Try:

Monty Python - The life of Bryan
The gods must be crazy I and II
Thank You for Smoking (2005)
Borat

The Op's chart is a deliberate joke, to mock bulls.
Anyone took it seriously?

I think people forget that there were rates of taxes of 80% between 1940 and 1963 for the richest and the seventies (where we find more regulations) were the time with less inequality.
Just to justify my assertions, I end my participation with these links to charts on inequality on the USA.


http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116361/17-charts-about-inequality-obama-should-read
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/11/inequality-and-growth-what-do-we-know.html

I doubt any serious manipulation can endure in any market. It's just too costly to pump the price just to see it going down again soon. The manipulator just ends up with some more thousand bitcoins bought at a higher price.

We see that at Huobi frequently, but the price just ends up down again. Think about the move to 547 (Bitstamp) on 16 April.


Of course, if a big whale really believes the technical situation is favourable he can really push the price up and make it gain momentum, but that isn't manipulation. Others pick up the move.

People write (lets call it) controversial things really hoping their post will influence the price. That is very amusing to me.
Anyway, I doubt the chinese government will do much more until the price starts rising fast again. If they were prepared to close the exchanges without a change of circumstances, they would already done that.

Of course, I don't trust people in power. They are the last that deserve trust, since power corrupts. Therefore, they have to be controlled by the people.

On regulations and taxes, here I have no doubt that we disagree. Since the Reaguen/Tatcher/Neo-liberal take over, many regulations were repealed, so I don't think we have an excess of it.

Moreover, we never had so much inequality and so many people receiving aid from charities (instead of public social services) and that is humiliating. Wages have been losing their share on the global income. We have people working full time and even having second jobs that are poor. I can't help feeling pity for them and thinking they live on unfair situations.

Inequality must exist, since it has efficiency consequences, but people earning 50 and 100 times what other earn is like making them from different species.

Can a democracy work well on those circumstances, where a few can with their money almost control public authorities and buy all the attention, work and subservience of millions of workers?

The price before the chinese entered in bitcoin in force was way lower than it is now.
It's controversial what was the price, since there was chinese exchanges before the jump in price.
Clearly, it was the chinese that breached the previous top of 10 april 2013: 266 usds at Gox and 251 at Bitstamp.
But I think it was the chinese that moved the price beyond about 150, after the dip to around 90 when Silk Road was busted.

The major part of exchanges accept withdraws by wire transfer to a bank. But usually they require that you verify your account by sending personal documents. You can use Bitfinex or Bitstamp.

Anyway, better search any exchange before you do any trade there. There are some complains on the one you mentioned. Of course, I'm not endorsing the complains.

I can't understand why people start insulting others because of divergences of opinion.
Insulting is an aggressive action and aggression usually (lets forget now about cases of greed or power that are irrelevant here) is a manifestation of insecurity.

If someone is ignorant and like to stay that way and hates anyone that tries to help him, that is a case for ignoring him or, at most, to laugh, not to insult.

I'm not taking sides or thinking about anyone in particular. Just read some messages on this thread.

Alright, we have some common ground.

But don't believe on owners (big or small) doing the right thing. History shows people usually don't do the right thing. Slavery ended not because of owners wanting to do the right thing: it's all about regulations. Hell, in the USA it was necessary to kill more than half a million people to end it.

I agree with efficiency and scale production, but on a monopoly the price has little to do with the cost of production. The monopolist extracts as much as possible from buyers.

I'm no believer on Rousseau good savage or the good human nature of anarchism. I hate power and authority, but I have no illusions, without public authority controlled by the people, mostly it would be hell on earth.

Actually, bitcoin will never be 21 millions. Coins have been already lost and many much will be lost. People forget the private keys and good bye to the coins.
On the price target, it's pure speculation. Everything is possible.

