It is clear that only 3 of the 9 are willing to protect constitutional rights. The other 6 are willing to uphold tyranny. The tenth amendment has long since fallen. It is clear we can no longer rely on the fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh. Progressive undermining of the second will follow. The first alone will not stand long. |
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What is the loan secured on ? What is the debtors ability to pay ? What is the creditors ability to enforce repayment ?
Answers: 1) The taxpayer 2) None so the loans will be charged to the taxpayer 3) The police, courts, and tax authority are very good at seizing assets and making sure people pay taxes. The bank has had to write off his debt - though ultimately public money is being used to put right the banks losses, which for me is the crux of the problem today.
Agreed, I would call that process socialism. It could also be called collectivism which is the same thing. There was a time in US history when our leaders understood the dangers. Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!
When asked to name his greatest accomplishment Jackson replied simply "I killed the bank" He is also the only president to ever pay off the national debt. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.
Sadly we were not vigilant. It took 77 years but the bank rose from the dead. Pushback against collectivism has subsequently grown more feeble with each successive generation. The irresistible trend is towards ever greater centralization, ever greater loss of fitness, and ever greater taxation. It will continue until the system collapses. In the US we complain about these problems but the US is actually one of the healthiest countries. We will be among the last to fail. The design of our government and a strong libertarian minority have given us a degree of resistance. It is not immunity (far from it) rather we are simply succumbing at a slower rate to the disease. It is our exported "freedom" that is the most virulent.  |
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... From payday loans to mortgages, people need to borrow money ...
No they don't "need" that. They may be used to do it, and it will be painful when they no longer can, but they will adapt. Americans used to understand Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!
From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834) When asked what his greatest accomplishment as president was Jackson replied simply "I killed the bank" It took 77 years for a central bank to reemerge. A nice video for those interested can be found here http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread685271/pg1 |
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Maybe you need to go back to school.
Yes, a loan doesn't depend on fiat money. Never said it did. The issue is how much gets borrowed and lent.
When an economy goes down, people get conservative. When people get conservative, they borrow less and lend less. When the economy goes up, the opposite happens. This impacts total money supply as when people lend more, there is more money floating around (ex: Person A has $100, they lend $90 to person B, so now there's $190 worth of money).
Hypothetically, lets assume the following:
-When an economy is strong, there are 20 dollars floating around for every actual dollar printed.
-When an economy is weak, there are 10 dollars floating around for every actual dollar printed.
-An economy needs $200 of money floating at all times around to properly function.
The advantage of fiat is that a government can increase or decrease the money supply (buy buying or selling bonds) in order to keep prices stable. If the economy is weak, they can print $20, and the economy will be fine (20 x 10). When the economy gets strong, they sell $10 worth of bonds (and pull $10 out of the market), and the economy will still be fine (10 x 20).
The problem with BTC is that it cannot do this. There will be a set number of BTC in existence. So every time the economy does something other than remain stable, you're going to have major problems as companies try to react to a currency that's flying across the board. Think of places like Brazil where they have to change their prices daily/weekly (though you may see price decreases as well as increases). Not to mention that we would be in a depression right now if it wasn't for the ability of fiat governments to massively print money in 07/08.
BTC can thrive as a gold like commodity, but it's not going to replace fiat any time soon. The one thing you absolutely never want in an economy is a supply restriction on money, and this can easily happen in a BTC economy. You're far too blind to the positive aspects of central banks in your thinking.
This is classic Keynes-Fisher macroeconomics or KFM. The problem is that KFM is horribly flawed. You are correct in your description of the business cycle, but the proper role for government to mediate these cycles is not to issue debt but to tax and save money during the boom times and spend it during the bust. Yet this never seems to happen. Instead we accumulate debt during the good times and accumulate even more debt during the busts. The result is a fundamentally unstable system that will eventually fail. There is no need for a fiat currency. Instead what we need is less collectivism and better governance. As neither of these are going to happen we will all get a front row seat as we watch the collapse of KFM. Fur a complete explanation I would refer readers to the Economic Devastation thread. |
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Communism is a monetary based system, The venus project advocates a system where money simply no longer exists.
