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Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 17, 2016 5:27 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment by jcm
Parent article: Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

> The dollar works because of the United States government, military, nukes, and so on.

"Democracy is the worst from of government... except for all the others."

With all their respective and very many sins and despite "the 1%", democracies are still the most... "decentralized" forms of control. So Bitcoin failed to beat this; let's watch and see what comes next.


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Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 17, 2016 11:56 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (9 responses)

> "Democracy is the worst from of government... except for all the others."

Actually, democracy is "government of the middle class, by the middle class, for the middle class". Which is why it's now under so much threat. And which is also why attempts to impose it on other countries fail so disastrously.

Democracy blossomed in Britain with the rise of the Victorian middle class. Democracy survived in India despite people saying it wouldn't, because there was a large middle class. Various attempts to "democratise" South America have imploded because the countries had no middle class to speak of and they elected a dictator to power (and just look at the similar mess in Africa. In fact, because of hyper-inflation, that's probably why a certain AH was *elected* to power in Germany!).

The middle class is being squeezed. More and more of the world's wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Even as the "average salary" is rising, the salary of the "average man" is falling ...

I think our democratic experiment is coming to an end. Look at pretty much EVERY election nowadays, America being a perfect example, victory goes to the person who managed to outspend everyone else. Our setup isn't quite so bad - there are strict spending limits - but it's still pretty obvious that throwing money at a constituency will win that constituency. It's just that there's a limit to the amount of money you can throw.

Cheers,
Wol

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 17, 2016 17:16 UTC (Sun) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (6 responses)

> I think our democratic experiment is coming to an end.

Could people (not just you) please discuss their general political opinions in fora dedicated to these topics and leave lwn for technical and open source-relevant issues, please? The signal2noise ratio seems to detoriate pretty quickly these days. Thanks.

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 17, 2016 21:03 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

"Time to end the disastrous democratic experiment." -- Sword_of_truth

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 18, 2016 7:47 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (4 responses)

There's still an easy and quite reliable way to avoid seeing political discussions on LWN: whenever you find an article about a fairly political topic - like for instance a new and revolutionary currency - then simply avoid reading its comments section.

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 18, 2016 23:00 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm not fussed either way but spaetz has a legitimate complaint: it's quite hard to skip over large off-topic threads in the "unread comments" interface.

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 20, 2016 7:20 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

Missed that, don't use this interface much. Maybe because it's... not that convenient to use and should be enhanced :-)

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 20, 2016 7:24 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Thought of this just now: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.lwn - now this would really rock!

(Check http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel if you never heard of gmane before)

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 20, 2016 19:22 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

At least you've got "unread comments" :-)

Non-subscribers just have an "all comments" view, as best I know ...

Cheers,
Wol

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 17, 2016 23:54 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

Contrary to popular belief, Hitler wasn't actually elected by the German people, he was artificially installed as chancellor of the German Reich by the Reich president, Hindenburg. In fact, in the last non-rigged election Hitler's party actually lost votes compared to the one before that, and didn't achieve a parliamentary majority that would have been sufficient to form a government (which is why Hindenburg stepped in). To be fair, Hindenburg wasn't a huge fan of Hitler's either – Hindenburg was popular as a general and war hero and used to think of Hitler, who had fought for a time during WWI, as “that Bohemian corporal” –, but by that time he was quite elderly and his advisors assured him that a coalition government consisting mostly of Conservatives that included only two Nazi ministers apart from Hitler himself as chancellor couldn't be so bad.

Also, when Hitler came to power, the German hyper-inflation had been over for 10 years or so. There was a period of several years of relative stability and prosperity between the hyper-inflation and the Great Depression, and the latter did contribute to the political that eventually led to the Nazis coming to power.

Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Posted Jan 18, 2016 0:31 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Also, when Hitler came to power, the German hyper-inflation had been over for 10 years or so.
Moreover, it was actually a period of severe _deflation_ with all the problems of a deflationary spiral.

Hitler stopped it by introducing a "stimulus" program in the form of huge military expenditures and public projects (like the initial Autobahn system).

Why is it important? Bitcoin is by design deflationary - the value of the individual coins will increase over time.


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