Great! Thanks for letting me know. |
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Fuck ISIS, that's all there is to say really, I say we should donate Bitcoin to the PKK so they can have more resources to fight them, the fact though that even ISIS refuses to use the dollar says something lol.
That's the Kurdistan Worker's Party for you uninformed individuals, they're allies of the Kurdish government and fight against ISIS and Turkey.
This reminds me of something I heard somewhere once: If the fascists hold a demonstration and the communists hold a counterdemonstration, you shouldn't pick a side. You should hope for a meteor strike. PS: I read the OP as being a joke. I seriously doubt anyone here is hoping ISIS takes up bitcoin. |
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To answer how bitcoin obtained its value, I'd suggest reading about Mises' Regression Theorem and the debate about whether or not bitcoin violates it. I mean the permissions to be able to transfer that bitcoin value into USD - Doesn't the governments have to allow that bitcoin value to be allowed to transfer into there currency? Does this mean there is significant government involvement in bitcoin since they allow it to be traded into the nations currency?
I can't say how things work everywhere else, but here in Germany that's exactly what happened. The Chancellor here is Oskar Lafontainne who came to power by working with the East German Communist Party (Hail The Party!). Since then, before any of us buy or sell anything for the legal currency, Euros, we use our government provided (and tracked) smart phones to call the relevant bureaucrat to check if we are allowed to trade Euros for the item in question (e.g., bitcoin) and what exact price we are allowed to use. That's how the EUR/BTC price is set. Since Lafontaine's minions can listen in to the mandatory smart phones even when they are turned off, they quickly find those class traitors who are trading without permission. As usual, Germany is showing the way forward and hopefully those other backwards nations of the world will soon start catching up. The previous paragraph isn't true, but might be in a few years. |
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Explain what Neoliberals are.
Good luck. I read the wikipedia page and then part of a book by David Harvey. You can find info in my responses on the thread, but I warn you: no one cares. They just pretend "neoliberal" means something and use it to refer to people and ideas they-don't-like without saying who those people are or what the ideas are. There's been an outstanding question from two of us on the thread from the beginning: Name one person who self-identifies as a neoliberal. No one can. No one will. No one cares. |
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I think one of the strenghts of Bitcoin is that users are ideologically various.
I've never meet a Bitcoiner in real life that was perfectly okay with paying taxes. We should meet up then, because I am absolutely "perfectly okay with paying taxes". We can agree on this. I'm absolutely perfectly okay with you paying taxes. Pay all the taxes you want. |
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I notice there are still people on the thread using "neoliberal" as a synonym for "anarcho-capitalist."
This makes the thread terrible for discussion but very useful for something else:
This thread provides a good list of dishonest forum members.
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The question recently came up as to whether bitcoin supporters are "neoliberals." To support the idea that there is such a thing as "neoliberalism" someone cited the book "A Brief Histroy of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey. David Harvey is a Marxist geographer.
I've started reading the book and just came across an interesting quote I'd like to share. Harvey describes a "neoliberal coup" of New York City by "financial institutions" in the 1970s, after which "corporate welfare substituted for people welfare." As a consequence, Harvey says the following:
Redistribution through criminal violence became one of the few serious
options for the poor, and the authorities responded by criminalizing
whole communities of impoverished and marginalized populations. The
victims were blamed, and Giuliani was to claim fame by taking revenge
on behalf of an increasingly affluent Manhattan bourgeoisie tired of
having to confront the effects of such devastation on their own
doorsteps.
I'm particularly interested in the phrase "redistribution through criminal violence" and Harvey's description of the perpetrators of "criminal violence" as the "victims".
This does seem to be in stark contrast to what I read from bitcoin supporters. Bitcoin supporters are often against redistribution, against all forms of welfare (corporate or otherwise), and would not describe those who commit violence in order to take someone else's money as being "victims". In fact, an argument sometimes offered in favor of "dark" marketplaces on the internet is that it removes violence from the transaction. I think it's fair for me to conclude most bitcoin supporters do not agree with this particular Marxist geographer.
What about bitcoin critics? Do they agree with this Marxist geographer on this issue?
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Well, on a positive note, at least there seems to be some agreement that Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are not neoliberals in whatever sense Harvey means it.
