Cool. Another needless pseudo-intellectual renaming of a more commonly known term. "Blaming the victim"
But if you'll notice, never one did I blame any victim. Never once did I endorse over paying for insurance.

Many financially poor, want to pay their own bills. Most expect to pay their own bills. The concept of entitlement comes as a shock to most of the new immigrant poor. I live in a southern conservative area where many Vietnamese boat people immigrated. (they call themselves that). They were clearly victims before they left. They were victimized many times by folks here. No one wanted the Vietnamese living among them. The world was not just.

However, it turns out those Vietnamese people were. They worked hard. Pooled their own money. Loaned their own money. Started their own businesses. Paid their own tuition. Paid their own bill. It never occurred to them there should be any alternative. I never heard of a single case of them begging for a bank loan, or purchasing insurance. (Not in the first two decades) Yet there were never complaints of them "draining the system". They always met every obligation. Their society wouldn't let anyone fuck things up for the rest of them. Now people flock to their neighborhoods. They make great neighbors.


I am claiming the root of over priced health care is two fold. 1) Insurance. 2) Entitlement  The two are in fact orthogonal concepts. But psychologically many have conflated the concepts.

1) Insurance causes "price increases" (not provider cost increases) for the obvious reason. Insurance companies *must* pay whatever prices are billed. They negotiate in order to avoid this getting out of hand. In the absence of insurance, medical providers must limit their prices to only what people are actually *able* to pay.

This is a corollary to mortgage loans affecting housing prices. In the absence of mortgage loans the average house would be priced around $80,000. Or whatever it turned out an average family could actually save in a few years.

Both insurance and mortgages were created to help responsible people pay their obligations. Their creation had the unintended side effect of increasing commodity prices. (Not the cost to produce the commodity.)

2) Entitlement is the opposite of helping people meet their own obligations. It should have absolutely nothing to do with insurance or mortgages.

However, some perverted psychologic concept caused envious people to say, "Hey that guy is going to the Doctor but he doesn't have to pay. His insurance company has to pay. What make him so fucking special?" This was a perverted view of course because, on average, everyone with insurance was already paying more for insurance (or being rewarded less in salary) than they would be if they just paid for their own care.

In honor of rainingbitcoins, I'll call this perversion, "Just-World Envy". Envying the victim for getting screwed, and demanding they get screwed too, purely out of fairness.

But like going to a hooker, when confronted with the cost of getting screwed they balked. "He that guy is rich! He can afford to get screwed! But what about me? I'm too poor to get screwed honestly! Hence, the birth of the concept, "Entitlement". I'm too poor to get screwed by the insurance companies. So I'm entitled to rape the doctor.


This perceived entitlement (of not having to pay) is what began the drive up in actual health care costs. These increasing costs compounded the provider's above dive to increase prices. Thus further raising insurance rates, and further screwing the responsible.

Realizing they were being screwed, the responsible began demanding only the absolute best, most expensive, treatments. Shouldn't they be entitled? After all they are paying for all the deadbeat fuck heads?.

Hospitals and Doctors are perfectly happy to sell expensive products if there is a DEMAND for them. And of course there is. Who wants to pay for less than the absolute best health care? Even if that CAT/PET scan is unnecessary medically. At least it, psychologically, makes you feel better knowing you absolutely don't have something the doctor told you that you couldn't possibly have.

Of course, since you are entitled not-to-pay for basic health care. Shouldn't you also be entitled not-to-pay for the unnecessary treatments the responsible are paying for? It's only fair...

------
Sure, it's TL;DR

But solving the problem, means first acknowledging the problem. Ask any alcoholic.

Cool! A guy who wants to build an "Unjust World" filled with tyrannical people who fail to acknowledge any personal obligations. Go for it! I really think this planet is big enough to try all sorts of experimental societies. Evolution will sort out what works and what doesn't. I'm sure there are many people who want to live among folks like you. Go forth and multiply. Leave the people who want to meet their personal obligations alone.

1) Everyone should be entitled to ACCESS to health care.
Meaning there should be no discrimination based on race, creed, color... or any damn thing. People get sick. People get care.

2) Everyone should be REQUIRED to pay their own bills. Period.
Insurance is what people buy to meet their obligation to pay their own bills.
If you don't need insurance to meet your personal obligations, well good for you!

If you decide for some magical reason that you are special. You are *entitled* to avoid your personal obligations. Well then, I think society as a whole should give you, and all people like you, a loud "Fuck You!". Does that mean we revoke (1). No. But it means we revoke your access to as much of society as necessary so that people instinctively realize the necessity of meeting their personal obligations. You should be treated at least a scornfully as we do with sex offenders. Your name should be put on a public list.

