Bitcoin Forum

So I read that bitcoin is now the most powerful distributed computing project in history.

I find it ironic that the cure for cancer and the search for extra terrestrial intelligence are lower on the scale of human priority than currency.  Not that I don't think bitcoin is good, or that greed is necessarily bad.

Is the success of bitcoin based on greed?

Yes, just like the success of any economy.

Damn straight.

yes currency is more important than both of those things combined. If left unsolved the problem of the double coincidence of wants would cause a great deal more suffering on net than the problem of cancer. Same for the problem of being unable to save non durable goods. Same for the economic calculation problem.

Greed is the only way to motivate people, its an unfortunate reality.

It's not at all greed. Any Money fills 3 functions:

1) Unit of account
2) Store of value
3) Medium of exchange

Money simply means that I can sell my old camera then maybe buy some pizza with some of the proceeds vs trying to find someone will accept a camera for a pizza, and then give me something that is worth the camera-the pizza for change. Money fulfills a function that allows an economy to work to some degree of efficiency. 

(Psst: Wanting that pizza is greed. Wanting to get the camera is greed. Wanting to get gas for your car is greed.)

If there were a decentralized computer system used to power your home or run your cell phone it would likely get more processor power than Bitcoin.

We use money more than we use extra terrestrial knowledge or cancer research.

Yes, the maple kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeKSiCQkPw

Is wanting to make money from a cure, or wanting to be world famous for a great discovery, greedy?

'Cancer research' on the whole may not be a scam, but mostly it sure seems to be.
The application of distributed computer power is not as strictly appropriate to astrobiology or medicine as it is to the pure number world of finance accounting.
The term greed actually does have linguistically negative connotations, and therefore is not a technically fit word to describe the motivations behind abstraction of trade.
A better word? Mutual Aid? Idunno...

Greed is driving force.

And in lot of cases it has been one for bad.

It needs some counterpart to be benecifial for majority. And sometimes that means force like labor unions...

Trade is entered not because you will help the other person, but because the other person will help you. (this is true for both participants) Mutual benefit might be a good term, or Rational self-interest.

powered by greed and the future all stars of the world  8)

Come to the mining custom hardware forum if you want to see what greed does to people. Its like throwing raw meat to a  pack of dogs in there.

You forgot freedom. Bitcoin brings the long-awaited opportunity to make business operations without being under the umbrella of any central bank. Unregulated business! Without any documents, nor the taxman collecting its share, just like the Mafia's doing in Sicily.

Bitcoin is powered by wishful thinking.

It is powered by greed, but also need in some cases.

Greed is fine in the free market because to be greedy you have to provide products and services to people.  This drives down the value of those products and services because you are increasing the supply.     That is the only way to get money in a free market.

When you have a rigged system, like the current banking system for example, money is obtained at the expense of others and thus the greedy are getting resources at the expense of others.   Inflation compacts the problems because it disproportionately hits the poorer in society while allowing the richer in general to attain more wealth than they otherwise would.  

So it is the greedy using a rigged system to get more than their fair share that is a problem.  Not being greedy per se.  It's all about the context.

Thus, it's not being greedy that is the problem, it's the rigging of the system.

in that sense, Bitcoin is not a problem.  It is providing a valuable resource to society with a net gain overall powered by greed if you will.

Thinking about it, I'm not even sure I know what greed actually is.  I know the word is used many ways by different people, sometimes in a perjorative sense, sometimes in a descriptive sense.

Greed is simply self-interest. Wanting to improve your situation. Some people don't like that.

I think it is perceived to be bad because of the imbalanced society that we live in. 

Also indoctrination and propaganda.  The wise leaders will provide for us, so it is in their best interests to denigrate those who bring wealth.    When you put forth the bankers who have a truly obscene amount of wealth that wouldn't be possible in a free market it is easy to do so.   Never mind that govt interference in the market is what created the wealthy bankers.  There's no way they would attain that kind of disparate wealth in a truly free market because it would be too competitive to garner massive profits.

Think of it this way, is it a bad thing that, say, Steve Jobs was "greedy"?   Was he greedy or did he just want the best for himself and his family and as a result help many others to wealth while providing the rest of us with good useful products?

  Suppose the idea of greed originated in agrarian society, and was applied to anyone who ate too much of the stores during the long, cold time between crops.  Or who ate the seed stock for the next year's plantings.

That would endanger survival of the group.

I'm basically an Ayn Rand type thinker, but I could agree with the above as a valid use of the term.  Then we've got the other, contemporary uses of the term.

