What a waste of time that was. Ty, I was 2min in and paused reading this thread. I closed the tab now. Curiosity got the best of me and I'm actually glad. The video is quite decent and his points have a lot of merit and I suggest people to at least listen to this presentation. Of course he is completely oblivious to the invisible regulations by strictly market consumers (i.e. the free market) and wrongly thinks we must have governmental regulatory tools to avoid volatility which is a shame since I got the feeling he is pretty intelligent. Wow 54:40 guy presents a beautiful counterargument to Kenneth Bromberg's argument that Bitcoin is not a currency because it doesn't have sufficient future value guarantees to which he doesn't have an answer for. |
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What a waste of time that was. Ty, I was 2min in and paused reading this thread. I closed the tab now. |
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A decent and factually correct piece. Someone did their homework.
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Care to edit your OP title to not needlessly cause FUD?
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while you seem to want to rule over others in how they describe bitcoin If you call ruling over people with my pointing out to people what the truth is, then yes, I guess I am. |
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Is that really your best attempt to weasel yourself into justifying calling Bitcoin democratic? It's being supervised by people?  The reason why I'm so strictly against calling Bitcoin democratic is because of all the bad things that actually come with that adjective. I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but there are no rights in Bitcoin, there are no entitlements in Bitcoin, there are no groups of people ruling over other groups of people in Bitcoin. And I don't want Bitcoin, something so powerful, honest, strict, free of coercion, voluntary and with a high likelihood being a very beneficial technology to all people, help in any way shape or form elevate the connotation or the image of a word that represents ideas and real world institutions which are the sole culprit of so many problems and so much suffering that we have today. I don't want for someone to be able to ever say: "Look at Bitcoin, see how well democracy can work?" Because believe me, just like nowadays they say "Look at America or Europe, see how capitalism doesn't work?", which is a complete and utter lie since we haven't had capitalism for a long long time, someone using Bitcoin as propaganda for that evil ideology is just as bound to happen, and I will have none of it.  |
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Look at silver at $28 KABOOM and it's gone:  well almost  |
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That is just one specific form "a" democracy can take. Just one form that does not define all possible forms. You know they put those numbers in front of those definitions in dictionaries to show that a word can have multiple definitions. Not all of them apply in all uses of the word.  Listen to yourself. You're telling me that Bitcoin is democratic, it just isn't democratic as we know what being democratic means in the real world. It's like saying my bike is blue, it just isn't blue as we all see the color blue. Can you see how little sense you make? Hazek, fix your brain. Your logic is tortured. Its pretty clear what Portnoy is saying: democracy means different things to different people/different usage. That means your continued attempt to pigeonhole democracy as 51%, rule 51% rule, 51% rule, 51% rule, 51% rule....is just silly. Go back to the Latin: demo=people cracy= rule of "Rule of People" can take many forms, not all involve everything being up for 51% vote. Bitcoin isn't ruled by people, not 1% or 51% or 99% or 100%, hence not a democracy. |
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Man that's one awesome design you got there. Big ups on going Bitcoin exclusive on your new stuff!
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Not being personally involved in this debacle and just sitting on the sidelines watching the train wreck unfold I have to say it's just magnificent to watch a market being regulated strictly by market consumers(i.e. a free market) doing it's work. There's not a chance in the world any crony government agency would ever be this vicious in justifiably criticizing a business and it's practices.  |
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Excellent interview, I posted it on ronpaulforums.com and dailypaul.com, hopefully we get a few more libertarians to see the light.
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An agreement that says something to the effect of "these bits operate under these rules and an owner who has the sole right to decide who to pass them on to". In addition to this, there's an agreed on procedure for establishing a consensus about who has and what bits. Fixed your post. There's no agreement about the value, just about the rules. Value is being continually rediscovered through supply and demand. |
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Pretty much. I'd say that the people changing the rules would be the ones creating a new network, though. Understood. The minority/majority concept doesn't really apply here at all, which does exclude it from being democratic. Any portion of the network can choose to start playing by their own rules but they can only play by themselves. I have to say that I like Bitcoin even more now that I understand this.  Can you now see why I'm so nitpicky about people using the adjective democratic for describing Bitcoin? |
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I don't see what isn't democratic about the Bitcoin network, you acquire the support of majority hashing power and the minority has the choice to just follow or start their own network. That is well, democracy in such a clear way that I couldn't even think of a better example of real democracy.
A majority of miners can't change the network rules. If every miner chose to increase the block reward from 50 BTC to 100 BTC, they would all just be ignored by everyone else. Your client applies the fixed rules of the network no matter what other people do. Your bitcoin is secured in a way that is physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter a majority of miners, no matter what. And those are the undemocratic facts about Bitcoin. Ty theymos for chiming in. |
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"Democratic" is a fine enough word to describe what the bitcoin experiment is all about. You can talk until you're blue in the face to try
and change the meaning of the word based on others misuse of it, but, I suggest, it will still represent those positive qualities, already mentioned,
to those with a reasonable education in the English language. That's your problem right there. You need a reasonable education in Latin, not English. Demos - people, kratos - to rule i.e. the rule of the people, majority rule! i.e. nothing like Bitcoin. |
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What bitcoin is: Honest, strict, free of coercion, voluntary, regulated by market consumers (a free market), sovereign, without entitlement of equality between users ect.
@Portnoy: Can you please point to an existing democracy that can by described by even one of these terms? I can point to many. I will only choose one to make the point: My girlfriend's book club. Do you and hazek think that "democratic" is a term that should only refer to the political governance of nation states? lol If the book club has a ruler(s) it can't be described by any of the adjectives I listed. And to answer your question: of course not. |
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We usually use words that describe what is to describe what is and not what isn't.
Miners have the ability to do so while casual users do not. Where in these facts do you see your eulogized democratic equality is my question..?
well you don't. huh? |
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