The poor have gotten much, much, much rucher over the last 200 years. The rich get richer AND the poor get richer, just not as fast. Envy is a horrible thing.

@Atlas, come on dude, you will only incite people to reject your premises if you call them parasites. He might be a very productive, supportive individual with an ideology me and you don't agree with.

With 1000 new members joining this board in the last 18 hours you tell me where you think the price of something so limit as bitcoins is going?

"The very thing that verily vexes me to visceral unhappiness is that the vilified method of transactional verification, "bitcoin" has no v's visible in it's spelling."

- Universal/socialized Health Care.
The implications for the future of medicine are absolutely shocking. There is no mechanism for creating timely, tested and needed new medicines through socialized health care. IE who decides what resources to throw at which diseases? The free market (truly free) can do this very efficiently by ensuring that there is always a big reward for producing cheap effective medications. Most of what we see today in medicine is the result of profit seeking, not of altruistic concern for the well-being of others. If you think today's system is somehow abusive, compare it to what was available a 100 years ago and at what costs.

- Worker's regulation, minimum wage, vacations, workers' rights.
Abuses under the so called "robber barons" are often used to defend this point, a much misunderstood period of history. I live in a country that has some of the most progressive labour protections on earth. The result? 19 years of economic growth in conjunction with 19 years of unemployment at higher numbers than that of the USA during the great depression. People literally cannot get hired in a booming economy and live in poverty because of it. Here you have to ask yourself something about a person who working in what you consider to be terrible conditions; if he is not being threatened by violence to be there, what were his other choices?

- Police, firemen, administration, public schools, roads.
Maybe, no, no, no never ever no! and no.

- Judges and free public servant lawyers for the defense.
Independent arbitrators, pro-bono work from qualified and motivated lawyers will more than make up for this. You would also have far less legal messes if there were far fewer laws.

On the topic of Wikileaks, I believe they were kicked of Amazon on a Thursday and had attacks against their dns provider? By the Sunday night Google was returning new their IP as the top result for them and there were 208 exact copies of the sigh up and running.

If they go after Bitcoin they will create insane interest in BTC in the rest of the world. If bitcoin goes down, something better will just replace it.

Well you are choosing not to go help him and being derogatory to him in the process.

I might not be able to help you when the government comes for you Atlas, either due to lack of courage or resources, but in my heart I will want to see you win. If it is due to lack of courage my inaction will haunt me the rest of my days.

We cannot enslave each other to force help for the down trodden but lack of enslavement will not improve the situation or remove kindness and charity from people.

Regarding your Waco picture, Waco was one of the reasons Timothy McVeigh listed for blowing up the FBI building. The more the government "comes for us" the more people will lose it.

Regarding Spain. You live you learn, if there we're a philosophically advanced anarchist nation or libertarian minarcist state today it would pay handsomely to have itself protected from external aggressors. If successful it would soon outpace the nearest competitors economically and then technologically and would within 10-20 years find defending itself akin to defending itself against 1939 Germany with 2011 war machinery.

Also any action against such a nation would be met not with wmds but with finding who was personally responsible for the intrusion and attacking them personally until they relented. If an industrial zone was hit all the companies would appoint investigators, they would identify a chain of responsibility. Courts would then determine likelihood of guilt and suggested compensation, safety enforcement companies would then target the chain of responsibility and neutralize the threats and enact restitution. A PR company might also be enlisted by the safety company to ensure the citizenry of the aggressor that the attacks on its rulers in no way reflects on them. The free nation would have the whole of the world market at it's disposal. A PR approach might simply be taken from day one to end the aggressors rule if it is decided that would be cheaper or more effective.

Although an anarchist/minarchist society would probably have freedom as it's number one export in the form philosophy, practical example, tourism, technology, tax shielding and low cost, high quality products. The price mechanism is the number one weapon of freedom.

+1

Worrying though is that what if bitcoin fails this test, that it is too transparent. That means something else will replace it, something that will have the benefit of the bitcoin experiment and less flaws, that something is what will destroy our investments in bitcoin.

