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Shelling Out: The Origins of Money (2002)

79 pointsby nochover 4 years ago

13 comments

asciimikeover 4 years ago
I find that "Debt: The First 5000 Years" has the best overview of money (predominantly credit systems), though admittedly it's a much longer read.
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littlestymaarover 4 years ago
I was pleasantly surprised: when I've seen the source (“nakamotoinstitute.org”) I expected the typical Austrian “First barter, then gold as money and then the fiat scam” narrative, but this one is much deeper and uses references that goes way beyond the Mises/Hayek pair you see on almost every bitcoin related publication. Sure, it talks about Carl Menger but it also talks about Graeber, which is as far of you can get from the Austrian school.
ur-whaleover 4 years ago
This need a (2002) in the title.<p>Szabo is an unorthodox yet very interesting voice on topics where economy and crypto intersect.<p>He pretty much introduced the idea of smart contracts.<p>You might deeply disagree with his perspective (both historical and political), but dismissing him would be and error.
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solotronicsover 4 years ago
I am not sure the percentage (99%+?) but most people don&#x27;t grok how money actually works, they consider it something like water or air which is looked at as a given instead of something which was created according to an engineered system. If someone doesn&#x27;t understand the history of money and what money actually is they will never &#x27;get&#x27; cryptocurrency and why it is so disruptive.<p>Trading goods, shells, physical gold&#x2F;silver, notes of credit, private gold notes, public gold currency notes, fiat currency, credit, and finally cryptocurrency.
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protoman3000over 4 years ago
And we see again, proven by historical records in the article, that the Commodity theory of money is wrong.<p>Yet, their evangelists don’t stop to spread the lie that scarcity and “intrinsic value” would be the root for money’s value. Just another trap they span out to sell you their toxic ideology of austerity and raise the price of the worthless golden commodity they are sitting on.
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dangover 4 years ago
If curious see also<p>2018 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16336880" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16336880</a><p>2017 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14918574" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14918574</a><p>2015 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8901026" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8901026</a><p>2011 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=2597253" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=2597253</a>
ilakshover 4 years ago
&gt; Warfare involved, among other things, killing, maiming, torture, kidnapping, rape, and the extortion of tribute in exchange for avoiding such fates. When two neighboring tribes were not at war, one was usually paying tribute to the other. Tribute could also serve to bind alliances, achieving economies of scale in warfare. Mostly, it was a form of exploitation more lucrative to the victor than further violence against the defeated.<p>This hasn&#x27;t changed. Maybe post-humans will be better. But I don&#x27;t see a lot of hope for humans reforming.
hsuavnalahsover 4 years ago
There are a lot of monetary theories, policies, and histories. But are any of them meaningfully predictive? I can’t grok it precisely because of the lack of concrete formulation, compare to say physical laws. Is there even a way to distill it down to tractable mathematics?
seanalltogetherover 4 years ago
A lack of trust seems to be the key ingredient for currency to spring into action. If you trust that I will give you 2 lambs in the spring, you will be okay trading me the 3 bushels of wheat now. If not, you&#x27;re going to want collateral or some form of currency.
carapaceover 4 years ago
Giordano Bruno said that whatever has the most value and the least cost of storage becomes money.
ilakshover 4 years ago
I think that money should now become a high technology and take advantage of that. We ask it to do a lot and so we should give money the tools to be effective. Starting by integrating more information.
blackrockover 4 years ago
On a side note, I’m starting to suspect that Bitcoin, and Satoshi Nakamoto, is an internal NSA job.<p>And Satoshi must be the alias name for some cryptography expert, or experts, inside the NSA itself.<p>Hah, and even if you rearrange the words, its acronym is NSA. Like, <i>N</i>akamoto <i>SA</i>toshi.<p>I just noticed that.<p>And maybe the architect behind it, used a Japanese origin name, to throw people off their trail. To pin it to some foreign country, instead of the United States government.<p>After all, who else can keep a big secret like this? And laugh all the way to the bank. While trolling the entire world, at the same time.<p>Some ideas:<p>1. The Satoshi Nakamoto guy on the message boards, wrote in perfect colloquial American English. Even his sense of humor was American. His grammar was perfect, and similar to a Millennial&#x2F;Gen-X aged American. Like, he grew up chatting on AIM and ICQ back in the 90s and 00s. And probably on BBS message boards back in the 80s and 90s.<p>2. Satoshi mined the originating Bitcoins, and they are incredibly valuable now, and worth around $8.8 billion dollars in mid 2020. Who wouldn’t cash out on it, and realize all the gains, or even some of the gains? How about some super secret organization, that specializes in cryptography. And especially an organization that doesn’t immediately need the money.<p>3. Bitcoin mining is consuming a ton of electricity. Increasing carbon pollution, and depleting natural resources. There is only one other country that is generating so much electricity, that a large percentage of it, goes straight into Bitcoin mining. You can guess for yourself which country this is.<p>I don’t think this was intentional, but maybe a side effect is that it will bankrupt other competitor countries that the USA does not like.<p>4. Maybe another strategic end goal is to trick others to put their money into Bitcoin, and wait until it becomes very very valuable. Like, 100 or 1000 or 1 million times more valuable than it is today, it’s a very long and patient wait, then the US Federal government will pass a law declaring the Bitcoins to be illegal tender. And will then pass another law to forcefully seize all private Bitcoin assets, like the way cops take candy from a baby, with their Civil Asset Forfeiture policy.<p>Who knows. All this is just fun conjecture. Maybe there really is a Satoshi Nakamoto out there. But, I’d probably believe Santa Claus is real, before I believe that cover story.
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drummerover 4 years ago
Szabo seems to be missing important background on money <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kareldonk.com&#x2F;on-money-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrencies-in-general&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kareldonk.com&#x2F;on-money-bitcoin-and-cryptocurren...</a>
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