Thread by @DamelonBCWS

It's kind of disappointing to see "Begging the Question?" in action so blatantly by someone who has written some good stuff.

But there you go. Rick Falkvinge makes the argument that Bitcoin Core has no one with economic knowledge in the team and as such can't write code

https://twitter.com/Falkvinge/status/982996991528652800

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That would be true if they lived in a bubble (this is made explicit in the talk, by the way), but that is not the case.

There is a lot of discussion going on via many channels, and even to a relative layman such as I this is obvious.

An extreme case of this can be heard at 6:22: "There is no one left in the community who understands economics".

To me, that is just preposterous, as a quick look at just Twitter shows several economists involved in the discussion, as well as many laymen also pitching in.

As to "you need coders who understand economy", I would argue that this is seldom the case. You possibly need coders who *listen* to people with an understanding of economy. There are few people who excel at multiple skillsets.

To illustrate this via the bridge analogy that Rick Falkvinge uses: you do not need a builder who is also an expert on design, but you of course want a builder that listens to someone who understands design and structural engineering!

I find the reasoning in this short video transparently leading to the pitch starting at 6:48, which boils down to "Bitcoin Cash solves all this", which is supposedly solved by adding a slogan to the team "We bring Liberty through Profit Motive".

Now, it is undoubtably true that such a succinct mission statement can bring focus to a team. But the argument here was that Bitcoin (Core, I am not going to indulge in using his marketing term as mine) had no *economists*, not that it didn't have a clear mission statement!

So, where are the economists of renown in the Bitcoin Cash team? Rick Falkvinge doesn't name any. Frustratingly, after this part he only says that you can only join iff (if and only if) you understand the domain. Who has joined then?

A mission statement is fine. But if the argument is not about a mission statement, that conclusion to a talk is not relevant.

So the argument built here is:

1. Bitcoin is meant as an economic system (fine)
2. Bitcoin Core has no people who understand economics (arguable statement with nothing to back it up. It also disregards input from people who are not developers. Remember Open Source?)

2.1 Bitcoin Core has driven away anyone with economic knowledge (I'd say that is easily debunked)
3. Bitcoin Cash has solved this (ok, show me the solution)
3.1 Bitcoin Cash has a clear mission statement (true)

4. Bitcoin Cash has parameters for people to join developement (??? Sorry if I misinterpret this, but the "iff" statement seems to amount to that, correct me if I am wrong here.)
5. (Repeated) Bitcoin Core doesn't have people with economic knowledge (see above).

Again, I think this is a sloppy argument and poorly constructed.

If you have a thesis you want to disprove, you need to stay within the confines of the thesis and not veer off to introduce something else altogether while not addressing the original thesis.

All of the above does not say "Bitcoin Cash is crap", by the way.

It only says that it is not served well by its spokespeople.

At all.