Bitcoin is teaching libertarians everything they don’t know about economics

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/08/bitcoin-is-the-new-middle-ages/

by a_w • 9 years ago

55 5 9 years ago

olvar_• 9 years ago

Not a libertarian nor a bitcoin fan, but I have to disagree with OP. First, he postulates a gedankenexperiment where bitcoin replaces the dollar, but since it tends to appreciate in value, no one actually spends their money, so the economy halts. This train of though obviously neglects the fact that, if it actually replaced the dollar, people would _need_ to use and spend their bitcoins, so its price action would be very different to what we have seen.

Then he goes and mocks the idea of having a trustless currency system but IMO he misunderstands the idea. If you use the currency for exchange you still have to trust other people, for instance if I use bitcoin on Amazon, I'd still need to trust Amazon and possibly some other merchant. The part of trust you are taking away is not between people, but towards the ability of the State to issue money and regulate its value. But then libertarians may come up with some other ways to achieve this that do not involve cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, you don't need to be a libertarian to agree on that principle. One example of this is Chilean Central Bank, which -unlike the FED and by the Chilean constitution- cannot buy the government's debt, so the government can't just keep printing money for political reasons, like many countries in the region have been doing for decades.

So whatever lesson he is trying to teach seems a bit farfetched. Bitcoin may die and not mean a single thing for libertarianism, because IMO it's success depends on technical implementation, not ideological barriers.

throwaway2016a• 9 years ago

he part of trust you are taking away is not between people, but towards the ability of the State to issue money and regulate its value.

Not 100% complete. You are also taking away the requirement that the seller trust the buyer. Assuming of course that both the buyer and the seller are willing to wait for the transaction to clear before delivering the product.

You are correct though, that it does not take away the need for the buyer to trust the seller.

abhisharm2• 9 years ago

Unless and until the asset and entire supply chain you are using is also somehow trustless, which I admit is contrived, but also interesting to think about.

abhisharm2• 9 years ago

Bitcoin may die and not mean a single thing for libertarianism, because IMO it's success depends on technical implementation, not ideological barriers.

100% agree. The technical details of bitcoin's implementation are taken up (despite being a red herring) by the author as an indictment of libertarian principles themselves, probably the reason he focuses on the oldest and most technologically outdated crypto out of the major ones.

Strudelnoggin• 9 years ago

Bitcoin may die and not mean a single thing for libertarianism

Exactly. Either the author overestimates Libertarian interest in Bitcoin and/or the article as simply a hit-piece on Libertarianism in general.

Bitcoin is teaching libertarians everything they don’t know about economics

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