Ah, I think I see the disconnect now.
A market force is not the same as coercion. Coercion against Tom implies that there was a willfull intent on some person's or group's part to affect Tom, be it directed towards Tom himself or some third party that might hold authority over Tom or is dependent upon Tom. A market force is a collective thing, without a will to cause you harm or gain. Thus a market force is comparable to a force of nature, in that it's not anyone's fault that Tom just got screwed, except maybe for Tom's own poor investment choices.
What Libs & Anarchists oppose isn't the broad, aggragate forces of society, but the individual & collective initial acts of coersion.
Alright, this is an interesting revelation brought about by the arbitrary defintions of libertarians. After I'm done with cash kid, I'll invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole for a second here, one step at a time so everyone can follow sans hyperbole and strawmen. The faster you can get him to stop throwing out strawmen, the faster we can move on. Hyperbole and strawmen are not violations. I don't intend to do anything about it until they start recommending anatomicly impossible acts involving your gentialia and your bodily orifaces. I never did anything about your strawmen, did I? In the mean time, please review the defintion of coercion, it will be relevant in later debate. #3 is especially important. co·erce
3.
to dominate or control, especially by exploiting fear, anxiety, etc.: The state is based on successfully coercing the individual. And that is a wonderful definition. Notice, if you are capable, that for that definition to be effective, some authority in the state apparatus must act towards an end goal. It's not necessary for the actions of distant authorities to know the individuals they are coercing, nor even the details of the coercion in reality, but only that there is an intent to achieve a goal and an action taken towards that goal. Enacting a tax is one such example of a collective act that forces those subject to that tax to themselves react in a manner that they would not have voluntarily. I realise that there is a paradox in all of this, as a lib is not an anarchist, but subtlety is a product of compromise; and the ability to discount the negative effects of such subtle inconsistancies is a sign of wisdom. I wish to see progress within my own lifetime. Yet I don't advocate sudden social change, even that which would significantly favor my own ideologies. I recognize the paradox, I just reject the concept that this paradox negates the validity of the system as a whole. |
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The argument that deflation is bad because it disincentivizes investment is like arguing that theft is good because it motivates people to work harder to feed themselves.
Amen to that, but Bitcoin isn't deflationary. It is very inflationary at present, and will taper off to a very stable amount. The only reason so many people believe it to be deflationary is because the Bitcoin economy is growing as such a greater pace than the monetary base. As more people assign value to bitcoin (recognize it as something worth having) it will have no other choice but to deflate. Imagine that 100 people thought BTC is something worth having and they had 21M of it to go around. Now imagine that 7 billion people find it worth having with the same 21M of bitcoins to go around. Wouldn't you agree that BTC would be worth a lot more in the second case? This is what will happen as more and more people get involved. That's not deflation, that's the law of supply and demand. Inflation and deflation are economic terms that directly describe the increase or decrease of the monetary base, respectively. I would disagree with this definition. Deflation is the reduction of the general level of prices in an economy, it has nothing to do with the base of BTC, just how much things cost in BTC. So, if the base stays the same (21M BTC) and a widget goes down in price from 1BTC to 0.1BTC because more people find value in BTC, we have deflation. Changes in the general prices are symtoms, not the causes, of deflation and inflation. In the case of Bitcoin's high inflation rate, that symtom is overwelmed by other factors. Words have specific meanings within certain contexts, and withing the context of Economics deflation and inflation only have meaning at all in relation to the decrease and increase in the monetary base. There is no other way to define them with any useful precision. Change is price is neither a symptom nor a cause of inflation/deflation. It'd the definition of both. Increase in price = inflation. Decrease in price = deflation. That's the definition of these two concepts, regardless of context. When prices of goods denominated in BTC fall (i.e. it takes fewer BTCs to buy something) deflation occurs. <sigh> Please take some time and read an Economics textbook. The definition that the news media presents is not the Economic definition. |
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I'm not grossly oversimplifying anything.
Business cycles can not exist without inflation.
