Bitcoin Forum

It's pretty silly to tell people that they can't value work now more highly than work in the future.

Bitcoin should be a convenience owned, used, and maintained by the community.

This is more common than you think and not arbitrarily non-sensical. Suppose you work for a fixed salary and generally work 5 week days and get 2 weekend days off. Now if you happened to work one weekend extra it is clear that you are "owed" two days of not working as compensation. If you take those two days the next week that seems perfectly reasonable.

However, what if you decided to "bank" those two days and to not take them for five years? Say over those five years your salary increases 50%. So when you take those two days, they are equivalent to three days of work at the rate you banked them. Is this fair to the company? What if there is a recession and your salary falls 50%? Do you have the right to demand four days off-work instead of two?

More and more companies in the US are employing a use your vacation (this year) or lose your vacation strategy whenever possible to avoid these issues.

The LETS philosophy adopts this concept for everything since everything is basically "work" to them. According to the founder there is no point at all in saving in LETS credits. Credis should remain fixed in value. If you want to save in something that changes in value choose one of the numerous commodities produced and traded by members of the LETS community. That is why they stress keeping everyone's balances close to zero.

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Bitcoin differs greatly from LETS in this philosophy but only because of the 21,000,000 fixed bitcoin policy. Bitcoin's monetary policy could be varied (in theory) to bring it closer to LETS, but that is definitely NOT a priority of the bitcoin community.

I'd like to factor Bitcoin the method from Bitcoin the useage.

Bitcoin should be a convenience owned, used, and maintained by the community.

The community can grow around Bitcoin, to be a web payment system, or an auction, or a commodity exchange, or whatever. But it must be understood that these enterprises are independent of Bitcoin. They should not be owned, operated, controlled, or promoted by Bitcoin in any way.

Keep it simple!

... The employee and employer have some agreement. ... It would be wierd if 'dollars' told them what they could agree to.

Does Bitcoin own anything? How would I even tell?

So appearing on the Bitcoin wiki is promotion by Bitcoin or not?

Some versions of our letter to the EFF, and of the magazine article being considered have buzzwords prejudicial to Bitcoin. They are being prepared on a Bitcoin website, by bitcoin people. A reasonable and prudent observer would be able to rely on the ill-advised claims. A grand jury can certainly accept these at face value. An ambitious prosecutor can and will have a field day, using our own statements against ourselves.

I am not sure how this is done on other countries, but in the United States the contract is written on a federal form W-4, and documents the employee and his Social Security account number and the employer and his Taxpayer Identification number. It contracts both parties with the federal government to abide by a set of rules called the United States Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and a host of others.

You cannot have the kid down the street mow your lawn as an "employee" outside of this system. Impossible.

My point: These words have consequences.

I don't think we use words in remotely the same way. Impossible things have never been done. Hiring a boy to mow your lawn illegally has definitely been done.

The employee and employer have some agreement. It doesn't concern me whatever they decide to do. It would be wierd if 'dollars' told them what they could agree to. Likewise it would be odd if LETS told someone what agreements they could make concerning how many LETS were owed.

I mean what happens anyway?

I tell a guy that if he mows my lawn I'll give him 10 LETS, but that if he doesn't mind waiting to get paid till next month I can give him 11. How does LETS stop me form offering to 'borrow' LETS at interest (over 100% APR even)?

I am not sure how this is done on other countries, but in the United States the contract is written on a federal form W-4, and documents the employee and his Social Security account number and the employer and his Taxpayer Identification number. It contracts both parties with the federal government to abide by a set of rules called the United States Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and a host of others.

Privacy Act and Paperwork Reduction Act Notice. We ask for the information on this form to carry out the Internal Revenue laws of the United States. Internal Revenue Code sections 3402(f)(2) and 6109 and their regulations require you to provide this information; your employer uses it to determine your federal income tax withholding. Failure to provide a properly completed form will result in your being treated as a single person who claims no withholding allowances; providing fraudulent information may subject you to penalties.

