Hey, some of us are also gun enthusiasts.

And community activists, which is a good way to effect non-state organization. It might not be so bad. 

The fact that businesses are not prohibited from refusing legal tender doesn't mean the .gov is okay with them accepting non-legal tender. I'm not an expert in the matter, and I could be wrong. I just don't see how that quote from the Treasury's site shows that I am. I would be interested to see something that does.


Can't find any conveniently and I don't care enough to keep looking. Consider the point conceded in your favor.


If things get to that point, I expect that state will not be very concerned with retaining its image of legitimacy any more. They won't need clever arguments when they have a monopoly on violence. I mean, it's not like they don't already break their own laws with things as they currently stand. Though perhaps an event capable of causing such a crisis - such as widespread integration of Bitcoin into the mainstream economy - would render them powerless to prosecute anyone for using Bitcoin in the first place.

I don't need luck. My life isn't governed by blind, stupid chance. Thanks for the well wishes, though. Also, I appreciate you leaving my rebuttals to your position unchallenged. (Note: the fact that I believe in God doesn't affect my arguments for a causal reality at all, because I did not argue for causality from a theistic position.)

If History is any indication, the state will make trading in bitcoin illegal at the same time it makes trading dollars for Euros illegal as well. Look at Zimbabwe's recent monetary collapse. They didn't just make it illegal to buy or use US dollars (which were the most popular substitute); they tried to nip any form of alternative markets in the bud by making Zim dollars the ONLY currency that could be used anywhere, by anyone, ever.

And there are already laws to that effect on the books in America. It is actually considered fraudulent to present non-legal tender as money. The fedgov doesn't tend to make a big deal about people using official money printed or minted by Canada, but there are cases of people using Mexican dollars in America being charged with fraud. Market currencies like bitcoin and the Liberty Dollar are far more likely targets then other state-approved currencies, but when things get really hairy they will probably regard ANY potential competition to the dollar as an actionable threat.

If a "pattern" is nothing more than a random series of recurrences of previous events, then it is completely meaningless. It proves nothing but that the same thing can happen twice, at random; it does not supply us with any basis for believing that the pattern will continue, neither "definitely" nor "probably". One can't say, "we can assume that X will probably occur because it has occurred many times in the past in similar conditions" without implying that those conditions cause X to occur, and what's more, that something more fundamental to the nature of reality causes those conditions to have that effect.

You say that randomness doesn't equate to equal distribution, but something cannot possibly be factually more likely to occur than anything else without something causing it to be so. Mass cannot be assumed to be likely to continue to attract mass unless there is something in Nature that makes it behave in that way. The fact that mass has always attracted mass in the past gives us absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that it is any more likely to do so in the future than not without admitting causality. If there is no causality, then anything that looks like probability is just an illusion. Denying causality reduces all theory to wild guessing.


You say that despite the fact that all observation suggests that things always act in a certain way, and implies causality. Denying that is not Occam's Razor; it's just an assertion without any empirical support. And besides, "it just does" still leaves open the question of "why?" Repeating "it just does" is circular reasoning. Saying "because Nature is governed by causal laws" at least provides an answer. It is no more falsifiable than your belief, but my belief at least appears to be supported by all the evidence that experience has to offer.


It's not a burden at all. I believe in God because I see the existence of a supernatural Ultimate Cause as being far more likely than the innumerable coincidences that would have had to occur to bring something as complex as human consciousness into existence, considering each coincidence as a separate assumption. Of course it is religious faith; I am a Christian after all. However, I'm not trying to prove that God exists in this thread. I am only arguing for causality.


And in so doing, you relegate economic laws to "things which I believe will apply in the future", while at the same time denying that you have any identifiable reason for such belief. Which Keynes likewise did, in his work before the General Theory. In denying that economic laws are descriptive of things that are fundamentally true about human nature, he was able to posit that they could be "broken" without predictable consequences. E.g., we don't really know that increasing the quantity of money will result in higher prices just because it has in the past. To say otherwise is to posit a naive, causal view of the world. Therefore we shall empower the government to meddle in the economy without end. Not only do we reject the childish causal-realism of the Austrians, we also don't know whether something the government does that works this time will even work again in the future.

Which explains the numerous and blatant contradictions in the General Theory. Keynes really didn't believe that he was describing a fully consistent system in his economics.

But who's to say what one's ability is? Why not devote ALL your processing power to mining? Why not spend ALL of your money (except for what you require for the barest of necessities) to build more mining rigs? In other words, contribution never comes by one's "ability". People contribute what they are willing to contribute, every time. Not just in mining pools, but in all things.

It makes more sense, then, that the rules be "contribute what you are willing to contribute, and be compensated according to what others are willing to pay". Which is market exchange.

