There's a profound irony in bitcoin enthusiasts arguing against the legitimacy of patents. If you want a level playing field in society, then at least your currency should not benefit people for simply being the first to have THE IDEA of getting involved it. Patents, at least, expire, and there are plenty of ways to cheat around them.
Each coin you hold is intellectual property that you hope will shift a larger percentage of society's wealth from others to yourself without working for it as the coin's demand/supply ratio increases.
A fixed-quantity or deflating currency has always been the dream and foundation of entrenched powers who want to stay entrenched without having to work. Every successful economic system since Persian times has had extensive debt erasure if not all-out jubilee's (Jewish cyclic society-wide debt erasure) as a key to leveling the playing field ( see http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HudsonLostTradition.pdf ).
Printing money is a type of debt erasure. Our current problem is not excess money printing as much as it is printing mainly to enrich the rich by getting the toxic "assets" off banks balance sheets and onto taxpayers, among many other things, like social security to already wealthy grandparents (welfare for the rich).
Patents expire for the same reason debt erasure is important. Society can grow stronger in the future if the wealthy holders of patents, land, money, etc are kept on their toes by not being allowed to retain their wealth forever and for their heirs (land has really high taxes if you are not going to gainfully employ it for 2 generations).
No comments:
Post a Comment