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El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender

(ticotimes.net)
927 points smallerfish | 5 comments | 04 Feb 25 00:00 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 00:51 UTC] No.42925817[source]▶
It's interesting and nice to see how progressive and creative El Salvador has been. Some failures are perfectly understandable when one is willing to try new things. Their approach to crime is another thing that comes to mind that was lambasted and ridiculed by the "international community" and "experts". Yet in the space of a single decade they went from murder capital of the world to safer than New Zealand (in terms of homicide rate), which is just staggering.

I love that they are innovating and experimenting and trying their own things, and don't let the stuffy pompous status quo hold them back.

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EA-3167 ◴[04 Feb 25 01:03 UTC] No.42925950[source]▶
This is... a strange and jarring thing to read. My kneejerk response was that yes, they are innovating and experimenting with oppressive and corrupt governance, but that is ultimately uncharitable. A more balanced response is that while you may personally think of Bitcoin as progressive (I can't imagine why) you certainly can't claim that Bukele's El Salvador is progressive. You may like the gang crackdown, you may appreciate the suspension of habeus corpus, but you can't claim that's a progressive position.
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1. starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 01:25 UTC] No.42926198[source]▶
I don't think "bitcoin" is progressive, bitcoin is a technology. I think the idea of trying a decentralized electronic currency is progressive. Whether they implemented it well or should have seen the problems with using it as a currency is one thing, but in the idea of trying something new sure I think it was good. I don't think it caused grave harm to try.

And I certainly can claim that their policies on crime are progressive. They are prioritizing the rights of the many law abiding people who have a fundamental human right to live unmolested and unterrorized by criminals. I think that is very progressive and quite a radical departure from the status quo. I don't think I have ever heard "human rights advocates" and UN types opine and lament the human rights of people who have to endure this type of criminal society and I think it is brave and progressive to fight for them. I absolutely understand that it has required concessions and weakening of rights in other areas, and I don't say that is a good thing, but everything is a tradeoff right? If they continued conservative status quo the tradeoff would have been other peoples rights continuing to be violated.

Just because it's not "progressive" as exactly defined by an elite ruling class in the "international community" and think-tanks and academia, and the leftist intelligentsia at large, does not mean it is not progress in social reform and improvement for the greater good. To the actual people who have to live in El Salvador, approval for Bukele's reforms are staggering. I'm sure a lot of the "experts" who assured everybody they would never work are upset about it because they have a lot of egg on their face now, but fortunately the country has a bright young progressive leader who cares about the people more than the elitists say.

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2. archagon ◴[04 Feb 25 01:32 UTC] No.42926270[source]▶
That’s all well and good until innocent people get caught in the net. How many thousands of young people are worth incarcerating indefinitely and without legal recourse for the benefit of society at large? Would you throw your own child into the pit if it meant that the happiness and safety of your town was ensured? In the extreme, why not just make every crime carry a death penalty? Would that society be perfect by your measure?

(And that’s before we start dissecting the bribery and corruption of those who wield this power.)

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3. starspangled ◴[04 Feb 25 01:38 UTC] No.42926339[source]▶
> That’s all well and good until innocent people get caught in the net.

Is your position that no innocent people were convicted of crimes before the reforms, or that innocent people do not get caught in the crimes that have been reduced so dramatically?

> How many thousands of young people are worth incarcerating indefinitely and without legal recourse for the benefit of society?

And how many young people are not killed or maimed or dragged into a life of crime indefinitely and without recourse in the alternative?

As I said, I acknowledge the issues with it, but no social policy is perfect and all social policy is a balance. You can't pull out "human rights" as a trump card to say Bukele's policies are bad or worse than before. Because you are confining and defining human rights in a very narrow specific way, and that does not account for many other rights of many other classes of people.

4. csomar ◴[04 Feb 25 04:21 UTC] No.42927898[source]▶
> How many thousands of young people are worth incarcerating indefinitely and without legal recourse for the benefit of society at large?

You can actually do the math for that. If the number of innocent people harmed by the gangs is more than the number of innocent people caught in the legal cross-fire then it is worth it.

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5. EA-3167 ◴[04 Feb 25 15:25 UTC] No.42933503{3}[source]▶
That assumes a lot, most importantly that the harm is limited to "innocent person in prison" rather than, "Government has the power to throw anyone it wants into prison, effectively disappearing them." The history of these sort of measures is a history of a slide into something worse than whatever was being solved in the first place.