• 1 Post
  • 58 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle




  • Do you feel the same way about centralized currency’s apparatuses? Visa, MasterCard, Chase, BoA, PayPal, the U.S. Mint, the FBI’s anti-counterfeiting department, point-of-sale terminal manufacturers, etc. These all use so much more resources than all of crypto combined, not to mention the human lives wasted to support it all.

    You say that if crypto disappeared, nothing would happen. I posit that if fiat currencys disappeared (and were replaced by a crypto that isn’t energy intensive) that you would have a net improvement to global society. You could hand out lifelong annuity/pension/UBI for all the displaced workers, pay them to dump all the executives/shareholders at the bottom of the ocean, and still have excess money left over. All those former bank tellers would have time to pursue their interests, and maybe produce some music/art/whatever for the rest of us along the way. (Bitcoin and proof-of-work’s energy waste do need to be trashed though.)














  • That is a perfect summary! I do not trust the general public with neo-nazi propaganda, and have no qualms with banning it. Time has proven that dumb people are going to read it and drag down the rest of us. Nobody should be arguing with them at this point in history. The 1990’s and 2000’s were proving grounds for free speech absolutism for dumbasses, and it has failed miserably with the far-right power grabs that have been happening since. I want a better society, not a perfect one.


  • Not sure how to react to a neo-nazi book club at the local high school doing membership drives though. There are always going to be people, regardless of society’s guidance and teachings, who are extra susceptible to that kind of shit.

    I think free speech absolutism leads to tolerating the intolerant, which just doesn’t work when you are dealing with imperfect primate neurological evolution. People experience the uncaring universe, and our brains struggle to identify the complex and nuanced systems at the root of strife, causing them to look for simpler answers (Jewish space lasers vs. incomprehensible market interactions that over-exploit delicate ecosystems causing droughts). Our brains are set up to tackle problems at smaller scales, and what better way than scapegoating can you reduce a root cause to be more manageable? Mental gymnastics only have to be done once.

    You can educate most people to equip them to defeat neo-nazi rhetoric logically, but humans cannot be programmed with the right answers and society will always produce some fuck-ups. Is it easier to prevent a new member of a hate group by banning their ideas, or let them ruin an innocent life and attempt to rehab them after?