
Bread, How Did They Make It? Part IV: Markets, Merchants and the Tax Man - Kednicma
https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iv-markets-and-non-farmers/
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Rotten194
This blog is great, highly recommend. Along with this series, he has some
really interesting ones on medieval warfare illustrated via Lord of the Rings:

[https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-
gondor/](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/)
[https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-
helms-...](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/)

~~~
rossdavidh
I can second that, both the series on the siege of Minas Tirith and the series
on the battle of Helm's Deep were outstanding, making great points by
comparing book, movie, and historical precedent, to better understand all
three.

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Kednicma
I wonder if the lack of extraction will doom cryptocurrencies to not being
suitable for the impoverished masses; without a government which needs the
cryptocurrency to be used for taxation, it seems like coin usage would ebb and
flow along with the tides of the market's capitalization.

~~~
seibelj
Cryptocurrency is a form of money unlike any other. Just as the internet is a
network unlike any other before it, native internet money simply has no
parallels. Bitcoin is related to gold in that it is attempting to be a global
store of value separated from governments. But other cryptocurrencies such as
Ethereum have elements of commodities, energy (ETH is similar to oil in that
you need it to run operations on the network), equities, interest bearing
assets, among others. It’s all of these at once. No government or regulator
sets arbitrary fences around what an asset can be, as it’s just software.

I think the biggest misconception of blockchain is that it’s “worthless”. The
people who say this haven’t given crypto a modicum of thought - they read some
dingus’ blog post and decided that was all there is to say. I truly think
bitcoin / blockchain will be seen as one of the transformative technologies of
the 21st century.

~~~
cromwellian
I has nothing to do with crypto tho. Whether a monetary instrument works and
is adopted as a widespread medium of exchange depends on factors outside
whether or not it's impossible to counterfeit or is deflationary or
inflationary.

It's been 12 years of bitcoiners telling me any day now, it's going to
overthrow the USD and Visa and Mastercard, and yet, no one's buying a
Starbucks with BTC.

If you start out with your selling point as some kind of libertarian utopian
currency free of regulation, you're going to miss the mark for the same reason
that the internet, once seen as free of regulation, geography, and government
(Remember, "The Cyberspace Declaration of Independence") is not only regulated
now, but you have the public clamoring for more.

We have regulations because a majority of your neighbors want them. And if a
majority of your neighbors want a regulated currency, they are not going to
adopt yours if your selling point is no controls.

~~~
ultrarunner
> We have regulations because a majority of your neighbors want them

A majority of my neighbors want the promised outcomes of the pitches for
regulation given by politicians and big businessmen. If those outcomes can be
provided more quickly by other means the regulations themselves become
comparatively unpalatable. No one asked for cookie warning popups on every
site.

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082349872349872
Just like one can convert milk to cheese (easier to store, easier to
transport) and grapes to wine or fruit to schnapps (same advantages), one can
convert grain to alcohol.

late USSR "vodka economy" as seen from the US:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24176587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24176587)

