I just posted on this idea using Bitcoins
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46130.0

Not really. It is more like a vote by shareholders. You can have more shares than someone else if you pay in more than anyone else. Thus you have more say on how your money is spent. You have an equal say for the equal amount put. Which is how it should be.

If tomorrow we said "Why not bring together the Bitcoin community and create a Bitcoin TV ad" and we had a few people willing to put in ten thousand BTC and others only able to contribute a few BTC, then those who contribute more would have more say in what the ad says and where it is aired. This would encourage people to put money in to the idea because they have more say. Those who only have a few BTC to contribute can still voice their opinions and even slow things down if things go completely contrary to when the original purpose was meant to be.

But if we instead used a 51% majority of people vote on how things are done. Then those with 10,000 BTC may not be willing to contribute too much. They would put in the least amount possible to get to vote. Then their money could be spent on something they did not want it to be spent on because 51% decided to do it that way. And they would have no means to do anything about it.

This is a way of providing compromise and time to compromise. Or they can come up with a better solution all together before the time is up.

If it is an emergency then this would be the best solution because during emergencies people tend to come together and go with the most obvious solution.

If you do not agree with how your money is being spent, this is far better than having a 51% majority going ahead and spending your money without your input. At least with this you can trade time for a better compromise that you may agree with.

This encourages you to vote your conscience. If I do not agree and I am in the minority I can say no, and the proposed plan will not go forward for some time. Why would I want to vote yes if I do not agree with the solution? Just so it passes? But I do not want it to pass. That is the point.

The system also allows you to leave. You can stop paying in at any time. There is no force there.

To answer the OP:

There is a thing called human nature. Humans SEEK REWARD and AVOID PAIN.

If you agree with this simple premise, then you cannot support socialism.

Humans will endure pain (work) in exchange for a sufficient amount of reward (money/goods). They will also avoid more pain (starvation/homelessness) in exchange for less pain (work).

Socialism seeks to give an equal amount of reward for a varying amount of pain. Humans will do what they can to endure the least amount of pain, thus they will do the least amount of work if the reward is always the same.

Thus socialism encourages people to do the least amount of work. If the least amount of work you can get away with is no work, then everyone will eventually gravitate toward doing no work.

When nobody in a country is working. Nothing is being produced, no services are provided, and society basically implodes.

The only way to counter the basic premise of socialism where everyone is given an equal amount of reward for varying pain is to use the threat of more pain to promote less pain.

Thus governments must punish those who do not work, jail them or kill them in order to have any productivity.

This is why Americans fear Socialism.

One final solution is to brainwash people into thinking that they are enduring pain in exchange for the reward of "something bigger". Such as patriotism, a sense of honor, duty, unity, the good of the collective, beating the competition, etc...

Did you bother to read anything up there?

What part represents force?

Actually, it has been found that new trees pull CO2 out of the air faster than older trees. Cutting down older trees and planting new ones actually helps in getting rid of CO2. The carbon is transferred to the wood and the oxygen is released. There are many wood based products that can be manufactured that could replace petroleum based products.

He is right that burning it is of no use because all that does is takes the carbon in the tree and sucks the oxygen out of the air and just releases CO2 back into the air.

Printing money to inflate the currency is just a form of tax, it is a tax on wealth.

There is not much reason why you should not do one over the other. They both do the same thing just in different ways.

We currently do both in the US.

Getting rid of all taxes and just printing money would at least get rid of the huge amount of beurocracy that comes with paying taxes which would save hundreds of millions of dollars.

But it would shift our way of using money dramatically. Any money that you earn, you would benefit from spending as soon as possible. There would be no incentive to save money. Investment would be very difficult.

There would reach a point where people would drop the currency and use other means to trade. Then the cost of the IRS would be shifted to the cost of keeping people using our currency.

The goal of this is to find the "most fair" way of voting for how money for a group/city/state/country is spent.

In an ideal voting decision the outcome would be that 100% of the members vote the same way. But practically, that is hardly ever the case. If 80% vote one way then you are forcing 20% of the members to spend their money in a way that they do not wish for it to be spent. This could be considered theft. 51% to 49% is far from ideal but is often used, leaving 49% of people dissatisfied. Not the best solution.

But even if you require 100% of people agree on something, there will always be that one or two person hold-out that just want to cause trouble or have an agenda which brings activity to a halt.


Overall method
So to the solution. I am taking the ideal solution of 100% voting the same way and adding an element not used in voting today...Time.

The solution is for everyone to contribute their money equally and then have a vote for where that money is spent. If 100% of people agree, then the money is spent in that manner. If only 30% of people agree on where the money is to be spent then the vote passes...BUT...you add time for the 70% who do not agree. So, perhaps you add a day for every 1% who do not agree, so you have to wait 70 days for it to be spent. Then the vote goes forward on a different way to spend that money, maybe it gets 50% this time. The first vote of 30% is dropped and the second vote passes...but it will happen in 50 days. After some discussion there are compromises made and more people are satisfied with the way the money is to be spent, it now has support of 70% of people. The 50% vote is dropped and now it will only take a month before the money is spent. This may be satisfactory or if they want to do a bit more negotiating to get it done faster they can work with the last 30% to satisfy them. Either way, they have time to work it out. If during those 30 days an emergency presents itself, they may push forth another vote and this time get 99% behind it (1% just are not willing to budge). It waits a day and the money is spent.

