Nothing, technically.  But the question is, who would use that system over Bitcoin?

now that's just slick

The Nobel Prize for Economics is not granted by the Nobel Prize Committee.  It's not really even related to the Nobel Prize.  It's given out by the Central Bank Board in honor of the Nobel Prize.  Basicly, if your economic theories are favorable to the central banks of the world, you're in the running.  Otherwise, you will never win.

Bullsh*t.  The Euro is first.  There is nothing underpinning the European Economic Union or the Euro itself beyond faith.  At least the US FRN has an army with a single command structure.  The Germans can't tax Greece if they tell them to bugger off and go start their own national currency again, and France can't buy German goods if Germans do the same.

The bank reserves thing is BS.  They can literally lend whatever the Fed lets them lend, there just isn't as many credit worthy borrowers to go around anymore.  The only reason that the increases in the monetary base haven't been worse is because we have had massive deflation in the overall economy due to the massive drop in home prices.  The inflationary period was betwenn 1999 and 2006 when everyone and thier brother were taking out Helocs against their homes and paying for inflated new car prices and vacations, boats, whatever.

You can recombine coins that have been broken down across many transactions, but this has little affect on the wallet.dat file.  The bitcoins don't actually reside in any form in the wallet.dat file, your public/private keypairs and references to your transactions do.  In truth, the bitcoins don't actually exist even as a digital object.  Everything is in the transactions.

Yes, it's fine.  The default behavior of the standard client is to change your receiving address with each transaction that you send.  Your old addresses remain valid forever, however, so long as the keypairs that relate to them remain in your wallet.dat file.  You can safely continue to use the same address for as long as you like, but giving that same address out to too many people undermines the anonimity of the system.  A good standard is to give a different address to each friend or family member, but keep a record of which address was given to whom.  The client doesn't do this very well, yet.  So if you receive a payment from out of the blue, you can tell who sent it by looking at the address that it was sent to.

It was more of a joke than a serious offer, I'm sure.  Search the forum for the 10K BTC pizza.

Inflation is actually low if one considers M3 (known monetary base + credit issued, etc) as opposed to simply M1 (monetary base).  The reason here would be because of the large amount of debt that was destroyed due to the real estate crash.  Even with the doubling of M1 since 2007, the paper value destroyed by the forclosures and general drop in home values exceeds the rise in M1.

Using price increases as your measurement for inflation, whether you include food and energy or not, is a fundamentally flawed method.

Yeah, well.  At least he won't remember that part of it except for an alien abduction dream in a few months.

The (non-existant, we really need a programmer to develop this) 'blockchain watchdog' process would ringing alarm bells after the 60% miner had left the network.  Whether that mattered would depend upon what the rest of the network does once the watchdogs are barking.

This is an elaborate version of a known attack vector, but one that is limited to a particular target, not the blockchain itself or the network as a whole.  Basicly, it's another way to perform a double spend fraud against a particular node.  There are many ways that a major vendor node could use to thwart this that are not mentioned by the article, probably due to lack of research on the author's part in this forum's thread history.  One defense is mentioned in the article, but he largely dismisses it's value. 

"Monitor network health and shutdown if there's suspicious activity.
Definitely a good thing, but wouldn't resolve conflicts automatically."

This is the 'blockchain watchdog' process mentioned in many prior threads.  It does not exist, but it could.  There are many signs that known attack vectors are underway.  No, this would not necessarily result in an automatic response, but it could notify the user that something is wrong as well as suspend transactions on an ecommerce site.

"Use the median block chain time exclusively when validating blocks."


This is a client issue, and one that can differ between client versions.  If a programmer wishes to come out with a version that does this, he is free to do so.

In short, this attack is possible, but very difficult even if the attacker is aware of any secret defenses the target may have already taken.  Nor is it a threat to bitcoin itself.
 

Why do we need a bitcoin version of Craigslist?  Craigslist isn't centered around a payment model.  Just use Craigslist and post Bitcoin as an accepted payment method.

Interesting proposal.  I think that this requires it's own thread, to discuss how to do this.

Ah, no.  Economics is, indeed, a science.  It's just that it's not that kind of science.  It's a social science, not a physical science.  As such, it's laws are based on how humans act, and therefore how they think.  Hence the name of the Austrian classic, Human Action.  Anyone who trys to tell you that mathmatical formulas can be derived from the economic data, or that the laws of economics drive the public and not the other way around, (*cough* Keynes *cough*) is full of crap.  Economics is the "dismal science" because it's a social science.  Physics is easy, your experiments (above quantum) are not affected by observations.  Humans don't act that way, they respond differently to the same stimuli, and moreso when they are aware that they are the experiment.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/26/dollar-store-nation

Then either Wal-Mart would be jumping in within a month, or the government would be jump on them within a month.

For that matter, a Bitcoin article in Reason would be epic!

It's doubtful that they will let him roam the halls with this own electronic devices.

This depends entirely on how one defines inflation.  I didn't bother reading your link, but IIRC the OECD defines inflation as the general rise in consumer prices.  This is not how anyone with an Austrian Economic Theory perspective would define it, nor is it how the majority of economists define it.  That metric is only how governments that print money define it.

LOL!  What nonsense!  There has been numerous articles from real economists pointing out Krugman's poor prediction record!  One I've seen actually demonstrated how Krugman is only slightly better than throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded.  If you want to see an economist with a real track record for accuracy, try Mish (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/)  Peter Schiff (http://www.europac.net/) or Rich Maybury (http://chaostan.com/).  All of these guys actually make money, real fortunes, based upon their predictions.  Krugman makes money selling advice to readers of the NYT.  He's the economic version of "ask Nancy".

If you are taking your advice from someone who doesn't make a living from his own advice, you are an idiot.

IIRC, ARtForz mentioned at one point that his cluster had crossed the $200,000 mark back in the Fall of 2010.  So we aren't talking about your average geek throwing this together in his garage.  ArtForz has resources.