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I threw an 87 mph fastball at 17 years old.
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nuclear weapons
So...precious metals? |
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Precious metals. Mmmm diversification.
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It turns out they fail even harder than I thought, which is actually kind of an accomplishment. First, they suspended demurrage for April, presenting this as a good thing. So even they don't believe their own bullshit philosophy. Second, the email in which they announced this put all the recipients' email addresses in the To: line. So now I have the emails of everyone on their list. ( link) LOL. Someone send them info about Bitcoin! +1 |
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I'm 16 years old, and got into Bitcoin when I was 15 years old. Granted I've been programming, doing server administration, and the likes for years and years, but I was able to understand the technical aspect of it.
That said, it isn't necessary to understand the technical side of it, and is in fact a turn-off to a lot of people. It makes Bitcoin seem "geeky" and only for tech guys. If the person is really interested in the technical side of it, they can learn that after the fact.
Just introduce them to Bitcoin, I say. But then, this isn't my bounty.
+1, you nailed it. Unfortunately, computer geeks typically aren't too great at psychology which is the basis for effective marketing. People like to feel safe, secure, loved, cool, sexy, excited, etc. Nobody gives a shit about C++ or linux or FPGAs or cryptography. But, if you can convince someone that using Bitcoin makes them cooler and sexier, then you have a winner. When you have an unbelievably awesome product and you market it inappropriately, you end up where TiVo is. Why would cryptocurrency be cool or sexy? I don't see even the most hardcore Bitcoin fans in lingerie running around showing off their wallet.dat swag. You know, you're right. And since you're on the right track, why don't you tell all those beer, toothpaste, car, gum, cigarette, shoe, etc. advertisers that they don't know what they're doing. Seriously, why would beer or cigarettes or shoes ever be sexy? And for the love of god, tell Bit-Pay to get rid of that uninteresting chick who draws absolutely no attention whatsoever. Wtf were they thinking?!?!?! |
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It seems some individuals here expect others (and themselves) to exclusively act out of pure emotional generosity; without monetary gain or otherwise.
They need to go first. You know, to show us the way. That's what good parents are for. How much did you have to pay for your upbringing? That's like asking how much I paid the hobo who just cleaned my windshield without asking: Nothing. Except that I don't think the hobo loves your windshield. The hobo may love me but that doesn't mean I owe him anything. It doesn't mean I am his slave. Sup Atlas. |
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It seems some individuals here expect others (and themselves) to exclusively act out of pure emotional generosity; without monetary gain or otherwise.
They need to go first. You know, to show us the way. That's what good parents are for. How much did you have to pay for your upbringing? That's like asking how much I paid the hobo who just cleaned my windshield without asking: Nothing. Except that I don't think the hobo loves your windshield. |
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Aligning with what enmaku stated, here is my prediction:
1) First few weeks after reward halving ---> No significant changes
2) Next few weeks ---> Slowly, inefficient miners begin to drop out as they see the price isn't rapidly soaring.
3) Months later, the price begins to rise slowly and some miners hop back in.
My reasoning: After the reward change, I think a lot of miners will continue to mine in anticipation of a value hike. I think everyone will be more or less waiting to see what happens. But, I don't believe the price will jump drastically and hold because even though the rate of supply will be cut in half, the total supply will not be cut in half. As a result, some miners will drop out (but I don't think 50% will). But, over time, the effects of the decreased supply rate will accumulate and the price will slowly climb. As this happens, more miners will hop back in since the profit margin will increase again.
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Dont be too hard on yourself for being willing to part with your guitar for a piece of rock that will buy 2 such guitars. Thats just a sensible business decision, unless of course the guitar has some special sentimental value, then maybe you are just being silly.
Either way, remember that guitar didnt conjure itself into existence. Its quite unlikely you could even have a guitar without a money system of some kind allowing for division and specialization of labor. Think about how many specialized jobs were involved in its creation. Forestry to cut the wood (and their support industries producing chain saw blades and the gas to run them etc), the milling of the wood (again metal production and specializations to support the operations of the mill), the shaping of it, the adhesives or whatever used to bond the pieces, the metal required to produce the strings and requisite ore mining, processing, and all the energy requirements of that aspect, and then the people who actually put the pieces of the guitars together. So to completely get from resources like "trees and iron ore" to "a guitar", you've got a lot of industries and people and specializations involved. And none of those people are waking up getting out of bed thinking about the awesome guitars they are going to contribute to, save perhaps the people who are going to be commuting over to the guitar factory this morning. The guys who are cutting the trees, or mining the ores, they are doing it because they need a paycheck, or maybe they just really love mining ores, either way, its not about guitars for them. And money makes it all possible. People dont get out of bed without a reason to do so, and putting food on the table and a roof over the head I think is the primary motivator. Typically one can have a far easier time in life by following some specialization in the pursuit of money required to purchase on the open market the required food and shelter. One can of course opt to produce their own food and shelter, but its hard work, and unless you know what you are doing with that, you might fail and literally starve and freeze to death.
