Having mandatory, is NOT the same as coercion.. b/c a large majority of the people do NOT need to be coerced to follow rules of their own making and a society of their own choosing and a community in which they chose to live... I would NOT call that coercion.
If I resist paying taxes, the government intervenes with the threat of force. Threat of force is the very definition of coercion. If people are really choosing to make rules to provide welfare, then they can skip the intermediate step and chose to provide welfare. Everything else is coercion. That is why this back and forth communication with you is getting NO WHERE - b/c you keep insisting that your being part of a community is coercion... and you give way too much weight to this coercion aspect - to the extent that taxes are mandatory and a part of civil society, and almost anywhere in the world has some taxes.. though there is variation. If you are an American (or another western country), you have won the lottery, b/c you can move almost anywhere in the world with your passport and find some haven that has little to no taxes. What country are you from? You seem to want the benefits of being part of a community, but you do NOT want to pay into that community's rate of taxation. why being part of a community is coercion, what dont you understand... Literally? I do not want to get caught up in the meaning of literally. Anyhow, part of the reason that we have some of this back and forth communication on this topic is b/c we have differing understandings on some terms, including the term coercion. So, at this point, I am a little unclear about the point that you are making Dreamspark? Did you want to chime in to clarify what is so clear about coercion and why living in society is coercion? There are people from third world countries who are fighting for the chance to live in america, in spite of all its supposedly "coercive" taxes. |
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Having mandatory, is NOT the same as coercion.. b/c a large majority of the people do NOT need to be coerced to follow rules of their own making and a society of their own choosing and a community in which they chose to live... I would NOT call that coercion.
If I resist paying taxes, the government intervenes with the threat of force. Threat of force is the very definition of coercion. If people are really choosing to make rules to provide welfare, then they can skip the intermediate step and chose to provide welfare. Everything else is coercion. Forget it, JJG's makes up his own definitions to rationalize his desire to believe he supports freedom against his desire to control others. War is peace, freedom is slavery, all that good stuff. It is NOT about making things up. We have already seen several times that terms are thrown out with some baggage or some meaning that differs from one side to another. If we remain unclear about our terms, then we are going to have more difficulties communicating our ideas. Anyhow mandatory and coercion are NOT the same even though they are similar concepts, and I explained to some extent, the context for my distinguishing mandatory and coercion. |
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Let's say for example, there is a decision by the libertarians (and maybe the convince the rest of us) to progress to a new and "better" society that does NOT have roads, there would be a lot of resistance in segments of society to those kinds of ideas and plans... so then we end up in a state of serious disagreement and tension b/c the bright ideas of libertarians want to progress to a "more advanced" state of affairs - a world without roads. GO figure!!!!
WTF JJG? You keep assigning these ambitions to others when that is not the case. Libertarians would decouple the roads from government and allow the system to develop in a natural and organic manner. My point with the roads is that what we would have *now* if this had happened a long time ago not that we magically jump from setup A to setup B. That is what collectivists do with their grand solutions and five-year-plans. Yes... it may be a little unfair for me to attribute fuzzy logic to all libertarians - b/c certainly, some of the libertarian ideas are decent ones. I am NOT opposed to getting value from ideas that can make us move in a better direction to improve personal liberties and even to improve voluntariness under current systems, to the extent those kinds of fixes are feasible. A problem, however, in this discussion is that the vision of no government or little government gets so preoccupied with criticizing government but comes up with few if any realistic solutions to address public concerns and the roads example is a good one, especially if we are going to describe the proposed solutions systematically. I really do NOT understand the point of arguing about our supposedly being in a better position (possibly) if we did NOT have roads. That makes very little sense (even if it were true). Currently we have roads, and that is our starting point.. NOT some hypothetical fantasy land world without roads, and that life without roads may be more of a Richy_T argument rather than attributable to other libertarians. Anyhow, I do NOT mean to insult anyone (including you Richy_T) with any guilt by association type assertions; however, I had been using some of the labels, such as attributing certain kinds of ideas to libertarians) to simplify to some extent... b/c there is a common theme that seems to be, but I also find that labels do NOT always quite capture various nuances in what is being proposed (apart from the less government angle) |
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The poor are better off under system B but I suspect this is unacceptable to you because helping the poor is less important to you than forcing everyone to conform to your values.
