The 'poverty' argument is circular. The word poverty can mean different things (impoverished how?) but obviously if you define poverty as a lack of money, then you will always determine that a world without money is an impoverished one. Would you suggest that it is impossible to not have any money but have ample food and shelter?
How do you build a house without money? You produce wool. The brick maker needs a jumper. So you trade. How many bricks can you get for a jumpers worth of wool? 3? 10? not enough to build a house. So what do you do. The brick maker might need some eggs, but you don't make eggs. You can trade wool for eggs with the egg maker, then trade those eggs for bricks, but then eggs would be MONEY! And that's against the rules. You could make your own eggs, but the brick maker only needs a few for his lunch. So now you have 20 bricks. long way to go. You just could make everything the brick maker desires until you have a house worth of bricks. But now you have, by definition, removed specialization from the economy. You may have food and shelter, but it won't be "ample". Money is NOT barter. Bartering/exchanging is a process, money is not. Money is not intrinsic to exchange. "Hey, here's a stick I found on the ground. I'll give you this stick if you give me that pebble."
yes, but as soon as I trade that stick for a leaf, that stick is money. By the way, there's a positive correlation between money and mental illness given that mental illness is more prevalent in industrialized nations.
That proves it! I've seen you say some brilliant things, but I must admit I'm pretty astonished to read your argument.
Money is what a GOVERNMENT says it is. Silver is NOT money in any market and it hasn't been since blue-seal notes were utilized. It is a commodity. Legal tender notes and gold are money (gold is money because the government still allows debts to be paid with gold). Take a silver eagle into a store and try to buy something with it. You will find that you will receive face value for your coin and not the value of the silver content as suggested by commodity markets.
If you define money as "what the government says it is" then sure, we can have a great economy without money. It's funny that you are astonished by evoorhees argument, because I'm pretty sure you have no idea what that argument is. |
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So I guess it's fairly predictable that the particular brand of anarchist libertarian on this forum wouldn't have thought through his philosophies enough to realize that eliminating redistributive policies would also completely eliminate the fictional "labor advantage" of people who have to travel a thousand miles in order to work...
It is kind of surprising though that evorhees at least can't intuitively make the connection between the FED's substantial inflation tax and wages lost to immigration. Would you call the Federal Reserve "moral"? Do you consider the petrodollar "moral"? It seems rather odd to couch the exploitation of what is effectively modern-day tribute labor in terms of morality, especially when the armies that extract that tribute are financed via wealth-redistribution. And you go so far as to label the corporate beneficiaries of this theft the "moral" ones? I disagree. This is a huge issue, and one that is intimately tied with the fundamental reason for Bitcoin's existence. It's too bad that more of you don't recognize this.
Read it twice. Still don't know what your point is or even what you are saying. o_O I'm pretty confident that evoorhees believes the FED to be immoral. Excuse me if I'm wrong. As to the topic, it's asinine to blame immigration when we have sanctioned a monopoly institution with the moral right and obligation to initiate force and steal, then not realising that IT is the source of all our woes. |
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...snip...
There isn't a better alternative so saying democracy isn't perfect is not really more useful than complaining about the weather.
The alternative is: don't use violence. It's pretty simple. Poor people? no problem, just use violence to help them. Sick people? no problem, just use violence to help them. Violence being used? no problem, just use violence to help them. All state solutions to problems are based on using a gun. Don't say there are no alternatives, because society uses voluntary interactions to solve problems all the time. aka the market. How will people get food if the government didn't run the farms and shops? Oh wait... they don't and yet we have food. Impossible!!! You can't have a free market without a state. So what is the point you are making? Umm... you can't have a free market WITH a state, by definition. The point I'm making is: stop sanctioning the institutionalised violence that is the state. It only exists because you, and most others, falsely believe it's necessary. It's an epidemic of Stockholm syndrome. |
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It happens because people like you fail to see the violence of the state.
