Elasticity can not be manipulated by governments. A government can't make resources out of thin air, and can't reduce people's need for things through force. The only thing that can change elasticity is economic/technological progress. All government can do is force prices down by using everyone else's money, until either everyone runs out of money, or until the resource is depleted. Take oil for example. USA is taking shittons of money from people to keep oil prices down (which they do through taxation and massive military spending). As a result, USA is hugely in debt, oil is quickly running out, and we have barely scratched the surface on alternative energy and transportation. In the long run, goods that are inelastic have the highest incentive for competing alternatives and substitutes. If your competitor, using established technology, is severely affected by changes in supply, causing him to drastically raise prices any time there is even a small shortage (say, he's selling imported water in a desert region), then he is highly succeptible to any competitor that comes up with a more efficient alternative, which will kill his business instantly (for example, with a cheap reverse-osmosis filter that can extract water from any liquid, including human waste, and can be powered by wind). We have already seen this with food - another inelastic good - where farmers who could demand premiums for their produce were supplanted by industreal farming, which turned farm produce into a market taker (i.e. farmers are forced to take whatever is offered for their food, since anyone else can do what they do). University economics trumps your high-school economics


If you know high-school economics, you would know that the thing that is priced many times higher will attract many more people to pursue that business, and as more people enter the market, competition will drive prices down AND create many more choices, and thus negotiating power. The reason surgery is so much more expensive than TVs right now is pretty much government. Plus, again, look at the available options: Let economics decide, or force it to change. The only ways to forcefully resolve the issue of internal pressure, such as need for life-threatening surgery for the person who needs it, is for that person to steal the money or service (such as threaten the doctor's family if he doesn't do it for free), or to have a government steal from everyone else to pay for this surgery. But then you have TWO negative consequences. The first is that the surgeon has no reason to reduce prices, since everyone always gets paid what they ask for, and the second (which I believe is much worse) is that no one who needs this surgery feels the consequences of their lack of responsibility. Why should they bother to work harder (or better yet smarter), earn more, and save up for emergencies, if they will be taken care of every time an emergency comes up? Yes, in a voluntary society we will have people duying because they can't afford life-saving services, but they will be warnings for others about being responsible with your life, and be the people who were so irresponsible that their loss will not be important anyway. Anyone who is respoonsible and important enough will likely be able to raise money by borrowing or through charity.


Sounds like high-school economics again. Monopolies are always short-lived, exactly for that reason. They get lazy and non-innovative, and ket killed off by much more flexible and faster newer innovators. For example, Kodak had a digital camera prototype I think in the 70's or 80's, but they scoffed at it because that wasn't their monopoly business (they were in photochemicals and film), and now Kodak is essentially dead. Microsoft, the biggest most powerful monopoly of the 90's and 2000's, is duying as PCs become less relevant. General Motors nearly got wiped out because they couldn't change and switch their business as fast as Toyota and Honda to accomodate changing tastes in cars (continuing to sell SUVs as gas prices went from $1.50 to $3.50). Let them merge and become more efficient. That's good for us, because their products will continue to be cheaper while they sell them, and because it'll be easier for innovators to take them out. And if they gouge prices due to monopoly power, all the more incentive for someone else to step in and kill them.


Non-aggression does not exclude a chaotic system of laws. It is simply the basis for those laws. It's the same laws that are being used now in civil courts, and in trans-national business law (a new body of law being developed by businesses independently of government, for use by corporations that do not have a specific country they are based out of). All non-aggression principle says, really, is that laws should not allow someone to take someone else's stuff "legally" and without recourse.


My system is not perfect, and I am still exploring the possibilities. But it's not as full of holes as you'd like to believe. Plus my overall point was not who's system was full of flaws, but the weird quirk that despite mentioning "individual sovereignty," he still ended up being stuck in the mindset of "someone must control us." Just as ZGM/RBE proponents advocate for total freedom from needs and wants, while still promoting "someone must control us."

So, is your answer, instead of allowing people to be free to do what they want, force them to do what someone else wants, and punish them if they don't obey?

It won't be "utopian" in the least. There will still be social and economic conflicts, still be poor and hungry people, still be issues with crime, and still many of the same problems we have today. The biggest difference is that everyone will have to be responsible for themselves, and everyone will have a much wider choice of things to be responsible with, since services typically provided by government will likely be different when provided privately, and you'll have more options to choose from. There will also be way less waste of resources, since organizations that are not efficient will be forced to shut down, instead of continued to be supported with tax dollars "for the greater good," and change and new developments will be much more rapid due to fewer restrictions.

As for those people in power, combine the anonymity of bitcoin with assassination markets, where the more someone hurts people, the higher the bounty on their head grows (funded by completely anonymous donors), and you'll see people like that learn to behave very quickly.

Finally, it doesn't have to be a global thing that applies to all 7 billion people. We can still have countries "ruled" by anarchy alongside countries like North Korea. The difference will be that North Korea type countries will be rapidly falling appart, while the anarchy countries will be the richest and best defended (privately, and efficiently) in the world.

