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How would it be and what would it look like?
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Poverty and homelessness under a bitcoin hard money standard
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How would it be and what would it look like?
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View Reddit by Luckyking223 – View Source
There will still be poor / homeless people.
probably the same as it looks today.
Bitcoin isn’t designed or intended to solve for wealth inequality.
There would be no point in hoarding vacant homes as they do under fiat standard
If bitcoin establishes itself as hard money, more people would use it for savings and it would take some share of other assets like real estate, which many use for investments / parking capital for the long run. So in my opinion it would probably look better than it does today, as more people would be able to save more money and also buy a house at a more reasonable price.
Currency debasement (and inflation) is essentially a regressive tax on the the poorest, who often own no appreciating assets to shelter themselves and would see some benefit.
Homelessness is often more of a mental health issue, so bitcoin isn’t going to do much there.
Elites won’t be able to steal what you earned and push more and more people into poverty. People saying bitcoin doesn’t fix inequality are wrong. Bitcoin does fix inequality by making everyone play by the same rules.
In the US, there are multiple causes of homelessness. The chronically homeless are typically afflicted with serious mental illness. Bitcoin can’t cure mental illness. So, there will still be at least *some* homelessness.
Similarly, there are multiple causes of poverty.
Bitcoin only addresses/affects where/how poverty in inflicted upon others by governments, bankers, the IMF, etc. Read the original version of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” Many poor people around the world are victims of repression, and Bitcoin goes a long way towards reducing that and giving every human being a fair chance, economically.
Bitcoin does not address cases where an individual ends up in poverty due to things such as an individual’s:
* Laziness
* Stupidity
* Drug addiction
* Gambling addiction
If you are not willing/capable to work and provide value to the society you will not earn any sats and thus become impoverished. But most people are compassionate and would be willing to donate to various sorts of charities that help those in need. I guess it’s not much different from what we have today, but an overwhelming Bitcoin adoption would eventually imply a weak government and low/no taxes, so voluntary donated charities will emerge.
Those things are not solved by bitcoin, i highly doubt that bitcoin would solve this.
People are greedy and selfish, we see things in a different way – will it benefit me yes or no and then prpceed from there.
My wellbeing, my health, my time is more valuable than others is a common idea that has been ingrained in our minds.
So changing to bitcoin would not mean solving this problem.
The homeless are not going away regardless. Saw one holding a sign today needing money at the walmart exit and across the street taco bell had job openings posted on their banner with like $15 hour. Bitcoin won’t fix lazy
Wut
It would look fair, and I’m guessing you’re asking as someone who is financially privileged, instead of living in Nigeria.
Those who are homeless today may be homeless because the central bank made their currency worth nothing.
Those who are homeless on a Bitcoin standard is because they don’t contribute shit to society and deserve to be homeless.
A problem faced by homeless people is where to receive their checks and most are unbanked. Embracing of a frictionless payment system allows funds to be automatically deposited into a digital wallet.
This could be a factor that helps implement something like a Universal Basic Income or UBI. Of course interacting with complicated systems assume some level of mental health and ability to understand how to interact with a digital wallet.
So the adoption of a Bitcoin standard would just promote a more favorable environment for homeless to find assistance.
Well the problem now is, that inflation benefits the debtors on cost of the savors.
Since poor people mostly change money for time and often save in money a Btc standard woule benefit them the most.
Fiat is designed to fail and that’s all there is to it
Probably worse. No cash to give homeless people and probably no education on how to use Bitcoin
Big thing about hard money is, that value taxed out of people is close to location they are taxed at. And that is something that might actually help with inequality/poverty/homelessness issues.
With indirect tax-via-money-printer – all extracted value is centralized, which allows to not redistribute it where it was collected.
With direct-taxes – extracted value is local, so it gets redistributed locally where it was collected.
OP – perhaps it’s better editing the original post to give your view of the relationship between Bitcoin and Poverty/ homelessness – as I suspect you didn’t just pick these topics at random.
Most developed countries under free market capitalism like Switzerland and Singapore barely have any poverty or homelessness to speak of. There are private shelters like churches that handles some of it though. Under a Bitcoin standard the chances are even higher that the vast majority is better off and have access to a basic standard of living.
