Topic: Money is an imaginary concept, but humanity is enslaved by it - page 5. (Read 17723 times)

Yes, we all know these. But still, average Joe don't care, fiat money already become their standard of value since they were born, and as long as it works, they don't have enough motivation to switch to another totally unfamiliar system

True, bitcoin transaction fee is almost zero, but to exchange value in and out of bitcoin is not free, usually it costs much more than the 3-5% fee of credit cards, and it does not provide consumer protection like reversing the payment. So no clear advantage from payment point of view

The advantage is at long term storage and international remittance, which also requires user to have outstanding IT/Financial experiences in order to handle bitcoin security and exchange related risk

Fiat has established trust, and people are short sighted. Most importantly, because their income all comes in the form of fiat, they even fight to protect its value. Even banks printed money for future 100 years and bought everything valuable in the country, average people just don't care, as long as the price in supermarket and gas station does not rise. Of course they will gradually learn the truth from internet, but by the time they start to react, banks already bought the whole planet

You are out of line again. How can anybody not benefit from bitcoin?

Have you ever shopped online?

-An average online card based shopping has a 4-8% comission on it by start, with bitcoin its about 2-3 cents (0.0001-0.0002 BTC)
-An average online card based shopping takes 2-4 days, bitcoin takes 10 minutes
-Wire transfer shopping is even worse, up to 5% comission +25€, so if you want to buy a 0.5€ pencil online, you pay like 30€ for it.
-Card based shopping is full with frauds, and if you have like 2000€ on your bank account, the thief can easily rob it, and then it will take you 6-12 months of police and other legal procedures to recover the money (if it can be recovered).
-With bitcoin you can just put 0.5BTC on your "shopping address" and keep your other 100 BTC on a safe cold storage wallet, so even if somebody steals your wallet he gets away with less (more diversification & risk control with bitcoin)
-Bitcoin is available for minors too, in some countries 16 year old is already eligible for work, yet he cannot have his own bank account without parent agreement which is nonsense. If a 16 year old guy works online to get some extra cash in bitcoin, and he spends it wherever he wants, thats his money and the government should not restrict that at all.
-Banks are not the safest place to store money (see Cyprus govenrment confiscation, Pension looting and other governmental thefts that occur nowadays), your bitcoins on the otherhands are invulnerable to government theft.
-Bitcoin doesnt have global restrictions, open to P2P trading, I can sell p2p anything, otherwise if i would have bought it from a central store you need to pay VAT tax on it, p2p trading is not taxed, yet, and it's more efficient.
-Bitcoin doesn't discriminate racially or politically or religiously between users (see EU and USA embargoes on "enemy" countries)
-Bitcoin is free market trading, its monetary freedom, and capped supply, while fiat money is an inflated toilet paper money.
 and many more...

An average guy can easily understand this, dont need a 160 IQ to understand that the governmental-monetary system is highly flawed.

The purpose of decentralization is to make that structure flat, not hierarchical, thus there will be no centralized management, and no way to go higher since every one is at roughly the same height

Most of the people are short sighted, the reason they accept internet is because they can get many ways of entertainment from it

But accepting bitcoin does not bring them any fun, and no extra income either, the only benefit they might get is from long term appreciation, which is only a concern for those who want to diversify their investment portfolio

This brings a chicken and egg problem: If average people does not benefit from bitcoin, thus have no motivation to acquire some, how could bitcoin become an attractive investment?

If they understand that fiat money is a scam, then they might consider other alternatives like gold or bitcoin. But in reality, the transition from gold based money creation to debt based money creation did not cause any chaos, it showed that almost no one cares about how fiat money is created, they only care about if price level is stable

Similarly, most of the people only cares if bitcoin can make them some quick fiat profit. There is no easy way to raise people's awareness above this threshold, unless something big like Cyprus hair-cut happens again

If you are born in a certain socioeconomical status, it's almost mission impossible to escalate up the hierarchical pyramid. This is the sad statistic. Only a few make it. For a Mike Tyson to exist, the remaining 99% stay poor stuck on some gettho. That's whats up.