I think you are talking about regulations on social security, health insurance, consumer safety, worker rights and safety. Would you end all of them? A return to the glorious laissez faire times?
Free market rule: 14 hours working time, kids working in mines, corporations selling non-tested drugs, etc.
Do you really believe a monopoly can be good (governmental or "natural")?

All money means freedom to his holders.
Bitcoin will mean freedom to the ones who have it.
If bitcoin was to assume the role you have in mind, as the dominant currency of a society, it would be a tragedy: a society with permanent deflation, that ruins any economy, where tax evasion would be the rule (unless the Government created serious invasives controls of our use of bitcoin and the Internet), where Government would have serious difficulties to adopt any economic policies to avert economic depression.
Where people who had fiat money would see their savings ruined, since the good money (bitcoin) would drive out the bad money (fiat), because of the so-called Gresham's law.
And since there can be Fractional Reserve banking of bitcoin, we would still have banksters exploring people.
I'm optimistic about bitcoin, but a general adoption would be good only for bitcoin holders, for the rest could be a disaster.

There are already lists you can use to develop your own:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
http://www.bitcoinmaps.org/
http://bitimap.net/
http://www.thebitpages.com
http://thebitcoincatalog.com/

I don't share all those suspicions about government and I don't agree with the conclusion on their failures.
The "free market" without central regulation usually ends with a monopoly, like standard oil or Carnegie steel: with no free market or accountability, only to serve the interests of the owner of the monopoly.

I don't think that the creation of money is just a side effect: is an intended effect that directly support the profit of banks.
Anyway, being the main effect or a side effect is not the point: the point is that it's a soverign function that should be entrusted to a public independent entity, not the Government, but the central bank (well, in the USA the FED isn't exactly a public entity, but its status in one of those absurd things of the USA). And not conceded to private corporations. We all have to pay more taxes to support that aspect of the "free market".

1) You know the USA can't print any amount of USDs they want, that would enlarge the american huge trade deficit, cause depreciation of the USD, inflation and could affect the status of the USDs as the international currency. Therefore, buying oil with USDs means they can't buy so many BMWs from Germany or other goods. Since even to them the USDs is somehow scarce, buying with USDs or exchanging those USDs for euros to buy oil (everyone will accept the USDs gladly) doesn't change enough to justify war.

2) Bush son and Cheney were convinced that the easy oil to extract was ending and that an oil crisis was imminent (search Peak oil and Cheney), therefore having USDs or euros to pay for Iraqi oil wasn't enough assurance to have access to it.

I rest my case, feel free to think that the USA are willing to destroy their reputation and their citizens lives on a blatant invasion because of the currency an oil producer accepts to sell its oil. I won't return to this matter.

If you want to belive the USA invaded Iraq in 2003 because of the currency of iraqi oil, be my guest.
The reason was clear, the USA wanted to grab Iraqi oil reserves.
By the way, the United Nations "Oil for food Program" aproved by the Security Council, with the necessary consent of the USA, autorized Iraq to sell oil and those trades were mainly in euros until the end of the sanctions.
Several countries currently sell some oil in euros, including Venezuela, Angola, Iran, Russia or indonesia. They have to watch out for the imminent american invasion.

No doubt, even democratic systems allow for abuses. The so-called political economic cycles, where in years of election there are expansions of the economy to grab votes, are proof of that. But in other systems things are worst.

And I think macro-economic policies are essential. If you think we should just wait for hard times to pass, with no intervention from Government, well we disagree on that. I'm not american, but I would gladly had exchanged the Trichet guy, that almost killed the euro, for Barnanke.

Numbers are abstractions. It's not important the exact number for my point, we know things were harder on the USA than they are now.

If you had Trichet, you would be worst. The capacity to make predictions about what would happen if some policy wasn't adopted or what will happen if it's adopted is a precondition of every science. Economics is a weak science, with lots of incertitude, but if we reject completely that capacity, we would be recognizing that it isn't a science at all, but a collection of cook receipts.