I was watching two people buy ice cream using their phones today. It occurs that they can only do that because the central bank that controls their phone apps/bank account hasn’t frozen their favors.
If money represents personal favors between two people, introducing a third party into money means someone else can show you disfavor (heh)
Fiat money is “controlled” centrally, but not each transaction.
Digital Fiat money is both “controlled” centrally, but each transaction must be approved by a third party (outside of some fringe distributed ledgers).
Like if you were a human rights reporter in a war torn country, and you tried to buy ice cream… maybe you couldn’t anymore, all your favors have been expired.
Full Disclosure - I’ve been influenced by this great book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years
I had this thought in a swimming pool, and not a shower, but a pool is shower adjacent so I thought this might count.
Let’s say I milk your cows today so that you can take care of other business today, and now you owe me a favor. Next week, I could ask you to repay me by giving me a enough milk, bread and eggs to last two days. What if the value of that favor changes based on supply and demand? What if I can later ask you to repay me with 10 days worth of food instead? What if that value can drop to just a mug of milk, 1 egg and no bread? Could that sort of value fluctuation even happen? Can’t really wrap my head around that, but in the crypto world that’s exactly what happens all the time.