They did not solder everything. They just assemble the board, heatsink, fans, and case together. It's not clear to me if the PCB fabricator makes the boards or a third party, but if I had to guess, third party.

I can't at the moment because I'm doing the BFL contest.

Let's just be clear, the temporary exclusive right to land come from the outbidding in the rent auction. Recreating the improvements is simply to give a person the product of their own labor. So you need to compare the pounding of stakes to the rent auction. Everything relating to the improvements is pretty much the same under ancap in that in ancap you are going to pay for the improvements, or you might contract the buyer to replicate them.


A mine on it's own doesn't produce wealth. The wealth comes from extracting the, say, copper from the wall and selling it on the market. The hole itself doesn't give you a gain, so not having the hole doesn't give you a loss. The copper isn't yours. You didn't create it. It's not a loss, because it wasn't yours.


A person is entitled to the actual result of their labor, not compensation for their labor. In fact the system is designed specifically to punish a man who puts more labor into a similar task. So you could amble for 40 years digging in the wrong place or take a week to strike a vein, but in neither case should you be compensated for your labor. You didn't actually produce anything. I could go take a walk and that would be considered labor, but no one is required to pay me for it. This isn't communism.

I'm sure some ancap will chime in on how this prevents mineral exploration. It is considered a weak point on the effect of Georgism, but it isn't important to the morality of Georgism. Even then, it isn't fully true that there would be no mineral exploration, as there are several ways for an individual to ensure a monetary result for their efforts (e.g. extract in a hidden way in situ and then sell all at once, negotiate rent for as long of a term as possible, etc), and there is also socially funded exploration (people want copper so they would be willing to fund exploration even if they don't get ownership of the result because they will get the result of the labor, or the people in the area contract with an explorer that they will exclusively buy from them over a given period of time given certain production metrics are met). The fact is that people would come up with ways to handle this in ways we cannot think of. This is the power of freedom.

This isn't related to this discussion, but since you seem interested in Georgism, this is a pretty good high level paper on it.


Just to clarify here. They'll only beat you up if you try to force them to pay to pee, as they should because you're the aggressor trying to take their money. If you wanted to charge them, then you should have secured a temporary exclusionary right to the land the toilet is on instead of free riding.

I don't see how your system is tolerant of me coming in and using the land that you were born on. In fact, I see intolerance because you are awarding individuals exclusive control over land they don't own.

Beside, when it a system of morality supposed to be about tolerance. Universal morality is almost explicitly against tolerence, so when a person is doing something wrong (like, say, claiming private ownership of land because their grandfather built a fence on it), then you are supposed to specifically be intolerant towards it. You don't just let it slide.


Topazan, I found the lost post. I pasted it into a local doc to merge it with my responses to myrkul in post #94, but I guess I didn't copy it back. I think this might explain some disconnect since I thought I had said the items below.


The free riders in other regions can't claim the rent if they aren't in the same system. This is a recognize my rights while I recognize yours thing. If it's just one town then the people in that town get the rent. If someone one town over wants rent, then they'll be opening themselves up to having their land taken in a bidding process.


That person would be morally responsible to move the mother. If this is done in a way so as to endanger her, that would be an aggression. And again, it won't be cheap for him or her to keep doing this.

One thing to be clear on, though. This isn't supposed to suddenly make some kind of utopia where people don't make choices in their life. The person being coerced needs to take a stand here and act responsively if the coercer is acting in aggression. The point isn't for the construct of society to resolve all your problems but instead to make you able to resolve them.

Also it's not possible to have rent cycles of a day.


Immobile would not be the same as immoveable.

Actually, though, I was giving a high level for the responsibility. You don't have to move the specific improvement but just have the same improvement done on the new land. An example is a well. It doesn't make sense to move a hole, but you can dig another one.

And I'm sorry, but the system doesn't 'break down' because of improvements. Again, people buy and sell property all the time and pay taxes on that property so it's not a stretch to have them buying and selling improvements and paying rent on the exclusive right to the land.