Sorry, but the business cycle exists regardless of inflation or deflation. It will exist in Bitcoin as well. The business cycle is an aggregate phenomonon that exists despite the Federal Reserve. In fact, elimination of the business cycle was one of the original missions of the Federal Reserve, but in practice the actions of the Fed only act to delay the correction phase, not eliminate it. Since the market has more time to build up inefficiencies before the correction phase wipes them out, those correction phases tend to be deeper and longer than without monetary intervention from the Fed. |
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Now that you have made one post in the newbie section, you can send him a PM.
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A pool miner doesn't do a full and proper check against it's hash solution to determine if it meets the target. All it does is a quick check of how many leading binary zeros are present, and if it is close, it submits that work to bitcoind for verification. If the submitted work does not meet the target, this is what you get in the logs.
This is exactly what my hunch was but im wondering if its documented in the code anywhere and if so if anyone can point me to the bit of code dealiing with this scenario? Sorry, but I'm not a coder myself. I know this is so because I have asked the same question in the past, and received this response from one of the developers. |
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Besides, just take a look at the front page of this forum and tell me that putting new people in a cage is doing anything helpful. You have "when do you think bitcoin is going to go up?" or "which rock star will get behind bitcoin?" This is childish blather from people who certainly have a lot of posting experience. My point is, putting all new people in a cage is insulting to them, and it kills new ideas and intelligent insights that this forum sorely needs.
I'm sorry if you feel insulted. The newbie forum exists as a filter against bots and those who troll until they're banned, just to create a new identity. It also functions well as an incentive for newbies to spend a little time reading, hopefully to better understand how Bitcoin works before posting nonsense. It's cut down on the "I'm the first person to discover the Great Bitcoin Flaw (tm) even though I've never read the white paper!" crap significantly. |
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I have moved this topic to it's proper home.
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Why does it have to be limited to smartphones? What prevents a system similar to M-Pesa built around a cell service provider offering a BitPay like service? Does anyone here have direct experience with M-Pesa?
My only issue is that the application platform is so widely adopted that this may take more time than is efficient to establish. It would of course open the market to everyone with a phone, but everyone wants a smartphone. Coinvestor (Ryan) Well, many more non-smart cellphones exist, and I had a $9 phone that worked quite well before buying an Android. I got the smartphone for the other apps, not for the possibility of using it to spend bitcoins. Not everyone is going to switch for many years, most people just need a phone and maybe SMS texting. Even my $9 phone could securely connect and use my account balance with the service provider. |
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A pool miner doesn't do a full and proper check against it's hash solution to determine if it meets the target. All it does is a quick check of how many leading binary zeros are present, and if it is close, it submits that work to bitcoind for verification. If the submitted work does not meet the target, this is what you get in the logs.
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Why does it have to be limited to smartphones? What prevents a system similar to M-Pesa built around a cell service provider offering a BitPay like service? Does anyone here have direct experience with M-Pesa?
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Ah, I think I see the disconnect now.
A market force is not the same as coercion. Coercion against Tom implies that there was a willfull intent on some person's or group's part to affect Tom, be it directed towards Tom himself or some third party that might hold authority over Tom or is dependent upon Tom. A market force is a collective thing, without a will to cause you harm or gain. Thus a market force is comparable to a force of nature, in that it's not anyone's fault that Tom just got screwed, except maybe for Tom's own poor investment choices.
What Libs & Anarchists oppose isn't the broad, aggragate forces of society, but the individual & collective initial acts of coersion.
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The argument that deflation is bad because it disincentivizes investment is like arguing that theft is good because it motivates people to work harder to feed themselves.
Amen to that, but Bitcoin isn't deflationary. It is very inflationary at present, and will taper off to a very stable amount. The only reason so many people believe it to be deflationary is because the Bitcoin economy is growing as such a greater pace than the monetary base. As more people assign value to bitcoin (recognize it as something worth having) it will have no other choice but to deflate. Imagine that 100 people thought BTC is something worth having and they had 21M of it to go around. Now imagine that 7 billion people find it worth having with the same 21M of bitcoins to go around. Wouldn't you agree that BTC would be worth a lot more in the second case? This is what will happen as more and more people get involved. That's not deflation, that's the law of supply and demand. Inflation and deflation are economic terms that directly describe the increase or decrease of the monetary base, respectively. I would disagree with this definition. Deflation is the reduction of the general level of prices in an economy, it has nothing to do with the base of BTC, just how much things cost in BTC. So, if the base stays the same (21M BTC) and a widget goes down in price from 1BTC to 0.1BTC because more people find value in BTC, we have deflation. Changes in the general prices are symtoms, not the causes, of deflation and inflation. In the case of Bitcoin's high inflation rate, that symtom is overwelmed by other factors. Words have specific meanings within certain contexts, and withing the context of Economics deflation and inflation only have meaning at all in relation to the decrease and increase in the monetary base. There is no other way to define them with any useful precision. |
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The argument that deflation is bad because it disincentivizes investment is like arguing that theft is good because it motivates people to work harder to feed themselves.
