You'll all have to excuse my stupidity, but what's wrong with unlimited (*) blocks? Let each miner set his own transaction fees and free market competition will ensure that transaction fees are kept low while still keeping the network secure. Surely putting some artificial limit on blockchain size in order to drive up fees is little different to central bankers imposing QE or inflation targets on a currency.

Of course, bitcoin mining will migrate to where there is cheap energy, but this might have a beneficial side effect - more effort will be put into building cheap energy sources (read: renewable (**)) so any given geographical region can contribute to mining and so benefit from incoming tx fees ("free money" for want of a better description).

(*) up to some reasonable limit that shouldn't ever be reached, which will depend on how widespread bitcoin adoption is - visa handles a peak of about 10000 tx per second, assume normal use is 3000 tx/sec, assume 250 bytes per transaction and you'd need on average 0.5GB sized blocks every 10 minutes. For the immediate future, I think there's no reason the blocksize should increase beyond 10MB at the outside.

(**) hopefully renewable but admittedly, not necessarily so.

This is a really awesome project and I wish you the best with it. I prefer to only ever beat the house so I don't ever gamble. But I can see that I'd probably log in sometimes and play for chump change. Better than playing hearts against the computer.

I find it hard sometimes to click and exit the blackjack chairs. Is there a list of instructions anywhere?

Tried to connect, says I'm not whitelisted.

I read once, I can try to find the reference, that if the Irish provincial kings had united they would have easily repelled the invaders. However, the invaders practised the very successful "divide and conquer" method, and exploited differences and petty wars to actually have the Irish fight themselves.

Medieval Ireland was not an AnCap society. It was hierarchically structured. Peasants paid obligatory tithes (taxes) but were protected by their lord or king, and other posts have already noted that slavery was present. Everybody in the society had a rank:


Source:


The video contains some truths mixed with misleading simplifications. The English weren't the first to conquer, but they were the last. Previous conquistadors were subsumed into the existing society - the phrase "more Irish than the Irish themselves" refers to this phenomenon. This "AnCap" society was not able to defend itself.

As the video says, smaller petty kingdoms were slowly amalgamated into larger, each with an "over-king". However the entire island was ruled by a High King (who also commanded taxes) - though much of the historical record is lost to legend by now. There was a highly complex legal system to which obedience was not optional.

For example, the video suggests people could easily change from one tuath to another. Not so; members of a tuath were unquestionably subjects of their lord or king.


To summarize, there are some truths in what the video states, but the real truth is much more complicated - I'm certain it wasn't the AnCap paradise you're thinking of. Though, on reflection, my own interpretation of AnCap and, to a large extent, libertarianism, is that people with more money will be able to afford better "justice" than those without. So, actually, maybe you're right. It's not what you're thinking I'm sure, but I'll bet AnCap would end up fairly similar to medieval Ireland, only with guns and telecomms instead of swords and fast horses. The video admits that there were wars between petty kingdoms, calling them "minor things". I have a problem with this as an example of how an AnCap society can go wrong - when two "defence" contractors and their respective "mediators" cannot come to a satisfactory solution, the only valid response in war (given the absence of a society-wide independent judiciary - though see below). Notably ever since Ireland became a unified independent republic there have been no more wars within or across its borders, with the sole exception of terrorism.

One thing that interests me most is that the video states the king as also subjected to an independent judiciary - this is, to my knowledge, true (with the caveat that a king's word held more weight than a peasant's). I haven't finished the book I've quoted (it's a tough read), but I'd like to learn more about the judiciary's independence. One of the big failings of AnCap/libertarianism, in my opinion, is that it cannot guarantee an independent judiciary.

Umm, he sleeps in one of those travel cots (we're tight for space, but fortunately it's decent enough).  So it's just 6 inches off the floor.  The walls are fabric stretched over a light aluminium frame and, on one end, there's a door that zips up.  A bit like a tent, I suppose, only being a cot there's no roof, and being a cot for small people (i.e. < 5 years), it would be a pretty small door for a real tent -- unless, I guess, if it was a tent for similarly small people 

Well, he walks proudly up, unzips the door, and climbs into bed. I need only zip the door closed again, put the covers over him, and voilà, he's done, all ready for sleepies. Admittedly, the first time he did this I was speechless. Didn't even know he knew how to operate zips. But, not wanting to lose the initiative, I took it in my stride and made him opening his own cot-door a part of the night-time routine 

I used to sit beside or lie on the toddlers' bed and make up a story. Once I made up a really nice story about a little bird that lost a feather and couldn't fly any more, until a friendly spider spun a giant web and caught the feather in it! They *LOVED* to hear made-up stories. It was the one sure method of getting them to calm down and listen. Sometimes they'd even make up their own stories.

