that depends on whether you use a screwy definition of "socialism".  socialism can be highly beneficial to economic freedom.

for example, single-payer healthcare improves job mobility, which i would consider a key aspect of economic freedom, rather than being tied to a company due to the need for health insurance.

'the value of money, expressed in goods, is called “value”'

You can't define a word using the same word you are defining is the definition.

Yeah because Putin is all kittens and doesn't want to distract from Russia's very real problems.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)


Alternatives are good, biased FUD for the sake of a nation states purposes is no better then that they claim to be an alternative to.

Off-Topic:  Why does it seem there are a lot of people on the internet that watch a news station funded by the Russian government?

BITCOIN ON RT

Max Keiser on RT, Bitcoin is discussed in all of the 2nd half of show.


http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/finance-politics-gold-money/

Nah fuck stability. Volatility separates the men from the boys.

Most money (currency) today is based on debt. Is debt an asset?

I'm calling it a "PR problem" because despite the threads on the subject we still don't really have any sort of PR strategy. People are letting the things that individually attracted them to Bitcoin become representative of the entire idea despite the fact that many others (who simply aren't as loud in public) didn't get into it for the same reason, and that those reasons are unlikely to ever attract a large population at all.

It becomes an issue of slippery slopes because the more people soap-box about the evils of government and whatnot here, the less people like me want to talk about Bitcoin to others for fear of being lumped into the same category as these people whom I disagree with politically.

The political forum should, IMHO, absolutely be done away with - if you want to have an anarcho-capitalist or Randian circle-jerk there is absolutely no shortage of places on the internet you can do it. You may even be able to espouse the wonders of Bitcoin over there, if you can do it without being run out by the rabid precious-metals fetishists.

Turning away everyone who's not an extreme incarnation of libertarianism, turning away perfectly good business owners who are interested in the currency, turning away "crybabies" is not going to grow this thing outside the realm of a small, irrelevant niche. If that's all the majority here wants, that's fine - but understand that there's probably still vast amounts of investment in this market from people who are waiting for it to blow up, so if you want to cut that possibility off, those people are probably going to want what's left of their investment back.

If you want any decent level of worldwide adoption from Bitcoin, people are going to have to realize that politics are irrelevant unless it relates directly to Bitcoin - not everyone is going to agree with your minority political opinion, nor do they have to for the idea to work.

She's right of course. I would never have bothered becoming a member if I had to go through the degrading "newbie" stage and beg for proper access. On the other hand that wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing. It would have saved me from wasting a lot of time discussing with narrow minded libertarian extremists without a clue about how real world economy actually works.

That thread is pretty much an indication of everything that's wrong with Bitcoin's PR, and with these forums specifically.

I know of at least three small businesses that entertained the idea of accepting Bitcoin, until they looked at the political discussions on these forums. It's off-putting to many real business owners to read what people say here. They don't want to be associated with hard-libertarianism, tax evading or government conspiracy nuts. It's almost turned me off a few times myself - I don't want people to think I'm only associated with it to avoid paying taxes, I'm only associated with it because it's a cool technology and a cool experiment in human trust.

I was having a discussion with a fellow on IRC a few weeks back, because he's a full-tilt liberal and I'm a moderate with slightly-libertarian economic leanings... he brought up about how misogyny is so prevalent in the libertarian camp, and that thread just provided ample ammunition for his case. "I don't often give my respect to whores" indeed.

1-2 btc max 12btc is 180 bucks right now you can get good webservers for 20usd a month.

Yes, another thread about the falling Bitcoin price.

I know the ship has sailed because I have finally put money into Bitcoins and every investment that I finally get around to making is at the end of its hayday.

Back in 2001 I finally bought some dotcom stock so that I could get in on the millions that everyone else had been making for the past few years...I had followed it closely from early on and finally bit the bullet and jumped in. That is when the dotcom bubble burst. I lost all of my investment.

I did see the gold thing skyrocketing back in 2005 so I knew that it would go up. So I dropped $20,000 in when it was $400 per ounce. Then my company, SAIC announced that they were going to IPO in a year and that they were offering employees share purchases up to $20,000. So I waited while gold JUMPED to $425 and sold sold sold...and put all of that money into SAIC's IPO at $42 per share which eventually split and dropped and I eventually got my money out at $18 per share.

Then came housing...I bought a house in 2007 at the height of the housing bubble. Fortunately I bought my house in Texas which was not as expensive as other places, needless to say, I lost money when I sold it 2 years later. I sold that house and bought a house in Florida...needless to say, the Florida market is not doing all that great right now.

I found out about BitCoins about a year ago and tried to get the mining to work on my computer but after it rebooted once it started coming up with errors so I gave up on trying to mine, back when a Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar.

I have always planned on getting some Bitcoins but just never got around to it...until this past week. I finally got money transferred through my Dwolla to MtGox and bought at $16.00 per BitCoin.

Expect BitCoin to now crumble like all of my other investments.

I have also been looking into land in Costa Rica...

Yea, just keep playing the semantics game so that you never end up admitting the negatives of a free market.


Quick reality check:
Someone took their land and property BECAUSE someone else wanted to build a factory and employ people for next to nothing.  The government didn't one day just up and take land from people at random, and then Happy Smilie Nice Company just happened to be passing by and see a nice empty piece of land to buy and establish a factory on.  FIRST came the need for cheap labor.  THEN came the interventionism by the US or whoever else to swing the local government's opinion, bribe them, kill them, or straight up invade and replace them, so that Happy Smilie Nice Company could come in and build its cheap labor factory.  The US government is an acting agent of the corporations that control it, NOT the other way around.  The local government that took the land is an agent of the US government that is an agent of the corporation that wanted the land.  All roads lead back to greedy big business and money, NOT to the government.  The goverment is merely one enabler along the way, it is NOT the root of the problem.

So what you're saying is: If you don't want to take responsibility for your own grandparents, it's perfectly okay to take money from your neighbors by force in order to help yourself pay for medical costs? Basically, because you and your family haven't saved money to take care of each other, and you don't want the trouble of asking for voluntary charity, you have the right to steal that money from other people? And then you dismiss any moral objections to your theft by saying you're only stealing it from "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?" And then you want to claim that you're the benevolent one?

Do you even know what percentage of taxpayers are "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?". Billionaires alone would be less than 0.000001%, and then maybe 5% of those could be considered "multi-billionaire trust fund babies".

So what the hell do you think you're doing by advocating the theft of property from the other 99.999999% of people?

You're a disgusting human being, because you steal from others to satisfy your own wants. Shame on you.