Quote from: arbitrage001 on July 08, 2013, 01:16:52 AM

Quote from: QuantPlus on July 07, 2013, 04:22:25 PM

Major Fiat currencies cannot "fail"...
Because they are the only way to pay taxes and stay out of jail...
So every Fiat Currency has a fundamental value >> Tax Base...
(We are not talking about Banana Republics here).

This USD "fails" nonsense is floated by people...
Who have never filed a Tax Return or held a meaningful job in society.

Seeing most government officials with bloated paid and mostly do nothing but process paper. I don't necessary agree those who filed tax return held a meaningful job.

Now that I think about it, many jobs in the west are pretty meaningless since most exists for the sole reason to comply with government rules and regulation (accountant, lawyer, government employee and etc etc..) Do bankers in its current form serve society in a meaningful way?

My guess is that you don't understand what a banker is.

Yes, bankers certainly serve society in meaningful ways. Ask anyone who has a mortage and didn't have to save up a 100% deposit to buy a house, to buy a car, to start a business. Ask the farmer who is able hedge his weather-related risk. Ask anyone whose house was robbed and who didn't lose his life savings because his money was in a bank (ie the original purpose of a bank, which is remarkably similar to keeping btc in cold storage today).

Ultimately, if bitcoin is to be successful, institutions will exist that duplicate all of these features for consumers. If you want to have the opportunity to earn interest on your btc holdings, someone (they're called bankers) must exist to manage the lending of that money to generate that interest, at a very basic level. Bankers provide services far beyond that, of course, but that's one of the basic functions.

I'm not a giant fan of the modern banking industry, don't get me wrong. I think the Goldmans, Morgans, etc need to be reigned in drastically, and it needs to be done via government regulation, because they're money-hungry psychos who are out of control on the institutional level. But that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Epicurus

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