Money is simply a medium of exchange. Eliminate money and all you have done is limit the ability to trade goods and services. In a hypothetical society without currency power lies with those who control the means of production. A society without currency lacks the ability to effectively trade as barter is highly inefficient. Individuals in such a world would be completely dependent on the producers in this case robots. So who gets to own or control the robots? If the answer is we all do equally or the government does and the people control the government the system is communism. See the Definition of Communism. Regarding technological surplus requiring new operating paradigms, I'm pretty sure that for the indefinite future people will use their social leverage to increase their power, and that social leverage will be primarily monetary or military for as far out as I can usefully plan. That said, if a critical mass of talent were to focus efforts on creating a sustainable autonomic technical system incorporating productive capacity to support the full human life-cycle, it would probably be doable in a decade or two.
This could work as a form of base human income funded by taxation on a prosperous overall competitive economy. However, the key operative word is sustainable meaning resources have to be rationed in such a system. This circles us back to the question of how do we achieve said rationing? What I like about the Dark Enlightenment (which I had actually never heard of prior to a month ago) is that it has given me a ton of outside the box thinking to look through. Each of those little dots on the map above is a blog of some sort. I am sure some of it will be garbage but there will also be gems. I have started with the political philosophy of Menicus Moldbug since he is described as the founder of the neoreactionaries (the purple section of the map). His Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations is essentially a detailed walk-through of Complaint the Third: Democracy is a failure. It's a very long but fascinating read. |
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I think we need the venus project
Lets take a closer look at this Venus Project. The term resource-based economy is used by the Venus Project to describe a hypothetical economic system in which goods, services, and information are free. Fresco argues that the earth is abundant with resources and that our current practice of distributing resources through a price system method is irrelevant and counterproductive to our survival.
Lets just call this what it is a modern day repackaging of communism. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
According to Marx such an arrangement is made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist society will produce. The idea is that with full development of socialism there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs. Marx described the conditions under which such a creed could be applied. Mainly a society where technology and social organization had substantially eliminated the need for physical labor. Marx argued his belief that, in such a mythical society, each person would be motivated to work for the good of society despite the absence of a social mechanism compelling them to work. Just remember the true natural state of such a system as was so elegantly laid out for us by George Orwell. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples."
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
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Quoting myself as the post is relevant to this thread Premises of the Dark Enlightenment
Posted on 2014-02-19 by esr
Complaint the Third: Democracy is a failure. It has produced a race to the bottom in which politicians grow ever more venal, narrow interest groups ever more grasping, the function of government increasingly degenerates into subsidizing parasites at the expense of producers, and in general politics exhibits all the symptoms of what I have elsewhere called an accelerating Olsonian collapse (after Mancur Olson’s analysis in The Logic Of Collective Action).
Of all the the premises of the Dark Enlightenment this is the most most critical for this is the mechanism (described as the power vacuum up-thread) which allows collectivism to grow to the the point where it threatens systemic collapse. The historical predecessor for our current system of government was Athenian democracy. Their system lasted for 178 years. Plato (427 or 428 BC - 348 or 347 BC) lived during the Athenian democracy. Plato in his most well known work the Republic points out all of the problems and pitfalls regarding living in a democracy, including its injustice and the oppression of the individual under the weight of a democracy that dictates at the whim of the majority of citizen votes.
The most chilling praise of democracy that I have ever read is that of James Anthony Froude. Democracies are the blossoming of the aloe, the sudden squandering of the vital force which has accumulated in the long years when it was contented to be healthy and did not aspire after a vain display. The aloe is glorious for a single season. It progresses as it never progressed before. It admires its own excellence, looks back with pity on its earlier and humbler condition, which it attributes only to the unjust restraints in which it was held. It conceives that it has discovered the true secret of being 'beautiful for ever,' and in the midst of the discovery it dies.