A lot of disagreements come down to definitions. This could be avoided if people would simply agree during the discussion to be clear about their definitions and assign different words to different definitions. It's easy enough to discuss fiat1 vs. fiat2 as being different concepts and during the discussion to explicitly say fiat1 or fiat2 to indicate which one is meant. I wonder why people are reluctant to do that.
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Oh good. This thread is not yet dead.
There's still an open question from people on this thread:
Does anyone self-identify as a neoliberal?
I decided to generalize a bit and consider the following statement:
According to X, Y is/was a neoliberal.
Someone would self-identify as a neoliberal if the statement is true for some X and Y where X=Y. I still have no examples of this.
However, I now have several examples with X different from Y. I read the introduction and first chapter of David Harvey's book. (David Harvey is an expert in "Marxist Geography" -- you might think I'm making that up to be funny, but I'm not.)
This gives me enough data to support statements of the form:
According to Harvey, Y is a neoliberal.
So far, I can say the following.
According to Harvey, the following are examples of neoliberals:
Deng Xiaoping, Paul Volcker, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet, Milton Friedman, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Keith Joseph, the Shah of Iran, Richard Branson, Lord Hanson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch
Of course, according to many people on this board, many bitcoiners including Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are neoliberals.
So if you want to better understand what "neoliberal" means, just think about what all these people have in common.
PS: It seems, given the work I'm putting into this, I might be interested in this topic. If anyone wants to help me gather information about what "neoliberalism" is supposed to mean, bitmessage me.
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I think the right way to whitelist an ip is to put something like this in your bitcoin.conf file: rpcallowip=yourwebserverip
I didn't do this. I instead wrote some ocaml code that could on the one hand locally ask bitcoind questions and on the other hand handle simple (but obscure) Q&A via a socket. I don't recommend doing it like I did, but I have trouble getting bitcoind to do what I want. I'll put some mysql and php here in case it helps you or anyone else who comes across this thread later. In the process of cleaning and documenting these clips of code, I may have introduced errors, but it should give the idea. Also, I'm not giving the full environment (e.g., connecting to mysql from php). Use at your own risk, and all other such caveats. This code was for making bitcoin payments to activate an access code in order to obtain access to an online document. Here is the relevant mysql table. I had a collection of (bitcoin-address,access-code) pairs for each document. CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `docaccesscode` (
`docaccesscodeid` mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`docsha` char(64) NOT NULL,
-- price (in satoshis)
`docaccesscodeprice` BIGINT(19),
-- bitcoin address
`docaccesscodeaddr` varchar(34),
-- "access code"
`docaccesscode` varchar(21),
-- hash of access code
`docaccesscodehash` char(64) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
-- has this access code/payment address already been used? If so, put the timestamp. If not, it is NULL
`docaccesscodeused` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
-- has the payment been made?
`docaccesscodeactive` bool NOT NULL DEFAULT false,
PRIMARY KEY (`docaccesscodeid`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=0 ;
Here is php code to request an access code and an address to pay to activate the access code. // A helper function to write the number of satoshis in a nice way as "bitcoins, mbits or satoshis"
function satoshivalstr ($s) {
if ($s > 100000000) {
return (($s / 100000000)." bitcoins");
} else if ($s == 100000000) {
return "1 bitcoin";
} else if ($s > 100000) {
return (($s / 100000)." mbits (i.e., ".($s / 100000000)." bitcoins)");
} else if ($s == 100000) {
return "1 mbit (i.e., 0.001 bitcoins)";
} else {
return ($s." satoshis (i.e., ".($s / 100000000)." bitcoins)");
}
}
$tm = time();
// grab an unused address/access code
$newcodel = mysql_query("select docaccesscodeid,docaccesscodeprice,docaccesscodeaddr,docaccesscode from `docaccesscode` where docaccesscodeused
IS NULL and docaccesscodecurr=0 and docsha='".$_REQUEST['d']."' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
// set it as used (and record when it was "exposed")
mysql_query("update `docaccesscode` SET docaccesscodeused=".$tm." WHERE docaccesscodeid=".$newcode['docaccesscodeid']);
// Say "here is your access code and please pay this address"
echo 'Access code: '.$newcode['docaccesscode'].'<br/>Pay '.satoshivalstr($newcode['docaccesscodeprice']).' to the address '.$newcode['docaccesscodeaddr'].' to ac\
tivate the access code.</div>';
