Just explain to the students that it’s like a calculator except the answers might be wrong.

You’re right of course, but we are talking about two different things.

Absolutely “governments” have always been in control. How do you think they get the gold out of the ground? An elite hires people to do that work. The elites are the government in these ancient times, and they always controlled the mines. That is literally the very first thing they go for, and we have plenty of evidence for this. The precise locations of these mines was not unknown to these peoples by any stretch of the imagination.

Further, these gold mines were not simple operations, they required skill and aptitude to extract and form the metal into it’s required physical form, indeed just the process of what the physical form should be is itself a complicated political process. It’s also a myth that this is something recent, we simply don’t have the archaeological or written evidence to know what they did, but that doesn’t mean that local elites weren’t controlling the monetary supply through various rhetorical, political and/or physically coercive means just as their distant Sumerian progeny would end up doing. We have evidence of direct economic control going back almost to the very beginning of civilization.

yes but ultimately perception is reality.

But there in lies the problem, money is solely the domain of government, and anyone who thinks it isn’t is extremely ignorant and naive of how money actually works. The crypto bros have been lying to you, and while the cypher punks meant well, they are woefully ignorant about things like history and jurisprudence.

There is a path forward with crypto currency, but it isn’t through private endeavor. Otherwise we would be trading in wampum shells.

Here’s my argument: tough titties. Everything Greg Rutkowski has ever drawn or made has been inspired by other things he has seen and the experiences of his life, and this applies to all of us. Indeed, one cannot usually have experiences without the participation of others. Everyone wants to think they are special, and of course we are to someone, but to everyone no one is special. Since all of our work is based upon the work of everyone who came before us, then all of our work belongs to everyone. So tough fucking titties, welcome to the world of computer science, control c and control v is heavily encouraged.

In that Beatles documentary, Paul McCartney said he thought that once you uttered the words into the microphone, it belonged to everyone. Little did he know how right he actually was.

You think there is a line between innovation and infringement? Wrong, They are the same thing.

And for the record, I’m fine with anyone stealing my art. They can even sell it as their own. Attribution is for the vain.