Got it in one. There's an aggressively libertarian philosophy at the heart of cryptocurrency. And once it's in place and being used there isn't anything you can do about it. Now - granted: you can still pay people in dollars, you can still require stores to take dollars, you can still issue dollars. But the fact that theoretically, there will be another more portable currency that floats based on something other than your central bank means your central bank just got demoted to scrip. This is the fundamental idea behind Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower. He and Graeber are polar opposites; I always try to read the two of them back to back to balance out the angry radical leftist academic with a pompous self-assured right-wing academic. "shifting who creates wealth and how we create trust in that wealth does not necessarily create an egalitarian economic system."
Long story short, I've learned since then, that from small companies like construction companies and restaurants all the way up to big international firms, almost everyone operates, on some level, on trust networks.
Is that Niall Ferguson book pretty transparent in its bias and agenda? I ask because I think I might like to read it, because it appeals to me, but I also know immediately that it appeals to me because I think it'll validate some of my classist world views and I'm trying real hard to disabuse myself from such illusions and it's not easy, especially right now. The world is messy, now's not the time to feed personal beasts.This is the fundamental idea behind Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower. He and Graeber are polar opposites; I always try to read the two of them back to back to balance out the angry radical leftist academic with a pompous self-assured right-wing academic.
It pretty much launches with a defense of the Bavarian Illuminati and uses as its central argument how awesome Henry Kissinger is. Dude wrote a book called 'Civilization: the West and the Rest.' I appreciate the possibilities cryptocurrency offers the world. I'm fearful of the social darwinism it's likely to engender. Being educated about something doesn't mean you endorse it; you may or may not have noticed that I know a disturbing amount about nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.