It's like the kid who when given a treat is upset because their sibling got a bigger treat. People need to look to themselves, not others. It's the "If I can't have you, nobody can" mentality. Here's another example of near incomprehesiveness, describing a conclusion and then putting a label on some created scenario that makes little to no sense - b/c both the previous arrived conclusion and the comment regarding the conclusion are quite separated from reality. Here also is an example in which the context should have NOT been snipped... b/c a new reader is NOT going to understand the conclusion or the comment b/c too much of the context has been snipped. |
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To expand more on the roads thing with a specific example: I work in a place called Cool Springs which is a rapidly growing (yay low taxes) area in middle-Tennessee. It has grown so quickly that the road structure is struggling. This year, Tennessee will spend billions of taxpayers money to upgrade the road structure to accommodate those people (including me). In the meantime, tens of thousands of people are spending a significant chunk of time sitting in traffic everyday leading to untold loss of productivity and/or leisure time and burning significant fuel doing nothing.
And yet... the growth in this area is mostly white-collar. The huge proportion of these people could probably work from home (something you would understand, Keyser). Vast amounts of time and resources could be saved. Yet there is no incentive to do so because those taxes are going to be taken and the roads built regardless. If it was laid out in front of people as a straight choice, maybe things would work out differently. Of course, maybe they wouldn't. But that's kind of the point, to let the market decide. Who knows, maybe we'd even have more roads, better roads. Maybe if you wanted to head to New York from here (or wherever you are) and you had a sufficiently equipped vehicle, you could hop on a 180mph toll road and be there in no time. The point is that the one-size-fits-all of government action leads to inefficient solutions.
The more you explain, the more we should be able to recognize how detached you are from reality. Roads are NOT going to be built in any kind of efficient way without public funding. Surely, there may be better ways to go about accomplishing the same objectives, but roads are within the community desires about the solution. If you want another solution, besides roads, you have to convince the community to move in that direction. In your rural Tennessee example, that is converting to a less rural existence, the community seems to have decided that it wants more roads.... b/c they see that as the solution to the issue of having more people in the area. |
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Having mandatory, is NOT the same as coercion.. b/c a large majority of the people do NOT need to be coerced to follow rules of their own making and a society of their own choosing and a community in which they chose to live... I would NOT call that coercion.
If I resist paying taxes, the government intervenes with the threat of force. Threat of force is the very definition of coercion. If people are really choosing to make rules to provide welfare, then they can skip the intermediate step and chose to provide welfare. Everything else is coercion. That is why this back and forth communication with you is getting NO WHERE - b/c you keep insisting that your being part of a community is coercion... and you give way too much weight to this coercion aspect - to the extent that taxes are mandatory and a part of civil society, and almost anywhere in the world has some taxes.. though there is variation. If you are an American (or another western country), you have won the lottery, b/c you can move almost anywhere in the world with your passport and find some haven that has little to no taxes. What country are you from? You seem to want the benefits of being part of a community, but you do NOT want to pay into that community's rate of taxation. |
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*Patiently waiting for a Chinese Bail-in*
I had a dream last night... I was watching the Bitcoin price chart at $640 and then all of a sudden the price just started skyrocketing, it went to $1,200 and then $5,000 in minutes... Then I woke up and thought, "well that was a wishful dream."
Strange times indeed...
Why didn't you wake up and say, "fuck, I should have bought more bitcoin at $640...."  |
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You seem to be assuming that voluntary is more efficient and you seem to be assuming voluntary results in a higher contributions through some kind of adequate participation rate.
Obviously voluntary contributions are more efficient because people resist being forced to do stuff. They evade, avoid, run, hide, and fight back. Monopoly welfare providers also face no competitive pressure to be efficient. "Obviously"..... yeah, right.. so obvious that you are speculating. just making things up on some kind of logic in your head that sounds convincing to you and to the other libertarians who want the facts to be what you speculate them to be. If participation is inadequate, we have two options: I prefer persuasion and you chose coercion.
There you go creating my position. Having mandatory, is NOT the same as coercion.. b/c a large majority of the people do NOT need to be coerced to follow rules of their own making and a society of their own choosing and a community in which they chose to live... I would NOT call that coercion. But you want to call it coercion in order that you can knock it down and to show all of its flaws. Your thinking is very incomplete in these regards. Maybe you need to get away from your imagination and meet people and talk to people and you will see that there are different viewpoints out there that need to be accounted... also, that is called listening.
The danger with coercion is that the coercive mechanisms remain in place and can be used for socially harmful as well as socially beneficial ends. Taxes fund war, graft, secret police, etc.
