Is SAFEcoin meant to limit the power of money or expand it?

I am asking a question about intents. I don’t think the question can be dismissed as a false dichotomy or too simplistic. Over and over again I hear enthusiasm that seems to becoming from the point of view that sees all the good in more power for money, or any profit is good profit or money is speech and therefore must be free of any limit or SAFE should be used to evade taxes or that any of these are good and unavoidable. These expectations seem to becoming from a world view that is not only backwards but malicious.

From my perspective the expanded power of money is responsible for perhaps a majority of the current conflicts and serious threats in the world. So often legislation, taxes and tariffs are attempts to voucher-ize or limit the power of money. Contrary to much hype the real issue isn’t simply one of empowering buyers with a red light zone, it’s also about the increasing power money has over those buyers and other people. Much of the solution would seem to be in lowering the power/value of capital. Bush openly called for elevating the power of capital. People starved over capital will for instance shine shoes if it means they can eat. Where capital is a less pressing issue people retain their dignity and spine. Linus Torvalds explained when asked why he didn’t ‘cash in’ American style, that where he came from people weren’t pimped out over money and he too had no desire to ‘cash in’- in essence saying: we didn’t come up starving so we’re not constantly looking out for our next food binge. They don’t have or value a money-for-the-sake-of-money mentality.
They would value profit efficiency not simply more profit by any means.

I think it can be argued that bitcoin was an attempt to lower or limit the power of capital. On the one hand (assuming I have a clue about bitcoin) it was set up to block manipulations by states and banking systems of the sort that Greenspan had in mind with his terrorist economics where per Greenspan the core of his job involved keeping the average person down and in fear (insecurity) so that average persons would not come together and advocate for a higher living of standard. Given his title was Fed Chair this was achieved in part through manipulation of rates to such ends and bitcoin was meant to offer a superior alternative and attractive replacement that would block that action programmatically and hence be an important way to limit money. Bitcoin with its ledger system was also meant to make it harder to cook the books and is therefore an important transparency tool, one that limits money and capital again by making it harder to cheat. The deeper attraction was a limit on money not the masturbatory speculator/gambling element.

Elevating the power of capital is achieved by foisting scarcity and insecurity. The power is in the differential between have and have not. The carrot is fake; it’s a pure stick approach. Someone pushing a toxic food additive will argue that they are saving food that would go to waste and lowering food prices. A charitable explanation for pushing a known toxic additive would be that it’s increasing other people’s risk for profit but holding out the carrot of greater access. But it could easily be more accurate to say that they are more likely degrading or damaging people’s health in a cumulative fashion rather than merely increasing the risk of a catastrophic health outcome for certain people. It’s a false choice of potentially more affordable food in exchange for much more expensive damage to overall public health. So again limiting money by keeping it from be used to poison people or risk poisoning people is an example of limiting money or capital but the payoff for society is more than worth it. Such limits are both efficient and effective

Even when we consider people as individuals it should be for us as the class of individuals as end users and global citizens. Faith in greed and selfishness isn’t working if it ever did. It’s looking more and more like the road to death.

Did you read the white paper? Seems to me that SafeCoin was intended to re-imburse people for providing hardware to support the Safe Network.

All that political mumbo jumbo is political mumbo jumbo and the whole point of the crypto-revolution is to make all of that irrelevant.

Generally cryptocurrencies are a method of transmitting value from one party to another. That is all. They don’t care if people are rich or poor, if the economy is good or bad, they just keep on doing what they do. They work according to mathematical formulas, and don’t allow people to monkey with the formula for any reason -good or bad, well intentioned or greedy, Brilliant or ignorant. They just do what they do, agnostic to politics.

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You seem to be arguing for a decrease in the political power of capital or money. I like your characterization, its sober.

I think that the movement is anti-capital, not anti-capitalist…

We reduce the need for capital, thus making the means of production much less prohibitive. This lessens the need for oligarchy, as ordinary people can do more with the capital they have.

Capital is a pretty big liability if it is excess. If I can reliably and repeatably make the same product with a raspberry pi, and a simple CNC that you have a custom engineered factory built for millions – in the long run I will win and you will lose.

If a company invests in massive data centers on two continents, and another puts their date on the SAFE network, The company with the massive investment is going to be the fool.

So we don’t have to be anti-capitalist… We just make it so we can accomplish the same goals with cheaper means of production and the oligarchs will be upside down in unneeded investment.

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Agreed! and requisite characters

Safecoin in the beginning will likely greatly expand the power of money because it’s anonymous.

It’s potentially the most powerful money to ever exist. But over time an equilibrium will be found. It depends on how the money is used and where the equilibrium point is.

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The other thing about deflationary currencies is that the more is hoarded the scarcer the non-hoarded currency becomes… So when certain folks get really rich, everybody gets a little richer with them…

Thats an interesting notion and but I think the aim has been a predictable currency that is either flat or slightly inflationary. I thought the rich have a lot of trouble with deflation due to the impact on their tangible assets.

I thought deflation wasnt such a bad thing but James Ricard’s historical account made it like something out of the twightlight zone. By his telling people will hoard deflating currrency under the matress creating an initial pleasant spiral but paradoxcally they also start to lose faith in it having any future and after a while a switch to a more tangible reserve currency becomes necessary but generally at a brutal exchange rate. Even with a slightly deflationary system it might dampen production because inputs seem cheaper but the sale price of your goods is unstable, do you even break even? Also that in real global deflation there are no good hedges just damage control with a lot of uncertainty.

The problem is not money or capital. The problem is rent seeking.

As long as there are choices, you can avoid the rent seekers. The problems occur when you cannot escape the monopolist’a grasp.

See fiat money and land ‘ownership’ as key examples here.

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Well, with Bitcoin, it is divisible by 8 decimal points, so the value of money going up ought not effect our ability to transmit value… If savings is encouraged by deflation, I have no problem with that. Consumerism is a sacred cow that needs slaughtered.

SAFE is not supposed to be devisable, so that may not be such a good deal… I still have no faith that SAFE coin will be anything but a network supporting currency effecting the SAFE network only with little relevance outside. Time shall tell, but I think debating it’s broad economic implications at this point is kinda silly.

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I wish Naksmoto’s opinion were also somehow available.

Rent seeking isn’t the problem if there is a land value tax. Look into geo-libertarianism.

Safecoin has divisibility built in but David has said he hopes it won’t be needed at least for a while (because of performance implications). If the value of Safecoin flies then it will be needed if Safecoin is to remain useful for micropayments, and a universally useful currency.

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I have a lot of sympathy for georgism. It certainly addresses the major problem with land ownership.

However, even geolibertarianism requires a state in common form. I believe there is a better way, a bit like open source software licensing. That is, all land is subject to a license which requires land rent (read: purely the levy from location monopoly) to be distributed to those in the local region. This could be a truly distributed model which would require no states, taxes or borders to operate.

I can dig out a link with my more complete thoughts from another forum, if interested.

I moved 4 posts to a new topic: Suggestion for decentralised community land rights (licencing) instead of state administered land ownership