Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Barriers to introducing people to bitcoin
by
My Name Was Taken
on 12/11/2014, 19:34:26 UTC
When bitcoins are loaned by their miners with interest to be paid in bitcoins, they will find their bottom—both ethically and monetarily.

What's wrong with loaning bitcoins? Loans have been around for as long as there was money. No reason to think the rise of bitcoin would end the demand for loans.

Quote from: Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Chapter 12, Negative-Interest Economics link=http://sacred-economics.com/sacred-economics-chapter-12-negative-interest-economics/
In a world where the things we need and use go bad, sharing comes naturally. The hoarder ends up sitting alone atop a pile of stale bread, rusty tools, and spoiled fruit, and no one wants to help him, for he has helped no one. Money today, however, is not like bread, fruit, or indeed any natural object. It is the lone exception to nature’s law of return, the law of life, death, and rebirth, which says that all things ultimately return to their source. Money does not decay over time, but in its abstraction from physicality, it remains changeless or even grows with time, exponentially, thanks to the power of interest.

Monetary gain, within the context of “loaning,” is, traditionally, realized via positive interest—which is an artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity reserves, for itself, resources that, without its imposition, could be allocated to greater machinations.

Obviously if I'm taking a loan, I know I have to pay it back with interest, which means I will have less money later. That means I've made the decision that having the money now is more important than having more money later. Again, why is that bad?