Bitcoin Forum

Choose the best and worst. There are no right or wrong answers in the academic sense. You may change your answers. If you have additional objects, you may add them as a comment and I may add them to the poll.

There was a nice money pyramid somewhere, If anyone has a link I think it had some additional ideas.

what about: brain, filled with skills

That's good, but too subjective for this poll. Most people think my brain and skills are stupid and don't value them much. Besides, it's easier to steal ideas than pay for them.  ;D

I chose "An IOU" as the best and Bitcoin as the worst.

I hope that is reflected in the results correctly.

Human slave FTW !

I set it to allow 2 votes, so it should.

I'm not making moral judgements here. If you think that slavery is indeed the best or worst value density, then it is a choice.

I mean if it worked for the Egyptians then why wouldn't it work for me too ?

Joking ;)

A brain filled with brainwallets.

Ok good, because I would not want my vote to be considered as me thinking that "An IOU" is the worst and Bitcoin is best.

Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.  :-\

What's the base unit for the calculation? They're incompatible. Also Bitcoin is immaterial, I can't compare 1 kg of
bitcoins with 1 kg of human slaves.

Trust me, the human slave comes out ahead at any weight. It is the only option.

Hint : selling organs, prostitution etc.

BTC can never compete with that unless it was $200 000 USD = 1 BTC or something ...

Human slaves are easily the worst and the price of a human slave is at a historic low 15 BTC or so. http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/07/cost-of-slaves-falls-to-historic-low (http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/07/cost-of-slaves-falls-to-historic-low). It is not even close to the prices in the early 1800's the equivalent in purchasing power of 6000 BTC or in roman times comparable to the prices in the early 1800's or by some estimates even higher.

As for the best it is easily Bitcoin since one can store a Bitcoin key virtually anywhere including one's brain.

human slaves can store brainwallets!  :P

The data doesn't correlate to any individual's vote. This is meant to show the values with absolute values. Like I said, there are no right or wrong answers, nor are the value assessments quantitative. These are subjective values. The reason I chose best and worse instead of best and second best is because the strength of belief that something is of least value will cancel out the vote of someone that has the opposite viewpoint and they will have equal value.

 The discussion will reflect the range of belief systems about value density. So you best and worst will inevitably help create a picture of belief systems we can each interpret within our own belief systems. It will be interesting if most people choose the same things for different reasons or there is an even distribution showing a wide range of belief systems.

If you already figured out what this tells about my belief system, then kudos.

I could make you give me all your BTC , gold, children, everything for just a glass of water. Nothing trumps clean water. You will learn all about this over the next 50 years.   :'(

Since people click the best and worst without distinguishing them, this poll somehow just shows which expressions people like to click.

Most potential value density is a string of text.

Water, lol. Make sure you save those tears.

Why do we have to weigh them?

Because density = weight / volume

Which is exactly why Bitcoin is the most valuable per density.  You can fit all the Bitcoin wealth in the world on a microSD card.

You can probably fit some digitized guarantees for more bank notes than the current BTC market cap on a microSD card... ::)

Potential.

There is no way everything required for one billion US banker bucks to be delivered fits on an SD card. Totally possible for a billion dollar value string (bitcoin key) to fit on a tiny fraction of any card. And that is all you need. Ok, maybe you need the transaction prepping software, but that is small also and rather ubiquitous even now.

I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious, that this is highly subjective.  The entire Bitcoin network has huge potential value density, but in order to measure it correctly you'd have to include all of the capital behind it.  Same goes for IOUs, bank notes, and gold.  Human slave is obviously the least valuable.

Potentially, plutonium could power a replicator that can create almost anything.  It wouldn't even have to be very big, smaller than a city block.  But an IOU could be used to trade, say, Dyson Spheres.  And the Bitcoin network might not be able to scale that large.  I imagine bank notes would not have much value at that scale, but that could be mistaken since they have in the past been used for, eg the Louisiana purchase.

Question Fail !

How are the results to be interpreted when worst and best are in the same bucket ?

The difference will show up in the distribution. This is an unconventional poll, because it shows no bias in the value density itself, only the perceived potential value desity of the highest and lowest. It will go to show which are most worth discussing. There are some pretty good arguments made for most of them so far.

If I had all of the plutonium, properly packaged, I could demand all of your btc and slaves!

If someone got all of the water first, well, yeah.

If one had all of the human slaves in the world we'd just call them Apple.


edit

come to think of it wouldn't the most valuable things have the ultimate impact on life?  water...nukes...etc.

I think 'DNA' should be added to this poll.

I chose Bitcoin first, because I can't think of a better medium to exchange and store value.  I chose plutonium second, because for everything we do, we need energy, and nuclear fission is one of the best sources.  I think the worst are bank notes, because they create the illusion of objective value.

IOUs?  You don't have to look farther than this community and GLBSE, that IOUs aren't reliable.  And they are a great tool for scams, just look at the Donation of Constantine (luke-jr will be offended).

Gold?  As I said posted many times, as soon as we start mining on asteroids, gold will stop being scarce.  And this is realizable with the technology we posses today.

