Bitcoin Forum

I got some fellow small business owners interested enough to check out, first they could not post or ask any questions (awesome move that), then once they dug around the tax evasion and "lets overthrow the government" derp scared them off.

Most of us would not think of plastering our political party logo on our business. As far as customers are concerned, Bitcoin.org is the face of Bitcoin. The two are largely inseparable. You come here to get the client software, and linking to it or advocating it leads your customers (as well as others) to think that you subscribe the the values expressed here. What kind of crazy business owner is going to link their business to a site and brand that advocates tax evasion and the overthrow of the government?
 
Yes, Bitcoin MAY change things- but it will never get a chance if people don't keep their politics on political web forums. You may be able to get people to adopt your currency- but not if you insist on linking it to your politics.

It's all well and good for Atlas etc. to use his allowance money and play "Come at me bro" with the US Government from behind Tor and three proxies- but real businesses don't have that option so would prefer he take the chest puffing and false bravado elsewhere.

True, but Bitcoin and bitcoin.org are not business. Like it or not, bitcoins have a political and economic background, you cannot really separate them.

Instead, I advice you to link your friends to apolitical sites like weusecoins.com or that Bitcoin Consultancy I saw somewhere, and maybe prevent them that if they come to this forum they will see heated political discussions. That's inevitable and should not be banned, IMHO.

if they are inseparable, that means the Bitcoin logo is an inherently political logo? You can see the problem, say Amazon might have with your politics?

I know it would be nice to piggyback your political views on the Bitcoin and gain wider acceptance, but it's not not going to happen- it's like wrapping barbed wire around a nice juicy steak- no ones going to eat something that dangerous just because the steak looks good.

You are saying Bitcoin is not simply a currency- but a delivery vehicle for the overthrow of the existing political system. Do you REALLY think that's widely marketable? Honestly?

That is clearly a mistake, and making it is not worth the minor inconvenience of a forum migration. The Politics forum on Bitcoin.org has absolutely no relevance to the development of Bitcoin and is only detrimental to it's adoption. How long until the Bitcoin founders are actually confronted in a television interview with some of the inflammatory content ON THEIR OWN SITE and have to backpedal and say "oh well it's...".

I agree with you.  This is an open source project.  It behaves beyond the scope of one.  That works against it in many ways.

If the treasury department or the Federal Reserve had a politics section (or a forum at all), it would be crazy beyond measure.

For bitcoin to succeed, it needs to lower its value as a target.  That means losing, not just politics, but the vast majority of this forum and let third party sites distribute the political target value.

Whenever you allow someone enter information, you put your site at risk.  If bitcoin.org is limited to the technical aspects of the project, the administrators can put bigger restrictions on the nature of discussion.

Bitcoin.org is obligated to secure the code and protocols and rules related to the bitcoin, not to guarantee every lunatic's freedom of speech.

The internet will not stop allowing people to say or do whatever they want.  Not any time soon, anyway. Setting up a forum is trivial.

Yes you can!

I have to disagree with you. I myself am a nanorchist (that's the guy that always must take the fight from both anarchists and minarchists) but that's personal. Let's move over to business...

Do you want to see bitcoin succeed as a global internet commodity ? If yes, you have to put all your politcal associations aside, its a revolutionary easy way of transfer money. And let's stop there, no it wont take down the fed nor will it replace euro nor SDR, stop there, noone has till now monetized the web and we are about to do it!

You have to make it appeal as more than something pure ideological. (trying to make it have people believe it will oppose or replace the fed is totally ridiculous)

Have I REALLY used these words? Honestly?


People, if bitcoin has no political-economical view built-in, then why in hell do you think it has a logarithmic growth, with an asymptotic limit? Stable monetary supply is an economical position supported only by Austrian economists. All mainstream "economists" support monetary inflation.

And, again, like it or not, using bitcoin instead of dollars or euros or whatever is a political position. It is not like "overthrowing government", but it is at least the equivalent of saying "I do not authorize the government to finance itself nor its banker friends with the inflation of my money." This political position is built in bitcoin. If you don't agree with this position, sorry but you should not use bitcoins. You should just keep using the currency of your government.

Saying that bitcoin has no political/economical view built-in at all is just wrong. It does.

Now if you don't like the political debates here, just don't join them. Honestly, I doubt that these debates scare more the condescending subjects of governments than stuff like SR for ex.

Oh my, the ideologues are not going to like this thread at all </snicker>. Personally I find it highly ironic that the greatest hurdle to widespread adoption of bitcoin right now is the perception that it is for drug dealers, anarchists, and other shady characters. Then, anyone actually wanting to research bitcoins comes here and sees such wonderful threads discussing secession, bringing down governments, revolutions, etc etc. Here's a hint for you guys:


You may as well change the official logo to read "Bitcoin: Currency of teh crazy"

Unless catering to a specific crowd, legit businesses don't mention politics. Its a good way to alienate at least half of your potential customer base. There are not enough Libertarians in the world to support bitcoin. Satoshi chose his initial adoption crowd well, but bitcoin is outgrowing the "herp! all governderp is bad!" crowd. You were useful, now it is time to put the politics aside and let real businesses step in and see this through to its maximum potential. You get a nice reward for early adopting, but bitcoin is a digital currency, not a revolution. Try to bill it as such and it will utterly fail with the general public, and condemn bitcoin to being a footnote in Wikipedia.

I would find it extremely amusing if the reason bitcoin 1.0 died was because the anti-gov't ideologues couldn't stfu from their rants long enough to let it grow. The absolute best thing the dev team could do would be to kill these forums and let other sites continue the conversations. Maybe leave the technical discussion and have it heavily moderated.

Jessy Kang thats why, actually, 90% FEDs undercover play Atlas-similar roles online/offline "on duty".
high-profile targets more vulnerable and [supposed/promoted/presented/provoked/guinded/established]offenders look more dangerous.
some people are so lazy and hungry for awards, promotions, to invent something new. or simply unable.

See. That right there. That's the kind of talk that makes everyone move to the next subway car.

If "everyone" wants to have their money devalued by government, then they don't need to move anywhere, just stick with government currency. Using bitcoins implies in not wanting monetary inflation in the long run. And it is built-in in the system.

Seriously, if you really want to get your money devalued by government's inflation, then don't use bitcoins, it doesn't make sense. I just think you are the minority there. Most people would rather being able to protect the value of their money, IMHO.

So you think the Pizzaria owner, computer repair guy, Amazon- that's why they are going to start taking Bitcoin because "Using bitcoins implies in not wanting monetary inflation in the long run."? (which by the way sounds a whole lot less bearded dude living in a van down by the river than "I do not authorize the government to finance itself...")

So all those shopping carts, fulfillment systems- you honestly thing any business owner will factor, even one tiny bit monetary inflation as an immediate practical consideration in their adoption of Bitcoin?

Here's the thing about business owners- even small ones. We aren't, for the most part- poor. We make very little money trying to do an end run about the government- it's really not worth it. You have to be a fricking HUGE corporation, before you can hire enough good lawyers and accountants to cheat on your taxes and get away with it. A few try, they nearly always get caught and end up paying more than they would in the first place.  The ones that do don't paste a big "I'm a tax dodger, come at me Bro" Bitcoin logo on their door- they keep it a private matter with their accountant. For most part it's easier for us to just pay- we pass the costs onto the consumer.

So while average Joe six-pack might deeply resent the money taken from his salary- for most business owners- while we may not love it, don't really care as much. It's just overhead. All this anti-tax and inflation stuff- all you do is scare businesses away because they don't take the same level of personal offense that you do. Say a person steals your wallet, sure it pisses you off and you would chase them down- as a business we call it shrinkage and it's just a number to be managed.

For you all this is a personal slight and a matter of principle- but we don't care, we just pass it on- and we aren't really interested in your fights or your anger. Or taking the bullet for you because we actually have enough assets to make it worth while for the government to make an example of us.

Bitcoin may enable you to break laws and avoid policies that you resent, but it is not by definition tied to that use, and if you insist on trying to make it so it won't be able to serve that, or any function for very long.

Even if you *think* Bitcoin will change everything- when the other guys are moving the big wooden horse into their city, you stop beating on the damn drums.

Bitcoin was made for political reasons (at least partly):




Embedded in the genesis block, which is required for running Bitcoin:

I don't really see how the current position of the BitCoin.org operators is consistent?

We have to shut down SilkRoad because selling drugs is illegal and makes Bitcoin look bad. But oh, advocating tax evasion and the overthrow of the government on our own website, in direct contradiction of the Bitcoin Wiki PR guidelines (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Public_relations)- all good.

We don't have enough mods, so new adopters of the technology we are advocating cannot actually post their questions and receive tech support. But we do have enough mods for endless pompous wharrgarbl in multiple irrelevant forums that not only do not advance Bitcoin, but are actively hindering it's widespread adoption by trying to piggyback their agenda. So priorities straight.

Despite the forums being under considerable load and running slowly, these irrelevant forums cannot be simply hosted elsewhere. So relevant forums, needed for the actual work of advancing Bitcoin are often slow and occasionally inaccessible as well. So developers can't have a cohesive thread about improving software clients because some of the leather elbow patch crowd want to fondle themselves while looking at regurgitated glowing words on the shiny metal box.

The problem with all this, is that it's a Catch 22. If we don't say anything, nothing changes. By pointing out how foolish it is, the operators risk loss of face by actually being responsive and doing anything about it- let alone replying.

So we'll no doubt end up with the same sort of patronizing "we know what's best" brush off from the Mods- if they deign say anything at all to us peasants. Or maybe they'll censor another one of my threads, they seem pretty fond of that.

Great, so Bitcoin- in it's very essence, at the core of it's code is a libertarian "plot". It's bad enough we have Masonic symbols on our paper money- but you go pointing out that Libertarian/Anarchist/Anti-Establishment propaganda is "hidden" in the base CODE? What side are you on? Are you TRYING to sink Bitcoin?

Do you get that these are NOT the talking points you really wanted to put out there? That when the mainstream media like Fox gets that it's not a Drug currency- worse it's a SUBVERSIVE POLITICAL currency they will have a fricking field day?

Look, I'm sure the people that run this place write awesome code but Bitcoin has gotten beyond that. Hire someone, recruit someone corporate- anything. Keep control if you need, but get some better advice and strategy. This is not about how smart people like you guys think, you need to be prepared for how dumb people think.

Feel free to kill it. I'll happily create a independent board to cater to the politics crowd.

Done. If Bitcoin.org kills the politics I'll buy you the forum script of your choice- I use IP.Board and like it but I'll leave it to you to decide.

You're too kind, Ms. Kang. I can really empathize with the goal you are trying to achieve and -- contrary to what you may perceive -- I find it quite virtuous. However, I will not be needing your charity. I already have a team of developers lined up to build something I like to see as revolutionary; contrary to the model of business most forums use today.  I plan to be paying my users in Bitcoin -- handsomely, according to the quality of their material. A bit like Witcoin but more direct and more liquid in terms of conversation.

Anyways, again, thank you.

Well clearly this is a political and economic project

But two points

One is that bitcoin is not ready for mainstream adoption. It is odd to think of currency as a software project, but we are and do, and there just is not a rich enough feature set yet to keep people from getting confused. I don't know if we are even in beta yet. So I'm not really concerned about expanding into that market yet.

The other is that I agree that bitcoin.org should pare itself back to discussions around the actual protocols and software - maybe even all the way back to a listserv, not a forum

But, I guess I'm not all that concerned. Question and answer like stack exchange sites are already springing up and well as sites like weusecoins.com  -- People shouldn't have to come here to read or download anything if they don't want to anymore than people go to the paypal forums to use paypal. We are just now experiencing the first explosion of growth that will make these forums unwieldy (and brought me on board the project). Before this it made sense to have one forum where everything could be discussed. Now maybe it doesn't. But it will take time to decentralize a bit.

I'd be happy to see the politics forum go, if it would stay gone. I even have it ignored. But I suspect that such discussions would crop up again all over the place, which is why the forum got created in the first place. Perhaps instead it could be made completely inaccessible to newbies (and search engines).

Unfortunately, currency itself has become politicized.  We didn't do that.  And I don't see that there's really any way to make a use-case for Bitcoin without pointing this out.

Fortunately, however, the political stance of Bitcoin is extremely neutral.  I mean, don't you yourself use Bitcoin in order to avoid the political aspects of official currency?  The point of grass-roots anonymous decentralized currency is to de-politicize trade.  Anyone who isn't interested in a more liberating currency can just use Paypal or Chase Quickpay or probably a dozen other electronic transfer services.  The world doesn't need yet another.

But Bitcoin on it's own will not dismantle any political systems that individuals do not want to see dismantled anyways.  The systems that Bitcoin will help to weaken are popularly despised, such as the banking system and the war on drugs.  And there is more political dissent among mid-sized businesses than you might think.  Amazon, for instance, is constantly engaged in tax battles and flat out refuses to collect taxes in some cases.  So that was an extremely poor example.

Yes, I agree, the main bitcoin site will be better off without a political forum.

It's time for Bitcoin.org to adopt an official "no  direct political advocacy" policy

It's like with silk market thing - having threads discussing what it is etc. is probably ok. Having people sell invites is slightly less oky but tolerable. Having people push drugs right here, in the "The Coin's very own backyard" - not so much. We must maintain a certain... veneer at this point in time, guys. 

P.S.:
However, the project yours truly intends to start  ;) (expect announce in several weeks) would most likelycertainly benefit from exactly such a strongly politicized forum and stuff, so expect us to make one, as soon as we finalize acquisition of seed capital and establish a web presence.

 

This is what Bitcoin was intended to be:


From: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Nothing there about politics, taxes or the government. It was simply a system for merchants and their customers to avoid high transaction fees, chargeback fraud and inconvenience. It is a system of commerce- not social change. There is no magic software code that it going to fix the World's problems. Instead of pursuing Bitcoin, as it was intended, it was highjacked by political ideologues who decided to use Bitcoin to their own ends.

Are we going to have a Satoshi-quote battle?  ;D

(My emphasis.)

Satoshi even explicitly approved of at least one political discussion on this forum:
(This is from the staff forum.)

Yeah, hijacked by its own creator, who created the inflation cap! :D

Please lady, pay attention to what you're saying. Bitcoin has anti-inflation political/economical views since its beginning. Don't like it? Fork the project and create your "inflatacoin" or whatever, keeping the other characteristics. You may as well make it possible for the government to track transactions on your implementation, since you seem so reluctant against "subversive technologies" and the possibility of tax evasion.

And if the politics forum bothers you so much, just don't read the discussions. What's so hard in that?

Agreed.

In my opinion, this should be changed to a developer forum. For people that are either developing on bitcoin clients, or making services/merchant sites that accept bitcoin.

No (direct) trading, no politics, no bullshit. Bitcoin is starting to get out of its infancy, and there are enough other places for that now.

The question, dear gentlemen and ladies, isn't about what are the politics of bitcoin creators.

The question is which marketing and PR approach would ensure greatest rate of adoption, said adoption being crucial for long-term security of bitcoin both against government and speculators.

I believe that the best rate of adoption would be ensured by a politically neutral main hub.

COME ON GUYS (AND GIRLS) WOULD IT BE SO DAMNED HARD TO DISCUSS POLITICS @ SOME OTHER FORUM ?

http://bitcoinpolitics.reddit.com

Looks like we don't need to. None of the quotes suggest he intended it be used, or openly advocated as a political tool. It was discussed as a commercial tool with political implications. Even if you want to use it as a political tool- it will accomplish the same thing and is far more palatable to the masses if marketed as a purely commercial one. The Ops don't have a logical leg to stand on and they know it. It's just a face issue at this point.

How's that for a role change- the girl is talking about facts and logic and the guys are talking about wants and feelings LOL. "You have to love us BOTH, Bitcoin and Ideology 2GETHR4EVR! I've got the Bitcoin.org so I MAKE the RULES! If you don't love my ideology GO AWAY! *screech, door slam*" ;D ;D ;D

Anyway, this will shortly fix itself. Just would have been better to stay ahead of the OODA loop and not be reactive to the media.

Truth be told, media attention did the coins no small amount of good  ;)

However, methinks that the main forum would best steer clear of controversies and maintain maximum possible neutrality to all participants.
Controversies are more than capable of emerging on their own, and it would nice to have a place that will serve as a hub of ideological and political...moderation, of sorts, to draw in, and reinforce the trust of, "simple", non-controversial adopters.

So yeah, Jessy's right.

Politics discussion is best to migrate to other pastures.

Lol  :D It's indeed interesting. For all things money, it's the men that go into emo rage.

Reminds me of this http://www.marketwatch.com/story/women-are-better-investors-and-heres-why-2011-06-14

What will your investors say when they find out the logo was made by... an individual. It's not official, it's just good.

Um, I dunno, is it illegal to use logos made by individuals and then released under nonrestrictive licenses in your jurisdiction ?

And BTW, I'm curious, what is the license on the Huge Bitcoin Coin logo?  ;D

I would like to believe you are a girl but on the Internet…

The men are men.  The women are men.  And the children are FBI agents.

:-)

True, but forum members have met me in person at the last Meetup in NYC. But none verified my gender, I could have been in drag LOL

There's currently a push to split these forums off from bitcoin.org and move them to their own domain:

http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/06/15/2#l1062161 (starting at 3:28)

As one of the anarchist lunatics, I really wish that my fellow crazies would take Jessy Kang's advice.  Bitcoin will benefit the anarchist project merely by continuing to exist and grow.  There's no need to jeopardize that by trying to shove our ideology down the throats of the normals.

