Real world question: I'm using as many faucets as I can, and I've accumulated .005+ btc.
Using the address in my sig, will I ever be able to spend my btc assuming I continue with these microtransactions? I'm super poor.
I haven't finished reading the thread, btw, so sorry if I missed something.
Halp?
If you keep spending instead of saving in life, you'll always stay poor. Thanks to bitcoin, I can actually save some money now. I've been boycotting fiat for years now. |
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Real world question: I'm using as many faucets as I can, and I've accumulated .005+ btc.
Using the address in my sig, will I ever be able to spend my btc assuming I continue with these microtransactions? I'm super poor.
I haven't finished reading the thread, btw, so sorry if I missed something.
Halp?
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invasion of privacy of the officer though?
while he's on duty. he's serving the public there should be no privacy i guess besides bathroom visits which should be on breaks. i guess they could say they're doing that and turn camera off then beat up someone. there's no ultimate solution but this one would have great improvements I think on how it is today I think they should be renamed to "Peace Officers", drop the guns, have a google glass-type of face mounted camera, a shield, and a taser. Their only responsibility should be to stop any and all violence. Then killing a police officer would legitimately be a heinous crime. Leave investigation to investigators who use voluntary means of obtaining information.
I mostly agree with you. The image you give looks like riot police anyway though and why aren't more people signing this? all we'd need is one mention on a large activist or conspiracy site and this thing would be full I <3 riot gear. After being on the losing end of a baton / barricade shield, my politics shifted a little further toward the "I should prolly invest in a bulletproof vest" side of anarchism. Petitions are groovy. I suppose I'll sign, even though I'm pessimistic about its effectiveness. |
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Unless you can come up with source material ciiting the first known use of the word with clear implications about capitalism that follow along with your definition, your "original" is revisionist and inaccurate.
"Original" as in the definition that has been used for the last century or two, and is still being used by economists, as opposed to the weird revision you are using. Specifically this "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market." I've bolded the keywords. In laymen's terms, recognition of property, voluntary trade, and uninhibited competition with other traders. Is this beyond criticism? Is it wrong to criticize the way it has been put into use? To point out the obvious flaws? Are you saying that all economists think alike- or just ignoring all nonclassical economists? When you say "recognition of property" who on earth are you talking about? Is it not the supposed job of the violent state to do this? What about those who recognize all resources as commonly owned? Certainly this is a fair viewpoint, and one capitalism actively sweeps under the rug. When you say "voluntary trade" are you not talking about ill-gotten, stolen resources? The operation of capitalism is exploitative and inefficient according to the definition we agree on. Any force that makes most poor and few rich, as it can be seen to have made, is a force that cannot be sustained. Before you go back into this silly drivel about making toilers rich as well, you might consider at what cost and how often. |
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Hail Satan.
Yeah, I'm done with you. You're just a troll, although a particularly thoughtful one. I'll mark this down as "Pro-Capitalist cannot interface with maximum-edgy Satanist and ragequits." Ayn Rand would be so dissapointed. Thx for the thoughtful comment tho. |
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I'm all for reclaiming words, but when the word's near universal application is unethical, popular, and appropriate, the reclaiming is going to take some uglyand backwards revisionism, as well as resistence from longtime anticapitalists. Nothing "actually" means anything, you know. Ideology is a conversation with arguably justifiable conclusions, not an emperical fact, that determine meaning
The problem is that we are arguing for the original "idea" or capitalism, while you are arguing for something that is not exactly capitalism, while arguing against something you call capitalism, which isn't capitalism, either. So, essentially, we are trying to argue for A, while you are arguing for B while arguing against C. We're not arguing against C. Is the whole of your worldview about your own personal opinions?
Hail Satan. Ugh. I read that as Hail Stalin at first. Too much Soviet talk in here. Unless you can come up with source material ciiting the first known use of the word with clear implications about capitalism that follow along with your definition, your "original" is revisionist and inaccurate. |
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We exterminated all the peoples who lived in anarchic societies and burned all their historical records. We are the product of millenia worth of war and conquest. In this sense we are at the end of history. That doesn't mean it never happened. It means that the people who wrote the history books weren't a part of those societies. This should be obvious seeing as any anarchic society would not be equipped or prepared to defend itself against those societies who's fundamentals were established through violence, paternalistic hierarchy, and complete disregard for human life.
