One of the unfortunate things I did not add to the slides were Gift Economics, and I apologize for that. This was indeed the first form of economic exchange, predating bartering for sure.
The problem, of course, is that it only works when you have a small number of trustable people (I'll leave Dunbar's number out of this, pick your favorite). When you get into the realm of billions of people, it's a system that just doesn't work. And there's plenty of romanticism out there from people that would love to go back to such a system. But -that- to me is ideologically driven economics. I'm not saying that Bitcoin is morally superior, or that gold is better than paper money, I'm trying to relay the verdict that large numbers of decentralized people have arrived at. Which could be a worse system in many ways.
But I'm not so sure, for the reasons you bring up. I do agree with you that governments capture these systems and control them. And the principal reason for this has been to wage war. War is so closely attached to control and devaluation of money, that you can almost predict monetary instability based on it, as these governments use it as a form of taxation. We've had quite a few currency devaluations in our own history, beginning with the colonies during the Revolutionary War (printing money to pay the soldiers, that they would take home and discover was essentially worthless).
This is where Bitcoin becomes interesting: It becomes a form of gold that is so liquid, that it is arguable if a government could even take control of it. You certainly can't stop someone from going through customs at the airport with it (or are we going to require a scan of all computers before leaving the country now?). If Bitcoin prevents/disrupts governments from amassing war chests, I see that as a potentially very positive development. Time will tell, as with all things.
The problem, of course, is that it only works when you have a small number of trustable people (I'll leave Dunbar's number out of this, pick your favorite). When you get into the realm of billions of people, it's a system that just doesn't work. And there's plenty of romanticism out there from people that would love to go back to such a system. But -that- to me is ideologically driven economics. I'm not saying that Bitcoin is morally superior, or that gold is better than paper money, I'm trying to relay the verdict that large numbers of decentralized people have arrived at. Which could be a worse system in many ways.
But I'm not so sure, for the reasons you bring up. I do agree with you that governments capture these systems and control them. And the principal reason for this has been to wage war. War is so closely attached to control and devaluation of money, that you can almost predict monetary instability based on it, as these governments use it as a form of taxation. We've had quite a few currency devaluations in our own history, beginning with the colonies during the Revolutionary War (printing money to pay the soldiers, that they would take home and discover was essentially worthless).
This is where Bitcoin becomes interesting: It becomes a form of gold that is so liquid, that it is arguable if a government could even take control of it. You certainly can't stop someone from going through customs at the airport with it (or are we going to require a scan of all computers before leaving the country now?). If Bitcoin prevents/disrupts governments from amassing war chests, I see that as a potentially very positive development. Time will tell, as with all things.