From: http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/06/15/3


You have GOT to be shitting me. So that line you fed the media about SR was a load of horseshit- Bitcoin.org in fact actively condones and protects illegal activity because it's "Free Trade"! Okay good luck with that.

I can't jump ship fast enough, will get my Bitcoin links pulled first thing this morning.

I think there are few options left beyond making a new forum and getting that linked from the bitcoin.org site.

The hard part will be copying all the useful stuff over...

I agree with john smith. Not just politics but also 17 different lotteries and ponzi schemes, trading, "is bitcoin going to burst, etc", signal to noise ratio is only going to get worse and it would be nice to have an "official" site that is purely about development. Feature requests on github are fine, but they don't go far enough in allowing discussion/debate IMHO.

I've been thinking. The only way to REALLY resolve this is to restrict the forum to development and technical support discussions, and kill anything that smacks of politics, speculation about exchange rates, and anything else not directly relevant to Bitcoin.

I suggest kindly that you do not overreact, since the offending material was eventually deemed deserving removal (LINK (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17872.0))

Ah no, there is a single nutter holding the Bitcoin.org domain name hostage to his ideology. He is a member of the Dev team, but openly advocates and protects illegal activity. This is the primary site associated with Bitcoin and the one given to the media- it matters.

You do not have your place of business listed in your profile. Your business does not accept, or advocate the use of Bitcoin. So it is reasonable for you to feel it's a non-issue- you are anonymous, as is theymos. Anonymous people are comfortable saying all sorts of goofy things because they risk nothing. Rules are different for those of us who do business in the real world and might be held accountable for our association with Bitcoin.

It'd be interesting if Sirius replied in this thread. I've only heard second-hand things about how he thinks about the forum's state, never from him directly.

I'm not anonymous. My real name and city of residence are public. It would be pretty easy to find me if you cared to do so.

As a businessman, with investors considering Bitcoin, I'm glad to see this thread and hope that something positive comes from it.

As this is Bitcoin's flagship site, it needs to lose the majority of its political rhetoric quickly(while there is still a wave of media attention). It's nice to see that many devs agree.

Unless the ideologues just want to trade Bitcoins with themselves, they have to realize that most people are going to find their politics offensive. Make Bitcoin politically neutral, if you want it to see widespread adoption. If you want the market to rise to its potential, Bitcoin needs mainstream money. As things stand, much of the world is going to pass, based on Bitcoin's image.


I've also put my business and identity in the line of fire, speaking to legislators in Washington about Bitcoin's potential. I won't continue to do so, if I'm going to be labeled as part of a plot to take down the government. I don't currently recommend this site to any investors, for the same reason. That this site runs so slowly doesn't help, either.

I also very strongly agree with making the "official" forums a more neutral place.  There are plenty of other places to discuss politics.

If you all want Bitcoin to succeed, you will support the removal of the Politics subforum.

Bitcoin will never be taken seriously with the number of posts advocating tax evasion, overthrowing the government, etc.  Businesses want no part of such activities, even if the business owner might even agree with such sentiments.  Businesses play by the rules, so that they can continue conducting business.

Well, as you can see, the degree of political fervor is dropping, questionable threads are being culled, and given that overwhelming consensus is that politics should go elsewhere I would expect the forum to de-politicize in a month or so.

@Jessy:

Bitcoin is more than just a technology invented to solve some practical need, like the toothbrush.  Right from the start, the motivations for inventing and promoting Bitcoin were very ideological indeed.  The technology is inseparable from the ideology, at least so far in the short history of Bitcoin.

You can't really blame the bitcoin.org forums for their anarchist/libertarian roots. The would be like blaming CAFOD for its Catholic roots. When I came here about a year ago, almost all discussions (outside the technical sections) were philosophical in some shape or form, and the bitcoin technology was seen as an experiment to test those philosophical findings empirically. 

Then all of a sudden (perhaps to everyone's surprise) bitcoin took off and became something bigger than that.  The first time I came here I was also put off a little bit by all that absolutist ideology, but I could see there was tremendous value in the practical applications of bitcoin and decided to stay anyway. Not to mention that I enjoyed having my world view challenged by some very intelligent community members.  Tell your small business owner friends to keep an open mind.
 

I do agree with you though that the joe sixpack "consumer" of bitcoin is better off not learning about the ideological motivations of the orignial core community. Perhaps we need a different website than bitcoin.org to act as a  gateway.

What I don't get: Why do you self proclaimed businesspeople from the Real World^TM not do something about this alleged problem instead of coming to bitcoin.org and complaining, hoping that other people will take care of it for you?

This is a decentralized project! There is nothing "official" or permanent about bitcoin.org. Persuade your investors to open another, less controversial "flagship site" and then market it heavily.

The owner of this site is maintaining it in his spare time for free. He owes you nothing.

Permanent, no. The Bitcoin source sites link to this site and its forum, for support. Bitcoin.org is currently the advertised home site for the project.

I imagine that most people here want Bitcoin to succeed in the greater market, though many have false hopes about how that will happen. Bitcoin is quickly growing beyond being a hobby.

This is the first stop for most newcomers and media. Your proposal is to try and make this site irrelevant; I doubt that's the best solution.

Bitcoin has many appealing features and, if nothing else, as an experiment in economic though it's about as interesting as can be.  It may cause political upheaval and worse (or better?), though I somehow doubt that it will ever substitute fiat currency.

But I agree with the OP.  Talk of illegal activity is bad for bitcoin and bad for bitcoin users that want to stay legal.  It'll never appeal to a broad base as long as that stays.  And any political discussion conducted by fanatics on any side is also bad.

Here's a compromise: censor any and all posts or threads condoning or promoting illegal activity and put a warning on borderline cases to the effect that the forum is public.  Leave the politics boards in place BUT with a big disclaimer to the effect that the opinions contained therein are, as with all political opinions, personal opinions of individual users, some extreme, some not, and do not necessarily reflect any official opinion of any bitcoin dev, or the general opinion of bitcoin users, or of the general direction of the bitcoin project.  Heck, include a religion sub-forum too, just to make the point that there are other aspects of life where extreme opinions can be found :-)

Make forum.bitcoin.org about development and adoption of bitcoin and its economy, but leave space at the bottom for people to chat aswell.

Gotta say, the extract from IRC below reflects *very* badly on those involved, I can only hope it doesn't make it's way into mainstream headlines - I can just see it now: "Bitcoin developers and project managers condone illegal activity according to secret IRC log files"  Then the next day, *after* a million sheeple have read the headline, try explaining that refusing to condemn is not quite the same as condoning, and InternetRelayChat ("InternetWhaaatChat?") is not secret at all.

Just in case it's not clear, I am not suggesting that anyone involved with bitcoin condones illegal activity. You guys should just have a care as to how you might be perceived.

Gentlemen!
I like democracy! I LOVE democracy! I like elections and polls and ballots...

 http://images.wikia.com/hellsing/images/c/cd/0.jpg

How about we solve this issue the democratic way?

The much respected forum administration will set up a poll, available only to registered users who are out of the "noob pits", and people will vote on that poll.

I propose that the poll should be explicit and simple.

Binary poll (YES / NO) would work best.

A link to this thread shall be provided so that the voters will be able to examine the relevant arguments.

I vote for the devs' idea of moving the forums to another site. This one should just be for development and user support.

Mailing lists will suffice for development. I think that not having any officially sanctioned forums will work just fine.

So then it should link the mailing list from the main page, not the forum. It will get swarmed. Mailing lists scale even worse than forums.

Personally I find mailing lists pretty inconvenient, though, I hate getting everything in my mailbox, and it feels like a step backward instead of forward. It is also not a good way to give technical support to merchants/users which are not unix dinosaurs like us.

No.  Just, no.

I never liked mailing lists.

Because this is not a democracy.

Based on the information that's come to light it's kind of pointless for everyone posting their "vote" in this thread. It's not a voting matter- either by the community of the developers. Thermos owns the domain, he has made it clear he will do with it what he wishes and is willing to martyr himself- and Bitcoin, for his ideology. As long as this forum is on the official site, it is unlikely any others of the same subject matter elsewhere will gain traction or be viable.

One power drunk nutter to descredit the whole project. Talk about single point failure issues. Next currency will learn the lesson and plan for it though.

Way I see it, we have two main choices:

1) Continue as we are now, or
2) Bring on a large number of new moderators and censor anything that makes the project look bad. Unfortunately, this would also include any post that complains about our censorship. I predict that this could be successfully done with about 20 full-time moderators.

Censorship, of any kind, is a slippery slope. Jessy Kang, you know that better than most. Imagine us having to fight hundreds of you...

Do you know what an open source project is? There is no organization behind bitcoin, it has no owners, no official representatives.
Bitcoin.org is only a site which has been used by all to discuss and evolve the project, and it is not hostage to anyone, it is owned by a very generous individual - afaik, he's keeping the infrastructure with his own money, earning nothing out of it.


I thought about this thing of limiting the scope of the forum, and I must admit that there would be at least one advantage: it would be less impractical to follow it. Today, I just can't, most threads have to go ignored. But I'm still not sure suppressing non-development discussions is a good move. If everything is properly categorized, RSS per categories would help to ignore those you don't want to follow.

Finally! That's what I've been trying to say.

Weusecoins.com was created precisely with this intend of being a "PR site", for newbies and all. Just promote that site if you don't want to create a new one.

I don't. And this isn't a democracy, it is private property. It's up to sirius to decide in the end.

Afaik, it's sirius who owns bitcoin.org, not theymos.

BTW, really, who does, in the end, own bitcoin.org ?

As an investor, I find this thread horrifying.  The OP brings up an excellent point and any rational person would have dropped the political forum and replaced it with a merchant forum immediately.  The fact that this wasn't done shows that she is correct in her assessment.

There is no better way to kill an initiative than to marry it with a political idea that the masses find repugnant.  Bitcoin is a great idea, but it's not irreplacable.  Especially now that the way to viral success has been revealed, you can bet that among the various spinoff projects there are quite a few successors being built.  The way for Bitcoin to grow rather than to be replaced is to be as politically agnostic as possible and focus on the merchants.

Moderators here need to step outside, take a breath of fresh air and talk to real people...not those in the same echo chamber.

Repugnant or not doesn't really have to do with it. No matter what your political view is, someone is bound to find it repugnant.

IMO the main bitcoin site should be neutral from any political view, repugnant or not. It should be about technical issues, indifferent of the political affiliations of the users.

No other major open source project I know has any political affiliation, at least on their main site. For example, file sharing tools have the same problem. So they simply say to be about legal file sharing to rid themselves of the same troll discussions all the time.

If we limited the scope of the forum it would not require additional moderators. Developer talk does not really lend itself to trolling.


A tightly focused board, would by definition need to be tightly moderated. I don't have a problem with that. Here it's the Wild West *unless* a mod is OCD, bored, disagrees- then they start stabbing wildly at the admin keys. If it were limited to development and technical issues it would not really a problem. The only reason I still use this forum ID is for continuity, if we ever make any mainstream progress obviously it, and any Adult links would be the first things to put on the chopping block.


Gosh no sir- it all sounds very complicated! All this is pretty far over my head- appreciate the patience with lil' ole' me.


Yes, I understand that is the narrative- you understand that based on the available evidence that it is not actually true in practical terms? 

So:
Openoffice.org Official OpenOffice website.
Redcross.org Official Red Cross website.
Mozilla.org: Official Mozilla website.
Wikipedia.org: Official Wikipedia website.
Bitcoin.org (copyright "Bitcoin Project 2009-2011"): NOT the Official Bitcoin Project website.

I'm sure that's obvious to everyone who visits here right?

So lets quit the "It's not the official site" crap and not rewrite the English language- because if it's not the official site, by any reasonable standard it should be and that means someone is domain squatting and using it for other than it's widely recognized purpose.

A single individual controls the domain, a single one runs the forum, there are names on the front of the site that all but the most hairsplitting would consider "official", there are people being represented by the media as "official" giving interviews with the press and government- not just for their software client, but for Bitcoin as a whole, they are determining Bitcoin policy- and all these people all belong to one small core group which is the de facto Bitcoin decision making body.

That's kind of an organization if you... I don't know, check a dictionary or something crazy like that- and trying to claim otherwise reeks of desperation.


Wait...whut? You just said a minute ago it's not "hostage to anyone"?


IRC indicates Thermos owns (or at least controls) the domain, Sirus owns the server. You have evidence otherwise it would be good to have it out there in the public record. No disinfectant like sunlight and all that.


Yeah it does. Because if THEY can't use it, you think they are going to let thousands of smaller retailers undercut their prices with their lower transactional overhead? Nope, they'll dial up their lobbyists and that will be that.


Money is money, the people who are better at making it, will always be better at making it. Every attempt throughout history to artificially level the playing field has failed. I should know, I come from a country that tried, and learned better. There is no magic legislation, manifesto or computer code that will give you what you think you deserve. A lot of people have been sold on a Bitcoin fairy tale that is just not going to come true.

As a psychopath anarchist, I converted to this position too. I find myself caring more about new infrastructure and the price of BTC/NMC than trying to push my philosophy nowadays, and as you say, why would I want to waste my time trying to push anarchism if the mere continued rise of Bitcoin makes my dreams ever closer to realization?

I guess this is my official endorsement of Jeff Garzik and all the walled garden people.

+1

Satoshi owns the domain. Sirius owns the server. Gavin and I have access to the server.

Clearly I am not any kind of "ultimate authority" of bitcoin.org. I am using the tools I have been given in ways that I think are good. I'm not going to do anything I consider I bad idea...

Perhaps you, Sirius, Gavin, and Satoshi should have a discussion about this.  It seems pretty obvious that the community wants to rid the site of the politics subforum, so why not comply?  I know you don't think it's a bad idea, but when there are already proven cases of people refusing to use Bitcoins because of what they have seen posted in the politics subforum, how can you ignore that?  Don't you strive to see Bitcoins being used for more and more economic activity around the world?

There are a bunch of people with enough coins to do that today.

What is holding them back?

Seriously.  If it's not a scam, back it up with lobbyists.  That's where they are there for--to protect your interests in spite of law, sanity or reality.

I missed the part on what this foundation will accomplish besides destroying any fringe discussion on the forums.

+1 You're right.  That's off topic and requires another thread.

It's like the government... it expands to raise funds, so it can expand to raise more funds.

hehehe, it's quite ironic that you cite Wikipedia.org. I don't know any site with more heated political debates than wikipedia! They are all over the site. And yet that doesn't make, afaik, people judge the whole encyclopedia by the political opinions of those who they see discussing there.

And talking about being official sites, all these sites you mention have organizations behind them, like the Mozilla foundation or the Wikimedia foundation. Although you still cannot rigorously talk about an "official firefox project decision", you can pretty much talk about an "official Mozilla foundation decision on firefox development", and that's what you'll see reflected on mozilla.org.
Now, for bitcoin, there's no actual institution behind it. Its organization is entirely spontaneous. It really doesn't make much sense to take the political debates in this forum as an "official position" of the "bitcoin project" or anything alike. Honestly, I find it ... how can I say... a quite poor discernment, at the very least.


I agree that the forum has become impossible to follow, and many silly political discussions have their share on that. But I'd be satisfied with better ways to filter the content that you want, like, for ex., when you click "show unread threads", it would be nice to be able to filter out entire categories.

Anyways, it's not up to me to decide anything, just giving my opinion.


Please, nobody is squatting anything. Individuals maintain this site, with all its infrastructure, for us to use freely. They don't charge anyone anything, neither ask donations. At least be decent enough to recognize their generous contribution instead of attacking them like that.


Now legitimately owning something is the same of taking it hostage?

There's a lot of confusion in this thread.

A Merchant subforum is a good idea.

But, ultimately, these are the facts.  Bitcoin has enough innate advantages to grow slowly and surely even without catering to established merchants.  Turning it into just another Paypal alternative, however, will kill the project dead in it's tracks.

The Politics subforum isn't highly-trafficked anyways.  I question the narrative that is being presented here, that merchants were turned off by it.  The political implications of Bitcoin are fairly obvious.  This just sounds more like an excuse frankly.  And the proposed solution, quelling political speech, wouldn't really solve that problem.

Really we should also consider the possibility that anyone who can't handle the political implications of distributed digital currency is more of a liability than an asset.

Then you're vastly limiting the potential of Bitcoins.

Many of the people I know wouldn't touch Bitcoins with a 10 foot pole because of how it has been associated in the media with Silk Road and other underground activities.  If they were able to brush past that, but in trying to learn more about bitcoins ended up here, and started reading about all the "down with the government" posts, I can guarantee you that they would be out of here faster than... something fast.

You can call them a liability all you want.  But a very high majority of people will not get involved in something that is so fringe as to call for the abolition of governments.  And unless we figure out a way to cater to the majority, Bitcoin will never last as anything but a fringe project.

Frankly, most people don't have the slightest clue about anything.  They're all perfectly happy to use cash laced with cocaine and banks that cater to violent cartels and to purchase prescription drugs from pharmaceutical companies that kill more people than any illicit drug ever has.

The entire point of currency, let alone a de-centralized apolitical currency like Bitcoin, is that it isn't a popularity contest and its value isn't even remotely connected with the number of people who approve of it because of whatever stories the media has told them.

One of the major themes of the Politics subforum, for anyone who actually reads it, is that so-called "anarchists" actually aren't.  Most of them are actually quite interested in functional government.  And the use and promotion of an apolitical, non-inflationary grass-roots currency is actually more an act of "government" than all the ridiculous nonsense carried out by existing "governments" through force and fraud and blatantly stolen resources.

Silk Road is arguably one of the safest drug delivery systems ever devised, including licensed, government-regulated medical doctors who accidentally kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.