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A centralized democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
The founding fathers were well aware of the potential dangers. At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word "democracy" had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation's inhabitants were able to participate in elections.
Specifically the founding fathers built a government with multiple safeguards against democracy. They built a government which 1) Lacked the ability to directly tax the population (no authority to tax income). 2) Had only one of its two legislative branches directly elected (The senate was appointed by state legislatures). 3) Did not have a fiat currency (gold and silver was money). 4) Did not have a central bank (no FED). 5) Did not allow direct election of the president (president was to be selected by the electoral collage). 6) Only gave the right to vote to landowners (called freeholders). 7) Gave most power to the states. Gradually over time each of these safeguards has fallen. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the constitution of 1787 had created, he replied: "A republic, if you can keep it." He reply has traditionally been read as a warning against monarchy, but it could just as easily be read as a warning against democracy. The Dark Enlightenment argues that we are failing to "keep it". It argues that the republic is decaying into democracy and that democracy is a failure. |
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Premises of the Dark Enlightenment
Posted on 2014-02-19 by esr
Complaint the Third: Democracy is a failure. It has produced a race to the bottom in which politicians grow ever more venal, narrow interest groups ever more grasping, the function of government increasingly degenerates into subsidizing parasites at the expense of producers, and in general politics exhibits all the symptoms of what I have elsewhere called an accelerating Olsonian collapse (after Mancur Olson’s analysis in The Logic Of Collective Action).
Of all the the premises of the Dark Enlightenment this is the most most critical for this is the mechanism (described as the power vacuum up-thread) which allows collectivism to grow to the the point where it threatens systemic collapse. The historical predecessor for our current system of government was Athenian democracy. Their system lasted for 178 years. Plato (427 or 428 BC - 348 or 347 BC) lived during the Athenian democracy. Plato in his most well known work the Republic points out all of the problems and pitfalls regarding living in a democracy, including its injustice and the oppression of the individual under the weight of a democracy that dictates at the whim of the majority of citizen votes.
The most chilling praise of democracy that I have ever read is that of James Anthony Froude. Democracies are the blossoming of the aloe, the sudden squandering of the vital force which has accumulated in the long years when it was contented to be healthy and did not aspire after a vain display. The aloe is glorious for a single season. It progresses as it never progressed before. It admires its own excellence, looks back with pity on its earlier and humbler condition, which it attributes only to the unjust restraints in which it was held. It conceives that it has discovered the true secret of being 'beautiful for ever,' and in the midst of the discovery it dies.
...
A centralized democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
The founding fathers were well aware of the potential dangers. At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word "democracy" had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation's inhabitants were able to participate in elections.
Specifically the founding fathers built a government with multiple safeguards against democracy. They built a government which 1) Lacked the ability to directly tax the population (no authority to tax income). 2) Had only one of its two legislative branches directly elected (The senate was appointed by state legislatures). 3) Did not have a fiat currency (gold and silver was money). 4) Did not have a central bank (no FED). 5) Did not allow direct election of the president (president was to be selected by the electoral collage). 6) Only gave the right to vote to landowners (called freeholders). 7) Gave most power to the states. Gradually over time each of these safeguards has fallen. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the constitution of 1787 had created, he replied: "A republic, if you can keep it." He reply has traditionally been read as a warning against monarchy, but it could just as easily be read as a warning against democracy. The Dark Enlightenment argues that we are failing to "keep it". It argues that the republic is decaying into democracy and that democracy is a failure. |
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Still, I don't feel good about keep butting into his threads like this - if for no other reason that I'm merely feeding the troll.
But surely he's just misguided? We ought to lead him back to the light -- that would be the morally right thing to do  Sadly I have conversed extensively with AnonyMint and determined that he is beyond salvation. He will not be led back to the light despite being shown the way on several several occasions. When dealing with dangerous fanatics such as this ignoring them messenger and public ridicule as our friend L'Estrange advised is best tried first. Sadly in tough cases such as this we must move on to more advanced L'Estrange tactics. 'Tis not necessity, but opinion, that makes men miserable; and when we come to be fancy-sick, there's no cure.