That is a very simplified summary of the concept, now how do Bitcoins come in.

Bitcoins role

Say you have a group of 10 people forming a club. They all agree up front that they will pay 1 Bitcoin a week into the club and they all have 1 vote. A program is written up where if they do not pay their 1 Bitcoin they lose their vote until they can make up for the lost weeks. The function for doing this would be for each person to have a 10th of an encryption key when put together creates the full key which can then be used to transfer funds. They each pay their 1 BTC for 10 weeks and there is now 100 BTC in the one address. One guy convinces 2 other people to vote to give all 100 BTC to him. They submit the votes and set up a transfer to his BTC address. They have 3 parts of the key and the computer then begins working on un-encrypting the rest of the key. Turns out, this will take several years so it is a non-starter. Then a vote comes up where they want to donate 50 BTC to helping children with cancer. They all agree on it and submit their part of the key. 50 BTC is transferred to the kids with cancer BTC address. They are now left with 50 BTC.

Then another person comes in and says he wants to join the club. The other members say ok, as long as he is willing to pay in the same share that they all have in at the moment, which is 5 BTC. They set up a new address with 11 parts to the key. They unanimously submit their keys and move over to the new address with 11 parts. They now have 55 BTC to spend. Another 5 weeks goes by and they now have 110 BTC. Some members want to set up a clubhouse with the 110 BTC. 6 members vote for it (the other members do not like the choice of the clubhouse location). They all submit their key and begin the transfer. The program begins to work on getting the other keys, turns out this will take several months. They do a bit more research and find a decent clubhouse. They vote again and 10 out of the 11 people are satisfied with it. The last guy is the chairman who really wanted all the money given to him and refuses to vote for it. Turns out it will only take a week to process through his vote so they go ahead with the transfer and start getting things set up. The chairman drops out and stops paying his dues. He loses his vote and it goes back down to 10 club members.

Now say that another 10 weeks go by and they have 100 BTC. They find another club that has a lot going on but their club costs 10 BTC per month. Each person cannot afford it but they decide instead to join the club as a group. The other group has 10 weeks worth of BTC in their account so they allow the new share in for 100 BTC with 1 vote. The same process goes through, they vote in the same way. 10 weeks go by again and the new club now has 2000 BTC. They want to set up a lodge on a large property for their clubhouse. The same process goes through for votes, this time the original club has 9 people who agree with one hold out. The new club has 8 people in agreement with one hold out plus the original group who is not in support until that 1 vote is unencrypted. They decide to go ahead with it and transfer the money with the delayed time.

2 years go by and the group now has 10,000 BTC in their coffers. They find a group that requires 100 BTC a week and is working on something big. They join them in the same way that the original group joined the new one and go through the process. The huge group has 100,000 BTC and decides to buy a large lot of land and split it up equally among all of the 10 shares. They find 3 different locations and various votes go through, each taking a long time. They get 8 votes for one final lot that costs 100,000 BTC but it takes another 10 weeks to get it to go through thanks to the hold outs. They buy the land and have 10,000 still in their coffers. With this they begin voting on clearing out the land, marking property lines, getting started on a community plan, etc. They essentially have the means to go forward on their own town set up with a system of collecting money to pay for things and voting on how that money is spent. And they can team up with other larger groups as wanted. People can drop out at any time and not pay, etc.


tl;dr - Set up a system for spending Bitcoin as a group which requires each person to have a piece of a key. If 100% agreement is not there, the keys of the hold outs are unencrypted over time giving time to compromise based on how many people are in agreement.

There are a few small things here and there that I have considered but did not want to make it any longer than it already is.

The Chinese people were allowed to start owning gold back when gold was about $400/ounce.

Now gold is close to $2000/ounce.

Bitcoin will be yet another commodity owned by the Chinese.

There are several Bitcoin auction sites.

It is factored in. 1/6th of Bitcoins are traded at the exchanges at a time.

This is similar to taking a poll of 1000 people to find out how Americans may want to vote in an election. What those 1000 people say has a lot of impact on the implied vote of the other millions of Americans.

Full disclosure though...your cat's blog kicks ass.

It appears that early September somebody took out a lot of Yuen.

Not at all. I assume that only 1/6th of all coins mined are sold for a currency. Which is in line with the amount of Bitcoins held at the exchanges.

I suppose I was unclear in my wording. By "trading currencies" I mean that they are being traded on the exchange for money.

If someone mines Bitcoins and then trades it for something that is then traded in Bitcoins and kept within the currency, then it is not being traded on the exchange. At this point about 5/6th of Bitcoins are either being traded among each other or being held on to.

This is actually pretty big (just read the article).

Even a small bump in the Chinese market will affect us quite a bit.

Link is screwed up...leads to a page full of gibberish.

From what it looks like right now, only about one sixth of the Bitcoin economy is used for trading currencies.

Ron Paul has sponsored a bill to allow competing currencies.

H.R. 1098

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-1098

You could contact your representative and hope it passes some day down the road.

Or just vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries.