Oddbean new post about login | logout did you ultimately decide the circular economy isn't a thing? I'm not ready to give up yet... I'm sure we all have different motivations, all my friends are locals. we're surrounded by people who have SO MUCH. but sadly the Bitcoin ethos doesn't seem to gel with charitable giving or even treating others. it's awkwardly stingy, in fact. my fiat friends are far more likely to just be nice and share. kinda breaks my brain.
yeah i pretty much gave up. i came to the conclusion that bitcoin is a great store of value but it will be decades, at best, before it's a useful medium of exchange. and it might never happen. in that time frame we'll get digital fiat and the herd will continue to prefer the devil they know over the devil they don't 😢 i actually changed my thinking somewhat through this process and really opened up to the steel man idea of credit money. spent a long time studying it, as well as commodity theory, and i'm still on the fence as to whether a deflationary currency would even be more useful as MoE and UoA (and for generating debt for productive uses) than a well-managed, low-inflation credit money. the key is 'well-managed', but i lean more in that direction now. bitcoin is a great SoV. maybe that's enough.
ps circular economies in the 21st century are a bit wishful imho, and based on 'thought exercises' that don't conform to reality outside highly remote, deprived communities. the vast majority of the world is just too interconnected nowadays - the value loops are far bigger than we realise, and basically impossible for a neo-currency to capture without some sort of top down (eg town mayor, county municipality, regional government) involvement, and even then, most fizzle and die (checkout Tumin in Mexico - it's another, non digital, well-supported and good-hearted attempt at this kind of programme that has, like other similar projects - digital and non digital - withered on the vine) people just want dollars/national currency and credit. and more people to spend money on their products/services. well-intentioned as we are, bitcoin doesn't fix this. at least not yet.