False comparison. More correct would be

respect government laws against murder, or die, not really a choice...
respect the NAP or die, again not really a choice...

In that case, yes, they would be the same, except that the second doesn't require a government.


Which is all that the NAP says and expects of you. So if you are following it already, why are you so against it?

This forgets the rather important difference myrkul stated (bolded). It would be comparative if the government then acknowledged that it wronged those rich people and tried to compensate them, but for the most part the government just blames them for what happened, saying they brought it on themselves for being rich, or they could afford it anyway, so it wasn't wrong.

We think so. These guys, however, believe laws are where morals come from.

If someone comes up with an idea for something better, why can't they just implemented in Bitcoin? I mean, we don't replace WWW with something different every time someone comes up with improvements, we just add them to the W3 standards.

Do you like watching videos of store robberies? You should be prosecuted for robbery. Because by watching videos of store robberies, you are contributing to store robberies.

P.S. I'm not into CP, but the laws around it are just plain ridiculous at this point, and they can only get more stupid, because "think of the children"  

I would say biology and evolution would answer your question. Look at the interactions of social species (of which we are one), such as wolves, and through our own history. Despite living in packs and being tribal, with brutal fights against other packs over food and territories, there's a lot of social support and empathy among social creatures. I think it's the lack of empathy that gets taught.

I love how you keep slinging this "illogical bullshit" accusations, while still failing to grasp the fact that you can't change definitions of words on a whim just to win arguments. 

There are two ways to increase one's worth and holdings: Take it from someone else OR Earn it by providing a good or service. Unless they're a politician, those people who have enormous worth and holdings only managed to get there through "their contribution to society." For some reason a lot of people out there completely ignore that fact, and keep thinking that 'contribution to society" only refers to charity.


Oh, it'c completely fair, for one simple reason: Risk has a very real price/cost. All risk. Riskier lifestyle? Higher insurance payments. Riskier investment? Higher possible return. Those people who earned a lot of money from bitcoin investments simply bought a whole hell of a lot more risk than anyone else did. If those teachers, nurses, civil servants, and the rest of the world wants to be as wealthy, all they ave to do is buy a hell of a lot more risk, too. Though with risk also comes the possibility that they'll end up with nothing, too.


Doesn't take skill? People are STILL complaining that Bitcoin is hard to use and harder to get, and it was way way worse two or three years ago. It took a lot of skill to set it up, get it working, and start mining, and even more skill and knowledge (and hours of reading) just to learn how to even begin doing all that (not everyone takes time to learn how to use computers for example.
As for not contributing to society, it's because people bought and hoarded bitcoin, and had so much invested interest in it, that Bitcoin is where it is to begin with. Without people hoarding, there would be almost no rise in price, and barely anyone with any interest to see their "hoard" (aka investment) grow in value. So, if you believe that Bitcoin is a huge contribution to society, then all those people who bought and sat that you're talking about have done an enormous service just getting bitcoin out of obscurity.



The only way they wouldn't use it to contribute back to society is if they sent it to a fake bitcoin address, making it disappear for ever (even in that case, their "sacrifice" would make every other bitcoin holder a bit wealthier). If they do actually use their millions on things like buying goods and services, then that means that someone else who provided that good or service god paid for their job, and are able to have money to buy the things they need. Spending money, even if it's "unfairly" gained millions, in itself helps society. There's also a pretty good chance that this early Bitcoin adopter isn't some wealthy guy from a wealthy neighborhood, but some poor nerd in some obscure part of the world. To suddenly have someone willing to spend millions within an otherwise not-very-rich community is a huge boon for their location's economy, and may end up helping a whole lot of other business owners in the area besides just that lucky bitcoiner, too.






Well, my risk was previous years of learning about computers, hundreds of USD on hardware, days of my time on reading and learning to understand the technology, and five figure amount of USD that was invested, with the knowledge that it may all be worthless. With all that, I'm still no where near as wealthy as I hoped I'd be. So how much risk do you consider to be "small"?

Really? His TV show was nothing but loony conspiracy theory stuff that even Fox News was too embarrassed about and killed his show.

It's a Tor link. It's impossible to know where it actually is, and thus is impossible to take down, let alone find out whom to contact to have it be taken down. For all anyone knows, those files could actually be stored, hidden in an encrypted form, on your own computer, and are being served to everyone using a computer virus based web server.

I think the answer to this is, "What if someone's will was the destruction of your property, while you were away so as not to force anything on you, and a bystander couldn't stop that someone since stopping them would be forcing them to do something against their will, which is to cause destruction"

P. S. Why this belongs here instead of Alt Chains is because it's also a statement to bitcoiners: Litecoin is a possible (future?) way for you to diversify.