The UK is a democracy. State violence is done at the will of the people who vote. In this case, you are trolling and luckily people don't vote for trolls to be shot at dawn. lol. Democracy = tyranny of the masses. I didn't vote to empower unions, yet I have union power inflicted on me. It is simply one group of people doing violence to another, voting majority vs voting minority and non-voters. But you dream up some delusion, the democratic equivalent of the 'divine right of kings' - that the 'people' are doing violence to themselves.... buahaha. In this case 'the people' have voted for something stupid: to empower unions (to prevent businesses from simply firing and replacing anyone who strikes - as would be the case under a true 'freedom of association'). Irrationality, maybe, but not by the drivers, irrationality of the voters thinking unions were a free lunch. They were wrong and now they pay for being wrong. There isn't a better alternative so saying democracy isn't perfect is not really more useful than complaining about the weather. The alternative is: don't use violence. It's pretty simple. Poor people? no problem, just use violence to help them. Sick people? no problem, just use violence to help them. Violence being used? no problem, just use violence to help them. All state solutions to problems are based on using a gun. Don't say there are no alternatives, because society uses voluntary interactions to solve problems all the time. aka the market. How will people get food if the government didn't run the farms and shops? Oh wait... they don't and yet we have food. Impossible!!! |
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On topic: Welfare recipients should be required to work for their welfare, no exceptions. If the government is going to give away money, at least make people work for it! You know, do trash cleanup on the roadsides, or clean laundry for a nursing home, or SOMETHING. The fact that people get money as a reward for doing absolutely nothing just astounds me.
Old topic I know, but you don't seem to understand where unemployment comes from. You really believe there is lots of work in society that isn't currently being done by someone - there aren't contractors already employing people to do this work (clean up trash and wash old peoples clothes)? Instead of the contractors employing people to do this work, you would like to see them lay off people and let all the work be taken up by people on welfare? (how could they compete with slave labor?) Why don't the contractors just employ all these people if there is so much extra work that needs doing? Unemployment exists becasue the work that needs doing is not distributed fairly amongst the people who are available to work. How many hours a week do you work? - Work less and give someone else a job. Or alternatively, just pay a trivial amount in tax and pay them off. Unemployment comes from the government interfering with the terms of trade. Minimum wage law prevents the lowest skilled from getting jobs. The 100s of regulations dictating how a person may be employed discourages businesses from hiring (eg. bundling health insurance with wages increases the real cost if hiring). Anti discrimination laws discourage employers from hiring minorities for fear of being sued. The welfare system pays people not to work and breeds dependance and entitlement (woman with 37 kids). Likely, this woman irresponsibly spawned so many beggars only because she expected someone else to pay for them. Who's fault is that? Using the state to solve problems through violence is the CAUSE of this and many other problems, NOT the solution. Stop trying to solve social problems by forcing other people to pay for it. Tax breaks are not a part of the free market, unless it's 100% tax breaks for everyone. Theft is not freedom. |
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I'm happier when invididuals pay low taxes because they always know how to make a free economy work and what best to do with their money whether they took macroeconomics or not.
I have to disagree with you there Tuxavant. A significant percentage of 'individuals' have no idea. Individuals who aren't motivated to put their money back into the economy and stimulate growth don't know what is best. The survey found that over a quarter — 25.6 percent — of all households either don’t have a checking or savings account at all, or have a bank account but still choose to rely regularly on “alternative financial services” like payday lenders and pawn shops.
Source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/unbanked-america/What's "best" is subjective and up to the individual to determine. No one has the right to tell anyone what to spend the fruits of their labor on. You might think it's best for your neighbor to invest in some stock. He might think it's best to buy that new TV he really wants. Remember, the economy is not an ends in itself, but a means to provide us with material wealth. As for their influence on the economy, if they end up giving a disproportionate amount of their income to payday lenders, great; now the money is in the hands of someone who does know how to invest it. Is there a problem here? If someone puts their money under a mattress for 10 years, that just means the value of everyone's money increases, until that money is spent. Also, spending for the sake of it doesn't grow the economy. Savings and capital does. |
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if you have multiple nodes, you won't need to keep the blockchain on all of them, just on the pool server. This will save butloads of disc, esp. when the blockchain is massive.
I could be wrong about that. I'm not a miner.
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so what is it? a proxy service or something more?
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the poignant question is: what is the "you" that will be reincarnated?
There is no separate self. Separate identity is an illusion; a mental fiction about an abstract entity called "I".
Every incarnation is the one; god experiencing itself.
