Maybe it will be the case that such "empowering" technology will ultimately be the undoing of us all. Maybe one day we'll all be able to make much worse things in our own homes, and some crackpot will destroy us all. Who knows? Is there some natural law that says the inevitable technological achievements of the human race will always result in good?
On the other hand, maybe counter-technologies will arise simultaneously, such that detection of any such devices on anybody's person out on the streets will be trivial. Again, who knows?
Maybe the answer isn't to tell people what to do, but to teach people how to think? |
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Tell you what. If you can explain to me where exactly this so-called joke is, I'll pay you 0.1 BTC.
Oh oh oh! Is you claiming to have even as little as 0.1 BTC the joke? |
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FYI, I am reading all of this, I just do not have anything more to add beyond what Phinn has already said.
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Better to teach how to do it properly, before the kids start biting and shoving fists into places and causing lacerations and tears.
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So, why focus on guns? There are way more deaths every year from people in possession of cars  Because there is no utilitarian value in keeping yourself from being killed, unless you are a criminal, then by all means, use gun control to do nothing but disarm innocent victims so you effectively cannot be killed in self-defense by them. There are many many other ways to avoid being killed by criminals that you're so eager to arm with guns. Criminals not armed with guns, prudence, and a socially responsible government are the solution. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Wild West is on its way out. So, how do you keep criminals, or anyone else for that matter, from getting guns when anyone is able to make one easily in the privacy of their home? |
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Honestly, I expect Bitcoin to survive longer than that website |
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So, why focus on guns? There are way more deaths every year from people in possession of cars |
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Governments can never be trusted as long as they are godless,...
Not to detail the subject, but I wouldn't trust a godly government, either. See Dark Ages and modern Middle East for why. |
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Your answer, if you still don't get it: You have no means to enforce your law: you're weak, you have no "statist thugs" to enforce compliance. See how that works IRL?  I guess I got my answer: you're a psychotic, masochistic child, with delusions of grandeur and a total lack of imagination, who bases its life on unsubstantiated assumptions, thinks morals and ethics come from authority, and believes contracts, businesses agreements, and property rights are based on nothing but weapons and might. No wonder you protest so much. Sorry i wasted any time on you, and sorry to say, you won't learn or gain anything from this forum. |
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I pointed out that Christians, unlike atheists, have a concrete, objective basis for their morals. Christians wishing to know the morality of an act appeal to their canonical text -- the Bible.
Do they now? So what do Christian morals say about working on Saturdays, eating shellfish, wearing mixed fiber clothing, owning slaves, rape, or sex before marriage? Their concrete canonical texts is very specific about the morality of those things. An atheist appealing to morals is appealing to ... what exactly? His intuitions? His gut feelings? That's the lulzy part. A very ancient atheist took the time to figure out morals from scratch, and wrote them down in a religious text. Christians just take the easy route, and use those written morals as the basis of their own morals, with some tweaks here and there once they realize that not everything in the bible is right. Atheists today who reject the bible, simply follow the same steps that the old atheist did, and derive their own morals from scratch again, sort of like testing a scientific theory you don't quite trust. It's like someone testing whether a rock and a cork fall at the same rate, writing down that they do, and then christians just taking those words in faith, while nonbelievers doing the experiment themselves and reaching the same conclusions. So Nietzsche and Machiavelli were two outliers who believed it was perfectly moral to steal, lie, and murder, and did those things often?
On the off-chance your ignorance is not willful, i will point out that it is irrelevant how much lying, stealing & murdering these two individuals did. Suffice it to say such things exist, & moral codes exist that accommodate them. I find some of such ad hoc moral codes curios, in particular: "Because f8ck U, that's why!" Elegant logic, no? Hey, you were the one who said their morals were contrary to the general "respect other's property and life" morals. I guess they were either liars, or hypocrites. So are you then claiming that committing a crime is breaking a contract?
No. I'll use pictograms: (break contract) -> (crime) (crime) ->((break contract) V (some other shit)). In words: Breaking a contract is a crime, but the statement is not a biconditional -- a crime may be other things, not just breaking a contract. Yeah, that's weird, because breaking a contract isn't a crime :p At most it's a civil dispute. You don't go to jail for breaking your Verizon 2 year plan and refusing to pay the fee, and you don't get arrested for moving out despite having a few months left in your lease. Worst case is you'll have your wages garnished, or get a ding on your credit score. Sounds like you have some issues with understanding how things are iRL, too  You brought this up in the context of me pointing out that the "agreement" or situation between government and citizen is not actually a contract, but is something else.
