> In my book, manipulation by government for political or plain self-interest reasons counts as compromising.
The problem is that «manipulation» by governments as you call it, is part of its toolkit, and a lot of empirical evidences shows that the cost of doing nothing when something should have been done is orders of magnitude worse than «manipulation for political reasons». Take for instance Germany is the 1920s: the hyper-inflation during the early 20s was a huge mess, but it had much lower consequences than the inaction after the crisis of 1929 with a huge economic slowdown caused by deflation.
A government not controlling its currency is catastrophic when something go wrong, you can see what happened to southern Europe during the last decade. I'm not saying the Quantitative Easing is the best way to go out of a financial crisis, but for sure it's better than doing nothing and waiting for the market to correct itself.[1]
Imo, people afraid of the Government and wanting to drastically limit its power are a bit like anti-vaxer: vaccines can indeed cause problems (and they do, a few people have dramatic secondary effects, like with any medicine) and must be controlled, but wanting to abolish them is suicidal. The anti-state psychology was understandable during the cold war, as people had a good example of what can happen when a government has total power on the economy and society as a whole, yet this irrational fear is really polluting the debate when it comes to defining the economic policies.
[1]: scientific evidences are hard to find in Economics, but this particular topic was the point of the Keynes / Hayek controversy during the great depression and, on this particular topic, Keynes proved right.
I'm not going to pretend I understand the intricacies of managing a modern economy in times of crisis and I can't argue with your historic examples. There are clearly problems that would require different solutions in a decentralised-driven economy.
However I think there are still a lot of things that a government could do too help its people in extreme situations, even if they were normally using a currency out of its control. Things that don't involve limiting the flow of currency or reducing its value.
The ideal of people being able to transact in a frictionless way, beyond borders and without having to deal with massive opaque entities (banks) just makes so much sense from my perspective that it's worth trying to find new solutions to any problems starting from that point.
I simply struggle to accept that an individual should suffer the consequences of an incompetent or malicious government in what should be a fundamental right (trading and securing your wealth). As a Greek I have experienced some of these consequences first-hand, in the form of capital controls and cross-border trading restrictions. People in other countries are experiencing them in a much more extreme scale.
But a citizen of a highly prosperous developed nation can still experience too much friction in day-to-day transactions that should be simple, a lot of which happens under the disguise of "your own security". Well, if someone wants to assume the responsibility of his own security, I don't see why he shouldn't be able to.
> As a Greek I have experienced some of these consequences first-hand, in the form of capital controls and cross-border trading restrictions.
If the most dramatic consequences you had to face from the past decade policies, you're probably pretty affluent among the Greeks (which isn't surprising here on HN, I don't think anyone here is part of the 30% lower incomes of his country)
> I simply struggle to accept that an individual should suffer the consequences of an incompetent or malicious government in what should be a fundamental right (trading and securing your wealth)
You're free to assign the priority you want in the role of State, depending on the personal believes and values, but I personally think there are more fundamental rights than trading or securing your wealth, and I'm not shocked to see a government making trade-offs between those rights.
In normal time, all those rights should be preserved and defended, but in troubled times it, I have no problem seeing a government cutting back the free trade right in order to provide food to everyone, or education, health, safety or whatever human basic rights I feel more important than business freedom. Call me a socialist if you want.
> If the most dramatic consequences you had to face from the past decade policies, you're probably pretty affluent among the Greeks
I don't live in Greece any more but no, I was earning a slightly above average full-time wage -which when you don't have a family, pay rent or care to go out much might feel pretty affluent, but if you have to support a family or pay rent because you don't want to live with your parents any more, is not.
My perspective is also the perspective of many people I know in Greece that are definitely not affluent (some earning sub €800 per month):
If you're lucky to have a stable job, you are working all day long to get a half-decent wage (that over the last decade lost 40% of it's effective value through tax increases, health contribution increases towards a completely broken health system, pension contribution increases -that you literally don't trust that you will get back, inflation, etc) and can't even do whatever the fuck you want with whatever little is left of it! They are strong-arming you to keep it in banks, transact through banks -accepting their fees and inconveniences-, restrict how much cash you can withdraw or spend, even limit what you can buy! They are still blocking Greek card transactions outside the country for a series of types of business such as gambling, pornographic, jewels, works of art, auctions, etc (which of course they fail to detect properly, so you get plenty of false positives :p)
Is this the most dramatic consequence considering everything else I just mentioned? Probably not, but it's the one that constantly reminds you that you're not in control of the rewards of your own labor. And it's also the one that you can suddenly avoid for good, giving them the finger, thanks to cryptocurrencies.
> Call me a socialist if you want.