Amen to that, but Bitcoin isn't deflationary. It is very inflationary at present, and will taper off to a very stable amount. The only reason so many people believe it to be deflationary is because the Bitcoin economy is growing as such a greater pace than the monetary base. As more people assign value to bitcoin (recognize it as something worth having) it will have no other choice but to deflate. Imagine that 100 people thought BTC is something worth having and they had 21M of it to go around. Now imagine that 7 billion people find it worth having with the same 21M of bitcoins to go around. Wouldn't you agree that BTC would be worth a lot more in the second case? This is what will happen as more and more people get involved. That's not deflation, that's the law of supply and demand. Inflation and deflation are economic terms that directly describe the increase or decrease of the monetary base, respectively. |
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interesting way to keep out the riff raff.
It works, too. |
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This was in regards to income, not some vague, non-measureable sense of quality of life. Nice try though.
Income isn't the best metric to determine the "most well off people in the world", as different thinkgs cost different amounts in different cities. That was the point of it all, and even based upon income of the bottom quintile, which is what the UN metric measures as compared to the rest of the same socieity, Europeans win. And we all know that Europeans are some raging libertarians.  Quality of life is a totally separate discussion that once again, ironically, though not surprisingly, does not favor "libertarian leaning" nations. I wasn't making any such claim, I just wasn't about to let you make a bs claim and just let it go by unchallenged. |
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The argument that deflation is bad because it disincentivizes investment is like arguing that theft is good because it motivates people to work harder to feed themselves.
Amen to that, but Bitcoin isn't deflationary. It is very inflationary at present, and will taper off to a very stable amount. The only reason so many people believe it to be deflationary is because the Bitcoin economy is growing as such a greater pace than the monetary base. |
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Average incomes are in the top bracket worldwide and they have the lowest wealth disparity in the world. Obvious conclusion, they've got the most well-off poor people in the world.
FAIL! I did not contest the claim that the Japanse have the lowest wealth disparity in the world, I was demanding support for your conclusion. It does not follow that low wealth disparity implies that the poor are magicly those most affected. The "most well off people in the world" is a vague metric, and I was giving you the chance to support this claim. I actually know already that it's false by almost any real metric available; but quality of life is a hard thing to measure. The poor in Japan certainly have access to much more quality of life than the poor in Kenya, but absolute comparisons are rarely instructive. Your probably thinking of the UN's MDG metrics. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/default.aspx These would imply that Japan has long been in a tight matchup with some states in Europe for the top spot, but that's based upon the percentage of total national wealth that the bottom 20% possess. This metric alone actually means very little with regard to quality of life, because nations like North Korea are automaticly removed from the comparisions because the government owns everything, so there is a bias from the start. Also, how do you compare the lifestyle of a poor japanese family in Kyoto to that of a poor American family in Spokane? Which has access to quality health care? Living space per household member? Effective public transportation? Consumer products? Internet? Most of these issues are about comparable between nations except living space per person. By any measurement, Americans (of any class) have, on average, the most living space per person compared to any of their class peers anywhere in the world; while Japan sits at the other extreme among first world nations. This was in regards to income, not some vague, non-measureable sense of quality of life. Nice try though. Income isn't the best metric to determine the "most well off people in the world", as different thinkgs cost different amounts in different cities. That was the point of it all, and even based upon income of the bottom quintile, which is what the UN metric measures as compared to the rest of the same socieity, Europeans win. |
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The deflation is meaningless. Predictable inflation and predictable deflation just get priced in.
This is true, but the highly predictable nature of Bitcoin (it's not deflationary) is an attractor for early adopters and long term speculators. |
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