We already went through exactly the same process with student loans. We wanted everyone to be *entitled* to get an education (we still do). But a ridiculous number of people decided they were *entitled* to not repay their loans. These people are/were Fuck Heads. So did we do away with student loans? No. Did we provide free college to everyone. No. We said, you are going to have to pay back your loans. One way or another. Pay, or we as a society are going to garnish your wages and make you pay. The same principle we use for child support, crime restitution, etc. The system isn't fixed yet. But it has stopped getting worse.

People often use the requirement to buy auto insurance as their model for health care reform. To that, I give a big, WOOT!, WOOT!, WOOT!!!

In my state, we have a requirement to provide "proof of financial RESPONSIBILITY" before you receive the privilege of driving. To people without deep pockets, this means getting a third party with deep pockets to commit to helping you meet your obligations should your need emerge. If you happen to have a rich uncle, you can create a financial responsibility trust fund or some such. Most people just buy insurance.


No one in a free society should ever be *mandated* to forgive someone else of their obligations. That is tyrannical.

If you choose to help someone meet their obligations out of friendship, compassion, charity or family, you should be praised by society. You can award yourself the personal attribute of "Good Character." I personally will call you *awesome!*

And if a Fuck Head denies his obligations all the way to his personal end. If he dies endorsing his tyrannical *entitlement* remain above any societal obligations. Well then, we as a society should posthumously and ceremonially revoke his citizenship. We should carve his name into granite on a monument of ignominy. "Here lists those who in there whole lives, were never good enough to live among us. May God Fuck Their Souls!"

Hopefully then, in the future, we will hear stories not of people who were "born poor, but made themselves rich." But we will hear stories that go, "I was born of two Fuck Heads. But I grew up and earned my own Good Character!"

---
Wow, I just went back and read the first post on this thread. I guess I'll have to mark my post here...
<OFF TOPIC>
Sorry!

Not that I know of, except of course the potential to delay transaction acceptance another block.

There is quite a bit of flexibility in some of the transaction formats owing the the script part. I have no idea yet if there is enough room to manipulate the hashes there. But in any case, it is useful to reduce the flexibility and timeframe any node has for hash manipulations. Since we have lots of folks with a strong background in hash manipulation!



I don't understand the question. If you were anonymous before, you still are. If you were known before you still are. If you don't have a single BTC you can't announce your prescience. But once people know who you are, anyone can ask you what block you are on.

This is bad math, and it tends to be more separated by gender among the young.

If you take all the 20 something men over the last decade, tally up every penny that got spent on health care then divide to find the mean. It will be well under the cost of insurance. 20 something men don't get very sick. They do tend to crash cars, get in fights and get injured while drunk. If you are one of those, insurance would pay of big time. If you are not, you are gambling against yourself.

20 something women's health care costs tend to differ based upon pregnancy rates. If you are going to get pregnant insurance may be a good gamble. If you hate kids, save your money.

It is important to realize that Obamacare mandates health insurance among the young to subsidize the old. Not to protect the young.

It is not so much a "fear" but a obvious potential perception among the folks who have not yet adopted Bitcoin. I only say "obvious" because I've seen dozens of posts here commenting on that particular perception. I also ran into random YouTube videos exposing the same sorts of perception. I wasn't even searching YouTube!



Not to be flippant, but there is unarguable certainty that the first (X) Bitcoin adopters control 100% of all generated coins. These (X) individuals currently control 35.5% of all Bitcoins that will ever be generated. All future potential Bitcoin adopters will realize this instinctively.

I'm not really concerned with how the current 35.5% of BTC is distributed among the current (X) bitcoin adopters.



So the perceptions I'm specifically worried about are:
1) How do newcomers to the Bitcoin concept perceive the magnitude of (X)? Do they see it as 10, 100, 1000, 10000, a million?
2) How do newcomers perceive the ratio (35.5%)/(X) versus the ratio (65.5%)/(population-X) as population tends toward 6 billion.
3) How do newcomers perceive the ratio between
    the value/$/goods brought into the Bitcoin economy by (X) in exchange for their 35.5%
versus
    the value/$/goods brought into the Bitcoin economy by (population-X) in competition for a minor share of other's 35.5%.
Specifically, if newcomers bring only $1 worth of value, but there are six billion of them, do they perceive their contribution as dwarfing the contribution of (X)?
4) Do perceptions change psychologically when the number of generate coins reaches 50%?
Specifically, do newcomers see an issue with (X) receiving 50% over 4 years, while (population) has to wait 100+ years to benefit from the remaining 50%.

My hypothesis is:

If (X) is perceived, by newcomers, as large (say one million) by the time generation reaches 50%. Then Bitcoin has hopes for a geometric growth rate that can lead to universal adoption.