They lose exclusive right to the land. So, in the case of the Empire State building, they would still own the building, but they couldn't stop people from squatting in it. Those people couldn't damage the building (or rather, they could, but would need to replace the damage) but you can't keep them out, and an attempt to keep them out (even with a lock) would be an aggression on them.


Explodicle,

 Good post. I just want to expand on this in that without the right to bid out a person from their land, it means that the deadweight loss goes directly to the individual who "owns" the land.

 Going back to the rail track vs maglev example. This means in a system of land ownership, when I negotiate for the land for the maglev, the rail track "owner" does not sell the land for the fair market price of a rail line but for the maximum price I would allow for my maglev line to be profitable. This makes it so that all the benefits of my new invention go to that individual and not to the commons. This is egregious because the rail line owner did not do anything for that value. I was the one who made the maglev system. So I get the profits above what you can support on your rail system, and the everyone else gets what you would support on your rail system. You get the value you put into your rail system, which compensates you for your personal effort while excluding you from the efforts of others.

 In short, you can't simply extract value from land because you put a fence on it. You have to be providing something to society because it's not your land, it's everyone's.

This reminds me of when I was a kid, I had the same thing where my mom was supposedly keeping track of it. Well, one day after literally years of saving I had over $1,000 and wanted to take it out to buy a new computer. My mom didn't have it.

I asked for cash from then on.

So just to be clear. That's just your definition of property. iIn my definition, people can't own land because they didn't make it. Their exclusionary right is only temporary and based on a system of winning a rent auction. You follow Locke, and I follow George. Yours is just and idea, and I personally don't see it's merit.

So because people were born on a plot of land, they are allowed to use force to prevent anyone from using that land? Sounds like monarchism.

Voluntaryism allows you to protect your rights to property and self. In this case to gain temporary exclusionary rights to land, you have to win it in a bidding process and pay rent to society. There is nothing contradictory in voluntaryism in asserting your right to land using violence as long as your are the one with the right to do so. This is true in ancap societies too.


Everyone wants something for free. I don't get why you're so special as to own land that you didn't create. Your labor doesn't mix in. Your fences can be moved and your house can be replaced. The whole 'This is our home' thing is a bunch of hippy crap. You're feelings of attachment don't create a social urgency.


There's no such thing as an immovable improvement. If it can be done to one plot of land, it can be done to another. This isn't a philosophical question of can God make an improvement so big that He cannot move it. This is stuff done by humans.


I thought I answered this but it seems like that answer was lost probably as I was cutting and pasting responses together. The answer, of course, is that you lose the exclusionary right to that land. So, in the case of the Empire State building, you would still own the building, but you couldn't prevent squatters from coming in. You couldn't even use locks to keep them out as that would be an aggression against them. Those people could damage your building (unless they subsequently repair it), but they could use it because you don't have an eclusionary right to the area.


I absolutely see the difference, I just don't care. It's not society's imperative to keep you having access to copper, or to keep your seaport accessible, or keep your rail connected. What if I invented a new maglev system that was 10 times more efficient than rail and thus could easily outperform your tracks. So we should just keep your tracks lying where I should put my mag rails? Because why? Because you want it to connect? No, too bad. My system is better. I can prove that by paying more rent and completely displacing your rail. And society is better for it because my system brings greater efficiency. Free markets win.


There no way to determine compensation in a moral sense that can apply universally. If you have a government, then maybe they could try to make a ruling on it, but you and I know that this will just devolve into the courts being captured by special interests who stack judgement in their favor. So the moral imperative is that they need to replicate the work you put in, not "provide compensation." If you want compensation, then you would need to go to him and say "I don't really want a hole in the ground, how about $X dollars instead."

If you can't picture it, then don't worry about it. Just picture people selling the improvements as they change land. The need to move improvements is a moral imperative to prevent people from just outbidding once a person has made many improvements. It's doubtful that this would commonly be done.


In this case, you don't have a right to the copper, so the fact that you have a hole that leads to no copper isn't a big deal. But likely the miner who won the land doesn't really want to spend the money on a big deep hole and you don't really want one on your new land (btw, you pick where it goes on the new land), so you can come to some kind of monetary agreement that discharges him of his moral responsibility. The real question is why didn't you outbid him to keep the mine if it was worth so much to you and to all of society?