Socialist policies can work great if a government is competent and honest like perhaps in Scandinavian countries. The problem is that no-one can guarantee when and for how long a government will be like this.
What's interesting in what you describe about the greek situation, is that it's exactly what one should expect when a government lose its control on the monetary policy : instead of solving the problem by just printing money (at the cost of inflation) it needs to be much more intrusive in people's life in order to deal with difficult times.
Well, I'm happy with neither of the two because in their exremes they are both disastrous and disempower individuals. Who knows, if the monetary system had been out of central control from the beginning, there might had never been a financial crisis to begin with.
So I'd rather make both choices impossible for my government and be in control as an individual, for better or for worse. Socialism in Greece has failed. Either failed to exist, or failed to work, failed regardless.
> Imo, people afraid of the Government and wanting to drastically limit its power are a bit like anti-vaxer
I should remind you that 11 months ago, Donald Trump became the head of what's arguably the most powerful government in the world. I'm glad there are restrictions on the power of that government and very much concerned that they're not stringent enough.
While I do have some sympathy for anarchist positions, I don't think a complete abolition of government as we know it is likely to be pretty. That certainly doesn't mean government should have unlimited power. If we're using the last century or so to source our examples, the governments we've seen fail with disastrous results had fewer limits on their power than those that are still with us.
100% agree with the fact that governments need limits, but I also disagree with the idea of removing all kind of monetary power from the hands of governments, it's just too helpful and achieving the same goals without it would be much more dramatic : if you think inflation is spoliation, what do you think about actually confiscating assets or properties ? In troubled times, a government will do anything necessary to keep its power and if he doesn't have access to monetary tools, things are going to be much worse, and the majority will be behind it.
People tend to think that the free market won against socialism, but it did not : welfare state won against socialism ! People being happier, they didn't want the revolution, but if a government can't buy social peace it's going to be replaced by someone who will do it. That's exactly the kind of mindset that made Trump president of the US (America first, no more globalization), and the fact that he is betraying his promises won't change the fact that a huge chunk of the population want some dramatic change (even at the expense of a lot of important things).
> but I also disagree with the idea of removing all kind of monetary power from the hands of governments
I don't have enough expertise or moral authority to say for sure whether that would be good or not. Governments fought very hard to get substantially increased monetary power during the 20th century, and the world that followed is a pretty good place. For all the bad news we hear, violence, starvation, disease and other metrics of badness are near historic lows. Some attribute those gains largely to government action, but I think a lot of the improvements were social and technological. As an example, better access to information makes people aware that those who employ violence usually don't get good results, so others are less likely to do so.
What I do feel fairly confident in saying is that for better or worse, it's fairly likely to happen. Here's the approximate scenario I see playing out:
First, a cryptocurrency becomes somewhat popular for actual use as a currency. It won't be Bitcoin. It might not even be one that exists yet, but it will happen sooner or later. It need not be universally accepted, but if you can buy groceries, fuel and a cup of coffee in most major cities on one or more continents, that will be sufficient.
Next, there needs to be a financial crisis affecting that continent. These happen every couple decades. It's a near certainty. Bonus points for runs on banks, slowness or failure of protection mechanisms like FDIC, rapid inflation or political instability.
The next step is that people start using the cryptocurrency in preference to the government currency, banks and payment cards. Of course, the government might want to prevent this, but any actual attempt at enforcing a ban would meet great resistance from the significant fraction of the population already using it.
I'm not sure what follows. I have little doubt that parts of the transition will be quite ugly. I hope the improvements the world has made survive it.
The problem is that «manipulation» by governments as you call it, is part of its toolkit, and a lot of empirical evidences shows that the cost of doing nothing when something should have been done is orders of magnitude worse than «manipulation for political reasons». Take for instance Germany is the 1920s: the hyper-inflation during the early 20s was a huge mess, but it had much lower consequences than the inaction after the crisis of 1929 with a huge economic slowdown caused by deflation.
A government not controlling its currency is catastrophic when something go wrong, you can see what happened to southern Europe during the last decade. I'm not saying the Quantitative Easing is the best way to go out of a financial crisis, but for sure it's better than doing nothing and waiting for the market to correct itself.[1]
Imo, people afraid of the Government and wanting to drastically limit its power are a bit like anti-vaxer: vaccines can indeed cause problems (and they do, a few people have dramatic secondary effects, like with any medicine) and must be controlled, but wanting to abolish them is suicidal. The anti-state psychology was understandable during the cold war, as people had a good example of what can happen when a government has total power on the economy and society as a whole, yet this irrational fear is really polluting the debate when it comes to defining the economic policies.
[1]: scientific evidences are hard to find in Economics, but this particular topic was the point of the Keynes / Hayek controversy during the great depression and, on this particular topic, Keynes proved right.