Well, I wasn't quite right when I said that whether or not anarcap is evil depends on whether or not humans are evil.  It's rather a matter of whether or not their evil part is stronger than their good part.  The question is :  can farmers organize a private force to protect them, without letting this force get enough power to enslave them ?

Honnestly I don't know, but I think we can't blame them for trying.

I like the way you express that.  It's quite exactly how I see it. "Challenging, exciting, and fun".  It will also probably be more dangerous, but I don't care.  If danger is the price to pay not to live in the jail they are buiding around us, so be it.

Personnaly, I consider bitcoin to be the first serious candidate for an anarcho-capitalistic currency.

Now, searching the web for the concept of anarcho-capitalism, I've found this apparently famous quote from Noam Chomsky :

<<
    Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever
    implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few
    counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that
    its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would
    quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of
    "free contract" between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick
    joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the
    consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.
>>


Well, somehow I agree that ancap could lead to some ugly things.  I doubt however that it would have no "counterparts in human history".  I think that, to some extend, roman empire can be considered as anarcho-capitalistic, for instance.

Anyway, whether or not anarcho-capitalism is evil is a huge subject, but somehow I think it's pretty much the same as wondering whether or not human beings are evil.  Anarcho capitalism gives individuals a huge power, for instance the power of letting people starve heartlessly.  But I also think it could lead to great things.  Anyway, I prefer the anarcho-capitalist perspective, rather than a bureaucratico-socialist world government.

The thing is :  I don't really know if humans are evil, but I'm one of them, and I know I'm not.  So I give others the benefit of the doubt.

Well, you can buy some stuffs with it.  Go to http://grondilu.freeshell.org/bitXmetal.html for instance.  You can buy gold and silver there

Well, I have.

Although it may be legal, I think it would be gross/rude.  Actually I saw once a reportage about a photographer would took picture of people in the subway.  He had to make sure people don't find out he was photographing.  I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this, personnaly.

Maybe it's legal, maybe it's not, I don't know.  Google had some trouble in EU with its Google cars, so there is definitely an issue with capturing "public" data.

There are things beyond law :  habits, politeness, and well-behavior.  Capturing data in the street, images or sound, is very much controversal, in my opinion.

Well, playing a fair game of poker online is a very tough subject indeed.

First, I'm not sure mental poker is already reliable.  I've red that right now it works only for two players games.

Second, how exactly do you intend to prevent collaboration ?  As I see it, the only way to prevent this, is to make sure none of the players know each other.  This is tricky, and in my opinion it can only be done in a anonymous network, such as Freenet or something.

Third, as far as an escrow service is concerned, it is also tricky.  It is not a pronlem specific to poker, though.  I didn't understand well your solution, but I think one can use a principle that would be close to the bitcoin system.  A network of anonymous nodes would offer escrow services, and the choice of the actual node for a game would be chosen in a random way.  The escrow node would have to perform some proof of work in order to gain the priviledge of being the third party.  Hopefully if honnest nodes are numerous enough, the escrow service would work fine.

Finally, I think it would be great if it was possible to create some kind of a robot on an anonymous network.  This robot would act like a virus, and would be programmed to organize poker games.  He would chose players, not letting them know each other, and would collect bets as a third party.  I don't know if such a bot would be feasible, though.  Plus, there should be a way to make sure the robot is honnest, for instance by making it open source.  But then, I don't know how could people be sure the instance they are playing with is really the one they think.

I think this subject is a little too advanced for me, but I reckon it is a very interessant and important one, as far as information technology is concerned.

I have the feeling that a good solution for online fair poker games won't be found during this century...

Well, using a cloud filesystem storage would be great for wallet backup (after encryption, of course).

But I checked the availibilty of tahoe on my debian system, and "apt-cache seach tahoe" returned nothing.

I still have to check out the website of this stuff, though.

Well, that might be good enough.

Exchange and storage of value are both fondamental usage of money.  None of them is more important than the other.

Currently used forms of money are better in exchange than in storage.  Bitcoins are good in both.

Now, I guess some people don't like the idea of seeing people saving money.  Nowadays, saving money is considered to be useless, and bad for economy.  People prefer consumption.  I really think this is a biased point of view.

Indeed bitcoins might be a good way for people to save money.  But this is a good thing, for it allows value to be available in future, in case it becomes more useful than in the present.  There's nothing wrong with that.

The very purpose of bitcoin is not to require any centralized organisation.  I don't see why bitcoin should try to mimic an organisation like Visa, for whom I have very little respect, personnaly.

Again, to me it seems just as weird as an organisation dedicated to gold, silver, salt, sugar or any other commodity.

I keep failing to understand what your purpose is exactly.

There is no such thing as a safe investissment.

However, I have very much more confidence into bitcoins than into dollars.

Dollar is about to become a terrible currency.  You are the only one who can decide what to do with your money, but if you want my advice, I'll tell you that you'd better spend these 1000$ in pretty much anything but cash.

I really don't understand all this mess about currency wars.  I know that the basic idea is that if a nation currency is too strong, it's bad for its industries because it gives them a competitive disadvantage on international markets.

But to me this just doesn't make sense.  How can someone complain that something is "too cheap" ?  If someone makes very cheap stuffs, I won't complain :  I'll just buy it.  I'll even stop producing and I will borrow money if I need to.  If a money is really "too" cheap, then it's an arbitrage opportunity and one just has to buy it.

I didn't know about Wirtland.  This surely seems like a nice project, especially on these times where nations are trying to force the idea of a world government.

With increase communication possibility, the urge for a territorial domain in order to maintain a large human organised society decreases.  Thus, a supra-territorial organisation seems logical.

It's not new, though.  Somehow, one can consider organisations such as freemsonery ("franc maçonnerie") to be some kind of supra-national state.

Still, it's a good things such projects developp.   The more they are, the better they will be able to counterweight the raise of world government.

I just couldn't wait for your feedback guys, so I've already ordered for about 50EUR of linux and debian stickers and other stuffs.

I will sell them for bitcoins asap.

As a way for me to acquire A LOT of bitcoins, I'm considering buying some real stuffs in euro, and sell them in bitcoins.

So far I'm thinking about geek related stuffs, such as open source promotional T-shirt, mugs, "linux inside" stickers, and so on.

Do you have any suggestion ?

What kind of stuff would you like to buy with your bitcoins ?

Lucky you.

I'll try again, with a smaller amount.

Bitcoin is nothing more than an electronic commodity.  It's not any political organisation, or at least it should not be.  What you suggest is about as weird as would be the creation of a gold-dedicated political movement.

Now, I know there *are* indeed such organisations, such as GATA (Gold AntiTrust Action Committee).  But this organisation exists only because of the manipulation of gold price from central banks.

So, I guess a bitcoin organisation would be required only when central banks will start trying to corner the market.

If nobody can, we'll have to consider removing the bitcoin2cash link from the "market" page.

Well, yes, I guess so.  And I've even been stupid enough not to write a return address.

I don't care much.  I've lost much more than 10$ many times in my life.

Well, I had already done the comparaison with gold earlier in this thread, so I wanted to change.

But I should have sticked with gold.  That's what bitcoin is :  electronic gold.  And it's actually even better, since gold is not very easy to handle in very small quantities.

Anyway, here is the comparaison with gold.

In the whole world, there are about 150,000 tons of gold.  That's 150 billions of kilograms, and about 5 billions of onces.  All those numbers represents the same quantity.