Nice thread, I enjoyed reading it.
It was particularly of interest to me, since I recently swallowed the red pill, about money. Specifically with crypto currencies and the block chain. I believe your arguments about who should control the money, and how it can be manipulated to achieve various outcomes, will become irrelevant. As irrelevant as people arguing how we are going to fit a million horses in NYC in 1911.
No one should control money. Just as Separation of Church and State led to greater freedoms and prosperity. The upcoming Separation of State and Currency will lead to increased monetary freedom for the entire world. Where two individuals can transact without regard to boarders, governments, banks, etc. requiring no ones approval beyond the parties involved. No one will be able to stop, divert or confiscate, transactions between consenting parties. Each individual will be their own bank with much greater security of your currency. Face it, if you trust someone else with your money, they will eventually steal it, they may even do it in such a clever way you don't even notice it (think inflation).
The original block chain currency is of course BITCOIN established January 2009. Since that time, its market cap has grown from nothing to 120 Billion today. Now, 120 Billion is a pretty large honeypot for bad guys to try and exploit (steal). As a matter of fact, it is under constant attack by some very smart people. To date BITCOIN itself has NEVER been hacked, and if you understand how BITCOIN works you will realize that trying to hack bitcoin is totally impractical. No government could afford to do it today, and even if they did it, would not net any gain. Plus, it only takes one node to completely rebuild it.
In the instances where BITCOIN have been stolen, the coins were kept in a central location, with the keys not under the owners control. Like an exchange, or bank, or trading platform which kind of defeats the purpose of a distributed currency system. I expect to see these institutions change to a distributed system in the near future.
Frankly, cryptocurrencies and the block chain are going to do to the monetary system(s), what the Internet did to information, open it up to everyone. Right now Block chain and cryptocurrency are where we were with the internet in 1989. This Pandora's box has been opened and cannot be stopped.
If you are interested in Crypto currencies (especially BITCOIN), I would suggest you start with a YouTube video called "Introduction to BITCOIN" by Andreas Antonopoulos, probably the most knowledgeable person about Bitcoin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1511&v=l1si5ZWLgy0 The lecture assumes you no nothing about bitcoin, and even if you think you know, watch the video with an open mind. The question and answer session at the end is particularly enlightening and answers some common misconceptions. I can guarantee it will be 38 minutes well spent, even if you end up totally disagreeing with him. Keep in mind the lecture was given in SEP 2016, so it is a year old. In that time the market cap has increased ten fold, so when he says twelve Billion, add two zeros.
We used to have a BOLD Prediction thread, so here is mine:
In less than five years the current monetary system will be completely disrupted. Banks, credit unions, government currencies, and most jobs involving financial middlemen, will become significantly less important than today and in some cases not even exist. Robots will have the ability to automatously control their own currency.