There is no opposing brutal force to the stratagems of reason.
That which the world miscalls a jail,
A private closet is to me.
The solution is quite apparent. We need to find a nice private closet for AnonyMint where his dangerous sickness can be contained. |
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Contentionism doesn't appear to be falsifiable.  Agreed, Contentionism is a theory and as it currently stands is not falsifiable. Its validity, like the validity of other non-falsifiable theories will have to be determined by its accuracy in in predicting future events. Contentionism is new thus has no such track record. It is therefore up to individuals to determine if they agree with the premises and conclusions of the theory. For Example, if you agree with Contentionism you should probably invest in both the dominant anonymous and non anonymous cryptocurrency as soon as said dominance establishes itself if not sooner. You should also stay far far away from any and all government bonds. If you think Contentionism is false then these recommendations, at least for the reasons argued in the theory, can be ignored. |
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- how about this one Coincube, if we are throwing googled quotations about :-
"When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it." - L'estrange.
Roger L'Estrange huh... let's take a look at the source of your quote As Licenser and Surveyor, L’Estrange was charged with the prevention of the publication of dissenting writings, and authorised to search the premises of printers and booksellers on the merest suspicion of dissension.[5] L’Estrange excelled at this, hunting down hidden presses and enlisting peace officers and soldiers to suppress their activities. He soon came to be known as the “Bloodhound of the Press.”[6] His careful monitoring and control of nonconformist ideas and opinions succeeded not only in checking seditious publications,[4] but also in limiting political controversy and reducing debate.[7]
Yep sounds like someone who would support ridicule to suppress knowledge. I will respond with a good old fashion American revolutionary. "But resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us." -- Thomas Jefferson http://books.google.com/books?id=zJchn31t7DgC&pg=PA288&dq=%22resort+is+had+to+ridicule%22,+%22Thomas+Jefferson%22&hl=en&ei=L4FqTdiPGYaCgAfSkenLCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=ridicule&f=false |
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Many computational biologists would agree that (and I'm sure Anonymint would have to, albeit begrudgingly, concur) , had it not been for lambda calculus, the understanding of spreadsheets might never have occurred. An essential challenge in artificial intelligence is the understanding of probabilistic information.
On a similar note, given the current status of optimal symmetries, hackers worldwide daringly desire the emulation of object-oriented languages. Nevertheless, context-free grammar alone is able to fulfill the need for the construction of context-free grammar especially with special reference to ECDSA and its existential threat to the farthing.
“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” ― Nate Silver |
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I will be away for some time (work obligations) I wanted to share one last interesting link before I go. The Dark EnlightenmentThe (Bright) enlightenment of the Renaissance was to raise society from the dark anarchy of decentralized warlordism a.k.a. feudalism into the collective light of art, culture, finance, governance, central banking, usury and top-down order. Now the (Dark) enlightenment pushes us from the order into the decentralized disorder (where in Shannon entropy disorder means maximizing the number of least probable possibilities i.e. maximizing degrees-of-freedom and diversity). This is the pendulum of Contentionism that CoinCube and I have been theorizing about. I've stumbled onto an analogy in my recent work on improving Zerocoin. It appears that all public key cryptography hinges on two dual forms, those based on number-theory (e.g. factoring of logarithms or elliptical curves) where the whole is collected into a monolith, or on random oracles where the whole is equipartitioned into its constituent parts (e.g. Lamport signatures). The former is an inductive and latter is a coinductive function (although to make them practical they are not unbounded oracles). We are headed into the coinductive age where the advances are to destructively peel off freedom from the monolithic whole, instead of constructively structure the chaos in collected forms. In the small, in Dark enlightenment (phase of the cyclical contentionism model) we have a plurality of inductive structures constructively growing within the context of the proliferation of structures destructively peeled away from the monolith increasing the economies-of-scale in the small (i.e. networking effects). Whereas in the dual of Bright enlightenment, in the small we are destructively peeling away small inductive structures and binding them together constructively to produce higher economies-of-scale in the large (i.e. fixed capital allocation). P.S. And this post was to get you to realize I was really serious when I said this topic is for the highly intellectual. Please don't be offended by Damned truth. The fundamental goal is maximizing degrees-of-freedom. Degrees-of-freedom is the number of potential orthogonal (independent) configurations, i.e. the ability to obtain a configuration without impacting the ability to obtain another configuration. In short, degrees-of-freedom are the configurations that don't have dependencies on each other.