You cannot have the kid down the street mow your lawn as an "employee" outside of this system. Impossible.

My point: These words have consequences.

THE TALLY STICKS (1100 - 1854)


King Henry the First produced sticks of polished wood, with notches cut along one edge to signify the denominations. The stick was then split full length so each piece still had a record of the notches.

The King kept one half for proof against counterfeiting, and then spent the other half into the market place where it would continue to circulate as money.

Because only Tally Sticks were accepted by Henry for payment of taxes, there was a built in demand for them, which gave people confidence to accept these as money.

He could have used anything really, so long as the people agreed it had value, and his willingness to accept these sticks as legal tender made it easy for the people to agree. Money is only as valuable as peoples faith in it, and without that faith even today's money is just paper.

The tally stick system worked really well for 726 years. It was the most successful form of currency in recent history and the British Empire was actually built under the Tally Stick system, but how is it that most of us are not aware of its existence?

Perhaps the fact that in 1694 the Bank of England at its formation attacked the Tally Stick System gives us a clue as to why most of us have never heard of them. They realised it was money outside the power of the money changers, (the very thing King Henry had intended).

What better way to eliminate the vital faith people had in this rival currency than to pretend it simply never existed and not discuss it. That seems to be what happened when the first shareholder's in the Bank of England bought their original shares with notched pieces of wood and retired the system. You heard correctly, they bought shares. The Bank of England was set up as a privately owned bank through investors buying shares. Even the Banks resent nationalisation is not what it at first may appear, as its independent resources unceasingly multiply and dividends continue to be produced for its shareholder's.

These investors, who's names were kept secret, were meant to invest one and a quarter million pounds, but only three quarters of a million was received when it was chartered in 1694.

It then began to lend out many times more than it had in reserve, collecting interest on the lot.

This is not something you could just impose on people without preparation. The money changers needed to created the climate to make the formation of this private concern seem acceptable.

Here's how they did it.

With King Henry VIII relaxing the Usury Laws in the 1500's, the money changers flooded the market with their gold and silver coins becoming richer by the minute.

The English Revolution of 1642 was financed by the money changers backing Oliver Cromwell's successful attempt to purge the parliament and kill King Charles. What followed was 50 years of costly wars. Costly to those fighting them and profitable to those financing them.

So profitable that it allowed the money changers to take over a square mile of property still known as the City of London, which remains one of the three main financial centres in the world today.

The 50 years of war left England in financial ruin. The government officials went begging for loans from guess who, and the deal proposed resulted in a government sanctioned, privately owned bank which could produce money from nothing, essentially legally counterfeiting a national currency for private gain.

Now the politicians had a source from which to borrow all the money they wanted to borrow, and the debt created was secured against public taxes.

You would think someone would have seen through this, and realised they could produce their own money and owe no interest, but instead the Bank of England has been used as a model and now nearly every nation has a Central Bank with fractional reserve banking at its core.

These central banks have the power to take over a nations economy and become that nations real governing force. What we have here is a scam of mammoth proportions covering what is actually a hidden tax, being collected by private concerns.

The country sells bonds to the bank in return for money it cannot raise in taxes. The bonds are paid for by money produced from thin air. The government pays interest on the money it borrowed by borrowing more money in the same way. There is no way this debt can ever be paid, it has and will continue to increase.

If the government did find a way to pay off the debt, the result would be that there would be no bonds to back the currency, so to pay the debt would be to kill the currency.

With its formation the Bank of England soon flooded Britain with money. With no quality control and no insistence on value for money, prices doubled with money being thrown in every direction.

One company was even offering to drain the Red Sea to find Egyptian gold lost when the sea closed in on their pursuit of Moses.

By1698 the national debt expanded from £1,250,000 to £16,000,000 and up went the taxes the debt was secured on.