@nostrum

One thing we libertarians do have a strong definition of is a state or government. It is any group of people who are willing to initiate violence, either directly through guns, knifes, fists, wmds, planes, etc. to achieve their goals and now hold a monopoly on the enforcement of violence. Others who initiate violence in spite of the monopoly can be thought of aspirant rulers.  

Oligarchs are those who exploit the current monopoly to enact laws that benefit them. Think established banking sector. These people are often "rich" but are not true industrialists, they control markets, they do not create or improve them. Recently the son of the former CEO of a local cellphone company gave a speech about "What the optimum amount of competition is in a market" Essentially what he was saying was that he could not conduct business efficiently without a government guarantee that he can do it with a captive market and willing fellow monopolists.

In these protected environments politicians often attempt to enact restraints on the protected parties to attempt to mitigate the unavoidable abuses that come with such a privileged position. These are the regulations touted to protect us from the "evil" rich. The oligarchs very often get the regulations written in their favour or removed, which for a while leads to the further unleashing of the chaos their protected positions guarantee. Then people turn around and blame the "free market" and "deregulation". If there were true deregulation then the protections would have been lifted and the pampered cats would have to fend for themselves among far leaner, meaner and more plentiful competitors.

There people's wealth need to be taken away from them, not by force but by simply removing the unnatural protections they have enacted for themselves.

A comment from Barack Obama's inauguration speech sticks in my mind as I read your posts "It is no longer an issue of whether government is too big or too small, but whether or not it works." Entertain with us for a moment that this question of "Is government too big?" is still on the table, because it can lead to solutions to very much of what we see happening today.

If government is too big; it will be spread to thinly.
If government is too big; it will have resources in one place, while needing them in another.
If government is too big; it will meddle in that which worked fine.
If government is too big; it will need more money than necessary.
If government is too big; it will take too much of your money.
If government is too big; and your money is not enough, they will borrow to much
If government is too big; and your money is not enough and no body wants to loan them money any more, then they will print the difference (IE "loan" from the central bank)

No worries :-)

Atlas, YouTube "Mozart was a red"

My point is that if it is essential to someone they will find a means of funding it even in the absence of a government guaranteed way of getting it at the cost of society.

I don't support or oppose it, I'm just trying to have a functional conversation about the practical effects of proportional taxation.

We both want a " better world" we just disagree once the dynamics of getting there. I believe and can argue that taxing the rich and misspending on behalf of the poor hampers both the rich and the poor due to unavoidable natural economic consequences.

Dude, you need to calm down, you just said that essential services cannot be funded voluntarily, I am arguing your point.

No essential service would not be able to find voluntary funding.

Charity used to mean love, left used to refer to those seated on the left of the French house, liberal used to mean quite libertarian, unfortunately it happens. Semantics aside, where do you stand on the issue of the basis of having wealth as a reason to be taxed more?

Robin Hood was a liberal, he was well off himself but took from the rich (indiscriminately but on the basis of valid abuses by some) and gave to the poor while wanting special privileges for maids and merry men.

lol, no offence meant by that one, just had to make that joke

But seriously in this context I mean those who believe that being rich in and of itself is grounds to justify taking that wealth and redistributing it.

Fractional reserve banking has been around for a very long time but until 1913 it was not able to create sustained inflation and the inflation at the rates you see today did not being until 1971. Before that (1913), in the presence of fractional reserve banking there were almost 200 years of sustained deflation, the only exceptions being periods of war where the government issued bonds and inflated the actual money supply.

Contrary to what modern economists theorize would happen that period was also the period great GDP growth in the US.

For an excellent and relatively politically neutral monetary history pick up a copy of Mike Maloney's "Rich Dad's guide to investing in gold and silver" or check out he's movie "Why gold and silver" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5VNAEmmBQM

PS Guys let's dial down the judgemental negs, most people are just trying to help and differ on how that would be best accomplished.

LOLOL @ your signature billyjoeallen

true, but eventually such link will be clearly visible if the current method of "post your bitcoin address" is followed. a google miner might even be able to deduce the information with a great amount of accuracy.