Topic: Stefan Molyneux Bitcoin vs. Political Power (Must see if you haven't yet) - page 3. (Read 7913 times)

Very good. Every human is fundamentally anti war, do what you can do abolish this war state which exists to provide revenue to the big defense contractors, fuck them all.

Nonsense. Humans (for the most part) have a natural aversion to violence. Are you a spokesperson for the Military Industrial Complex? If you end up in a street fight, if it came to that, would you rather it dragged on as long as possible or would you rather it culminated in some result sooner so both sides could move on?


Yes... and now we get to the root of the problem. For whom is war fought, generals or the state they represent? If the answer is the state, then whom does the state work for if it's not a communist regime? If the answer is the people then what you're really talking about is not money, but support. To win generals need the support of the people they fight for, but can do much without any support whatsoever so long as they have funding, and that can come from a state even if not willingly from the people, via inflation.

If a war is unpopular its funding will be withdrawn by the people and be over, that is unless the people don't feel the direct costs of the war while it can remain funded, as in Vietnam where as you correctly point out the U.S. lost that unpopular war, which dragged on nonetheless. We now trade with the Vietnamese.


I believe this is a key argument of Keynesians. It is false. You can have a thriving economy, by some definition, without money at all. Wealth comes from things people produce, not units of account. I should define "wealth". When I say wealth I mean things which provide directly for or some enhancement to the basic needs of humans. If your house is filled with useless trinkets, although pleasure may have been taken in buying them I wouldn't say it makes one truly wealthy.

In this light we see it's goods and services which are produced by people, such as quality farm fresh food and the skilled chefs to process it, which are examples of valuable products within an economy and these things can be bartered for in the absence of money. Money simply makes barter more efficient, by providing a common medium through which various goods are traded.

Let me put it another way. Say there was an isolated neighborhood of a few city blocks, completely cut off from the rest of the world. Within this neighborhood there are people with different skills, doctors, chefs, musicians, etc. These people get together and determine to make an economy. They find a special sheet of paper and cut it up so that everyone has an equal amount of squares. They ask the doctor how many squares he would charge to do a life saving surgery. The doctor upon seeing everyone had 100 squares said 30 squares, this thereby giving each square measurable value. For example, the musician couldn't charge 30 squares to play a song.

For years this community lived happily enjoying fine food and music, trading squares for things they want, and building fine houses for say 1,000 squares. There would be no need to increase the money supply if the population didn't increase.

One day a stranger with zero skills arrives, but he finds a hidden trove containing three sheets of that special paper. Realizing he has stumbled into enormous wealth he calls over a few friends and they cut up the paper between them. They enter the economy wealthy men though they have contributed nothing of value. What effect does their lavish spending have on everyone else? The extra paper in circulation bids up prices, aka inflation, causing the other square holders to become poorer. That's what simply adding more money into supply does. It doesn't inherently add valuable GDP.

@acoindr  the purpose of war is NOT to end it quickly.  The purpose is to have victory over your enemies and make them legally comply by your demands afterward.  That might take years so money is needed.  No general can accept defeat because he didn't have enough money to win.


I don't understand the basketball analogy at all.  Economies need money and if money is limited economies cannot thrive. This is simple

Viet Cong won the "American War".  Vietnam became a Communist state after that.  The deterrent would be a treaty.  An agreement that we will not go to war.  Something like NATO

You overlooked my example of Pikertty research.  Wealth inequality happens when R (return on capital) is greater than G (growth).  pls refer to his research of empirical data



The middle class benefitted from post WW2 because the war destroyed capital and it reset the wealth distribution.

I don't get what you are trying to say but hope these few lines emphasize what I'm saying

Then what are you doing on a Bitcoin forum?

I guess you don't appreciate why limits are necessary. Without limits you lose meaning. It would be like a basketball game with no limit on how many players each side could bring onto the court. Pretty soon that game becomes meaningless because there is just no point to passing the ball.


War would have a heck of a lot better chance at being over quicker. As Stefan says when the money stops so do the bullets. War is expensive, yet governments don't have unlimited wealth without ability to create/counterfeit/inflate fiat money.