As someone who works in social services, bitcoin has nothing to do with poverty and homelessness, those more so fall under what you push your government far enough to do so they actually get off their asses, im still waiting for Canada’s plan to end child poverty by 2000.
One minute you are your own bank with $500k+ worth of bitcoin, a minute later after 10 failed attempts at entering your seed phase, your hardware wallet destroys itself and your **E N T I R E** net worth…
One minute you are your own bank with $1m+ worth of bitcoin, a minute later someone has a knife to your throat and another guy has a gun to your wife/kid/dog/mom ‘s head and are instructing you to send all your bitcoin through a crypto washing service to their address… and your **E N T I R E** net worth is gone.
One minute you are your own bank with $2m+ worth of bitcoin, a minute later you hit your head in a car crash and get amnesia. You can’t remember your seed phase, where you wrote it down, or what even bitcoin is. Your wife and kids are going frantic as you were the family ‘banker’… and your families **E N T I R E** net worth is gone…
These are just 3 scenarios in which you become poor and homelessness under a bitcoin hard money standard. I’m sure we can ask ChattyGPT for more suggestions…
Humans should get rid of the idea of money and capitalism all together.
As long as the money emitted is equal to the value of the services and products in circulation you can be sure that your work is payed for what is worth, so in order not to be poor you’d just have to work. A centralized honest system could achieve that, Bitcoin can’t but at least it isn’t possible to manipulate it
Right now a lot would be homeless and poor bc they wouldn’t understand how to use it or keep theirs safe. People on here (likely educated) seem to not understand that 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2023. 54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level. They barely can read and now you expect them to handle and understand pass phrases, block chains, etc
Look at high inflation countries. Poverty increases with inflation. Bitcoin fixes that.
“The poor you will always have with you” – Jesus (Matthew 26:11)
I’m actually not religious, but I was raised Christian and that appears apropos. As regards Bitcoin, specifically, I think the key thing to understand is Bitcoin *fundamentally* is about empowering individuals, increasing their freedom, at least financially.
What we see in reality is that in any given situation where a stable group (not warring) is given maximum (or close) freedom, there is a high correlation with wealth. The opposite is also true, as we see limiting freedoms is correlated highly with poverty, shortages/non-availability etc. Look at the difference between North and South Korea. North Korea is the very picture of a totalitarian state where the government is fully responsible for the well being of the citizens. Another example was Cuba under Fidel Castro. It is estimated that 60% of the total population of North Korea live below the poverty line in 2020. A satellite photo of Korea at night shows a striking difference where the North is all dark, but the South is lit up like the Las Vegas Strip with bustling economic activity. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Korean_Peninsula_at_night_from_space.jpg). South Korea has been killing it with things like autos (Kia), K-Pop (BlackPink, Mamamoo, BTS), K-Dramas, Food, etc. Same people, very different outcomes. The difference is the South adopted a free capitalist model like the West. Another quick example is the difference between normal Chinese versus a locale like Hong Kong. Actually, Chinese in general have been gaining affluence (like Jack Ma who started Alibaba after failing to be hired by a local Kentucky Fried Chicken). The reason for the rising wealth of many Chinese is China actually started experimenting with capitalist models although they are still ultimately communist.
Why do I never see concerns expressed regarding bitcoin related to the risk of wealth concentration?
Someone very wealthy could, right now, purchase a massive number of coins.
What happens when the coins concentrate in the same way our currencies currently are?
Hungry and cold, I’d imagine.
Honestly I think it will be quite worse.
Same as now.
So part of the problem with homelessness is that homes are seen as a store of value, rather than a utility.
Under a world where the unit of exchange is seen as the only thing holding value, people will opt to hold value in the actual store of value (bitcoin) and not homes. Therefore, investors will stop holding real estate to speculate against bitcoin, and simply hold bitcoin.
If this were to happen, we would see a dramatic redistribution of houses from the people who are holding homes to those who need homes. We would also see a collapse of home prices. This would allow everyday people to have a home of their own.
Years later I can tell my kids I got rich by doing nothing but holding bitcoin 😂
There will temporarily be more poor and homeless people because the mega governments that fund mass welfare programs will not survive the fall of fiat currencies.
But under a long term bitcoin standard the middle class and higher classes can pick up society from the ashes.
They still poor