Folks donate without knowing where their money goes. Even If the money gets to the lab it can, and is easily, be misspent, be used to bring the facility into compliance with nutso govt regulations, or is used entirely for more donation soliciting ads.
One can hope this is the exception to the rule. Inevitibly, it happens, though.

Right.  That would be a case of where you had a shared store and someone took more than their fair share.  I could go along with that definition being "greedy".

Maybe it's because we have all these collectivist ideas today that people are classed as greedy.    Those who don't pay their "fair share" of taxes for example are just greedy.    They don't realise that society is not actually a collective.  Though the nationalist democratic system makes it seem that way.

Well, in this situation I usually ask: How would Folding or SETI be any better if Bitcoin didn't exist?

In most cases greed puts more wealth back in to the world than it takes out. Yes, yes, externalities exist. Market failures exist. But if you never let the kids go in the pool they won't learn to swim. Sure, no one would ever drown but the best situation is letting each person decide for themselves how much risk to acquire and what to spend their resources on.

Also consider charity workers for a second. They're greedy too. Maybe not in an "Acquire as much currency as possible" sense that greed is usually painted. They are still interested in acquiring what makes them feel good and as much of it as possible. That's greed for their own self-interest. I would still argue someone creating a product or service does more to help the world than charity workers but that's a separate argument.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.

You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the Bitcoin and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or Bitcoins. Take your choice. There is no other.

And your time is running out.

What do you think?  Would a beer named Greed sell?

Hell yes I think it would!

Honey, going down to the store? Pick up a six pack of Greed, will ya?  We're going to have some fun.

I would buy it.

Ah, I guess we better close down Wikipedia then. And all other open source programs for that matter.

Greed doesn't mean money. Greed means finding things that make you happy, and trying to obtain them. It is greedy to contribute to Wikipedia for the pleasure of proving people wrong on the Internet. It is greedy to contribute to open-source projects for the fame of having your name appear on the credits. It also looks pretty good on your resumé, improving your job prospects. Double greedy!

Then in your opinion wanting to live life should also be called greed.Then go kill yourself and it will also be called greed for wanting to kill yourself.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWnP2Zu5zEnT-BNl10L9hON0hHwqURgqg4MR-vF1Ipj--_ZCKK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed

OK, now how do we determine what is beyond the dictates of a person's comfort?  Where is the line drawn?  And by whom?

The point I'm trying to make is that whether someone is greedy or not is entirely subjective.

No citation?

Quite.

Devcoin is the solution!!!

bitcoin works like anything else in the world: carrot on a stick :)
and thats ok .. if we had no goals .. we would be doing nothng or still be monkeys on this planet. 

greed is fine, it's the carrot of economics..

personaly I use btc as a hedge against inflation..  even if btc does not skyrockets..(but it is and it will for a long time:) )  i'm fine with it..   it's still much better ten fiat.

Aren't all economies more or less powered by greed lol. Aren't humans powered by greed? Without greed I doubt much would be going on lol

Well, we could always look into the life of a stoner for an example of that :P

It's Ayn Rand. In a rare moment of somewhat coherent thought...

I'm so sick of this "greed is good" meme. A child's first experience with greed is usually eating too many sweets - they get sick and don't do it again.
The whole reason we're here on this earth is because we cooperate and depend on the "kindness of strangers". Greed invariably ends badly and
causes great misery to those on the receiving end of it.

You sure about that?  Have you just equated under the term "greed", the actions of a child and the actions of adults running organizations and/or institutions, then correlated the results based on the child's experience?

Secondly, fyi, Rand did not say "Greed is good."  The above quote refers to the rebuttal by Rand of an assertion that "Money is the root of all evil", cast in fiction in Atlas Shrugged.  Even when Rand asserts that acting in one's own self interest is good, that...applied to the child would indicate the child should not eat so many sweets.

I think what may confuse the entire issue is the various definitions and uses of the term "greed."

OK, semantics get tiresome pretty quickly for me. Also I did not attribute "greed is good" to Ayn Rand, rather the long quote that Gordonium pasted without attribution.

From wiki: greed = "an inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort".

Obviously my analogy was to point out that a child has to learn not to take more than they need. I don't think it's much of a stretch to apply the analogy to the rich/greedy?  Is it good that we have people who could spend $100,000 a minute and still not be broke by the time they die?

I would think that greed is inherently counter to self-interest, so let's not bother trying to equate those terms.

Basic survival and comfort is a pretty low bar.  Do you need your TV for survival.  Your playstation?  All those games?  etc, etc...

Have we got an objective definition of what's greedy or is this all just people's opinions?  Or are we saying that anyone with creature comforts beyond their survival needs is greedy?  Which would then equate to a large percentage of the population.