As soon as we start mining on asteroids?
165,000 tons of gold has been mined already... what makes you think that we could bring back enough from asteroids to make a significant increase in that number?  The payload on rockets is in the range of tens or hundreds of tons.  Even the largest airplanes can only take on 100-200 tons - I can only imagine how limited the payload would be on a private spacecraft of some sort.

Sorry, I just don't see asteroid mining as making gold non-scarce.

Asteroid mining ? Just as realistic as IXC going mainstream ...

Asteroid mining is very feasible. You don't need to to load it into a ship, you only need to get it to the moon and start processing it there. Just strap a rocket on a chunk of roid that has rich veins and aim it at the moon. Then you can use disposable re-entry vehicles to get the refined minerals to Earth.

So far we have:
The Bitcoin Network    - 38 (33.9%)
Human Slave    - 24 (21.4%)
Food and Water    - 16 (14.3%)
Plutonium    - 11 (9.8%)
An IOU    - 10 (8.9%)
Unspecified Bank Notes    - 7 (6.3%)
Gold    - 6 (5.4%)

The Bitcoin Network and Human Slave have either the best or worst potential value density. Food and Water and Plutonium are the next best or worst. Then you have the three most commonly used forms of money as the bottom three best or worst potential value density.

potential value density...... the fuck. Well - an IOU could cover all of those and more, and there's potential for a fellow to honor his commitments even when doing so results in his death, so if we're going only for potential - that seems to be the obvious choice. Lowest potential? Plutonium or gold, I guess. Plutonium could be worth a lot, but certainly never more than food and water, except in cases where priorities are totally fucked, which is a proven possibility -- I guess plutonium can be thrown out, leaving gold, which is the only true luxury resource listed (ETA: that's not true, I guess - and, you know... maybe God would cut you a deal where if you bring him 6oz of gold, he'll give you his powers) -- but I could think of absurd scenarios where it's the only electricity-conducting element/alloy left, and you need to connect two devices together to save Earth or something... A human slave could be extremely valuable, since we're going for potential -- could be anybody...

I guess since we can make our own... worst would be... Idunno.... small quantities of dolomite. Best... being God?

After you load all of the Bitcoins on it, eat it and tell me how filling it is. :D

37% of US city drinking water is privatized already. That means corporations will be dictating price, quality, and how much water you get once they own it all. 37% is now and will only get worse every year. By 2020 all water will be privatized. If they can limit how much water you can access they can limit how much food you can grow to be self sustaining.

You want to be God or use God for storing value? I'm not sure if you are serious about that. Actually, I chose things that have actually been historically considered highly negotiable. I almost considered obsidian, because it is somewhat scarce and I think it may one day again become highly sought, this time for scientific uses. But that's just my whimsy.

BTW, absurd scenarios are always worth considering if they have historical significance.

Human slave ... Satoshi Nakamoto and Billy Gates :D

Best of fiat and BTC !

I forget which book it was, but Michael Crichton once wrote that the highest value density item was bioengineered medical drugs, which could have incredibly high value for just a number of cells.

Godly powers would likely have the ability to provide everything listed and much more (and unlike an IOU, can provide the ability-holder to produce whatever he pleases on-demand without needing to abide by a contract), and perhaps could be contained in as small a vessel as a human being. I imagine it being, by far, the most value-dense. "God" couldn't really be used as a store of value unless He suddenly decided not to enforce His will. Well.... OTOH, I guess God provides his blessings upon his subjects when they meet certain conditions........... Anyway -- yeah, consider it like an education or Cheney's metal heart, adding value to self.

Ah yes, Godly powers. Are you talking about divinity or religion? Are we talking about trading relics or actually throwing lightning bolts? I know we can smite pretty much anything with plutonium nowadays.

Plutonium requires large facilities, skilled human slaves employees, or selling to some crackpot dictator. Lightning bolts.... I can shoot those at anyone I please. No cost, high-precision, and produces electricity. World peace, respected dictatorship, and as many virgins worshipers following my abstinence mandate as I please. Idunno -- what kind of relics do the different religions have? I mean -- that could be cool, too. I think the Jews had some type of fancy sand->bread machine after the Moses thing, Christians have the relic of Reagan politics getting the Baptists out of their fatalist political apathy and into a tizzy over abortion no politician would dare criminalize and give up as a tool, and Muslims have..... ..... Idunno.... libraries? I think they have some cloak of Mohammed the Taliban control to claim divine authority, but I don't believe it has any supernatural powers. :-\ Mormons have that bitchin' special underwear and that highly-convincing video about celestial sex.... Then Scientologists have a spaceship in a volcano or something cool.

Looks like we have the son of Cronus himself in out forum.  ;D

That's a good one, but still, a bitcoin private key can fit on... maybe... one hundred millionth of the space of a few ounce drive? And there are already keys that have been worth millions of dollars. With more valuable bitcoin and even smaller storage of the very few bits required the potential is going to be leagues ahead of everything else.

This reminds me of the metaphysical question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"