Generally agree on the subject of paper vs. digital money. Had a friend who had to visit the mainland a while back, and a local was glorifying the convenience of digital shopping.
“But can’t the government track where you’ve been and what you’ve bought?” asked my friend.
The local was briefly perturbed. “I suppose they could,” he said slowly, before brightening, he replied, “But they wouldn’t!”
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Haha of course human beings given absolute control over other humans wouldnt abuse said power. when has that ever happened? The best way to discuss the subject when meeting truly naive people would be alongthe lines of: digital currency isnt all bad and it is convenient. The issue isnt using digitial currency (banks, debit and credit cards already are digital currency in most ways). The issue is taking away physical currency. Thats a real worry as no one has any choice and hope of defending thenselves without a physical currency.
We already have every tech company making a__ pay app. Wechat, line, samsung, apple , google etc etc. We already have digitized currency as in our physical currency can be exhanged digitally . That i think is ideal. Make the system better, sure. Absolutely do not discontinue physical money or the days of freedom are certainly numbered.
The other side of the coin, though, is that paper currency can be used to manipulate the economy. In Elbonia, everyone “believes in” cash as “real money” and don’t want to use electronic transfers, so the government can deliberately throttle the money supply to prevent any kind of economic growth (in conjunction with complementary legal impediments to business, employment, etc). There is a perennial shortage of paper cash. In that scenario, private electronic currencies might be the answer.
I keep seeing people reference this on here. I googled it and got Dilbert. Is it Taiwan, is it Forumosa? I don’t understand…
Well, not really. They are manipulating the value of it. Much like china, taiwan, the US and many other countries do. Whether you exchange a megabyte or a paper note isnt really the point in that scenario as they are just the physical entity that represents the value. My worry with digital is that the physical entity is gone and digital ones are way easier to manufactuure, suspend, take away and erase as there is nothing solid backing them up.
I agree cash is hollow as well, as i say in above posts. But millions of times safer and more real than a digitized version. its almost like no one has heardof credit card fraud and the like. Counterfeit notes, today, are far more difficult to manufacture than changing a decimal point on a computer.
It’s a stand-in for when you want to use an example of a fairly backward place- people used to say Ruritania.
Like people say “it’s like 1984” when they want to say something is totalitarian, or “Blade Runner” when they want to say some practice is more modern and cyber-punkish.
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ah, like podonk, or the boondocks, but on a national scale? people also used to say third world here, when that was relevant and less offensive?
And they are based on? Trust?
It’s the one with 7000+ islands.
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Yeah- Elbonia has a kind of East European/Balkan/Central Asian vibe.
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I wasn’t thinking of Bitcoin etc. As currencies, they’re completely useless, for several reasons. In particular, they do not meet the basic criteria for either a medium of exchange, or for a store of value (which are the most important things, for most people).
As far as I can tell, Bitcoin is just a bizarre Ponzi scheme (although I do know a couple of people who have made a shitload of money from playing that game, so I’m not going to knock it too much!).
That doesn’t mean that digital currencies could not, in theory, work as well as a paper currency. You can anchor the value of electronic money to commodities the same as you can with paper. The overriding requirement, IMO, is that it should be immune to government interference. You’re right that paper performs that function well. But I’m pretty sure it could be done with electrons just as efficiently.
Yes. Any fiat currency is basically fossilized trust. The problem with alternative currencies to date (digital or otherwise) is that they don’t scale well. They only seem to work when constrained within small geographical areas.
IMO one of the reasons poor countries are poor is the low level of social trust. That puts limits on the value of money, or in extreme cases can stop it working properly.