Me: Pretty much. Many communists around if you want to find them, it's a third world country, it is still a feudalistic cultural epitome as well.
One of my first conversations and confrontations about my Communism... in a thread..
* Fellow traveler sees me watching a video clip on Leninism...
Him: You're a Communist? In this day and age? That's rare. Where are you from?
Me: India
Me: Pretty much. Many communists around if you want to find them, it's a third world country, it is still a feudalistic cultural epitome as well.
Me: No. India's communist parties follow the electoral line. Though there are many hardline Maoists that believe in Armed struggle. The CPs also have trade unions, they do a lot of societal transformations, etc wherever they are in power.
Me: Yeah. At least, there is no antagonistic anti communism like you have in the west.
Me: Communism didn't do that. The Eastern bloc countries turned poor en masse after they abandoned Socialism btw.
Me: Under Socialism, jobs were a fundamental right. When they turned neoliberal is when their jobs went and they were left high and dry.
Me: Let me ask you. Do you want to be rich?
Him: Yes.
Me: ... and the person next to you?
Him: Sure that would be great!
Me: and perhaps everyone in this aircraft as well?
Me: Then that's communism, btw :) Have a look at the UN figures for Soviet Russia and you will see an economic graph that never went down despite being the most sanctioned country in the world. Cuba...
Me: Billions? And the world never saw a population drop? USSR and China eliminated those who threatened their Revolutions, which I find no different from massacres and wars started by the West to keep their hegemonic power intact.
Me: But it's also a planned economy. The government also has board members in every private company, there are national targets, things to achieve as a nation.
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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
If everyone was holding bitcoin on the old x86 in their parents basement, we would be finding a price bottom. The problem is the risk is all pooled at a few brokerages and a network of rotten exchanges with counter party risk that makes AIG circa 2008 look like a good credit.
— Greg Wester (@gwestr) November 25, 2018
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
