17

Objectivism & the illusion of currency?

Posted by $ AJAshinoff 3 years, 8 months ago to Philosophy
60 comments | Share | Best of... | Flag

cryptocurrency is literally NOTHING, a promise based on the integrity of a mathematical algorithm.

By definition Crypto means"
noun, plural cryp·tos.
a person who secretly supports or adheres to a group, party, or belief.
adjective
secret or hidden; not publicly admitted:

Objectivism is the idea that human knowledge and values are objective: they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has.
Peikoff, Leonard (1991). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

A=A
Value for Value

So how is it a philosophy based on the tangible and observable can embrace such a vacuous idea for currency? Money being the physical representation of a persons labor, his/her sole property to do with what he or she wish's for his/her sole benefit. How does one give his "value" away for nothing or at best potential from nothing?

Granted the dollar isn't worth much if anything these days. Even so, if worse comes to worst you can wipe your ass with a dollar bill, you can smelt and reshape coins for whatever purpose you have. You can compost paper money to help grow food? Knock $10 worth of smelted quarters into some weak nails or a spoon?

What do can you do with cryptocurrency when it is 'considered' pass'e by the masses? When governments feel too threatened by another competing illusion of wealth (value) and filters out all the supporting protocols for the "currency" 1's & 0's from routers and servers around the globe of those "artists" they don't prefer (or who care not to share)?

What happens when you alone no longer are permitted access to your digital funds or your fund's algorithm gets rendered obsolete by the next version of super computer and your $10k cypto stockpile is worth absolutely nothing?

I get being frustrated with things are they are.But a recent conversation has me wondering if the whole **cking world has gone insane.


All Comments


Previous comments...   You are currently on page 2.
  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Soooooo. Being able to use bright coins as fishing lures while supporting the central bank is more better?

    Not following. Central bank = bad. Bitcoin undermines central bank. Therefore Bitcoin = good.

    BTW hacking Bitcoin is not easy with supercomputers, but will be super easy with quantum computers.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    McAfee openly admitted to hacking into Honduras government using the software he provided. My point is ANYTHING electronic online is subject to extreme risk by those who either control or know better how to use the resource. El Salvador's time will come when whoever decides those things decides.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ blarman 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Actually, when testifying in front on Congress, Janet Yellen argued that the IRS already has the right to monitor transactions as low as $10. Just insane. Especially when she went on to try to excuse such behavior as simply "enforcement" of existing tax laws. Nevermind that the biggest tax cheats aren't the people spending $600 on a new TV at Wal-Mart, but the Democrats themselves. One need look no further than to remember Timothy Geitner, the freaking Secretary of the Treasury who owed millions in back taxes. Or how about Al Sharpton who owes millions. Or how about members of Congress like Sheila Jackson Lee?

    The utter hypocrisy and lies make me want to scream...
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by gj289fia 3 years, 8 months ago
    El Salvador recently adopted cryptocurrency as legal tender, so far the only nation to do so.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Lets not forget, its entire worth is determined by a communally accepted perception, subject to change given at any moment for any given reson.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    To an extent I agree but ultimately. Disagree. As I mentioned to CG, even without value you still can value, practical use, is paper money or coin. Crypto, there is nothing of value once public (communal) perception decides the 1's & 0's are just vapor and move on to the next craze. Further, computing being what it is today, the algorithm's of crypto curency, the foundation of crypto's supposed worth, will be moot as those algorithms are quickly cracked by super computers.

    What about government filtering out crypto protocols, preventing you from even seeing, let alone getting what you put into it?

    With decades in IT I can assure you that nothing online is entirely secure, nor will it ever be. For every guy like me there are 100k people on the planet who have nothing better to do than smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, eat pizza, and hack other people's system on monitor 1 while watching porn on monitor 2.

    Oddly enough this quote by Franklin is also applicable in this context as well.

    "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by mccannon01 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If in very good to excellent condition many of those silver certificates are worth more than face value to collectors.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by LibertyBelle 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Some years ago, I would sometimes come into possession of "silver certificates". These were old paper money, and were supposedly redeemable for a certain weight of silver. But an employer of mine told me that the government had repudiated that, and that therefore they could no longer be turned into the government in exchange for the silver. I still kept them as curiosities until I got so low on cash that I had to use them as regular money.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by LibertyBelle 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Actually, I do not think that governments should be either printing or coining money. Money should be printed and coined by private enterprise, which enterprises would be subject to criminal penalties if found guilty of fraud (misrepresentation in weight, for instance.) In the case of paying for legitimate functions of govern-
    ment (military, for instance) maybe the government should print some scrip, redeemable in local coin/currency.
    Perhaps it would be good, in that case, to have some kind of exchange, where the different currencies would be weighed and measured on scales,
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by LibertyBelle 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Crypto is not something solid that can be handled, like gold,or even paper. It seems to me that it is some kind of pretense. So why is a "private" pretense much better than a government pretense?
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by LibertyBelle 3 years, 8 months ago
    I never thought I would want any "cryptocurrency".
    Actually, I generally prefer to deal in cash, even when checks are obtainable. Even when I have to send money through the mail, I generally buy a money order. I am getting sick of the garbage which is being invented in the modern world. But I don't want to die before I get my debts paid off.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by JuliBMe 3 years, 8 months ago
    Value is set by the amount of whatever currency exists that people are willing to pay. The currency itself has no value until the fad of the day takes people by storm and gives it value.

    Gold and silver by different degrees, however, have always been coveted by people and always will be.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by DrZarkov99 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I like your balanced response, recognizing there are more concrete mediums of exchange, even though you have faith in the credibility of blockchain. The caution I would pose as the vulnerability of encryption is quantum computers, which the intelligence agencies now believe will ultimately eliminate the idea of "uncrackable" encryption.