Really? Who won the Vietnam War, which spanned almost 20 years? The U.S.? What about Iraq? Did the U.S. win that war? What exactly were we fighting over again and what was the win?

Do you see how murky these answers get? That's the problem with going to war without clear impetus and objective. The wars drag on and because governments can mask the cost via currency inflation, there is little deterrent to those favoring war, for whatever reasons.


Well it's a slippery slope. If you provide people no restraint on drinking and driving that will inevitably get abused. Then you get the casualties of that policy.


Why so? Even if you follow a hard gold standard global human population increases by roughly 2% per year, which is about how much gold enters the supply as well.


I think that's an over simplification. The fact is that inflation of a currency provides an automatic, gradual transfer of wealth from lower to upper classes. That's a key reason wealth inequality is so high currently, that along with crony capitalism. Those wars and inflation certainly had effects on the economy, but the real way you help the poor is by allowing open access to a free market built on top of sound money.


The talk about gold standards and fractional reserve is about keeping the upper echelons of society, government and banks, honest. Once you have those two, which can do much damage due to the power they wield, under control then you let the free market work. I agree there should be common sense policies against unfair, uncompetitive monopolies.


I don't know why you have faith words are the simple answer. Even the U.S. Constitution has clear language, for example, which is routinely ignored.

OK I get your point now and perhaps you are right.  I'm glad you debated me.  I had to go back and watch that video again and ignore the distraction of his political ranting to figure out what point he is trying to make.

Still i think he must be some kind of nutcase to want to LIMIT money supply.  Again, my point is you can't single out war finance when it comes to economics.  And I don't agree that you can arrive at simple conclusions like "If we only limited money then the wars would only last a few months"

If history has proven anything is that once war is engaged there is no stopping til someone wins.  And the state will do whatever it takes to win.  So I think he has the cause & effect backwards.  Its not that govts print money because they want to wage war.  Its that once war is engaged you have to print money to win at all costs.   Imagine if you were Churchill, would you let Hitler occupy the UK cause you couldn't come up w couple hundred billion pounds?

But as a argument for BTC I think war financing is a weak argument.  Because if you limit money supply you limit ALL economic activity.  I could easily make a counter argument that Federal Reserve System was necessary for the Industrial Revolution & the Information Revolution to happen because it modernized banking.  But I won't because thats also a simplistic economic view

In his talk Stefan longed for the "good old days" of the 19th Century.  I don't know why he thinks times were better back then.  Wealth inequality today is at historical highs since levels of 19th century.  The wealth distribution was most even post WW2.  So perhaps prices were more stable back then but less people had access to wealth.  If you don't know about this economist, Thomas Piketty you should check out his work.  He writes about wealth inequality.  He actually says that WW1 & WW2 destroyed capital & reset the wealth inequality.  If you look at empirical data -- these wars HELPED the middle class

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006

http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-on-us-inequality-2014-4

I think all this talk about gold standards & fractional reserve banking are all smoke and mirrors used by people who simply want to transfer wealth from one population to another --namely themselves.  If you limit money supply then it becomes easier to one class to monopolize money supply.  No difference than when Marxists tried to convince the proletariat to uprise against the bourgeois.

If you want to stop wars then create stronger treaties.  If you want to balance out wealth inequality then limit wealth monopoly thru progressive taxation.  If you want to avoid systemic risk then regulate banking.  Its not like these issues aren't being discussed and debated all the time by super smart people.  Maybe the solution is already out there but there is no political will to make the changes necessary.  In any case changes have to made made from within the system not by creating noise outside the system.  BTC is a non-solution as far as I'm concerned because it ignores existing institutions that built over long spans of history.  Maybe that's why Communism also failed.  It doesn't work so lets destroy everything and start over is just crazy 20th Century 'tabula rasa' ideology.  Who the hell wants to experience that again?

Exactly. Like Stefan says, government doesn't want to have to make people choose between bread or war, because people will always choose bread. But war is profitable. Extremely profitable.