As hard as it might be to believe, in times of economic upheaval, wealth is rarely destroyed and instead is often only transferred. And who benefits the most when money is scarce? You may have guessed. It's those controlling what everyone else wants, the money changer's.

When the majority of people are suffering through economic depression, you can be sure that a minority of people are continuing to get rich.

Even today the Bank of England expresses its determination to prevent the ups and downs of booms and depressions, yet there have been nothing but ups and downs since its formation with the British pound rarely being stable.

Moreover, in the context of a LETS system it negatively effects the community. If someone hoards a positive balance, then others' balances by definition have to remain negative.

I move to town, mow a few lawns, take a few credits, move away or die. And people are hurt?

What if I sell them all bullion and fancy cars and then move or die or hoard?

A positive balance means that you have on balance helped people, zero is neutral, and negative means you owe. It is not bad to be owed favors or services or items and not cash them in.

I understand your point of view. It makes perfect sense in reality. Say I come into a community and I teach basket weaving. If I leave and take nothing the community is richer. 

However in the case of a formal monetary system it does have consequences. A LET system is equivalent to a fixed currency system in the sense that coins, bullion or tally sticks, it someone enters the community than leaves taking the currency, then there is less currency to go around. It is monetary deflation. It makes it harder to trade.

In LETS as others' balances go more negative you have to either allow more credit to compensate for the unspent credits or change prices to compensate for the hoarded currency.

If die or formally leave the community and return your unused credits, you have the same issue as someone dying with negative credits. You still have to redistribute the good fortune, or the burden. It is much easier in a LETS system since there is central control of the accounting.

In this case there is not less money, but it is worth more. Is it still a problem?

I like the tally system analogy. I think this is the closest description so far of what we are trying to do with Bitcoin.

I'm afraid that I don't get the GETS system.

So if total value increases and currency remains fixed then, currency value must increase. However this equation does not really apply to LETS. I've convinced myself it doesn't apply to money in general.

These are great definitions. Here as in the rest of my life I struggle with naming things appropriately. I will try to use these definitions consistently in the future.

How would you describe LETS credits? The have long ends and short ends like split tally sticks, so currency seems superficially appropriate.

I'd never given two seconds thought to economics before I came here! :-)

....and so we begin the system again using bitcoin.Will it go down the same path as the original Tally Stick system?Who can tell.One thing is for sure and that is there are powerful interests out there who would shut it down as soon as they realise its revolutionary value.

<necrodearia> What methods can be pursued to "shut it down" or to cause Bitcoin currency to fail or cease to continue/exist?
<necrodearia> What safeguards exist if any/necessary to prevent such from happening?
<necrodearia> Perhaps it is fairly simple in that someone can create infinite amount of USD and use that to buy all Bitcoins?
<necrodearia> Perhaps allowing the exchange of Bitcoins to other currencies is its weakest link?

....and so we begin the system again using bitcoin.Will it go down the same path as the original Tally Stick system?Who can tell.One thing is for sure and that is there are powerful interests out there who would shut it down as soon as they realise its revolutionary value.

I agree with the others that say that the tally stick and bitcoins are not similar at all. In fact, they are opposites. The tally stick was a government imposed currency. Bitcoin is a voluntary currency. Nobody forces you to accept it like the tally sticks.

A better analogy for bitcoin could be the private mints of the UK XVII century.

PS: The fact that the king used tally sticks to fight powerfull people in England does not make them legit. The king wanted the power to keep his authoritative regime, to fund wars, etc... There is nothing noble in tally sticks, just another government forcing a currency on the people because it had the swords.

They are similar in that they are almost impossible to counterfeit and they keep a record of value.I did not say I agreed with government force or that it is legitimate.

hmm. it's very interesting. a global 'micro' currency. i'm happy for it. but at this point in time, i'm more interested in things that increase inflation for the dollar - things that can overburden the current economy - it's nice to know that people are coming up with options, but the status quo needs to change significantly before any solutions can be concretely implemented.