If (X) is perceived, by newcomers, as small (say one thousand) at the 50% point, there will be significant psychologic barriers to broad adoption. Bitcoin from that point on best see niche (linear) growth.


As Perceptual evidence I submit:

1) The Satoshi has 1.5 million BTC debacle. This perception seemed to affect even true Bitcoin believers. It seems likely a generalization of that perception will effect each and every potential new adopter.
2) Endless pre-occupation with BTC speculation vs endless references to early adopter Ponzi schemes. Clearly the perception exists.
3) The Occupy Wall Street movement. These folks are busy chanting we are the 99%. (X) seems much less than 1%. Rich people and bankers are bad. This is more an extrapolation then evidence. But still I expect skepticism.


Keep in mind I'm not saying anything in Bitcoin should change technically, monetarily or otherwise. It is more a matter of how do you generate the perception that, "Bitcoin is the currency of the 99%?" You know... Marketing!

Woot! Health insurance derivatives!

It's like gambling on the odds you'll win in Vegas over time!

Rework your math.

The more healthy friends and family you can gather together in a group, the more it makes sense for that group to "self insure" by saving money and paying for whoever gets sick in cash.

If more unhealthy friends and family you have, the more it makes sense for everyone to buy insurance. That is why there is so much fuss about pre-existing conditions. It's like card counting in Vegas. You can't require the casino to allow card counters. They're not being heartless, they are saying it's not gambling if you've got a sure thing.



Ta Da! You've just become a Republican!

Yes! Employee health insurance has always been a way for employers to reduce payroll. That was the whole point of it. If it increased payroll, they would simply pay the employees a little more, and let the employees buy their own. It has been that way since the invention of employee health insurance. It is a perk to attract a certain class of employees to the company for a lower salary.

Minimum wage companies never offered the perk because it does nothing to lower their payroll. It's not that they're cold unfeeling bastards. It's just that they are in business to make a profit, just like the employers who do offer health insurance.

It is illegal to say, I'm going to give you $3 an hour but free insurance. It is easy for a company to say to higher level employees, you get 10K less in salary, but good insurance. It's not really a deal, but higher level employees are not really that smart either.



If you go to private practices you will find them more negotiable than they let on. It's only business. It's nothing personal.

I'm completely convinced I'm delusional for even wanting to try it. My delusions are only supported by about 5 people so far. It is a wacko thing to even propose. I'm just hoping my delusion might become infectious among the masses. But for the life of me, I'm not really sure why I care. I won't directly profit. I'm not trying to replace anything.

Really, I just want internet cash that is not easily profiled. It is more a privacy issue than anything. I hate that every company gathers every detail about my life. Then the government/and others ask them for all the information in mass, so we can all be profiled, or targeted for re-education.



I buy into that delusion in the same way I buy into gravity. All theories about why it should function seem completely implausible. But it seems invaluable in getting me through my day.

Hamming was the first thing that popped into my head. Any function that isn't trivial for individual nodes to manipulate is equivalent.

Specifically though,  I wanted a two stage function. Each node's announcement transaction is sent prior to building the block it ends up in. So, the hash of the block becomes dependent on the announcements. Therefore, no node can "optimize" his announcement transaction in order to have the fittest hash. The variable he must optimize against cannot yet be known. (I'm not completely sure I have the specified the example correctly. But that was the concept.)



I think we are getting really close too. Especially because I don't think I'm relying on "trust" as much as you think I'm relying on trust.

Nobody is really "trusted" in the "blessed" sense of the word. Anyone can broadcast announcement transactions for a given block. Even if they choose to be anonymous. The process is equivalent to sending 1 BTC to yourself. The question becomes, "Why should anyone else CARE what block you think we all should build upon?"

That is where non-anonymity comes it. Nodes can become known by choice. This does not automatically make their announcements any more trusted than anonymous announcements. It does however make these individuals identifiable to those who ALREADY trust/distrust them through business or personal relationships.

A peer can say, "Hi I'm Red! I'm a GEM speculator, as such I have a personal interest in making sure the system is transactionally secure." Really though, they probably just publish a standard X.509 certificate from a well known certificate authority. The same thing sites do for https and ssl. Non-anonymity is the basic defense to the Sybil attack. Certificates cost money and require jumping through hoops. (And best of all, I don't have to implement that process!) If some known individual acts maliciously his certificate gets a death penalty. If he is a merchant, all his customers see the blacklisting.



There is some sense of this and it should be analyzed for logic flaws and potential attacks. But our goals are the same, we both want to make it obvious in advance that forking attacks cannot succeed.

The method I've discussed is not so "pure" as yours. But I think I can prove that pragmatically, it has the same effect.

