Thread by @tymoignee

This "bitcoin is better than gold" statement going around once more show that bitcoiners have no clue about monetary history and what the purpose of a monetary system is. A thread.

1- Metal standards were never inflexible; they could not in order to operate properly. Qty of metal was changed, usually lowered, to accommodate for changing economic conditions: price of metal, scarcity of coins, financial needs of economic units (state and private), etc.

2- The purpose of a monetary system is to make the rest of the economy go. It is there to accommodate financial needs. The more elastic one can design the supply, the better.
That doesn't mean that monetary creation & destruction shouldn't follow any rules & have no constraint.

3- Rules and constraint impose depend on economic system and evolve over time has we learn how to manage better the system. In a capitalist economy, the private sector is subject to the profitability constraint. We have learned from experience that this is not enough.

3 (ii) Financial stability requires a "hedge finance" constraint for most private agents: profitability should be judged on income gains, not capital gains.
In the government sector, the constraints are ressource availability and political constraints.

3 (iii) taxing, spending, financing of private sector by gov should be done with the goal of chaneling real ressources toward the societal "goods" and removing the "bads". What good and bad are is not necessarily obvious and requires broad political discussions.

3 (iv) The argument "but we don't have money" is a non-starter in these debates. Finance is flexible, debates should be on the things that are less so.

4- What bitcoiners want is a monetary system that is completely inflexible to the needs and aspirations of human beings. They want to give up the fight about what to use the monetary system for, by making it untouchable and uncontrollable.

5- Worse they focus all the attention of monetary outcome on capital gains. Monetary system would become a giant speculative game BY DESIGN. The exact thing that promotes instability and the exact thing we learn we should not to promote.

6- So yes there are power relations involved in the economy, yes banks do make improper credit decisions, yes government do mess up and are subject to power influence. The point is not to shut the monetary system but rather to work to remove the problems.

7- The bitcoin project is a rejection to participate in these debates and trying to change the system. It reflects a sense of powerlessness and a retreat to self-centered, "f...k everyone, i am in it just for myself" mentality. I am sorry to say that politics and power relations

7 (ii)- won't go away. You either work to change them or let other do it. What you don't do is prevent everyone to fight to change them in part via changes in monetary relations and instead promote a primitive and unstable monetary system that reinforce the problems. END