You’re still not answering my question.

But it’s now clear that communism for you is a religion. Upper stage communism is the paradise that is promised to those who follow the tenets of the faith fully, and I am a heretic non-believer

I will not be continuing this discussion any further

How about instead of just saying that I am wrong, describe to me how an individual in a higher stage communist state would be prevented from slacking in his duties (and still gaining “according to his need”) without state induced violence

What I described is exactly how it played out in about a dozen instances where a transition to communism was tried

There are different kinds of work which needs to be done for our society to function. These tasks have costs for those who perform them (lost time, spent energy, danger, boredom, etc).

In pure communism, everyone works hard and everyone is given the spoils of the work we collectively provide. But it is rational for any individual to not work as hard, because he will bear less of the cost of that work, but still realize the same gain

Therefore most people tend to shirk their duties, and the output of the entire collective drops. In order to maintain the system, the threat of violence is introduced, and we quickly get to Stalinist purges

It is not game theoretically aligned. It’s not his fault, Game Theory didn’t really get going until after his death

Marx’s critique of capitalism is spot on. It’s his proposed solution that is problematic

I don’t like it

I have to give credit where it’s due, I actually like this change. Likes used to be private, and then they became public and subject to the toxic performativity of social media

It’s anti-tech propaganda. The same is happening with crypto. Certain groups don’t like it, so they try to convince the public that it is bad for the environment so it will be banned

This isn’t a good situation, but I also don’t like the idea that people should be banned from using energy how they want to. One could also make the case that video games or vibrators are not “valuable” uses of energy, but if the user paid for it, they should be allowed to use it.

Instead of moralizing we should enact a tax on carbon (like we have in Canada) equal to the amount of money it would take to remove that carbon. AI and crypto (& xboxes, vibrators, etc) would still exist, but only at levels where they are profitable in this environment.

Humanity:

It seems to be a lightweight alternative to Mastodon that is easier for individuals to run on a private server

Yes, of all the problems in the healthcare system, the problem of letting AI help patients diagnose their own problems is definitely top of the list /s

That would be great! And I’m sure there are people doing it. And if 2.3% of the US Power grid were dedicated to that I’m sure some people would be upset about it too

My basic point is I don’t think there is anything morally wrong with Bitcoin miners using energy, even though this is a narrative that is very popular now. There are plenty of other valid criticisms of Bitcoin, but I don’t think this one stands up to scrutiny.

I would love if this were an option, but it’s not. The current battery technologies don’t have the scale for grid level storage capacity. The only grid scale storage solution that is really being done is to build very expensive infrastructure that moves water between two dams of different heights, and building more of those doesn’t seem politically likely at the moment

The reality is that there is much a whole bunch of excess energy supply that is produced because power plants can’t cycle up and down with demand. So they have to keep producing at peak demand 24/7 (there is some nuances based on the type of power plant, NatGas is faster to turn on/off, but this is broadly true)

I have my qualms with Bitcoin. As a currency it has significant transaction speed problems, and potential security ones after a couple more halvenings. But I don’t see a problem if Bitcoin miners want to pay energy producers to use energy that would be produced anyway and earn the producers nothing.

I agree with everything you’ve said

Pretty much the only things Bitcoin has on Ethereum today is a better brand and Lindy effect

Oh yeah there are many criticisms of Bitcoin one can make, I just don’t think the energy one is very convincing if you think about it a bit

It does NOT fucking matter if it’s “”“”““waste””“”“” energy

Sounds like you don’t actually care about the energy use, you just hate this for moral reasons. Using excess energy has zero externalities

I’ve always found this argument against crypto to be a bad one. The headline will say something like “Crypto mining uses XYZ total energy” and we’re supposed to infer that this means crypto is polluting a lot. But it doesn’t say how much pollution there actually was. For economic reasons, these miners often use cheap excess energy that would have been produced anyway or green tech. Not all of it obviously, but that level of nuance is missing.

Also, we don’t make the same moral arguments against other energy uses. Air conditioners use more energy than Bitcoin mining does, but we don’t go around saying the government should ban people from using AC.

There are legitimate problems with crypto, but this one never convinced me

Tbf, most money nowadays doesn’t physically exist nowadays. Only a tiny fraction of the “money” that is out there has a physical instantiation. Most of it is just numbers in bank servers