Steemit/Dtube EXCLUSIVE: Bitcoin's Value & Modern Monetary Theory

in #dtube7 years ago (edited)


This interview with Stephanie Kelton was recorded today and will not be published on my broadcast show or YouTube channel for days, but I'm releasing it early exclusively on D.Tube and Steemit since the last interview about MMT garnered significant interesting.

In this interview, we actually talk specifically about the intrinsic or inherent value of Bitcoin and other cryptos. We have a bit of a disagreement about the pros and cons of a "centralized" vs "decentralized" currency.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments, and feel free to suggest future interviews!


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well done on this available first on dtube. Do you mind me asking are you using an email list to send your followers here?

I have not yet done any email marketing to get people on Steemit. My email list isn't that huge unfortunately.

Link broke try:

Some times Dtube links get broken due to IPFS links are not made corectly. I think will have solutions for this will send fix to there github.

@davidpakman She brought up anonymity in regards to bitcoin, bitcoin isn't inherently anonymous, in fact, you have to be very deliberate in having any kind of anonymity. This is by design, because of the public ledger. If I have one of your bitcoin addresses, I can watch it, and begin to establish other addresses you may own.

Cash is much more anonymous, inherently. If I hand you a dollar, you aren't then potentially privy to know anything about where that dollar has been or went. or how many dollars I have.

that's indeed true

It's easy for me to point out these things though, people often have some thing they think they should've brought up when they had the chance. I used to do telemarketer work, and the only plus side to having the same kind of conversation again and again is having the chance to use the rebuttal at a later time.

You are in the same kind of situation, so I'm sure you are aware of that kind of perk as well.

You do a good job, keep it up.

I'd recommend using the MMT tag so that people can find these videos more easily.

good idea, I didn't realize that was a known/commonly used tag. Will add it now!

Great discussion David, a very healthy way to disagree and feed off each others points of view.

I'm glad you've started to do Dtube Exclusives... this is truly fantastic!

thanks very much, excited to be doing it!

@davidpakman, i think the link might be broken.

I pinned both the 480p and source hashes to my machines.

Welldone

A decentralized currency would ensure that 99% of global wealth is not controlled by less than 1% of the world's population. It will surely enhance an equitable distribution and will reduce the ever expanding gap between the haves and the haves not.

For your information.
As for now, 1% of steem accounts control 93% of coins.

I'm pretty sure it is quite similar on Bitcoin and Ethereum too.

Proof of stake just amplifies this by giving all the power to the wealthiest.

I've yet to hear a different system that is better. The best you can do seems to be try really hard to avoid inequity in wealth distribution. Or introduce a use it or lose it mechanism so people have to put their wealth to work for the good of the blockchain or see it drain away.

Not THAT big.
In meatspace 1% weathiest control close to 50% of wealth. Not 90%+

Maybe in the world... In the US the top three people have more wealth than the bottom 50%

https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/

Although this figure seems to be disputed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/

Maybe one figure includes accumulated debt? Because I believe I've seen figures that say the bottom 25% have no wealth at all.

Of cource there are different sets of data and methodology.
The most robust of them IIRC is World Bank's data for OECD countries in total which state that 1% of populations owns 52% of net worth. Net worth means actives minus total obligations. Lowest 5% IIRC have negative net worth.

That's a good point @o1o1o1o, a form of demurage would motivate people to increase the velocity of money.

As has been pointed out, decentralized mechanics don't guarantee decentralized results.

Currency distribution has nothing to do with how that currency is accounted for. Decentralized currencies are about making it difficult to stop the distribution of that currency, but any number of forces can result in only a few people having the majority of accounted for quanta of value. Among those forces are a natural distribution.

The only thing that will really decrease the gap between the haves and have-nots is the have-nots increasing in value. That is, their work has to be useful and applicable to a larger portion of the population and thus be in greater demand.

From a realistic perspective, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been decreasing for decades. Poverty globally has been on a steep decline with the dual influence of increasing accessibility of private ownership and the decreased cost of communications technology along with the rise in non-local services which rural and impoverished populations can provide across that now cheaper channel of communication.

I realize it's not nearly as good a story to suggest that the poor have never had it so good and blockchain-based commodity trading isn't likely to save the world, but it's a lot more rational and more likely to be true.

I'm fond of things that are true. Other people can disagree.

Remember that you're writing from a standpoint of well-educated person from developed world. The probability is high because you get involved in leading edge technology. You're more on have end. You can be successful in such new tech.

Most of have-nots are lowskilled low educated ppl. They will lose more than gain from automation, AI and blockchain while you most likely will benefit.

I'm writing about it from the standpoint of someone who knows the difference between another person who's starving to death and one who isn't.

That's a pretty stark difference between having and not having.

In this case, the number of people not having has been decreasing pretty aggressively, turning them into people that have.

Most of the have-nots have always been low skilled low educated people. That's kind of the nature of being for them. But increasing automation, artificial intelligence, and distributed synchronized databases give them as much opportunity as they do me – possibly more, in the sense that they have a long way up to go, whereas any advantage I may acquire from those is probably marginal.

Compare the access to mobile communications technology in the Third World to the impact in the first world. While the results were big in the US and Western Europe, mobile phones and the infrastructure that they require has made huge, sweeping changes to Africa and for Eastern populations. In some cases, allowing them to have a useful economy at all.

The logical endpoint of your argument would be for all of us to throw down our technology and revert to a short-lived existence at something just north of medieval subsistence. Just so the poor can live as miserably as they ever have without the possibility of improvement – but saved to the suffering of seeing that other people can do better and that they might aspire to it.

I have to say, not really my thing.

The logical endpoint of your argument would be for all of us to throw down our technology and revert to a short-lived existence at something just north of medieval subsistence.
Please don't pervert my words.

The problem of job transformation is well known. 150 years ago big city has ten of thousands of workers who cleaned horse manure from the streets. One thirs or all agriculture production went to horses too. Motorization wiped out the whole industries. These cleaners and farmers didn't starve to death because the same motorization which drove them from their occupations gave them new jobs.

Will it happen the same way now with AI and automation is the question. I can't be so sure.

It already has been.

We don't have to ask "Will it happen the same way," because we know that it is happening the same way. People are moving their efforts into other sectors. Creative people are finding new ways to create content that people want, get it in front of people that want to see it, and get paid for having made it. Despite the best efforts of State actors, parallel economies are building up and finding ways to continue trading which see regulation as damage and route around it. Poor cultures and economies are doing their best to adapt in a whirlwind of new technologies and methodologies for doing so.

Unless your contention is that humanity at large is somehow more stupid than it used to be, why would your expectation of the ability to adapt to changing situations the any less than your observation of the ability to adapt to changing situations in the past?

If anything, the actual conflict between what is now useful and what is no longer useful, the breaking power of the State and the disruptive power of NGOs, is more useful than any of those entities in isolation. Because they operate adversarial in, we get far better results.

I don't think there is any cause for concern in the long run. In the short run, any sort of uncertainty and disruption causes difficulty for somebody. Thus the names. But that's the nature of the beast.

, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been decreasing for decades.

Not in the US it hasn't. It's been downhill since the late 70s when Reaganomics and the mythical trickle down beasts attacked the middle and working class.

Inequality growth is a problem everywhere. The root cause is economic privilege, and things like free trade agreements only exacerbate this.

The problem is the control, access, tools, and the fiat. You can't use USA Banks now....

the link is not opening..

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