I don't think capitalism is a system, either. It's simply what tends to happen when people are left to behave in a certain way. I don't think discussing capitalism here is very fruitful. Using that moniker makes it seem like people are talking about the same thing, but looking at the discussion above, I don't think that's the case.

Anyway, this was a thread about anarchy, wasn't it? I'm sorry if my careless choice of words ("anarcho-capitalism") diverted the discussion. I still haven't received anything even resembling an explanation of how a free, individualistic society would manage to stay that way...

I've sent you a PM, SunAvatar.

I'll bite on Portal 2. Have BTC on hand.

EDIT: this is assuming it can be transferred to an account in Finland. How's Steam with that these days?

The biggest problem I have here is I can't see how you'd transition to a voluntarist system and keep coercion out of it for any significant amount of time. People have different resources at their disposal. Some individuals have vast resources, to the point that it would be difficult for any group of individuals I can see agreeing with each other to defend themselves against them. So what I think would happen if you removed the current coercive state apparatus is that another would simply spring up in its place, in the form of private armies or something analogous.

Voluntarism is fine if everyone has more or less equal capabilities, but even if the playing field was even to begin with, wealth would eventually accumulate in the hands of a minority, giving them the opportunity to use coercive force against others once they had enough resources.

Perhaps your paper will deal with this, but didn't both Iceland and the Old West fail to protect themselves against centralization of power?

RE: not promoting too much: spot on. Aggressive promotion is important if you're hoping to get rich on the BTC you've interested in. I'm content to just wait for services to slowly pop up.

Has there ever been an anarcho-capitalist society? What happened to it?

Freedom defined is freedom denied.

FatherMcGruder is onto something there: "government" or "the state" is simply any group of individuals with the ability to subjugate others to their will. Removing government altogether is likely to just lead to someone establishing  a new one, with force perhaps. I still don't see how a truly free market would actually arise, let alone stay free for any significant time.

Personally, I have a "vault" wallet with most of my BTC on it, stored in an encrypted container, backed up locally and in the cloud. I've used that wallet on multiple computers without a hitch. I do make it a point to  only access that wallet briefly, so it's never in use on multiple computers at the same time.

FatherMcGruder: Interestingly, your solution revolves around the party with power refraining from using it, not so much around the party with less power trying to avoid being taken advantage of. Anyone who refrains from getting the greatest profit from their property on moral grounds puts themselves at a disadvantage in comparison to less scrupulous competitors. In the long run, altruism loses out, unless it is somehow supported. There are many such supports in place in society now, most of them coercive in some way.

What's your stand on coercion? Socialism (I don't use this as a pejorative BTW, your ideas sound pretty socialist in a very classical sense.) requires co-operation which very easily leads to coercion. Much like with Anarchism in general, for things to work out you have to be willing and somehow able to break society down into units small enough for small-group psychology to hold sway - in a larger society, you need guns to keep people altruistic. I'm interested in any counterexamples, of course.

I do think any remotely free society requires its residents to behave altruistically at times. There must be a willingness to make personal compromises in the interest of the society as a whole, otherwise you lose the sense of belonging that is one of the greatest protections against abuses of power. One thing I've never understood about Anarcho-Capitalism is how it wouldn't simply lead to anyone with enough wealth hiring a private army and forming a new government, probably rather less friendly than the ones we have now in some places.

As Chairman Mao said, power grows from the barrel of a gun. You can take that as an endorsement of guns or as a condemnation of power...

Good point. Hmm, I wonder who to ask if there's been a spike in CoinPal buys recently...
But seriously, as fine as your service is, I (my ass, anyway) doubt it's contributed that much to the spike at this point. The volume at Mt Gox was somewhere around 13000 last I checked, and a new user could buy 40 BTC on CoinPal.

There may be another spike coming up, but whether that's just because people already invested in Bitcoins expect a further rise remains to be sen. I doubt many, if any, of the buys that have pushed the price on Mt Gox up now are from people new to Bitcoins. It takes time to get funds into Mt Gox...

Perhaps you'd like to compare your idea to this checklist:
http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
I don't feel snarky enough to fill it out myself.

So, feel free to try to implement this. You have a huge hurdle in getting people to adopt this, I think any other concerns pale in comparison to that.

Now, a question: Your scheme seems to require the user to read every e-mail they get in order to choose whether to refund or not. Is this a good idea? I know I'm a lazy e-mail reader; I think a lot of people would be pissed off with me for getting their bitcents stuck in limbo because I neglect reading their mails.

Altruistic sacrifice is extremely rare. Also I don't expect this to be FatherMcGruder's answer. Perhaps it's best to let people speak for themselves.

FatherMcGruder:
I don't think I really see what you're proposing. To help me understand could you:

-define "capitalism"
-give an example of how one would go about avoiding it.

I'm not sure I see the difference between "start trying to avoid capitalism" and "start behaving smarter in their business dealings".

There's room to disagree about that, but let's agree, for the sake of argument, that this is "wrong". Now what?

There's no point in talking about the rights and wrongs of something if you don't talk about what you propose to do to discourage behaviour deemed wrong. I think trying to force people to behave more fairly in free market situations is likely to lead to much more harm than just accepting that sometimes people get screwed.

It swings, but nothing like as much as BTC. The risk of total loss is much higher with BTC in my opinion, which is why I don't want to have any more funds tied up in BTC than I'm willing to risk losing altogether.

Where are you located? If in the EU, I might be interested. If not, I suspect customs and tax costs would be too much to justify the expense.