Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.
+ this, 
Topic: Bitcoin's Dystopian Future - page 7. (Read 28243 times)
Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.
You are persuming that goverments will go against their citizens' will against bitcoin? It will be their citizens that demand it.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that people will always support the government view that its systems are just fine and that alternatives like Bitcoin are the villains? You tell me. You say you're from Greece. Do Greeks think the government monetary and financial system is just fine?
Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.
+ this, 
And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
Oh, and whilst it is true no lone ranger is likely to be able to counter the network effect of Bitcoins if you have valid arguments and can persuade enough people (I suggest you engage differently or look elsewhere) there are plenty of options with different economic models e.g. Freicooin. Go support them
Sorry for beeing *maybe* pedanting but euro started as an experiment, so did the internet, the atomic bomb, but we all know by whom and to what ends. Conducting an experiment in the wild and after it goes viral you dissapear doesn't sound very responsible.
I for one like to always be in a position that maximizes my degrees of freedom. I can't understand the choice of pegging the parameters.
It reminds me of papers that start to create a model of reality and end up doing a fairly good job at it only to find the model too complex and unsolvable. Then in the conclusions they start simplifications, hidden assumptions, pegging parameters to make it solvable. But its not reality anymore. Here only to work bakwards get a solvable? simple model peg its parameters, make that a reality. But reality is known to be a bitch and will hack and slash.
And I have yet to listen to a single argument that deflation is good, all I hear is inflation is bad.
It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south....
Thank you for coming and commenting. I have to admit I really struggle with in particular the Greek and Italian electorates' mentality. I see now you truly believe your problems are caused by northern Europe and have nothing at all to do with decades of insane spending and deep political corruption in cahoots with the very wealthy whose activities were turned a blind eye to and who have by now escaped with their wealth and invested it in London properties.Of course it was all the nasty industrial northern Europeans' fault!
The cause is that when they created the euro it was not perfect, they did all they could do, and let future generations (of politicians) handle the problems as they arise. The rest is simply market dynamics, capital flowed from the north creating bubbles, entrenching trade deficits, and cheap debt postponing design faults to the future. Sounds familiar?
And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
Oh, and whilst it is true no lone ranger is likely to be able to counter the network effect of Bitcoins if you have valid arguments and can persuade enough people (I suggest you engage differently or look elsewhere) there are plenty of options with different economic models e.g. Freicooin. Go support them
Using the after effects of a massive credit bubble to argue that deflation is harmful is as rational as using the existence of hangovers to argue that one should never stop drinking.
Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines,
But at least with Euro there is a slight possibility for policy change cause despite all there is room for discussions and maneuvres. In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions...
But I seriously doubt that I will have the option off due to Network effect.
And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
It was the euro that enabled the mercantilistic? attack on the south....
Thank you for coming and commenting. I have to admit I really struggle with in particular the Greek and Italian electorates' mentality. I see now you truly believe your problems are caused by northern Europe and have nothing at all to do with decades of insane spending and deep political corruption in cahoots with the very wealthy whose activities were turned a blind eye to and who have by now escaped with their wealth and invested it in London properties.Of course it was all the nasty industrial northern Europeans' fault!
Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines,
But at least with Euro there is a slight possibility for policy change cause despite all there is room for discussions and maneuvres. In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions...
And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
So if you Cross China, India (shutting down BTC), EU, USA taking over btc infrastructure, what is left? Sealand? sure the rest of the world can withstand a 51% attack.
Who the hell would spend billions on a 51% attack, and what the hell do they expect to get out of it? 51% attack doesn't automatically destroy bitcoin. At best, it lets the attacker double-spend. It doesn't change the rules of the network, since those are maintained by miners and wallets, and it doesn't even block transactions fromm going through, as there is a very easy fix for that.
USA and EU would propably rather shutdown Internet than lose control over Euro or Dollar.
That would be pretty fun to watch, as every single citizen in the country protests to the point where the politicians who did that are literally dragged out of their government buildings and shot. Though I doubt it would ever come to this, since politicians know they need votes to keep their office, and would rather get anonymous bitcoin donations than vote for laws to shut down the internet.
Well do you expect their citizens watch their hard earned assets vaporized so bitcoin whales come to scoop them up, and not demand their Gs to fence-double-firewall their net and if that fails to shutit down?