YES... I agree that there are a lot of problems with various ways that tax money gets put to work to carry out dirty deeds. Sometimes the dirty deeds are mixed in with what is arguably justifiable... and yes we do find out about tragedies being committed in our name ... And, some of these may be solved by taking away funding or may be solved by better election procedures or may be solved by greater transparency... there is NOT only one solution to these kinds of negative application of the arm(s) of government. |
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You have a clever way of pointing at technicalities such as you do NOT want to "run a society." Who gives a flying fuck whether a person uses the word run or that the society is running on its own...
Ultimately, the point that I am making is that in the real world apart from your fantasy land of generalities (that supposedly is shared by others with similar visions of grandeur), the societal objectives are NOT going to be met. ... and net happiness will be down.. even thou some people may feel free an empowered by such a vague societal outline.... b/c supposed individualized liberty will be embraced and respected... Your whole outline seems much to vague.
And face the reality... you cannot "meet the needs of the helpless" without having various plans that outline such rather than relying on some amorphous concepts of voluntary giving...... and I am quite confident that the helpless will be a much broader category than you are contemplating in your vague outline of principles.
Is this less vague? System A: 60% of the people vote for a 10% tax to help the needy. Tax collection and funds distribution is 50% efficient so the poor get 5% of society's income. System B: 60% of the people voluntarily donate 10% to help the needy directly and the poor get 6% of society's income. The poor are better off under system B but I suspect this is unacceptable to you because helping the poor is less important to you than forcing everyone to conform to your values. Your numbers are unacceptable b/c you seem to be pulling them out of your ass. You seem to be assuming that voluntary is more efficient than non-voluntary and you seem to be assuming that voluntary results in a higher amounts of contributions through some kind of adequate participation rate. Also, I have NO idea the tax methodology contained therein, and some of these dynamics to create a kind of flat tax, is usually NOT acceptable - even though you did not outline what kinds of taxes that you were suggesting. Taxes are NOT such a big monster and enemy to the individual freedom that you are making them out to be - even though I will admit that it seems that in many regards, in modern application taxes are all screwed up... and a lot of the screw up has to do with the generous tax cuts to the rich for more than 30 years... which have been causing increasing burdens on regular people. and also in regards to the preferential treatment of the rich, in various regards, and death of unions and other democratic institutions, there has been considerable redistribution of wealth from regular and middle and lower classes to the undeserving spoiled ass rich. I am NOT jealous.. b/c I have NOTHING against people being able to become rich.. the problem is that there has been such widespread corruption and failure to pay taxes by rich people and even subsidies, that this has been contagious and even decent rich people get lured into this trap of never ending desire for more.. even when they have plenty. |
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Seriously Richy is correct, roads and almost all the new world Infrastructure is a result of thinking based of a misunderstanding, it's not that we need or don't need them or think paying tolls are unjust. It's just they may not be as relevant as you think if you correct the original misunderstanding and build from a base of free market and mutual cooperation.
It's like you guys can't even hear yourselves talk. You keep saying, "In this world that I imagine in my head, if things had worked out differently and the US would have developed flying cars before cobblestone, you would easily see what a waste of money roads are. Imagine where else we could have spent money if we didn't have roads!" Yet in this world we call reality roads allowed us to rise above 3rd world status. I'll leave it to you to google "road importance" and maybe you can begin to understand that we wouldn't have any fucking money at all if we didn't have roads. Please spend some time learning one of the major reasons Rome was able to rise: The Appian Way. YEAH... but it is NOT only the fact that arguably currently we are better off b/c roads exists, it is also the status quo. We do NOT just magically of the gathering "progress" from a status quo that has roads to another state of ideal world that the libertarians are projecting where we would have been were it NOT for our investing in stupid ass roads. To me, it seems more practical that we start from the status quo with roads, and work from there by figuring out how to use the roads that we have. And figure out how to take advantage of the roads that we have. Let's say for example, there is a decision by the libertarians (and maybe the convince the rest of us) to progress to a new and "better" society that does NOT have roads, there would be a lot of resistance in segments of society to those kinds of ideas and plans... so then we end up in a state of serious disagreement and tension b/c the bright ideas of libertarians want to progress to a "more advanced" state of affairs - a world without roads. GO figure!!!! ON the other hand, they may just be crying over spilled milk.. to be suggesting these new states of affairs that could have evolved were it NOT for the current evolution... in other words, it may be too late to develop a world without roads.. at least NOT in the next couple hundred years. |
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The war illustrated that one phase in the Bible may in fact be true."Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth"
Not sure who the 'meek' are meant to be here --- the Allies? The meek are the ones who invested in bitcoin early. NOT only did they invest early, but they were also patient enough NOT to sell during times of scaring tactics and accordingly were able to retain enough bitcoin in their wallet(s) in order to wait for the eventual choo choo. |
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bid sum has increased to 15M on stamp. Ask 17M.