Clip of php code for checking if a payment has been made (activating an access code). This first asks the mysql database. If it says it's active, the document is presented. If it says it's not yet active (payment has not yet been made), then a function cs() initalizes a socket connecting to my "payment processor server". I send "P".$ach through this socket to indicate that I want to know if the payment for the access code with hash $ach has been received. The payment processor server knows which bitcoin address this corresponds to (so I'm not sending the address itself). The payment processor server (some ocaml code) asks bitcoind about the right address and either responds with the character 'P' for "Paid" or something else. If the socket says its been paid, then the mysql database is updated accordingly and the document is presented. if ($_REQUEST['accesscode']) {
$ach = hash('ripemd160',$_REQUEST['accesscode']);
$docaccessl = mysql_query("select docaccesscodeactive from `docaccesscode` where docsha='".$_REQUEST['d']."' AND docaccesscodehash='".$ach."'");
if ($docaccess = mysql_fetch_array($docaccessl)) {
if ($docaccess['docaccesscodeactive']) {
presentdoc($doc);
} else {
if ($sock = cs()) {
socket_write($sock,"P".$ach,41);
$o = socket_read($sock,1);
if ($o == 'P') {
mysql_query("update `docaccesscode` set docaccesscodeactive=1 where docsha='".$_REQUEST['d']."' AND docaccesscodehash='".$ach."'");
presentdoc($doc);
} else {
echo 'Access to this document is currently restricted. Your access will be granted after your payment has been received and processed.';
}
} else {
echo 'The payment processor server appears to be down.';
}
}
}
} else {
echo 'You need an active access code to see the document.'
}
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I like franky1's suggestion. The "other" computer could handle more than just checking for payments. On the other hand, sometimes the "other" computer might be temporarily unavailable. In that case, it's useful to still be able to give out a payment address immediately. PS: I just saw your latest reply. I like money.
While I do like money, the truth is that what I'm describing is simple enough that I wouldn't charge anything for sharing it. Also, the things I never did (dealing with images/QR codes) I'm not very interested in doing at the moment. I'll see if I can isolate a few lines of mysql and php that anyone can copy to start from. If I can, then I'll post it here. |
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I've done what you're describing and I can tell you how I did it. 1. Generate a lot of addresses and private keys. I did this with my own bip0032 implementation, but you can also do it (offline!) using bitaddress.org (see the "bulk" option). Make sure not to lose the private keys, of course. 2. Put the addresses (not the private keys) into a database on your web server. There should also be a column indicating whether or not the address has already been used. You probably also want a column indicating whether the payment has been received. I had a mysql table for all of this. 3. Each time someone orders something, randomly choose an unused address. This can be done with some basic php/mysql interaction. 4. Mark the address as used and display it to the buyer. This should be done over https so that it is not visible to third parties. This is the only time the address will be sent from you to the buyer. 5. Here's the final and most problematic step. You should check for when the payment is made (with n>=0 confirmations) and mark it as paid in the database at that point. Here's how *not* to do it: Call a third party site like blockchain.info. If you call a third party, then you've leaked the address. You chould have bitcoind running on your server, but to watch an address you have to have the private key in the wallet. It's a terrible idea to have wallets with private keys on a web server (which is a real shame). You can encrypt the wallet with an extremely high entropy password and it's probably safe, but I wouldn't recommend it. I'll tell you what I did: I rented a separate server that only ran bitcoind (no apache), put the wallet in question with a very high entropy password on that server. I whitelisted that my webserver could ask about payments to certain addresses. (Well, what I did was a little more complicated, but I'm trying to give the idea.) You could also secretly just wait half an hour and then assume the payment was made. The buyer will probably assume you are waiting for confirmations. That's the technically easiest solution.  PS: I just saw your latest reply. I like money. |
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Tails has network filters to block anything not going through Tor, it is likely the rpcallow= command along with the proxy setting that isn't going to let you connect back into a daemon with the network stack, although loopback<->loopback should work if you specifically allow a non-routable local IP. https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Tor_enforcement/Network_filter/ - notable:
Local services whitelistThe Tails firewall uses a whitelist which only grants access to each local service to the users that actually need it. This blocks potential leaks due to misconfigurations or bugs, and deanonymization attacks by compromised processes. For specifics, see the firewall configuration where this is well commented: config/chroot local-includes/etc/ferm/ferm.conf I suspect this is the issue. There might be a way to modify ferm.conf that would work, but for a variety of reasons I don't want to risk this. I'll stick with QT. I hope this thread at least helps someone else later if they run into the same problem. Thanks again, everyone. |
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Do you set rpcuser, rpcpass(word?), server=1 (or deamon=1? or even both?) and allow connections from localhost in the config file?