Silly Example Bitcoin Tangent:
Say the NSA decides to mount a secret chain forking attack on bitcoin. So at the next difficulty change, they secretly begin building their own secret fork containing nothing but empty transaction blocks. Say they borrow one of those new GPU based super computing clusters the national science foundation sponsors. So at the end of two weeks, they have a 2050 block empty chain, to inject in and override bitcoins existing 2016 block transaction fork.

So what happens? Momentary chaos. All the exchanges stop trading. Everyone jumps on IRC and decides the new empty chain is a scam. They "lock in" the most recent block from the 2016 block chain, (issue new clients if they have to) and everyone just goes on ignoring the NSA chain. Or everyone decides, No damage done. No double spends. We'll just re-run all the transactions on top of the NSA chain and start trading again once we are caught back up.

There really isn't a fundamental 51% issue. There is a momentary chaos problem. But those problems will get fixed, and they'll get fixed by those who care enough to show up in IRC (or wherever) and fix them. Everyone else ends up having to agree.


GEM Analogy Tangent:
Say the NSA tries the same trick. One fork has zero announcements from known parties. The other fork had a consistent chain of announcements. The basic rule says, "NEVER blindly trust a fork that everybody you know has vanished from." So every client just ignores the NSA fork, and there is zero chaos.

----

So back to the exchanges for a moment. Keep in mind that exchanges DON'T trust each other. But they do have to monitor each other. Every exchange needs to be notified within seconds if the other exchanges disagree with their opinion of history. It doesn't initially matter who is right and who is wrong. If there is a fork, they MUST take human action.


Most immediately it means every exchange. But this trickles down to everyone else.

If there are 10 exchanges trading on the same chain, if one exchange sees the nine other announce on a different block, he has to follow or stop trading. That is a human decision. Maybe his node is faulty and made the wrong decision. Maybe all the others are malicious. Either way, it is fool hardy for him to pretend nothing wonky is happening.

If 5 exchange announce on one block and 5 announce on another block, everyone has to stop trading until they can figure out what is happening. (Is this a bug? An NSA attack?) But the point is, they get the notice within seconds. The exchanges don't blindly follow each other out of trust. They monitor each other out of DISTRUST and based on a self-preservation requirement to do so.

To avoid making needless human decisions every 10 minutes, GEM will have some simple easy to enforce consensus rules:
Say:
1) Everyone who announced in the previous block, and who announced at the start of this block, is in the starting set.
2) Anyone who had been blacklisted is out.
3) We use this fitness function.

This should serve in every case where nobody is deliberately trying to subvert the consensus. But in cases where somebody is, the exchanges will immediately negotiate their differences, or there will be a nuclear exchange war.


However, if there is war, everyone gets advanced notice when half the exchanges drop off a block. When I say "advanced notice" I mean that everybody gets notified there is a discrepancy within 10 minutes. But nobody considers any transaction absolutely confirmed for 30 minutes.

So if any merchant sees known exchanges announcing on multiple blocks, they can simply wait till they see exchange consensus before announcing about their chosen block. If no consensus appears within seconds or minutes. Human merchants need to know something wonky is happening. Merchants at a minimum need to stop considering their transactions as "confirmed" until things settle down.

They don't have to see 100% consensus in exchanges. Merchants just need to confirm their exchange isn't going rogue. And they need to see that their trading partners and competitors are all announcing onto the same block. It's the 99% strength in numbers thing. Until they are sure, they simply avoid announcing their commitment to any given block.

Clients, on the other hand, may not care about exchanges at all. They simply want to know if they can buy something from Apple,  McDonald's or whoever. If they STOP seeing announcements from the folks they have traded with in the past (easy to implement). Or don't see an announcement from a new merchant they want to trade with (also easy to implement). Then they should wait until the system settles. They simply periodically ping the merchants they use, asking each for their latest block announcement. Once they see consensus among their merchants, everything should be good to go. Before that point, client's can still attempt to send transactions. But they shouldn't expect merchants to deliver the goods until consensus is re-established and GEM transactions become irreversibly confirmed.

You are absolutely correct. This is true even for *Gold!*

That is why companies pay great sums of dollars to run "Gold Exchange", "Buy Gold Now!" "Gold had never been worth zero!" ads everyday, all day. They are maintaining the delusion.

Delusion maintenance is very important. That is why, "Refinance Now!", "Rates have never been cheaper", "Home Prices are skyrocketing" were all the rage a few years back. It was delusion maintenance. Now that real estate delusion fever has broken, there is really no point in trying to maintain that delusion. But that doesn't stop lots of people from trying. "This apartment once sold for 1.2 million! I got it for only 800K! I got such a deal!" The rest of us however rest secure in knowing that guy who bought the apartment for 200K and sold it for 1.2 million got "the deal".



The point of this thread was that very little is being done in the way of Bitcoin delusion maintenance. Everyone here seems to be saying, "The delusion is strong in me! So screw the delusion resistant. When they finally come around they'll be sorry they didn't listen to me. And anyone who thinks *we all* could become post-delusional at once us... Poppycock!"



That is the problem of the moment for Bitcoin. However I don't think that is the medium term existential danger to Bitcoin.

The real danger is that the other 6 billion people on the planet go from pre-delusional to post-delusional before they ever actually ever become delusional.

That happened for me with housing and with *Gold!* I never even got to participate in those delusions. I just became post-delusional. There isn't the least bit of draw for me to go rushing into those delusions now.

This is the most corrupting fallacy.

Total medical insurance cost for everyone is a really simple function to calculate. It is total healhcare costs for everyone, plus considerable overhead.

Over their lifetimes, the vast majority of people will pay significantly MORE for medical insurance, than they would have paid for health CARE had they chosen to save their premiums and pay in cash.

Buying medical insurance is exactly the same as playing the lottery or gambling in Vegas. Sure you might score a big "win!" But in this case "win" means you get horribly maimed or are rewarded with prolonged illness. As Charlie Sheen would say, "Duh! Winning!"

Some people like to complain that most rich people don't gamble enough in Vegas. Middle class people can gamble in Vegas whenever they want. But there are lots of poor folks who want to go gambling in Vegas but can't afford it. That seems unfair. If we mandated that all rich people go gambling in Vegas, then we could use the extra revenue to send free slot play vouchers to the poor so they could go gambling in Vegas too!

You don't have to convince me. You have to convince the one billion people you want to come into bitcoin next.
Their opinion will be influenced by the magnitude of folks holding the initial 10.5 million and the quantity and quality merchants.

If Bitcoin hits the 10.5 million mark and a million people are spending 10 BTC each every month at thousands of merchants. Then the next billion, people rewarding the first million a little will seem fair and reasonable.

If Bitcoin hits the 10.5 million mark and a 100 people are hoarding 100K BTC each. And one thousand people are spending 30 BTC each month at a dozen silk road merchants. Well then your argument is going to be a really hard sell.

That's why a say the next year is Do or Die for bitcoin. All roads do not lead to the Orient. There are dead end paths and gaping chasms.



Bitcoin doesn't actually STORE value. It is critical to remember this. Bitcoin's value is based on the strength of a global shared delusion. Currently one BTC is worth precisely zero to most folks on the planet. It is possible, in the future, for BTC to be worth zero to every person on the planet.

I really need to draw something. I'll probably screw this up explaining in text. I'm going to explain the issue for anyone else who might stumble in. I know you already understand it.

So the issue is, if we have (N) peers all validating every broadcasted transaction. And every ten minutes we want all valid transactions batched up into an immutable block. And we want every node to agree on the same block of transactions, so we all share the same history. How do we reach consensus?

In Bitcoin, every node works redundantly, and POW randomness blesses one node's block. This blessing is based on time. Everyone agrees to use the first block they hear about.

GEM's doesn't have this timing randomness as a starting point. Everyone's 10 minutes happens at the same time. So to replace the above process randomness, I'm suggesting a "fitness" function.

---

Say we have lettered nodes and numbered blocks that increase with time. And say (via magic) that Nodes A, B, C & D are all on the same block chain.

1) Contains announcement transactions from A, B, C, D
2) A, B, C, D
3) A, B, C, D
4) A, B, C, D  (this is the announcement pattern everyone expects to see if the network is not partitioned.)

----

So, the first thing that happens is, nodes A, B, C & D broadcast announcement(4) transactions to tell everyone they are building upon block (4) in the chain.
Every node receives these announcements, validates the transactions and places them in the next block they are building.
Every node also receive normal transactions, validates them and keep adding them to their blocks.
[time passes, 10 minute timer elapses]

----

Now we have four independent potential next blocks. (5a, 5b, 5c, 5d)
We need a bit of randomness that can pick one so it can be broadcast to the others.
Before we can pick one, we need to know the set we are picking from.
Fortunately block (4) contains announcements from all the nodes who were around 20 minutes ago.
Our currently building block (5) contains announcements from all the nodes around in the past 10 minutes.
Let's assume that if a node was validating transactions 20 minutes ago and they are in our building block, then they are a candidate to choose from for block (5).

So as a trivial example fitness function, let's use the hamming distance between block (4)'s hash, and the hashes of announcement transactions (A-D) inside of block (4). All nodes have that information already. (Hamming distance means XOR two hashes and count the ones digits in the result. So the result will be a number between 0 and 256 for Sha256 hashes.)

