I would be curious to know if the USSR had the same mentality of restricting innovation and progress that china does now. And whether that regressive mentality factored in to the USSR's economic implosion.
The USSR clearly restricted progress: Citizens could buy a car but had to save the money beforehand and
there was a waiting list that ranged from 4 to 10 years: "
There were many automotive plants in the USSR, but getting a car was not just a matter of having the money. Some people even believe production was deliberately limited for fear that car ownership would give the Soviet people too much freedom."
there was a famous
Reagan joke on the subject: "
One of Reagan’s best Jokes. Soviet apparatchik: OK you can have a new car. Pay for it now and you can collect it in 10 years from today. Russian asks: Morning or afternoon. Soviet: why would that matter. Russian: the plumber is coming in the morning." (10 years from now, lol)
They say history sometimes repeats itself, due to people being determined to never learn from it.
Yes, I think history is being repeated by the Chinese with respect to Bitcoin, making the same mistake they made holding a silver standard instead of moving to the gold standard:
How the silver standard wrecked Chinas economy.I don't disagree with some of your overall points Hydrogen, except to the extent that you are striving to frame these matters in left/right frameworks or commie/capitalism bullshit.
We can leave the frame aside, but the Bitcoin at least theoretically, fits better with an Austrian School theory of economics (capitalist), than with a Keynesian economic theory (more socialist-left), let alone a Marxist one, with which it does not fit at all.
Another thing is that nowadays we have politicians everywhere who do not follow theories so much as what they believe will give them more votes.
I would not even assert that you are completely wrong in terms of attempting to frame some governments trying to be way more involved in seemingly social benefits areas, and they might end up having struggles in dealing with bitcoin differently than governments who might be less inclined towards providing social benefits, but I doubt that it is helpful to just lump governments into socialist or capitalists and try to presume from there in terms of if there might be more room for their being friendly rather than hostile to bitcoin.
Yes, while I think the framework that Hydrogen puts forward is correct, I also don't think it's a hard-and-fast division that we're going to see:
1) Left-wing governments: ban bitcoin.
2) Right wing governments: embrace bitcoin.
There will be a lot of grey areas and I don't think he puts it that way either, he talks about what is most likely.