Edit: just checked and
server=1
daemon=1
rpcuser=whatever
rpcpassword=SHA256(ofJustAnythingYouDontNeedItAnywayUnlessYouConnectRemotly)
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
should work. IIRC localhost is allowed by default, so that setting might be redundant.
Thanks for the reply. I modified my config file, but it still doesn't work for me. Here's what my bitcoin.conf file now looks like: server=1 daemon=1 rpcuser=bitcoinrpc rpcpassword=omitted:) rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 txindex=1 I already had txindex=1 because I sometimes need to get information about arbitrary transactions. I can start the daemon, but when I try to use it I get the same response as before: ./bitcoin-0.9.3-linux/bin/32/bitcoind -datadir=/media/myusb/.bitcoin/ -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 getinfo error: couldn't connect to server amnesia@amnesia:~$ ./bitcoin-0.9.3-linux/bin/32/bitcoind -datadir=/media/myusb/.bitcoin/ getinfo error: couldn't connect to server I'm reluctant to keep trying because after starting the daemon the only way I can stop it is with "kill" -- which I'm afraid might leave something in a bad state and I won't be able to start by bitcoin-qt. I can do anything I want through the debug console of the qt client anyway, but I could automate more if I could get bitcoind to work. |
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"Neoliberal" is a phony made-up word by people who want to limit others' choices. Nope, it's not. Read more books.  Are the people on that book cover neoliberals? If so, I am definitely not a neoliberal. Ha! You win. Of course "neoliberal" is a made up word. All words are made up. Neoliberal was (apparently) made up in 1938 by Alexander Rüstow. These original neoliberals advocated state intervention in the economy and wanted a word to distinguish them from "classical liberals" who advocated no/little state intervention in the economy. (I wrote all this yesterday, but as this thread seems to be going in circles anyway, why not type it again?) Later it became used as a pejorative term for anyone who advocates less government interference in markets. I had the impression yesterday that "neoliberal" was being used to refer to pure libertarians/anarcho-capitalists. Now it seems to be being applied to Reagan and Thatcher. I doubt anyone is silly enough to believe Reagan or Thatcher were pure libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. Reaganites, Thatcherites, pure libertarians and anarcho-capitalists basically have one common property: there is a large group of people who hate all of them and need an insulting word to use against them. This is the way "neoliberal" is being used here. It's basically an N-word to throw at anyone they don't like. |
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Regarding Voorhees. I'm curious. Is there evidence that Voorhees presents what I would call liberatarianism and you would call neoliberalism as "new ideas"?
Read his tweets. It's over-the-top anarcho-capitalism. I think we're miscommunicating somehow. Anarcho-capitalism also isn't a new idea. If he has a tweet where he says "Hey everyone, look at my great new idea of anarcho-capitalism/pure libertarianism/...!" then that would be evidence that he's presenting it as a new idea. Anyway, gotta go; nice talking to you. I hope I didn't come off like I was claiming new ideas as my own...except words as base58 of sha256 of definition thing. I totally invented that. |
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Wait. I think ordoliberalism refers exactly to what neoliberalism originally meant! Maybe they should be called neo-ordos. Ordiots would be to negative. Regarding Voorhees. I'm curious. Is there evidence that Voorhees presents what I would call liberatarianism and you would call neoliberalism as "new ideas"? Bitcoin can be very fairly called a "new idea", but the ideas of individual liberty have a long history and my impression of libertarians is that most of them learn something of this long history. I mean, at least people tend to know who von Mises, Hayek, Friedman and Rothbard were. They also know Ayn Rand, but that leads to lots more infighting. Even earlier there were influences from Lysander Spooner to Rose Wilder Lane that get talked about. Go to a libertarian meeting. They'd rather bore you with history than pretend all their ideas are new. But get ready for arguments. Libertarians always discuss until they find an area where they disagree. And there's always an area where they disagree with each other. |
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I read the Goldberg book years ago, and I agree it's good. More people should read it. The current term noeliberalism refers to political movements that want to break down national sovereignty, freely trade and commodify natural resources, labor, and such.