What type of political bent is interested in increasing inflation? Seems either an extreme progressive, or just a crash everything because I want to need me to save it type.

hyperinflation, from a political perspective rather than an economic perspective, could destabilize the united states towards decentralization, lead to the collapse of the federal reserve, incite riots against the dollar and fiat currency and capitalism in general, generate necessity-forced dependance on local and sustainable systems, and, as an antidote to apathy, contribute to a massive increase in collective awareness.

Right.  Consider the consequences of the Great Depression in the USA vs those of Weimar hyperinflation.

We're perhaps heading for a hyperinflationary great depression  :o

Perhaps, but I doubt it.  Hyperinflation always and everywhere requires the willfull participation of those who control the printing presses. In every case that I can think of, that required that the political class have the authority to create new currency, and would do so for political reasons not economic reasons.

In the US the  federal government does not control the Federal Reserve.  It's more like the other way around.  And since hyperinflation, once begun, is a death spiral; those who do have control over the monetary base have a vested interest in the continuance of the status quo.  To allow, or even risk, a hyperinflationary event would be so catastrophic to their personal fiefdoms that few would be willing to go along quietly, even if there was much to be gained politically.

Far more likely is an old fashioned deflationary Greater Depression, the great 'they' have less to lose that way.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (Bernanke and the rest of the gang) is nominated by the president and ratified by congress. If you say that the government is corrupt and benefits special interests I will agree with you (its a government...), but I dont see how someone can say that the Fed controls government when its the other way arround. You have to think that politicians benefit from the expansionary policies of the Fed, because they get to spend more than they would without the Fed.

The board is is nominated for 14 year terms, and they are just nominations.  The sitting board is not subject to the will of any branch of the US federal government in any official capacity, and they don't have to accept the president's nominations.  They don't have to worry about political backlash once appointed because they *will* out last the president that nominated them.  Also, no sitting president can ever get the chance to nominate a majority of the board.  The idea that the board of the Federal Reserve is subject to political control is a convient fiction.  I said that it's more like the other way around because the power to regulate the national currency is the power to destroy same, and that power is far greater than any of the branches of the federal government.  The only real power that the government has to check this is the power to revoke the charter of the Federal Reserve, and remove it's monopoly control of the currency.

This, of course, would destroy the currency in short order, but it would also destroy a large number of the legistlators' own personal fortunes.  So there is a strong incentive to not choose this 'nuclear option'.

No, I am not saying that the Board of Governors does a good job or anything similar.

 I am just saying that the Board of Governors, the one who takes the decisions in the Fed, is a federal government agency.

 Supposedly, the system is the way you describe it so the members are independent. I dont believe that for a moment, but it is the justification. Having a independent or honest politician or bureaucrat with that level of power is an utopia, a lie. But the decisions about monetary policy are already taken by a federal government agency. That is what I wanted to say, not that it worked. If I could I would abolish the Fed, and put an end to the money monopoly.

I think that the real reason politicians support the central bank is because the central bank finances government and allows politicians to spend more than they could by direct taxation only.

Thank you for that quote.

It sounds just ordinarily anti-social until you get to "contribute to a massive increase in collective awareness" then it gets implausible and silly. No offense to your roommate, it's just not my first trip to the enlightenment rodeo.  

'ordinarily anti-social' suggests a complete misunderstanding, and a massive
increase in collective consciousness in no way implies 'enlightenment'.