And since one of the founding principles of the US government, at least, is the right to freedom of speech and accountability to the average person, this entire proposal reeks more of oriental despotism than a defense of rational government.

So, no, I'm not buying it.  And I've yet to see evidence of a coherent argument that the dumb masses will buy into Bitcoin either, if only it were neutered and taxed and regulated and marketed in just the right way so as to make it completely indistinguishable from any of a dozen existing alternatives.

All I see here is a bunch of intellectual whores pushing a very short-sighted agenda.

You're arguing against a strawman. No one of us is claiming anything about drugs, or that it's wrong, or blabla. Personally I live in a country that is very liberal on drugs. But that's not the point.

The point is that a more focused 'official' support forum, that's not a troll sesspool, would be more useful and less obscure to new users. I have no problem with the forum in this form to keep on existing but it should not be the official one linked from bitcoin.org.

Uh, is that a compliment or an ad hominem attack? Confusing, I cannot decide :)

See I agree with this



This is more than a little bit racist. The US has a pretty high market share of the evil despots dept


And that's just dumb/mean

You can want bitcoin to succeed for purely political reasons, and still not think that all the other BS on these forums is useful on /these/ forums. Little illegal ponzi schemes, unlicensed lottoes, dick waving contests, ideological purity arguments, etc etc etc -- all well and fine on some forum, but not the bitcoin.org forum -- let there be a place that can be purely dedicated to the development and use of the product from a developer/merchant perspective and let twenty other sites take up the slack of all the other discussions.

When I go to drupal.org, it's to figure out why I'm getting a bug with a certain module or what the current status of the debate about including feature foo in core is, not to have discussions about whether taxation is moral or whether bill gates is evil or whatever else

Question to those well versed with forum maintenance:

If/when the project I am tasked with overseeing (formally so far, since we're still waiting for first part of investor monies to arrive ) attains a basic web presence and a forum (we're currently evaluating several offshore hosts), I would very much like to see the current Political Forum crowd in its forum, since it will be a very niche project targeted more or less specifically at the mindset that disturbs Jessy Kang

So question:
would it be technologically feasible to migrate the entire Political there, maybe with forum.bitcoin.org account credentials to give people a truly seamless experience?

it would be possible to copy and clean that part of the database and populate a new forum, especially if you were running the same forum software, but probably not worth the effort. just let folks register accounts there. no need for bold ;)

But I want to draw them in  ;D

And it's such a beautiful thing - Politics Folks get a playground to truly call their own (with accounts already there for their convenience), "vanilla" bitcoin adopters aren't spooked by ZEH ANARCHISTSES, and I get an active potential userbase from which to recruit volunteers for the (hopefully) eventually upcomming beta.

Everybody happy

Since so far we haven't got any forum, I can try to arrange for exactly same forum software to be installed.

Wow, really dude?  You lose the thread.

This is already possible. Look at the "ignore boards preferences" in your profile.

Jessy Kang is right on. There are perhaps four useful parts of the forum.

1) Dissemination of news.

2) Discussion of Project Development [Development]

3) Answering users/vendors questions about bitcoin [newbies forum maybe renamed to users forum to avoid being pejorative]

4) Advertising bitcoin services and archiving feedback from users who have utilized the service or have questions about the service. [Marketplace]

Most everything else has a negative impact (willing to debate exceptions). In particular, reading the forum makes me worry that an exciting technology
may have fallen into the hands of idiots and fanatics who will fail to realize its potential. The discussions about market trends are particularly unhelpful.  

Would be better to have a forum that depended subscriptions to operate; that is a forum run like a business. Posting privileges would be restricted
to the marketplace feedback and the newbie/users sections for individuals who did not pay the fee. Abuse of news dissemination, project development, and service advertisement could result in
a warning and then membership termination.

Yeah, we need to raise thousands of dollars for a Foundation for a forum script install LOL.  :D Moving right along...


No, Louhi Networks "owns" the domain since it is the name on the record. The issue is who controls it? Bitcoin.org is registered through eNom.com. So who has the login information to eNom and so de facto ownership of the domain?


*confused*  ??? I'm told that Bitcoin.org is hosted on a Sourceforge virtual server. Seems unlikely Sirus owns Sourceforge.


Far from clear, there is a distinct lack of transparency as to the operational structure of the Dev team. I can understand the desire for privacy- but that does mean that the roles of each player have to be concealed from the community. Simply anonymity should suffice.


Right, thoughts and feelings again. :'(


Yes, I understand we have to find a face saving way to extricate you.  ;)

Since, according to you Gavin has the access required to make the needed changes, if he, or his agents, in accordance with a majority vote of the either the development team, or the forum members, begin to do so- would you actively impede them? Then *you* would not be doing things you don't like. Would this be acceptable?


Can some mod put "Whorish Oriental Despot" on my profile instead of "Jr. Member"? It has a nice ring to it.  ;D ;D ;D

Yea the politics forum was probably a mistake to add to a fledgling economic proving ground, but hey we all make mistakes. I think the site wouldn't be complete without some downright dirty free-speechering! It'd be hard not to be completely blindsided by the whirlwind of conflicted and contradictory statements generated by the postmodern american culture; anyone could get caught up init! For the most part though I think anyone who could consider putting their money in a place where trojans pose a bigger threat than bank robbers are more than capable of taking bitcoin seriously regardless of a few political musings. I'll admit it would be nice to see some diversity in op every once in a while. Maybe we should separate? See other people?

The political forum and everything else/

Would certainly make the whole movement seem more professional

Indeed, it's not like one'd need a fancy office with expensive furniture and hire 10 people just to set up a basic 'bitcoin foundation'. Most projects started small.
It appears that Louhi networks is a provider that provides anonymous domain registrations, based in Finland. The question indeed is who controls it. Probably, that's still Satoshi.

www.bitcoin.org is hosted on Sourceforge , however forum.bitcoin.org is hosted on a VPS operated by sirius.

The sourceforge project is owned by Satoshi and GA: http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=244765 ... So one of them could pull/replace the link to the forum from the main page any time, without even touching the domain.

IMO, the dev team is pretty transparent. You could see who contributes to the client on either github or sourceforge. However, the dev team and the forum team have almost completely diverged. The dev team is mostly active on the mailing list and sometimes IRC.
Haha, don't forget "intellectual"  ;)

Cool, got my stalker chicks on chat- learning all about "WHOIS" LOL


Doesn't look like it. Satoshi registered in Aug-2008 with anonymousspeech.com- but hosted with value-domain.com. Which is a pretty damn Japanese company for a guy that otherwise did not come off as Japanese LOL.

Anyway hosting and registration stayed in Japan until 18-May-2011 when someone moved it to that Finnish Company.

So as recently as a month ago, someone had control over the domain name, and so is the individual with de facto control over Bitcoin.org and it's forum. Probably Thermos still hairsplitting.


Ahh, ok "slicehost.com" still in the US though. Seems ill advised.


Yeah, when you dig though IRC and the old forum logs, what gets you about Satoshi and the team is how workman like they are- no "Helter Skelter man- this is going to change EVERYTHING". They were just putting an immense number of hours in crafting an incredibly elegant tool- with almost no interest in the implications until fairly recently. Even then- not really from the developers, they just seem to want it to be "right".  I have immense respect for them after sifting though all that conversation mixed with incomprehensible data.

One of the reasons I think that the forum is most likely under the control of a single individual with his own agenda rather than the Dev team as a whole- because as a whole they just do NOT come off as asshats in any block of posts I can find. Bunch of watchmakers, don't understand a word of what they are saying and that's exactly what should be in the Bitcoin.org forum IMHO.

+1, but there are a few other forums that are useful like mining and trading discussion.

Personally I would make the following changes:

1) Rename Bitcoin Discussion to Bitcoin News.
2) Merge Technical Support and Newbies forums.
3) Delete Economics, Politics and Off-Topic.
4) Add a Security subforum.
5) Replicate the exact same format on all the language subforums.

Elimination of Econ subforum is totally uncalled for.

Anyways, I'd like to get a bit of official position on this - if I do implement exactly similar board with exactly similar software, will bitcoin.org administration kindly assist me in drawing the politics and social issues discussion, as well as discussion of legality of various questionable bitcoin goods, towards that forum of mine?

Pretty please :)

6) Add a Merchants subforum, for merchant help in implementing bitcoin payments (I think it's good to keep this separated from general client technical support, as it will be easier to find things)

Leave it all alone...it sucks that lofty, theoretical discussions disturb some people.

That's kind of the point- do you want it to stay theoretical?

The Bitcoin politicals seem divided into two camps, the hardcore academics who understand the underpinnings as well as the history of their ideology, and the "You're not the boss of me!" "I don't need you, I don't need ANYONE!" crowd who just likes to have a label to make teenage angst seem more credible.

The serious, academic political types here realize that these "lofty, theoretical discussions" have been going on for a hundred and fifty some-odd years with little to show for it and what is needed at this point is not more talk or navel gazing- but credible proof. They reasonably think that a successful Bitcoin simply by nature of how it will function, illustrates their beliefs better than any book or explanation.

It's one thing to point to your books and say a structure is unnecessary, it's another to have a successful system in place that proves it so.

And it's yet another to over-post in an attempt to sound "useful."

Yes, and no. That's your perspective of who the "bitcoin politicals" are. Seems subjective (is it just black/white, really?). A lot longer than that, dear. Given the rash generalization of the academics, seems like you might not know enough of them. Bet you they swing both ways, if not more.
Collaborative dialogue is always useful and necessary, with or without any real implementation. Things change, sometimes too fast for anyone to do something else about it.

A forum is a motley assortment of crazy characters, only some of which fall under any definition.

Political musings related to bitcoin are both vital and extraneous. Innnnnnnn the end, just keep the little section for politics, and if you feel it's not enough, then you do more about it. If you feel it's too much ignore.

Did you really just bust out a "dear"? Patronizing ass.

"Yes, and no" my good chap...

If you read that entire post in a Michael Caine voice it's awesome.

I seem to have lost my snuff box.

Awww did I hurt your fewwwings? I'm sorry, dear.

I am patron...of the "it's the 21st century I'm sorry I'm not the most PC." Can't help if I use the superlatives with those who seem like they need them.

Call me a dick, or a prick, or a mofo (with or without uplift party plan). Rolls of my non-virtual shoulders....because I try not to get insulted by darkened pixels.

Still...the only retort is ad hominem. That's political :-)

Who's offended? Or insulted? It was hilarious. Still didn't top Whorish Oriental Despot though ;)

Lemonginger. Not you...cheerio from lectern.

I'd agree...my once-over just gives levity to (all politics or nothing). At least you have a sense of humor...like a cat who's caught a mouse, after eating a nice medium ribeye.

What I am mildly amused by is this peculiar territorial response in a virtual medium.

This is our fatherland subforum, historically we lived here like we like and we shall not move to a different plot of land new medium, even if it is greener richer, better connected and has blackjack and hookers has more forgiving moderation, more welcoming to our viewpoints, etc.

We shall stand our ground! Close the ranks!  ::)

It's remarkably common, and yet it is a human response that utterly baffles me...

First of all, I would never advocate the breaking the law. I advocate abolishing it. Second of all, overthrowing governments is what the United States of America was founded on. It's pretty amazing to me how one can be considered a "radical" or "extremist" just by advocating values that this country is based on. Have you really never heard of the American Revolution or read the Declaration of Independence?


We overthrew the colonial English government and created a new government based on our own ideals. Somehow people should be freaked out when we suggest that it might be time to do that again? It's depressing that we've grown so far apart from our roots. The words in bold mean that we grant authority to the government, not the other way around, and if we don't like what they do with the authority we give them, it's our right to revoke it.

Anarchists are mostly of average intelligence, have achieved nothing of significance, but have compulsions about every other living being in the world being 'cattle' or 'masses'.

If you liked anarchy or anarcho-capitalism so much as to make it a reality, then you would already be in Somalia or Afghanistan where no government has any real influence in anything, including taxation.


Then you'd have to realize that all power instantly falls in the hands of the clan or warlord with the most firearms and ammunition so it doesn't really fit your utopia & you get nervous when you realize you need protection in numbers or you will be exploited or killed.

There. You *need* other people and organization to survive, unless you're planning to be a self-sustaining hermit on the North Pole.
Even then, you're fucked if you need medical care/run out of food/get stuck in 20ft of snow.

Citation needed.


A failed state is not the same as no state.


I'm not against organization. I'm against aggression. If you think that you need to use aggression against others to protect them from aggression, you need to reevaluate your logic.

If you have sex with 1,001 people and 1,000 consent but 1 does not, you're a rapist. If you take money from 1,001 people and 1,000 consent but 1 does not, you're a thief.

You accuse anarchists of being Utopians but it's you that is being unrealistic if you really think that people can't govern themselves but somehow will be able to govern others.

*dons MOPP gear*

*backs out of thread, slowly*

Oh the irony, this thread is now being hijacked with exactly the kind of troll-inviting discussion that it was complaining about :)

If I had tribal connections I'd be in Afghanistan.  This is a society that has sucessfully defeated every world power everywhere.  Without any real central government.  They are the evidence that anarchy can be militarially superior.

So, you're the troll doing the 'jacking. Nice...

Must be a pro from all that 'jacking you do elsewhere.

But it's not a real anarchy like idealists see it.

They use very harsh sharia discipline based on the Quran. The women have practically no rights. They don't even allow ordinary Afghans to listen to music.
http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm

What kind of anarchy is it when the group with the most guns tells you what you can do & what you can't do under threat of violence?

As you see, all power ultimately comes from violence and coercion.

Boring one?

Also, whether Afghanis have "defeated" every military power throughout history depends on your definition of "defeat".

Edit
And yes, this thread lends indisputable evidence to the hypothesis that political discussions have to be airgapped from the rest of the project ;)

Most people don't want violence in their daily lives, just want to be left alone and are basically decent human beings when they know other people are watching. That being the case, the majority of people can easily defend themselves against a violent minority that don't care who knows they're murdering thieves.

You're right that authority grows from the barrel of a gun which is why we need to make sure that most of us decent folks that don't want constant violence, don't want to harass others and don't want to kill and steal, are well enough armed and organized to keep the minority at bay. That kind of power is simply self-defense and if you think that self-defense is morally wrong then you might as well just lay down and wait to die.


I think it's evidence that the kind of crowd that's interested in Bitcoin has strong opinions about politics and therefore political debate is inevitable. Therefore, it makes more sense to give it a place to happen rather than having it sprinkled all over the forum. A moderator can now come along and split the thread, moving the political debate posts to the proper section. That's pretty much why the politics section got started in the first place.

Perhaps the crowd could be kindly informed that there is a different location outside the bonds of bitcoin.org domain that is more suited to this kind of discussion?

Like, a HUGE HONKING BANNER saying that these forums are for project technical discussion and tech support (incl merchant support), accompanied by HUGE HONKING LINK to a site which is not directly affiliated with bitcoin per se and is willing to support exactly this kind of discourse due to having a strong incentive to maintain niche appeal of a certain "anarchist-ish" type?

Over 9000

Please explain the difference to me. I'd love to hear it.
A state that doesn't intervene because it can't or because it doesn't exist is the same I'd say. The end result is no intervention. So you should really go there, it does sound like the utopia you want.
Or don't. I have a feeling it wouldn't be beneficial to your health and longevity.

Good luck with that.


There's no precise definition but basically, a failed state is characterized by political and economic failure. A non-state isn't necessarily characterized by those things. What Libertarians desire is a society not based on statism but with a thriving political and economic system that is entirely voluntary.

Getting back on topic...


They don't sound like very smart business owners. If they were then they'd follow the money and ignore the rest. Doesn't sound like a huge loss here.

You may be right. I skimmed through some pages of the econ forum and it does have some useful stuff that wouldn't fit in any other subforum. Though it should be purged from anarchist thought that would scare businesses away.

well, what is happening in this thread would happen a lot more without a political ghetto to stick the debates in.

Afghans drove out every major world power.  The Romans, The Greeks, the Russians,  they are still working on us, but my money is on them.

As far as their fairly oppressive social contract that is what they choose, it is not being forced on them by anyone.  It may have been forced on them by the Taliban for a while, but that is no longer the case.  They have a choice in judges and they tend to choose Taliban because that is line with their social values.

This thread is over.

Let me sum it up:

Free speech is important.

Simple Machines Forum sucks rhinoceros balls.

There is a technical solution to stated objections.

A political ghetto is an important part of keeping the insanity contained. Search engine robots should be denied access to the ghetto.

User levels and forum access need to be more granular.

Merchants need a subforum.

The code needs cleanup.

We have seen the enemy and it is us.

Anything else?

Move lively forum full of colorful characters to its own domain.  Stress that it is unofficial and not affiliated with the developers of the Bitcoin client.  Set up dedicated user support forum (at weusecoins?), restrict discussion to just that.  Colorful characters get to do their own thing on unofficial/political/seedy forum without scaring the squares away from using bitcoins.

Good grief!! :o Those poor little things. I do hope they were wearing their 'big girl' Pull-ups. Those 'business tycoon' types, can be such delicate little treasures. Next time you might like to let the mods know you're sending guests, so they can have the place sanitized and renovated to look like a part of the Microsoft PR website. :D


Most of us are far too selfish and greedy to stand by our convictions and openly discuss our true values. The fear of what is good for our own personal profit/resume/social standing etc, does have a lamentable tendency towards cognitive dissonance, tempting us to rationalize our motives and decide what is 'best', is the thing that makes the most profit or popularity for me. Of course, nobody is required to place a political logo on their business. Your business colleges are not required to adopt any particular political view (even if it is predominant here), let alone endorse it with a badge of honor, simply because they happen to use bitcoin. Are they really so intellectually challenged, that they can't differentiate between using a piece of software and endorsing/embracing a political ethos? Fortunately for them, the very ethos that underpins the development of this software and the whole open source movement for that matter, also happens to emancipate them from being required, by external forces (monopolies governments) to endorse anything.
 
