I'm happy to admit my mistakes, really. Just point them out to me.

That's the risk you have to consider when you have a problem that the legal system refuses to solve. You may have the absolute moral right to use force, but it can still be (and usually is) very foolish to do so.

There's no difference. If you walk into a candy store and say "I'd like a Hershey's bar" and he hands it to you and you walk out with it without paying, it's still theft. The "it was voluntarily given to me" argument won't fly.

It wouldn't matter. No risks were disclosed. Certainly it was never disclosed that there was a risk that he would just walk off with everyone's money and that was a risk his lenders had to accept as a legitimate investment risk.

If I hire someone to clean my house and he steals my jewelry, can he argue "I never said there was no risk I would steal. When you hire someone to work in your house, you willingly take the risk they might steal from you." Sorry, that fails the giggle test.

If someone borrows money with no intent of repaying it or solicits investment with no intent to actually invest it, that's a criminal matter. (Also civil, but definitely criminal.)

That's true. We'll have to see if anyone, private or government, cares enough to investigate.

I got lots of popcorn.

If that happens, then we live on a desert island.

That is correct. The one advantage that a manipulator has is that he knows the timing and amounts of his manipulations.

The price always come back much more easily than it can be pushed. The further the price gets from where it's going back, the more you pay for each Bitcoin you buy or sell to push it further and the bigger the walls you have to break down.

And this is the really important thing -- if you're trying to push the price of Bitcoin from $10 to $9, a well-financed person can make you sell as many bitcoins at $9.10 as he can afford to buy. And any number of people can each do this to you with you taking losses against each one of them. And then if someone panic sells, you'll have to fight them for the $9 Bitcoins. It's never worked.

I don't see why it would reduce either your volume or your profit. Also, I don't see why it necessitates buying debt at way above market rates. Also, I cannot comprehend how any legitimate business would make an offer that would only be accepted by someone who would also respond to an offer that was an obvious Ponzi scheme. And those are really just the three most obvious flaws in such an explanation. It falls apart in so many places.

We'll know if people attempt to get the authorities involved. Either they'll succeed, and then we're not on a desert island, or they'll fail, and then we are.

Oh, okay. Then we agree. I thought you were trying to explain how I was wrong about Pirate.

Obviously, "Pirate has some secret way to make super-high returns and because he's a nice guy, he shares that money with people who would invest in something that looks exactly like a Ponzi scheme" is silly. So this doesn't explain what Pirate is doing.

The Federal reserve was created to stabilize the value of the US dollar. Prior to the creation of the Federal reserve, the dollar was bouncing up and down by 30% or so in 40 year cycles. Since the creation of the Federal reserve, the dollar has lost value consistently, halving in value every 30 years or so.

Of course, this doesn't prove anything's wrong with the Federal reserve. In fact, if anything, it shows that we need a few more Federal reserves to stabilize the dollar as one hasn't stabilized it nearly enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dollar_value_chart.gif

I don't think we know that yet. We'll have to wait and see.

Exactly. Any explanation that doesn't explain why Pirate borrows at 3,600% effectively equates to "Pirate is so rich he can give money away, and he chooses to give money away only to people who would fall for a Ponzi scheme".

Pirate debt is still selling for more than 0. Pirate can create as much Pirate debt as he wants at a cost of zero to him. Until Pirate debt is completely worthless, Pirate has no incentive to stop selling his own debt.

Say I decided to burn my reputation to make as much money as possible. I would ask for loans, maybe pay some people back to build my reputation, and so on. When would I quit? I would quit as soon as my debt was worthless. So long as I could continue to trade IOUs for bitcoins, why would I stop? Pirate IOUs still trade for bitcoins, so why would he stop?

He can't flood the market by trying to sell all his debt at once. So he needs a week or two to sell off as much as he can to as many new suckers as he can find.

Please, explain you how can make 10% on capital by borrowing at 3,600%. If Pirate doesn't need to borrow at 3,600%, why in the heck is he doing it? Because he likes wasting a buttload of money?