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This universal trend towards maximum independent possibilities (i.e. degrees-of-freedom, independent individuals, and maximum free market) is why Coase's theorem holds that any cost barrier (i.e. resisting force or inefficiency) that obstructs the optimum fitness will eventually fail. This is why decentralized small phenomena grow faster, because they have less dependencies and can adapt faster with less energy. Whereas, large phenomena reduce the number of independent configurations and thus require exponentially more power to grow, and eventually stagnate, rot, collapse, die, and disappear.
As shown earlier in the economic devastation thread unrestrained socialism by its very nature limits degrees-of-freedom. Society is trapped in a cycle of ever increasing economic inefficiency which is the equivalent of a loss of degrees-of-freedom. Our collective lack of understanding of the fundamental cause will result in attempted "fixes" that will worsen the underlying problem. Similarly, anarchism by its very nature limits degrees-of-freedom. Unrestrained anarchism will quickly exceed the error threshold at which point knowledge is destroyed rather then created. Unrestrained anarchism increases short term fitness at the cost of long term optimization/adaptation. In a fitness landscape anarchism steepens the curve driving the population to the nearest local optima. Individuals not at the local optima are destroyed their uniqueness obliterated. This destruction impacts the ability of the system to obtain another configuration and thus limits degrees of freedom. For example, there would be gaps (i.e. errors in fitness) between a bicycle chain and a curved shape it is wrapped around, because the chain can only freely bend (i.e. without permanent bending) at the hinges where the links are joined. Each hinge is a degree-of-freedom, and the reciprocal of the distance between hinges is the degrees-of-freedom per unit length. Employing instead a solid, but flexible metal bar, the metal would remain fit to the curve only with a sustained force. The resisting force is a reduced degrees-of-freedom and an error in fitness. Permanent bending to eliminate the resisting force, reduces the degrees-of-freedom for future straightening some of the bend for wrapping to larger curves or straight shapes.
Using this analogy unrestrained socialism is using a solid but flexible metal bar forced to the curve using sustained force supplied via expropriation. Unrestrained anarchism is eliminating the resisting force via permanent bending reducing the degrees-of-freedom for future straightening of the bend. Contentionism is the balance of the two forces. Contentionism is our bicycle chain with hinges. The optimum should maximize the search done through anarchism subject to constraint via socialism to limit the loss of information already gained. The role of socialism is to act as a dynamic constraint and smooth the fitness curve. Critically, socialism must be prevented at all cost from warping the fitness curve and creating false local optima. Socialism can only function via expropriation of resources from the fit. If socialism is permitted to create false optima it will progressively pool individuals into this falsehood. The optima can thus only be sustained by ever increasing expropriation on the fit leading to the eventual collapse of the system and the total loss of the dynamic constraint. This way lies the jungle. Socialism has been allowed to grow to the point where it has created multiple false optima. These are set to require ever increasing expropriation from the fit. The end result is Economic Devastation. To solve this requires a solution to the power vacuum. I am hopeful that truly anonymous cryptocurrency can help perform this function. The power vacuum starts to break down once government loses the ability to debase the currency. Even a truly distributed non anonymous cryptocurrency that cannot be debased would be a significant improvement over our current system. It would give us an opportunity to retire fiat debt and force governments to tax for their spending rather then simply debasing the currency. My hope is that cryptocurrency will eventually force socialism to live on a fixed income (taxation of the physical economy). Socialism would then lack the resources to create systemic false optima. The danger of collapse would ease and stability of the dynamic constraint would be achieved. |
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Can you see where you've been going wrong?