to begin with, the problems inherent in the system make solutions to those
problems impossible within the framework of the system. therefore, for the
'economy' or anything else to 'get better', the inert baggage of corporatism and
the fractional reserve system must be cleared away somehow. the chaos and panic
that accompanies hyperinflation would do more, at once, to destabilize the
system, than any attempts to reform or curtail or deconstruct it from within.
one of the most significant obstacles to improvement of the status quo is a
pervasive attitude of apathy that the corporate empire entrenches (through
complacency, distractions, and exhausting workforce conditions, among other
things). hyperinflation could potentially "contribute to a massive increase in
collective awareness" in the sense that it would wake massive amounts of people
all at once out of their apathy-trance, presenting them with immediate
situations to address rather than persistent
disappointment/hopelessness/disillusion to try to ignore as they struggle to pay
for food and housing. for example, lonely individuals struggling to pay the rent
month after month, working 40+ hours a week, are not going to challenge the
system or initiate its deconstruction. a whole neighbourhood of people finding
empty grocery shelves, or finding that prices suddenly jumped 600%, are going to
be angry and lash out. "collective awareness" as i used it in my initial
statement refers specifically to BEING AWARE OF THE CURRENT PROBLEMS WE FACE, it
has nothing to do with flimsy fanciful notions of 'enlightenment' or theories of
qualitative states of mind.

the chaos and panic
that accompanies hyperinflation would do more, at once, to destabilize the
system, than any attempts to reform or curtail or deconstruct it from within.

I don't know where mizerydearia and roommate live, and here in the US of A, it's the Tea Party that'd be the big winner in that scenario.  If necessary, to save my ass, I could blend.  Hell, I'm an NRA member, and on Tea Party mailing lists.  And I'd hate myself for it.

From my roommate:

NO !!!  The Tea Party is total astroturf.  They grew out of GGOOB, which was a tobacco-industry effort to block anti-smoking laws.  GGOOB became so popular (among it's target population, anyway) that many other industries demanded a piece.  Of course, corporations now have free speech (and spending) re the political process, and they of course buy politicians, but this is a nacent political party that's actually a covert corporate lobbying effort.

If the Tea Parties near where you live are being funded by tobacco money, I can't speak to that.  Around here; however, I haven't heard anyone talk about corporate 'rights' in any capacity, and there is no evidence that the tobacco industry has any particular interests in the Tea Parties

Hey, creighto, no offense intended.  I'm sure that the Tea Party includes many good people with good ideas.  Hell, if it weren't for the rampant xenophobia and racism, I'd be one of them.  However, if you dig, what you'll find is the DCI Group -- founded by Thomas Synhorst, Douglas Goodyear and Timothy Hyde (all tied to RJR and the Republican Party).

No, it is not.  The Federal Reserve Bank is a privately founded bank with monopoly powers by virtue of a government charter.  This is comparable to the federal government hiring a private merc army for operations overseas a la Blackwater.  Government is the customer, and has sway, but does not make the executive decisions and was never designed to be able to influence those executive decisions to any large degree.

creighto, yes we are discussing the exact tonality while we agree in the color. But for the sake of it:


You could say that the Federal Reserve is a mixed thing:

 The members of the Board of Governors are nominated by the president and ratified by congress.

And yes, once they are nominated they are supposedly independent from political pressure. But its not true that the Fed is politically independent, f.e. Bernanke knows that to be re-elected again, he has to please the politicians.

So I would say that the political system holds good power over the Federal Reserve.

Yes, but the president can only nominate from within the ranks of the sitting board.  It's as false as the choice of voting for or against your local representative.  By the time the public gets a say, their choices are effectively reduced to only two people, both of whom are already parts of the political machine.  This is not similar to a Supreme court nomination.

Only to a point.  If he were to fail to get renominated by the next president, he would *still* be a member of the board until his original 14 year term was up.  He may risk his position by upsetting the politicians, but not his paycheck.  This gets back to my comment about the tail wagging the dog.  The Senate *does not* have the power to affect the personal finances of the members of the board by *any* legal process; but the reverse is not true.  The decisions of the board can dramaticly affect the personal finances of the members of the Senate in the same way that they affect the entire nation times the size of their fortunes.  Who do you think has more power?

The president can only nominate to Chairman someone who is already part of the Board of Governors, correct. But all the members of the Board of Governors are previously nominated by the president and ratified by Congress... I am not discussing how great or bad this works. All I am saying is that there is no private entity involved in the process. Whatever the rules are, is a government issue.