Who is expecting them to nail their flag to the mast? Let me guess. I know!! It's the stigma and public perception factor isn't it?


Ahhh! Thought so. Once again, those who are incapable of separating a community and its (individuals) political values, from the piece of software it uses/endorses, are conduits of a deplorable social problem. I say conduits, because the problem is deeper. They are prone to petty whims and vanity and vexing psychological concern like 'what will the neighbors think' and 'ew... that's yellow, nobody likes yellow things anymore'. The throngs of vacuous automaton like consumers, hungry for populist conformity, irrepressible gluttony and who need to be told what to think, what to believe, what values to uphold and a myriad of petty, voguish little conceits, which fill them with programed piety, conditioned self-worth and indoctrinated allegiances. Norms and fragile egos that collude to endorse them, must be conserved as the precious treasures of humanity. The "done thing", they cry. It isn't the 'done thing'.  So when they see somebody, who happens to be doing something they happen to associate with evil/wrong/bad or... 'not the done thing', it's not just the actual thing they perceive is wrong, but also anything or anyone to do with it or standing too close to it. Guilt by association.

We already have a front of spin doctors pushing the line that bitcoin is used to buy illicit drugs. well whop-de-do. Government cash is also used to buy illicit drugs. Are your pantie piddling business associates, also decrying the guilt by association they will have to endure, because the money they hungrily clutch at already, is used to finance the black market drug trade. HEY! That was started and fueled by the cash economy and granted it's premium profits by the war on drugs making it massively lucrative. No?  I suspect they don't recoil from government cash, because society isn't programed to despise it. They go along with what's good for them. Pandering to the hoards of ignorant sheeple and helping to reinforce their stupid prejudices and petty egocentric norms.


Linking to it and advocating it huh? That's what leads to people thinking wha... WTF? It's such a pity to have to admit, that there may be some element of truth to this claim. You make it sound so 'par for the course', I most like you understand or sympathize with this Neanderthal tribalism. I don't know that this 'public perception' is anywhere near as prevalent as you suggest; at least, not if you think it's a fatal detriment to the eventual widespread acceptance of bitcoin. I think bitcoin will at least become extensive as an on-line currency and that will be success enough. I also think it will do so, whether we pander to these conformist, spin-doctored populist PR charades you seem to endorse. My guess is that there are well more than enough people out there, who are not so intellectually lobotomized, by coercive social programming, that they need everything they see, to be sanitized and commercialized, with a squeaky plastic facade, of conformist mass marketing bullshit.

What anybody with a modicum of intelligence should be aware of, is that bitcoin isn't a commercial product. Nor is it a brand or a coercively marketed corporate entity. How hard is it to realize, that these forums are inhabited by INDIVIDUALS? Each and every one of us, is the vehicle of a separate individual value system. I only have to worry about how, whatever I post reflects on me. I don't expect anybody who can make their own breakfast, to be incapable of understanding that whatever I might say, should not be taken as YOUR opinion. Nor should YOUR values be expected to stand for anything other than your values. This is a shamelessly low blow, to pitch an issue of such petty minded appeal to the most lamentable vices of mass ignorance.

There are too many people who expect you to think what they think, eat what they eat, do what they do and wear what they wear. The need belong and 'fit in', to satisfy their fragile ego and be given recognition in a kin group and so they conform and adopt the prevailing trends and norm of their identity group. Like little monkeys they mimic each other because, 'if I'm like you, you are more likely to like me'. We establish norm just to support social bonding, but anybody doing something different is less acceptable.This is how social groups are manipulated. this the basis of fear about anything different and 'weird' it fuels social conflict, bigotry and war. Here it's just being promoted to support bigotry and censorship. The 'people won't like it' war cry, is a lot like the 'not the done thing' motive. It's fueled by ego-paranoid petty and debilitating human emotions. You do it or don't do it, because everybody else wants you to do it, or not.

The problem lies not with people who come here to discuss their thoughts freely, but with those who can't keep their own prejudices to themselves. People who cant say 'it's none of my business' also have a hard time with saying "that's you opinion and we can agree to differ". Those ones, go around demanding others either agree with them, else they don't deserve to speak their mind. Many places (like this) have already made provisions for those people. They are granted the same rights as everybody else. Wanting to shut people up because you don't like what they have to say is called censorship. It may be the next worst thing to outright bloody war except that censorship fuels ignorance and ignorance causes war. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental and precious liberty we posses. It enables us to engage in constructive criticism and undermine deception and coercion.

The libertarian values you seek to undermine, by calling for the politics forum to be closed, could only be a threat to those who would benefit from harnessing the ignorance of the lowest common denominator. It's places like this that people can come, to learn about the kind of liberties and freedom that are absolutely intrinsic to the open source movement and the grass roots projects like bitcoin, which it has spawned. You don't like what people are talking about in the politics section? If you don't agree you are free to do so. If you want to say you disagree, you are also free to do so. If you don't want to read the political content, or perhaps you just cant make any cogent argument to support your censorial bias, well then, you don't have to go in there. The same goes for all the people, who you think will be so scared they will have to run away from the freedom of open discussion. If there is an argument to make about any topics in there, then go and make your point to address the issue at hand. Argue against the topics if you wish, but not the fact that they exist at all. 


What kind of crazy business owner is going to link their business to a site and brand that advocates tax evasion and the overthrow of the government?
 

One who understands that his businesses is not being represented in any way by the individual people of this forum or their ideological views. Supported? Yes Educated? emancipated? Yes Represented? NO. In case it isn't clear yet, this is a community and when people come to a community place of discussion, they should have no reason to expect anybody to represent anything but themselves. For those who don't get the idea, that every individual can speak for him or her self, then it's damn well time that they DID. This is far more serious than an image problem with the forum. It's an issue that cuts to the heart, very of the mental health of society. Some people just cant think for themselves as individuals. They cant like what they themselves like, believe what they themselves believe, want what they themselves want. They've have been brainwashed and indoctrinated as blind little consumer sheep, on the corporate ranch. So when they meet people they project their own expectations onto that other person. That other person uses bitcoin? 'Well... they must think like everybody elde who uses bitcoin'. 'Some people buy drugs with bitcoin - he's probably a heroin addict and a criminal'.

As for toppling governments. Whether you like it or not, there is going to be a revolution in political governance, just like the one in economics bitcoin has already begun. Government will inevitably be one that is OF the people and BY the people. It will be globalized and our legislation will be tabled and thrashed out on forums much like this, while the voting system will likely be done over a P2P network, very similar to bitcoin. People had better pull their heads out of their ass, learn a bit about what's going on in the world and make some contribution to the collective welfare of society. Governments WILL be toppled, it's not a matter of IF, but WHEN. It seems, you would have the education resources that people need, to help them escape from their mindless fog of oppressive manipulation, removed.


The MOST important thing that it would change, would be as a result of those libertarian values it empowers, through the decentralization and the finite supply, that will make the political paradigm shift possible and allow freedom from corporate tyranny. So the only thing that is wrong with what you said there, is that the exact opposite is true. The very fact that you don't want people exposed to politics is a deplorable attitude. People need to become involved with and learn about it. We need to foster free speech and learn use our mind and ideas as currency also. Until people snap out of their state regulated, corporate funded fog, of insular, materialist consumer apathy and learn what they need to know, to take mutual responsibility for representative governance, we will never have a fair system. If there is a way for bitcoin to fail, it would be at the hands of government. We are in for a rough ride if we are not prepared to nip this in the bud and empower ourselves. This forum, is the center of the universe in terms of it's political potential to bootstrap a new democratic system and the big political battle with government, will happen whether we like it or not if bitcoin is successful enough to be common currency beyond the net.

Pulling the plug on the politics forum, would only be about the stupidest thing anybody ever did.  ::)

Karmicads- your post was articulate, detailed, addressed specific points with clear lines of reasoning- and it would be absolutely wonderful if more people shared your values. I admire your faith in not just the intelligence of large groups of people acting in concert, but your confidence in their willingness to read deeply and educate themselves. Yes I agree, businesses are mostly concerned with making money. Whether we still need their participation regardless is where our viewpoints differ.

I'm sure all of the political statements are well reasoned and sound- the issue is venue. I am not well read enough to comment on much of the political discussion so I keep my fingers off the keyboard in reference to them.

I do know what is marketable, what it palatable, how small changes in presentation and language can make a massive difference in adoption. The largest brand in the world provides brown sugar water- and even if your brown sugar water is Open-Source, tastes better and will free the masses from the tyrannical price fixing of Coca-Cola- you still can't call it brown sugar water when you want people to drink it.

Branding- how something is presented, it's message and narrative- beats the better product nearly every time.  Even if you think there is no correlation to Bitcoin, look at what the De beers marketing campaign did to diamond prices starting in 1939 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/). I understand you think that the masses instantly will see that Bitcoin is not a brand, not a competitor to Paypal- lets hope that’s the case. Because if it is perceived as a brand, it's pitch- while factual, is far from persuasive.

It seems the embarrassing IRC logs are "offline":
http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2011/06/15/3#l1062344

That's right- don't fix the problem, just hide the evidence.

I had an IT buddy explain an interesting point to me. Usually it's the Geeks that find vulnerabilities in the projects code- then the Public Relations/Business types figure "security in obscurity" try to hush it up, or attack the Geeks who found it- rather than get the hole patched.

Here we have a gaping vulnerability in the Public Relations policy and now the Geeks, rather than patch it up are similarly hoping for "security in obscurity", and attacking the Public Relations/Business types who pointed it out ???

Reposted the logs here. (http://www.MistressKang.com/Bitcoin/3.html)

http://www.MistressKang.com/Bitcoin/Bitcoin.png


I'd like to thank the Politicals for joining in this thread and so eloquently illustrating the cause of our concerns.

yawn - this debate is still going on? who loses if the btc.org forums become strictly development-oriented shop talk and other forums bloom in other places. There's 30 other forums I can go to to argue libertarian-socialism vs libertarian-capitalism. Hell, a great majority of TSR talk has already been moved to hidden services, etc. Honestly, my concerns are more about the forums becoming completely unnavigable in all respects -- just too much noise and too many posters on too many topics -- than any particualr content. though I sympathize with those concerns as well.

By that kind of logic, I have defeated my math prof. ::)

The don't defeat, they just persevere without changing and have the inherent low value of their landmass cause every half-sane opponent to leave, then emerge from hiding, return to their old ways and that's it.

They are sociopolitical equivalent of a chemical system in a very low energy state. Much like such a chemical system they are unlikely to change on their own and would require tremendous energy input just to change them a little bit, and perhaps even more energy and a lot of know-how to change them in a manner that would be somewhat stable and won't immediately revert to old status quo upon being left unattended.

In other words, Afghani status quo seems pretty close to the maximum devastation a military opponent could inflict on a different society, thus attempts to alter them via force are usually fruitless and eventually just run out of steam.
PR "vulnerabilities" operate differently from the ones that happen in the wonderful realm of computer code, methinks.

Disclosure is the very vector by which they do damage so limiting disclosure is a legitimate PR response.

Having said that, I have come to the idea that individuals so concerned could join efforts in order to provide the Politically Inclined Users with a better, more liberal platform to carry out their discourse and incentivize them to relocate that discourse away from "main" forum and into said more liberal platform.

P.S.:
Banning search engines from the Politics forum is entirely reasonable and should be done.

I wonder if any of you know what text was in the blockchain's genesis block.

Yes, they really are that delicate and that intellectually challenged. Are you saying with this "Fuck them, we don't need them." ?


Why do you care what Satoshi thinks? He is irrelevant now. An appeal to authority from someone who thinks himself a libertarian is pretty damn ridiculous is my opinion.

I'll just leave here for both of you:

I agree that an appeal to authority coming from a Libertarian would be pretty ridiculous. Which is why you'd think that would be enough to stop you from jumping to such an absurd conclusion but unfortunately not. Somehow you managed to twist a simple question into an appeal to authority even while acknowledging how ridiculous it would be coming from me. That's pretty impressive.

Now, would you like to know what my point actually was in asking that question or would you like to just keep putting words in my mouth?

The extremist politics are one thing, but you expect us to abide overcooked meat?!  :P

You guys don't get. Bitcoin is its own subculture, with its social mores and institution. We are merchants, buyers, and sellers in this particular world we called the Bitcoin community.

When you try to exterminate politics and other sections, you are trying to exterminate and make the bitcoin culture unoffensive and suitable to the masses. The early adopters were never the masses of the US, the republicans or the democrats. Then we become dull and uninteresting because now the culture suits the masses. That kill the specialness and uniqueness of the bitcoin community.

The early adopters bring a kind of knowledge and wisdom that's not available to newbies, in additional to the political yuckiness. They teaches in debate and they run businesses, startup, and experiments within the bitcoin economy. Then they are gone, their knowledge not accessible to newbies because they are on some other obscure forum somewhere after being censored.

There are those who wishes to ban the yuckiness of the forum, but they also ban the pioneers who settle this town when bitcoin is still(and still is) a yucky concept.

I support the removal of the politics sub-forum. There are lots of other options for holding those discussions.

Sure, I'd like to know. I assumed you were clearly inferring an appeal to authority but since you weren't I take my words back.  


Yeah, that's exactly what we want to do. Don't you want the masses to use Bitcoin?

I prefer to build a solid community that support bitcoin, which will help bitcoin retain its value. Masses of people who don't care about bitcoin is not the way to go.

Eventually, bitcoin usage will goes mainstream as the bitcoin economy become more attractive.

It is possible to build a solid community based on self interest (namely profit) instead of our anarchist ideology which alienates most other people. The bigger the numbers, the more solid is the community in my opinion.

Ok, let me try to get what's going on in this thread. OP  Jessy Kang, the Madam whore who runs an SM and Bondage business(check out her website) with several "ladies" in NY is concerned that respectable businessmen will be scared away from using bitcoin because of libertarian extremist wackos on the politics forum.  And that respectable and completely legal business's like hers wouldn't be caught dead using bitcoin. She is now no longer accepting bit coin for this reason.  Am I getting this right so far?

Don't get me wrong, I found many of her posts excellent, and this is one of the best threads I've ever come across.  She truly is an"intellectual whore". Even though I am a life long libertarian,  I for one am in favor of at least moderating the politics board because other unmoderated libertarian boards I've been on have degenerated into Neo-Nazi, racist, and antisemitic playgrounds.

That being said, I first heard of bitcoin on the Max Keiser show.  And really got interested when I heard about the Silk Road thing.  I'm into bitcoin because it is about Freedom (I hope) and is revolutionary.  That's the attraction for me and probably lots of other people who come to bitcoin.  I wonder what attracted Ms Kang to bitcoin.  Perhaps she's looking to get some of those presumably rich bitcoin administrators as clients?  Just wondering.  I can't really see her trying to get her existing clients to use bitcoin that much although maybe the (supposed) anonymity would be an attraction in some cases.  Those clients would have to be patient and into bitcoin though because it takes some effort at this point to locate the amount of coins Ms Kang would demand for her services.  Perhaps she could enlighten me.

Your gauche attempt at ad-hominem aside, BDSM is legal in most jurisdictions (and pretty awesome, lol ;) ) while tax evasion and subversion of government is not legal in any jurisdiction I am aware of, not even in Somalia (and AFAIK, Somalian authorities, the ones often derisively referred to as "warlords", take tax collection very very seriously)


I suggest you re-read the bitcoin papers.

Bitcoin is traceable, even if not particularly easily so, so it hardly "free as wind" (I do intend to do something about that, so stand by for updates  ;D)


Word.

I'd sign every single word in  JohnDoe's post.
 

My point was, the genesis block contains a somewhat politically charged message and therefore the entire blockchain and project itself is tainted by its ideological beginnings. If you're really worried about scaring people away then you'd need to reboot the entire project.

As a person with some background in marketing of fairly politically touchy products, I assure you that there is a world of difference between [redneck]"gee shucks, there's some weirdo words that sound a bit anarchistish  buried  in  the sorc'rous mathematications that underpin this cow-pootor thingus"[/redneck], and people openly expressing disdain for existing political framework and discussing methodologies of blatantly subversive acts (such as illicit drug trade and tax evasion) on your official forum.

Yes, because no project has ever changed direction mid stride.  ;D

I agree that it's a world of difference, for now, but eventually someone's going to point this out to the media and they'll run with it. My point still stands though. If you want a politically neutral technology, this ain't it. The very idea of free market money is already politically charged in itself. Good luck with your petition. I'll be in the politics section if you need me.

I don't think they will be able to run very far because most users lack attention span to care for blockchains and "genesis" blocks ([redneck]are they like, bricks?  ???[/redneck])

At worst, it will become Bitcoins own conspiracy nut magnet, not unlike the allegedly masonic symbols found on dollars.
At best, it will remain a curiosity to be gawked at by those inclined to dig deep into the scary bowels of "cow-pootor programses"


Thanks :)

To the best of my knowledge BDSM services, especially in the USA, typically do not involve acts that legally constitute sexual intercourse between the client and the mistress, and thus can hardly constitute prostitution, de jure (what exactly happens de facto may be a subtly different thing, but officially, no intercours-y things are provided...Marketing and Government Relationships ahoy! :) )

Dttonme is engaging in a bit of grade school pigtail yanking. "I'm going to talk naughty and take a poke at Jessy" is the digital equivalent, possibly aided by reading one too many pickup manuals.

