Substance meaning actual productivity. Like treating patients, managing companies, making economic/business decisions.

The government should not be responsible for anything of substance. A government is a costly, slow, and bureaucratic way to organize anything. It has it's place only in regulating, auditing and prosecuting.

Everything else should be handled by the free market. A free market is not what we have, and we can't have a free-market as long as the economy runs on monopoly money.

A truly competitive free market would work itself out as long as the government sets clear boundaries and is there to prosecute cartels, monopolies, collusion, price setting, and other anti-competitive practices.

Of course this can't happen either as long a bribery is legal in the form of lobbyists. Any candidate taking anything, even a free meal, should be prosecuted. The US government already has conflict of interest rules that conveniently don't extend to politicians.

I don't think so. Americans are funny that way. We generally don't want the government telling us we have to do anything and we don't want them involved in our personal business. The younger people may have a different view on this but their numbers are just too small to matter in a national election.

When you see statistics and polls showing differently, you have to understand, most hard working American's aren't going to speak to some asshole calling you after dinner to answer stupid survey questions. This is how Trump won in surprise fashion. The pissed off people will show up and vote but aren't going to speak to polsters about it.

Government controlled healthcare is not a reasonable solution. You would lose all the innovation America creates and the whole world benefits from. They could regulate insurance companies and healthcare providers though to eliminate some of the most heinous activities (such as drug and ER pricing) but taking over would set the world back decades in my opinion.

Why? He could have given everyone a dollar. How is that mind-bogglingly stupefying or are you saying the person who posted that on twitter is mind-bogglingly stupefying?

Reading that quote, how do you get that a child of a baby boomer is a millennial? It specifically says gen x is the generation between baby boomers and millennials.

Enough with the generation wars. They are not even a real thing, they were created by marketing firms to generalize groups of people.

The children born after WWII were numerous, which allowed for a lot of productivity gains around the world. They built the nuts and bolts of the world we live in.

Their children expanded on the nuts and bolts and made them more useful in day to day life.

Their grandchildren use the devices and technology that their parents and grandparents created and we've yet to see what their impact will be.

No way I would burden myself, my insurance company, and by proxy, every other person's premiums, or society in general if I had those kind of problems. I'll just have to let life (or death) run it's course when I get that far gone. You know, take it like a man, instead of living on life support.

The first thing you have to know about the US is that a large portion of the population has no health insurance, does not go to the doctor, and has probably only seen a doctor a few times in their lifetime.

They don't have a doctor, don't really know where to find one on short notice, and aren't going to wait for an appointment if there is something so extreme as to get them to see a doctor. They only use emergency rooms for care, and some never intend to pay. Hospitals know this, which is why they charge $3000 for a visit to the emergency room (this is a real number btw from personal experience taking an ex girlfriend). Their collection department is hoping to get a 10% return on the amount they bill through collection agencies.

Trump vs Sanders would be the largest landslide victory in the history of presidential elections. No one over 40 is voting for a communist in America. No way he gets even 30% of the vote on a national level. Sanders might have done ok if he didn't refer to himself as a socialist. People still remember the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). In America, socialist means communism.

Must be what the rally was about yesterday. Some peeps got wind of the cut early.

Yeah, the normally quoted death rate is likely only considering people who were admitted to the hospital. We were talking about if everyone in the world caught it, where 90% of people won't even seek medical care.

I would say the Korean numbers are probably the most accurate in the world because they are testing everyone. The US charges for everything so most sick people are not going to go to the hospital for a slight sickness. China and Iran are outright lying.

Based on the Korean numbers, the death rate is 0.5% but likely higher because of the lag between getting sick and dying, but let's say it's 0.5%. If the whole world gets it, that's 35 million people dead. Granted, a lot of these people would have died from the flu or some other disease anyway but still, that is a lot of people.

Interestingly though, if the Korean numbers are correct, there should be over 600,000 infected in China based on 3000 deaths, rather than the 80,000 they are reporting.

One big thing will need to change before it becomes the global reserve currency though. It will have to be declared a currency by most of the world. There is no way it grows to that level as a taxable commodity.

Edit: Other currencies could be backed by bitcoin though.

The dream scenario would be 1% of the money being taken out of equities finding it's way to bitcoin. Bonds are at record levels. Gold is a joke to most investors, commodities are falling, most will just hold cash but what if bitcoin starts rising at the same time the stock market crashes? That reverse correlation could make for an epic spike.

I think we saw a decline in the last few days because traders are trying to make it look like bitcoin is correlated to the stock market. I hope they run out of ammo while the stock market keeps declining. Wishful thinking perhaps.

I bet he has another backup somewhere. Better wait until bitcoin transactions have better privacy before moving them though.

The worldwide average "Electricity Only" cost of mining is likely around $7500/BTC. Maybe some miners are shutting down temporarily? Probably just variance though.

If bitcoin is still mined worldwide by then, I doubt any changes to the rules would be possible. It would require consensus and the world I know can't get consensus on any topic. Therefore, the only way to change the rules is to fork off. That could happen many more times and the value will follow if there is a market for it.

I think big daddy Bitcoin will be just fine though.

No need to incetivize miners. It's a self-regulating system. If they can't make enough money, they will drop out which makes the remaining miners more profitable.

Also, fees may increase as well and small transactions will be squeezed out. This is ok. There is no reason to use the worlds most secure transaction network to buy a cup of coffee.

Even if there is something wrong with it, or it was intercepted before you received it, it seems like you would be able to verify what the QR code says before you broadcast the transaction so it shouldn't be an issue. Similar to an Electrum air-gapped setup, you always verify what you signed before broadcasting the transaction.

I also wouldn't trust any hardware wallet to generate my Mnemonic in case it was tampered with or the manufacturer is doing something sketchy.

I don't know if I'd want to be one of the first to buy one from a new company but maybe Trezor and Ledger will take the hint and do something similar.

I don't trust anything connected to the internet. The next generation of hardware wallets use QR codes instead like the Ellipal Titan.