I'd like to build my own house and grow my own food too, or have robots do it all for me, but my specialization is writing software programs, so I will sell my labor at that task for the stored value tokens I can use in exchange with other specialists to obtain the things that make ME happy (guitars, watches, bits of shiny gold, etc). Every individual will make their own decisions about what is good and desirable in life and I think thats part of what makes being human so fun and exciting.
I quite like this response. So it gets a +1 from me, too. Immediately after reading this, I thought of two things: 1) specialization (which you mentioned) and 2) time. With regards to specialization, I agree that the depth of specialization that exists today likely would not exist in the absence of a monetary system, but I would be hesitant to assume there wouldn't be any depth of specialization. Studies show (if you absolutely need a citation let me know) that people work harder when they are given more freedom to do their jobs the way that they want to in contrast to being offered a monetary incentive. In other words, people choose to work more for less as long as they can add their own individualized flair and they don't feel like just another worker/number. Music is my passion, but I didn't choose music as a career because I could make more money doing something else. My guess is that even though there is immense variety in specialization, a lot of those specialists fell into that line of work. I also bet that their work is not very intrinsically beneficial to them (this is a generalized statement). I'm sure that some luthiers, for example, truly love their work, but I would also imagine that many don't. In an extreme example, I doubt that children specialists in sweat-shop factories enjoy their work or that assembly-line workers do either. I would imagine that it's possible for variety of specialization to exist outside of a monetary system, but I also think that you would see a redistribution in specialization. For example, in some parallel universe somewhere I might have chosen a music career because money didn't exist to influence my judgment. Even though I specialize in psychology and social work and happen to find it very rewarding, it's still not my greatest passion. This leads me to 'time.' How much time do people waste as a result of money? And, by "waste" I mean spending time doing things that you truly don't want to do. I find it very unlikely that most people would really choose to go to school, sit in an office for 8 hours a day, commute several hours each day if you don't live close to your job, etc. if money didn't exist. I think if you add up all of this wasted time which could be otherwise spent doing something intrinsically beneficial, I think you might find some high-quality guitars spring up in the absence of a monetary system. Why? Because there would be a few select people who are so driven to build a guitar that they would let nothing stop them. Motivation is essential to production. We live in a world where many people simply are not motivated to do much work of any kind, and I'm guessing that's because of the associations they've built around the idea of work. When I was a kid, work was fun. Work was building a house out of Linkin' Logs. Work was going to the park with my dad to work on my baseball swing and my pitching. Work was raking all the leaves in the yard into a pile to jump on. Work was...fun! The things I did as a child required effort, but I liked them because I was motivated to do them. Today, work has become associated with stress, lack of sleep, cases of the Mondays, etc. Most importantly, hindsight is always 20/20. It's easy to say, "Well, we have guitars, and we have incredible variety of specialization, and we have people to build our homes and shelters for us, so money is very useful." But, it's impossible to say, "Well, if we didn't have money, we wouldn't have guitars and we wouldn't have people to build our homes and shelters for us." Thus, it's equally impossible to assume that we wouldn't a world without money. I would imagine that an enlightened population could figure out a way to have all the bells and whistles without all the bullshit that money brings. When I'm intrinsically motivated to do something, I do it and I do it very, very well. But I think that money has placed restraints on the motivations of many people. Maybe if those restraints were pulled away, people would find very creative solutions to problems in the absence of a money system. TL;DR -- I'm hungover today so this was the best response I could muster. |
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I'd pay 32 BTC for both with codes intact.
I'll let you know if Immun. falls through. Ok, sounds good  |
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The three characteristics of money are:
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
There have been occasional variations and exceptions throughout history, such as fungibility being an aspect of money, or money lacking a store of value function, which is common among fiat currencies. The earliest money was fiat unit of account money in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Egypt had gold ingots for units of account and stores of value, but there was no gold medium of exchange. Coins came much, much later, probably in ancient Lydia.
