Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
moose_man · 2024-01-10
· Original
thread
It's not arrogance and not just that it is scammy or wasteful to the environment. Bitcoin is another mechanism the increases inequality.
I think Bitcoin is one of the many way that the economy is rigged against economically insecure retail investors. The more money that gets funneled from the middle class into Michael Saylor and crew's pocket the closer it brings us to civil war.
Checkout
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin
https://www.amazon.com/End-Times-Counter-Elites-Political-Di...
Recommended reading:
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
https://www.amazon.com/End-Times-Counter-Elites-Political-Di...
"Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit."