Where do "starving artists" fit into your view of free markets?  Do fans of quality entertainment never pay for the convience, fun and details of the original product?  You do realize that DVD extras are normal fare on movie disks now because of the general availability of VHS quality video on the Internet, right?  You will never consider the counter position seriously, because as you have already noted, you make your income by the direct influence of copyright protections.  At least, you believe that you do.

Ah, I see.  You assume that without copyright law, movie house owners won't bother with such contracts and simply wait until a copy shows up on the internet.  Under what assumptions do you come to such a conclusion?  You can't get a (decent) bootleg from the internet now until the movie is released onto DVD, so why would you assume that distribution contracts would be any less of a deterent without copyright?  Or any less of an advantage for the movie houses that play ball?  A 'dollar theater' might be able to do something along these lines without blowback, but not a first run theater.  Movies make 80%+ of every nickel in the first two weeks of a major release, for the production company anyway.

Nonsense.  First run movie houses are generally bound by contract to 1) not show the movie for less than a certain amount and 2) not show the movie to the general public before release date.  Copyright says nothing about selling a legitimate DVD before it's release date, and employees would get fired for renting a new DVD before release dates when Blockbuster was still around.  Those companies are bound more by their commercial distribution agreements than copyright law.  Copyright is relatively weak, and has many exceptions.  Not the least of which is 'fair use', which is how Nina Paley can release her full length movie for free but not for any profit.

I have to admit, I still don't know what they stand for.

Order complete.  One bitcoin sent.

That's not even one example.  Major motion picture companies don't actually depend upon IP monopolies for their base revenue.  They would be fools to do so.  They depend upon operational security and contract law to prevent the early release of their movies.  They make most of their money off of those movie-goers who just can't wait to see the next blockbuster, because once it hits DVD I can legally head down to the local library and check it out for free.  Sure they will swing that big stick if things get out of hand, such as a counterfitter in Hong Kong is mass producing DVD knock-offs or a cinemia employee is selling pre-release copies of the film before the movie debuts; but their business model isn't dependent upon the IP monopoly for the base revenue of a new major motion picture.  Try again.

And, again, you completely failed to present a counter example.  Why are you here?

How?  Because you believe you would lose a sale?  The reverse is likely true, young people share copies of all kinds of media, but tend to grow loyal to the media companies that don't treat them like criminals.  You don't have to make it easy, no one has anything against charging a fee for the convience of, for example, VALVe's Steam software.  And Steam is a beautiful example of a company that does not treat their customers like criminals.  Team Fortress 2 was about $50 two years ago.  Two months ago it was $10.  Today it's free, if you are getting it directly via Steam servers.  Why?  Because it's a very popular game, and in order for young adults to get it free, they have to install (also free) Steam on their machine.  And then VALVe gets to advertise directly to your Steam account.  When you get a job, and finally have money to spend, where are you going to get your PC games then?  Are you going to trudge down to the store and buy a retail CD box set, or walk into your living room and order it through the Steam interface that you already have?  If you are dependent upon the monopoly for your revenue, your business model is wrong. 


VALVe isn't dependent upon IP protection for revenue, although I'm sure that they would swing that stick if some major operation were to pop up making profits off of their work.  That short video that I linked to was produced by an independent film maker who used to believe that copyright laws protected artists, until she independently produced a full-length cartoon movie, and couldn't release it for sale because the basket of licenses required would have cost her $50K more than what it cost to produce the movie to begin with.  In the end, she released the movie several years after it was finished, but for no charge.  She can never charge any money for that magnum opus, yet she still manages to earn a living releasing her art as copyleft licensed work.


That is an unproven claim. You don't get to state it as a given.  I've already provided two real world and current examples of business models that can and do work sans a copyright monopoly, without even trying.  You need to at least match that to be taken seriously.

Sure I do, start a co-op with my neighbors.  If their service sucks, someone is going to come along and eat their lunch.