The only way for a merchant to stay in bussiness is to offload the risk to ... B) producer to delay payment until sold.
This results in a regression of risk down the chain of producers, but the risk is ultimately taken on by the bank.
The initial money has to come from somewhere. In inflationary currency, the cash starts with the bank, and goes
Bank -> Producer A -> Producer B -> Merchant
then on the way back, the cash flows
Customer -> Merchant -> Producer B -> Producer A -> Bank
Point is, cash has to come from somewhere, and the bank is the risk taker, despite the final link in the chain, the Merchant, being where all the risk is. If the merchant fails to sell, everyone up the chain loses, too. In a deflationary system, instead of buying and holding inventory, and paying back for it after it sells, likely the bank will be funding the merchant, and the cash will go
Bank -> Merchant -> Producer B -> Producer A
then when product is sold, it will go
Customer -> Merchant -> Bank
This way, the bank knows exactly where it is placing its risk, and none of the producers up the line are at risk or depend on the merchant selling, since they get their cash upfront. Chances are, the merchant and the bank will be the same, or rather the merchant will be operating on savings instead of on debt.
The producer will have to invest savings to equipment, assets, and general means of productions that depreciate, have to deal with merchands that promise to pay when and if they sell, takes all the risk of faults cause none will insure him, so why bother? He will wait for preorders and possible advance payments and only them begin producing. So the consumer will have to preorder/prepay goods at execive prices in his view and wait unknown time until delivery, so he will buy only what he absolutely needs: byebye to consumerism?
Hell Im in, if only I wasn't that brainwashed to need all the shit that are on TV
I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now.
The euro is not deflationary, so that's bullshit. Greece problem is not deflation, it's excessive borrowing.
And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes...
Kisa, can you explain the ethics behind that statement?
That being said, are you seriously suggesting the local 'deflation' you are experiencing is the cause of the problems? When an economy is as crippled as Greece's I can understand why citizens would be crying out for their Central Bank (if you still had one) to be inflating your currency. However, there are some who do not believe this is anything other than a 'sticking plaster' solution which provides temporary alleviation at the expense of savers.
Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....
Did the confiscation of wealth in Cyprus from the savers make Cypriots better off? Cause op was saying at the expense of, and you seem to be disagreeing with something...
It's not a sticking plaster, it's just a stronger pedal that keeps you on the bicycle when it gets steeper, you only fall when you stop.
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines, the crisis origins lie with the Euro as a construct.
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines, the crisis origins lie with the Euro as a construct.
It's not the euro, it's deficit spending. You have two options: keep spending more than you take in, inflating currency, and continue until you hit hyperinflation and currency collapse, OR keep spending more than you take in, but have no methods of inflating currency, and hit a wall at which you can't spend any more, causing social program collapse. Or you could maybe not keep spending more than you take in. I think spending more than you take in is the problem here. The only difference between Greece that can't print its currency, and other countries that can, is how high of a bubble they can inflate before they explode.
In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions, that's what ires me in Bitcoin. And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
If I knew it was the right decision, sure, why not?
[/quote]
gee right any decision you ever make at any point is right (for that time only)
That being said, are you seriously suggesting the local 'deflation' you are experiencing is the cause of the problems? When an economy is as crippled as Greece's I can understand why citizens would be crying out for their Central Bank (if you still had one) to be inflating your currency. However, there are some who do not believe this is anything other than a 'sticking plaster' solution which provides temporary alleviation at the expense of savers.
Savers? tell that to the Cypriots....
Did the confiscation of wealth in Cyprus from the savers make Cypriots better off? Cause op was saying at the expense of, and you seem to be disagreeing with something...
It's not a sticking plaster, it's just a stronger pedal that keeps you on the bicycle when it gets steeper, you only fall when you stop.
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines, the crisis origins lie with the Euro as a construct.
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines, the crisis origins lie with the Euro as a construct.
It's not the euro, it's deficit spending. You have two options: keep spending more than you take in, inflating currency, and continue until you hit hyperinflation and currency collapse, OR keep spending more than you take in, but have no methods of inflating currency, and hit a wall at which you can't spend any more, causing social program collapse. Or you could maybe not keep spending more than you take in. I think spending more than you take in is the problem here. The only difference between Greece that can't print its currency, and other countries that can, is how high of a bubble they can inflate before they explode.