Sure, in the sense that adults with poor impulse control are going to be failures in life - that impulse control can be hunger, sex, anger, any of a number of things.

What would motivate a person to act except perceived benefit?

From a biological perspective it's not so much the individual, but the genetic structures promoting themselves.

The ultimate greed is harmony.

There's a sci fi short story...

Once upon a time a race of beings living on a heavy metal planet.  They were short, squat creatures but with nice little villages and families, and who collect and treasure and trade a very heavy metal that glows in the dark.  

Plutonium.  

They had a saying, passed on from generation to generation, as everything was, because they had no written language.  The saying was "Don't be greedy."

One day the head creature of a family told the family they were going to collect the glowing metal.  They would collect it and save it.  He explained to them what saving was.  He said they would become very wealthy.  

Instead of trading they started doing without.  Then they found they could take their metal bricks home and put them with the increasingly large pile in the family room.  

Soon they found they could go outside at night, the entire neighborhood was lit up with the light from their house.  Then they would make approval gestures to each other.  Others, in nearby huts, made gestures of disapproval.  Some would not communicate with them at all.  

Some thought there was something very wrong, and very evil, with a hut that shone light a bright light in the night.  While the other creatures' huts, the good creatures, showed only a faint glow.

But the miser's hut got brighter, and brighter still.  When would it stop?  Soon, even at mid day, the hut was glowing brightly.

.......

The head of a clan looked at the creatures in the hut and told them about trading goods for the glowing metal, and then said "Don't be greedy."

There's no moral to that story. Just some people being upset without explaining why.

"For lack of a better term"
Until Kropotkin strolls along with his Mutual Aid as a factor in Evolution.
Then we have a better term.

Except "mutual aid" does not convey the self-interest inherent in human nature, the desire to better one's self.

Forgive my ignorance, but of what use could this kind of processing power be in the search for extraterrestrial life?  Or the cure for cancer?  Is this a fair characterization of bitcoin?  Don't worry, I'm not getting upset over here, lol.  Just saying.  Hashing doesn't make light any faster, or diminish the vastness of the universe; or does it  ::)

Besides they're here already man  :D

Yes, Bitcoin is off Course Powered By Greed - I mean Only "The Rich Elite" Can afford the Proper Hardware To mine It!
But... I Personally Am against greed(It Sickens Me) It is what drives Evil People to do the things they do. I'm NOT saying
we should all hold hands and Sing "Amazing Grace" but still... There Are More "Attractive" Motivations, I'm Sure.

Tsk.... Greed is just self-interest. Without greed, people would be starving left and right, because they weren't self-interested enough to eat.

Familiar with Ethiopian hacker children? Good times.
Secondhand GPU rigs, worldwide local community pools, and cheap ASIC thumbdrives will change the game, imo.
I see no reason why all Apple products shouldn't be built with crappy plastic spork standard LTC miners included.

Then greed isn't so bad as everyone is talking about.

Nope, sure isn't.

SO... It's OK?! For Men Like Jacob Zuma and Adolf Hitler to do the Things they do/did?! (It Was/IS, After All... Motivated By Greed.)

It was just as ok for them to do what they did while being motivated by greed, as for Mother Theresa to take care of those sick people when she was motivated for greed, too. Except those you mentioned were more motivated by greed for power, while Theresa was motivated by greed for warm feelings, and heaven.

It's not greed, it's what you are greedy for, based on how screwed up your mind is.

Was it ok for greedy people like Bill Gates, Linus Trovalds, Allan Turing, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wosniak to pursue their greed for money and/or fame, just so you can use the technology they brought into existence to complain about how greed it bad?

Nice concise summary of the function of money but I would add to this concept by saying that money represents time. We spend time to acquire ____________(write anything.) But even this is not quite right, the true equation is

were;

       (life SPENT)  is equal to Life Span - {Life Span + [years:months:days:hours:minutes:seconds of work done to acquire ____________(write anything.)]}

                   and value is equal to (what we are willing to take as compensation for life SPENT that will never be experience again).

Therefore we get this function for greed (if we define greed as purely a moral nagative acquaintances (i.e. selfish action without any real positive or intended benefit for others beyond ones inner circle of acquaintances),

were;
                
Greed is not necessarily intentional, it can happen over time and catch an individual unaware. Yet once at the point of being greedy it is hard to stop because of the human instinct for self preservation and resource protection.

I kind of cover this in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=228120.0

It would be cool if there were cancer research pools that paid in BTC. Would be a good way for CPUs to earn money.

If you
re talking about mining, you'd get much more if you just ask the people to mail in the amount they would have otherwise spent on the electricity.