The threads where I discuss why I chose Bitcoin are here:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15660
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17914

My business is legal, and non-sexual. Once you have invested the time in learning the trade, and the capital for the rooms and all of the equipment needed to practice it- it makes no sense to provide "extras" when prostitutes actually make considerably less money at far, far higher risk. Dungeons don't get bothered by the authorities provided they play by the rules- so we are very, very careful to do so. Any lady who accepts contact information, or sees a client outside the facility is fired on the spot. Sure, all tears over "just a business card" but not worth us taking the chance. We don't have sex with our clients for the same reason paramedics (about the same training time) don't give you an HJ in the ambulance for a $50- everything to lose, nothing to gain.

That being said, just because it's legal- does not make it the best association for Bitcoin. I removed the link from my signature as soon as a realized this, and have already said I'll pull this ID if the Project pursued a more PR friendly direction. I think if Bitcoin succeeds then Adult businesses, like political ideologues will be early adopters- but that does not mean we should be plastering ourselves all over the Bitcoin Project site.


The genesis block quote occurred early in this thread. Clearly it is attack against the evils of Christian Banking. I find it absolutely fascinating that Bitcoin was founded on the principles of Islamic Banking. Satoshi, no doubt a Muslim, decided to create a usury free, Sharia compliant currency for his brothers around the world. Brothers who, laboring under the yoke of Western Imperialism may otherwise have difficulties funding Jihad. I for one, think it is only fair that the moderators create an Arabic language forum to facilitate this as Bitcoin is clearly- at it's very core, a Muslim currency.

See how that works?

You think Libertarians are the only political group who can claim bitcoin is "theirs" or founded on their principles? The Politics forum is great- so long as it's YOUR politics or a similar variation. All sorts of other people can read the Bitcoin Scriptures and the Book of Satoshi and interpret them differently to suit their goals. Given that Satoshi, in 500+ posts devoted less than a few sentences to vague observations about Bitcoins political implications, any group claiming him as one of their own is equally delusional.

The smart thing is for the Bitcoin Project to distance itself from ALL politics before some less pleasant ones with equally good claims show up. They want to, Thermos won't do it. He created the Politics forum quite recently to serve his own agenda, he is hardly going to remove it.

Thanks. If only I though you were sincere. :( Then perhaps you'd then be able to encourage me to market those values. You know, some nice lighting and a modern display stand at eye level - 'cos eye level is 'buy' level. I could have them packaged up in cardboard and plastic bubble packs, adorned with images of sexy glamor and wealth, implying (by association) that this product is intrinsically associated with those things. I could get some glossy brochures printed, exclaiming my values to be the very thing your life is incomplete without and that your are tantamount to being a failure if you don't have them. By only associating myself with flawless physical beauty and appealing to the consumers greed and sense of inadequacy, they could be transformed into rich, attractive popula... er.. Hey wait! What was the product again?  ;D



I wouldn't go overboard with the 'faith' rhetoric. Sometimes impulsive revulsion has a rational basis. In any case, I'm not sure what the extent of the damage is to be sure, but there is a gradient of attitudes from the purely superficial, needy, ego-paranoid hyper emotive power consumer, with no impulse control and all those easy to reach, ergonomically designed buttons, that you seem so keen to push, right up to the conscientious, compassionate, cosmopolitan citizen of the world, who needs less and contributes more. There is also a shifting 'zestiest' of public awareness, that despite the tenacious perils, of flagrant corporate marketing manipulation and coercive party political spin-doctory, is able to resiliently move forward towards a more enlightened and responsible mindset. I don't want to over estimate the potential, for a conscientious consumer market and proclaim that self-respect and responsible buying/spending will triumph. I don't want to even estimate the probability. What I am concerned with, is the seeming inevitability of this crass, consumer debt based, vortex of gluttony, to be a major catalyst in the demise of society as we know it. Great civilizations fall all the time if you look at history on the proper scale. The failure to plan is the surest plan to fail.

My argument is not one of naive optimism, but of sincere concern and extreme consternation. If anything, I am pessimistic that we will pull through, without first causing a shambolic catastrophe, the likes of which the human race has never witnessed. Our governance our economy and our environment, are on a collision course with reality. They are ALL unsustainable. There is a brake even point, beyond which there will be no hope of meeting our requisite capabilities, to turn things around. If we become too selfish, we may not care if society lasts another couple of generations. As long as we can use it and take from it and gorge our hedonistic desires, just for this lifetime. If we don't learn to quit living in delusional fantasies, we may convince ourselves that future generations will be fine. We can buy into all the spin-doctored, coercive political rhetoric from politicians and take the easy, hedonistic, self gratifying promises, bantered by power hungry politicians and leave anything that is not as glitzy or asks us to compromise, or use our brains, or get off our ass. We can be lazy, ignorant, selfish slobs that want everything done for us, to only eat delicious food, demand pretentious, media manufactured, cookie cutter stereotypes of beauty, that we have been programmed think of as objective and intrinsically valuable, while we crave and covet, over the endless spoils of status symbols and opulent luxury, that we now believe we deserve to own, before we have earned the price of them. All that, can not only be ours but by taking the easiest, self gratifying, no-brainer approach, this is how we can get incredibly wealthy, irresistibly attractive and be immensely popular at same time. It's true! The man behind the big corporate marketing machine told me. He must be honest, clever and nice because he wears an nice suit.  ::)

Our government models are coercive adversarial marketing machines deliberately plotting to manipulate us and fending of responsibility and fueling our imminent demise. The private corporate monster, of commercial consumer greed led by the fed is orders of magnitude, beyond all powers of accountability save for that which we muster by our own collective will. Our environment is a disgrace and the need to consume from borrowed spending, at ever escalating rates to prevent the catastrophe of economic collapse, precludes an environmentally sustainable, social infrastructure from being implemented. If that sounds like doom gloom and misery then wait till you can taste it, see it everywhere and feel it crumbling under your feet. It's not so much that I think we can depend upon "large groups of people acting in concert" and "their willingness to read deeply and educate themselves" but that we MUST. It's absolutely imperative as our only hope of climbing out of this hole we are in. Those who don't understand this will invariably ignore the true nature of the problem, and continue their quest to dig their way to prosperity and toil for the guy standing above the hole sifting gold nuggets out of our dirt pile. The future we are stealing belongs to us but to our of spring and yet we give it for a pittance, to the guy taking the gold.

We may even yet, come have no immediate impulse to care about anybody who is not yet born. They are just a subset, of those who we dont know and who cant give us our fix of ego flagellating reinforcement. It's sad that so many of us have desperate yearning for approval of those closest to us, and apathetic compassion fatigue for those with whom we are less familiar. This I think, is a relic of our tribal past. Large societies are less suited to primitive instincts, even though our best social skills (empathy and co-operation) were also nurtured there. Our desperate desire, to be wanted, liked and seek the approval of  others, that tribal impulse of our collective egos, is as much a farcical tragedy, as it is, a bonding tool for social cohesion. It's not the first time we've discovered something that can make our world much better but also ultimately destroy us. We should be learning by now.

Try thinking of society as a 5 yr old child. Your child. If say, between the age of 3 and 5, you fail to teach your child any impulse control and cave into her slightest petulant demands for attention and toys, and treats and... well, whatever she wants; then what will she be like and how well behaved do you think she will be. I expect you will still be changing her diapers waking up in the middle of the night to her screaming demands, because she wants a drink and you should get it for her. You, will have to take her to the playground when she wants and she might refuse to go to school/kindergarten, because the teacher made her stand in the corner for throwing another child's lunch in the sand pit. You may find yourself chasing her down the road, screaming futile pleas for her to come back, as her chance of being hit by a car increases by the second. You get the picture? Society is like this poor child who honestly doesn't know any better, because her parents were irresponsible, selfish and avoided their responsibility. Instead of raising a well adjusted child, they made a rod for their own back. Those two years of Society's live, are analogous to the previous fifty years of the society we live in.



I have nothing against business making money, and their participation is vital in the long run. It's how it is implemented and how as consumers, we are actively engaged in the process of reward for value proposition that needs to given the utmost consideration. It's not true that ANY business that comes along aught to be able to bilk our money after a sleazy coercive appeal to our compulsive, ego driven insecurities and our poor education about consumer resistance. The reason business is mostly concerned with making money, is because so many of us, do nothing to alter the value proposition by demanding they furnish products and services that are consistent with values that we should have had in the first place. Business would be interested in nothing, so much, as pandering to very detail of reasonable consumer needs and desires, and making money (even handsome profits), would be an inevitable outcome of it. It can be considered a by product of business. When satisfying needs comes last and wallet stuffing is the shamelessly lauded grail of virtue, while the modus operandi, obvious to any intelligent person, is to exploit peoples ignorance and make them want some shit that is near worthless.

Theres a point where it becomes obvious that many (far too many) consumers have been programed to accept that greed is good and still not see through the blatantly obvious crass, vulgar, and frankly insulting efforts, of so many businesses to make people want things and control their buying impulses to exploit them and use them as cash cows. If you don't think this is insidious evil born of pure greed, then you are a part of the problem and not the solution. Coercive greed driven marketing, anti-competitive maneuvers and monopolization are things that consumers can well do without. Actually for the health of society, they are forms of economic disease. There are things out there that are the economic analog to rape. White collar looting and pillaging for the digital. When people lay down and let it happen, or even seemingly even enjoy it, its more like a gang bang. That may be a fun theme for a consensual adult party (in the right company of course), but in social economics, its not a private party and everybody gets assaulted by the same cesspool of corporate filth. When theres nothing else to choose from and you cant say no, it simply blatant rape. 

Like any guest at an adult party, the business that we might use our better judgment in favor of as consumers, would be invited to attend and not be accepted for gate crashing. Lying manipulation and coercive bullshit is an insult to our intellect and if we don't posses enough of that, we need education to help us understand the value of consumer resistance, healthy competition and living within our means. I think many people do know that they have been played for a sucker at times. They may be reluctant to acknowledge it though, because they have emotional investment in their "choice". They wont want to admit that they were coerced and so they own the choice, they wont like being burned so they find some justification that their purchase was satisfactory. Again, ego gets in the way of reason. I can admit it. I have been ripped off before in my time. It's easier to resent the business that riped you off, than admit it was your own poor choice. But at least if you admit, that you were burned you can learn. If nobody (or hardly anybody) even does this, then you can learn about smart spending till you have an advanced doctorate degree in it, but it wont make a tinkers damn of difference. If people wont learn to think for themselves, then somebody will exploit not only them, but all of us.

The importance of the whole community ethos of bitcoin as well as the diversity of forums, is that it represents much more than just a piece of software. It's more than just a currency or even a P2P currency. It is a solution to a much more pervasive social dilemma. The convince of P2P transactions is a pittance of the benefit. The wisdom the coin supply decreasing to a finite limit and the practical implications alone are profound. Bitcoin is simply, the definitive solution, to never ending debt, unsustainable deflation and catastrophic economic collapse. That plenty of reason to use bitcoin right there. Liberation from economic failure should be the MAIN reason that every day people want to use it. As individuals, they are automatically able to transact with each other, and thats better than having to use PoxPal or anything else. Even if there were NO business using bitcoin, the individual using it as P2P cash represent a user base. Business, will follow the opportunity to open their doors to the consumers that are using bitcoin. Bitcoin needs to belong to the whole community and the business should have the intelligence to cater to the community (if they want access to consumers) and understand the ethical principal that under pin the new economy. Bitcoin is not a tool for commerce to manipulate and control consumers with. It's a tool for individuals to transact with and if business owners can find consumers amongst them, then they should be grateful and respect the community that owes them nothing.

If you think the community should be remodeled to pander to the dictates of business and that a corporate facade should be erected to present the main bitcoin website, so business will be pleased with what THEY want customers to see and if they think those consumers should be spared from exposure to the libertarian values of the community, then I think they can got to hell. That clearly demonstrates their ethical imperative. A minimal test of business ethics would be their willingness to satisfy a libertarian consumer base and community and to become a part of it, without throwing their weight around as if they deserved to be here without satisfying consumers, answering their needs and earning community respect. That's the whole problem with the traditional corporate model of economics introduced by government handing currency control over to corporate banking. Business needs consumers not the other way around. What consumers in turn need, is education and a sense of community, one which they don't have to fabricate with material status symbols, bought with their addiction to debt that can never be repaid. They also need the sense of belonging to a community which maintains a positive cash flow and that their little chunk of the currency pie, is guilt free and not contributing to international debt and poverty.

Only by ACCEPTING the new currency as based on a positive cash flow supply, spread throughout the community, as the rightful distribution of wealth, while consumer satisfaction, acts as a sort of psychological currency moving in the opposite direction, which pulls   bitcoin through the economy (rather like the Kanban on demand component delivery systems in many factories), only then will business be so deserving as to assume respect =< 0. Value is added to bitcoin by business, for the PRIVELEDGE of competing in a lucrative market, and by providing a products and/or services that may prove to be valued by virtue of ordinary market demand. The more discerning the consumer can be, the healthier the overall economy. Letting greedy pigs, blurt bullshit in your face, to convince you that if you buy their shampoo, sexy girls will want to run their fingers through your hair, or that you will be just like that sexy girl, and since she is on a beautiful yacht, mored in a pristine tropical shore line and of course using this emulsified, scented chemical muck, is much easier than working and saving for a yacht. It might be owned by a guy (conveniently absent) but they are easier to get than yachts too, at least if you use this shampoo, which makes your hair a shine in such a way, that your whole body looks like that of a a swim wear model. The bonus is that nobody who uses this shampoo ever seems to have a double chin, buck teeth, a hair lip, acne or even looks older than 25yo. So the benefits are obvious. 

The problem with this, is not primarily the understandably coercive feel good imagery, or the the company's competitive motivation for trying to present an appealing psychological association for viewers to be drawn into (albeit a blatant mind game). After all, their competitors will be trying to do the same thing or something similar. Their scammy conartistry, may be about microscopic gena-lust-rious micro-gell vitalizing particles. Which is technical terminology for 'meaningless, fabricated pseudo-science marketing piffle'. They might as well tell you that pixies know you've used it, and it makes them more likely to trust you and come out to dance in your garden. If they thought it would sell more product, I have no doubt they would be happy to feed us the most deplorable, crass bunch of monkey snot, possible, if only they could find a tiny percentage of gain to be made on the desperate effort to trample any minuscule vestige of integrity they may have left, along with the respect they have, for the intelligence of the less gullible viewer. This is not just a concern for attitude of contempt it elicits, but more so the fact that. first of all, it actually works. Ie. They do find a profitable margin to gain somehow, by taking their brazen, mind bending con artistry to these levels and worse. Second, whatever gains they can squeeze, from such blatant, infantile pandering, to such insecure, helpless people (who must be pitiable to say the very least, if they are impressed enough to be influenced), is somehow not swamped, by the negative backlash of people who I would think, should be reviled by any company with such arrogant contempt, for not just the obvious disgrace, of trying to con people and fleece them by any means possible, but for expecting the viewer to be so gullible and to insult the intelligence of what should be a much larger mass of the market. It says a lot for how gulible some people are. It say even more about how much unadulterated cynical, insulting, contempt, many more people will turn a blind eye to, and complacently allow the companies to hunt for gullible suckers in full few.

This is why it's futile blaming the companies for trying it on. If nobody cares and nobody drops the offending company, for daring to suck people in and just make money by throwing it into crass, insulting advertising, that takes advantage of people who have little presence of mind to avoid being used. Isn't there a duty of care we have for our fellow traveler? Anybody who is prone to being influenced, by much of the advertising content we see, deserves pity and support. Whereas the company deserves to suddenly see their sales drop to the floor and find they have to scramble about and pick up the scraps. They need to be made to have some respect for people and earn their market share by showing us a fair deal and an honest effort to face a much more stringent gauntlet of educated consumers, who expect to actually be given GOOD reasons to choose one company over another. It's not as if these advertising campaigns don't cost anything. Nor are they of any intrinsic value to the product or service being flogged. Does anybody realize or care that the cost is an overhead that companies have to factor in and that has to be passed on to the consumer.

The only good reasons we have to tolerate advertising at all, it that it may be diligently used, to bring a deserving product or service to our attention. An intelligent society wouldn't tolerate the arrogant temerity, of a company, squandering inordinate sums of money, which they will expect customers to reimburse in their profits, for the opportunity, to capture our attention and squander our time, yet give us no useful information, but instead, get in our faces, with a cynical plot, to test the lower extremes of our intellect, in pursuit of a bounty collected by making the unwitting victim pay, for a something they were manipulated to want.

Coercion, brainwashing, pseudo-science and outright bullshit, is the typical modus operandi and it's underlying motive is greed. Stupidity has become a commodity and harvesting its dividends is the forte of the advertising profession. It's our visible evidence of just how insane, greedy, lazy, petty, superficial, selfish and apathetic, our hapless societies have become. How can we expect the typical citizen, to contribute more conscientiously, to their community and to responsibly make vital decisions, about how we can collectively mandate a more reliable democratic process and regain some semblance of mutual democratic power? We are clearly required to be the guardians of our society and lay down the mandates for government and Industry to follow. A task we have selfishly squandered, to our escalating detriment. Expecting people to think about the things of substance, that make the economy, the government and society as a whole, work (or fail as the case may be) effectively, is something of a perilous mystery; especially if they cant be trusted to buy shampoo, without being manipulated by the most trivial and transparent, ego pandering, coercive ploy; or, if per chance, they can see right through this pretentious farce and somehow don't give a toss that those who might be prone to the seduction, are little more than pitiful victims, how could they have a hope against the might of the banking world, which plunders their very future and sells them money that never existed, for money that they pay back over time with interest. 