Wally, how far do you think it has to increase before we get enough upwards momentum?
We might wake from hibernation when bid sum goes over 20M. MIGHT. Yeah, but nobody really seems to care about those walls, until the trade volume starts picking up... and then the walls start to move closer to the trade price... the pent up demand sort of scenario... |
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the only flash crash thats going to happen from this point on is when btc-e gets shut down probably this year taking all alts with it
What are your points of contention regarding the problematic nature of BTC e, if any? Are they NOT transparent enough? Are they engaged in fractional banking? What's going on? no aml/kyc, they don't even ask for name when you sign up, thats where all the stolen btc ends up I know that I have heard some anecdotal stories of people losing their BTC... on BTC e, also. However, I question whether those are just made up or exaggerated stories. I remember one guy had provided me a link to a story.. but in my view, the story did NOT pan out b/c the person was merely sending out negative stories before there was even an issue of a problem. Surely, it is possible, and maybe I should withdraw some of my BTC from there.. I have about 15 BTC (about 40% of my holdings) on BTCe. |
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the only flash crash thats going to happen from this point on is when btc-e gets shut down probably this year taking all alts with it
What are your points of contention regarding the problematic nature of BTC e, if any? Are they NOT transparent enough? Are they engaged in fractional banking? What's going on? |
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Last ~4 hours we've been in a tight range.
Interesting.....
Anything less than a 50% flash crash is boring.   Surely, a lot of the money can be made on volatility, and we have been in boring territory for a couple of weeks now... I mean we have been expecting more volatility than what we have been getting.. especially given the Gox Shenanigans with the bankruptcy filing and then the mysterious movement of 180k GOX BTC money and the hacking of Gox information and the appearance of Dorian... and even the threats from Twobit to "OUT" out the bitcoin foundation...... oh yeah, and then there was the pending blockchain announcement on bloomberg tv... but in the end... mostly all of these resulted in anti-climactical movement that let to no meaningful choochoo in either direction. Is there such a thing as a backward choo choo or a stopped choo choo....  Even litecoin has been somewhat less than exciting.. regarding movement we thought that there may be some action with litecoin base on its increase exposure to china exchanges... .. but that has, so far, kind of flopped.. with an initial spurt that lasted a few hours at most and overall without any real meaningful price changes... (though maybe a little more back and forth movement in prices as comparison to BTC?) |
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I simply want to live in a society where all interactions are voluntary and property rights are respected. If that sounds too distopian to you, find comfort in the fact that I am philosophically am opposed to forcing anyone to create such a society, to live there or to stay there. Can you the the same of your society?
Those are very nice and lofty principles in theory, and they are NOT even bad things to which to aspire. NONETHELESS, we are likely NOT going to be able to achieve complete voluntaryism, especially your concept of the term, and there are social and public benefit and social and public property that are from time to time going to impinge upon the boundaries and property rights of others that are NOT likely resolvable voluntarily. But, in theory I would like a world that also aspires to those kinds of broad principles, to the extent feasible.. so maybe we kind of agree to the broad principles, but NOT to the absolutism of such broad principles to the detriment of society as a whole. The debate might end here, then. There are several strong utilitarian arguments to be made in favor of distributed governance, but I'm probably not the right person to make them. I'm a Natural Rights kind of guy and I don't think coercion is justified even if it produced a net benefit for society, which I strongly believe it doesn't. Our community just donated over $25,000 worth of bitcoin to a victim of irresponsible media. Is that not evidence of our charitable disposition? You cannot run a society like that.... this situation got a lot of attention, but there are so many situations of public need that do NOT get attention, and the problem of free riding or free loading is a well known principle in economics and human psychology that people are NOT going to just freely invest in certain public goods, and they are just going to wait for the other guy... b/c they know that they can get it for free.. there are so many examples of this and even examples of natural monopolies that it is very inefficient to build redundant systems.. and those kinds of systems are public goods. I think a lot of you anti-government folks do NOT account for these various factors, and somehow expect that everything important is going to be covered by some kind of hands-off voluntary/free/individualistic system. I don't want to run a society. I want it to run without anyone running it. Kind of like Bitcoin. Free riders are not the primary issue to the truly altruistic. The main issue is "are the needs of the helpless being met?" You have a clever way of pointing at technicalities such as you