Nick Szabo  🔑

Incidentally, the tax collections of defeatable polities is the much-vaunted bullet-enforced "floor" Krugman et. al. love to put undernearth fiat currencies. That floor sits on structures quite vulnerable to political earthquakes.

Some examples of political earthquakes that destroyed government financial "floors", including some in major world powers: https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/959000858485665792 … https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/979478875313922048 …https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/979454582605594624 …

That’s where I think pro-fiat advocates need to tighten their arguments: they could say “we’re getting better at creating political systems, institutional frameworks where central banks can be independent from political pressure”. A Stephen Pinker like optimism vs BTC’s pessimism

They share this in common with the "governance innovation" utopians that plague the crypto space.

Horseshoe theory of Bitcoin: crypto utopians and crypto skeptics overlap more with each other on the topic of Bitcoin vs alternatives than they’d like to admit

Maybe just a teeny bit harsh, wouldn't you say? There are several thoughtful pieces on the subject, I think.

There are also thousands of thoughtful pieces of theology from each of the major world religions that thoroughly contradict each other.

This is true, but am not sure what point you are trying to make. One can make a thoughtful pro/con analysis of any money and payment system. Unless one is peddling a particular religion, that is. Is that what you're doing?

My point is that thoughtfulness is woefully insufficient for being accurate or useful or worth reading. Why should Bitcoin people pay attention to the self-serving and often facially shallow ("Bitcoin is too volatile to ever be used as money") theologies of central bankers?

First of all, because some of those arguments may be correct, at least, in some contexts. In any case, my point is that you could do better by critiquing the arguments you find to be wrong instead of throwing all central bankers (or any class of individuals) under the same bus.

That would certainly not be better. It is an awful way to waste one's time, trying to reconcile the realities of monetary history and engineering, which I have mastered, with the superstitions of central banker macroecon. I'm not yet another of your victims.

Alright, well I would have certainly preferred a civil and enlightening conversation, but it seems you're not willing. Wishing you all the best with your project.

Apparently this is indeed religion and I am the devil. :-)

The @federalreserve and its acolytes share common ground with central planners, a belief that systems can be controlled with enough information and knowledge. Such tinkering has given us 0% rates, a burst TMT bubble, housing bubble, and yet to burst sovereign debt bubble.

"belief that systems can be controlled with enough information" In a way, they are correct. They control the system... but not for everyone's benefit... for their own. Siphon off the bubbles, and short sell the bursts.

Yup, socialist don’t believe their own propaganda. It’s so frustrating that because we are good people we assume the devils are just confused. They are not confused - they are feeding while they tell us to lie still because it causes economic stability.