This.^ Library of Alexandria ect ect for the win mindblowingly tragic loss. The structure of history has been a strict state pegagogy up until the internet. |
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You don't need to be a surgeon to know why getting stabbed is bad.
And yet, that's what surgery actually is  Perhaps you got stabbed by capitalism which was a bit reckless, and perhaps tinged with malice and corruption, and are now over-reacting by claiming all stabbings are bad, even when used to remove economic tumors, so to speak. If capitalism is a knife, anticapitalism is holistic medicine and nanobots It's capitalism when toilers built it for you.
You keep saying "toilers" as if it's a bad thing. People sell their trade (product/skills). If their trade doesn't sell for much, they can improve their trade, or do something else. It's either toil, or live off of discarded scraps of other toilers who actually did improve their trade. I wouldn't say being that way is parasitic, but it's certainly not beneficial to the rest of society in any way. Toil is by definition bad. Toil must be automated. What you say is true if you do not acknowledge that classical economics is a malignant lie and that capitalism itself is dying. Capitalism isn't just "whatever works well."
Of course not. Its mutual trade and recognition or property and all that. One cannot buy back one's labor and time. The state is in the buisiness of 'recognizing' property. My one and only gripe is the insistence that everything good is "Capitalist"
Why is willingly trading something you have for something you want bad? You best be trollin'... Why not abandon the word-and its ideological shortcomings? Its connotations are worse than "greed."
Because we are using the word as what it actually means. Why abandon it because some others are trying to redefine it or give it bad connotations? Responding twice because of too cool for school. |
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You don't need to be a surgeon to know why getting stabbed is bad.
And yet, that's what surgery actually is Perhaps you got stabbed by capitalism which was a bit reckless, and perhaps tinged with malice and corruption, and are now over-reacting by claiming all stabbings are bad, even when used to remove economic tumors, so to speak. It's capitalism when toilers built it for you.
You keep saying "toilers" as if it's a bad thing. People sell their trade (product/skills). If their trade doesn't sell for much, they can improve their trade, or do something else. It's either toil, or live off of discarded scraps of other toilers who actually did improve their trade. I wouldn't say being that way is parasitic, but it's certainly not beneficial to the rest of society in any way. Capitalism isn't just "whatever works well."
Of course not. Its mutual trade and recognition or property and all that. My one and only gripe is the insistence that everything good is "Capitalist"
Why is willingly trading something you have for something you want bad? Why not abandon the word-and its ideological shortcomings? Its connotations are worse than "greed."
Because we are using the word as what it actually means. Why abandon it because some others are trying to redefine it or give it bad connotations? I'm all for reclaiming words, but when the word's near universal application is unethical, popular, and appropriate, the reclaiming is going to take some uglyand backwards revisionism, as well as resistence from longtime anticapitalists. Nothing "actually" means anything, you know. Ideology is a conversation with arguably justifiable conclusions, not an emperical fact, that determine meaning
Before capitalism if you invented something sweet your feudal lord would say YOINK thanks for the sweet invention. after capitalism the person who invented it could chose to use it for his own purposes or to trade it with someone else for something else. this is what i mean by keep, i should have been more explicit though, this was admittedly a communication failure on my part.
Are you sure? Do you have an example of that? Inventions are invented to improve the world. The first video game was invented on an oscilloscope for a fair. Then pong happened and the industry crashed. Nowadays you have either endless mindless Call of Duty clones or free indie games and the Oclulus Rift. Is the whole of your worldview about your own personal opinions? Hail Satan. |
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Firstly this: I think they should be renamed to "Peace Officers", drop the guns, have a google glass-type of face mounted camera, a shield, and a taser. Their only responsibility should be to stop any and all violence. Then killing a police officer would legitimately be a heinous crime. Leave investigation to investigators who use voluntary means of obtaining information.