In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions, that's what ires me in Bitcoin. And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
If I knew it was the right decision, sure, why not?
Governments can - at any time - stop inflating their debt-based currencies and stop spending more than they take in. They have the upper hand in that any policy changes they make will ripple through the market on a large scale much faster than any alternative currency can impact the market or have such a large scale effect.
Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.
The threat of the use of force on a grand scale by governments is largely a paper tiger. It is only useful for them to use force at the margins, otherwise it becomes counter-productive to the survival of the regime itself. Any regime that goes all out with a show of force on a large part of the population at one time is setting itself up for failure because once you go that route you lose all propaganda value and even the masses are not fooled by your claims of legitimacy. You become ripe for overthrow.
The future currency game, I think, will be more like a chess game than an actual war. There will be ground gained and lost on both sides. If you consider that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and you understand that markets tend toward equilibrium, you can predict that forces on both sides will tend to balance over time. By balance I mean that both sides are always pushing back, and that tends to create short-term stability and predictability. It doesn't mean a 50/50 balance. It just means that the tension between them produces a balance one can quantify presently and predict in the short term. Once that state has lasted for a while, a new picture emerges of who's ahead and who's behind, but both are still pushing against each other. Then the opposing forces adjust their policies accordingly. It's a mistake to extrapolate present trends out indefinitely. Things tend to only go haywire in isolated spots, not in the big picture. So you might get a crazy dictator or an insane political system for brief periods of time in limited areas, but the political market is so wide that these aberrations typically do not propagate throughout the whole world.
The nightmare scenario is of course a tyrannical world-government which is not afraid of displaying an extreme show of force as a matter of policy because it loses its inhibition and thinks it has captured the queen in the grand chessboard of world politics, but it's difficult to see anything like that lasting long term. Ultimately, all these systems rest on the support of the people. They either actively support or acquiesce. But if you push too far, even those who would otherwise acquiesce are forced by the harsh circumstances to take a stand. The only reason for people to compromise with tyranny is if they see self-preservation in it. Once it becomes clear that the survival and comfort of a certain portion of the population is not predictably certain, then you can get an explosive push-back, and that's when revolutions take place.
Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.
The threat of the use of force on a grand scale by governments is largely a paper tiger. It is only useful for them to use force at the margins, otherwise it becomes counter-productive to the survival of the regime itself. Any regime that goes all out with a show of force on a large part of the population at one time is setting itself up for failure because once you go that route you lose all propaganda value and even the masses are not fooled by your claims of legitimacy. You become ripe for overthrow.
The future currency game, I think, will be more like a chess game than an actual war. There will be ground gained and lost on both sides. If you consider that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and you understand that markets tend toward equilibrium, you can predict that forces on both sides will tend to balance over time. By balance I mean that both sides are always pushing back, and that tends to create short-term stability and predictability. It doesn't mean a 50/50 balance. It just means that the tension between them produces a balance one can quantify presently and predict in the short term. Once that state has lasted for a while, a new picture emerges of who's ahead and who's behind, but both are still pushing against each other. Then the opposing forces adjust their policies accordingly. It's a mistake to extrapolate present trends out indefinitely. Things tend to only go haywire in isolated spots, not in the big picture. So you might get a crazy dictator or an insane political system for brief periods of time in limited areas, but the political market is so wide that these aberrations typically do not propagate throughout the whole world.
The nightmare scenario is of course a tyrannical world-government which is not afraid of displaying an extreme show of force as a matter of policy because it loses its inhibition and thinks it has captured the queen in the grand chessboard of world politics, but it's difficult to see anything like that lasting long term. Ultimately, all these systems rest on the support of the people. They either actively support or acquiesce. But if you push too far, even those who would otherwise acquiesce are forced by the harsh circumstances to take a stand. The only reason for people to compromise with tyranny is if they see self-preservation in it. Once it becomes clear that the survival and comfort of a certain portion of the population is not predictably certain, then you can get an explosive push-back, and that's when revolutions take place.
You are persuming that goverments will go against their citizens' will against bitcoin? It will be their citizens that demand it.
The only way for a merchant to stay in bussiness is to offload the risk to ... B) producer to delay payment until sold.
