There is actually another reason for all this money, which theymos has been trying to keep under wraps. As bitcoin is becoming more popular, it is now being targeted by government agencies, like FinCEN, NSA, etc. and more government meddling is expected. There is expectation that main communication hubs, like this forum, will become major targets for governments to take down, in order to try to disrupt bitcoin itself. So the plan is to use this money to move the server into a location that will be impossible for governments to raid and shut down. Specifically, theymos is going to be buying a small drone that will be carrying a lightweight server, and will stay in the air almost 24x7. The large amount of money will mostly be used to pay for a satellite data connection, and refueling costs to keep it aloft.

Regarding your other posts, we haven't paid for people efforts and labor in centuries. We pay people for the products of their minds. Those that know best, earn most. Which I believe is not only fair, but beneficial. We wouldn't want people who pour plastic and aluminum into molds designing the style and features of an iPhone, or the people who dig holes in the ground figuring out where to dig for oil and how best to transport it to the market where you can get top dollar, where it's needed most.


Of course. We all always strive for more, but there is usually only so much to get, and it's just natural for all our combined striving to eventually reach equilibrium with what we actually get out of it. This is the way it is in all business: long-term profit tends towards zero, because other companies join in to compete, and drive your prices down until you can sell your stuff only for exactly what it cost you to make it. This is also what drives people to innovate and figure out how to get just a little bit more than what has been previously available. This can be a more efficient production method, cheaper material, or more innovative product. Those people are the ones who earn more, because they discover something new, that others want, and that benefits everyone, and they do this by using their heads, instead of just their brawn.


I don't think "confirmation capacity" is an issue. You can store an enormous amount of confirmations in 2 gigs of ram, and that's a fairly cheap thing for anyone to own.


Miners don't charge, they just accept whatever fees are available. They can choose to only accept higher fee transactions, but that would exclude the lower fees from their profits. Everyone else will likely include all the fees, including the lower ones, too. So the only way they can make more money is by having more hashing power.


Clearing houses? For what, mining transactions into a block? How would that lead to price fixing? Unless you are talking about the price everyone has to pay to get a transaction processed (mining fee), and they have a monopoly on mining power (51% of the hashing power), in which case it's a 51% attack that has been discussed at length. Someone having that power will put uncertainty in the Bitcoin system itself, possibly causing Bitcoin value to crash, and would hurt them in the process, too.


Try to find and read some information online about "network effect." It's what explains eBay, Facebook, Windows, Blue ray, etc. Bitcoin has it, and it's why alt-coins will likely always fail, or at most be second best.

So what you're saying is capitalism is only capitalism until it becomes statism/communism/fascism.

Are you a physicist? A biologist? A psychologist? Can I come to you for tax or car mechanic advice?

Wealth can be wasted. Tomatoes can rot on the vines, machines can wear out and break, capital can be put into businesses and factories that produce nothing of value. If you trade 8 hours of your hard work for a paltry sandwich, you have given up a lot of wealth (time and labor) for little reward. If your labor involved digging a hole that you turned out to have dug in the wrong place, the person who paid you a sandwich gave up what little wealth that was for a bigger expense of now having to fill that hole back in.

Out of curiosity, did anyone here actually believe that this BFL 1000 BTC thing was anything other than a PR stunt to be doled out at their own discretion, only in ways that helps improve their own image? It sounds like some people may have been fooled into thinking that this was BFL being genuinely charitable for no reason other than being nice.

And i guess follow-up question, is anyone actually surprised, shocked, or offended at them doing this, instead of thinking that's to be expected from most any business, and especially from one of BFL's caliber?

I'm just saying that when to comes to charity, they don't owe anyone a thing. They made a promise to the community. They owe a debt to the community. Anyone else see a problem with that last sentence?

They "owe?" They, as the company BFL, volunteered 1000 for this charity/PR thing. Josh/Inaba may owe a separate 1000 himself for whatever bet, but I don't know the details of that. Don't conflate who is supposed to give to whom, and don't conflate a voluntary act of kindness for "owing" anything to the needy. All they really owe is the damn ASICs to their customers, and a ton of apologies and compensations for making them wait so long.

Even the most powerful capitalist is still at the mercy of his customers. Wealthiest is only wealthiest because those buying his products have decided to make him so. Money does not appear out of thin air - that wealthy capitalist had to create a lot of benefit to those buying his wares. He did so only because he was the most skilled and the most fittest for the work he could do. (Unless he acquired his wealth by brute force, forcing others to give it to him at a muzzle of a gun, in which case he is no capitalist). And if he should turn bad, he will lose his wealth to boycotts, thefts, and exorbitant security expenses to protect his property and life. Because the fittest is not a man with money and a gun, it's the huge mob of people with guns wielding their collective buying power.

The only other option is to have someone pay you just because they feel they have to "mutually aid" you. That's just plain dependency. A mutual dependency means you have to pay me for my work, because you need me, and I have to work for you, because I need your payment. Otherwise, with the mutual aid you describe, you have to depend on someone to grow a garden and cook the food for you, but they have no obligations to you, and can just stop supporting you at any time, and then you just starve.

