I am sure a conservative Christian or a Green Peace environmentalist is VERY compassionate about their respective subjects, but I guarantee you that does not translate to the Christian's understanding of theology, anthropology, and biblical history, and it does not translate to the Green Peace environmentalist's understanding of climate, economics, or technology related to the environment. Marx and economists of the Soviet Union were very passionate about economics as well. That didn't mean the were correct.

My reason for asking is because this isn't the only place I've discussed econ with Hawker, and I am genuinely confused as to what his understanding of economics is.  If you wish me to be specific, the particular parts of his post which case me to (once again) raise an eyebrow were:

"National mandated prices are the only rational option"  (paying a price that's higher or lower than it's cost or utility is not "rational")
"only country where the shortages ... you occur is the USA" (how can things in a free market experience shortages?)

And many other claims in other topics, such setting a floor price for things (such as wages) does not translate to shortages for things (unemployment), that there is no such thing as competition in the market, and without price support, everything would cost close to 0 (or employers would pay EVERYONE only enough to keep them alive), etc. etc. etc. This even extended into a long debate about copyright industry needing government protection for price support, otherwise prices for all intellectual property will become $0. All of his points are exactly the same here; just replace "wages" with "drug prices" and "unions v.s. employers" with "government mandates v.s. free market insurance."

I am not asking for credentials, degrees, or certificates. I am only interested in where his understanding of economics comes from, because his ideas seem so diametrically opposed to reality that I don't even know where to begin to debate with him. I mean, is he a Keynesian socialist, a Marxist, someone who learned about basic economics and got confused about something somewhere, someone who is just guessing based on things learned by discussing this in forums, or is it just a language barrier issue? I don't know if discussions with him should be based on the assumption that this very basic and underlying tenant is true http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand, or if he uses some totally different system I'm not familiar with.

I always wondered how people like this go to the bathroom. I mean, do they "wipe" with a hose?

Hawker, if I may ask, what kind of economics or business background do you have? I can't figure out if it's "none" or if you learned econ from someplace... "weird"... is the only way I can think of putting it. Basically a lot of what you are saying makes little to no sense when applied to the basic Supply/Demand on Price/Quantity chart.

I'm just glad I finally got to see the full size image of Randy's avatar pic, because until last night I thought that was chin flab instead of a beard.

By the way, we have a lady in our accounting department who is exactly the same size as Randy. You interested in a date? XD

Maybe the places being invaded are being invaded due to their natural resources, and them having wealth due to natural resources, as opposed to using brains and coming up with innovative ideas, makes it easy for them to get away with lack of fiat&debt?
If you were to look at the various Middle Eastern countries, those without natural resources to live off of are generally more accepting, innovative, capitalistic, and have stronger economic structures (Dubai, Israel, etc), and those with vast natural resources are much more totalitarian, religious, and socialistic, with their economy entirely dependent on those resources (Iran, Saudi Arabia, where majority of youth goes to get useless degrees in theology, and where the economy would collapse catastrophically if the oil runs out)

This is just Republicans reaping what they sowed (and allowed to exist) back when Bush was in power, back when they thought only "good patriotic republicans" will ever hold the presidency :/

It's not the financial system that's the problem, it's religious fundamentalism. Just because a religion can have some good ideas (use sound money, love your neighbor, whatever) doesn't mean all of it is automatically good.

if that's the case, then the ONLY option is government mandated prices, but that will very likely result in shortages; everyone can afford it, but it's not available because no one wants to make it. I just don't see how this can happen without going outside the bounds of market laws.Maybe if the goverment makes it using government owned factories and sells it only within the country borders...

You're forgetting that, likewise, the drug and medical companies will lose ALL their income on some procedures if insurers chose not to cover it. So both, the insurers AND the medical providers will need to agree on a price. There's also the issue of all insurance companies declining some treatment if they feel it's unnecessary, so all of them let some people die. Finally, if it's just one medical procedure that isn't being offered, like, say, treatment and possible cure for Leukemia, if one insurance company advertises that they cover it while another doesn't, everyone who doesn't have leukemia won't care, and will stay with whatever coverage they had before, but everyone who does have leukemia will flock to this one company, and will likely bankrupt them as they are forced to treat more leukemia patients and raise their premiums to afford it, pushing everyone who doesn't have leukemia out.

Because 0 x 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 is STILL 0

I guess you missed the whole purpose of the OP and this thread, which is that with centralized exchanges, this currency becomes an easy target for government laws and scammers. Look at Tradehill and all the issues MtGox has with keeping a bank account open.
Unless your proposed solution is to have BitUSD created and controlled by the government, thus being fully endorsed and legal... but in that case, why even bother, instead of just making ACH transfers irreversible? It's kinda funny how you keep making it sound as if you think everyone else is an idiot. 

OMG! My clock just jumped from 1:59am to 3:00am! Atlas stole my hour! So THAT was his announcement: he's stealing time! This will have huge repercussions on Bitcoin, since we just lost about 300 BTC worth of blocks!

And how will irreversible BitUSD exchange from reversible USD? At some step there will still be reversible fiat needing to convert into irreversible currency. Again, all you're doing is creating more steps further down the road, but ignoring the problem with the very first initial one. I mean, hell, why not have irreversible BitUSD, that exchanges into irreversible BitEuro, that exchanges into irreversible BitUNcash, that exchanges into irreversible BitWorldCoin, that exchanges into irreversible BitCoin? Make the chain long enough, and maybe people will forget about the initial reversibility problem.

It takes up to 24 hours for current DNS changes to go through and propagate. I don't think a delay with DIANNA will be an issue.

I know how you feel. I haven't been to bathroom in three weeks, waiting for good reading material 

Exchanges. What will they be exchanging? Irreversible BitUSD to irreversible BitUSD? I'm wondering the same about you.

But, in the end, all you'll have is irreversible USD on top of reversible USD, with the same incompatibility-based fraud problems, where people will buy irreversible with reversible, and reverse their transaction. There won't be any benefit in that system besides off loading fraud into exchanges.

The issue is that getting money into Ripple with some level of trust is that it's as difficult as getting the money into Bitcoin with some level of trust. This suggestion seems like it's trying to mask the Bitcoin issue by covering it up with something else with exact same issue. There's also the problem if having to build out both, Bitcoin and Ripple networks to get this to work, as opposed to just a bitcin network by itself (network among people I mean)


What's the point of having a currency that has a fixed exchange rate with USD and centralization, if you can just use USD with centralization?



Completely agree with the first point. I think the fear regarding the second is that those exchanges may not last, and they make HUGE targets for government takedowns. People may not want to keep their money with the exchange if they fear it may be shut down and they can lose everything at any time. The man question for this whole problem is how or where to store the fiat money...

Yeah, that's only 15 minutes away from where I live.

it would have to be both. A more interesting question is, can you get electricity from barn wood?