That can be moved. It's not a basis for establishing any right of property. The work you do to improve the land is morally yours, but the land is not.


Still don't see it. You didn't make the land so it doesn't magically become yours because you did some stuff to it.


Nope, you're not stealing anything because the land wasn't theirs. You can't steal something that isn't owned. Furthermore, you aren't getting ownership of it either because you are just getting a temporary exclusive right to the land.


It's not a justification. The fact is that there's no justification for this family to think that they have ownership of the land. Because they put a fence up? It's complete madness. I don't understand a social system that says the poor should have a right to ocean front views.


The rich can only take what they can pay for. The benefit of these payments goes to everyone. In your system, the rich create price shocks and endebt the poor to leverage themselves into ownership of of all the land and resources. No one has a chance to break out of the lot their given and people fall into despair as they never have any exclusive right to any land and must pay rent to benefit a small few. This is the world we live in and it has created a ruling class.

You're saying that because poor people can choose the best places to live, that this is a system endemic with oppression and it just doesn't make any sense. If those poor wanted to, they could get a loan, bid out someone fro m a resource patch and mine it more effectively than the person before and come out way ahead. There no systemic oppression.


These things are easily moved.


These things don't get compensation. The land isn't yours, you just have a temporary right to it. You can't have an expectation of keeping your community nor never moving if you are not willing to match rent. It's not simply because someone wants mineral resources, it's because someone is willing to give a greater social benefit than you are for the right to that land. It's not your land so get the hell off it and let the guy who is doing more use it.


When I come onto your land that you mixed with your labor, you would likely put a gun to my face to tell me to get off. But you but have not paid me for the exclusive right to that land, so you are the aggressor, and I am in my rights to fire on you as you have violated the NAP. The person who does rent that exclusive right is within their moral right to use force to get me off the land, also as part of the NAP. I think you do not understand voluntaryism.

Except that's not really what happens. Fully private banks can't just make money from a credit card loan (home loans are tricky because they have a real asset behind them). They have to have the deposit on reserve and if they don't then they borrow it from intrerbank lending. The Fed is the only one that creates money. The additional dollars from fractional reserve lending are real at each step.

Fractional reserve lending can (and likely has) been done with Bitcoin. Person A buys some bitcoin from Mt Gox and gives it to pirateat40. pirate then sells the coin at mt gox to get fiat to put into Zeekbucks. The person who buys the coins happens to be person A again, who sends pirate more money.

Ignoring the rediculous 7% interest, in the scenario above, Person A at one point in time has a single bitcoin twice. Once in their Mt Gox account, and twice as a note from pirate for redemption.

But it's not their land. It never was their land and it will never be their land or anyone else's land because they didn't make the land themselves. It's everybody's land and if someone wants a temporary exclusive right to it, then they can bid the rent.

I'm sorry but I just don't see the moral basis of ownership coming from the fact that some guy put a flag in a square of land 300 years ago. It completely makes no sense to me.


The person who shoved you you out of your house is (likely) paying more in than they are getting out in rent. The case where they are not paying more in, it's because you decided that you yourself don't want to bid enough to put an equal or more amount in. This means you are living on society. They are paying all of your rent and probably they are paying for your food and improvements.  Soory, but, yeah, you don't get the prime real estate with the ocean view. I don't see the problem.


I was simple stating that our current model of capital ownership of land has empirically lead to a ruling class. You are a kettle saying 'well, your pot might end up black.'


And yet if someone is more competent at getting that copper or oil out, then we should give them the means to force the land steaders offf and give access to those resources. Any improvements will be moved (or replicated) elsewhere so don't worry about that. All the effort you put in will not be for naught.

It seems like you're not going to do the escrow, but I'm going to suggest BTCrow. I use them when selling my singles and they were excellent.

The poor aren't forced to live on someone else's land. They can bid for land just like everyone else. The poor will end up with land that has less utility to society, which is how it should be. It doesn't make sense to have a poor person sitting on top of a copper mine that they can't develop when society desires that copper.