This results in a regression of risk down the chain of producers, but the risk is ultimately taken on by the bank.
The initial money has to come from somewhere. In inflationary currency, the cash starts with the bank, and goes
Bank -> Producer A -> Producer B -> Merchant
then on the way back, the cash flows
Customer -> Merchant -> Producer B -> Producer A -> Bank
Point is, cash has to come from somewhere, and the bank is the risk taker, despite the final link in the chain, the Merchant, being where all the risk is. If the merchant fails to sell, everyone up the chain loses, too. In a deflationary system, instead of buying and holding inventory, and paying back for it after it sells, likely the bank will be funding the merchant, and the cash will go
Bank -> Merchant -> Producer B -> Producer A
then when product is sold, it will go
Customer -> Merchant -> Bank
This way, the bank knows exactly where it is placing its risk, and none of the producers up the line are at risk or depend on the merchant selling, since they get their cash upfront. Chances are, the merchant and the bank will be the same, or rather the merchant will be operating on savings instead of on debt.
I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now.
The euro is not deflationary, so that's bullshit. Greece problem is not deflation, it's excessive borrowing.
And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes...
Kisa, can you explain the ethics behind that statement?
-snip-
I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now. The only economists I know that think deflationary currency is a neat idea is Wolfgang schaeuble, and german banksters who sit on shitloads of Euros, You want to see the future of Bitcoin? look at Europe NOW.
I am sorry to hear you are suffering from the economic tragedy that is Greece right now. I have Greek friends and know how bad it is.I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now. The only economists I know that think deflationary currency is a neat idea is Wolfgang schaeuble, and german banksters who sit on shitloads of Euros, You want to see the future of Bitcoin? look at Europe NOW.
That being said, are you seriously suggesting the local 'deflation' you are experiencing is the cause of the problems? When an economy is as crippled as Greece's I can understand why citizens would be crying out for their Central Bank (if you still had one) to be inflating your currency. However, there are some who do not believe this is anything other than a 'sticking plaster' solution which provides temporary alleviation at the expense of savers.
Of course if some of the dystopian predictions here come true Bitcoin being essentially deflationary won't do much just as the ECB refusing to inflate for Greece's sake doesn't appear to be helping Greece's situation right now. However I find it a bit of a stretch to look to Greece to predict how Bitcoin will turn out.
As for appealing to the authorities of the numbers of economists who believe deflation to be bad it doesn't cut it for me sorry!
Savers? tell that to the Cypriots.... It's not a sticking plaster, it's just a stronger pedal that keeps you on the bicycle when it gets steeper, you only fall when you stop.
Besides It's not only Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy they feel the burn too and soon the north, Greece was just the canary in the mines, the crisis origins lie with the Euro as a construct. But at least with Euro there is a slight possibility for policy change cause despite all there is room for discussions and maneuvres. In bitcoin it can be worse because a critical parameter is hardcoded with no hope of change, a single person no matter how smart made a decission for millions, that's what ires me in Bitcoin. And I ask you that, would you do it? would you made *any* decision that could affect millions based only in your judgement?
So if you Cross China, India (shutting down BTC), EU, USA taking over btc infrastructure, what is left? Sealand? sure the rest of the world can withstand a 51% attack.
Who the hell would spend billions on a 51% attack, and what the hell do they expect to get out of it? 51% attack doesn't automatically destroy bitcoin. At best, it lets the attacker double-spend. It doesn't change the rules of the network, since those are maintained by miners and wallets, and it doesn't even block transactions fromm going through, as there is a very easy fix for that.
USA and EU would propably rather shutdown Internet than lose control over Euro or Dollar.
That would be pretty fun to watch, as every single citizen in the country protests to the point where the politicians who did that are literally dragged out of their government buildings and shot. Though I doubt it would ever come to this, since politicians know they need votes to keep their office, and would rather get anonymous bitcoin donations than vote for laws to shut down the internet.
You all miss the point about what deflation really means. Forget the consumer's view where you just spend your precious coins only when absolutely want/have to. Or the prime producers view. Think about it from the merchants view, who has stocked up goods, or the various processors who still wait materials to arive in their processing pipeline and see that time works against them.