Say we get the following results:
sha(4) hamming sha(4A) = 128
sha(4) hamming sha(4B) = 125
sha(4) hamming sha(4C) = 127
sha(4) hamming sha(4D) = 130

That means the nodes in fitness order are: B, C, A, D

-- Node A --

Since Node (B) is the "fittest" (B) broadcasts his transaction block (5b) first.
Every node receives block (5b), revalidates it, diffs it with their personal block (5n) looking for transaction DOS and double spends.
If block (5b) fails,
    the node removes node B's trust.
    And broadcasts a warning transaction, "node(A) failed node(B, 5b) for DOS"
    Then asks the next fittest node (C) for their transaction block (5c)
If block (5c) passes, and the node broadcasts an announcement(5c) transaction.

----

Since this all happens in parallel, node (A) receives announcements as the other nodes make decisions.
If the other nodes agree with (A) about (B's) transaction DOS, then node (A) will receive:
    A's Announce(5c)
    B's Announce(5b)
    C's Announce(5c)
    D's Announce(5c)
    "node(A) failed node(B, 5b) for DOS"
    "node(C) failed node(B, 5b) for DOS"
    "node(D) failed node(B, 5b) for DOS"

If the other nodes disagree, then node (A) will receive:
    A's Announce(5c)
    "node(A) failed node(B, 5b) for DOS"
    B's Announce(5b)
    C's Announce(5b)
    D's Announce(5b)

If A receives the latter it can change its mind, switch to 5b and re-announce to preserve consensus.

----

Anyway I was right. It needs a diagram. But that's the gist of the process.



Yes, its almost a nuclear option. That's why I'm so sure nobody will let it happen. And why I want everyone to have advance warning is somebody even tries.

I asked in another thread what the exchanges do if a block chain fork attempts to erase/revert a "confirmed" transaction block they had already payed out on. The reply was "they shut everything down until everyone figures out what the fuck is happening!" I'm not sure it was an authoritative answer, but it made perfect sense.

That was basically what happened when they forked to bitcoin chain to remove the extra 184 billion coin. Absolutely everything stopped while everyone emailed everybody they knew to stop the old clients and start new ones. Fortunately, few were doing business or trading at that point. But if they were, those trading on the original client would have gotten a hell of a shock when 53 blocks of their transactions magically disappeared!

The long and the short of it is that I don't have enough time or motivation to personally do an elaborate implementation like EnCoin. That is not to say that I don't think it should be done. EnCoin should be done and could be great. I wouldn't have spent so much energy on this if it didn't show promise.

The one thing that drives me about EnCoin/GEM is the stable currency. That is the part I'm fascinated by and the part so many here go "ho hum" over. I really think most normal people (meaning potential currency users) would take to stable coins much more intuitively than to variable value ones like Bitcoin.

I'm quite skeptical, in fact, that Bitcoin can reach mass adoption from where it is. I think it was much more likely to reach mass adoption 18 months ago. I think the boom and the bust will end up consolidating most Bitcoins into the hands of only a few individuals. By next December it risks looking, to new adopters, like a newCoin with a 10.5 million coin pre-generation. I think most potential users will reject the "they got half, we compete for the rest" argument.

However, until Bitcoin's failure becomes apparent, I doubt stable coins will get much traction on this site.

----

I'm in agreement with, and have great respect for, all the stuff you wrote that I'm not responding to. I'm only confused about a couple of things at the end.


I'm confused about which system you are referring to? If you mean GEM, I was considering "need not approve these transactions" as requiring a client change (at least on the merchant machines) to know which transactions not to include in blocks. Crap "client" is such a sucky word for me to use. In this case I mean the merchant's peer node, not the human client machines.

I was planning to require each peer to diff their own work with the proposed "fittest" next block. This is a slimmed down version of your PB union mechanism. My concept was that since each peer is receiving every transaction, diffs should be very close to exact matches. If the "fittest" block seems to be missing *lots* of known transactions (DOS), that block can be locally rejected and node that produced it marked "untrusted". If everyone follows the same procedure they will all arrive at a common "fittest" non-DOSed block. At that point they can announce their use of the non-DOS block. They will add to their announcement, blocks X,Y,Z rejected for (DOS, invalid transaction, double spend, etc). These serve a consensus flags to warn everyone else.

I guess the last sentence confuses me the most. I was presuming there would be lots of merchants and exchanges in different countries and legal jurisdictions. If all the US nodes started DOSing particular transactions, all others nodes would know about it immediately. The risk belongs to merchant/exchanges/transaction receivers.

