Basically, the Bitcoin technology does not address the issue of unequal distribution of wealth. Or does it? If not, what can be done about that?
Education.
And not just any education, I learned economics all through my school years and never once did anything we cover monetary theory. I also frequently consumed any economics or financial oriented journalism or documentary, and only through youtube did I ever find anything that filled the gap (Neil Ferguson's "Ascent of Money"). And even that covered it from a very status quo sort of angle.
I agree wholeheartedly. Especially the part about
not just any. Personally, I believe that being put in an institution with the stated aim of
learning is akin to putting a sane man in an insane asylum to
get well. Humans are designed in a way that they automatically spend all their time learning, as long as you don't meddle too much and break them into pieces - something an institution is perfectly designed to do. I'm not providing a cure-all, but if you shut down the gulags that most children are sent to (schools) and where they have to do meaningless forced labour is the first step.
And a complete cultural change is what's really needed, because this culture encourages everyone to be superficial, acquisitive, accredited/authorised, vain and introspective ("selfie", ugh), and dependent (both on government and on social groups). It discourages the self-determined (in both thought and profession), critical thinking, independence, and above all questioning authorised or established views. And this culture achieves this result through the newspapers, history books, school textbooks, school curriculum, advertising, television and movies, the list probably contains even more subtle examples than I can contemplate.
Again your observations are to the point. Culture is key, a collaborative culture that encourages critical thinking, curiosity and self-expression is what is needed. I don't know how to make such a culture blossom, but I do believe that removing or reducing support structures (like governments) will make it a necessity for most people to develop these traits.
Really, the current class of rich plutocrats are in that position through a mixture of nepotism, gangsterism, and not least the careful propagandising and cultivating of this era's version of the serf class. Bitcoin plutocrats will be mostly made up of people that used self-determination of one form or another to attain that status, so their values won't be quite so easily corrupted as they got there through merit. And those who adopt cryptocurrency last will still benefit from some inevitable cultural changes: hard money will bring better quality of goods, more political power to the individual, improved long-term capacity to save, more transparent finances from governmental bodies and businesses, plus a whole host of ancillary benefits from taking the model of a decentralised database validated by proof of work and applying it to other aspects of the way communities and societies organise themselves (this will be the absolute game changer, our future lives will be very different using this data storage tool that we've been gifted).
I commend you on your optimistic view of humanity. Yes, hard money will bring benefits to the people who are more in tune with the cultural aspects discussed above. It will be up to the new meritocratic Bitcoin plutocrats to use their power benevolently, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Simply wanting to do good is not a prerequisite for achieving positive results. But a prerequisite for achieving good
if you want to do good is critical thinking. This has the potential to help a lot of people, and early adopters of Bitcoin should be above-average skilled at this.
However, how do you propose to help those vast amounts of headless chickens that are so far gone that the likelihood that they will ever be able to think critically and do anything else than do what they are told is close to nil?
It's a shame that these journalists are throwing fits of luddite rage, instead of learning and disseminating about how this will eventually be nothing short of a technologically driven revolution. But then again, I guess their response is truly representative of the worst aspects of this culture that I disparage above, they'll not be fit for such a change until they realise that their position in life is no longer as certain as they once became so comfortable with.
While I do agree that one is never absolved from personal responsibility, I'm always skeptical of criticizing journalists. It is like criticizing Germans who didn't rebel against Nazi Germany, or to use a less used up comparison, Americans who keep supporting their military-industrial complex overtly or tacitly. Ethically it is wrong, and everybody has a personal responsibility, but in the end it is easily exploitable aspects of human psychology that make it possible for the plutocrats to continue with their agenda. In essence the journalists you are criticizing are just the same as the public that swallows the bullshit journalists write. The people who are ultimately more responsible are the people at the top. Journalists are simply brainwashed worker-bees like most other people, and if they refuse to work (as they should, if they want to make a moral choice), they will simply be replaced by average unemployed Joe that knows how to copy-write semi-understandable hogwash. Blaming the journalists is playing right into the hands of the plutocrats want (edit: by removing the focus on them, i.e. don't shoot the messenger).