So fiat (=fake) money was invented. Print as much as you want, it doesn't matter! Now we can do war-for-profit forever! Hell, we can base our entire economy off that! Problem solved.





Nation states devour their children. Just watch this repeatedly until you get it.

Then how did the U.S. survive prior to 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created?


Governments want ability to print money to do whatever they (and their special interests, including war profiteers) want to do. This includes financing popular social programs which help politicians win election, but put a costly drain on the economy.


That's our point. Governments did suspend gold standards and inflate for those wars. Check out the following:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/war-causes-inflation-and-inflation-allows-government-start-unnecessary-wars

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard


It was the newly created Federal Reserve in 1913 which inflated for WWI leading to a bubble facilitating the "roaring twenties". The subsequent popping of that bubble caused the stock market to crash in 1929 ushering in the Great Depression.

World War II cost the U.S. 15 times more gold than it had in Fort Knox and the Fed.

Can I get $20 for trolling?

Pretty much this.  I'd be spreading the video around if I hadn't seen some of his prior videos which put me off the guy.  He might be right about Bitcoin.  In fact, I sincerely hope he is, but if other people start looking more closely at his other videos, they might end up taking him less seriously and that in turn casts doubt on what he's saying about crypto.

I can see why the more radical people out there are drawn to Bitcoin, but in terms of helping spread mainstream adoption, we ideally want to publicise details coming from a more moderate source to avoid alienating the general populace.  If we give the impression that Bitcoin is just for extremists and anarchists, it's going to hinder the cause.

Yeah but you can't single out War Financing.  If the govt cannot print money then nothing else can get financed (or limited financed).   Govts don't want the power to print money in order to engage in war.  They want that power to finance whatever they want to finance

Also you & Stefan are conflating separate issues.  Wars still occurred when money was backed by gold.  WW1 & WW2 are examples of huge wars that occurred when currencies backed by gold

The flaw of his arguments goes like this:

Wars cost money
If money is limited then war is limited
Therefore, to limit war we should limit money

I could try to make a similar illogical argument

Wars are fought by soldiers
If less soldiers then less wars
Therefore, to limit wars we should limit soldiers

It seems to me he had a hypothesis about war finance & banking.  Then he tried to connect BTC to that somehow.  Poor academics for a guy who claims to be a "philosopher"

Apparently you didn't read it carefully. As I tried to point out the word war isn't in the quote. Fighting to achieve something doesn't always mean you're fighting war.


I agree there has probably been in place a U.S. military wishlist to invade and occupy Iraq, Iran, Syria, regardless who landed in the Oval Office. Also as my Rwandan Genocide example shows it must be about oil, not morality.  What I'm saying is Saddam Hussein allowed enough interests to align to turn a wish into action.


Aha, but this is my (and Stefan's) point. If BTC (or gold) was used by Americans as the dollar is it absolutely could have prevented the Iraq War. Why? As I pointed out that war cost over 2 trillion dollars, all borrowed. If everyone was using BTC those costs would have been due and payable in BTC.

The problem is the government doesn't have the ability to create BTC on demand. It would have to actually get BTC from its citizens in some way, all bad: taxation, bonds (lending), or confiscation. In the case of taxation with such a large cost taxes would be high enough to anger the populace, and the war would be over quickly. In the case of borrowing with such a large cost interest rates would be high (remember things like gold or BTC hold or increase in value over time) and repayment would be steep so as to again require higher taxes. Confiscation, well you should know the rest...

None of those war finance options are preferable to a government that wants to remain easily in power, due to the cost felt by its citizens. This is how sound money prevents, or at least limits, war. Wars are then only fought over legitimate conflict, not frivolous, profiteering motives.


That's a false dichotomy. You're implying either govts can print money or there will be no war. Other possibilities exist, such as starting limited, less costly, war.


I'd argue there is a lot hidden from the masses, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, but either way the masses remain ignorant of much.


The fact is both he and Alex Jones have amassed large and growing audiences, so what they're saying obviously resonates with someone. Even if they don't get all of their information 100% correctly proven and presented in the best possible way, it seems foolish to dismiss the whole of their content as worthless and never deserving any attention.
  