IP aren't rights, they are a protected monopoly.  Explain how, in the absence of that explict force of government, I do you harm by copying your ideas?  Do I prevent you from using your own ideas, like I do if I take your bike?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CB0QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DIeTybKL1pM4&ei=5ceMTtnCOaXJsQLnsOSaBA&usg=AFQjCNEDg7_ap8otqvRJxjUWZn4Bw2kP7g

If the current 64 bit integer model remains intact until 2133 (very unlikely) than no, the reward will actually cease.  If the integer is either switched to a 128 bit integer or some other method of recognizing additional bits is devised, then the halving could continue, but the reward will continue to dwindle as it approaches the 21 million bitcoin limit.  It can never reach it, no matter how long the block reward continues.

It would give a premium to the grace freicoins.  It will not give them their base value.


Okay.  A rational perspective.  I'm not entirely in agreement, as I think that it's more complicated than that, but the above statement isn't wrong.


But this one is.


If there is an established, accessible and liquid market; then you can exchange them for another currency.  But this is not an easy target.  Again referring to Bitcoin, it took almost two years for the first market exchange to appear, and even now bitcoins aren't very liquid.  As a vendor, I could now set up an account with MtGox to exchange bitcoins received immediately, and can generally expect that exchange to process within an hour if I price it right.  However, if every vendor who accepted bitcoins were to do this, bitcoins would have no value.  In order for anything to have value, someone must be willing to save something in it, even if that amount is relatively small and simply amounts to a spending account.  Otherwise, the currency is simply a transfer mechanism and cannot rise above a nominal zero value, and thus never attract vendors willing to go to the trouble of accepting a new currency to begin with.  It's a chicken and egg problem that bitcoin took more than two years to solve, even though there were hundreds of people willing to save in the currency during those first two years (at great risk of losing all investment if a flaw was discovered or it never took off).


Not true.  Your credit cards are transfer mechanisms, but do not have any market value in themselves.  The digits that represent currencies do.  Same with bit-pay, it's not the transfer mechanism that holds value, it's the currency used by the mechanism.  And the currency must be able to hold value at least as well as comparable methods.  If (small) demurrage were part of the original design of bitcoin, then freicoin might stand a chance (although it would then be redundent) but because bitcoin is now the benchmark against which derivatives will be judged, vendors are not just going to accept freicoin because a few customers prefer it.  It would require that a significant number of their customers prefer it, and since bitcoin exists, most of them aren't going to ever favor a currency that generally buys less in two weeks than one that generally does not.


But then you pay nothing for the same exact functionality with bitcoin.  Again, you misunderstand that the market is now different that bitcoin exists and is established.  The market always favors the first (functional) solution that reaches the market, and will remain hostile to new competitors unless they offer an obvious advantage to the customer.  Unavoidable demurrage might be an advantage for the economy at large, but it's not an obvious advantage to the individual consumer.  Quite the opposite.


Not really.  If the value of freicoins is increasing faster than the demurrage rate, then some people (vendors who accept payments in freicoin, perhaps) will be hording it as a speculation play.  Once that trend reverses, these same speculators will have no expectation that holding what they have will rally further latter, so most will dump.  If anything, demurrage could make voltility greater percentage wise.  There is no reason that it would reduce voltility.


But not advantages that they can enjoy with any certainty.  The certainty is much higher with bitcoin, and that is why you will fail.

The grace period will influence the premium, but in the same way that the period chosen influences the interest rate metric.  If the grace were a full year, the premium should reflect the "basic interest" (assuming that it exists) as expressed as an APR.  If the grace period is a month, a quarter or half a year; the premium should be adjustable.  As for not being (quite) fungible, that's a temporary condition.  Nothing at all needs to be done for those same coins to become completely fungible in time. 


Too many things.


Because some capacity for value storage is a market requirement for a currency not backed by the force of law.  There will always be someone who is holding the coins, it's unavoidable.  Taken to an extreme, your plan to increase velocity in this manner, if there is no alternative while holding the coins themselves, is likely to backfire.  A high velocity is also a sign of a collapsing currency value.  The velocity of the mark in the Reimar Republic was huge.