+g 64Secondly, I'd love to see a cleverly crafted argument for why OP isn't a great idea (so that it can be ceremoniously torn utterly asunder. |
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Would that not make the surviving bitcoins ultravaluable after a decimal shift? Also, If you use OSX, Windows, or any Linux with 'auto-update' then the government has a ready-made backdoor through which they could delete all traces of Bitcoin and their wallets from most computers. So yeah, different linux distributions are located in different countries. Which government has the auto update backdoor into them? Maybe all goverments? Or even aliens? +1 |
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i already conceded this point in my post. "granted with out capitalism some people will experiment for curiosities sake" it is not sufficient to counter my argument because my argument was not that people would not invent, it was that people would invent less. from 100,000 bc to 1bc people still invented things, just not as many things as from 1700 to 2013.
Now we're heading into really wacky territory. To begin, i never said that "people will still invent" -- i said that fear & greed are not primary motivators of great people. You'll find little correlation in great Scientists /composers/ painters/etc. & great ... whatever you call guys who are spectacularly wealthy. This is doubly strange, since society tends to reward its exceptional members the only way it knows how -- with $$$. When i read about my heroes from *every field but finance*, they're ... what's the polite phrase? "Financially undistinguished." Why? Now for your timeline breakdown. You'll dig this. World population in 10,000 BC : 4 million World population in 0 AD : 170 million (x42.5) World population in 1700 : 610 million (x152.5) World population NOW : 7,100 million (x1775.0) People love numbers, +1 for exponential growth. If people were put on this earth fully developed, and knew just as much in 0AD as they do today (in other words, be on par with the modern man in every way), they would invent 1,775 times fewer things in one year. Because there are only ((today's population) / 1,775) people to do the inventing. See? Then there's all that mess about "information thresholds." Let's say you're learning to play guitar. For a while, you're doing nothing but learning chords, scales, hand positions -- it takes you awhile just to tune the thing. You're making nothing but noise 'till ... oh, joy! 145 chord progression! Hey, a pentatonic goes over that real well! And suddenly you've figured out not just one tune, but nearly every blues & half of the rock tunes. That's a the moment the bright people call "epiphany," the time to reap all that you've already planted. There are times like that in history, too. Classic Greece, Renaissance, Industrialisation. The fact that many things you know today were invented in the last 300 years is part simple math (x1775 more people to do the inventing) & part timing. Capitalism? It's been with mankind all along, it's what happens to mankind when grownups stop paying attention.  this discussion is so effing stupid, who cares about statistics, just follow through the logic. capitalism is the system where inventors get to keep their inventions. when inventors are allowed to keep their inventions they are more likely to invent things. more invention leads to more wealth. ergo capitalism leads to more wealth. if you are arguing about something else than you are not arguing against the point i was trying to make. i apologize if i mislead you into believing that i was arguing something other than this. Allowed by who? Keep? Any inventor who keeps her invention may as well have skipped inventing it. Before capitalism if you invented something sweet your feudal lord would say YOINK thanks for the sweet invention. after capitalism the person who invented it could chose to use it for his own purposes or to trade it with someone else for something else. this is what i mean by keep, i should have been more explicit though, this was admittedly a communication failure on my part. Are you sure? Do you have an example of that? Inventions are invented to improve the world. The first video game was invented on an oscilloscope for a fair. Then pong happened and the industry crashed. Nowadays you have either endless mindless Call of Duty clones or free indie games and the Oclulus Rift. |
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[...]
Or if that's not it explain what is your specific definition of capitalism is, that apparently isn't at all the same definition that the rest of us use?
I've offered several versions of my definition already, so I'll just defer to wikipedia this time. It's very important to understand that your economists were selling you something that is not accurate. What you describe is free trade, if you actually own and built the fridge yourself, ect. It's capitalism when toilers built it for you. That's simply wrong. Buying & selling a fridge built by "toilers," buying & selling, private property -- these things are in no way exclusive to capitalism. True. Had the feeling I was going out on a limb there. I was attempting to point at the overlooked value imbued into an object by the people who suffered under an employer to build it, and the complicity a seller of such an object has in that suffering. It's a stretch to find something strictly capitalist in such a simple deal. Diamonds make for a clearer example. |
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[...]
Science was important also but it couldn't have happened with out private property and free trade (capitalism).