Take it to the extreme. The government created the Fed. If the politicians are not happy on how the Fed operates they could decide to change the law. Check Ron Paul recent Audit the Fed bill that had great support among congressman until it was taken down. The Fed knows that all its power, the monopoly on money, comes from the government. So its in its own interest to keep politicians happy.

That said the bill Audit the Fed failed because there was evident pressure on Congress to not audit the Fed. And that pressure did not come from Bernanke, but from banking power.

Again, I honestly think that saying that the Fed is a private institution is highly inaccurate. About who controls who... I think we might have slightly different suppositions on how that works. I think we can agree that banking power controls both.

Those previously nominated board members, that were ratified by the US Senate, must also be acceptable to the sitting board for practial reasons.  Again, it's impossible for any sitting president to pack the board during his two terms, so any attempt to nominate anyone that the board doesn't approve of would upset the sitting board.  If the Senate doesn't nix the nomination, then that person will be entirely ineffective their entire time.  So for practical purposes, all board members that are nominated come from a pool of acceptable employees of the Federal Reserve banking structure itself.  Which, in turn, recruits from a pool of applicants with a history of employment with the member banks.  So yes, there is and are private entities involved, and they hold most of the cards.  You are taking what is seen and drawing the conclusions that they desire that you come to, and failing to look at the unseen to understand the entire process.  The Federal Reserve system is intentionally designed to give the appearance of a government entity with a measure of independence, while for all practical purposes, they are a private business with monopoly powers.  As a wise man once said, if the common man understood how the montary system of the United States actually worked, there would be a revolution before tommorrow morning.

but reality shows that the fed is succeeding at its assigned task.

What reality?

The point of the Fed system is to separate banking from politics. It deliberately makes it hard to change policy. The congress could disband the fed but reality shows that the fed is succeeding at its assigned task.

real estate, medical technology and higher education

In the us. Lived here for lots of years. It still doesn't suck where I live.

Real estate spiked mostly in particular areas, CA, FL, AZ, NV. It wasn't the Feds doing. It was wall street's fuckup. It is very simple to understand and explain. The actual criminals were mortgage brokers who didn't vet loans. They basically gave out loans to anyone then sold them the same day to Fannie, Freddie, and real estate trusts. Bankers bought in to wall streets fuckup. It turns out letting them do that was a bad thing in retrospect. To big to fail served us just as well as it served the soviet union.

Yes there was a central policy fuckup, but it was that the government should be in the real-estate business without paying any attention. It wasn't the Feds fuckup though. Outside of the areas being gamed things remained stable.

Education is again a central planning fuckup and an organized scam. But it isn't the Feds fault either. Sallie allowed any crappy fake university take government backed student loans. This increased competition, but again it was competition against state supported universities. Who then just raised their prices to cover losses of aid flowing elsewhere. Again, state universities are always too big to fail. Now students are defaulting at much higher rates from fake universities. So we have the big O is nationalizing the whole program without fixing any of the problems.

Medical care spiked because insurance and government subsidies make an even more horrible combination than subsidies alone. But the industry made huge improvements in care and technology over thirty years. Americans however made impressive strides in how far we are willing to go to abuse our bodies over the same time period.

This time it's not a too big to fail problem, it's a "too stupid to die" problem. Again not the Feds fuckup. If anyone fucked up, it's American restaurants for providing huge food value at minimal cost.

The part to the right of 1960, that excludes the 70's which sucked. But even when things sucked in the US, they sucked more in other countries at the time.

But ever since 1980, you see a consistent ability to keep inflation slightly positive, with no deflationary dips. 2010 might actually be deflationary dip, but it won't be one because of the fed.

