That's a perfect description of what's wrong with the state.



Well, codified morality is supposedly what gives the state system legitimacy, and guess what, a tiny immoral minority quickly rose to the top and took control.

My answer is that there would be no overall control, but that doesn't mean society would instantly collapse (although fans of the state believe this). If human beings are so cold hearted that only the law prevents them from behaving anti-socially or unethically, societies could never have had a chance to become established at all. Humans are social animals, and the social norms are inherent traits, not cultural, just as with all social animals.



I think the thieves and other moral transgressors would hang out together and plot. That would be a difficult problem to solve.



That's not an answer to the question I asked.

You don't seem to want to tackle the point; law enforcement cannot be reasonably expected to prevent altercations over property disputes, especially not in a rural setting. That's another difficult problem to solve, don't try to imply that a police force solves it, they can only act after the fact.

Angry people (or those jealous of another's property) simply don't find law enforcement to be a deterrent to acting on those emotions, otherwise there wouldn't be anyone in prison having done so (and a majority of people are in prison for just that; acting on an emotionally driven whim). These people know they'll likely be caught, but essentially accept the risk and do it anyway. The law does not solve the problem, people know it's unproductive and wrong, and they still do it.

It's far more complicated than that. But if we are to simplify it, I would disagree thusly; the main factor dterring people from stealing is not law enforcement, but morality.
 



Criminals are worried about being identified as perpetrators of criminal acts. And I'm not advocating for a power vaccuum, where did you get that idea?



Well, if everyone knows someone is a thief, they're going to behave differently towards them in many ways. Many people will not help a known thief when they need help. Many people will not allow a thief into their place of work, either to work or as a customer.



You're not answering the question.

In a state system, it's highly unlikely the police would arrive in time to prevent the confrontation, they would likely be collecting evidence for serious assault or murder. In an anarchistic system, it would be no different, a private security service would be unlikely to prevent a rural confrontation. So it's not such a great example really.

Well, first principles would be knowing your neighbor and securing your property appropriately, but let's say we accept your premise.

What makes you think that state police are a perfect solution to this problem, or a perfect deterrent? Situations such as you describe happen now. So why don't we all steal from our neighbors, we stand to gain more property for ourselves after all?

In reality, few people inclined to theft would do what you describe anyway. The most reliable way of keeping the gains of theft is to conceal the identity of the thief, letting the victim identity the thief carries risks for the thief, no matter what. Your described scenario is a recipe for the thief to suffer the consequences, regardless of the societal system, so it's not an especially meaningful example.

Maybe a better scenario might be: self sufficient farmer believes that a neighbor stole from them, and confronts them in anger. Can we reasonably expect third-party intervention to prevent this conflict, in a state system or an anarchist system?

So you're all acknowledging that democratic government is unfair and/or corrupt in various ways, yet you don't see a problem with using the present system to change it?

Voting simply doesn't work as a democratic mechanism, it's too easy to tempt the majority of the electorate with trinkets. The majority aren't competitive, so they don't really want a meritocratic system. You're all arguing, really, for the continuation of the status quo: a tiny percentage of people, who are personal friends of the political class, dominating everyone else.

@Guybrush: you cannot expect me to debate you if you distort what I say, or outright put words in my mouth. It cannot be reasonably expected that you will behave ethically, and so I will not dignify such deceptive behavior. You are dishonest.

Use a free market (of which there are several).

You're doing yourself and the Bitcoin ecosystem no favours if you volunteer information about your BTC holdings to a state that wishes to bully you in light of that information. If the state knows how much Bitcoin you have, you're right back where you started; they will literally invent reasoning to take as much of your BTC as they think is suitable for their purposes. You will have little or no BTC left, and so you will have wasted your time and effort.

I'm still not convinced you understand. Bitcoin does not mean "no policies", it just means "no fiat policies".

Previously, money and it's underlying system were subject to state policies, enforced by state violence and threats thereof. Now, state violence cannot affect Bitcoin, it is immune to violent control.