Most people are still dumb ,but the situation is favorable, the dogmatic world views are cripling and people start to become more peaceful in general.

Of course that can easily reverse, there is no permanent achievement in humanity, but i`m sure also our genetics have been improved in the last 2000 years.
I hope our tribal/primitive genes will be turned off from our DNA.

Other than that, hope that people will start to be not so ignorant.

I wouldn't either, but surely not for the reasons you mentioned. We mostly don't have slavery by now since it is an inefficient form of economy at the present level of technology in the first place. Burning people at stake en masse is also economically counterproductive...

And I'm not certain about increasing equality

Nonsense, most people still dont even heard about bitcoin if i go out the street and ask 50 people of age 15-25 i bet 90% of then havent heard of bitcoin, even if they stay in front of the PC all day. (and the 15-25 age group is usually the most aware, you wont see 80 year olds mining bitcoin lol)

Most people dont even know what money is, you cant expect the whole world to jump in the uncertain boat of bitcoin in 6 short years?

They still obey, and they do what they are told to, if the government would tomorrow say that bitcoin is now the official currency , then they would use it, but otherwise it will be a slow process.

Friends need to tell friends, and there must be many merchants, even local barbers or ministores, to spread awareness, that accept bitcoin.

And that could take another 10-15 years, in normal pace, of course unless the fiat system collapses in the next 1-5 years (which is also likely), then it will be much faster 

I wouldn't despair.  In the long run, history is the story of increasing equality, increasing awareness, and improved institutions to guard against abuse by the powerful.  2000 years ago we had real slavery, and 500 years ago the powerful could burn people at the stake for having the wrong sort of faith.  Sociopaths will always be around, and in fact their lives might become better with the general progress of living standards, but average people also enjoy better lives, and under better social structures.

The problem that bitcoin is attempting to solve (successfully or not) had its source in great economic progress: the Renaissance demonstrated tremendous economic potential for humankind, but soon afterwards, the financially savvy and those with state power figured out a way to collect a good piece of that wealth and power without doing real work, by manipulating money.  When these two forces worked together inside a genuinely advanced country, as during the British Empire and later in 20th-century US, the system seems to last forever.

But this too, will pass.

I understand your point, and if people really select bitcoin, it will be like the free market as you described. But the reality is that average people still don't choose bitcoin, maybe never will, because of the fiat money's domination in people's life: As long as they unconsciously use fiat money to measure value, it means fiat money is already rooted deeply in their thoughts. The free competition phase has already passed long time ago

And now when fiat money is dominating, it will use all the possible tools to crash the bitcoin if it ever becomes some kind of threat, currently banks don't care since bitcoin is just too small

HOW IS THAT NOT A FREE MARKET? Wtf are you talking about.

That is exactly the definiteion of free market. People voluntarly choosing between the products and services they want to use.

If 1 product turns out to be a scam they can embargo and boycott it.

If you introduce a regulator into the market then that itself will take advantage of it, as its much easier to corrupt the regulator than the market itself. Easier to pay off 1 state bureocrat than 10000000 customers dont you think?

Please rethink your logic, because its nonsense.

Great point! That's the reason I don't really believe in totally free market, since the rule of "winner takes it all" applies not only to power, but also to intelligence. In a totally free market, the less intelligent people will become the slaves no matter how hard they work/think

And awareness can only reach certain level. Today's financial system is too complicated for normal people to understand, I have met several professors from different economy school, almost none of them really understand the essential of the fiat money system

So a better solution is to give people choice: People have the freedom to select whatever monetary system they like, so that if one system is total slavery, the opposite system might be the way to total freedom. No matter how rosy picture the central banks paint about their fiat money, if people using bitcoin get much better life, then the fiat money will get less and less attractive