Actually, forget it. Just explain it to me so that I'll understand it and then I'll (probably) point out how it can't possibly make sense with respect to Pirate. (Or just look in the other threads where I did exactly that after people suggested possible ways.)

I disagree completely. Pirate's culpability has no effect on his victims' culpability and vice versa. Each is fully responsible for their own actions and the consequences of them.

And yes, using violence to get stolen property back from a thief is self-defense. In a civilized society, within the scope of operation of its legal and police systems, one give's up one's right to the use of self-defense in non-emergency situations. But where those systems don't apply, one still has it.

If you and I were stranded on a desert island, I would fully have the right to use force to defend my property from you, including taking it back from you if you had stolen it. Defense of one's property is self-defense.

Please, explain how you can make 10% a week by borrowing at 3,600%. I find that very, very hard to believe, but if you have some evidence, I'm perfectly willing to listen. Otherwise, you're basically just saying "it's possible somehow".

It is the only possibility known that explains all the available evidence. If you know of another possible explanation, please tell us what it is.

When you have a set of facts, one explanation that covers them perfectly, that has always been the correct explanation for that set of facts, no other explanation is known, and people who would know another explanation if there is one refuse to provide one, that is sufficient to accept the explanation.

I turn on my light switch and my light comes on. I accept the explanation that electricity from the power company made it come on. That has always been the explanation before. And that case is even weaker, because I can think of other possible explanations. Someone might have disconnected by house from the grid and powered it by generator. Of course, nobody has any reason to do that. Nobody has done that before.

This is logical reasoning and common sense. It is more than sufficient for accepting an explanation under ordinary circumstances. (Those where nobody has a vested interest in convincing others or themselves that the obviously true is not true.)

I'll try not to respond further about this in this thread, since there are already 800 threads about that and this thread is about something else.

I am one of those. I will not apologize unless I have made some sort of mistake.

Can you please explain to me the possibility I failed to consider? I've been asking people to do that and to date nobody has. You cannot fault me for failing to consider a possibility that I had no knowledge of nor any way to know. That's like faulting a caveman for not knowing that Mars has two moons.

If there's any mistake in my reasoning, tell me what it is. If you know but refuse to tell me, allowing me to continue to spread what you know is FUD and that I have no way to know, how is that *my* reputation that's at stake?

If I've made a mistake, point it out. I'm happy to correct errors. But all I hear is a broken record of "You might be wrong." and "That's what you think." But when I ask how I might be wrong, all I get back is silence. When I ask what I failed to consider, I get nothing back but handwaving and bogus arguments that Bitcoin is magical.

Well, and also by creating national debt that children are born into. Usually this is justified by arguing that the children will get the benefit of what the debt purchased, so it's only fair that they pay part of it.

The refutation doesn't rely on any such thing. That was just a simple way to explain it. If it makes you happy, re-read it but everywhere you see, say, $10, mentally substitute "whatever the average  price would have been over the medium-term had the price not been manipulated". Wherever you see, say, $7, substitute "a bit less than what the price would have been had it not been manipulated".

Of course, the argument doesn't work if the price is increasing continuously. But, obviously, anyone can make tons of money in that case.

The point is very simple -- you have to manipulate the price at your own expense, and others can make you take as big a loss as they wish. And you have to split the profit with others. And I know for a fact that there are several well-financed people fully capable of doing both of those things.

That's the big question. I've seen people who I consider very intelligent and worthy of respect manage to convince themselves that Bitcoins are somehow different. I find it baffling.

I don't think he wants any kid's finger to show up in anyone's mail.

I wish I could say that I don't condone violence of any kind, but I'm not a pacifist. If the legal system is not equipped to deal with a Bitcoin theft like this, I'm not sure what the alternative to force is. I'm morally opposed to responding to force or fraud with pacifism unless there's an effective agency with moral authority to address the issue. In this case, there very well may not be any such agency. In that case, I don't believe you've forfeited your natural right to self-defense -- just as you would have it if you were in a region of the world that didn't have a functioning government.

For the record, I am not yet convinced that institutions are not in place that are capable of dealing with this.