After the little story I would chat to the kids about this or that, or sing a little song. Then, sooner or later, I would interrupt with some reason to leave like, oh, I need to pee (kids understand that), I need to wash the dishes, I need to do a make a phone-call, something, anything, but *ALWAYS* with "wait there, I'll be back in 5 minutes".  9 times out of 10 they'll be asleep when you get back. If not, rinse & repeat. Eventually you won't have to go back no more.

Apart from that, the earlier message about developing a routine is vital.

Instead of having the young ones in your bed, much preferable is for you or your SO to squeeze into bed beside them - obviously it's better if you just sit there, but I'm considering the hypothesis that you're dead tired and need to sleep. You'll get uncomfortable soon, wake up, and can then go to your own bed. That way, they will become used to sleeping in their own bed.

Our bedtime ritual is now pure joy. We bring 'em upstairs, they climb into bed (the youngest even unzips the door on his own cot and voluntarily climbs in!), a short song or story, kisses all around, and awaaaaayyyyyyyy!

I'm not so sure. If a large stake-holder could ruin the value of the current blockchain, they might increase the value of their own blockchain or their own fiat currency as the case may be. It would remain to be seen whether they would enjoy a net surplus in the process. Of course, this would require bitcoin's market cap to be comparable to (e.g., if we're talking about fiat US$) US GDP. At that stage, presumably, the bitcoin network would be unassailable by any earthly economic power.

Cunicula, I don't entirely understand your proposal. Correct me if I'm wrong - you're suggesting that people that run a full node *AND* engage in heavy mining get to preserve their stake. In your scenario mining contributes to the network security, as does running a full node with full blockchain history. So then, what about people that only maintain a full node without running a mining op? I'm sure I misunderstood.

As an armchair wikipedia-surfing economist, I can see that Friedman was not the diehard libertarian I'd previously assumed. This quote here, again from wikipedia, suggests he promoted a Minimal State, and was certainly not advocating giant centralized states as suggested by Zanglebert above:
In fact, the wikipedia article suggests he was predominantly liberal, but was unfortunate enough to be paid by Keynesians to decide policy in a Keynesian world, so he did the best he could:
Today I learned something more about economics. Cheers, forum!

I can see that, in a future with thousands of transactions per second, today's TOR network couldn't supply enough bandwidth. I've run a full node over tor for a long time, and I've never had any problems.

I'm trying to differentiate between *identifying* a 51% attack and *defending* against it. Everybody on this forum will happily wax lyrical about how hard it would be for govt to eliminate bitcoin. And yet, nobody seems to notice the contradiction in declaring how easy it would be to exclude govt from bitcoin.

Good post. I would add that some defence against a 51% attack should be implemented ASAP. If I were a central bank, I'd be buying up as many ASICs as possible to gain > 51% hashing power, or better still, > 90%. For the moment, then, I'd leave them hashing according to the standard rules and not make any hostile moves until I were certain how best to proceed.

Does wikipedia need correcting?

I tend to compare today's western societies more to Huxley's "Brave New World". But, really, I think of room 101 in 1984 as the "stick" and soma in Brave New World as the "carrot", both getting people to be docile citizens. Put in 2020 if you prefer, I'm sure you did realise that the actual year wasn't the important part of what I wrote.

Touchè! I guess it's just so ingrained in my mind that I didn't realise I made the swap. True, there may well be good Big Business. When I look at politics, and how it is influenced by lobbying, I genuinely feel that an abolition of big business would do much more good than harm for most people on the planet. Perhaps I'm biased.

Ok. So let's look at the idea of why BigBusiness would *promote* libertarianism. Just like the Christians took what they liked from a plethora of cults before them, and promoted it as their own, maybe BigBusiness did the same with libertarianism. What would the "true" founders of libertarianism have to say about huge multinational corporations, some with budgets the size of countries?

This seems logical. I'd add another upside: elimination of large-scale state-monopolized violence. No entity could challenge the BigCorp's security division. Depending on whether it was a GoodBigCorp or BadBigCorp, this would be a correspondingly good or bad thing. Right?

So when BigCorps now push liberal agendas, do libertarians tend to think this is a good thing? Or do they watch with scepticism and wonder... "Why, what's in it for them?"

Imagine a policeman in the year 2040. The state pays him in GovCoins (thx for the name, bitcooper) over which it exerts full control. Would he accept those coins? In the case of a BigGovt, where a sizeable fraction of citizens are paid in GovCoins, do you think a majority of shops and businesses will accept GovCoins? In that scenario, could GovCoins represent a larger fraction of the economy than the (let's assume) outlawed bitcoins? In that scenario, would the government have unprecedented control over, and information of, companies' and people's spending habits? Would it be a 1984-esque situation, only more tyrannical?  If such a situation came to pass, in any one nation, or in all nations, or globally, would you say that bitcoin and blockchain technology are crucial to enabling that situation?