What needs to be done is a mountain of diligent hard work to show people how important it is to take a little interest in things. If not politics then at least a little economics, along with a much more diligent commitment to consumer responsibility. That's an absolute vital must. I don't see how this could be any less than URGENT! Dependence on strong community and allegiance to the fundamental principals that made our economic revolution possible. The coming days will present many challenges, as we can expect covert attacks on the community, attempting to usurp the libertarian stronghold, have it relegated to obscurity, or just disrupt the cohesion of the community by instigation of contentious divisions, and mud-raking to incriminate community members of higher profile and foster resentment for things that might have come to nothing.


The politics section here is of critical importance IMHO. The people who come here as new to bitcoin, need to have every opportunity to notice and take part, in the vital philosophical backbone of this movement. The act of using bitcoin is to experience the practical outcomes of libertarian values at their finest. There is no requisite to adopt any political allegiance and of course you may forfeit entering into the politics section. The link on the forum, has been carefully created with this in mind. You can either click on it and go in there OR (and this is the clever bit) if you DON'T click on it it works in the other mode, by which it doesn't direct you to the politics section at all. It may be considered somewhat unfair that the zero click option is given precedence and those who wish go there have to 'opt-in', but that's a negligible compromise. The is NOTHING to be gained from splitting this forum and consequently the community, by dividing the politics section of into another forum on another site. The newcomers who come here are far less likely to pursue other external sites, if they are not important enough to be given pride of place here. the community would clearly be divided along these lines so that it would break ranks and become two weaker groups with diverging agendas and communities. If I were determined to drive a wedge that would divide this community and weaken the whole movement, that is precisely where I would drive it in. A malicious attempt to undermine this project would also do well, to cut out the heart which might really be considered as philosophy of libertarianism, more so than politics, but that does tend to be the impetus of the politics forum.

The importance of communicating the political and social implications of bitcoin, just cant be stressed enough. The freedom of autonomy and restructuring of monetary power bases that, if this currency were to become widespread, would put people back in control and send pigs back to their swill troughs. That will not happen without some turmoil, so people need a strong and cohesive, supportive community for the battle of ideologies ahead of us. Education, for which we have such a very long way to go, is to bitcoin, like nutrition is to our bodies. The difference with nutrition, is that you can get enough of it, without having to discuss it and think about it all the time. Education and the skills that will be required to foster a community, that can handle to responsibility which it has the potential to create, cant survive without strong lines of communication, as the philosophical and political consequences come to pass. That will require that the social ethos and ideological basis of bitcoin, needs to stand front and center in the landscape of of the project. This is the exact opposite, to relegation of politics, to an off-site forum, completely segregated from the first port of call where newcomers will come to learn more. 

Suggesting that the superficial, cosmetic vanity, of business people who come by, with no commitment to the community or the ethos of the golden gift they are given freely, is tantamount to treason. While they may expect every thing to palatable to their patronizing, 'marketed at the peasants', corporate image and facade of 'glam coated greed' design philosophy. They have earned nothing and clearly want to establish the same power structure they are used to seeing in the conventional economy, where it is the norm to harvest profit without cultivating prosperity and to tell people what they want and expect them to be pleased. Catering to customers rather than profit, may be new to them. I suggest they get used to it. Wanting to be involved with the community and it's ethos rooted in liberties and freedom for our mutual benefit, would be the best way to show they even deserve the opportunity to cultivate the respect they should wait to be granted. Otherwise it's clear who they are and what they stand for. So I say, they can get back to the swill trough, until they learn some manners.

The proposal to banish those conversations of substance, regarding the essential ethos and social value of this project, to make way for the vulgar ploys of shallow, pretentious, manipulative, con artists, who only know how to profit from exploitation and coercive deception, is an INSULT to the integrity of this community, of selfless developers and community builders, who toiled without reward or any guarantee of gaining anything from their experiment. A nascent market appears and suddenly the pushy show ponies turn up, to tell us they...: 

'don't want to hear about the libertarian values of the project or anything like that, but hey! You sure can cut me a slice of that yummy turnover. Now let's make the place look a bit more sleazy. how about if we hide the stuff that would allow my customers realize that they are the ones with the consumer power and that I am required to please them. Screw this community crap and all of it's ethical ideologies. Screw the talk of something better than our good ole loving government. You'll have people thinking they have a mind of their own before long. Let's start making some appeal oriented props, for the puppet show and glamorize the whole thing with a superficial marketing facade, so they can jump into the coercive trap, because this is how it's done. You need to tell people what they want and need, and make them feel inadequate without the 'product'. Now! Slogans and sound bites. What have we got to make it seem too good to be true? How about some subtle implicit lies?'


That must make you very proud, to know that you have given so much of yourself, for the tireless efforts to make something of value and give it all back, by seeing if there is a more efficient way of appealing to peoples unconscious impulses and manipulating the important things that make the world a better place.  ::)

"The largest brand in the world provides brown sugar water- and even if your brown sugar water is Open-Source, tastes better and will free the masses from the tyrannical price fixing of Coca-Cola- you still can't call it brown sugar water when you want people to drink it."

There's an old saying: People who only know how to use a hammer, tend to go around treating everything like a nail. That gets to be a problem when you're helping out in a store full of fine antiques and china hammer gurl. Coke is a fine example of mass enslavement of the minds of so many unwitting innocent minds, who were unprepared for the massive corporate machine about to engulf them and turn their brains into a malleable putty, to be prodded and stretched, kneaded and squeezed. The success you tout, is lauded from the perspective of greedy corporate tyrants who only had, knew, and cared about hammers and themselves. Bitcoin is 'the taste of a new generation'. Bitcoin is not brown sugar and water. It's made of emancipation and mutual voluntary co-operation. It's not a product or a corporate brand and if you treat it as such, you are going to be left out of the value equation, like the piece of lettuce from the baguette, that fell in the dirt. Nobody will use something they don't want or need, unless you sell it to them. Bitcoin isn't something unneeded or unwanted.

The power of this technology, to liberate people from being treated like sheep, being herded and enslaved by the greedy, ruthless tyrants, is unprecedented. You may market that as if it only had the intrinsic value of sugar and water if you like. Trivializing bitcoin as something like soft drink that relies almost exclusively on image and coercive appeal value, is the preferred strategy of those skull f**ks that screwed everybody, so they could to make nearly worthless liquid an expensive commodity, at profits in the hundreds of percent, so they could afford to pump their ill-gotten gains, into the most extravagant advertising assault, and harvest those inadequate, needy feelings, as a prime commodity to exploit the people who knew no better. Its the kind of sad, reprehensible exploitation, that bitcoin (in particular the community and the libertarian roots) has the power to overcome. You're trying to sell an open source project and its power of freedom from corporate exploitation, as if it were a product of corporate exploitation. You are applauding the very model of economics, that bitcoin has the potential to undermine. Needless to say you are missing the whole point.  ::)

Bitcoin is free and doesn't need coercive manipulation to get it to market. You hear about it, you download it. Simple. From there the main selling point is that you can learn to liberate yourself from greed of banks and connect with a community who offers a growing compendium of online services and products, that will accept bitcoin. You can have friends install bitcoin so you can transact with them, like when you call up a friend and say 'I'll send you half the cost of the pizza and you order it. I'll see you in 20 mins'. The cost of transactions is zero and so for non-comercial P2P there is already an obvious niche. You then get to know the community online and explore the many exciting developments and soon learn that the thing you have is sooooo much more than a convenient transacting system. The business people will have to learn that they cant be manipulators and make bitcoin a herding tool for gullible sheep. The currency doesn't support their traditional dependence credit based currency. They may sell their own stuff that way but bitcoin has no need to 'guild the Lilly'. The main selling points, are all in the components that are totally free. The way the software works and the access to a community of intelligent conscientious people, who are fed up with the coercive manipulation of greedy pigs. The buck stops here where the bitcoin begins.

The one thing open source software does not need, is to be sold with coercion. That's a deal breaker. because developers produce code that people choose to use, not because they were manipulated or bullshited too. Selling is for products of business that have a price.


What other product? You know of a P2P online crypto-currency, that is capable of free micro transactions, has a finite absolute quantity to prevent devaluation, is open source and secure, requires no central authority or server, and is immune from physical intervention by authorities? Of course the community that you might like to undermine, is also apart of the bigger picture. Liberating people from the mindset of ignorant sheeple that require 'branding' after muster is going to become an matter of contempt and resentment sooner or latter.


 Even if you think there is no correlation to Bitcoin, look at what the De beers marketing campaign did to diamond prices starting in 1939 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/).

I knew about De Beers and I didn't need to read past the smoking gun line "diamonds had little intrinsic value". That is the crux of the issue you don't (or pretend not to) understand. You seem to think that the value of the bitcoin network, and it's burgeoning community, is the equivalent of an unlimited supply of worthless industrial rock, or even worse, brown-sugar water. When you are selling worthless bullshit, the only way to make people want it is to make up sound bites of bullshit coercion, or glossy, hype filled,  brochure making their inadequacies pale into insignificance, with the illustrious dreams of the marvel they can only get from CompanyX (hurry while stocks last). The only people you can really use this method on is the sadly impressionable folk, who will be far worse off, for having the misfortune of walking into your house of smoke and mirrors. It's nothing to be proud of or enthusiastic about, that you like pulling the wool over peoples eyes and getting their emotional state into the best condition, to exploit their least controllable impulses.

It seems your capacity to comprehend the true nature of bitcoin, is clouded by superficiality and greed. You don't apparently understand the fixed supply and inflation factor, nor that the value of bitcoin, is not a commercial enterprise that needs to swindle and con people with cheap coercive stunts, to manipulate them into believing a sales pitch, or even an 'angle' for them. You want to 'get the foot in the door' then 'close the sale' *shudder*. Bitcoin is not a plastic packaged toy for screwing people over with and making them want to buy worthless shit. It's a REAL, intrinsically valuable, one of a kind crypto-currency that has no parralell and is designed so that bitcoins will become more valuable than De Beers diamonds, in the event that every person who has a diamond wants some bitcoin. There's no digging more up and no oversupply. 


Well it's NOT a brand. You think everybody has the attention span and the cognitive capacity, you seem to think is required to get over this? YOU are the only one I've seen with such a difficulty in comprehending that bitcoin is not a brand. "competitor to Paypal" You see, you cant help yourself with the corporate terminology. bitcoin is an ALTERNATIVE to PoxPal not a 'competitor'. Bitcoin doesn't loose money if PoxPal earns more, nor does it 'win' more if it gains participants (although the demand for bitcoins may may increase). There is no corporate body, no turnover no bottom line and no shareholders.  Most people get that bitcoin is not a brand fairly easily, as most computer users by now at least, have a basic comprehension of what open source software is and understand that it's just like the community group in your neighborhood, but that it makes software, it lives on-line and may have thousands of participants. Most people get that you can go to any community group for it's "COMMUNITY" of people, and a support network. They would also usually be very uncomfortable with a community group doing a 'RA RA RA' high pressure sales pitch, using voguish corporatism, whether it be cheesy gimmicks, or artsy stylized pomp. Designing a logo and having an attractive, consistent website theme, is about enough for the grass roots project. Destroying the community, by amputating the heat an soul of it and relocating to a different address would make for a sad day.  :'(

No offense Jesse, but you're either a corporate/government shill, or a general all round pain in the ass.  :-* 

We certainly need to get business on board I think John, Plenty of it. But we don't necessarily need particular ones, who have the gall to check out an application that volunteers wrote and provided as OSS for free and that may benefit their business, then come here to complain that they don't like the discussions of libertarian values here and that they think it will scare off their customers. Some people may not be ready to embrace a world of change, but I'd truly be more concerned if my customers thought my values were any other kind. You cant really choose your customers, but I'd be damned if I let them dictate what values I should hold, let alone what software I use, because it's community happens to broadly endorse those values.

I see some are still making accusations that Bitcoin has some sort of political slant one way or another.  Really this is very simple to debunk, because Bitcoin is not a political phenomenon in the least.  As an anonymous distributed open source currency, Bitcoin is about as politically neutral as it can get.  Anyone is free to post in the Politics section about how Bitcoin supports technocratic communalism or Islamic banking or liberal localism or libertarian isolationism or satanic globalism.  Because it's true; Bitcoin supports all of those things, as a neutral medium of exchange.

But that also doesn't mean that Bitcoin's creation was not motivated by the political actions of others, and that we can just skip out on addressing political issues completely.  Bitcoin has almost no compelling features aside from those that stand in contrast to the inherent political nature of government-issued fiat currencies.

So for anyone who might be under the delusion that Bitcoin is just another payment processor, and should strive to be something banal like the next Paypal, take a look at this chart.  Because this is the reason that Bitcoin exists:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=S6

In my view it's extremely foolish to merely be interested in taking over Paypal's measly 20 billion dollar market cap, and to groom and mold Bitcoin's image towards that end.  Replacing just 1% of the 2.6 trillion Federal Reserve Notes in circulation is a much more noble, and frankly realistic, goal.

Ted Kaczynski, is that you?  :-)

Take the advice of Shakespeare: Brevity is the soul of wit.

Or the advice of Need For Speed Shift: You don't need to win the race on the first lap.

Retool your writing for internet levels of patience.

tl;dr

Wow, Karmicads.  Thank you.

Jessy Kang, I liked your threads around the forum, but I think you are wrong on this one. Just for the record, I, as a market anarchist, was supporting that the bitcoin exchanges should be and actively look to be regulated (here (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19851.msg255139#msg255139) and here (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19851.msg255484#msg255484)) Im a market anarchist but I am pragmatical and aware of the world we live in.

Bitcoin needs the political influence, otherwise it will loose all credibility. Why? Its very simple.

Bitcoin, as we all know is a decentralized currency, and the implementations of the rules rely on the majority of the network. If a big majority of the people using Bitcoin changed the rules the rules would change or at least there would be a fork and two different Bitcoin currencies, the one with the new rules and the old one. We have seen already in the forum people and crancks with weird ideas about currencies saying or even demanding that the Bitcoin protocol should be changed or otherwise it will never work (according to their more or less lunatic economic theories). If the Bitcoin project looses its heart, the sound money influence, and a majority changes its rules towards a more inflationary currency Bitcoin will start to decline until it collapses. The funny thing with inflation is that it produces a long term destruction process that its not obvious initially, so people not well versed in economics or without personal experience in a inflationary collapse, go along with it and dont realize what they have done until the collapse is happening.

If we do what you are asking Bitcoin is probably doomed.

Now, you are right in one thing: This forums are bad PR for the Bitcoin project. But it is not because of libertarianism. I have the same opinion that the forums are not right. For me its two factors: the afluence of people only interested in getting rich quick and a massive attack of trolls. Go check the forums when Bitcoin was starting. I was there and I can tell you it was much more civil. Now the forum lives on histeria, its even stressing. I believe that the trolls are doing their job mocking everybody, confusing people and basically getting everyone angry. This tension is transmited and we start talking to each other more aggressively. Its not good. I myself am guilty of this, and regret the tone of some comentaries I have made lately.

We agree something needs to be done. In my opinion the forum deseperately needs more moderation. Specially not allowing anyone to start new threads with similar tematic as another (basically if anyone starts a redundant thread just join it together with the original one). We need to regain the civil discourse that we had at the begginning. This way people will be much more calm and the way they expose their ideas will be more paleatable to other people.

Jessy, do me a personal favour and don't ever complement Karmicads again. That was the longest post I've ever seen in a forum.  :P

Was trying to be civil, just got more name calling for my trouble. I don't particularly object to juvenile insults (Adult professionals are fair game), but it just validates and encourages a decline is substantive dialog. Saying I'm dumb/whorish/amoral etc. is not an argument.

See- a civil reply ;)


I agree, but I think a fork is coming anyway. "Bitcoin" is tainted and unless something dramatic happens, well on it's way to being the Lawn Dart and Ford Pinto of 2011.  I think as far as I and most merchants are concerned at this point the Politicals are welcome to it.


At this point there is no reason to fight for deckchairs on the Titanic. Merchants process- not invest. Since we don't keep our assets in Bitcoin and don't have any legions of Bitcoin customers awaiting us, we have no reason to board a ship full of unfriendly passengers that is taking on water. We'll stand on the dock and see if you sink  ;D  If Bitcoin stays afloat, and the media is comfortable with the politics, we can come to terms with the politicals later, but to be honest I'd prefer to have another fork with a clean name I did not have to defend to my clients. Look at EFF- and more will come, no one wants to "run the Bitcoin banner up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes" anymore.

Crypto-Currency is here to stay, it's not like losing one version of it will matter much in the long run. Call it a prototype- lessons learned.

Honestly I feel ofended by your tone here. Tainted? Tainted by what? A ship of unfriendly passengers that is taking on water? Bitcoin is at the moment the most succesful alternative currency of the last 100 or 200 years. That might have something to do with the ideas that founded it (and its ok that you dont understand them, I was a social-democrat until I was 27). Now, it is true that we need more merchants on board and it is true that its going to take some time and efforts. But it is not the politics behind the community that is creating the problem, its the very same nature of the currency. Its the part that you dont really understand about monetary policy (and this is ok, Im ignorant about a lot of stuff, life is short) that is making Bitcoin successful while at the same time is worrying a lot of people at the top. Both things are unseparable.