I brought it up because in your particular case -- you being an immigrant -- the situation involved a contract. Your parents *explicitly* agreed to be governed by the laws of US of A to become US citizens, and agreed in your stead (In their capacity as your legal guardians). In other words, you, of all people, have no reason to baww. Yes, my parents. Remember I asked if it was legal/moral/ethical/whatever for your dad to buy a shitty investment property, and settle you with the debt? (Hint: it's not) You danced around that question like a drunk stripper, never actually bothering to answer it, or maybe not even understanding why I asked it in the first place. Plus there's that "contract" thing again. It's not a contract. It's a promise to abide by rules. Police is the executive branch of the US justice system. Please learn to law.  OK, and what does this executive branch have to do with negotiating, establishing, fulfilling, and terminating a contract between a citizen and a state? Teach me on wize one. Surely you wouldn't have brought up police into a discussion about citizens having a contractual obligation to the state which they may or may not have been forced into, if said police wasn't relevant to the topic. Police are responsible for enforcing the terms of the contract. You claim that you are not obligated to abide by a contract entered into on your behalf by your parents. Committing a crime in front of a cop is the most practical & scientific way to explore the legal validity of that belief. Said crime will trigger an arrest & introduce you to the judiciary branch of our legal system, where you may argue your case to your heart's content. But, again, there was no proposal, no agreement, and most importantly no consideration and no termination terms. Which doesn't make it a contract. It's just a promise to follow some rules. I tried to explain that in my kidnapping you, strapping an explosive collar, and forcing you to work for me example. In such a situation I have set up laws: Do not leave the house, Make sure to clean every day. I wrote the laws down on a piece of paper for you to see. I am the cop that enforces those laws. Leaving the house or refusing to clean are crimes, punishable by up to and including death. It's a microcosm of the situation you are describing. Yet no sane person would possibly describe that situation as you and I having a "contract." Feel free to not reply to anything else until this last part is settled (agree and learn something, or point out where I went wrong). I certainly won't bother discussing so-called contracts if you won't answer questions, won't debate, and won't even use the proper definitions of words. |
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The example of using as a replacement for international payment seems to have one "buy" and one "sell" of a Bitcoin in the middle. My simplistic understanding is that neither of these will be done in seconds with the need for confirmations. I thought I'd read that it was minutes, and could approach an hour.
Yes, a confirmation could take a average of ten minutes, so in low trust situations, this would take about ten minutes instead of a few seconds (still way faster than other methods). However, exchanges are very unlikely to try to pull double-spend attacks against each other, and can (and already do) use so-called "green addresses" to send BTC back and forth, which are addresses publicly known to be used by exchanges and considered to be trustworthy. Isn't there also the usual bid/ask cost at each end of the whole transaction? In other words, I start with $100, and by the time it goes through the buy/sell process, it's not even $90 at the other end. Is that completely out of line?
It's quite unlikely that it would drop so much in such a short span of time. Possible, but unlikely. And these fluctuations are only going to decrease and the total "market cap" or bitcoin goes up, since it would take proportionally larger trading sums to move it by the same percentage amount. As for exchanges, you would only need one to convert to BTC, and one to convert from BTC. One other benefit over PayPal is that you don't have to worry or care about which system the other person is using. I.e., if we use PayPal, we both have to use PayPal, and submit to their restrictions and fees. If we use Bitcoin, you can use MtGox, I can use Coinbase, and we don't care about what the other person uses, and can switch from whatever we use should we find fees or restrictions too inconvenient. The idea of Bitcoin as protocol is an interesting one though it can only carry Bitcoins, and it's not
entirely loss-less as I understand. Isn't there a small "fee" levied somewhere along the line for the
transmit?
