Why does it make a difference whether your wealth is denoted by USD, Bitcoin, milk caps, or Rai Stones? If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys? And how does the medium of exchange have any bearing on nations going to war over control of oil, rare earth minerals, strategic islands?
It seems to me you're implying that the colossal environmental damage inherent to a Bitcoin-driven world economy would be offset by the abolition of militaries, police, and banks, but I don't see how you make that jump. $trillions of military spending are used to secure resources and strategic assets and ensure national security, not to defend against bank robberies. A world without militaries or police is unimaginably different from our world in so many more ways than just the medium of exchange.
And if you can't point guns at people to make them give up part of their pile, how will you implement the CO2 tax?
> Why does it make a difference whether your wealth is denoted by USD, Bitcoin, milk caps, or Rai Stones? If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys?
The soldiers lining up your countrymen and shooting them in the head so they fall into a ditch become the new owners of your countrymen's USD and milk caps, but not their Bitcoin or rai stones. This kind of thing (the "pillaging" part of "raping and pillaging") is historically a major incentive for going to war.
> If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys?
If your seed phrase is erased from your brain by a bullet, it probably doesn't do you much good. But it will completely change your life if you manage to escape: a refugee with pockets full of gold is observably different from a destitute pauper; a refugee who has memorized two seed phrases is not observably different from a refugee who has memorized only one. That's the difference between starting a new life as a homeless beggar and buying a country estate to retire on.
> the colossal environmental damage inherent to a Bitcoin-driven world economy
You seem to be begging the question here; why should we expect a Bitcoin-driven world economy to produce colossal environmental damage? Mining Bitcoin with fossil-fuel energy is unprofitable, so we should expect Bitcoin to produce a colossal shift to cheaper renewable energy, which may reverse the colossal environmental damage caused by fossil fuels. Or it may not.
the US dollar is backed by the petrodollar arrangement: oil exporters accept dollars for oil in exchange for defense guarantees and other benefits. everyone needs oil, so everyone needs dollars. the dollar is inextricably tied to oil consumption and the US is strategically invested in it. add to this that the US military is the single largest institutional consumer of oil on the planet. there is no coherent argument that bitcoin is worse for the environment than this. bitcoin only wants cheap energy; it is agnostic about what generates it, and incentivizes renewables since they tend to be the cheapest.
It seems to me you're implying that the colossal environmental damage inherent to a Bitcoin-driven world economy would be offset by the abolition of militaries, police, and banks, but I don't see how you make that jump. $trillions of military spending are used to secure resources and strategic assets and ensure national security, not to defend against bank robberies. A world without militaries or police is unimaginably different from our world in so many more ways than just the medium of exchange.
And if you can't point guns at people to make them give up part of their pile, how will you implement the CO2 tax?