Dont take this the wrong way, but I feel you dont undertand how a currency system works, specially regarding the nature of Bitcoin. A decentralized and pseudo-anonymous fork will have the same problems with the politicians and other critics that Bitcoin has, no matter the political ideas of the people behind it. And if the "fork" is not decentralized (it wont really be a fork then) it will just be another Paypal system, and I dont think there is much market for another competitor. How are you going to make a fork with the characteristics that make Bitcoin great, but at the same time without those same characteristics because it worries some people?

At the end, p2p file sharing also worried a lot of people at the top, they fought it, but it is here to stay. Because of its decentralized nature, nobody could fight it. Now everybody listens to more music and the bands have seen more interest for them playing live. But at the begginning a lot of people said it would not work because nobody would go with it. Bitcoin is the same and has the potential to bring a new era of trade and welfare for everybody.

You might not want to take the lead in some market, thats understandable and completely fine, but keep in mind that being the first business to operate in a new market gives you a name recognition that is a lot of times an unbeatable advantage (just check MtGox). You might not be willing to take the flag that might come your way (and again its fine, its your decission) but the person that do, will be in a great position. I have a friendly prediction for you: In the future you will regret not jumping onboard and be the first business in your sector that opens to the Bitcoin economy.

Think of the Children!! ::)

Exactly, Even before I knew anything about bit-coin. I realized if bitcoin could exist then many such currencies could exist....and that's a very good thing!  Bitcoin is revolutionary, and you can't separate the "politics" from it for that reason.  I want to support something that sets money free.  If it survives, there will be multitudes of money making opportunities arising from it, but the battle will have to be fought first. 

If the U.S. outlaws the use of bitcoins, then some other country will embrace them, or something like them, and the U. S. will lose..  This is the future and it is very exciting.
The existing financial system is on the rocks and this is the medicine.   

Remember boys, everybody is stupid for not understanding, you don't need big organizations accepting Bitcoin for credibility, and you don't need good PR:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/06/bitcoin-eff-wikileaks-fsf-donations/39055/

Victims of the Sunk Cost Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs) can form a line below.

 ::)

According to you we are tainting the project... But I guess we should not get offended by that.

Anyways, I was thinking on having a sign at the top of the political sections saying that the opinions in the forum are not the ones of Bitcoin (or something like that). Would that help towards PR?

EDIT: Btw, I write for a economic publication here in my country (not in english) and always try to write in an understandable and clear way, even when talking about complex monetary issues (my speciality inside economics). I am trying to do something similar in the economics subforum but this forum is too much of a mess to have a nice economic conversation. But it is important to me to explain things in a easy to understand way. People usually use complex words to hide their ignorance or failed theories. I dont think Im more intelligent than anyone else, I trully believe that if you expalin things properly, anyone can understand even the complex issues, if they have the interest.

Nobody speaks for Bitcoin as a whole. Not even the forum staff. It's not a company. It's a product used by all. The views of its users represent Bitcoin.

I know. I was thinking about it more like a PR move than anything.

I do believe that this forum is not making a great service to Bitcoin.

Eh, I think we are only going to achieve a personable forum is if we take out all discussion and limit it to tech support. That's what Nintendo did a few years back. They certainly got the professional atmosphere they desired but it reeks normalcy and sterility.

I know.  I am not criticizing you, I'm just amused.  You gave Karmicads a pat on the head and he got excited and posted a 6000+ word response.  I think you have been presenting your views very calmly, rationally and without malice.  You've also handled the immature responses and jeering replies very well.  I apologize for the fact that so many members of this forum seem to be incapable of accepting opinions different than theirs without resorting to ad hominems, name-calling and other school-yard behaviour. I'm not sure that I agree with you, but I appreciate your civil, logical approach to the issue.

Whiteknight.  Apologize for only yourself, you self-righteous pedant.

Then maybe Jessy Kang idea about closing the Economic subforum is not such a bad idea. I really dont know exactly what but something eneds to be done with this forum.

Meh, I think we should look at this more carefully. Fixing things only in the name of fixing things tends to lead to more undesirable results.

Don't take my post personally.  Also, count to ten before you reply.  You tend to respond out of blind emotion, though, I've seen you apologize when you were in the wrong before, which is admirable.

I will amend my statement to "I am sorry that so many members of this forum....".  That way I am not apologizing for anyone. 

Because your threads are full of shit would be my first guess.

Remember, "bearded guys in the van down by the river" generally don't have lots of internet access...I find it hard to see how people posting on the forum (and *gasp* expressing their own view!) give you the impression of bearded guys in the van down by the river.  

1)WhattheFUCK does having a beard have to do with anything?

2)Exactly how many bearded guys living in vans do you personally know?  Especially to the level of having actually had a political discussion with them?  I think you are just pulling stuff out of your pussy again and trying to use it to justify censorship.

Did you read the disclaimer/TOS when you signed on to this forum?
There are other places you can direct your erm. . ."clients" . . .seriously though, if people wanna buy hookers and blow with bitcoin, why should they have an issue with anti-government discussion?

If it really bothers you that much, refer folks SOMEPLACE ELSE. . . .maybe

http://bitcoinme.com/ ?

Hmmm... Yeah. I know I was a little windy TS. I sometime have a fair bit to say and just want to deliberate, for however long it takes to say what I need to say. New points and analogies often arise as I write. Having an attention disorder and an aversion to being misunderstood, only makes me more verbose.


Are you kidding me Jessy?  ??? Really? After the best part of a whole day's writing, to detail the value of the Politics forum and to detail a far bigger picture that needs to be considered, as a lot more serious and important, than your concern about the image which business people wish to portray to their would-be victims, and not only do you falsely assert that I was denigrating you, but you also imply that was the sole message of my (what I would have considered) extremely substantive post.


Thats Funny, I thought you just did. If you had apparently demonstrated some remarkable feat of humility, by turning a blind eye, rather that taking issue, with someones 'unreasonable' criticism, or unconstructive , then I would be the first to admire the commendable restraint of your temperament. If you want to take credit for being so restrained, by gloating that you are, while at the same time, pointing out that the remarks you "don't particularly object to" were "juvenile insults", then, I regret to inform you, that you could be not be more comically ironic, if you shoot yourself in the foot, while giving a lecture on gun safety.


What, ACTUALLY DOES encourage "a decline [in] substantive dialog", is making unreferenced accusations, that you have been insulted, indeed positing this alleged opprobrium (which you have already claimed you don't particularly object to), as if it were a deliberate, malicious, character assassination, yet you foist this contention, without addressing the comment/remark in question.

Clearly it's YOU Jessy Kang, who would rather have a substance free, declining dialog. In particular, with the shrill accusations of 'juvenile insult', you also seem to be inflaming the emotive rhetoric and trying to provoke hostility. If you were such a noble and tolerant sport, then instead of making an unsubstantiated accusation, of having been maliciously lambasted, by my allegedly 'juvenile insult', you might have instead, pointed out specifically what this insult is (by directly quoting it) and why it is you consider it so unjust and juvenile. Obviously it would be easy then, to put the issue in context and I or anybody else, could attempt a fair assessment. 

I make a VERY stringent effort, I think it's fair to say, that if I am going to criticize anybody, I go to whatever length necessary, to give full disclosure of my justifications and address the issue head on. I don't care very much at all, for thoughtless derision and senseless cruelty, to debase anybody, for the sake of pushing their buttons and making them feel bad. If I had wanted to do nothing more than level a juvenile insult at you, I would think, I could have come up with a much stronger flavor of vitriol, an taken far less time, to post a detailed assessment of your proposal and why I think it's so disagreeable. If I happen to express my contempt or disapproval, then at least I care enough to be honest and even more so to show my justification.

For what it's worth, it doesn't make a tinkers damn of difference what I think about you. I have no idea why anybody considers any remark an insult unless they can furnish some measure, for why they deserve any more respect than they are being offered. In any case, playing the victim card and tolerant sage all at once, while failing to mention any specific content, is hardly prone to help address any issue, or foster any 'substantive dialog'. By such means, the dialog I already had been servicing with more than my fare share of substance, may be hijacked, by your plaint of personal offense, in effort to divert it towards one of those squabbles about the debate itself.

You see? This is the sort of divisive, reactionary tactics, that do tend to cause emotional reactions and substance free squabbles. Take a detailed constructive criticism, ignore the details in question and make an emotive appeal, to foist an accusation, that itself has explosive potential for emotive reactionary response. I won't be manipulated into petty bickering. If you don't want to play silly little mind games, and degenerate the dialog from substance, and if you think you deserve credit for being tolerant and mature, then I suggest you might resist the temptation to pander for it, by pointing out how the 'juvenile insults' you "don't particularly object to" were juvenile and insulting, thereby making it clear you DO object and returning a insult by way of name calling. By your own ironic measure, of boasting humbly about your own tolerance, I could just as easily proclaim my own virtues of restraint because 'I don't particularly object to compound hypocrisy'. But I wont do that.  ;) 


See... Here's where direct quotes come in very handy for the sake of honesty and transparency. Those who wish to have a constructive dialog, often quote another persons text, in order to make reference to it, so it can be seen in the context of the present reply. I would love to know what you are on about. Other than for the sake of disingenuous innuendo, I cant see why anybody might consider this relevant. If you want to address an argument that I have attempted to make, then I would be glad if you would care to point out where I have said any of these things, and why you think I expected them to be taken as an argument? If somebody says something of this sort to you, I think it would be best to conclude that it's just a straight out remark. It's not necessary to construct a syllogism, in order to express an opinion. If you want recognize an ad-hominem fallacy, then don't forget, that a remark expressing discredit or disparagement, has to have been used as a premise. If I tried to establish your argument was false, because you were amoral, then I would be resorting to ad-hom.

Ad hominem or tu quot (to the man), is an attempt to employ emotive, value added judgments against a person (or persons), rather than address the soundness or validity of their arguments. such an ad hominem is exactly what you have employed with the politics forum, by saying:

A) Libertarianism is crazy hysterical vigilante zealotry, that embarrasses the forum.
B) My business friends, are turned off by the crazy hysterical vigilante zealotry, they see in the politics forum.
C) Therefore, bitcoin will suffer if the politics forum is not taken down.

Or perhaps:

A) The Politics forum is a turn off to business people.
B) Business people are needed for bitcoin to succeed.
C) Therefore, the politics forum should be taken down.

If you wouldn't mind, please desist from attempting any further efforts at provoking divisive rhetoric, in your blatant effort, to inflame emotionally loaded venting. I have provided plenty of substance for you to consider and respond to. I appreciate being quoted thanks and not having contentious insults shoved in my mouth.

And, just to recap, the complaint was:

1) Atlas was mean to me.

2) As a purveyor of adult services I represent the opinions of average merchants.

3) My Wall Street clients would rather pay me in Federal Reserve Notes than in Bitcoins.

4) ???

5) Shut down the Politics subforum.

And, just to recap the current situation:

1) Jessy was right- stupid people really do run the world, and what they think DOES matter.

2) Bitcoin is dying in front of our eyes because of people naive enough to think reality trumps perception.

3) The papers and politicians ignore our charts, diagrams and white-papers.

4) Lets direct our sniveling, impotent "why don't they understand I'm RIGHT!!!" Asperger rage at Jessy  ;D

Do we really have to powder our noses and put on our finest Sunday clothes for people to convince them to use Bitcoin? Aren't its benefits inherent?

Same could be said of your political beliefs, but most people won't sit still long enough to find out. I can't think of any good examples of people choosing the better thing, over the more understandable and prettier thing. Look at the iPhone. Heck I live on a country where height has a huge statistical impact on who gets elected. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_and_presidential_candidates)

You would think geeks- more than anyone would get that people don't care much about what's on the inside. Never met a good looking asshole who was single- but decent hearted geeks who just happen to have poor social skills? Perception matters, it's not fair but it's how the world works.

Atlas just doesn't own enough BTC to care.  :)

Hm, I understand, Jessy. I am going to ponder this for a bit.

Eh, I have over 105 BTC.

I think the fact that the average person seems to have to worry about their bitcoins disappearing whether they store them in an exchange, an ewallet, or on their computer is hurting bitcoin's image a bit more than the forums.

The being said the forums do need to be cleaned up. If not for image, then just because the signal to noise ratio is totally out of whack.

Seriously whats w/ all the aspy bashing?  You make some good points but the whole obsession w/ aspergers leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  It's about as destructive as the whole "the government are illegitimate violent thugs" model.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiqPCRtzOBw&feature=relmfu

You are being just as lurid about the problems facing bitcoin right now as the media you are criticizing.

Step back a little.  Tabloid journalists are going to sling mud at bitcoin, no matter what. There is little we can do about that.   Technologies that challenge people's perception of the status quo always tend to provoke that kind of reaction, initially.  

Remember all the bad press and ridicule that Wikipedia faced just after it gained mainstream attention?  

What we can do is increase the amount of positive coverage in media consumed by the decision makers in our societies.  Luckily, coverage has been more positive in those media so far (specifically The Economist and Der Spiegel)

Bitcoin is facing challenges, but it won't die if we don't let it die. It grew a little bit too fast initially.  The bare bones infrastructure (the bitcoin protocol) seems to be solid now. The next step will be to build user-friendly tools (eg. wallet security software) that will unleash the power of that infrastructure. But that takes time.

Wait, after all of the other language used up until now- THIS is where you draw the line? You are going to White Knight- Aspies?


Awwwwww. I take it that you aren't, and don't know any well? Because they joke about their approach to the world the way I joke about being a dumb blond. Treating them like they are handicapped and are off-limits for off-color jokes would NOT make you any friends. Here's a hint, anyone who knows the term "Aspie" is probably very close to one or more.

So either be one (for real- not a self diagnosed explanation for poor social skills) or love one before you break out the horse and lance in a forum full of far more colorful language.


I'm in full agreement. Politics is far from Bitcoins worst problem any more. I started this thread when businesses and the media were starting to look into it- when the tone of the Politics thread would have (IMHO) served as a deterrent to merchant adoption. Out of tens of thousands of new users not a single established merchants has joined since then- but correlation does not equal causation so silly to speculate. I don't think anyone in their right mind could claim that politics/legality was the primary concern of most potential users now.

Right now the primary problem is technical- a vulnerability was found and exploited. The fact that the average user does not understand anything about "hacking" or how this happened works to Bitcoins benefit. If you are a technical user I'm told the hacks look far worse than they do to a laypeople like me.

So I don't think most people think in terms of "Bitcoin is inherently insecure". Look how many people use retarded passwords and outdated browsers. Even the ones that know better- just slap a patch on and problem solved (in their minds).  Few stopped using MSIE even with weekly vulnerabilities alerts. Just patch it up. This is not the way it works in the real world- but in the average persons mind it does. If the Dev teams says "Oh we patched that bug" and jumps a client version to "Bitcoin 1.0" most people won't bat an eye- they are used to holes being found, then Microsoft/Apple/Google whatever fixes and then everything is ok. Clarke's 3rd law and all that.

Once again- we are talking about perception, not programing realities. There is an existing business model to follow in precisely these circumstances that people will accept, and do accept daily- that is a "patch" and "all better".

So if the current version of Bitcoin were to be saved, it is primarily a technical issue- something which is well within the Developers area of expertise. If a secure, encrypted Win/OSX/iOS/Web based wallet, with a UI designed by a designer and not a programmer, say- "Bitcoin 1.0" were released in the next few weeks- and the current issues dismissed as Beta version issues, most new adopters would not bat an eye (although the people who lost money are another thing).

The issue is; does the existing body of Bitcoin users have enough faith in Bitcoin to fund/make such a thing in the little time allotted. Because I don't think Bitcoin will see a lot of new users until a secure solution is released. It's not really "if you want to use Bitcoin then you code it" thing, it's more a "If you'd like to have Bitcoin around to use you probably need to get this designed and coded pretty quickly." It's unfair to look solely to the Dev team for this as they've busted their asses this whole time to get the project this far.

There are also some considerable PR issues, it is a skilled trade. It requires pretty much the opposite skill set from programmers, but the Development team has made it clear they would like to handle it themselves and in their own way so there's no point in taking pot shots at them. There are countless examples in the history of the Web of earnest programmers successfully promoting a purely technical project simply through describing it's functionality. The tricky bit is everyone seems to agree Bitcoin is not simply code. The Developers have been repeatedly called on to address it's implications in areas that are well outside their expertise- that's a tough position to be in.

Actually, it's not bitcoin that got pwnt, just a particular exchange service.

Exchange services will be pwnt from time to time, that's just the way things are (some of them will always be far softer set of targets than the bitcoin net itself). It's not that different from the CITI hack (nobody says "OMG dollar got hacked" because of that)


Well, judging from Gavin's CIA presentation, the are doing a decent job so far

Sadly, humans aren't rational utility maximizing AI bots :(

@Karmicads

As a corporate shill with government ties (it's good that our jurisdiction has recently amended its laws so that conflict of interest is now de facto defined as "A thing that never happens") I must point out that you have a weirdly narrow definition of brands.

Brands are best described as memes that deal with subjectively perceived value of a product, or a service, or a business.
As such, anything that can be called a product or a service (be it open source software or a type of belief  system with stable definite traits) can be, and usually is, a brand.
NONAME CHINA is a brand, too.

Jessy's politically-incorrect aspie bashing is probably preventing Bill Gates from converting his entire fortune into Bitcoins.  Thanks a lot.

 +1  ;D

Not to mention this...


