The value isn’t the promise itself, but the probability that the promise is sound and will be kept. There is always a risk that it won’t be paid back.
For me to not have capital, and then to gain...
"Value is the probability the promise is kept."
This is sleight of hand, and I've already addressed it.
The entire defense is verbal and conceptual sleight of hand.
"The probability of a promise kept" does not exist. It's reification—treating an abstraction as a concrete thing. That is exactly what fiat is: pretending to create something from nothing with words alone. Playing God, which we are not.
We do not know if we will even be alive tomorrow, let alone what value others might place on work we have not yet done.
How is this any different from the "full faith and credit" of Steve instead of the state? It is not.
Buying and selling things that do not exist distorts the real market, because all goods compete. The "financial economy" extracts value from the real economy by definition—forcing tangible things to compete with reifications. That is, with fictions.
Proof-of-work and promise-of-work are not the same.
You also keep sliding across the is/ought distinction. Yes, people can and probably always will practice usury. That tells us nothing about whether it is right or wrong.
People will rob, murder, and rape. That is not an argument that they should.
That is sophistry.
Twisting scripture to justify usury—by pulling a metaphor from an unrelated point—is perverse.
Scripture frequently uses slavery as a metaphor too. It does not mean slavery is ethical.
The perspective I offer is precisely Christian. It is the position of St. Thomas Aquinas (and Aristotle before him).
Christendom rose from the ashes of Pagan Rome—which destroyed itself with usury—and built humanity's greatest civilization by banning it outright.
Look at what has happened since we began using word games to corrupt that ethic.
We have been on a thousand-year degenerate bender, spending Christendom's inheritance, and it has brought us to the doorstep of recapitulating Pagan Rome's collapse.
Bitcoin embodies that ancient ethic in code and hardens it with cryptography. Undoing it off-chain is failing to learn the lesson.
If we build new pyramids of lies, we will have accomplished nothing.
Truly adopting Bitcoin means internalizing its honesty. Only the truth can save us from ourselves.
This is sleight of hand, and I've already addressed it.
The entire defense is verbal and conceptual sleight of hand.
"The probability of a promise kept" does not exist. It's reification—treating an abstraction as a concrete thing. That is exactly what fiat is: pretending to create something from nothing with words alone. Playing God, which we are not.
We do not know if we will even be alive tomorrow, let alone what value others might place on work we have not yet done.
How is this any different from the "full faith and credit" of Steve instead of the state? It is not.
Buying and selling things that do not exist distorts the real market, because all goods compete. The "financial economy" extracts value from the real economy by definition—forcing tangible things to compete with reifications. That is, with fictions.
Proof-of-work and promise-of-work are not the same.
You also keep sliding across the is/ought distinction. Yes, people can and probably always will practice usury. That tells us nothing about whether it is right or wrong.
People will rob, murder, and rape. That is not an argument that they should.
That is sophistry.
Twisting scripture to justify usury—by pulling a metaphor from an unrelated point—is perverse.
Scripture frequently uses slavery as a metaphor too. It does not mean slavery is ethical.
The perspective I offer is precisely Christian. It is the position of St. Thomas Aquinas (and Aristotle before him).
Christendom rose from the ashes of Pagan Rome—which destroyed itself with usury—and built humanity's greatest civilization by banning it outright.
Look at what has happened since we began using word games to corrupt that ethic.
We have been on a thousand-year degenerate bender, spending Christendom's inheritance, and it has brought us to the doorstep of recapitulating Pagan Rome's collapse.
Bitcoin embodies that ancient ethic in code and hardens it with cryptography. Undoing it off-chain is failing to learn the lesson.
If we build new pyramids of lies, we will have accomplished nothing.
Truly adopting Bitcoin means internalizing its honesty. Only the truth can save us from ourselves.
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