Wednesday, April 5, 2017

another comment on one of nick szabo's article

in response to
https://unenumerated.blogspot.nl/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html


Since the early adopters stand to profit enormously, I would not say bitcoin is socially scalable in all aspects. This gives rise to a wealthy class (Satoshi being the prime example) that Adam Smith said should have their wealth taxed away (because they gained wealth without labor). Later writers generalized Smith's complaints about the land-renting aristocracy and large capitalists forming monopolies and "lobbies" to include natural monopolies and unearned interest on loans.  Unearned interest on a loan is even worse in our Dutch-english type of loan as opposed to German-type. The difference between a dutch-english loan and a stock investment is that the loaner is not concerned with the outcome of the business venture. With collateral its head's I win and you win or break even and tails I win and you lose, excepting bankruptcies and housing crisis destroying collateral value. Anyway, if there is a class who can lend out a non-inflationary money at interest with little fear of loss, and more than live off that interest, the logical end result is a 1% class. But not just that, what happens if there is any type of wealth accumulation and everyone is require by law or convention to base the ownership or temporary control of all assets in society in that currency?  By definition, an accumulation  requires a loss of relative wealth by some other party if they tried to only live off their labor. By not investing more in the "machine" they and/or their children lose compared to other people. Maybe that's good and simply survival of the fittest, but I'm not sure. The escape for the masses getting less and less of of the total wealth by trying to live off of wages instead of engaging in the "savings war" is to abandon the currency, just like empire currencies eventually have to be abandoned. The non-working non-skilled wealthy would then lose its cheap slaves. The bitcoin "ponzi scheme" ends. He who gets in early and gets out before the fall is the winner, not having not ever having done anything beneficial for society. But maybe the machines will figure out how to force us to accept on this one currency so that we work more efficiently (i.e. we work harder for less money). Economizing means doing more with less, not optimizing human happiness. The recent increase in human happiness which might just be an odd recent result of the fossil fuel influx.  Anyway, the focus on savings in a non-inflationary coin like bitcoin is supposed to cause a deflationary spiral until a different currency is adopted. I never see anyone addressing these problems.

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