151–160 of 520 posts
I have a really hard time taking a column called "The Conscience of a Liberal" seriously, even more so when he claims: "Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I; but I am trying not to let that tilt my positive analysis of BitCoin one way or the other." in a piece titled "Bitcoin is Evil".
This is his column: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the floor is unrelated to the energy put into mining. The intrinsic value of Bitcoin is the ability to facilitate financial transactions. Brinks' entire CIT vehicle business is based upon just a subset of this function, and we can agree their value is not zero.
Bitcoin is able to facilitate transactions because of the power put into the computers running the Bitcoin network. Mining Bitcoin provides the functionality for validating the block chain. So, power into the network provides the value of security.
Either way, he's not to be trusted.
>> BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions
So? Damaging States' ability to forcefully confiscate everyone's wealth is a distinctly good thing, here in the real world.
What does that sound like? Maybe an earlier top post on HN http://blog.oleganza.com/post/71410377996/crypto-anarchy-doe...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Krugman is smart and a bit condescending, with a sarcastic bent. "Is evil" was not prima facie humorous, but the way certain people in this thread have responded to the title without reading the article may have been part of the joke.
It's still a totally inaccurate bait and switch title, which annoys me and makes me like his column a little less. If I click through to an article called "Bitcoin is Evil", maybe I actually want to read about how a Bitcoin-dominated world is going to making exploiting the poor trivially easy. I'm not convinced yet, but it's a plausible (if normative) argument someone could make, so there's no sense in making a joke…
Judging by the clichés you use, exploiting the poor is probably a good thing in your Libertarian utopia.
Ignore the flamebait headline. The distinction Krugman makes between positive and normative economics is a useful one. On the positive side, I think Krugman and DeLong are overestimating the strength of the floor for the value of a dollar. Hyperinflation would make it impossible for the Federal Reserve to buy up enough dollars to stabilize the value of the currency. Sure, you can pay taxes with them, but the governme…
>Hyperinflation would make it impossible for the Federal Reserve to buy up enough dollars to stabilize the value of the currency Even if this is true, where is the evidence that we're in imminent danger of hyperinflation? Despite mounting public debt, U.S. inflation has remained incredibly low since the start of the financial crisis four years ago, as has the interest rate that must be paid by the government to issue…
There's something you're overlooking though: the dollar was backed by gold until 1971, and that's where our problems really started mounting.
Here's another interesting (though imperfect) way of thinking about bitcoin: it's a decentralized corporation, where bitcoins are ownership shares and the business is money transfer, like a decentralized Western Union. And for further thought, could other types of businesses also be structured in this way?
>>BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions. So basically it brings an ability to the middle-class that normally only the top 1% have. We know wealthy people use tax loopholes(and a few of them, laundering) and... why do…
I have had and am continuing to have a dialogue with smart technologists who are very high on BitCoin — but when I try to get them to explain to me why BitCoin is a reliable store of value, they always seem to come back with explanations about how it’s a terrific medium of exchange. My friend, you fall under this critique. While the middle-class can make transactions if it chooses using Bitcoin, it has to deal with i…
So what we have is governemnt creating an illusion of unmanaged store of value through financial engineering. It's is somewhat artificial, so I suspect it's not stable either. Consider that financial bubbles are caused by excess of capital relative to production needs, and the glut of capital was accumulated strictly due to people trying to preserve value of their savings. There is a mismatch between amount of value people are trying to preserve and cumulative size of viable investment opportunities.