Then oxygen it is. 1.) Store of value --> without it, you die; oxygen provides energy. 2.) Medium of exchange --> yep, inhale/exhale 3.) Unit of account --> O2. Surely, money is more than these 3 things. Not sure if trolling or..... Basically, you're confusing an economy with breathing. I would explain this, but I think it's self-evident. Hey, if someone can pick up a stick and say it's money, then for damn sure oxygen could be money. I'm being serious when I say this, but I've thought of starting a bottled-air business. I'm sure there'd be a whole bunch of people that would be interested. Want a sealed bottle filled with air from Antarctica? Or maybe a bottled that was opened and sealed on the Moon and flown back to Earth? Or maybe air from your favorite celebrity's bedroom?I see no reason to believe that air couldn't become money in the way that you have defined it. Extend this idea a little further and I would purchase from you. I think you should sell celebrity queefs. I’ll take two bottles of Adriana Lima and a bottle of Megan Fox. I'll try to get a hold of Adriana, but we tried a few with Megan and she melted the bottles  I'll keep you posted. |
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The three characteristics of money are:
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
There have been occasional variations and exceptions throughout history, such as fungibility being an aspect of money, or money lacking a store of value function, which is common among fiat currencies. The earliest money was fiat unit of account money in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Egypt had gold ingots for units of account and stores of value, but there was no gold medium of exchange. Coins came much, much later, probably in ancient Lydia.
Then oxygen it is. 1.) Store of value --> without it, you die; oxygen provides energy. 2.) Medium of exchange --> yep, inhale/exhale 3.) Unit of account --> O2. Surely, money is more than these 3 things. Not sure if trolling or..... Basically, you're confusing an economy with breathing. I would explain this, but I think it's self-evident. Hey, if someone can pick up a stick and say it's money, then for damn sure oxygen could be money. I'm being serious when I say this, but I've thought of starting a bottled-air business. I'm sure there'd be a whole bunch of people that would be interested. Want a sealed bottle filled with air from Antarctica? Or maybe a bottled that was opened and sealed on the Moon and flown back to Earth? Or maybe air from your favorite celebrity's bedroom? I see no reason to believe that air couldn't become money in the way that you have defined it. |
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The three characteristics of money are:
1. Store of value
2. Medium of exchange
3. Unit of account
There have been occasional variations and exceptions throughout history, such as fungibility being an aspect of money, or money lacking a store of value function, which is common among fiat currencies. The earliest money was fiat unit of account money in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient Egypt had gold ingots for units of account and stores of value, but there was no gold medium of exchange. Coins came much, much later, probably in ancient Lydia.
Then oxygen it is. 1.) Store of value --> without it, you die; oxygen provides energy. 2.) Medium of exchange --> yep, inhale/exhale 3.) Unit of account --> O2. Surely, money is more than these 3 things. |
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The stick example mentioned by a few people is actually close to truth. For hundreds of years, tally sticks were used as money.
Yep. |
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I am fearful that we will never succeed as a species in overcoming a problem that we have created for ourselves, and equally fearful that we will continue to live our lives blindly influenced by the power of money, giving up our guitars and other things that make us grow as individuals for the additional capacity to exert control over others.
Money has no power. Using money is the opposite of using violence. Using money means that there is a negotiation going on. Therefore, if your tool is only your money and you don't have the consent of the other person, there is nothing you can do to control him. Yes, I agree that there is negotiation going on...nobody is forcing anyone into a monetary transaction. But, I do not agree that money has no power. By this I do not mean that money objectively has power, but that we give it power and that we are unaware of how much. I'm suggesting that we ironically exercise our control by choosing to relinquish it; we submit to multiplied propagation. I'm suggesting that the paths most of us take in life are fundamentally altered by money more than most other variables. We do things that we would not otherwise choose to do for money, even things that cause us an unhealthy level of stress. We turn down jobs that sound rewarding in favor of a rewarding paycheck. We buy clothes and devices simply because they ARE more expensive (i.e. name-brand items). We buy watches instead of guitars when we already have clocks everywhere and when we really like playing guitars. Actually, in this sense, I am saying money is like a drug. Surely, everyone chooses to use drugs, but the more you use them, the more they influence you to continue using it by altering your associations. Drugs alter your associations (my meals are SO much more satisfying if they are followed by a cigarette) and so does money (my watch is SO much more valuable because it's made of gold). While there may be nothing you can do to literally control a person with money (other than hiring someone to physically control him), there is one hell of a lot you can to do influence him. And, because people are largely unaware of the effects of money, knowingly influencing a person with it is deceitful. |
