I question that, and apparently so does the market.  It is literally impossible for the market price to go over $3 if there was no question that it should be lower.

Of course, that would take nothing less than a constitutional amendment, and there are way too many people who take advantage of the system that would be unwilling to risk losing any perceived advantage to let it go easily.  And to what end, then?  Parlimentary systems such as a  common in Europe are easily just as easily screwed with.  A direct vote would actually be worse for voter fraud in the US than is common today, and a great many people would still agree with the original reasons for having an electoral college, namely as a means for the political class to insure against an ignorant electorate making a horrible choice.

I can't imagine how even an ultrasonic chat system would be worthwhile even in a crowd.  A piratebox (http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox) would serve this function better in that use case, and when Dash7 radios (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7) are half as common in smartphones as wifi, I could text chat across a crowed city block or two, with a building in the path.  And PSK31 is so slow for this, that it would take many seconds to transmit even a single bitcoin address, and a lot can change in the signal in that time unless the two parties are close enough to each other to just simply talk like real people.

(I'm a ham too, BTW)

So sorta like how gas shoots up and everyone gets mad, then drops back halfway and everyone beleives that that is a value?

Ironicly, less than 1% actually do have a vote.  The ritutual of voting for president every four years is an official poll, not a vote.  Nor is it 'democracy' in any direct sense.  The citizen casts his vote for his choice, then electors are gathered together to vote on who is president.  It's called the electoral system, and it usually has the same results, but it hasn't always and doesn't have to.  Most states bind their electors to the majority will of the state's citizenry for the first vote, but if there isn't a majority winner the first go, the electors can then vote for whomever they wish.  Very few states bind their electors for as many as three votes, but none beyond that.  Even so, the consequences for voting contrary (it's not a secret vote, btw) are not all that huge.

This is an old idea that was connected to the concept that landowners were those in society most closely associated with the local area, because the 'mobility' (where we get the term 'the mob' from) are able to move away from areas that the political environment is hostile.  This principle didn't really work then, and is even less true today.  That said, I understand the sentiment.  If voting were just in modern democracies, only those who have contributed a net-positive amount of money to the government should have any say in how it is directed.  Of course, requiring that voters prove that they paid more in taxes to the government than they received in direct benefits is likely impossible, and the idea is also probably unconsitutional.

Anyone who claims to be able to answer this title question with any certainty should not be trusted.

Not any more than you can via an encrypted chat over Tor.  Less so, even because I can find your numbers station with the right gear.

What good is this?  If you were working on a way that hams could transact over radio links without Internet access, I could see the value in it, even though actual hams couldn't ever use it due to the prohibition on business transactions.  I still can't imagine a use case, though.  But to encode a bitcoin address, URI or even an entire transaction into a modulated audio stream seems entirely useless to me. 

Do you really think that a few days rise in the exchange rate is suddenly going to alter the overall opinions of anyone, much less the most outspoken detractors of Bitcoin?

No, because they have nothing invested into Bitcoin to eat, short or otherwise.  Trolls never have any 'skin in the game'.

Oh, yes you will.  Because if you ever become a father, you will have to come to terms with the concept that it is your responsibility to educate your child so that they can assume their rights.  Your own shortcomings are irrelevent, you must do the best you can.  Dictating to the child what to read is an easy example of that.

As a parent, I have the "right" to act and make decisions on behalf of my children, as a caretaker of my child's rights up until the point that he is rationally capable of taking those rights for himself.  In most places, that point is usually defined by an arbitrary birthdate; but in reality most children hit the "age of reason" sometime between 11 and 14.  This also means that, as caretaker of my child's rights, I have the authority to use those rights, or obstain from using those rights, in whatever way I feel is best; the immediate opinions of the child in question are actually irrelevent.  So if I decide that my two year old needs dicipline, he gets 'incarcerated' into the corner against his own will, and that is not a violation of his rights even though to do something similar to a 19 year old certainly would be, because the two year old's rights are held by myself and his mother.

