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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   30782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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I prefer digital good boy points because my decades-long experience is that I can reliably exchange them for goods and services that I desire. I grant that there is some systemic risk incurred by relying on said good boy points instead of the new and very reliable shitcoins, but I find that level of risk over the course of my lifetime to be acceptable, particularly when compared to the likelihood that I'll ever be in a situation where Delta or my local steakhouse are accepting Doge.

I get it, you just want to grill.

But what happens if the local steakhouse starts being rationed? Maybe they haven't met their Climate Obligations? Or maybe you aren't doing your part of the Green New Deal? You might want to go to a market... oh your digital good boy points can't be traded to Non-Licensed Traders?

How are you going to protest if you can't fund anything individually or collectively? How can you have free speech if you can't pay for a journal or web hosting? The next thing you know the police have invited you over to 'have tea' like they do in China and there's nothing you can do about it, certainly not paying for a lawyer.

Without freedom of transaction, there are no other freedoms.

But what happens if the local steakhouse starts being rationed? Maybe they haven't met their Climate Obligations? Or maybe you aren't doing your part of the Green New Deal? You might want to go to a market... oh your digital good boy points can't be traded to Non-Licensed Traders?

Assuming this, I expect I cannot buy them with BTC either.

To avoid such scenario other methods are more efficient.

You can buy anything with Bitcoin, an early use-case was illegal drugs. They physically cannot stop you making the transaction. In this scenario they'd probably watch all the BTC addresses, so you'd actually be using monero or some other privacy-coin.

Anyway, no revolution can work without financing.

Still, in such case (meat being rationed) I expect that BTW will not help much compared to other barter and that it will be worse at barter than other mediums of exchange due to insane transaction fees and long confirmation period.

I think my odds of being able to go to the farmer's market and buy beef with American dollars for the remainder of my life are quite high. Maybe I'll be wrong, but my general monetary plan isn't based on not desiring the ability to freely transact, but based on my evaluation that I can pretty much do so in the United States and I don't expect that to change any time soon. I'll be absolutely shocked if it turns out that in 2034 I can purchase brats with Bitcoin, but not US dollars.

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