Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Bitcoin debate: Max Keiser vs Steve - Bitcoin is not Socialist - For people interested in money laundering, tax avoidance and illegal drug deals Bitcoin has its attractions, but as a model for payment in a socialist system, the infrastructure provided by existing chip and pin cards and card readers is more promising.



BITCOIN IS NOT WHAT SOCIALISM NEEDS -  

In a recent paper Huckle and White (2016) argue that, while Bitcoin is often associated with right-wing libertarian political philosophy, the underlying technology – Blockchain – has properties that also make it applicable in a socialist economic framework. They cite Marx’ concept of labour credits and argue that credits created by Blockchain may take on the role of representing labour time. 

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx 1999), Marx discusses the idea of a communist society awarding labour credits to workers in correspondence with the labour time contributed by them. One hour of labour would yield a labour voucher representing one hour of work, minus taxes. Taxes are to be used for public expenditure, such as investment, education or the consumption needs of those unable to work. 

A one hour labour voucher can in turn be used to buy a consumption good that takes one hour to produce.

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