Then you all going to go nagging about how shity preorder, prepay is, and that you still have not get what you bought for, and why on earth vendors don't stock goods in advance, heellloooo because of Deflation maybe?
Then you all going to go nagging about how shity preorder, prepay is, and that you still have not get what you bought for, and why on earth vendors don't stock goods in advance, heellloooo because of Deflation maybe?
Time to get yourself unbrainwashed about that whole Deflation = Bad!!! thing.
Customers don't wait to buy new things, as evidences with people lining up to buy new gadgets.
When currency deflates, customers feel like they have more disposable cash to spend, and thus increase spending.
Merchants will not be working in a deflationary economy with expectations of being in an inflationary. Just as merchants calculate and adjust prices for the rate of inflation, they will adjust prices for the rate of deflation. Right now you expect the value of what you are asking for to fall, so you adjust prices up with expectation that if they sell in a month, you will earn -3%/12 of the current day value. In deflation, you expect the value of what you are asking to go up, so you adjust prices down with the expectation that you will get +3%/12 at the end of a month. I.e. if inflation or deflation is 1% for a period, and your cost of product is $100, you will price it at $101 in inflationary currency, or $99 in deflationary currency, expecting to get the same $100 value when it sells. Customers will just get used to this too.
Governments can - at any time - stop inflating their debt-based currencies and stop spending more than they take in. They have the upper hand in that any policy changes they make will ripple through the market on a large scale much faster than any alternative currency can impact the market or have such a large scale effect.
Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.
The threat of the use of force on a grand scale by governments is largely a paper tiger. It is only useful for them to use force at the margins, otherwise it becomes counter-productive to the survival of the regime itself. Any regime that goes all out with a show of force on a large part of the population at one time is setting itself up for failure because once you go that route you lose all propaganda value and even the masses are not fooled by your claims of legitimacy. You become ripe for overthrow.
The future currency game, I think, will be more like a chess game than an actual war. There will be ground gained and lost on both sides. If you consider that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and you understand that markets tend toward equilibrium, you can predict that forces on both sides will tend to balance over time. By balance I mean that both sides are always pushing back, and that tends to create short-term stability and predictability. It doesn't mean a 50/50 balance. It just means that the tension between them produces a balance one can quantify presently and predict in the short term. Once that state has lasted for a while, a new picture emerges of who's ahead and who's behind, but both are still pushing against each other. Then the opposing forces adjust their policies accordingly. It's a mistake to extrapolate present trends out indefinitely. Things tend to only go haywire in isolated spots, not in the big picture. So you might get a crazy dictator or an insane political system for brief periods of time in limited areas, but the political market is so wide that these aberrations typically do not propagate throughout the whole world.
The nightmare scenario is of course a tyrannical world-government which is not afraid of displaying an extreme show of force as a matter of policy because it loses its inhibition and thinks it has captured the queen in the grand chessboard of world politics, but it's difficult to see anything like that lasting long term. Ultimately, all these systems rest on the support of the people. They either actively support or acquiesce. But if you push too far, even those who would otherwise acquiesce are forced by the harsh circumstances to take a stand. The only reason for people to compromise with tyranny is if they see self-preservation in it. Once it becomes clear that the survival and comfort of a certain portion of the population is not predictably certain, then you can get an explosive push-back, and that's when revolutions take place.
Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.
The threat of the use of force on a grand scale by governments is largely a paper tiger. It is only useful for them to use force at the margins, otherwise it becomes counter-productive to the survival of the regime itself. Any regime that goes all out with a show of force on a large part of the population at one time is setting itself up for failure because once you go that route you lose all propaganda value and even the masses are not fooled by your claims of legitimacy. You become ripe for overthrow.
The future currency game, I think, will be more like a chess game than an actual war. There will be ground gained and lost on both sides. If you consider that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and you understand that markets tend toward equilibrium, you can predict that forces on both sides will tend to balance over time. By balance I mean that both sides are always pushing back, and that tends to create short-term stability and predictability. It doesn't mean a 50/50 balance. It just means that the tension between them produces a balance one can quantify presently and predict in the short term. Once that state has lasted for a while, a new picture emerges of who's ahead and who's behind, but both are still pushing against each other. Then the opposing forces adjust their policies accordingly. It's a mistake to extrapolate present trends out indefinitely. Things tend to only go haywire in isolated spots, not in the big picture. So you might get a crazy dictator or an insane political system for brief periods of time in limited areas, but the political market is so wide that these aberrations typically do not propagate throughout the whole world.