Also, don't forget that the poor person directly derives rent from the person taking their land, and all the other land in the area if not the world. The concept of poverty is not anything like the concept of poverty now. Up to the point of over population, the poor will always be able to find somewhere to live.

I doesn't make sense that people happened to have ancestors who came here before anyone else and put a flag in the ground gives them some kind of overriding moral exclusionary right to land. You want to explain to me how that is fair? Empirically speaking, it has established a ruling class.

The most important point here is that the natural resources are not created by anyone so it makes no sense to say they are exclusively owned by anyone.


Yes a rich person could outbid a poor person off their property, but that rich person is now morally responsible to move the poor person to a place of equal rent. This costs the rich person money and thus acts as a disincentive. And the rich person needs to pay rent on the property and this is a net benefit to society including the poor person.

I take exception to the term bullying. If the rich person wants to have exclusive right to that land, then they should have it. They have as much claim as anyone.


I don't really care how you move it: the key part is that you have the moral responsibility to do so and in failing to do so you don't get exclusionary right to the land nor access to the improvement. As a result, if someone were bidding on, say the Empire State Building, they would really only do it if they were also going to purchase the improvements from the current tenant. People buy and sell buildings all the time, it's not a stretch.


That's the difference between Georgism and anarchogeolibertarianism. In your system, you have a community rule (a minimal government) that determines rent and enforces right of sale. In my voluntary system, the free market is used to determine the rent price point and there's no "right of sale" but a moral tie to temporary exclusionary rights to property and responsibility to maintain the product of another person's work.

Yeah that part is also a bit dubious. The only time money is written into existence is from the Fed (e.g. QE)

That's not entirely accurate. The delegates that were voting for Ron Paul were the ones won by Santorum who dropped out. Romney was not the winning candidate from those states, and I'm pretty sure there was not any defecting f Romney delegates to Ron Paul. Santorum delegates were interpreting the votes for Santorum as votes for "not Romney". This is why they introduced the plurality rule because Romney came in second in those states.

I'm an anarchogeolibertarian and I can answer this from that perspective.

Let's be clear about the deal here, there's no "homesteading" in the ancap sense. If you want exclusive right to a piece of land, then you need to bid the rent for it. If someone comes along later and outbids you, then they get the exclusive right to that land. You don't just get to keep land because you were there first, it goes to the highest bidder.

If you make improvements to the land, the improvements are morally yours. However, if you lose rights to the land then either the new rights holder will pay to move them to the closest area with the same previous rent, or more likely they will buy the improvements from you.

As an example, you bid for a piece of land and win it. Then you build a house. You decide to move, so you put the house up for sale, and enter into a contract with someone for them to buy it. They give you the money and take over the moral rights to the house, and start paying the same rent as you on the land.

Or, you bid for a piece of land and win it. then you build a house. A company knows there are natural gas reserves on your property, so they bid on the land. You try to bid higher, but they bid even more, so you lose rights to the land. They don't want the house, so they offer to move it. The land in the whole area is being bid up because of the natural gas, but one county over there is some land with a similar rent amount. You go through a few bid cycles and get a place for the same rent. The company moves your home there.

Now that this is clear, let's go to the question: what if you are both paying rent on the land through some mistake in the system? well, it goes to the last person who engaged in a bidding process properly and won with the highest rent. So if I had some land that I bid on previously and you came along and just started paying rent on it, this wouldn't count for anything because you didn't open up bidding process. As far as the money, I'm inclined to say that it's your fault for not bidding properly.

As far as who "the commons" are, in minarchist systems, this is a small government, but in geoanarchism this is paid in equal parts to whomever asks for it. Potentially this could be paid to every person on earth, and this would really be my preference, but for practical reasons, this is simply whoever says "I want a slice of that" gets their slice. I can see something like Bitcoin excelling here, but Bitcoin itself has protocol limits that make it unusable for large distribution micropayments.

This last part is important because for me to respect your exclusive right to your land, I need to get some portion of your rent. By accepting your rent, I'm also accepting your exclusive right to that land. By paying your rent, you are compensating me for the loss of use of your land. By bidding the rent, it assures that the land is being used to the highest utility for society instead of being sat on by "homesteaders."