...sudden swing from Politics/PR rhetoric, to Inspiring Technical Critique^TM may have a serious impact, on our chances of Obama announcing a MtGox bailout. ::)

So how does this fit in terms of privilege and rights theory?  How is using asbergers as a pejorative consistent with your goal of removing speech that would scare away the average investor/merchant/customer?  I am not trying to attack you.. My intent was not to invalidate your contribution but to beg for further reflection. I am just trying to point out that rhetoric in these forums is not necessarily representative to the broader community as a whole.  In fact the ones who post the most in any political/religious forum are probably a standard deviation or two from the norm.  These outsiders have a role in our society too, and we are better off for having them, if for no other reason than providing an outside perspective to ponder.  I personal see anarchist and extreme libertarians as priest constantly pushing us to reevaluate the legitimacy of government policies and ethics of broader government actions and legal interpretations.  Unfortunately the volume of post by these vocal few tend to lead to the perception that they a much greater contingent of the community.  I am interested to see how this experiment progresses.

I don't know what that means.


My use of "impotent rage" also slurred individuals with Erectile Dysfunction (and possibly Intermittent Explosive Disorder- I cut a wide swath). But- as the self appointed Guardian Of Civility I think you chose the right time to step in, draw the line and stand up for all that is good and decent.

I take it with a smile and a wink, ignore the boring ones. I would comment on others who see that, and then cry foul for their own pet issues- but it would be terribly unfair to boys named Nancy and no doubt you would object again.

As for the effect it would have on potential merchants, what- you think they are coming? They heard about Bitcoin when prices were sky high a week ago, and got lost on their way from Google? They are rolling it out...very very slowly. But any day now, they are coming- really. Even the few established businesses that do accept Bitcoin- most are burying it. No one even wants to admit they accept the currency- but that's a total coincidence.

Yes yes I weigh the same as a duck because I'm not treating Bitcoin like the Second Coming. It's code. Code has alpha and beta versions.


Yes, even I know it was just one exchange- but that's not how it was reported, or how the average person perceives it (speaking in my official role as "Idiot's Advocate" LOL).

Here:
Bitcoin Hack (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/22/lulzsec-rogue-suspected-of-bitcoin-hack)
Bitcoin Crash (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13857192)
Bitcoin Mess (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/06/21/137324088/the-bitcoin-mess)
End of Bitcoin (http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the-end-of-bitcoin-then/)
Bitcoin Struggles (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/bitcoin-struggles-as-it-tries-to-change-e-currency/)

As far as I can tell all total, and utter foolishness- but it does illustrate the problem. The elitist "it's all very complicated, it's not what you think it is" narrative, results in people inventing their own to describe it (incorrectly) in terms they already understand.

It's like when you call IT and the guy shows up, and *sighs* like you're a total idiot. It's not endearing in an individual- or an Open Source movement. If people "aren't getting it" then it's the job of the people who WANT them to "get it" to explain it in clearer terms- or present it in a clearer way. Because they are not going to suddenly get smarter or more technical.

In all of the above articles, Bitcoin is being referred to by the media in branding terms- they don't care if you think that's wrong. As it turns out, simply not understanding Bitcoin is not making them the least bit shy about making sweeping statements about it- and people listen and judge Bitcoin on that deeply flawed narrative.

As with all experiments taking a defeatist mentality is rather counter productive, but one can certainly share your frustrations and doubts.  Please don't let it consume you.  I do not think you weigh the same as a duck and I don't see bitcoin as the second coming but I do see it as a potential as a constructive (not destructive or disruptive) experiment.  Your concept of "Impotent Rage" may add depth to artistic expression but could easily be misconstrued in a broader argument without further explanation.

Blasphemy   STONE HER, STONE HER!!!!

Hehe, watch out with the stoning, now "they" will think we're Muslim fundamentalists. As if the image of bitcoin wasn't bad enough! No decent folks will want to be associated with us anymore.

So, let's go with age-old Catholic tradition and burn her instead! :P

Wow, this discussion is now 10 pages long. Isn't this discussion about removing politics, politics in itself now ? ;)

Precisely. Anything bad that happens anywhere, to anyone, or anything, even vaguely associated with bitcoin (even if it's only that they use it), must somehow be attributed to bitcoin itself. If bitcoin users cant draw a distinction between the security issues of a bitcoin exchange (hint Independent entity) and security issues of the bitcoin clients and network itself, how can we expect newcomers do so? 


!SNAP!

BTW theres a link for the MtGox 'security patch' in my signature.  :P


But now Jessy Kang has gone all tech savy, theres light at the end of the tunnel.  ;) It's true though. Nevertheless there a particular kind of intrinsic utility, built into the bitcoin software and network, that doesn't require anybody to understand it, in order for it to procure significant accumulating benefits. The inflation of bitcoin value itself, will accumulate as an ongoing attraction and that will continue with adoption even after the bitcoin production dwindles to nothing. It's very simple economics really, but even then, you don't have to understand it for it to happen.

The fixed to total sum of bitcoin likewise makes existing inflation currencies look like dinosaurs. You don't have to read the source code and understand it, to see that value of a bitcoin it steadily performing better. It just works. And finally, the P2P nature of the network, is also a technological innovation that you don't need to understand to see it's benefit. So it's technologically superior, for geeks and all users alike. It's economically superior for economics savvy people and all users alike. It's also subversive and politically potent for those who understand the importance of this, but, as Atlas pointed out, like the other benefits, it is all intrinsic to the nature of bitcoin, which doesn't expect users to know anything (other than face vale) to benifit.

When TV was an emerging technology, who would have said, 'It'll never work because nobody understands all them little components inside or how the radio waves are supposed to carry pictures through the air. Nobody will adopt it because it cause it doesn't have any intrinsic value." People see it working and how it benefits them directly. They will download and use bitcoin just for P2P transactions. That's a huge value proposition right there. The business community will see the same value and also the swelling numbers of people, who have desktop and phone applications that enable transactions to occur and so they will see lots of $$$.


@Karmicads


Well, yeah, I do realize is used in a broader context. The context of the OP and the more traditional concept of commercial branding, was the one I was addressing more specifically, with respect to business people coming here and expecting the bitcoin 'brand' to conform to their particular scope of 'top down', commercial marketing, image oriented hype. The issue is not really with the semantics of the word 'brand', so much as the opposite approach represented by grass roots, 'bottom up' consumer driven technology, that liberates us from being seduced, by an insidious onslaught of opportunist marketing magicians. Branding is an overt strategy in this sense, and as such, is oriented to the masses as a means to manipulate them for the ends, of the self-interested commercial player. Those players, must not be allowed to intervene and make bitcoin the strings to pull in their top down puppet show.

There are many business owners who will not play, if they cant have it all their own way. They will take bitcoin users for puppets. It's not that hard to see, who has the most to gain, from removing the politics forum, as a strategically subversive ploy, to silence the will of the individual, under the pretense of image sanitizing the 'bitcoin brand' and to prevent the newcomers from finding a valuable resource of education and  information that empowers them to know how to take this technology forward, as consumers, who are inverting the power base and taking back what government and industry have squandered.


That's an interesting description. :) Older folk will have learned the meaning of 'brand' before the mid 70's and before they'd ever have adopted the word 'meme' though, which was coined by Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene. (and I just realized, meme still shows up underlined as a spelling error on my system). There's an even more compelling argument to reconsider my claim to 'value' being intrinsic to the properties of the bitcoin software and network. As you point out the value is subjective and it is must be perceived, in order to be valued. I have adopted more perfunctory short-hand in reference to value as being intrinsic to bitcoin. I am also aware that a much more pedantic assessment, would need to reconsider the designation of 'value' as a utility of the object. Utility, in economic terms is, "a measure of relative satisfaction". But here I refer to the word 'utility', in the colloquial context of 'usefulness', as a practical consequence of intrinsic properties, in contrast to the perceived value.

The utility of bitcoin itself, IS at least, partly intrinsic and objective (like gold), but it is also engineered to inevitably improve, in ways that are consistent with our subjective perception of value. The undeniable subjectivity of value issue is of prime importance. It's the only answer needed for those who have decried bitcoin as 'funny money', because, so they complain, "it isn't backed by anything like gold or government endorsement". We've all heard the ballyhoo denigrating bitcoin for having no 'intrinsic value'. But all the best POTENTIAL value arises from the intrinsic, objective properties and thats important.

All currencies are valued as a meme of collective endorsement. To say bitcoin is a 'brand' might apply (loosely) to the software, network and community as a whole. But to call the bitcoins themselves, both a brand and a currency is an unusual idea to ponder. I mean we don't call our existing money a brand AFAIK. Nevertheless, a brand must be subject to consumer approval and have subjectively perceived value in order to succeed. A currency it seems, is also subject to the arbitrary whims, of subjective consumer consensus. They both have the properties of their value being proportional to subjective consumer approval. My preferred implementation of a brand however, involves a very tangible value proposition, which expects the value be derived from utility and not from artificial inflation of superficial marketing hype and coercive manipulation to sell the perception of value, rather than the genuine utilitarian benefits, of its intrinsic properties. Trouble is I don't know if that would count as branding. Telling like it, isn't popular in some places. Perhaps we could have some kinda slogan like:


Just a short point list of thoughts in closing:

• We should try to keep a separate account when considering the value of bitcoin, that there is a difference between 'face' value of the bitcoin itself, and value of the bitcoin client software, the network and the community.
• All value is subjectively perceived, but may be derived objectively from utility as emergent value.
• Some value is derived from intrinsic objective properties and subjectively perceived as a result.
• Some value is derived from subjective perception alone, (or perhaps more like subjective projection)
• Tangible information derived from external objective source, must travel from outside to inside Ie: from source to mind
• Value attributed to anything prior to direct experience perception is projected and travels outward from mind to source
• Value worth paying for, is not derived from subjective perception alone.
• The emergent value of bitcoin is independent of the marketing appeal factor, in that
  
  
  • small merchants will compete better then larger competitors will be compelled to adopt for same market,
  • it has universal appeal for free instant transactions with no controlling body
  • adoption will increase value leading to more adoption
  • community support & OSS FTW
  • inevitable inflation

well yeah, a cute whorish Oriental despot is way more fun to verbally abuse than the people who really don't get it.

I vote for this idea.  maybe in the profile you turn on access to "Other or Controversial forums" and you can't turn it on until your Jr. level or something like that.

Dear Jessy,

Bitcoin is open source.  FLOSS.  You can download the source code, retitle it as citizenCoin and modify you client to require the user's Legal Name, SSN, Birthdate, Physical Address, Telephone #, and then have your modified client automatically report all your users' transactions to the IRS and FBI.  I notice that the url citizencoin.org is available.  Please register it in your name, and then you can let people download your modified client, and they can post topics to your politically-monitored forum.

Saying that bitcoin has no political/economical view built-in at all is just wrong. It does.  Admittedly, part of the current market value of bitcoin comes from the fact that it is an unregulated alternative to state currency.  If it weren't for the FED, and most importantly the bailouts of 2008/9, then I doubt Satoshi wouldn't have been inspired to code bitcoin.  (in a way, society is better of for the fact that the bailouts happened and inspired Satoshi, since we may have instead had to be lugging around gold&silver if the RonPaul folks got their guy into office.)

Realize that us libertarians are have a great traditions and are partly responsible for many great advances in history.  Lao Zi's Taoism philosophy, The Enlightenment, The Magna Carta, Liberalism, The Colonization of The New World, The American Revolution, The Abolitionism Movement, Crytography, Servers, Gnu/Linux, Illegal filesharing, drug trade, etc.  PayPal, for instance, was started by an anarcho-capitalist lunatic Peter Theil who sought to create an unregulated international supercurrency.  He unfortunately failed since he used proprietary software and was bought up by the eBay corporation.  But now that The Great Satoshi has gifted humanity with bitcoin, we have another chance.  Please you may use paypal or USD if you wish.

Damn...I may have to make this Satoshi quote my new signature:

This is true, but irrelevant.

Do you want Bitcoin to be used by those who do not share your political beliefs?  If so, then don't present it as "the libertarian currency".  Present it as politically neutral, even if it's not.

IF bitcoin cannot succeed because of its political baggage, than it is a poorly designed currency.

I'm sure that it can succeed, but that doesn't mean that it will succeed.  I believe a Trojan Horse analogy is appropriate here.

Good marketing:


Bad marketing:

I like the Trojan horse analogy.

Kiba and other fellow anarchists, why do you feel such an urge to talk about anarchist stuff in here? Are you not entirely sure of the awesome powers of anarchy and need self-assurance? There's plenty of other places where you can get that. Or is it that you just can't help yourselves trying to bring the poor unenlightened people into the fold? If that's the reason then you are missing one of the best parts of Bitcoin, which is that we can stop wasting our time trying to convince people that our way is better and instead force our way on them just by pushing this technology. If your wet dream is to have global anarchy then forcing it through technology is way more efficient than educating our way to it.

We are way stronger individually, but remember that we are way weaker in numbers. If we want to win this fight then we have to fight smart, and the first step is to make the dumb masses think that it is safe to bring our Trojan horse inside their city.

Excellent point.

To put it more diplomatically, most people are operating from different premises than we are, and changing those premises is hard.  It's not likely to happen though arguing with them on the internet.  In fact, that's a great way to harden their current beliefs.

Our primary argument, when talking to non-libertarians, should be that Bitcoin is useful.  If it continues to exist and grow, that itself will eventually serve as a solid challenge to their worldviews.

The sad thing is that I think you are already defeated. It looks like you quit. They enemy has already won, in your mind.

It isnt that you dont know of the issues that plague us ... I think you do ... its that you believe there is nothing we can do to stop them.

Maybe I am wrong, but that part of your post made me think that.

Not all playing-field-leveling attempts have failed. Just ask Andrew "Old Hichory" Jackson an quite a few others that made a difference in their time. Heroes like that need remembering and we should honor their memories with like-acts.

Sure, the pendulum swings wildly at times, especially when most are so apathetic and disinterested in their own government, admittedly, against our favor lately, but that doenst mean we should give in to them and quit! It's up to us to fight for our freedom and liberty. I think participation in Botcoin helps in that fight.

The BitCoin is about freedom and liberty.

That's worth much more than giving up/in or the faster money. Longterm, with the dedication of all involved, bitcoin can only become better and more widely used.

BitCoin is still in its intancy. It's a baby. In all, yes all open source projects, there is a development-phase meeting of minds. In there you have discussions of all kinds. BitCoin should eventually grow up and into a portal page for the Bitcoin. It's going to have to grow into that to ultimately be taken seriously, successful, and competative.

With any grassroots effort there are setbacks. The dedicated believers will not be swayed by these. They willl learn from them, adapt, then advance. Keep advancing and never give up.

For what BitCoin stands for in the grand scheme, plus to be fortunate enough to be on the ground floor of something with so much potential, not only for wealth, but the potential to do so much good in the world and affect it in a positive way, is what I am here.

Case in point.  Bind, I mean no offense by this, and I have no idea what you're like in person, but your posts make you sound somewhat unhinged.  Keep in mind that this observation is coming from someone who shares a lot of your political views.  To someone that doesn't share your views, you probably come off as downright crazy.

Talking about "believers" doesn't help.  That makes it sound like Bitcoin actually is a Ponzi scheme.  Hell, worse than that.  It makes us sound like a cult.

I must admit i skipped large chunks of the discussion after a while scrolling down; but i think i got most of it.


Tell me if you, from both sides, think this would be an acceptable compromise:

The politics and other subforums dealing with more controversial topics not directly related to Bitcoin are kept as part of the forum, but mostly just serverside, when users try to access those sections they are directed to another domain, with a disclaimer stating somthing along the lines of "even though the moderators and participants might be the same these sections are not part of the official Bitcoin forum".


And of course, in both the original forum and in the non-official sections there would be some disclaimer like on chatrooms, games with user created content, chat etc and other things like that, somthing along the lines of "The ideas expressed by users in here does not necessarily reflect The Bitcoin Foundation's position - viewer discretion advised" (i can't remember the exact wording i was going got, but is somthing kinda like that)

Politics get talked about.

This is one of those things where you have to give them their own sub-forum, as unlike the Silk Road people, politics will be an hourly thing.  I see SR posts once every few weeks, I see politic based posts within threads, which is fine, but I can't imagine how bad things would be if they no longer had a forum.

Also, I was at first for killing of the section, but I do not see the full benefits.

To be clear, I don't support killing the Politics subforum.  I want to see this entire forum either moved to a separate domain and completely disassociated from bitcoin.org; or shut down and archived.  This place is full of crazies, trolls, and drama queens.  It's poorly run, and it makes the Bitcoin project look bad.  I believe it would be far better to let a handful of unofficial forums compete for users, rather than having a single official forum which has no incentive to compete.

Everything above goes for the economics forum as well. These venues are an embarrassment. Shut'em down.

WTF is "The Bitcoin Foundation"?  Last thing I want is some board deciding what is or is not necesarrily the official position of bitcoin.

Please folks, start your own forums. 

I personally hate seeing forums and other places online, where people are openly talking about their ideas concerning the grand scheme of things. Why do these people have to rock the boat?

They must be silenced! FOR THE GREATER GOOD!

Seriously people! If you want to talk about politics .. do it in the privacy of your own head.

I think I have a might better suggestion than those I've read in this thread.

My solution is to hide it. Like not really hide it, but in such a way that if you are looking for the "Halp, my wallet just exploted?!!", you dont notice it.
In order words: keep it at the bottom-mid-bottom. Use colors that dont stand out. Make the design of the politics forum such an eyesore that people wont stay there for longer than they must. Hide everything in a subforum of a subforum of a subforum.
To summarize: Make it inconvenient, and the masses will stay away.

It would be easy enough to make it a subtopic of "Off topic" or something like that. But really, if you feel as a user that the quality of discussion in that section is lacking, you can either try to make intelligent posts there yourself or just avoid it altogether.