Stefan didn't say politicians have always fought wars for the power to create money. You implied that. There are many ways to gain political objective without fighting war.


The Iraq War.

Was Operation Iraqi Freedom fought over land dispute? Ideology? Religion? Economics? That's certainly not what we in the U.S. were told. Iraq is nowhere near our borders.

We were specifically told it was over weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and further we knew where they were. Although I wouldn't hold my breath for an official government explanation of what went wrong let me propose a guess. Let me first remind viewers Americans in general didn't seem to be clamoring for war over WMD. There was also the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 where 500K to 1M were killed with no intervention from the U.S. If we are so concerned for the well being and slaughter of distant people, why not?

The real downfall of Saddam Hussein was interests of a powerful nation (the U.S.) were aligned against him. An empire the size of the U.S. which doesn't produce much domestically needs something else to export to sustain a debt fueled economy: war. The Iraq war cost over 2 Trillion dollars of additional U.S. debt. Second, as Stefan mentioned there are those who do profit from war and somebody got paid from those dollars.

Third, Saddam proposed selling oil for euros which threatened the petrodollar. While Iraq wasn't the world's biggest oil producer, others could get ideas and Iraq was small enough to be made an example of. Combine all this with the fact Saddam wasn't the most saintly ruler and you probably have the real basis for that war. Now that explanation I'd argue makes far more sense, and is certainly about the ability to continue printing fiat (the U.S. dollar).


I'd agree with the fierce part.


You're missing the point. It's not printing money that restrains government. It's cost. The two are not the same.

If the barometer for what people use as money is gold, something which government can't simply create to dish out, then people will feel the cost of things like war in a more pronounced way, rather then gradually over years by inflation.


Maybe the speeches of George W. Bush in the lead up to the Iraq War were more to your taste.

1.  He claims "Historically, politicians have always fought for the power to create money out of thin air, so they can increase their spending without having to directly increase taxes." 

Wrong -- Most wars are over land disputes, ideology, religion, economics or a combination.  Please name one war fought over the issue of printing fiat.  He certainly didn't

2.  Trotsky, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pinochet, Castro, etc..  These guys had nothing to do w banking.  They are astute politicians and fierce military guys.  Their power didn't come from raising money but politics and convincing people to follow them.

3.  Limiting money limits govt from printing to pay for war.  Wrong again.  Govt borrow money for war by selling (war) bonds.  Or maybe raise taxes.  Or they might borrow it from foreign banks.  No govts can just print money for no reason.  They can increase money supply in form of gov debt though.


All he says on stage is that govt do bad shit and it costs a lot of money.  Blah blah blah.  Well how does he know what's overpriced?  what is he comparing to?  Like "war on drugs" costing 100s of billions.  How much is a war on drugs supposed to cost?  Is there an empirical comparison?  No because he just want to make people irate.  What about good shit that govt do that costs 100s of billions?  He picks his projects be he wants to rile up people.  Anyways it was a goofy speech.  Nothing to do w BTC and more to do with scare mongering

Maybe. Can you point to anything he said that you think is wrong?

I don't like truthers or conspiracy theorists, but his thoughts on Bitcoin (specifically fixed supply currencies) as being useful for limiting political power are interesting.

Hahahahahahaha!!!! LOLOLOLOL He is NOT a "respected public intellectual".  He's a YouTuber fear monger and "truther".  He's a rebel rouser and tunnel visioned politically narrow minded libertarian know-it-all.  He just tries to instigate controversy.  No research no empiricism

No different than Ted Nugent, Alex Jones, Zietgeist dude.

If Molyneux is a cult leader, his cult is the truth. I strongly recommend checking out his "the tyranny of illusion" video. The man is a very respected public intellectual, an easy target for a nobody to slander.

Why is this thread not stickied yet? At least for Americans, this is by far the most important video on Bitcoin. Sticky it.

Stefan Molyneus is sort of a cult leader.

Check it -- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JqngrsDHU6Y

"Molyneux believes the world needs his show for its survival" ... delusional people will be delusional

Page 5? That is simply unacceptable. Everyone needs to see this.