Human clients (transaction spenders) potentially benefit from chain forks. During any chain forking dispute, they have control of twice as many coins. They can simply contact service providers on each fork, or run multiple instances, one trusting each fork.



Again, my bad choosing the word "client".

I presumed that merchants would switch to visa-compliant nodes. These would keep only visa-compliant balances. Presumably, if you wanted to trade with these nodes you would have to agree to their balances and send them only visa-compliant transactions. Non-visa compliant nodes (merchants/clients) would quickly lose trust in the visa-compliant ones and vice versa.

However, the visa nodes are still functioning, self trusting and forked from the rest. That means *any* client sending visa compliant transactions can potentially double spend. Once on the visa fork. Once on the original fork. The renegade fork wouldn't last for very long.

I'm not going to worry now, about issues I might not have to worry about at all. If everyone decides GEM/EnCoin isn't interesting because it is not a Ponzi scheme, this thing will fall flat. Right now, I think there is about and 85% chance of failure in that regard.

I'm saying as best as I can tell Bitcoin is running 20,000 peers or so. There's not that many transactions, but still nobody is complaining about scalability issues. If I can get there, and transaction rates start to climb, woot! Then I'll worry about optimizing the broadcasts.



I think one billion peers redundantly checking every transaction is silly. Any number of peers mining at any level to maintain trust is completely unnecessary.



Good word! Woot!

But I'm not raging against the man at all. I'm not worried about the government trying to subvert or overthrow my currency. I don't even care if people can avoid taxes, and I certainly don't want to stop the government from tracking down major criminal rings. I just don't want them needlessly profiling my internet cheeseburger deliveries. That is why I called it quasi-anonymous. If I'm a major government nuisance they have ways of tracking me down (as with bitcoin). But it is way too much bother to cross reference every single quasi-anonymous internet cheeseburger purchaser and send the result to the Obamacare administration to assist in re-education. 



Quite frankly I thought that concept was silly when the liberal guy mentioned it. I thought it hilarious when he called it a "feature" of bitcoin.

But I handle it exactly the way Bitcoin did in the example I posted. If some group deliberately changes the client to outlaw certain transactions others want, it causes a fork. If people want to stay on their original fork they can. Just the way the Bitcoin folks could have locked in the block with 184 Billion BTC had they wanted to stay on that chain. If it becomes necessary the original fork can modify their client to outlaw all Visa registered addresses to invert what was done to them. It's war. Everything is fair.

As far as I can tell the situation would be exactly the same in EnCoin. Different clients would begin to automatically trust different peers. The ones running Visa compliant peers would see the others as maliciously accepting invalid transactions, and drop their trust. The originals would see the Visa nodes as maliciously rejecting valid transactions, and drop their trust. How is this not a fork? You have the same original balances, but different balances based on more recent transactions.

I'm sure you will tell me differently.

All of those are quite understandable. Aside from the orphan, I've been on both sides of the family and friends issues.

It is really quite hard when you have to kick out a family member. I'm not going to go into long personal stories on an open forum, but know I've taken people in when they were rightly kicked out by their family. I've helped them get their act together and go back. I've also had to give family members the boot to avoid them taking advantage of other family members. Sometimes we've even turned to government programs for help. They never helped solve anything. But they did help "our burden" to feel better about hemself, by getting off the family's back and onto the back of random government strangers.



The truth is while you were wondering "what if I wasn't here?" Hundreds of folks you don't know took in hundreds of others. All asked themselves the same rhetorical question. It is a great question. It helps us all do the right thing. If you give that rhetorical question a trivial answer you change human character.


"Good character" is an award we give ourselves for doing the right thing. When the trivial answer becomes, "See someone in need? Dial 811" we all lose our test of character.


There is a rule of the sea that says, "Captains must render aid in times of distress. Unless it puts their crew in jeopardy. Then aid is rendered at the Captain's discretion." It's a really good rule. It has been around for a really long time.

You can't blame yourself for not being able to help. You can second guess other captains who worry about their own crew. But you don't get to override them.



I have to admit, among myself, family, and friends when one of us is down on our luck, there is a 90% chance we screwed something up ourselves to cause it. This doesn't excuse extreme interpersonal callousness. But acknowledging the problem is the first step to recovery.



Quite frankly I watched the Frontline documentary too. At the end they point out that no existing universal healthcare program pays for itself. They all run in the red. And every time they try to raise healthcare rates, the people protest in the streets. So they cut medical provider's pay, cut services, and raise taxes. We are already there.


Woot!



That's not how churches work. They help people who ask for help. They don't just send random checks.

But either way, if his mother paid for his screw up or the hospital did neither is right. If the government mandates that you and I pay for his screwup, that doesn't make it right either.



