tar
New Member
- Jul 15, 2016
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Is this that famous kind of flawless Austrian argumentation?Nah!
Is this that famous kind of flawless Austrian argumentation?Nah!
as long as you don't insist on the origin of a money having to come from a physical commodity, i suppose you can shoehorn Bitcoin into the Regression Theorum@Roger_Murdock
"All it took to get the ball rolling was a few visionaries who recognized that Bitcoin's fundamental properties gave it the potential to, over time, become valued by others for its exchange usefulness, which led them to place immediate value on it."
Agreed, This this is plausible.
But it is a very interesting question how the first Bitcoin exchangers determine what initial value to assign to the unit. All the Regression Theorem says is that this initial value had to be based on something other than just previously observed exchange values. The initial demand could be based on something as trivial as "having fun". For example, many people spend countless hours collecting in-game currencies like World of Warcraft Gold. So I see no reason why initial Bitcoin acquirers couldn't have been motivated by similarly trivial reasons. This means the initial value could have been based on some combination of the amount of leisure time people felt like spending on mining, and an incremental electricity cost that was small enough to seem trivial.
Krawisz's speculation explanation could be true, but it's also possible that initial value was based on more frivolous reasons.
No, but your writing was so far out I did not want to undertake a discussion.Is this that famous kind of flawless Austrian argumentation?![]()
I can certainly agree that a monetary system is going to make systematic extortion easier. (Having to collect cows from the cattle farmer, baskets from the basket weaver, etc., etc., would be kind of a pain.) But ... so what? Money also makes voluntary, wealth-creating exchange and the coordination of productive economic behavior infinitely easier. And the historical origins of money don't strike me as terribly important. Even if money as we know it were the invention of some warlord who created it as a way to make the collection of tribute easier, that wouldn't change the fact that money as a behavior is a hugely useful tool for wealth creation. So if you don't like extortion and violence (and I don't), the answer isn't to try to scrap the idea of money entirely because a) the TPTB aren't going to go along with it; and b) you'd be throwing the baby out with the bath water. A better approach in my view (as an anarcho-capitalist) is to embrace an alternative to the monetary status quo (like Bitcoin) that seeks to remove power from the hands of a privileged elite. And also to try to change people's consciousness so that they recognize the illegitimacy of the state's purported authority.That is a general misinterpretation of the foundation of money and when why and how it emerged.
The foundation of money (credit) is power. With the first claim of tribute the reference is there. Whatever is claimed the subjects have to provide it on the fixed date(!) or they will face penalty. This is the reference of power: force and violence - the foundation of money, markets and prices.
You somehow misunderstand me or I just failed trying to point out the basically obvious requirement for money/markets/contracts(!) the Austrians (and (Neo)Classical) proponents mistakenly presuppose as a natural given "thing" which in their imagination even could be created by competitive private institutions: centralized law. A law that guarantees the obligation whereof the "value" results, e.g. someone has to provide 100 kilo of corn on september the 1st - otherwise he is degraded into a slave or beheaded or whatever sanction you may think of. Before this "state-building" procedure, no one has even thought about producing a surplus - there was neither a need of it (because it existed voluntary solidarity inbetween communities) nor did anyone know what a fixed due date meant (this came with the tribute claims in the world for the first time).No, but your writing was so far out I did not want to undertake a discussion.
Lose that violence perspective. Violence can not possibly be the source of value of money, the value that is far above the usefulness the money stuff is made of. Robbers take money all right, but, if anything, it would reduce the value, by increasing the risk. You have 100, but if the risk of losing it to a thief is 50%, the value for you would be reduced to the equivalent of 50 in a safe situation.
The value of money comes from the market, and you can use destructive force on it to draw prices in either direction, but it is still the market. (The price is something that is revealed when in a voluntary exchange, some number of one thing is exchanged for some other number of another thing. The price of thing expressed in the other thing is some number divided by some other number). No king can change that.