The nightmare scenario is of course a tyrannical world-government which is not afraid of displaying an extreme show of force as a matter of policy because it loses its inhibition and thinks it has captured the queen in the grand chessboard of world politics, but it's difficult to see anything like that lasting long term. Ultimately, all these systems rest on the support of the people. They either actively support or acquiesce. But if you push too far, even those who would otherwise acquiesce are forced by the harsh circumstances to take a stand. The only reason for people to compromise with tyranny is if they see self-preservation in it. Once it becomes clear that the survival and comfort of a certain portion of the population is not predictably certain, then you can get an explosive push-back, and that's when revolutions take place.
Does anyone else find it funny that those convinced that customers will have a reduced incentive to spend deflationary money forget the seller of goods and services have an equally increased incentive to sell. So won't we simply see the price change to reflect this and things carry on as always? Same with stock. The store will have the same disincentive pay for stock that is losing value (relative to depreciating currency) as the supplier will be incentivised to sell his goods? I kinda like that theory but truth is I don't know how it will turn out. Fact is, neither do those who are convinced their arguments are correct!
If the PC and consumer electronics industries could figure out how to adapt to a situation where stock is losing value relative to currency (BTW, bitcoin is appreciating, not depreciating) then other kinds of merchants in a bitcoin world should be able to adapt too.So if we have a C_onsumer, M_erchant, P_roducer, someone must accept the cost of depreciation Time. And here we only have the Shipping time, if you add Production Time, Return of Investment Time. You have simply stoped the economy.
I am talking on experience here. I live in F*** Greece, we are deflating for 4 years now. The only economists I know that think deflationary currency is a neat idea is Wolfgang schaeuble, and german banksters who sit on shitloads of Euros, You want to see the future of Bitcoin? look at Europe NOW.
That being said, are you seriously suggesting the local 'deflation' you are experiencing is the cause of the problems? When an economy is as crippled as Greece's I can understand why citizens would be crying out for their Central Bank (if you still had one) to be inflating your currency. However, there are some who do not believe this is anything other than a 'sticking plaster' solution which provides temporary alleviation at the expense of savers.
Of course if some of the dystopian predictions here come true Bitcoin being essentially deflationary won't do much just as the ECB refusing to inflate for Greece's sake doesn't appear to be helping Greece's situation right now. However I find it a bit of a stretch to look to Greece to predict how Bitcoin will turn out.
As for appealing to the authorities of the numbers of economists who believe deflation to be bad it doesn't cut it for me sorry!
thanks for high quality OP and discussion! It is very worthwile even if it just helps a number of people feeling that they are not alone with similar doubts and ethical considerations. A perfect thread to start "BTC self-help group" with - any professional therapists around to moderate such thread? After initial adrenaline shot, I started reflective thinking and experienced a state of semi-permanent thinkaholic awareness shock for a few weeks in a row, somewhat resembling Neo's awakening scene from the Matrix. I believe that anyone should be mindful not to just exclusively focus on negative scenarios, as these are based on the premise that following initial negative development no appropriate communal or governmental reaction is achieved. But wait, humanity - however difficult and disturbing it was - adopted to the spread of christianity, to vasca da gama and columbus "discoveries", to the emergence of nuclear energy a.s.o. it is therefore likely that distributed currencies will represent major challenges and cause major changes. The more of these challenges and changes can be shared with and managed in co-ordination with national democratic majorities and existing influential NGOs, the better the outlook will become. My hope is that potential debasement of G20 currencies against cryptos can be somehow "managed" over long-time period, without creating major political and social disruptions like civil wars. E.g. could the world governments and central banks decide at some point to build up substantial BTC reserves to smoothen the redistribution effect in rather acceptable for the society way? And, indeed, if significant part of early adopters recognizes their ethical obligation to support philantropic causes, then the future might become not as bleak as feared during sleepless nights...
And for pessimistic folks, please try smiling efortfully from time to time, this might help in shifting focus to somewhat better aspects and opprotunities
And for pessimistic folks, please try smiling efortfully from time to time, this might help in shifting focus to somewhat better aspects and opprotunities
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