Quote from: Artemis3 on February 02, 2020, 02:43:58 PM

Quote from: worldtraveller321 on February 02, 2020, 01:26:56 PM

I know this is not exactly in relation to Bitcoin. I may be in the wrong forum.
Considering with all the failures of the money systems in the past. That only benefit the government and wealthy.
I know there were systems that did benefit the people. At least were more systems that offered a fairer playing field. I know those systems did get shot down by the "powers that be"

What systems, would you all know of, that did work or could have worked better in the past? More less the non digital era of anything more less?

The closest that worked were precious metal based coins. Not bank notes with the promise of the precious metals, but when the coins were actually made from the very precious metals.

In other words, things like gold and silver. Because no matter what is engraved in them, you could always melt them.

But the physical realm is not immune to scam. Suppose you have 100 gram coins, someone could start "chipping" them so they each lose 1 gr, after chipping 100 coins you get 1 "free" coin right? actually you just stole that from others. Sometimes they add back the lost gram but using a cheaper metal, and sometimes the practice was done by the State. Indeed in the Roman empire it was done that way

This cannot be done in the digital world, not with something as secure as bitcoin, where every little satoshi is accounted for. With physical coins you would have to carefully check each coin, this is unscalable and unpractical. If if you get a "certificate", you its different than trusting a bank "to keep it stored...". You trust whoever certified it, and besides the physical good could always be tampered with after certification.

Therefore Bitcoin is more secure than gold.

But in the event that you have an artificially honest society that would absolutely never tamper with your gold coins, then yes.

Gold production is not controlled by the government and is worldwide recognized (by weight). Your country might collapse and the gold keeps its purchasing power, unlike fiat. But its physical, it can be found, seized, tampered... keeping it protected costs money, and its heavy too!

As for successful monetary systems, the key difference is removing the government from the equation. You could look at countries that use another country money without their permission (such as many countries using the USD). In those they moved their local control to foreign control, but the risk is too high, should the USD collapse they would collapse too. But until that happens, they in their territory can experience handling a money their own local politicians can't manipulate. If their budget doesn't fit, they cannot print more to cover it, they have to reduce expenses etc (transparency).

Pegging doesn't work because its a promise they almost always break, because they can. That is the point, CAN or CANNOT do. CAN your gov. make you poor overnight or not?

Unfortunately these precious metals made coins were also made by the government of that time , the Monarchy , so even at that point it was very unfair that the small households had to work a lot and pay taxes .
It was very very unfair for certain people from different castes and also the country.
That system was quite a failure , only good for the king ND the rich of that time , therefore I do not think that it was fair.

I do think that the system where you exchange a thing for something else was actually very good in the past .

Because this way you will be doing your work and at the same time you will exchange directly from other people not the government or anything, preserving your tradition and your skills.