Case in point: The stinkin' commies put a sputnik in orbit, scaring the bejesus out of God-ferain' Americans. Followed up by a man in orbit -- all by a country which was full of starvin' illiterate dirt farmers just 50 years ago.  Sorry, despite being done in commie Russia, that was still capitalism. The scientists and astronauts who worked on these projects were all paid handsomely in exchange - more than other poor slobs - and they were also trading their knowledge and works for fame and access, not just money. Worse yet, the whole reason USSR beat USA to it was because USA was working under strict regulations and safety concerns, while USSR was just going, "damn it all, we're going to space, even if we kill a bunch of you bastards in the process!" So, in a way, the Soviet space program won because it was more capitalist than the American one. Also, they weren't dirt farmers being forced to work. Russia had some really great universities for decades, if not a century, at that point, as well as a slew of top scientists and physicists. Hell, the top rocket scientists in the world were coming from Russia as far back as 1800's, and their theories on rocket propulsion and orbits were used by USA and are still used today. As for force, some may have been coerced by peer pressure (especially ones risking their lives) but they all really wanted to do this job. (Source: those were my peeps doing that work, including those working with my family members) Also, I think you guys may be confused, thinking that trade and capitalism = Stuff for Money. It's not. It's voluntary trade of anything that makes both parties better off. Galileo, Einstein, and my grandfather, all valued money, but they also valued fame and recognition. They were furiously competing against their scientific peers for the scarce resource of fame and worldwide recognition, which to them was worth more than the time they put into working out their theories. Finally, sure, it took some guy tinkering on how own computer on his own time to come up with TCP/IP, but it took capitalism to lay the fiberoptic cables across the world to make that science actually do something useful. Capitalism isn't just "whatever works well." My one and only gripe is the insistence that everything good is "Capitalist" Why not abandon the word-and its ideological shortcomings? Its connotations are worse than "greed." |
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"Is that without the state, capitalists cannot withhold their capital from the creative commons"
i wonder if you could explain what this means. as i understand it creative commons is a type of license that people apply to intellectual property. capital is real property not intellectual property so i'm not understanding the connection.
Delete "creative." |
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So what you're saying is capitalism is only capitalism until it becomes statism/communism/fascism.
I'm saying capitalism is only possible when the state facilitates it. My personal definition of capitalism, as well as that of those arguing on my side, and that of the economists that taught me classes on it, is that capitalism is the voluntary exchange of personal property and services. If you have an old fridge to sell, and I am in need of a fridge and have $100 burning in my pocket (or some computer monitors I don't need that you want), we can meet, and trade, and that would be capitalism. The trade was voluntary, and we both came off better from it. Can you explain to be where government or state fits into this trade? Or if that's not it explain what is your specific definition of capitalism is, that apparently isn't at all the same definition that the rest of us use?I've offered several versions of my definition already, so I'll just defer to wikipedia this time. It's very important to understand that your economists were selling you something that is not accurate. What you describe is free trade, if you actually own and built the fridge yourself, ect. It's capitalism when toilers built it for you. |
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i already conceded this point in my post. "granted with out capitalism some people will experiment for curiosities sake" it is not sufficient to counter my argument because my argument was not that people would not invent, it was that people would invent less. from 100,000 bc to 1bc people still invented things, just not as many things as from 1700 to 2013.
