When a president tells the governor of the central bank not to raise interest rates despite the bank board's best professional judgement, is that considered an attack?
And then the governor of the central bank doesn't because they don't take their orders from the executive branch, because they're a private entity? That's actually the whole reason they're a private entity -- to separate monetary policy from politics. Them being a private entity was what Satoshi was mad about, and yet here it is, saving our asses. What if Satoshi was ... wrong about everything?
Ad hominem. It's an opinion that some "policy" is "saving our asses". BItcoin isn't undergoing a 51% attack, currently. You don't know Satoshi's identity.
Private entities still practice consensus. Just because one can't inspect or participate in the consensus doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That’s all irrelevant to my point; I didn’t say bitcoin was being attacked. The “saving our asses” comment was that if the executive branch telling the fed how to monetary policy represents an attack then the private nature of the federal reserve represents a defense, one that’s working, or colloquially “saving our asses.” This effective structure is one bitcoin maximalists decry, and yet, it continues to work effectively. Further it’s not a stretch to attach that idea to Satoshi given the content of the genesis block. It’s not an ad hominem attack to suggest someone is wrong — even that someone’s entire thesis is wrong — the definition is to attack the attributes of someone instead of their argument, I’m refuting their argument.
It doesn’t matter who Satoshi is, I don’t need to know to opine on their ideas. That private entities practice consensus is fine (after all isn’t that just any human interaction?) and further I have no problem with consensus just the sheer wastefulness and intentional anti-efficiency of bitcoin as-is, the fact it’s waste isn’t sufficient to prevent an attack, it’s fiscal policy (inflation is fine, you’re not supposed to hold currencies) and the idea that somehow bitcoins dreadful wealth inequality will save us from the present dreadful wealth inequality. Not to mention the idea we should just defer monetary policy to a bunch of developers who hack on protocol instead of a group of trained economists. Or the idea of scarcity when anyone can and does fork coins to double the number outstanding every few weeks. Or it’s user hostility. Or it’s defenselessness to market manipulation. History won’t look kindly on this mess in a few years.