I started mining Bitcoin back in 2011, when solo mining was already not possible without a super expensive mining rig full of video cards. When Litecoin came around, it was one of a slew of different alt chains with not much to offer. It was basically, "It's Bitcoin, but..." and I figured doomed to fail like all the others. Being aware of a business concept called "Network Effects," I didn't expect it to pose any competition to an already well established Bitcoin, even with shorter confirmation times. To me it seemed like basically a worthless waste of time that offers absolutely nothing that Bitcoin doesn't already offer, being mined and pushed by certain "butthurt" individuals who felt cheated about having missed out on easy mining and being early adopters. Frankly, my opinion on that still stands.

However, recently I've come to think about individuals having to manage vast quantities of wealth, and the issues that arise with that (think people like Sheldon Addleson, worth billions). You can't keep all that in a bank or as cash, because it's not insured against theft or devaluation. Stocks are risky. Bonds are safer, but also have risk. It's a problem of figuring out where to stick your money in a way that won't make you lose a lot of it due to some circumstantial fluke. With the rise of Bitcoin price, that made me reflect on the exact same issue that people with large bitcoin wealth have, too, and that's when I realized that Litecoin can be very important, too. Not as the silver to Bitcoins gold. Frankly, with Bitcoin getting all the attention on enabling transactions, I expect that Bitcoin will be the cash, and Litecoin will be the gold-like currency, useful only for storing wealth. No, it will be important because of one very important financial and investment concept: Diversification.

So, all you plucky Litecoin investors putting money into it thinking that you can still get in on the ground floor of something like Bitcoin, sorry to disappoint you, but I doubt that Litecoin will ever be anything like Bitcoin. But it will still be very important, and kudos for being in on the ground floor.

But... But what if my freedom (to sit at home all day playing videogames) depends on you paying taxes to support me? Stop obstructing my freedoms! Think of the poor old grandmothers!

Liability, not "legal problems." Two different things. As for "what other?" Owing a bunch of people tens of thousands of USD after the bank close is the other one.

I'm not "interpreting" the NAP. It's a defined thing. What agenda is there in "don't mess with me and I won't mess with you?" You keep saying this "agenda," or "force" or whatever, but you have yet to actually describe it. What force am I exerting on you by telling you that I have no intention of preventing you from leaving your room? What is my agenda in not doing anything to prevent you from moving around your own property?


And yet, it's been done for thousands of years. The NAP is just the concept that if you don't mess with me, I won't mess with you. How often has that idea, which is also referred to as the golden rule and followed in all societies and religions, changed? How often has the definition of NAP changed since someone came up with it? (No, you trying to change the definition by saying there are variations of it doesn't change the original definition). The funny thing is that using your rather misguided logic, you could also say that mathematics and laws of physics are just a religion, since they don't change, either  


Are the terrorists breaking the NAP? Or are you just claiming they are to further your point? If the military is defending US territories from unprovoked attacks, yes, it's following the NAP. If the military is just fighting the rebels who want that military out of their country, then the military is the aggressor, and the "terrorists" are just defending their home. Frankly, it doesn't matter what the military does. The NAP is the NAP, and you can't just say someone is following the NAP as an example of it being a good or a bad thing, any more than I can come over, kill you, and say it's not murder, just because I say it isn't. Or, in a nicer term, I can't say that altruism is bad by claiming that Stalin was practicing altruism by killing off 6 million of his own people. You can't redefine words like that.


To quote, "my brain is full of fuck" after reading that. Biggest government = no government is like WTF! And "ordinary governments" have only come up with the idea of getting feedback from their population fairly recently, a few centuries ago. As for Russia, they have plenty of oversight: the people at the top oversee that everything goes their way, no questions asked. Like in a dictatorship, which is the most governmenty kind of government you can get. Which is, again, the exact opposite of what we want, because it's the exact opposite of what individual freedom consists of.



Yeah, fuck things like wanting to have food, water, energy, and home (aka greed). We want "humanity!"
And that point is kind of what you learn when you learn about international business. It's all AnCap at the top. It's also all AnCap on the web, since the web has no borders, either. And it's not a quirk, it's a trend. So keep fighting against it if you wish, but you'll have to get used to it eventually.

But, what if my idea of freedom conflicts with your idea of freedom? Stop imposing freedoms on me! 

[/statist reply]

But... but... but... market efficiency 

It is? Is there some source that supports this? Or is it just a feeling you have? Roman is always ridiculously quiet about everything. Even when the 25kBTC hack happened. I would actually fault him for that quite a bit myself: that's not how you run a business, regardless of what happens.


Sounds like it's about time for Bitfloor to hire Inaba as their PR rep, though that would also mean the repayments will actually start to go out in February