You are correct that it was easier to collect silver than to collect tons of corn - this development of tribute change is also historically proven and hereby I think it is necessary to mention that not the "thing" (corn, silver, coins, cash, electronic bits and bytes, you-name-it) itself is money - money is the immaterial right of debt amortization and the particular "thing" is only the information carrier set by the sovereign as public law!A better approach in my view (as an anarcho-capitalist) is to embrace an alternative to the monetary status quo (like Bitcoin) that seeks to remove power from the hands of a privileged elite. And also to try to change people's consciousness so that they recognize the illegitimacy of the state's purported authority.
BTW, if you haven't read this article, I'd strongly recommend it:
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/reciprocal-altruism-in-the-theory-of-money/
Are you living in wonderland? I even showed you how the Indians have "learned" the "value" of gold, which beforehand ("before hand"... haha) was z e r o for them. A very nice win win situation!@tar
You are still far out. The market is inherently human, voluntary action has been the preferred way since people understood that violence is highly destructive, the reverse of value creation. Value creation is the win win trade, you make a good or service, act in the market, and both participants in the trade are better off, the sum of value they have together has increased.
I can read your cognitive dissonances and how much you suffer from it, unfortunately. On the one hand I understand that you prefer the imagination of a happy win win humanity... on the other hand I recognize it as ignorance to accept tribute and law as general economic foundation.TLDR; Seeing that all that was just a response to your very first sentence, you can maybe feel the pain I have from reading your words.
If so, how come they collected it in the first place?Are you living in wonderland? I even showed you how the Indians have "learned" the "value" of gold, which beforehand ("before hand"... haha) was z e r o for them. A very nice win win situation!
You mean the Indians? They used it as trinket beforehand - without due dates, therefore no valuation of property / prices, no interest rates, no credits, no economic incentive, no market.If so, how come they collected it in the first place?
Do you know when and why property emerged? An alienable right of private law that stands above sheer posession! Can you imagine that property rights are a fundamental change for sociocultural behaviour which have absolutely nothing in common with delightfulled plans in order to have so-called "win win situations" at all?it is completely up to the owner of property do do what he wishes with it
Primarily a common and reasonable understanding of the dependency between public and private law and the related subordination of any economic development whereof money, interest, markets etc. initially emerge - instead of following ahistoric assumptions of outdated theories.I don't understand what you are up to.
That we have to accept the contradiction of public (state) and private (market) law and their partial dependencies and finally can get rid off such socialist (state) and liberal (market) approaches that ignore those dependencies and therefore led to poverty and millions of deaths in the last century.What is the consequence of all this?
Spreading the wordWhat are you going to do?
I bought one 2 years ago (after the first big hype) and speculated a bit with Litecoin. Still have the 1 bitcoin.Will you get some coins and hold?
For paying or what? Nope - as I do not have any clue where and what I should pay with.Will you use them?
I often thought about a political career but I do still not know which party or movement I should join (Europe: Germany). The lefts still represent outdated marxistic theories, are blind for the law and ignore family rights as well as demographic developmentsWill you move into a position of power?
I am mostly for the underdog as the established ones here agitate against the majority of German civilians - not only against those who are net payer in the social system but also the receivers and the middleclass in general (the wages stagnate since nearly 20 years).Will you support the powerful?
As a society/state in general is a system of redistribution of wealth I give my very best not to give too much wealth away but I cannot hide my economic activity as my business partners do not pay me in Bitcoin and I have to pay my taxes in Euro.Will you take their gifts, will you try to become a receiver of monopoly privileges?
I once studied economics on the university and was shocked enough by the nonscientific assumptions in order to create mathematic models which have nothing in common with the real world. After I wrote my thesis on property economics and debitism I now sympathize with ANEP (Academy for New European Political Economics).Will you join the ranks of the economic academia, the neo keynesian cargo cult?
Why should I? I see it as what it is for now: an object of speculation (like an electronic type of gold) but not money as explained before.Do you want to depress bitcoin?
This is science fiction à la Hobbes. The opposite happened. The homines sapientes became violent when they have been forced to produce surplus (tribute/tax) to the war lords (church and state). That's the origin of the market and all kind of money (an enforced contest that had been inexistent before). That's the tragedy of the commons, which lived in anarchy, self-sufficiency and therefore without suffering organized violence.@tar
You are still far out. The market is inherently human, voluntary action has been the preferred way since people understood that violence is highly destructive, the reverse of value creation.