The fees are, as of yet, not mandatory. Most "normal" transactions can go through just fine without a fee (normal as in average size without small amounts lumped in). If you send an unusual transaction without a fee, such as one comprised of many inputs (say 10x 0.1BTC to send someone a single BTC), or include some extra code in the transaction, sometimes it may take longer for a transaction to be included in a block. If fees are included, they are typically less than a penny, so it's still not much of an issue. As for it being only able to carry a bitcoin, that's not entirely true as well. Rather, that Bitcoin doesn't necessarily have to be a bitcoin currency. Check out http://www.whyisn'tbitcoinworthless.com (same as in my sig) for some examples of what else the bitcoin protocol can be used for (specifically Colored Coin, digital contracts, and notarization by including a time-stamped hash of documents in transactions). |
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We are not debating if Christians are right to be Christian. Right now let's stick to the topic: What do Christians base their mores on. Answer: The Bible, be it right or wrong. We're not debating where Christians get their morals from either. We are debating where morals themselves come from. I suggested that they are based on a foundation of morals that are innate and objective. You found that idea "lulzy." You explained that, for example, Christians get their morals from the bible. I pointed out that the Bible's morals have their origins in the same innate and objective moral foundations as everyone else, including an atheist like me. More so, even Christians who think they get their morals from the bible still have their own sense of morals, since they don't stone adulterers, don't kill those who work on Saturdays, and don't think slavery is OK, which obviously didn't come from the bible. You're wrong again. If you bothered reading philosophy, you would know that "Do unto others" is just a lame rewording of Matthew 7:12. Nietzsche believed in the primacy of strength and self-assertion, and considered appeals to kindness & fairness weepy and weak. Weakness he also detested, though he himself didn't even lift. Machiavelli, if you wish to go there, was rather specific about keeping two distinct moral codes -- one for private and one for public dealings. He was not well-known for preaching "Do onto others." You should read more. So Nietzsche and Machiavelli were two outliers who believed it was perfectly moral to steal, lie, and murder, and did those things often? If you believe i claimed that breaking a contract was necessary for a crime to take place, blame your reading comprehension. I said no such thing. I merely pointed out that in your specific case, you as an immigrant would be breaking a contract -- an agreement between two parties that, in this case, also happens to be legally enforceable. So are you then claiming that committing a crime is breaking a contract? You brought this up in the context of me pointing out that the "agreement" or situation between government and citizen is not actually a contract, but is something else. How am I supposed to comprehend your statement that, if I don't think the thing government forces on its citizens is a legally binding contract, that me committing a crime and being arrested by a cop will prove that I have a legally binding contract with the state? Is being arrested for something constitute a contract? Also, who are the two parties you are talking about and what agreement? Police is the executive branch of the US justice system. Please learn to law. OK, and what does this executive branch have to do with negotiating, establishing, fulfilling, and terminating a contract between a citizen and a state? Teach me on wize one. Surely you wouldn't have brought up police into a discussion about citizens having a contractual obligation to the state which they may or may not have been forced into, if said police wasn't relevant to the topic. |
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^^^^^ That, Rampion, is my point and understanding of the matter entirely, which I completely agree with.
Note the statement Rampion made: "Nobody in Switzerland wishes to carry a gun..." It would help if people in the U.S. stopped wishing to carry guns... Meaning the US should focus on making people stop wishing they could carry guns, instead of trying to forcefully prevent them from doing so. All that does is create distractions, especially in a time when anyone can 3D print guns at home. |
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^^^^^ That, Rampion, is my point and understanding of the matter entirely, which I completely agree with.
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 *sigh* It doesn't matter what christians believe. The bible was written by people. A Christian would say that's utter garbage. "It is divinely inspired," he'd say, "the people writing it were merely conduits for God, no more its authors than a pen or keyboard." Before having theological discussions, why not brush up on the topic? And that christian would be a total idiot for claiming this, because they would essentially be saying that the thousands of cultures that live on other parts of the planet who have never heard of their god, or all the humans who lives for 200,000 before their god even came along, were all immoral, despite having largely the same sets of morals. "Brush up on the topic" indeed What are you saying? That all moral codes are identical? That save for some "weird eccentricities," stripped of "extra frills," everything's the same? Just what is the escence, and what are "extra frills"?