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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". 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. 1.) Regardless of what you consider to be ample shelter, none of what you posted has anything do with the circularity of the "no money = poverty" argument. 2.) No, the stick is not money. Seriously, are you going to go so far as to say that the oxygen you breathe is money because there was an exchange taking place between you and plants? 3.) The comment about the correlation between mental illness and money doesn't 'prove' anything, nor was it intended to. Actually, what I said was circular too -- mental illness is defined by industrialized nations and so naturally it is more prevalent in industrialized nations. This was stated to demonstrate how the "no money = poverty" argument is absurd. 4.) Money is what the government says it is because we do not have a free market. The economy is governed. Where money functions in a centralized economy, it is determined by the centralized authority. If you want to go around calling sticks and oxygen money, then go for it, they can be money to you -- now go into a store and see what you can buy with them. |
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 "For the first time, I was seriously realizing I could live totally moneyless." Um yeah... because you hitch hiked off other people's generosity, and used clothing and tools created by the money-society you are pretending to reject. And then took a flight to Thailand and India, using a plane built by thousands of years of human ingenuity and progress which was enabled by trade and exchange, which was in turn facilitated by money... and then reported about it on a computer. The dude is a 'tard. Wanna live off the grid? Fine, that's cool. But unless you're crafting tools from wood and stone and living in a shelter made of logs with clothes made from grasses and deer skins, then you're just fooling yourself. A moneyless society is a society of starvation and utter poverty, and a world without trade, production, and exchange is a world without the leisure time one might desire for the purposes of reflecting on such fantastical notions as "a world without money." Idiot, what makes you think a world without money is a world without trade, production and "exchange" ? Calling someone a 'tard then come off as a completely idiot is priceless - (or should i say moneyless? ) A world without money IS a world without trade, production and exchange. Money is impossible to avoid when people trade with each other, for they begin by bartering, and soon discover that certain goods are most easily bartered for (grain becomes easier to trade than bicycles, even if the other person doesn't want grain for his own consumption). Thus, you quickly discover that certain goods in the barter economy become traded very commonly. And voila, that's called money. In other words, in order to have an economy WITHOUT money at all, there would need to be a law that you could only trade for things you would personally consume or use, and nothing could be traded twice. If a society actually had those rules, I suggest that trade, production, and exchange would be rare, inefficient, and burdensome. Thus, I think my point was a fair one. Without allowing for money, an economy is not an economy. Whether the money is grain, cigarettes, seashells, gold, pieces of paper with leaders' faces, or Bitcoins... money ALWAYS emerges when people trade with each other. Money is intrinsic to exchange - they cannot be separated. Fair, if your definition of fair is utterly stupid. First of all , "A moneyless society is a society of starvation and utter poverty" is completely false. You are pulling crap out of your ass. While a moneyless world would make trading inefficient, it doesnt mean its an inferior world in anyway. Trading originally is a way to share resources and transfer wealth. Its now an exploitation of modern slavery. In a moneyless world, trading is not necessary. Moneyless world is a world without production? really? You're such naive to think its money that gives ppl incentives to work and produce. Inefficient to the point of starvation and utter poverty. I consider that inferior, but you're welcome to disagree with that judgement. You did not address the point of my prior post - that money is intrinsic to exchange. If you are opposed to money, you are opposed to exchange, because money is just the name given to that good exchanged most commonly. And please explain how "trading is an exploitation of modern slavery"? When I trade my eggs to Bob in return for several loaves of bread, which of us was exploited? Also, was money involved... were the eggs money, or the bread? Has either of us done something wrong by agreeing to the trade? Now... what if instead of eggs I actually traded Bob a small bar of silver for the bread? Has exploitation occurred? Is silver money... or is bread? And one step further, what if the silver is cut into round circles. Is silver money yet? What if... I actually previously traded my bar of silver for a deposit receipt from a man who promised to guard the silver from bandits, and then I trade the receipt for the bread? Any exploitation occurring yet? Did I use money? My point is this: money is not anything weird or separate from barter. Money IS barter. It's just the name given to the most commonly bartered item. And again, if you're opposed to money, you must necessarily be opposed to barter, and thus trade, and thus exchange. And if so, you are condemning man to live with only what he is able to produce himself. This is a world of poverty and starvation, and if you don't think that's inferior, then we can disagree on that point. 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? 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." By the way, there's a positive correlation between money and mental illness given that mental illness is more prevalent in industrialized nations. 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. |
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Its not often id read an article this long. My opinion is that you do not write this sort of thing much but I must say I did enjoy it as it somewhat differs from the and wanders from the expected. I aproove  Thank you! I'm happy you found it enjoyable |
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