But Bitcoin has it's own policies, and it is those that are immune to intervention (and controlling monetary policy is something the state otherwise claims sovereignty over)

I read that as "Not at all", so I was reading too quickly :/



Well, it's interesting that some states in the US might permit self-sufficiency, in a possible future. I don't quite see how this rebukes my overall point: being self sufficient invites state interference, and there is no ethical basis for this. There's no reason that someone who has established and run their own home should be a part of any state simply because there are other people with a belief in a public territory that includes someone's (actually occupied) real territory. You could argue "the public territory is real too, armed police will arrive at any part within it to enforce their ownership". I say that's gangsterism, and that it's immoral and unjustifiable.

FTFY. You're proving my point in detail and in spirit: self-sufficient people are considered a part of the state, and are assessed for taxation as such.
 


So, you don't believe in a system that threatens people that don't pay, yet you accept that there are "consequences" (i.e. threats) if you refuse?

And if you disagree and with to leave, you cannot leave without the state's permission (and 2 separate offices, the passport office and the border police, grant you permission to leave. Or not). That's not democracy, that's a protection racket.

Policy certainty has never been required. Neither has centralisation. Bitcoin was designed to evade any policy, and decentralisation was one important way that resistance from interference (policy or otherwise) was bestowed to the Bitcoin network. You're completely wrong

I've already said I'm not advocating for chaos. Can you admit that you will accept misuse of power as a consequence of centralised governance?

And FWIW, Somalia is a true canard in this kind of debate. You're talking about 1 region of Somalia; there are 6 regions with big differences in how stable everyday life is for humans.
 


All levels of US government demand money from all citizens regardless of how independent they are from society.

No, there is a majority everywhere that shares the belief that other people's will can be rightfully imposed upon by way of violent threats. There is nowhere to go now that the world has a definite jurisdiction on every piece of the existing land, whether inhabited by humans or not.

Individualistically: there is no option for those that would choose to live in an entirely self-reliant way apart from any society. If you built your own house, with it's own water-well and electricity generation, farmed only what you needed for crops, then what have you taken from anyone else? And yet you would still be harassed, that you are a part of a group to whom you owe some of your productivity, despite no such agreement existing.

Collectively: if you and a group of like-minded objectors to a corrupt society attempt to live as your own society, you will be harassed. Claims will be made that you're living under the jurisdiction of another group of people, with whom you have no agreement to cooperate.


And working within the framework of an established society to effect change is delusional. Politicians have long ago learned to simply give lazy and unimaginative people more or less what they want, in exchange for being dominated by people that break the rules. You cannot bargain with a majority of people that want that kind of slavery, they prefer an easy life where they do not have to confront anything difficult or dangerous.

They don't. If they don't want or don't need some service or other, they should not be compelled to pay.

What's more, in a Bitcoin world, they can not be compelled to pay for something they either don't want or don't need. Bitcoin literally gives them the right to withold payment, and there's nothing you, me or anyone else can do about it.



Your beliefs aren't compatible. On one hand, you want to minimise the amount you pay for socialised costs. But you also want a system that threatens people's lives in order to take as much money as they want, which those administrating the system claim pays for socialised costs. And the reality is that these organisations use the money in a multitude of ways that you probably consider to be wasteful, immoral, nepotistic or corrupt; providing good services is usually not the priority.

And your ideals pressurize me to do it your way, by way of violent threats. Can you justify this ethically?

eltoo solves this problem

You could mention that BIP157 & BIP 158 (implemented in Neutrino) will improve privacy for SPV based Lightning wallets.



And you could mention that Schnorr, MAST & Taproot will make the on-chain transactions opening/closing Lightning channels indistinguishable from regular 1 input/1ouput transactions (another privacy improvement, + extra fungibility)

Well Guybrush, it seems that you can't make a rational arguement, and prefer to rely on dismissive witticism or straw man arguments instead.

It's ironic. You implied that you think limited government to be a good idea, and that being able to choose how your taxes are spent would also be a good idea. I fail to see how that's alot different from my position!

Is the problem that I offending your moral sensibilities by asserting that you support a violent enforcement system? This is not intended to offend at all, it is (an apparently difficult to absorb) statement of fact. If people pay for everything directly, there's no need to compel them to "do what's good for them" using negative incentives. They'll do what's good for them in their own judgement, of their own volition.


Part of the problem here is of stereotyping; well-known anarchists fetishize individualism to the extent that they claim that it's always the best solution to every problem. It's not.

