not to disagree with you even further, but our planet isn’t running out of resources (though I know most people would call me crazy for saying that). Resources, properly understood, are productions of man. We produce trees (indeed there are more trees in America today than a hundred years ago, because we’ve made tree farms. Oil is indeed going to “run out” some day, but oil is not the resource… the resource is energy. We can (and will) find other sources of energy as the price of oil increases to become prohibitive. Indeed, at the beginning of the 19th century the world was worried about running out of coal.

We make resources, and humanity tends to make more than it needs, and this is why living standards have increased. We are more materially comfortable today, we have more energy, more heat, more access to water, more food, etc than we did a hundred years ago, and this is amazingly true even though there are billions more people to sustain!

But, let’s assume for a second that you’re correct and our resources are “running out”. Bitcoin, because it’s not inflationary, will be a disincentive on excessive spending. When you know your Bitcoins will be worth the same or likely more next month, you will not buy as much as you otherwise would. You will not consume as much, at the margins. Contrast this to the US dollar, which loses value each year, and thus encourages excess consumption, excess spending.

So, nobody should think Bitcoin is perfect, but for your specific purpose of curbing some degree of excessive human consumption, Bitcoin is a better alternative money than fiat currencies like USD.

And there is a forum! bitcointalk.org

My point is really about currency in general. Our planet is running out of resources – in my opinion because money the currency incentivises us and rewards us for using them up.

I guess i’m looking for a currency that counter-balances the negative effects of money, and disappointed that Bitcoin isn’t it.

There is a space for community and regional electronic currencies where trust networks add and create value and that’s where my efforts are going right now.

Thanks for the healthy debate – we need some sort of forum or community group maybe?

Mike.

“The libertarian critique of money implies that fiat money is bad because it is subjective, i.e. political; and that money needs an ‘objective’ support. But the Bitcoin support being immaterial code, it is worthless except for the trust of the community…”

You misunderstand libertarians. Their critique of government fiat money is not that the value is “subjective” (indeed all value is subjective, even the value we place in “hard” assets like homes and gold – gold had no value before humans subjectively valued it). The critique is that people are coerced into using it, period. Libertarians are opposed to coercion, and thus the extent to which a populace is forced to use one specific money is the extent to which libertarians will be greatly antagonistic to it. The problem is made worse when the money we’re forced to use is debased by a privileged group of people. It’s absurdly immoral to force a man to use your money while you print more of it for yourself. You debase his property, you ruin the product of his labor, by your coercion.

As Bitcoin is true free market money, nobody is forced to use it. It’s voluntary, and thus while some libertarians might think it’s silly or stupid or foolish to use it, they would not be opposed in principle to others voluntarily choosing to use it. It astounds me that so many people are vehemently opposed to monopolies, and yet they tolerate (even encourage!) a monopoly in the production of money itself. If monopolies are bad because they stifle competition, reduce consumer choice, and lead to “price gouging,” what possible justification is there to permit a monopoly on the most crucial good in an economy – the good called money.

You also said,
“In any case,the commodity approach behind Bitcoin makes any progressive social policy impossible, and leaves us stuck in highly unequal societies.”

Well, if “progressive social policy” is impossible without the ability to print money to pay for things, then yes. Regarding equality, you probably shouldn’t pontificate about that when you have a thousand dollar computer and yet children are starving in the streets of Mumbai. Rationalize it however you wish – you choose, every day, to preserve the inequality between yourself and those poorer than you. Next time you enjoy a $20 meal at a restaurant, think of the starving children awaiting your donation.

And indeed, if your interest is equality, how can you prefer a money system in which some privileged group of elites (banks and politicians) can print and receive the benefits of that newly printed money? What a terribly corrupt system we currently have… why do you defend it? Bitcoin gives no special privileges, to anyone, even if they call themselves the government. It is truly egalitarian money, and if only you’d awaken to that fact I think you’d discover why some of us are so excited about it and have dedicated our lives to building it.

Yes I do, in the same way that Henry Ford made the world a better place by giving people-traffickers, drug-runners, and arms-dealers a much more efficient means of transportation and Alexander Graham Bell gave them a way to communicate across distances. Indeed, how much has the underground benefited from these inventions?

Every great tool, by nature of being a great tool, will be used by good and bad people. It is a foolish policy to discourage the making of great tools, merely for the purpose of handicapping the bad guys.

And I think you misunderstand my argument about money’s origin. Any item that becomes commonly traded for is de facto money. Cavemen who tend to trade for furs because they know that furs are easy to re-trade to another person are using furs as money. It is impossible for money to have originated from “tribute” when, at almost the very first instance of humans trading with each other, a money was created. Money is as old as exchange itself, and is not something separate which was “invented” whether by a State or anyone else.

I don’t know what you could mean when you say “zero evidence was found for the barter myth”… are you suggesting that barter is a myth? If barter happened, money existed.

🙂

“A good money, then, merely needs to excel at the facilitation of exchange”

Is this how you measure good?

Do you seriously expect to make the world a better place by giving people-traffickers, drug-runners and arms-dealers an anonymous means to exchange their goods and services?

And if that isn’t the purpose of Bitcoin, then what’s the point of Bitcoin?

It’s fine for the shadow economy I guess – not my place to judge after all, but as a consumer I believe i have a moral responsibility. I’d prefer a currency that was backed by something abundant rather than something scare. In that sense, Bitcoin is no better than fiat money.

Hi Eric,

I don’t think you have understood Kleiner’s key argument: that you can’t use Bitcoin for public policy and maintaining the ‘polis’, i.e. society, it can only function as a market currency. Public money essentially fiat (as is by the way, of course Bitcoin as well, it has no objective value, only the market value derivative of the trust of the community in the cryptographic production) and cannot be anything else. You should really read David Graeber’s book (Five Thousand Years of Debt) or even Zarlenga’s classic monetary history. Money does emphatically not derive from barter, but indeed originally from tribute. Historians and anthropologist have found zero evidence for the barter myth.