If it helps, I agree with you - GovCoins would indeed be little different from the current paradigm of money of which, I think you'll probably agree, most people are ignorant of the problems.

Cognitive bias does not apply to non-cognitive systems. Think again. To my knowledge I don't actually have a "favorite" insult - I prefer to use a variety. Feel free to enlighten me though, a dog never can smell his own scent (or so they say).

Woah, you'll have to educate my sorry ignorant ass here. What, are you gonna ask mtgox to ignore blocks coming from tor aswell? Identifying a 51% attack must needs be based in properties of the blocks mined, not which IP they come from. Andresens' crude PoS, for example, linked in this thread would work on block properties.


I think cunicula means to increase the cost of *saving* money. Though I'm not sure that a simple linear tax on bitcoin-days would do the job.

Let's get back on topic.  The article says:

1. Big business created libertarianism
2. Friedman, its representative, was a scumbag.

Well, saying libertarianism is terrible because of point 2 would certainly seem to be an invalid argument. Point number 1, however, is very relevant. What would big business stand to gain from libertarianism?

All the pro-libs here suggest that evil big corporations will suffer under libertarianism because they'll be out-competed by smaller "nicer" outfits in the free market.  So, why would big business promote libertarianism then?

[note: I'm assuming the article is factually correct regarding the facts it states, to wit, that big business did, in fact, create and promote libertarianism. I'm neither an historian nor an economist so I can't judge the truth of these statements]

This is interesting, and it seems like a valid defence, though I can spot two weaknesses. First is that having more bitcoin-days is "easily" accomplished by having more than half the bitcoins. So you'd need 51% of hashing and 51% of bitcoins. Second is more subtle. If people get paid (e.g. civil servants) in the govt-approved blockchain, then they'll have to use that chain to spend their money. If there are lots of civil servants, then the govt blockchain will be correspondingly more important.

They'll switch to TOR. Is there any way to block a miner from participating over tor that doesn't involve compromising tor itself?

Not possible with paper money. VERY possible with a blockchain.

Depends proportionately on how many people depend on the govt-blockchain.


Let's pose the problem another way. Suppose tomorrow the US government issued a statement to the effect that they really like the idea behind bitcoin and would be commencing work on a new government-mined blockchain, complete with a new genesis block; obviously with some different mining and block verification procedures. Police, military, doctors, teachers, ALL employees in ALL branches of government would be paid in that new blockchain. How do you see that situation evolving?  Now ask yourself, how is that situation any different from executing a surreptitious 51% attack on the current blockchain?

Actually, thinking about that scenario myself, it would seem to be a much more logical path for government to follow. Hah, I just shot myself down 

One answer: in your country!  Alternative answer: in any country. The attack I outline could be carried out by any country and its citizens could therefore be subjected to perfect financial regulation. Other countries might seek to join that blockchain, or they might have one of their own.

I disagree. Current network hash rate is ~ 25TH/s. BFL says they'll give you 1.5TH/s for $30k in a single box. You'd need only about 20 of them to gain > 50% of the hash rate, that's $600k. Six hundred thousand dollars! So let's suppose someone tries to set up this attack in the future when there are already, let's say, 10000 such boxes already running and connected. You'd still only need about $300 million (ignoring price reductions due to efficiencies of scale, and improved technology) - that'd still be small change to a central bank that's printing, what, $40 billion per month? Suppose there were 1 million such boxes running - that'd cost $30 billion, 8 months of QE3. Let me emphasize, the attack would have to be surreptitious so as not to raise suspicion. ASICs coming online would be the *perfect* moment to implement the attack because nobody will be worried at sudden massive increases in hashes-per-sec.

ASICs will be great for bitcoin if they become truly distributed, but it should be obvious to all that they'll never be as uniformly distributed as CPUs. Any argument on that point?

If civil servants get paid in a particular blockchain, then they'll use it. And if the police understand that their bitcoins become more valuable by beating on 'blackchain' exponents, then you can be sure they'll do just that.

Put two apples on a table to your  left, then put two apples to your right (use the globally (and for all we know, universally) accepted definition of "2").  Now join the two sets of apples together.  For the globally accepted definition of "4", ask yourself if there are now 4 apples on the table.  If so, then you have successfully tested, and verified, that 2+2=4, given the accepted definitions of "+" and "=".

If not, then you probably shouldn't eat those apples :-)