Yes. The "Golden Rule" of "Do unto others..." The rules against taking other's property or life are pretty much universal, regardless of the religious, legal, or philosophical book or culture, and everything else stems from that. The "frills" are just cultures of the time, often based on misunderstanding of the world, misinterpretations of history or scripture, or just stuff added for power hungry assholes to control others. This is obviously a topic you have little to no experience in, so I don't feel like venturing into it. It is legally binding. Stop it with the silly biz 101 definitions. If you want to find out *how* legally binding it is, go and break some lawz in front of a cop. That's the truly scientific, empirical method. Come back & tell me how it went, this is getting tedious.
k?
Stop conflating crimes defined by objective morals and codified in books (laws) with contracts or oaths attempted to be passed as contracts (so-called "social contracts" and citizenship). The two are not even remotely related. If they were, had I been an illegal immigrant, then in your example the cop would have no obligation to do anything since I have no "legally binding contract" with this country. Had you been an illegal immigrant, there would be no contract, you'd be thrown out of the country, not made to pay taxes. Had I been an illegal immigrant and committed a crime, the cop would have still arrested and imprisoned me. You don't need to follow or break contracts to commit crimes. If that had been a prerequisite, being an illegal immigrant with no legally binding "contract" with the country I committed a crime in, the worst that would happen to me is deportation. But, as you so like to say, "that's not how the real world works." So, as I said, stop conflating contracts (social or otherwise) with crimes. The two have nothing to do with each other. If I were to kidnap you, put an explosive collar around your neck that will blow up if you leave the house, and write down a "law" on a piece of paper that said that you are obligated to stay in the house and to clean it once a week, that would also be "legally binding" on you, enforced in much the same way as government law (threat of force, and in case of USSR/China ban on crossing borders). But no one would consider you being in a contract with me.
U should take me up on my offer, and collect some empirical data -- go and break some lawz in front of a cop. Then you can try your astute & incisive reasoning on him, and see if he's easier to convince than i am. What reasoning? I'm not talking about breaking law. I'm talking about breaking out of the "social contract" or whatever the hell contract you think we as citizens have with this country. As I said, police have nothing to do with whether you are under any contracts in order to stop you from committing crimes. Stay on topic: Do you think my imprisoning you in my house with an explosive collar and forcing you to clean my house, because I wrote that I'm allowed to do this on a piece of paper and called it a law, makes for a legally binding contract between us? I mean, I would be able to say, " Go ahead and try to leave the house, and see how quickly your head blows off. Then you can try your astute and incisive reasoning on me about how it's not a legally binding contract," right? We have a body that creates and enforces laws (me and the explosive collar you're wearing), and a person being compelled by that body to do something (you cleaning my house and not being allowed to leave), same as with government (or at least a heavily armed and border-restrictive one). Are you really claiming that such a situation would still be considered a contract between us? |
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I would much rather have a site ran by a programmer than a businessman. Programers are usually open-minded, don't believe in greed, and contribute to FOSS projects. While businessmen only care about $$$ no matter what their customers think of them: See /r/entrepreneur, everyone wants to take advantage of any situation moral or not, and would make crapware that is crippling innovation because it leads to more income for them.
I would say that a businessman is incentivised by money and greed, and tries to get it by the best means possible, which is to get you to give it to them in return for something (good code, good site, good service), while programmers only care about code, and don't really care about someone else's money or quality of service, since that doesn't interfere with their ability to code in any way. So you end up with well made sites with excellent APIs, and almost complete lack of customer support, service, or care about customer money. |
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What means does anyone have to protect their own property except by force? And what does it mean when two parties have different ideas about the division of property (eg how much profit each partner keeps in a profitable venture, where property boundaries lie, etc)? What recourse does an individual have against fraud?
Rules against fraud and force need to have an impartial arbiter, and that arbiter needs to have the means to enforce rulings as to the outcome of disputes.
We have empirical examples of the way businesses organize themselves when they have no court system to fall back on to handle disputes: drug cartels and street gangs.
What happens when multiple law-creation firms disagree on their verdicts or their sets of standards? What, do we only do business with customers who have subscribed to the same law-creation firm?
But anyway, you're right about one thing: you don't know what it would look like. And you seem to agree that there have to be some standards for behavior and some form of recourse against violation of those standards in order to have a free market. So come up with a better system and I'll be happy to have a conversation about working toward it.