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dumbest idea evah!  |
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bacteria cannot innovate or grow their means of production. false analogy. "Bacteria" (as in populations of bacterium) can innovate, it's just ignorant to say otherwise. As for "grow their means of production", what is "means of production"? Bacteria can evolve, sure, but not in one isolated "minimal media" experiment. If you put some humans in a box with some food and left them there then your bacterial story might be analogous to that. Means of production is land, labor, capital. In particular, bacterial do not have capital; machines, technology, etc. which can be used to increase the efficiency of production (get more value for a given unit of resource). As physical resources deplete, so will the efficiency with which we use them to produce value to the market. As various resources become more scarce, their price will increase, driving the market to more efficient alternatives (ie. renewables will become more economically viable). This process will not cease; the problem of finite resources is not a problem to a rich market economy, only to bacteria in a dish. |
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I think this is an interesting analogy:  The above is how "lab-cultured" microorganisms behave. If you grow bacteria on "minimal media", which reproduces the usual natural environment more accurately, they do not do this. Instead there is an extended stationary phase. Interestingly if you collect the bacteria/yeast/whatever still surviving at the end of the death phase, they remain in an extended stationary phase even when given excess nutrients. bacteria cannot innovate or grow their means of production. false analogy. |
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Um no. It reduces the dividend the company pays. The consumer pays the maximum he can be charged regardless of the company's costs. If the consumer is being undercharged, the directors are in breach of their duty.
It will discourage oil production, reducing supply, driving up prices. Though, I don't know if this will affect the pump price much, initially. Not true. Oil production is profitable and the market will ensure that the oil gets produced. Remember, the tax credit only matters AFTER the company has covered its costs and made a profit. So oil production and supply won't be affected. The oil companies charge whatever the market will bear. That is a legal obligation on the directors of the companies. As far as I know, you could reduce all corporate taxes to zero and it won't affect oil prices, but I'm happy to be corrected on that. according to your argument, if we tax 99.99% of oil profits then oil production will not be affected. No, it won't directly affect what they charge, but it will drive all capital away from the industry. supply will be affected and hence so will price. |
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Ok, but as a reason for this leading to more miners, Vlad is entrepreneurial, has created a unique position at this point, and there's a long term and elastic source of reward money. why would he stop there ?
Let's say you invested in inventing a new spade that you could use to dig up $100 of precious metals. There's plenty of precious metals around, but no-one else's spade is any good. Do you make more money by :
A) making a spade and digging
B) selling spades for $99 each ?
ans: B |
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they could just stop paying people not to work and remove the numerous disincentives for companies to hire workers and repeal minimum wage laws. The market creates jobs all by itself, the only reason there is so much unemployment is because of regulation and taxes. |
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Um no. It reduces the dividend the company pays. The consumer pays the maximum he can be charged regardless of the company's costs. If the consumer is being undercharged, the directors are in breach of their duty.
It will discourage oil production, reducing supply, driving up prices. Though, I don't know if this will affect the pump price much, initially. |
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It really pisses me off when people explain something not mentioning the whole picture. What we have in the entire world today is not a free market and it is not capitalism. What we have is GOVERNMENT (FORCE, COMPULSION, VIOLENCE, AUTHORITY) that enables companies to behave in ways the free market would have never allowed them to also called CORPORATISM.
+1 To anyone complaining, if what Vladimir is doing is so lucrative, you'll have no trouble starting your own ASIC farm and taking a share of the market. If it's not, then what have you got to worry about. You assume that Vladimir will be the only guy who ever mines on a massive scale. This isn't the banking sector, where GOVERNMENT FORCE prevents competition. Free market cartels are unsustainable, because there is a great incentive for any participant to break from the cartel and undercut their competitors. Damn state apologists make me sick! |
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Stimulation represents a miss-allocation of resources. Forcing the market to expend its scarce resources on something that it would otherwise not have.
This is the same problem with any centrally planed economic policy. Once you accept that values are subjective (and thus only individual rational actors can know what their own true values are) then you accept that only the collective values of the market can efficiently allocate resources according to those values. Resource allocation that is a function of a bureaucrats values results in destruction of total wealth (value). aka socialism.
Since most people just want to maximize their own personal wealth through the mechanism of voluntary trade, the market results in an incredibly efficient wealth creation machine. EVERYTHING the government does to defy this mechanism (involuntary trade, eg: taxation) makes it less efficient, hence society poorer.
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Nope. They're delusional if they think their Bitcoins will have value when the value is tied to dollars. Once no one wants dollars anymore no one will buy Bitcoins because they won't need them for storing dollar value. Euro will blow up around same time. Pounds will crash along with everything else. Maybe Asian currency basket will be valuable. How many yen is a burger these days?
Bitcoin value is "tied" to dollars? how do you explain the floating exchange rate? Bitcoin value is tied to the goods and services available in exchange for bitcoin + speculation on future availability of such goods and services. "bitcoins store dollar value" wat? |
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There should be no authority. The premise implies the right to initiate force. This is immoral and destructive.
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