The decentralisation you seek is actually less diverse, not more. A cloud of water vapour has a far greater surface area and less degrees of freedom than an equivalent volume of ocean.
This is not quite right. Take a fixed volume of water in a sealed closed container ie no other molecules in the container. No air or anything else to confuse the analysis and no loss of heat to the environment. When the system is very low entropy we see the water as ice it has very limited degrees-of-freedom. Add some energy and the ice melts we get water with significantly increased degrees of freedom. Add some more heat (a lot more) and we eventually will turn the water to gas. The gas has far more degrees of freedom and potential energy then the water and the water more then the ice. The analogy of the cloud of water is simply the process of losing degrees of freedom and potential energy in the transition from gas to liquid. |
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The (Bright) enlightenment of the Renaissance was to raise society from the dark anarchy of decentralized warlordism a.k.a. feudalism into the collective light of art, culture, finance, governance, central banking, usury and top-down order.
Now the (Dark) enlightenment pushes us from the order into the decentralized disorder (where in Shannon entropy disorder means maximizing the number of least probable possibilities i.e. maximizing degrees-of-freedom and diversity).
This is the pendulum of Contentionism... We are headed into the coinductive age where the advances are to destructively peel off freedom from the monolithic whole, instead of constructively structure the chaos in collected forms.
The fundamental goal is maximizing degrees-of-freedom. Degrees-of-freedom is the number of potential orthogonal (independent) configurations, i.e. the ability to obtain a configuration without impacting the ability to obtain another configuration. In short, degrees-of-freedom are the configurations that don't have dependencies on each other.
...
This universal trend towards maximum independent possibilities (i.e. degrees-of-freedom, independent individuals, and maximum free market) is why Coase's theorem holds that any cost barrier (i.e. resisting force or inefficiency) that obstructs the optimum fitness will eventually fail. This is why decentralized small phenomena grow faster, because they have less dependencies and can adapt faster with less energy. Whereas, large phenomena reduce the number of independent configurations and thus require exponentially more power to grow, and eventually stagnate, rot, collapse, die, and disappear.
As shown earlier in the economic devastation thread unrestrained socialism by its very nature limits degrees-of-freedom. Society is trapped in a cycle of ever increasing economic inefficiency which is the equivalent of a loss of degrees-of-freedom. Our collective lack of understanding of the fundamental cause will result in attempted "fixes" that will worsen the underlying problem. Similarly, anarchism by its very nature limits degrees-of-freedom. Unrestrained anarchism will quickly exceed the error threshold at which point knowledge is destroyed rather then created. Unrestrained anarchism increases short term fitness at the cost of long term optimization/adaptation. In a fitness landscape anarchism steepens the curve driving the population to the nearest local optima. Individuals not at the local optima are destroyed their uniqueness obliterated. This destruction impacts the ability of the system to obtain another configuration and thus limits degrees of freedom. For example, there would be gaps (i.e. errors in fitness) between a bicycle chain and a curved shape it is wrapped around, because the chain can only freely bend (i.e. without permanent bending) at the hinges where the links are joined. Each hinge is a degree-of-freedom, and the reciprocal of the distance between hinges is the degrees-of-freedom per unit length. Employing instead a solid, but flexible metal bar, the metal would remain fit to the curve only with a sustained force. The resisting force is a reduced degrees-of-freedom and an error in fitness. Permanent bending to eliminate the resisting force, reduces the degrees-of-freedom for future straightening some of the bend for wrapping to larger curves or straight shapes.