The means are private dispute settlement and arbitration. Two parties that can't decide about division of property can both agree to a single arbiter. Two people who wish to make a transaction and wish to avoid fraud can decide on a single escrow agent. We have plenty of examples of this in the real world, ranging from multinational businesses that don't exist in any specific country settling disputes among each other, to even the mafia being hired as arbitrators in black market transactions to make sure the two parties don't try to steal from each other. There's no issues with multiple law firms/arbitrators disagreeing with each other, since the only thing that matters is that the two people in dispute agree on one of those firms. Likely the two disagreeing parties will realize that picking an arbitrator that both of them are at least ok with will be cheaper, more productive, and healthier than just going to war with each other. And the arbitrators (even the mafia) have a huge incentive to make sure they make just rulings and don't play favorites, since no one will ever use their services again if they prove to be unfair. So, we know exactly what that will look like, simply because we already have all that. And it has only been made much more prevalent in the last decade thanks to globalization and vastly expanded international trade, where free market reigns without the supervision of any specific government. |
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Which is the crux of my point - that morality and ethics are rooted in innate objective values - even the ones that get written into religious and legal books my moral/ethical people. What specifically do you find lulzy? Do you think that ethics and morals are all made up, and are all subjective?
"Rooted in innate, objective values" is particularly lulzworthy. you may *think* that the Bible codifies human gut feelings & superstitions, but that's not what Christians believe -- Christians believe the Bible to be the Word of God. So if the Bible is what the Christians believe it to be, it is *explicitly not derived from the secular realm.* If it is written "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" -- it is what Christian mores are based on. You may disagree, but you'd have to base your morals on a *different set of innate & objective values*. So if the values vary, perhaps they're not so innate or objective? *sigh* It doesn't matter what christians believe. The bible was written by people. The only thing that matters is where the ethics and morals in the bible came from. Sure, there are weird eccentricities that have more to do with the times during which the writers have lived, but read every religious text and the law of every country, and you'll find a set of ethics that are universal to everything. Things like don't take other people's stuff, don't lie and steal, don't murder, and help those who need it. It doesn't even matter if the cultures had prior interactions, or only existed on opposite sides of the planet. That tells me that there are innate, objective values, with some cultures dressing them up with extra frills and bullshit for various reasons (usually control). Define contract. Are you using the legal definition, or just the whatever you think it means definition?
In your particular case, i define it as the oath you and/or your parents had to take to become citizens of US of A. A very hardcore & legally-binding contract, and one which many people would love to be able to enter into. Anything else i could clear up? Yeah, an oath is not any kind of contract, and especially not a legally binding one. It is legally binding. Stop it with the silly biz 101 definitions. If you want to find out *how* legally binding it is, go and break some lawz in front of a cop. That's the truly scientific, empirical method. Come back & tell me how it went, this is getting tedious. k? Stop conflating crimes defined by objective morals and codified in books (laws) with contracts or oaths attempted to be passed as contracts (so-called "social contracts" and citizenship). The two are not even remotely related. If they were, had I been an illegal immigrant, then in your example the cop would have no obligation to do anything since I have no "legally binding contract" with this country. I'm not questioning whether the government things my participation and submission is legally binding. Just don't call it a contract, because it's not. If I were to kidnap you, put an explosive collar around your neck that will blow up if you leave the house, and wrote down a "law" on a piece of paper that said that you are obligated to stay in the house and to clean it once a week, that would also be "legally binding" on you, enforced in much the same way as government law (threat of force, and in case of USSR/China ban on crossing borders). But no one would consider you being in a contract with me. |
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Its like frogs and boiling water, if you put them into boiled water they will immediately jump out, but if you increase the temperature gradually with the frog in it, it will be cooked.
We had a fucking dumbass of a news commentator demonstrate on live TV that that's, in fact, not true, when he tossed a live frog into a boiling pot of water, and it instantly died from being boiled alive. He later on tried to claim that it was a rubber frog, which if was true, and he knew the frog wouldn't have jumped out, would have made his prior speech make no sense. |
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Some other things banks do and are good at:
Accounting
Investing
Insurance
Arbitrage
Escrow
Security
All these can be provided for bitcoin as well. So while they won't be able to charge high fees for moving money around any more, I'm sure they'll be just fine.
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