Again, there would always be someone holding the coin, it's unavoidable.  If you were the business, would you prefer to hold your slush fund in a currency that automaticly dropped in value or one that did not, all things else equal?  That is the difference between Bitcoin and Freicoin as it is presented.  So given a choice, the business would prefer to hold the slush fund in bitcoin, and the value of those bitcoin would be higher (due, in part to the thousands of such vendors holding slush funds) and the business would prefer to accept payments in bitcoin, because they have some place to put it and won't have to seek out a buyer quickly.  However, if it's possible to avoid the demurrage, than vendors might be willing to hold some of their slush fund in Freicoin, and thus be willing to accept payment in same.  It's a vicious circle.

<sigh>  I resign.  This conversation is futile.

"Beware the ides of October" just doesn't roll quite as well.

That's a lot of work, and I gain nothing by the efforts.  We have Google and Wikipedia now, use the modern technology.


The FAA could just as easily be a privately provided pay-for-use service, because it largely is.  The federal government pays for federal burecrats in Washington that private airports have to respond to, but the federal government does not pay for the wages of the air traffic controllers.  Those wages are, generally speaking, provided for via the per-seat airport fees that the airports charge the airlines; not via taxation.  The rules of air traffic were largely settled by hobbyist pilots back in the early 'barnstormer' days, as a matter of self preservation; so there is plenty of evidence that a federal agency isn't necessary for the development of new public safety rules.  The pilots and airlines can work out those issues effectively enough amongst themselves.  BTW, my aunt was the first female flight instructor in the city of Louisville, Kentucky.  Photos of her in her mid 20's hang in the lobby of Bowman Field.  If the same rules existed back then for the qualification of pilots as exist today, she would likely never have been able to get a pilot's license.  Most of those rules don't make you safer, most just create an artificial scarcity of experienced pilots, supporting wages.  This may or may not be in the best interests of public safety, but generally speaking they are only in the best interests of the pilots' union.

The same artificial scarcity of skilled labor exists in the medical field as well, but in that case government is more of a tool, not an active co-conspiritor.  The AMA sets the standards for medical practitioners, and states merely back them up with force of law.

You are projecting your experiences with an anticilliry institution (a residents company) to that of a protection service with a real, and significant, natural consequence for failure to pay.  Avoiding paying the homeowners' association membership fee is free interest, if there is little or no risk of adverse consequences for delay.  Large corporations do this kind of thing all of the time.  It's why they still wait to the following Friday to pay for last week's wages despite owning computerized payment systems that could literally pay you daily for today's wages.  They don't delay with payments to their own insurance companies.  Certainly some homeowners would forget or delay, but it would likely be high on the priority list for anyone who actually owned property.

That's not what I'm saying, either.  I'm saying that regulation is okay if it actually is the best option, but that you have no way of knowing that because you are unwilling to consider alternatives.

You assume that dynamic is sustainable.  I say that if the value of tenebrix ever comes near the value of bitcoin, the miners that jump in won't be so limited and won't be concerned about the needs of those previous miners.  There is no garrantee that you will have any warning that the algo needs to be expanded, either.  At one time, ArtForz had the only known GPU cluster mining bitcoin, and he alone represented roughly 30% of the "vote".  Twice as much investment in hardware without advance warning, and you won't be able to change the algo.


ASICs are just stupidly un-economical and carry additional bonus of being (Unlike GPUs and FPGAs) pretty truly dedicated

[/quote]

Yes, and that is the point.  If only dedicated hardware, in mass production runs, is more cost effective than the widely availble generic hardware; then only professional mining clusters will be able to afford them in the early stages.  By the time the average guy can afford a mining card, you will have long lost majority control over the algo, and you will be committed to it because none of the professional miners who have invested in dedicated hardware are going to even consider a change in the algo.

No, I don't.  Asics have been developed for bitcoin, they just don't (yet) matter because they cost more than GPU mining, not because they aren't more cost effective than CPU mining.  If GPU mining were not ever realisticly possible, asics would be dominating bitcoin mining already and CPU's would still be a losing effort.  However, the overall security of bitcoin would be lower, because it would mean that a well heeled attacker could actually attack bitcoin while the bitcoin blockchain would be dependent upon the professional miners for the vast majority of the hashrate.  Which without GPU mining would be much lower than it is today.

Did you have an argument to refute my 'mortgage & homeowners insurance' response to the "free rider problem"?  Or are you just musing about the difficulties that some people will impose upon a bill collector?