Uh, no, that's not how monarchy works. I am a monarch because I was born to a monarch family. That's it. Yes, the system is stupid that way.

By the way, I'll just add that ideally, or at least long-term, bitcoin mining profit should approach zero. It doesn't matter if you are mining with CPU, GPU, or ASIC, as long as there is any profit at all, more people will start mining, until the difficulty gets high enough to where everyone only makes just enough to cover their costs. So in that sense, even if you do get an ASIC, you will rapidly be left in the cold, still, as other people also get more ASICs, and then you may end up with an expensive hardware device that you have no means to pay off.

That's not capitalism, that's crime. That'll exist regardless of whether it is a purely capitalist, purely socialist, or any other system in between.


Common claim without much factual backing. Sure, there are cases of people working for loans they can never repay, which is typically referred to as slavery and is illegal. But in practically all cases where teary eyes proclaim, "think of the exploited workers!" the worker's other only other options are starvation or prostitution on the streets. Plus as more and more labor gets absorbed by companies, the collective quality of work and pay increases (reduced supply for labor, increased demand, increased price). India started out as a bunch of really underpaid workers. Their wages have gone up drastically. China was full of exploited workers. Companies can't find workers any more, and are competing against each other with better benefits and working conditions. Ditto for every other third world country without a repressive government or criminal warlords. There are literally NO examples of a third world area with poor workers where conditions did not improve dramatically once businesses and free trade were allowed to come in and "exploit" those workers, while there are dozens of examples of the opposite (India, China, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Finland, East Germany, Poland, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, etc etc etc.)


Don't blame human nature on capitalism. If potential problems were a problem under communist rule, once enough people became concerned, they would ask the government to pass regulations to reduce the problem. If same thing happened under pure capitalist or anarchist "rule," once enough people became concerned, they would simply ask friends, family, and everyone else to stop supporting that problem by avoiding its products. In either case the outcome is the same: if people care, something will happen. If they don't, the government won't do anything either.


If by "morals" you mean things like not having sex before marriage, not using cursewords, only having missionary sex, and perhaps having women wear veils whenever they go outside, then those have no effect on efficiency whatsoever. If you mean things like stealing, killing, lying, etc, which are generally unethical regardless of morality, all you have to do is ask yourself if you would do business with someone who was unethical. If you won't, why do you suppose everyone else will? Besides, if you look through history, you'll find that it is much more profitable to stay ethical than to attempt to get short term gains. You don't even have to look too far back. Just the last 12 years that included the dot com, Enron, and the recession is enough.


Before we continue, ktttn and blablahblah, could you please give us your definition of what you think "capitalism" is? Because ou keep posting either gross misconceptions of capitalism, or examples that have nothing to do with capitalism, and it really looks as if we're all arguing about different things.

How can you be pro monarchy, and at the same time question its validity?

Yes. I would have been. Had the king not been deposed during the Russian Revolution.

Meh, just like calculators and pacemakers aren't trying to overpower us, we'll much more likely just use these autonomous agents ourselves as tools to improve our own lives and bodies. I.e. we'll much more likely merge with them, just as we have "merged" with our smartphones, than have them fight us or something.

Though, if it comes to it, I personally welcome our autonomous overlords, and volunteer to be a pet 

Obviously. That's why he had to hire a lawyer, go to a bunch of different banks, where he was rejected every time, and only about 5 pages of this thread was spent on discussing suggestions for a bank that might accept him.


LOL! It's always useful to have a hardcore pessimist around to point out possible pitfalls, but somehow I doubt that rich kids have to resort to couch surfing when they go on vacation 

Is a kidney stone a symptom of bitcoin loss?

Because Germany never had issues relating to keeping long lists of names of "undesirable" people    

You SERIOUSLY need to spend much more time in the Economics/Politics section of this forum. You have a lot to learn. This was a very long and very thought out post, and you should be proud of it, but there are just so many misconceptions in it regarding the way people and markets work that it would take for ever to address them all. Sorry.

If you
re talking about mining, you'd get much more if you just ask the people to mail in the amount they would have otherwise spent on the electricity.

Still catching up on this thread, but didn't want to let this gem slip through:


So, what would you say if I told you that I am a real, actual count?

Don't use "CEO" if he's not actually in charge?

Sharing the love and the hugs:

It was just as ok for them to do what they did while being motivated by greed, as for Mother Theresa to take care of those sick people when she was motivated for greed, too. Except those you mentioned were more motivated by greed for power, while Theresa was motivated by greed for warm feelings, and heaven.

It's not greed, it's what you are greedy for, based on how screwed up your mind is.

Was it ok for greedy people like Bill Gates, Linus Trovalds, Allan Turing, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wosniak to pursue their greed for money and/or fame, just so you can use the technology they brought into existence to complain about how greed it bad?

... until someone gets disintegrated by an INTJ super-weapon 

You wrote a paragraph, bitching him out and calling his idea fucking stupid, when you could have took into account that he might still not be thinking straight, and either ignored him or just pointed out that, unless he owns all the land in that town, the naming of it will really be up to all the people that live there. You know, "tact." Yes, I may be biased against SA, but you're only reinforcing that bias.

There's still the issue that this system will simply connect multiple traders together, and not much else. It will be up to the traders themselves to actually negotiate and complete the exchange, which will very likely take more than a few milliseconds to complete. Also, BM doesn't take 3-4 minutes for POW. More like 10 to 60 seconds, especially for smaller messages.

So, how 'bout that crappy streak of bad luck these past few days, eh?