Quote from: donut on March 13, 2014, 09:12:35 PM

Quote from: JorgeStolfi on March 13, 2014, 09:02:12 PM

In particular, I cannot understand why some bitcoiners still believe that crypto-currency in general, and bitcoin in particular, will free them from governments or banks. If that is what you expect from bitcoin, prepare to be severely disappointed. Governments can render cyptocurrencies useless with a single stroke of the pen; we saw that happen in China and other countries.

More generally, one cannot expect that a technological invention, by itself, will bring fundamental social, political or economic change. The people whose wealth and power could be threatened by such change will fight it, with all the resources that their wealth and power gives them. In particular, technology cannot give to the people of a country any freedoms that their government is denying them.

Are you honestly suggesting that black markets don't exist?

Are you really ignoring that the internet fundamentally changed society and is the reason the protests and revolutions from 2011 on are even possible despite the wishes of local dictators?

Wow, yeah. While I mostly stopped paying attention to his posts, as they struck me as yet another self proclaimed intellectual casting judgement in the absence of some fundamental understandings, this seems like pretty good justification for my assumption (at the risk of sounding hypocritical). Not enough time in my day to hear all these guys out. Nothing personal.