Enabled Person A to buy a fishing rod.

The RNC changed the rules so that the delegates could not change their vote from Santorum (who dropped out) to Paul. Instead, they had to follow the plurality of the votes in their district, meaning giving the majority to Romney. Ten delegates from Maine announced they were going to refuse this, and so they were unseated. The majority, naturally went to Romney.

What's unclear to me is if Ron Paul would have had the majority. It still seems to me that if they didn't change the rule then Romney still would have won. Also the rule change doesn't really make any sense. If delegates have to follow the plurality, then why even have delegates at all?

I kind of feel that these two videos have some logical errors that are there specifically to introduce a new-Marxist agenda. The first video definitely has this problem and they actually correct it in the secodn video, but kind of handwave it away.

The core thesis is that the money supply must be ever expanding in order to satisfy interest based debt. This is absolutely not true. I'll give an example:

Imagine a system with no money, but a central bank. Person A borrows $100 from Bank B to buy a fishing rod with the agreement that they will pay back $110 at the end of the year. Bank B creates $100 out of thin air and gives it to Person A. Person A then buys a fishing rod from Rod maker C for $100.

Person A is very successful at fishing. She is able to fish an overabundance of fish, way more than she needs. Rod maker C doesn't really like fishing, so he makes an arrangement with Rod maker C to pay them $10 per month for a certain amount of fish. Person A can fish all that she needs, all that Rod maker C needs, and even more if they put in the time. After 5 months, Person A has $50 back from Rod maker C, and takes that to Banker B who takes the first $10 paid back as his own interest profit and applies $40 to the principle. Thus, she still owes $60.

Well, Banker B also likes fish and would prefer to not have to fish every day, so he signs up for a month of fish with Person A for $10. Since Banker B only has $10, he can only do that for one month. Rod maker C continues to buy the fish for the next 5 months, giving Person A $60. They then discharge the debt. No more debt was created and all debt and cash was discharged even though there was at most $100 in the system at a time.

So what happened? The answer is "usable production." The debt can be repaid when Person A is able to produce something that convinces Banker B to spend their interest profit. In fact, this is why bankers charge interest (aside from defaults): so that they can have a profit that they then use to live on. In a highly complex economy, Banker B would have loans out to the ranchers and apple farmers and wine makers. This would allow them to buy beef, apples, and wine. In effect, the lending of the money gives Banker B a 10% slice on production, something that is sought after because without it people like Person A wouldn't have any fish. 90% of an overabundance of fish is better than 100% of no fish.

This is touched on by the second video, but then it dismisses this a "unlikely," but in reality it's very likely in the case of a central bank like the Fed. This is because all profits by the federal reserve are not privately held but instead turned over to the Treasury. And the treasury spends all the money like it's on fire, so it's apparent that these profits are cycling back into the economy and thus all debts are resolvable.

Money as Debt does have some good info in it, but it needs to have a huge grain of salt.

FairTax is mistaken in the whole "we can tax black markets thing". Compare two societies, one with income tax at 20% and one with sales tax at 20%. You have a person A buying a black market item from person B who then uses the profits to pay rent to a legitimate person C. Person C spends his money on legitimate sources. Person A then uses the rest of their money on legitimate sources.

In the income tax scenario. Person A makes $10,000 and pays $2,000 in taxes. They pay $100 for a black market item to person B. Person B pays no taxes and pays $100 rent to Person C. Person C pays $20 in taxes. Total taxes: $2020.

In the sales tax scenario. Person A makes $10,000. They spend $9900 on legal things and thus pay $1980 in taxes. They spend $100 with person B and pay no taxes. Person B spends $100 on rent to person C and pays $20 in taxes. Person C spends that $100 and pays $20 in taxes. Total taxes: $2020.

The thing is that everyone's spending in is another person's income. It doesn't matter which side you put the taxation on, it is equivalent. So the taxation you gain from black market dealers now buying legitimate items is lost from the income of customers who are buying black market items.

+1 to using Tangible Cryptography.

Also, I think converting $10,000 at once is against BitInstant's terms of use.