Topic: Globalization, Marxism, and Technological Development as applies to BitCoin (Read 3511 times)

I'm not sure I have properly caught the sense of your post, LanYu, but it seems you are saying that socialist nations would embrace a decentralized currency. Somehow I don't see that happening, like... ever

Not sure if the bandwagon is big enough carry all the murdering socialists ideological centralisation baggage as well.

Mining kit is only for rich people.

Beside, smartphone will be everywhere as it get cheaper. The rich folks are just the have-now, and the poor folks are have-later. Very different notion from being poor forever and rich get to keep all the good toys.

The rich folks(us)  subsidize these inventions, which will eventually accrues to the poor. Capitalism FTW.

Yeah you are right, but my point is, do you think the people in Central Africa are thinking about going out and buying a smartphone and a mining kit? NO, because they still draw water from rivers and herd cattle.

After the fall of the USSR a CIA agent went to Moscow to find out what happened.
He went to the Butcher and took out his notebook writing down "No meat"
He then went to the bakery and wrote down "No bread"
He went to the shoe store and wrote down "No shoes"
At that moment a KGB agent looked over his sholder and said "10 years ago you would be shot for doing that"
He then wrote down "No bullets"

That's  just plain wrong. 

It's not that the bitcoin economy will destroy global market, but rather it will globalize the economy.

Rather than just big companies having the market to itself, they will expand the market to anyone with a smartphone. Capitalism FTW.

All I can really say is that at this point it's just kind of comical to me the way socialists always doom themselves to failure by postulating post-resource-scarcity and then wanting to subsidize people, mostly since I've come to the conclusion that anyone who thinks of a service economy as a good thing must have some kind of mental disorder.

First of all, I must say that BitCoin is an extremely brilliant and well-thought out plan. I have three postulates as relates to Globalization, forces of production in Marxian theory, and technological development.

1)Globalization and Post-20th Century Economics

In a global economy with fully capitalized markets, and a freely open basket of currencies, the PPP of any given dollar will tend to be equal each other over a long enough time scale. That being said, the majority of non-Western world is underdeveloped relative to other countries, which means that the likes of Africa are probably 50 years away from the level of our current development.

here is a graphic illustrating the current inequality: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/GDP_PPP_per_capita_2009_IMF.png

2)Forces of Production and the Service Economy

Traditionally, the forces of production have been utilized by the "bourgeoisie" against the proletariat, manifesting itself in wage labor tending to minimum required for subsistence of the working class. However, the traditional capitalist economy, since the end of WW2 has begun to and is still currently dissapating. We are experiencing the creation of a post-capitalist service economy. This is going to continue throughout the 21st century. However, so too will exist a parallel resource and production economy, likely by a large market of competitive labor-owned corporations (why yes, we do live in a socialist paradise)

I postulate that, in bitcoin's "lottery" sense of currency creation (and in future transaction execution), the forces of production are now driven by hardware development, moreover the currency is based on it. In a sense, the computer has now become the object of exploitation.  

3) The transition will be slow

Both because of BitCoin's tendency to undermine existing global markets, and the underdevelopment of countries, the BitCoin "economy" will be slow to develop, and the global market will be slow to fade away. Existing global markets, and what is soon to be the global currency basket, are an opportunity for underdeveloped countries to attract capital, and through efficent socialist states allocate that capital to its people, moreso than BitCoin is capable of doing, even on a scope of 20 years from now.


My only concern for cryptographic "lottery" currencies such as bitcoin is the future of computing power and cryptographics, especially with the advent of quantum computing looming on the horizon.