Insurance is a perfect example; it's very similar to a socialised system in fact, except that there is no compulsion to pay for private insurance and also more than one organisation providing. Or, if local people wanted to look after a place they wanted publicly available (e.g. a park or a lake), paying in to a joint ownership/maintenance scheme would be in everyone's interests, as it improves the lives of all the people within a certain range. These are collectivist ideas at root, but implemented in a way that incentivises a good use of resources. And disincentivises corruption.

On one hand, I think you guys are coming from the right place. On the other, I think you're being set up.


This whole alt-right movement is simply doing what traditional Conservative politics always has: used the ideas of classical liberalism as the positive selling point, but then gently twists it to represent an apologia for intolerance of any liberalism at all. They convince their adherents that giving everyone freedom means everyone must be very strictly monitored to make sure you're behaving freely!

The major irony here is that you guys are reacting to the left style governments doing exactly the same thing: restricting everything, then calling it freedom. No politician is ever going to sell you the reality: real freedom cannot be given to you, you have to take it.

So this has proven helpful, I previously assumed listenonion/ephemeral hs was working without really checking it was! Currently looking into why not... some success so far.

 

Relevant information:

Default fees are proposed to be lowered in Bitcoin 0.18.0

Basically, the minimum will drop from 1sat/vbyte to 0.2sat/vbyte.

0.18.0 is scheduled for release in March 2019, which assumes nothing delays the release. And it may take time for the full effects be felt on the network, as miners may still refuse transactions less than 1sat/vbyte for a while (until a large enough backlog of < 1sat/vbyte transactions develops, I should imagine). Maybe this time next year we could be celebrating even cheaper fees

19th century USA was very much like that, there was very little government involvement in services, and the USA became a very wealthy country as a result. There were very few rules about the medical profession, and the health insurance system was very cheap if you didn't want the best treatment. This all changed in the early 20th century, when rules around medical licensing became much tighter, setting the minimum wage for medical professionals much higher than before, which in turn pushed health insurance rates far higher.

Roads is a time-old example: roads began as a private system. Some were terrible, but the incentive to make good quality roads is high, as it increases commerce transiting through the road (and can drive the success of market places served by the roads).


And have you heard of Bitcoin? A privatized money system, where violence is not required to enforce the rules, and violence cannot be used to break the rules?


Politicians and big companies collude to keep them on the right side of the law. Corporations use the legal system internationally to ensure they can outcompete small businesses. The rules essentially don't exist for them, but hurt small businesses instead.

The real solution is to actually make the playing field equal for all. And that means removing the rules. This will change things in important ways: fraud will increase without rules (corporations mostly abide by the fraud protection rules, although they still deceive people within the rules, of course). But we now have instant and abundant information systems to call out fraudsters, it's not like they can pack up and go to a place where no-one knows them, the internet can see to that. It's also important to note that the current anti-fraud rules do not prevent all cases of fraud, and there are frequent cases of people who are too clever or too protected for the rules to work. Alot of tax money goes into anti-fraud, yet the outcome of a decentralised policing of fraud such as I'm suggesting would probably be very similar, except without having to pay taxes to expensive agencies for it. I would happily report retail experiences if it meant I would help others to make an informed decision about the merchant I used. In fact, everyone already uses that system online anyway (and they consider it to be a pretty reliable method).

I do want all those things, and I do want to pay. I want to pay the best people to do it, and that's not possible in the state system. Either one accepts how bad the roads or police or fire service are, or is punished for refusing to accept it. There is no feedback that gives the public sector an incentive to perform well, and so they typically perform badly, and so public sector jobs attract people that don't care about doing a good job.


You seem to want to pretend you don't support a violent system, and at the same time claim I want chaos and depravity for everyone except me. Your argument is based completely on fantasy in other words: the state system fails egregiously all the time, that's why bitcoin exists at all. You're a bad fit for this tech guybrush; you don't support the political philosophy behind bitcoin, and yet want all it's benefits and the benefits of it's antithetical ideology too. That comes across as pretty selfish, which is particularly ironic considering how you labelled me (I've never said I don't want police or roads, lol).

Guybrush: "Money, I'm libertarian. Healthcare, I'm a socialist". Your socialist buddies aren't going to let you get away with that, you know.