The goals of the fed are:
maximum employment
stable prices
moderate long-term interest rates
promotion of sustainable economic growth


http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_2.pdf

Real estate spiked mostly in particular areas, CA, FL, AZ, NV. It wasn't the Feds doing. It was wall street's fuckup. It is very simple to understand and explain. The actual criminals were mortgage brokers who didn't vet loans. They basically gave out loans to anyone then sold them the same day to Fannie, Freddie, and real estate trusts. Bankers bought in to wall streets fuckup. It turns out letting them do that was a bad thing in retrospect. To big to fail served us just as well as it served the soviet union.

<offtopic value="slightly">I would rather die without any nonfree medical treatment than to pay for my health. I appreciate Japan's health industry.</offtopic>

Price deflation is one of the signs of a sane and healthy economy.

Amen.  Red, you should also consider the flip side of price deflation, for there are always winners and losers in the ebb and flow of a free market.  During price deflation the losers are banks and businesses, for neither can sell their wares for as much as they once could.  But who, then, are the winners?  The consumers who can, temporarily, buy more groceries or a better car or a newer home for less money than they could have before.  This is when the prudent saver is rewarded for foregoing the high life during the boom.  Said another way, the Fed's basic mission, to avoid deflationary cycles, known in our modern economic speech as a "recession", is to, openly and without pause, benefit finance and business at the expense of everyone else; forever.  They haven't been very successful at that, but it is not for a lack of trying. 

Absolutely.

We should be having major price deflation. Instead printing is neutralizing it. There is not a vacuum large enough to bring it all back in. The next boom is the crack up boom, imo.

Except for the pesky little fact that the Fed isn't neutralizing the deflation. The deflation is here and now, reflected in the falling real estate values, the drop in state sales tax revenues

, the rapid contraction of credit outstanding (due to both mass bankruptcies and a sea change in the public towards austerity) and vast unemployment and under-employment.  It's not that the Fed is incapable of creating enough new FRN's to come close to what you seem to believe that they already have done, it's that they fear hyperinflation in a couple of years as a direct result.  The things that they already have done, although they would be vastly inflationary under other circumstances, have done very little towards replacing the contraction in credit extended by the Fed's member banks.  2009 was the first year in two decades that American's were net savers, and that was by a measly 1%.

It is in the best interest of the political powers, in the near term, to compel the Fed to participate in stimulus.  But to do more than the appearance of complying risks the hyperinflationary death of the currency.  Since this would spell the end of the game, the Fed, and the private banking interests that they represent, are simply not willing.  I see no conditions that could change that in the foreseeable future.

In macroeconomics, price deflation is defined as a decrease in the general price level, meaning the CPI. There has been a stock crash and a housing crash, but there has been no significant price deflation. It really is a stupid issue, since its only a definition. I dont really care about the definition as long as everybody knows what its happening in reality, but using standard definitions makes everything easier.

There should have been price deflation but the government has stopped it.

This is something very few people understands for what I've seen. The government could print more and create more price inflation, but they fear the consequences this could have in 1 or 2 years, because it could even create hyper-inflation as you said. But for some reason, people has a big problem understanding this.

The official CPI is a government metric, and should be suspect.  It does not include energy or equities, and only considers real estate indirectly via 'owners equivalent rent' which (presumedly by design) tends to dampen the effects of inflation or deflation upon the real estate sector.  There are better metrics to base your opinions upon.

Indeed.  I find that it's incredibly difficult to get people to consider the motivations of the creation of the Fed, beyond the official story.  The idea that the Panic of '07 was so terrible, but it only lasted for a year.  And during the depression of 1920, the Fed did nothing at all, and the economy recovers in 18 months.  So what was different in 1929?  The classic story that the Fed waited too long to provide stimulus is historicly dishonest.  The reality is that the Fed was stimulating for several years leading up to the crash, mostly by keeping the interest rate too low, encouraging risk-taking.  As the cracks started to show in the economy, the Fed started to tighten up, triggering the crash themselves.  We would be better off without monetary management, but like anything else, it's very difficult to get a professional to admit to any client that his services are counterprodutive; or even unneccesary.