A word can be used however people want to use it. I agree opponents of those ideas tend to use "neoliberalism" to refer to them. I just don't think advocates of the ideas use the term "neoliberalism" that way. Suppose I started using the term "neostatist" to refer to people who hold lots of very mainstream beliefs about government. Are most people suddenly "neostatists"? A lot of disagreements could be avoided by giving neutral names to things. I suppose someone could give the definition they intend and then hash it and we could use the base58 representation of the hash. Take your description "political movements that want to break down national sovereignty, freely trade and commodify natural resources, labor, and such." Taking the sha256 and putting it in base58 we get: BDaofyahyEpS7E9fCaoFkbMitFFv8WGToys1gBRrt9Ts We could now ask: Do Bitcoiners believe in BDaofyahyEpS7E9fCaoFkbMitFFv8WGToys1gBRrt9Ts? It sounds bizarre and neutral. The term "neoliberal" doesn't sound neutral. It sounds negative (by design). Tschüs! |
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I'm curious if there is evidence of supposed "neoliberals" calling themselves "neoliberals" or if this is a term primarily used by the opponents of alleged "neoliberals."
In Germany, I've only heard the term applied (always negatively) to the FDP, the sort of mainstream "liberal"/"libertarian" party. The FDP is quite hated right now, but I attribute this to some oddities in German thinking. Germans seem to think the opposite of socialism is...national socialism. Since "neoliberals" aren't socialists, they are, by some skewed thinking, somewhere down the road to national socialism. It's quite odd. My solution is to not take people who think this way very seriously.
I generally get the feeling when people apply a "neo" prefix to something they don't like (e.g., "neoconservative" or "neoliberal"), it's meant to suggest "neonazi" without saying it. It's a kind of neogodwinism.
In response to the question "Are Bitcoiners Neoliberals?" I decided to do some quick reading.
A quick scan of the Wikipedia page on neoliberalism says the term was coined by a German, Alexander Rüstow, in 1938. It was to distinguish them from "classical liberalism" (as advocated by von Mises and Hayek) because neoliberals advocated state intervention. In fact, Rüstow is considered one of the fathers of the "Social Market Economy" (again, according to Wikipedia, so research primary sources if you want more reliable information). The "Social Market Economy" doesn't sound anything like what the allegedly "neoliberal" bitcoiners advocate.
The Wikipedia page for "neoliberalism" also says this: "According to Boas and Gans-Morse the term neoliberalism is nowadays mainly used by critics as a pejorative term."
Without looking into it further, I would conclude two things:
1. Using the term in its original historical sense, the bitcoiners to which some of you are referring are not "neoliberals" because they don't advocate state intervention in economic affairs. They could possibly be called "classical liberals."
2. Using the term in its modern, pejorative sense, the bitcoiners to which some of you are referring are "neoliberals" because you want to insult them.
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I'm trying to run bitcoind in Tails. I am able to run bitcoin-qt without a problem by doing this: cp /media/myusb/bitcoin-0.9.3-linux.tar.gz .
tar xzvf bitcoin-0.9.3-linux.tar.gz
./bitcoin-0.9.3-linux/bin/32/bitcoin-qt -datadir=/media/myusb/.bitcoin/ -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 &
I can instead start bitcoind the same way: ./bitcoin-0.9.3-linux/bin/32/bitcoind -datadir=/media/myusb/.bitcoin/ -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 &
However, when I then try to use it I get the following: ./bitcoin-0.9.3-linux/bin/32/bitcoind -datadir=/media/myusb/.bitcoin/ -proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 getinfo
error: couldn't connect to server
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks. |
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