Electricity is a renewable resource. Mankind has increased electricity exponentially. Most electricity is created using coal. Coal is not renewable on non-geologic timeframes. It is expected to last only another few hundred years. Or another example, Dubai is a city that grew out of the sand within 15 years. Population exploded and with it the demand for clean water exploded. Your theory would state that it'd be impossible for Dubai to grow exponentially, because it would run out of water - water being produced only in a "linear" fashion.
But of course, Dubai doesn't care about your theory. The solution was simply to build more desalination plants, thus increasing clean water exponentially along with population.
Dubai went bankrupt in the housing crash, and had to be bailed out by it's neighbor Abu Dhabi, which owns the energy resources necessary to run desalination plants. LOL so we only have another few hundred years to find alternatives to coal? Yikes we're doomed! The fact that Dubai's government needed a huge loan from Abu Dhabi doesn't invalidate my point. Abu Dhabi experienced similar growth and the clean water/desalination issue is the same there. The point is that resources can be and are produced to meet the needs of humanity. |
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Doing this would mean the US Gov admits it's currency, the US Dollar, is dead. That will never happen.
Further, half the appeal of Bitcoin is that it can't be inflated. So if the US Gov made a competing p2p currency which they could inflate, who would bother with it? Not me.
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Sorry I grabbed some of them =)
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In the best case renewable sources "renew" at a fixed linear rate, yet we consume them in an exponential way.
This is demonstrably false. Let me demonstrably it for you: Electricity is a renewable resource. Mankind has increased electricity exponentially. Or another example, Dubai is a city that grew out of the sand within 15 years. Population exploded and with it the demand for clean water exploded. Your theory would state that it'd be impossible for Dubai to grow exponentially, because it would run out of water - water being produced only in a "linear" fashion. But of course, Dubai doesn't care about your theory. The solution was simply to build more desalination plants, thus increasing clean water exponentially along with population. Man creates the resources it needs. We make clean water. We grow trees. We find new energy when old sources run dry. If we can't do these things, prices rise and alternatives are found. Your concerns about "deforestation" etc have to do with a lack of private property enforcement, and thus you see a tragedy of the commons. Protect private property and resource issues are null. |
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People who get upset at "hoarding" are Keynesians. Don't blame them though, they've probably been educated in public schools.
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I think this can be explained by the fact that, on margin, bitcoin mining is making a large impact.
While it's true that millions of GPU's are produced, it's also true that large companies have quite precise calculations for demand and production. They always try to produce exactly the number of cards that will be purchased at the market price. So, a change in demand, even if small in relative terms, may still have a large marginal effect on inventories.
This is why GPU's are going out of stock, even though btc mining is maybe a "drop in the bucket." You can expect ATI will be reviewing such things and adjusting production accordingly.
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The Efficient Market Hypothesis should not be regarded as a "fact" but more as a "tendency." Markets always tend toward efficiency, but are never full efficient, nor operating on perfect knowledge.
Even though the general bitcoin market knows that new publicity will bring in more buyers, you're assuming actors will want to buy bitcoins ahead of this publicity. But, this is risky, because nobody knows the perfect extent of the publicity.
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So you are saying that the notion that water is limited, that oil will deplete and that trees need time to grow is a MYTH?  WATER?!? That's an even worse example than trees. Water is the most plentiful resource on the surface of the planet, and can't even be used up! It doesn't go away, unless we shuttle it off the earth. While clean water is indeed limited to some extent, it's merely a question of "at what price can I obtain clean water." If the government allowed markets to work instead of fixing prices, then as clean water was used the local price of that water would rise, and entrepreneurs would figure out ways to bring new clean water in to make a profit. Desalinization is a great example... roughly 95% of the UAE's water is directly from the ocean. They're in the middle of a desert and have plenty of water. Water, of all things, is perhaps the most unlimited resource we have. Price is the only factor that's important. |
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Resources ARE limited period, and REAL science tells us so, no matter what economists want to believe.
If you chop down a tree you have no tree left. You have to wait years for it to grow again, and yet this BASIC thing is not taken into account by our current economic system.