You summarized things quite nicely. But I think the root problem is people all ready feel they are "entitled" to not pay their medical bills. This causes the pricing problems you noted.

There is a brilliant guy named John Wanamaker. He invented most everything you see in retail life. Clothing stores had the same credit problems that healthcare providers currently have. It turns out stores invented credit before they invented regular payment plans. Wanamaker fixed the situation by only transacting in cash. That gave him the lowest prices and he ran everyone else out of business. His book will blow you away! He invented price tags, labels on clothing and the money back guarantee for christ sake! Before that retail was a complex scam of salesman bullshit on quality and customer haggling ability on price.

I go to the dentist and doctor and pay cash. It is amazing the prices you get and how good the service is. (Shhh! Don't tell anyone!)



Once the policy was established that the government must guarantee these "entitlement" loans, absolutely it was game on for the bankers. I don't believe, however, it was the bankers who invented the concept of mortgage entitlement. That is not in their nature.

Clearly there were "good intentions" paving the Fannie Mae Freddie Mac road to hell.



Me either!

By the way, I found a reference to the BitCoin forking I previously mentioned. It was the first example of one group changing rules and long recorded history behind another groups back. They guy with 184 billion bitcoins didn't even get to voice an opinion. Such is the will of the masses.

Value overflow

On August 15 2010, it was discovered that block 74638 contained a transaction that created over 184 billion bitcoins for two different addresses. This was possible because the code used for checking transactions before including them in a block didn't account for the case of outputs so large that they overflowed when summed. A new version was published within a few hours of the discovery. The block chain had to be forked. Although many unpatched nodes continued to build on the "bad" block chain, the "good" block chain overtook it at a block height of 74691. The bad transaction no longer exists for people using the longest chain.

I respect you for doing the right thing. Everyone should do the right thing. The government should not give people easy excuses to avoid personally doing the right thing.

But I also trust, that someone as righteous and intelligent as you, asks questions and evaluates people in the process of taking them into your own home. So I put the question to you, "How come nobody else saw fit to help the folks you took in?" Where were their family members, friends, and neighbors?

But realize you made my point. Failing, family, friends, and neighbors. Community members step in. Helping community members is in every community's self interest.


I respect you for creating this safety net. I'm thoroughly in favor of the way you implemented your safety net. It was practical and I presume had demonstrably successful results.

The same is not true of *any random* safety net implementation. And the broader you make one single net, the weaker it becomes.

I propose each individual community should provide their own safety nets. That gives lots of examples to aid evolving toward the optimal configuration. There is a lot to be said for people voting with their feet. Curiously, the net migration patterns depicted in the census seem to show people moving from high safety net states, to states with lower safety nets. Correlation is not causation. But over time, evolution favors what works.



I'm pretty sure I wouldn't call libertarians those who dedicated their mortal soul to helping the needy. However, he died in the hospital after receiving proper care. There was nothing additional medically that could have been done for him. The safety net worked.


He didn't take responsibility for his bills before he died. He didn't leave money to pay his bills after he died.

You are claiming he is entitled to not pay for his healthcare.


That makes your point is moot. In your view, he got what he is entitled.

My view is that he acted irresponsibly. As such he was a drain on his family, friends, neighbors, and community. Someone did pay for his care. I don't know who. But it was either family, friends, neighbors, community, all of us as citizens, or the doctor and hospital simply donated his care.

Curiously, doctors and hospitals are mandated by law to provide this safety net. They don't get the luxury of deciding to only work for paying customers. So in reality, the remainder of the safety net only "entitles" doctors and hospitals to get paid. However, now you have a situation where the government decides both whom is allowed to perform a service AND how much they are entitled to get paid for their services.

If this concept was applied to my chosen profession. I would quit practicing and change professions. But I'm just an asshole who thinks I'm entitled to personal free will.



Quite frankly there was plenty of corruption to go around, but I don't think any of it originated in malicious intentions. Congress and multiple administrations mandated that people be relieved of the responsibility of having to qualify for a traditional mortgage. Once they created a mortgage entitlement, all the corruption follows naturally. How could it not?



Woot!

I actually hold a whole lot of people MORE responsible than I do the mortgagees. Curiously, houses do not cost what people are willing to pay. They cost what banks are willing to loan.

There are endless experts involved in purchasing a home. They all gave corrupt advice. Banks are supposed to be experts in how much to loan. Real estate agents, loan brokers, title companies, appraisers, inspectors. All of these people hold themselves out as "experts" in the industry. It is impossible for them not to realize that prices were in a bubble. All of them advised against what should be common industry practices.

You wouldn't let doctors get away with advising healthy patients to take out healthy kidneys. Then blaming the patient for their stupid decisions because they didn't disregard the evidence presented to them by a series of expert physicians.