Now we're heading into really wacky territory. To begin, i never said that "people will still invent" -- i said that fear & greed are not primary motivators of great people. You'll find little correlation in great Scientists /composers/ painters/etc. & great ... whatever you call guys who are spectacularly wealthy. This is doubly strange, since society tends to reward its exceptional members the only way it knows how -- with $$$. When i read about my heroes from *every field but finance*, they're ... what's the polite phrase? "Financially undistinguished." Why? Now for your timeline breakdown. You'll dig this. World population in 10,000 BC : 4 million World population in 0 AD : 170 million (x42.5) World population in 1700 : 610 million (x152.5) World population NOW : 7,100 million (x1775.0) People love numbers, +1 for exponential growth. If people were put on this earth fully developed, and knew just as much in 0AD as they do today (in other words, be on par with the modern man in every way), they would invent 1,775 times fewer things in one year. Because there are only ((today's population) / 1,775) people to do the inventing. See? Then there's all that mess about "information thresholds." Let's say you're learning to play guitar. For a while, you're doing nothing but learning chords, scales, hand positions -- it takes you awhile just to tune the thing. You're making nothing but noise 'till ... oh, joy! 145 chord progression! Hey, a pentatonic goes over that real well! And suddenly you've figured out not just one tune, but nearly every blues & half of the rock tunes. That's a the moment the bright people call "epiphany," the time to reap all that you've already planted. There are times like that in history, too. Classic Greece, Renaissance, Industrialisation. The fact that many things you know today were invented in the last 300 years is part simple math (x1775 more people to do the inventing) & part timing. Capitalism? It's been with mankind all along, it's what happens to mankind when grownups stop paying attention. this discussion is so effing stupid, who cares about statistics, just follow through the logic. capitalism is the system where inventors get to keep their inventions. when inventors are allowed to keep their inventions they are more likely to invent things. more invention leads to more wealth. ergo capitalism leads to more wealth. if you are arguing about something else than you are not arguing against the point i was trying to make. i apologize if i mislead you into believing that i was arguing something other than this. Allowed by who? Keep? Any inventor who keeps her invention may as well have skipped inventing it. |
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I've lived under bridges. I have $0 to my name for over 4 years. Don't be mean, buddy, I get what you're saying. I just don't think you get where it comes from.
Are you a physicist? A biologist? A psychologist? Can I come to you for tax or car mechanic advice? I specialize in smoking cigarettes and being a useful bum. The fine arts didn't work out for me. I almost inherited a fortune, but these days, I'm just not dying. So why is it that one must be a physicist, a biologist, a psychologist, a tax accountant, or a mechanic to give sound advice on those topics, but anyone living under a bridge with $0 to their name and no experience in the field can give authoritative statements on economics and capitalism? Your "under bridges, $0 net worth" claim only shows you have little to no experience in the very thing you are arguing against. Perhaps my rarer perspective gives me more experience in how noncapitalist frameworks function. You don't need to be a surgeon to know why getting stabbed is bad. |
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I've lived under bridges. I have $0 to my name for over 4 years. Don't be mean, buddy, I get what you're saying. I just don't think you get where it comes from.
I don't think you get where any of it comes from. Perhaps I do. Perhaps my reading of anti capitalist literature and speaking with wage slaveshas given me perspective. You've lived under bridges? I've done some 'urban camping' of my own in my time.
Homelessness can be fun. It can give you a taste of what its like to exist without depending on a job. Now you can argue with people from across the US and around the world in real time, and it costs you nearly nothing of consequence. It's not quite free, but it's now cheap enough that buying an overpriced coffee can get you an hour or two of free wifi access. The Internet itself existed for 20 years before the 'private sector' gained access to it at immense costs, and another 20 years later and more people in this world have regular access to a personal email account than have regular access to a flush toilet. Why?
Science. Because nearly all of the Internet is privately owned property engaging in exchanges for mutual benefits (i.e. Capitalism) whereas the vast majority of urban areas in this world are served either by water monopolies or publicly owned municipal water services.
The internet is a great example of how capitalism fails, illustrated in the next part. Between pirating and CC, the internet is sort of free. Sure, a flush toilet is an expense, but it's value is in it's ability to deal with the human waste problem effectively and cheaply. Even under a bridge, you benefit from our modern society in the sense that potable water is cheap. Filling your water bottle up at a public fountain costs you nothing, but it still costs someone something, just not enough for them to bother with the costs you incur.
This is what 100%of the internet is for me. If I am a freegan, capitalists lose. Less than a penny a gallon where I live, but in another part of the world wherein a gallon of drinking water might cost as much as a dime, but the average wage is $2 a day; four gallons per flush just doesn't make economic sense. And yet, there are still people who will save for a cell phone and service to gain access to the Internet, because the efficiencies of communications make their trades more profitable. The farmer can find a buyer for his harvest faster, without wasting time and energy traveling into town to speak to some dealer in person; as an example.
The internet is awesome You cannot fathom the many ways that capitalism has improved your own life, even during the midst of your poverty and homelessness.
I can fathom the ways that capitalism caused my poverty and homelessness. Even bridges are owned. This is problematic if one isn't stealthy. |
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