The UK is one of the wealthiest, stablest, most developed countries in the world. Pointing out that its banking system is relatively effective as if that reduces the value of Bitcoin is like saying toilets and public sanitation is great in the UK so why are these entrepreneurs bothering building cheap toilets and menstruation technologies for India and Africa again? In other words, unbelievably naive and borderline arrogant.
Entrepreneurs smell an opportunity[1] to roll out one of the many, many new energy technologies that have developed in the meantime in your area (which somehow was overlooked until this point.)
[1] An opportunity made possible by the ability (created by Bitcoin) to profitably and efficiently collect micropayments in poor regions of the world
So your solution to the problem of bitcoin being unusable without power(and internet access) in a region is that in the future bitcoin will enable people to develop new technologies that don't currently exist? And they will be able to invent these new technologies because the only thing holding them back is in the inability to collect micropayments(which they can currently actually do using cash)?
No, Bitcoin will help make it profitable to roll out new technologies. Roll out != invent. It will also stimulate the development of said technologies. Because it lowers the cost of taking payment.
As far as cash, try collecting cash payments for your grid of micro-generators recharging cellphones in the Amazon, see how well that works out for you. Let me guess, you're gunna fly some drones in to pick up the payments...
What are these new technologies that are just waiting for roll out?
>As far as cash, try collecting cash payments for your grid of micro-generators recharging cellphones in the Amazon, see how well that works out for you. Let me guess, you're gunna fly some drones in to pick up the payments...
Try removing your micro generator from the community after you've installed it when they stop paying your rent. See how that works out for you.
I'd collect the payments when I delivered the fuel btw.
Maybe the "entrepreneurs" will in fact "smell the opportunity" and move in and save the day, but for what? What's the gain? Why design critical infrastructure so that its survival is based on a hypothetical market scenario, when it can be done right in the first place?
I don't have a problem with understanding why capitalism works, or even why it worked so well for us in the last century. But "straightforward application of basic logic", as well as simple observation of the world around us, clearly shows that the "invisible hand" is pushing us toward a very unpleasant future. We would do well to reconsider how much we want to follow that hand, because we don't share the goals of its owner.
But hell, we're dealing with incentive structures here, and people change those only when they're incentivized to do so. So maybe we really need to wait for Bitcoin or something similar to throw us back into XVII century (only dirtier) for people to realize that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't have been treating feedback loops as benevolent deities.