That is one of the problems with the dismal science, Keynes was a great and intelligent guy in his own right, and very well might be accurate in everything that he intended to communicate about what he understood about Economics; but then the failures of his students to understand (and therefore implement) his ideas are still Keynes own failures.  It's like saying that the Bible is the perfect word of God, and it's humans that screw it up; although it could be true taken alone it makes no difference for the outcomes.  Praxeology (and thus Austrian economic theory) views human interactions (including economic ones) to be a social science, and studies it from that perspective/paradigm.  It makes few promises about predictions, because humans are too complex to break down their actions into mathmatical algos, there is always going to be data that cannot be represented in such simulations.  It's like those 3D computer simulations of flocks of birds.  Sure we can model the mathmatics to mimic such behavior in a computer simulation, what we cannot do is use those mathmatics to predict how real flocks of birds would actually act in the real world.  The reason for this is that the simulations are simply mimicry of real birds, and must make numerous assumptions about the decision making processes of any given flock of birds.  Just as this decision making process is a complex and rapid group communications process that we can't come close to gathering enough data to model, the collective decisions that millions of independent human beings make each day can't be simulated either, for the simple fact that it's impossible for the observer to know all the data that all of the individuals know.  Austrians tend to refer to this principle as a 'fatal conceit'.

Are you sure that you intended to say his predecessors?

Since the root purpose of any scientific theory, economic or otherwise, is to be able to model the observed into a paradiem that permits the scientist to make accurate predictions; they were terribilely wrong.  The 1970's 'stagflation' was regarded as coincidentally impossible by Keyes's general economic theory.  That is where and why Austrian economic theory shines, by making predictions of long term outcomes.  That is the "one lesson" from the book by Hazlitt, Economics in one Lesson.  To quote the lesson, "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

That's the macro in a nutshell.  If an economic theory cannot predict the long term effects of national monetary policies have on everybody then it's a false idol.  Keynesism in all it's forms should have been abandoned as false by 1979.  That's exactly why Ron Paul and Peter Schiff have been so prophetic in their warnings about where this country was headed for the past decade or more, and exactly why Austrian investors like Mish Shedlock and Rich Maybury make a killing while investing into what amounts to the ineffectivenesses of Keynesian and Monetarist theories.  These theories persist because they favor government with the idea that economies can actually be controlled by reason of altering one of the variable in the calculations, but in reality an economy is just a huge set of independent actors (generally) doing what (from their own perspectives) is in their own best interests.  At root, then, Economics is a social science, and is therefore not subject to the rigid rules that apply to hard sciences.

I know a guy who was born and raised in NYC, and moved to my present city of Louisville, Kentucky because he is a chef's assistant and now works for General Electric in the appliances testing division, presumedly testing kitchen appliances.  He was both shocked and a little taken aback to learn that there existed so many firearms in the city, and that it was legal for citizens to walk around with them concealed.  What shocked him most was to learn that no one got hurt.  I believe in twenty years, there is only one case of a concealed carry license holder committing a gun crime in the entire state, and that wasn't here.  I've literally seen grown men with "assault" rifles slung over their backs downtown in Jefferson Park (for one of the earlier Tea Party events, before the movement was co-opted by the Republicans; best of luck staying independent OWS).  Cops around here don't get sideways with whomever they wish, like in NYC, and they damn well don't do 'no knock' home entries after dark.  That would be an exceedingly hazardous occupational risk, particularly if they got the address wrong.

This same guy couldn't get a license to drive in NYC; not only does he drive here, he owns a firearm.  As far as I know, he doesn't carry though.  This is one of the safest cities in America.

Ah, no.  That's not remotely accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime

This is the largest study on the subject ever done, anywhere in the world.  The conclusion isn't even in contest, the results of states passing carry permits for any citizen are overwhelmingly in favor of the title of the book.  More guns in society results in less violent crime overall.  We can argue all day over why this is so, but not about the empirical facts.

Kentucky has open carry for just about anything, but no one really does because Kentucky also has citizens' concealed carry laws as well.  By some polls, roughly 10% of adults in Kentucky are armed whenever they leave their house.  Kentucky also sports the highest per capita rate of Class II and Class III weapons owned by civilians in the US, and one of only a few public firing ranges approved for such weaponry.  I live within a 30 minute drive of that range, Knob Creek Gun Range.

Wow, this prediction is based upon a particularly error filled view of economics.  So if the Euro begins to really collapse, the European "1%" are just going to throw up their hands and say, "Well, it was good while it lasted"?  Of course not, they are going to scramble to do whatever they can to save as much of their wealth as they can in any fashion that they can.  I find it unlikely that Bitcoin will benefit in any significant way, but the US $ certianly would.  Gold would.  Silver might.  Bitcoin just isn't a large enough of an economy to absorb even a small portion of the needs of Europe at this time, and anyone with enough money to bother would be able to understand that up front.