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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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there are only three options: embrace crypto (and subject yourself to the non-stop boom-and-bust cycles it suffers from), voluntarily disconnect from the global finance system (with all the hard work that entails), or admit that we all live in America.

This hits the nail on the head for me. People attack crypto for being volatile, prone to hacks, scams and so on.

But at the end of the day, digital currency is not going away. Cash is going away - it's inconvenient. We are not switching back to gold. There is a binary choice between a central bank digital 'currency' and a decentralized digital currency, almost certainly a cryptocurrency.

The former is controlled by bankers and governments, it literally just becomes good boy points that can be doled out or withdrawn at will. Freedom of transaction is the fundamental basis for every other kind of freedom. Good luck with your free speech if you can't even pay for food, let alone a marker and cardboard. First it's CP and loli or whatever, then it's anything they don't like. Disfavoured groups are already systematically disadvantaged in uni admissions, job applications and certain grant initiatives. Why not raise taxes on them or raise prices of certain goods for certain people? What about a climate lockdown? This power is seductive and self-reinforcing. It is very effective at suppressing people. AI-assisted control of centralized digital currency is the totalitarian dream. They can print money and ration goods with perfect efficiency. They can assess taxes at will, arbitrarily. Paypal decided to sneak back in its $2500 arbitrary fine after pretending to scrap it - there is nothing and nobody that can stop them if they're acting at the will of the state.

The latter is controlled by stakers, miners and eccentric nerds. Maybe they make mistakes from time to time. But they don't have armies and fleets, they don't have vast bureaucracies to inflict their will on the rest of us. The rules are fairer - all transactions are public (or in the case of Monero all are private). There is no panopticon for thee and privacy for me. Reputable coins don't have a single node that can print unlimited amounts of currency for free - looking at you central banks.