Don't forget, wars are extremely expensive, completely unprofitable, and require those waging war to be able to steal money to support said war. On the other hand, resistance (such as guerila warfare) is typically voluntary, is cheap, and is driven more by ideology and wish to preserve one's way of life, which has a higher incentive than war does. That's why USA is spending billions in Afghanistan, and getting nowhere.
If we had some sort of a financial system that allowed people to hold their wealth in private and in secret, maybe even having it password protected so that those in power who wage war can't seize it either as a tax or as a spoil of war, then wars likely won't happen often, if at all. Sure, there will be squables over land or territory, but even those are typically way more expensive than diplomacy and business negotiations.

What the hell? Did they move it from Monday the 18th to Tuesday the 19th? Or is this a follow-up meeting? (I'm going to have to change my schedule at work now)

That's a joke, right?


Personally, I'm really skeptical about this (give it a probability of 20%). Also, now that I know what this fund is for and how much it may hold, I'll have to create this vanity address on something other than Windows. Plus, do we really need a vanity address?

Isn't AnarchoCapitalism a political position? It's even different from AnarchoCommunism.

So if god created physical laws, then who created god?


Same question. If god always existed, why couldn't physical laws always exist, too?

Sorry, I still have no idea what you are talking about XD


A person who gives a logical "I know! It's ..." answer to the question "What's behind that horizon?" will come out rather foolish as soon as the person who said "I don't know" walks over to check it out. You have some strange concepts of logic...

Only if you use the currently bastardized political terms. By original definition, Soviet commies and modern democrats are conservative too (resistant, or even hostile, to change)

Perhaps. But that 0.01% still needs to live somewhere, eat, protect their wealth, and buy stuff, meaning someone still has to work to make that for them. And Bitcoin doesn't pay interest, so it's not like they'll be able to live off of it alone indefinitely, meaning investments into other people and companies. Plus there's this: "lotto curse".

I don't expect many of the wealthy early adopters to be able to hold on to their money.

Actually, you can have healthcare for $100. Though youll have to be content with 1900's technology, involving barbers, scary saws, and no anesthetic.

Thanks! Good to know Celso is still on top of things.

All you have to do to refute this is to explain how you plan to convince people to have their resources controlled for them. We had this discussion a year ago, and it never really went past the point at which someone said "won't this system fall apart as soon as a few people decide they want to trade things instead?"

Yeah, that would be a pain. I only have 8 terrabytes in my main server right now. But chances are that by the time we get to that point, 1 terabyte will cost as much as 100gigs do today. Also, don't forget that pruning will keep things from growing too fast, and many of the transactions in the new block will clear out transactions in the old blocks.
But, yes, in the long run, this will have to be handled by data centers of wealthy hobbyists (such as bitcoin early adopters), while most users will just use SPV.

Everything happens for a reason. That reason may just be something other than god. For instance, if you took a whole bunch of magnet bars with N and S at opposite ends, tossed them into the air, and let them fall freely over a large space, you'll see them orient themselves into large lines and curves, as the S's attract to the N's. Were the reason they oriented themselves in such a way god's doing? Or was it basic physics?

Trezor's main competition is Bitcoin Armory and a cheap used laptop, which can be had for under $100 (and their "substitution" is paper wallets, or just risking it and not bothering with more advanced security systems). So if Trezor continues to sell for $100, they would mostly be making their sales on increased convenience of a single small device, versus a big laptop you have to set up with Armory yourself. They may also end up making more money if they sell it for way less than $100, since more people would be interested in buying it, but obviously not too much less, since the shrinking profit margin (sale price - cost to manufacture) will start cutting into their potential profit. If sales (X) versus price (Y) was graphed, the resulting profit graph would look like a bell curve. It will be up to Trezor to figure out where the top of that graph's hill is, and what price they will get the most revenue from.

So I am pretty sure the final price will be lower than $100, and if it isn't, I'll keep using Armory with the computer I already bought. I would like to buy a Trezor for my parents though, since they're planning on getting a few $K worth of BTC.

TradeFortress's #1 mistake was not using cold storage. Everyone will get hacked at some point in the future (or should at least assume they will) regardless of how awesome and official their security policies are. As for Theymos, you would have to assume that he knew how old TradeFortress was, or knew whether his service used cold storage or not. Far as I know, Theymos will run adds for everything (legal), since his job is to run the forum, not be the BBB and do security inspections for other businesses.
As for the foundation, Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin Police are two different entities. Plus the Foundation is trying hard to put on an image that they are not trying to control bitcoin or anyone in particular, and just want to educate people and promote bitcoin itself. Attacking TradeFortress would have hurt their image within the bitcoin community, even if it may have helped bitcoin itself in the long run.

Did you lose money with TradeFortress?

Yeah, it has been a rather drastic change. Though, on the other hand, I was always a loner, outsider, and anti-ahtoritarian. Even back then I believed lawss should be treated more like guidelines, especially when actions aren't hurting anyone (mostly applied to traffic laws though  ). Point is, though, arguing on the internet DOES change people's mined. Not everyone's but at least anyone's who is willing to consider opposing views and learn from them.

Me too! Although for me "months" were "years" and although myrkul helped, by that point he was mostly reaffirming my beliefs and helping explain some more finite details for me. Back in 2007 I was proud to pay taxes to support our fine upstanding government, with it's social programs, mininum wages, roads and regulations, and a well managed USD policy. Although I was also really upset at the things Bush was doing with wars and especially Hoomeland Security act, and it may have been a combination of Bush and Bitcoin that finally changed my political view.