Using this analogy unrestrained socialism is using a solid but flexible metal bar forced to the curve using sustained force supplied via expropriation. Unrestrained anarchism is eliminating the resisting force via permanent bending reducing the degrees-of-freedom for future straightening of the bend. Contentionism is the balance of the two forces. Contentionism is our bicycle chain with hinges. The optimum should maximize the search done through anarchism subject to constraint via socialism to limit the loss of information already gained. The role of socialism is to act as a dynamic constraint and smooth the fitness curve. Critically, socialism must be prevented at all cost from warping the fitness curve and creating false local optima. Socialism can only function via expropriation of resources from the fit. If socialism is permitted to create false optima it will progressively pool individuals into this falsehood. The optima can thus only be sustained by ever increasing expropriation on the fit leading to the eventual collapse of the system and the total loss of the dynamic constraint. This way lies the jungle. Socialism has been allowed to grow to the point where it has created multiple false optima. These are set to require ever increasing expropriation from the fit. The end result is Economic Devastation. To solve this requires a solution to the power vacuum. I am hopeful that truly anonymous cryptocurrency can help perform this function. The power vacuum starts to break down once government loses the ability to debase the currency. Even a truly distributed non anonymous cryptocurrency that cannot be debased would be a significant improvement over our current system. It would give us an opportunity to retire fiat debt and force governments to tax for their spending rather then simply debasing the currency. My hope is that cryptocurrency will eventually force socialism to live on a fixed income (taxation of the physical economy). Socialism would then lack the resources to create systemic false optima. The danger of collapse would ease and stability of the dynamic constraint would be achieved. |
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The diagram of the Dark Enlightenment above is incomplete. It is missing Contentionism. I corrected this omission.  |
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The diagram of the Dark Enlightenment above is incomplete. It is missing Contentionism. I corrected this omission. |
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Isn't The Bilderberg Group just a conference for wealthy business leader types, where they can meet in peace to network, discuss their own plans...
In Reply People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public
Adam Smith The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII, p. 145, para. c27. |
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I'm not that interested in how the law is currently interpreted in some specific jurisdiction right now (no horse in the race either), but I would like to see someone actually argue why bitcoin should not have the same exception as these existing exceptions "to facilitate trade and commerce by favouring security of transactions over the protection of property rights in certain common, but risky, trading situations". Personally I have problems making a good case against that.
There is no case law here. Thus the only certainty is lots and lots of lawsuits. For Bitcoin the best outcome is if MtGox's records are so bad that they can't identify which bitcoins were stolen but this seems unlikely. Some courts may go with your argument above. Others may rule bitcoin a digital commodity and order coins be returned to victims. It will likely vary by jurisdiction. As clarity in law is probably not coming anytime soon all we can be sure of is uncertainty in regards to this issue. Recommended Reading: How Bitcoin could become its antithesis Failure to Understand Bitcoin Could Cost Investors Billions Economic Devastation |
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There is no chain of title from the depositor to the current owner of a coin. MtGox being off blockchain and pooled funds makes sure of that. You can trace a particular "coin" back to MtGox, but the trace stops there. You can't trace back further than that.
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application of demo dat rule is not a forgone conclusion when it comes to bitcoins. It doesn't apply to legal tender and it also doesn't apply to bearer instruments (i.e. casino chip), or negotiable instruments (i.e. a check). It is at least plausible a judge would rule that bitcoins are more like those exceptions than real property. Until we see a court case we won't know for sure. I am not a judge so what I think matters little but a bitcoin has more in common with a casino chip (a bearer instrument) then it does with a car (which is a unique specific piece of real property).
You have chain if title from the victim to MtGox. With records from MtGox you will also be able to identify the stolen coins that left MtGox. That is a sufficiently strong chain of title for a lawsuit. Your assumption that the courts will rule that bitcoin should be treated like cash rather then a commodity is in my opinion foolishly optimistic. I have no horse in this race (not a MtGox customer). But at the very least this creates huge legal uncertainties for bitcoin. |
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