[P2P-F] bitcoin critique summary

Fri May 20 08:06:25 CEST 2011

I don't see how the alternative currency experiments like Bitcoin do anything 
to help us move to a more egalitarian, steady-state economy.

An economist will tell you that "price is information", but I'm not sure how 
they justify that.  An ounce of crack, a few hours of music lessons, a lawn 
mower, or a couple hours of labor might all be $100.  None of these can 
remotely be considered the same, but yet the dollar value is identical.  Any 
mechanism which equates these is an absurd abstraction which eliminates a 
great deal of useful information.  This dearth of relational data is a 
fundamental feature of money which turns the economy into a valuation game.   
Over time, the wealth gap between those who game the system well and those 
that don't becomes so great that a jubilee or a revolution is needed.

I see open source production and modern information technology as powerful 
tools which allow us to more fully value things.  They are important because 
they help make money (just a primitive form of information technology, IMO) 
obsolete.  I just don't understand why people want to continue to treat the 
economy as a game.

-Karl