do NOT want to "run a society." Who gives a flying fuck whether a person uses the word run or that the society is running on its own... Ultimately, the point that I am making is that in the real world apart from your fantasy land of generalities (that supposedly is shared by others with similar visions of grandeur), the societal objectives are NOT going to be met. ... and net happiness will be down.. even thou some people may feel free an empowered by such a vague societal outline.... b/c supposed individualized liberty will be embraced and respected... Your whole outline seems much to vague. And face the reality... you cannot "meet the needs of the helpless" without having various plans that outline such rather than relying on some amorphous concepts of voluntary giving...... and I am quite confident that the helpless will be a much broader category than you are contemplating in your vague outline of principles. |
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I observed this wall today, uploaded for your pleasure. Edited: vandal's graffiti.  What's it mean? |
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I simply want to live in a society where all interactions are voluntary and property rights are respected. If that sounds too distopian to you, find comfort in the fact that I am philosophically am opposed to forcing anyone to create such a society, to live there or to stay there. Can you the the same of your society?
Those are very nice and lofty principles in theory, and they are NOT even bad things to which to aspire. NONETHELESS, we are likely NOT going to be able to achieve complete voluntaryism, especially your concept of the term, and there are social and public benefit and social and public property that are from time to time going to impinge upon the boundaries and property rights of others that are NOT likely resolvable voluntarily. But, in theory I would like a world that also aspires to those kinds of broad principles, to the extent feasible.. so maybe we kind of agree to the broad principles, but NOT to the absolutism of such broad principles to the detriment of society as a whole. The debate might end here, then. There are several strong utilitarian arguments to be made in favor of distributed governance, but I'm probably not the right person to make them. I'm a Natural Rights kind of guy and I don't think coercion is justified even if it produced a net benefit for society, which I strongly believe it doesn't. Our community just donated over $25,000 worth of bitcoin to a victim of irresponsible media. Is that not evidence of our charitable disposition? You cannot run a society like that.... this situation got a lot of attention, but there are so many situations of public need that do NOT get attention, and the problem of free riding or free loading is a well known principle in economics and human psychology that people are NOT going to just freely invest in certain public goods, and they are just going to wait for the other guy... b/c they know that they can get it for free.. there are so many examples of this and even examples of natural monopolies that it is very inefficient to build redundant systems.. and those kinds of systems are public goods. I think a lot of you anti-government folks do NOT account for these various factors, and somehow expect that everything important is going to be covered by some kind of hands-off voluntary/free/individualistic system. |
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All good news, no more Gox to stop us. Jet packs are full. Prepare to strap in, bears.
People should give no weight to "good" news to up the price because... yadda... Clearly you're new here. This is the speculation thread. We do not require any factual data to support our assessments. There has been good news: the price will go up. One need only wait long enough. That is one of the interesting things about the speculation thread... some posters will see good news, and predict the exact opposite of what any other reasonable person would expect. NONETHELESS, sometimes there are solid bullet points to support why a poster believes the market will go in one direction or another, such as... CCMF........ and I am of that inclination that the stars are aligning us for a CCMF - however, i am NOT clear whether that CCMF will be today or possibly within the next 6 months... Accordingly, my BTC price prediction timeline is almost too broad to be credible... but it seems to be in line with some others in this thread.... and my long term bullishness seems to be why I am more of a long term kind of dollar cost averaging BTC investor, rather than a day trader. |
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I would hate to live in the experimental society that you would design after the supposed revolution....
You kind missed the point again. He doesn't want to design a society. That's what statists want to do. This time it can happen, history has favored the plunder, now for the first time there is a plunder proof store of wealth if you store it properly, if it is stolen it rewords all others not the plunderers. Bitcoin is NOT going to resolve all of these societal and community questions b/c they are still going to exist; however, bitcoin will likely bring some revolutionary possibilities in the way that we think about our social institutions and how we think about and carry out social interactions. I agree Bitcoin wont solve a thing, its people who will solve the problems, Bitcoin is just a useful tool, a unique and powerful tool people have never had before. DITTO>......  |
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