If people have tried both alternatives and none of the choices will give them freedom, then most likely the problem is not located at the monetary system, but some other area. But at least they can give it a try for an alternative system, and I doubt most of the social problem is caused by fiat money, since it involves action of crime: Stealing and robbery, at GDP scale

I`ve heard that argument before, i`m not sure where but i think a philosopher said this once:
"The enviroment creates the organism and the organisms shape the enviroment"

It can be interpreted as a hybrid form of free and non-free will. I dont think its a black and white situation. Although i still think free will is as it is free, but even if you think otherwise, the mere thing that the enviroment is shaped (wind makes the mountain erosion, or ocean makes the beach) its still in some sense the organism having free will to shape the enviroment.

Therefore doesnt matter what perspective you look in from: Free will is valid in all cases.

If we take the premise of the environment being everything as the source of the outcome, it wouldn't matter because genetics would dictate how you react to said environment, which means that if you try to change the environment it was because your genetics allowed to do so, therefore rendering free will irrelevant as we know it.

Thats nonsense, the sociopaths already control everything and they are already very cunning.

But if you make your average savage trendy leftist a well informed and peaceful person, then you (on average) increased the wisdom and understanding of the average people.

Now they will still fall for some smaller scams: psychics, alternative medicine, sorcerers and other frauds, but they wont fall for the bigger scams: democracy, voting and state.

I'm afraid this won't work. If you somehow increase the awareness of humans at large, this should also increase the cunning of your "sociopaths" and their skills at fooling the general populace. So, in the end, we will most likely have absolutely the same result as we have today...

I`m very sure determinism is not true. Because if determinism were true then you will have to ask who/what is determining things.

Some God is playing around with humans as their toys attached on strings. Whats the point of that?

Free will must be true otherwise nothing would make sense.

Yes thats true, so make people smoke and drink but thats ok, but not the others. I think it will be legalized in the next 10-20 years there is just no way they can stall this much longer.

Of course the main obstacle is the church, most ultrareligious people just condemn it without even analyzing it. And there was no separation of church and state, its still the same entity in 90% of the countries.



Well its getting worse and worse, most males are without job, due to our magnificent money printing economy. And then obviously they will beat their wives and kids because of desperation. Some people are just too "alpha" and without a proper enviroment they go crazy.

And we wont see any improvement in that any time soon, as the economy will get only worse.



Yes but most animals are driven by instincts, and if that instinct is not made for survival then they will perish. Ants were evolved to be a collectivist society, the individual ant is easily sacrificed to hunt down a spider for the greater good.

Collectivism however is evil and its not good for people, there is no common good in humans, except survival, everything else is subjective.




No but really, i can understand why people are desperate in this tyranical society. But in a free society they would not have any excuses.

The fact that you cannot open your own restaurant chain because you require a 10m $ license from your slavemasters is a big obstacle, but in a free society everybody could do that. So a poor guy in a free society is only his own fault, whereas now its the governments fault.

This thread has become so interesting now when many other aspects like politics and psychology have entered the discussion. I tends to believe the enlightening of the knowledge of money is the way to a more just society, and with the help of internet, human are much better positioned than 300 years ago, when John Law first designed his fiat money system and failed

Those so called financial assets are just a scam to rob average people off their money, when majority of the people were robbed, there will be depression and recession. But now when money can be created out of nothing at will, banks don't need to do this kind of scam any more, they can raise those financial assets' value forever using money out of thin air. And as long as people are still using fiat money to measure value, that game can last forever

There is a live show of central bank election: Greece crisis. Greece must decide if they still honor ECB to be their central bank, or they can say bye bye to ECB and setup their own central bank. The Greek people did not elect their central bank, but they elected a government who might be capable of setting up a new central bank thus totally reset the whole system

My guess is that ECB will never let them go. Print tons of euro and give it to Greece is much easier than set them free and become financially independent. However, ECB will never gain anything from enslaving Greece: They are so cunning that they just default  

If Greece are set free from ECB's control, they will be as good as heaven, then everyone will understand what is the root cause of Greece's problem