    Ultimately, I'm afraid the devotees of cryptocurrency will become a joke, like the folks who used to say "Hang onto them Confederate dollars, boys, 'cause the South's gonna rise again!" The difference is that the Confederate dollar is now worth far more as a collectible physical item than it ever was as currency, while the cryptocoin will be worth exactly nothing.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by DrZarkov99 3 years, 8 months ago
    Cryptocurrencies are only the latest evolution of the Ponzi scheme, relying on the "greater fool" principle (there's always someone dumber than you are to buy your worthless stuff). The telling factor is when the creator of the scheme suddenly disappears before others get wise to the crime, and the creator of Bitcoin has vanished, just when China made cryptocurrency illegal as a medium of exchange.

    I'm glad to see I'm not the only objectivist to recognize immense fraud when I see it. It's a sad sign of how far our society has gone down the magic "something for nothing" rabbit hole. One encouraging thing is that unlike the Albanian Ponzi real estate bomb, or Iceland diving into the subprime mortgage fiasco, it appears no nation has bought into the cryptocurrency fantasy, which could have a huge impact on international finance when the whole illusion vanishes.

    Preppers seem to be the only people remaining sane, recognizing what an asylum the world is becoming. Goods of real value, as in foodstuffs, ammunition, precious metals, stockpiles of expendable goods (the toilet paper hoarders aren't the crazy ones), crafting skills to barter with are the treasury of last resort if SHTF.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by LarryHeart 3 years, 8 months ago
    What we call a dollar is a debt note (IOU) from the federal government to the Banks (Federal Reserve) and represents nothing but a promise by the Federal government to tax the people and repay the value of the loan (bond) that the dollar represents. However the government reneges on it's promise of what seemed to be 100 cents at first by taking out more loans (printing more debt - Federal Reserve Notes we call a dollar) to pay for expenses way above the ability of the government to tax it's people for decades into the future. What that does is dilute the promise (value) of each Federal reserve note we call a dollar since the total note amounts in circulation are much more than what the Government can pay from your taxes. Let's say government takes in a million in taxes but has printed two million notes. Each note then is worth 50 cents not 100. The government has now reduced the value of the Fed reserve note Dollar to less than one cent compared to 1918 when it began as a promise for 100 cents. Inflation of prices is actually the equalizing of prices to the actual promised value of the Dollar note.

    Cryptocurrency or coins made from mined metals are based on a fixed amount of labor put in to mine either digital or actual coinage It is not based on taxes but rather a fixed value and amount of the underlying metal or digital coins. No worse than trading someone else's IOU that you have to pay from taxes. . .
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 8 months ago
    This is My observation on Crypto Currency lately.

    The coins value rises and falls according to usage, interest and the value of the services it represents.
    Example: Etherium is a block chain network called the Ether and it's not just for the currencys, it's for all services rendered by each of these companies that create ways to make the Ethernet faster, more secure, autonomous and the future of all communication out of the eyes of the government and Deep States...just like the way the Internet was supposed to be.
    There are companies that create more than internet stuff but choose to spur investment in crypto coins instead of stocks on a corrupt exchange.

    These technologies will change forever the nature of the internet and vanquish the corrupt tech industry and social medias we are dealing with now.

    However, I am not in favor of a crypto dollar. We still need a physical currency because of the vulnerabilities of our electrical grid and communications grid in the coming years...there is nothing that can be done to stop what's coming as of yet...and I think the Fed and UN knows this.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by term2 3 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I suppose that the currencies of today just make one treat them as trading devices, and not stores of value. Make money now, spend the money now, and invest only in your ability to make money tomorrow
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by term2 3 years, 8 months ago
    Real Money is supposed to be store of value and a means to exchange value.
    Many things have been used as "real money" in the past, the most recent ones precious metals. They last a long time, but are difficult to carry around in a modern economy.
    The idea of paper receipts issued by banks backed by gold was used for a long time, and worked pretty well actually. BUT, when the government took over the issuane of these receipts, they printed more receipts than there was gold to back them up. Then they took away the gold backing altogether. That is where we are today. We have a convenient way to trade using the "dollars", but we lose value continually if we keep them. They arent a store of value at all.

    Crypto is a joke based on nothing at all but people;s. Its even worse than the dollars we now use. I think we have better odds here in vegas than crypto gives us. It can go up or down by large amounts based on who knows what.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ jbrenner 3 years, 8 months ago
    The reason that many will give regarding an Objectivist's support for cryptocurrency is that the exchange of value is not based on a government's affirmation of such value, but the real reason may be that it is a "sign of the dollar". It is a way for people who are not centrally localized to exchange value for value in a way that has some degree of privacy.

    Do you really want Joe Biden et al. monitoring all transactions over $600? They already monitor transactions over $10000.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by mgarbizo1 3 years, 8 months ago
    I think currency is a lot like our history books, influenced and therefore, subjected to the whims of those in power and in control. Objectively, if paper money were to no longer be a trusted medium of exchange for goods/service, then sure, it can then be used to wipe your ass and light a fire to keep you warm, but is that really what you want to fall back on when push comes to shove and the US currency is no longer an accepted form of exchange, like say Venezuela's currency has become? You've defined crypto without really considering the follies of currency as it is today, like fiat currency, which is exactly why our dollars earned today are worth much less tomorrow. As Circuit Guy correctly stated, the only way to win is to exchange it for investment purposes as opposed to speculative purposes. I really think you have to come to the conclusion that values change everyday (sometimes for good and other times for bad, like now), and so do our different media of exchange. Human ingenuity is infinitely capable of producing the next big idea that sends us in a flurry to want to own or be a part of, call it the human condition if you will
    Reply | Permalink  

  • Comment hidden. Undo