[Cryptography] threat models, was quantum computers & crypto

[John Levine]

It appears that  <cherry at cpal.pw> said:
>On 11/2/21 12:37 PM, John Levine wrote:
>> Financiers predicted disaster when the Roosevent ended the US gold standard
>> in 1933, which did not happen, and again in 1971 when Nixon ended even nominal
>> gold convertibility, which didn't happen either.
>> 
>> In the meantime, US GDP grew from inflation adjusted $0.82 trillion in 1933
>> to $5.1 trillion in 1971 to $21 trillion now.  The US population has grown
>> by about 2.6 since 1933, so divide and you can see how much richer we are now.
>
>It is rather obvious that the inflation adjustment factor is cooked, and 
>over the last six months to a year, the cooking has radically worsened.
>
>In the fifties, a working man could buy a car and a house in the suburbs 
>and support a stay at home wife and children.

Things were different sixty years ago, and it is very hard to make an
apples to apples comparison.

If you are happy with a 1950s lifestyle, you can probably still do it
on one income. That suburban house was 1000 sq ft, which included two
or three bedrooms and one bathroom shared by 4 or 5 people. There
might have been a blurry black and white TV, no cable, and a record
player. There was one black phone, with calls outside your own town
saved for special occasions. You had never seen a computer other than
pictures of vacuum tube giant brains in Life magazine, and network
meant NBC, CBS, or DuMont.  You had two or three sets of clothes
that you wore every day and probably a suit or dress for church and
weddings and funerals.  You might go to the movies on weekends.
The idea of ready to eat food delivery would have seemed absurd.

The car in the carport (probably no garage) fell apart after 75,000
miles, but it was what your family used for occasional trips to
relatives or a nearby lake or beach. You never flew, you probably
didn't take long train trips. Speaking from personal experience, one
time I was in the hospital ward with the iron lung but it turned out
to be bad flu, not polio, so I am here typing this.

However, this has nothing to do with the original argument about hard
vs. soft money.  The dollar in the 1950s was just as soft as it is
now, with a more regulated economy featuring scary sounding financial
repression, which meant that every bank paid 2% and there was no other
place to put your money unless you were a high flyer with a stock
broker.  Even if the inflation adjustments are off by a factor of
two or five, which they aren't, we're still vastly richer now than we were
when we had hard money.

R's,
John

PS: since this has nothing to do with crypto, I think I'm done.