If everyone were living in a mutual aid society, and there was no profit in their mutual exchange, everyone would be collectively getting poorer. You are either better off from a trade, and have made a profit, or worse off, and have had a loss. You have either put a lot of your time and effort into something, and after giving that something to someone else came away better from it, or you wasted your time for no reward, and have more time and labor wasting to look forward to.

*cough* 1,000 BTC at $100 price is $100,000

Actually, the thing that mainly bugs me about this donation is that the money they donated technically isn't theirs. Not until they ship all their backorders, anyway. Until then, it's money they collected from their customers, which belongs to their customers until the money is either returned, or their orders are shipped. So they are basically using the money of the people they have hurt to try to improve their image in the eyes of everyone else. I would have much preferred if they spent that 1000 BTC to either increase their throughput to get products out faster, or split it amongst their customers and sent everyone small refunds.

Wait, what? I'm doing accounting for The Conference? I guess I'll have to get off my butt and actually, uh, do... something?

For what it's worth, the money is still BFL's, regardless of what they said about giving it to charities, so I don't fault them for being picky about who gets it and not giving it to those they dislike. As long as it's not going back to them, I don't think it matters if they deny it to someone for personal reasons. The whole point of creating this fund was to help them improve their company image, so it's really up to them to pick which donations would improve it and which won't have any effect. I'm also not sure that The Conference really qualities as a needy cause. Or a charity.

Also, despite horrible business mistakes and fuckups, I don't consider BFL a scam at all. If only because they were always willing to give refunds, and I believe all their reasons for delays, especially since they were honest about making stupid mistakes to cause those delays. Badly run business? Yes. Scam? No. Maybe I'm just gullible. I'll also probably be buying from them once they catch up on backorders and start regular shipments.

I didn't expect that the resulting data from this experiment would show that the person running it would die

Even better - just have it connect periodically, like every 10 to 30 minutes, automatically

Yeah, I would have preferred if it said, "we suggest they use BitPay," but oh well. I did actually plug them on purpose though. They help us out with the no fee thing, in exchange for getting publicity for their service.

Uh, what does inheriting right from a mother have to do with capitalism?


You can't have something me both amoral and abusive. It's either abusive and immoral, or amoral and just is.


Mutual aid? You mean, like, I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me? Sounds like capitalism 

Um, sure? Why is matrilineal verifiable but the other isn't?

Not at all. The "official body" can be as simple as whoever owns the land simply making up the rules, which can be specific, or as general as "don't be a dick." For example, I don't allow smoking on my property. It's not a law, but if you break it, I just kick you out of my house. Or these could be a set of rules in a community, like a privately owned gated one. Don't like the rules, don't go there. Or buy property, and negotiate to have the rules not apply to your part of the land (easier if you buy something on the edge of the community)


I specifically addressed those when I mentioned China and Southeast Asia. They all start out as sweatshops, because people will do anything for money, and working in sweatshops is better than prostitution. Then as more companies move in because of the cheap labor, the labor gets used up, leading to labor shortages (too many jobs, too few employees), and companies have to compete for workers through higher wages. That's what happened in China and India, and why those two places are not necessarily the cheapest places to outsource to any more. Sweatshops isn't a problem that can just be fixed or legislated away, because the countries where they exist are just too poor to do anything about them. There's no one to tax. But having companies come in and compete for workers, on the other hand, has been very effective. Generally, if there were no barriers to trade, such as legal or distance, all labor around the world would pay about the same. Sweatshops are just examples of areas that were left behind economically that have yet to catch up.


You are. Putting things off till later, and not caring about things unless they affect us in a large way right now, is in our biological code. It's how we've evolved as a species, learning to be afraid of predators, but not abstract concepts that may harm us in the future. This problem will exist whether we're in an AnCap or a Dictatorship, and have to be addressed separately through whatever system is available.


I think those would simply add extra, unnecessary, though minor amount of "regulation" at most. Kinda like how the Southern Baptists boycotted Disney because Disney supports gay rights, and when Disney found out, they were like, 'Wait, who?"


I understand. It's a good example. How many regulations do we have regarding making sure chickens and cows are free range? None? Yet people are more and more aware of the issue, and places like Chipotle, and other higher scale food places, actually use "free range" as an advertisement. People will pay if they are concerned enough, and companies will figure out how to make free range a cheaper alternative if it can be used to sell more products than their competitors. For example, there's an ice cream shop in Baltimore called Pitango Gellato, that worked with their egg distributor to design a large roving chicken coup on wheels. During the day, they actually wheel out the chickens onto a large grass pasture, and let them roam around free. At night, the chickens go back into the coup, and get driven home. Chickens are happy playing in the nice green grass, and the producer actually saves money because he rents the chickens out to fields that need help clearing insects, same as sheep get rented out to trim grass. In the end, Pitango doesn't pay that much more for their eggs, but their eggs taste much better, and they can advertise by bragging where their eggs come from, and the cool farming system they use.



Should we just switch to debating "free trade" instead? Or will you find some personal definitions of that, too (like you did with "not being aggressive.")