Additionally, the US might just collapse under its own weight before then anyway. Especially if bitcoin becomes popular enough that people start abandoning legal tender in its favor. (Oh please oh please oh please...)

I don't know. He may be ignorant of the fact that he would subsume other people's values to his own by force. He might just not care. Most likely, he does know and thinks that it's just because his values are "better".

Which gets back to the OP's question - why it is wrong for me to impose my (conservative) social values on people's sexual, recreational, or other lifestyle choices, while it is perfectly fine for him to impose his values on others when it comes to pecuniary matters? Obviously, the assumption is being made. I (along with the OP) want to know WHY.

I think it's far more consistent to say that one may not impose his values on other people through force, period. Liberty is the absence of coercion. One can't say he is "for liberty" if he supports coercion in either people's personal OR economic choices.

Easily - by believing that his (BCE's) subjective values are superior to the subjective values of the parties to the exchange, and therefore that they may be forceably imposed upon them (and upon us, as we - not he - will be paying for it all). Paternalism in rare form.

Now if someone who objected to the exchange offered to donate from their own funds, or to raise funds from other voluntary contributors, to rectify what they perceive as an inequitable exchange, then I would applaud them.

Your examples didn't demonstrate that at all. Saying that the universe is random but not disorderly is to say that cause and effect exist while denying the existence of causal laws.

Also,


Then you can only believe that the universe is "probably" random. You can't know it. You can't know anything at all. Which means I'm just as likely to be correct in my belief that the Universe is an internally deterministic system injected with human Free Will by a supernatural Being as you are that the Universe is a purely natural, purely random event. If everything (including human thought) is random, then all thought is equally valid, just as all thought would be equally invalid in a purely deterministic Universe.


If you are really not aware of how your beliefs are relevant to the epistemological foundation of Keynesian thought, then I leave it as an exercise to you to find out. Here's a clue: before he wrote the General Theory, he wrote a book detailing the same epistemology you hold. It's important because it implies the economics of the General Theory by denying that such things as "economic laws" exist.

It's helpful to remember that when governments suppress markets, the markets don't go away. They just go underground. And they also grow the profit margins associated with those markets by doing so. I see black markets as a potentially good thing (as my custom title suggests). It depends on whether the people who participate them have conscious ethical goals or not. Which is why I encourage libertarians to embrace "counter-economic" activity.

No they didn't. They just gave themselves a monopoly on doing it.

It's not properly exploitation if the rules say you can take without contributing.

Great. Markets are all about managing uncertainty. It's what they do.


Not analogous. Central banks are political organizations. They are secretive, coercive, and inherently fraudulent. A non-inflationary competitive currency, for all its flaws you can name, is transparent, voluntary, and while not completely fraud-proof is at least not conducive to it. Furthermore, central bank currencies are monopolistic; centrally-controlled and effectively outside the market. Market currencies, by definition, are not.

What you are proposing is to apply a central planning solution to a problem which markets are perfectly suited to address: a top-down guess at a solution which will inhibit or prohibit the millions of possible other solutions coming from millions of different approaches. Whatever benefit may come from that solution cannot possibly be as good as the solution that will occur naturally, through competition, in its absence.

It really seems to me that you're completely missing the point of bitcoin. In closing, go start your own inflatacoin or whatever. Some of us are choosing bitcoin for precisely the thing that you would do away with.

Why don't they just create an inflationary counterpart to bitcoin and let the two compete? (It may be uncharitable of me, but I think it's because the pro-inflation people are mainly also the sort of people who believe in monetary monopolies. "Properly governed", of course.)

ohai, John Maynard Keynes.

They exist in the same way that hygenic or nutritional laws based on human nature exist. They are conditional imperatives: "if you want to achieve [the greatest possible long-term material well-being and have healthy relationships], then you must [refrain from the use of force against non-violent persons]."

I do not believe that they can exist as anything other than that without a supernatural consciousness to issue them (in which I believe, but I don't try to argue the point with non-theists from that angle because it's quite pointless).


In which case you can't believe that you really think at all, as Reason is an ordered process which cannot exist in a fundamentally orderless universe.

Anarchy in Your Head FTW.

Too bad Dale doesn't seem to be interested in making more of them.

And by what standard does "the community" (which is nothing more than a group of self-interested individuals) get to decide that?

How about instead of putting a person at the mercy of a group of persons (which is nothing but playground bullying all growed up and with fancy clothes on), we use an objective standard to determine those things? Something like an identifiable threshold of difference between something that is being properly used or not used, like... maybe the transformation of a part of nature through labor into a productive good? But nah, that's property theory. So much better to let the power-seeking yammerheads who rise like flotsam to the head of "the community" decide.

Actually that's pretty accurate. Considering that we define "the market" as the sum of all voluntary human interaction and completely oppose involuntary human interaction, it's almost dead-on in fact.