Man, you couldn't have picked a worse example to support your argument. Trees are a renewable resource, they are not "limited" (unlike perhaps oil or gold). In fact, the US has more trees today than it did 70 years ago. For every tree that is chopped down today, commercial lumber companies plant 1.x trees, leaving an increasing quantity at all times. Why do they do this? Because it's profitable. Where are you getting your "REAL" science? |
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Do any of the naysayers take into account the money being pumped into the economy because of bitcoin? I just dropped $500 on mining gear. Nothing compared to what others are doing. But still, $500 going out into the economy that otherwise would not have been spent.
If "money is being pumped into the economy," does that not mean that "goods are being pumped out of the economy"? How does this help anything? Spending money does not "stimulate" the real economy unless that spending went into something profitable, ie - successful investment. Spending money does stimulate GDP figures, but that's just cause GDP is a measure of spending  Let's bury this silly Keynesian notion that spending is valuable for its own sake. |
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Banks will not go away as an institution, they will simply change and adapt (though this change may be pretty extreme).
Let's remember that banking today uses digital money systems already. Physical cash deposits are a small minority of business. There will always be a need for warehousing of wealth in a protected "vault" type system. We store digital dollars in bank vaults today. We'll hopefully store digital BTC in bank vaults tomorrow. The bigger change will be on the government side, for the inability to print and manage the money supply will be the true disruption.
Banking and finance industries will adapt as all business must. Governments may be in serious trouble, however.
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Bitcoin is an example of why the market cannot produce everything that is needed.
Correction: Bitcoin is an example of why the market can produce everything that is needed. Yes. How much did Satoshi sell the use of his invention for by the way? "Markets" properly understood are voluntary trading environments. Bitcoin was built voluntarily by individuals pursuing their own interests and using their own resources and property (some of those interests being profit, or eduction, or ideology, or experimentation, etc.). The fact that the creator didn't "sell" the idea is irrelevant. Bitcoin would NOT have been an example of free market innovation if it had been produced via taxation and coercion (ie - by a government diktat or program). Big difference. |
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Bitcoin is an example of why the market cannot produce everything that is needed.
Correction: Bitcoin is an example of why the market can produce everything that is needed. |
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How about this... anyone should be able to send any amount of money to anyone, whenever. Liberal or conservative. (as if there's a difference)
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Okay, so perhaps it's as simple as, "anyone who was caught doing that would be in big trouble."  |
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Okay I had a thought today, please tell me if and how it is silly/screwed up.
Many of us want to be able to use Bitcoins to donate to political campaigns ::cough:: Ron Paul ::cough:: However, it seems campaigns have strict limits on A) where money can come from and B) how much can be donated. If I'm a Bitcoin billionaire, say I want to donate a huge amount... how can I do it?
Suppose the following:
1) Anyone interested in this scheme signs up at a special website,
2) BTC is donated by X-number of charitable donors to a trusted account held at this website.
3) The BTC is then converted to USD. There is now one big pool of dollars.
4) USD is now distributed evenly to all the members of the website. It is given to them somehow - but they cannot control it.
5) The site then forces all members to donate what they received to the specified political candidate ($2,500 each max or whatever the rules say)
6) The political candidate then receives a huge sum of donations, each from an individual, and each within the allowable limit. The campaign never needs to know Bitcoins were involved. The campaign probably couldn't even reject it, because they wouldn't know whose donations were "authentic"
This strategy could certainly also be done with normal currency... and the reason it hasn't been done is probably good evidence that my plan is very silly and this will be addressed by you all =)
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Taking a global view, an ever-growing economy cannot work in the long run because of earth's limited resources.
Resources are not limited, my friend, they are produced by capitalists. An economy can be ever-growing so long as specialization, technology, and innovation can continue occurring. This doesn't prove my point but is a fun anecdote... the known global supply of oil is larger today than it was 10, 50, or 100 years ago. How can this be if we use so much of it? The answer is that innovation and technology allow us to get more out of the ground. Eventually, oil won't even be used and a new energy source will take its place. If you see an economy that is not growing, you will probably find a government that is trying to make it grow. |
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