That can be done.

Economics.  The altruistic motive to help defend the blockchain, in a crisis or otherwise, cannot continue beyond the willingness or resources of the altruistic individual.  Excepting such a crisis, the userbase willing to mine at an ongoing loss is always going to be a vanishingly small percentage.

Are you serious?  More efficient miners are going to be pushed out of the market by a few guys running miners on old laptops at a loss?

Honestly, Theymos; do you make up b.s. for fun?

It does help, simply because they could find a block.  Like raindrops form a river, every little contribution strengthens the blockchain a little.  If we look at it like you are, then we should stop all this other wasteful searching and just look in the last place we would have!

And merchant law.

No, it won't.

No.  Cityhash is not a secure hash, as I understand it.  The hashing function must be securely irreversible.

I does help the network, but whether it's worthwhile is up to you.  As far as efficiency, a laptop cpu is going to be terrible.

There already is, to some extent, as the signing and hashing process involved in sending a transaction does put some weight on the sending cpu.  More would be a burden for collective wallet systems like mybitcoin.

See the quote above yours.  That is what I was responding to.

By "state" I mean any collection of people that form a collective form of security for themselves, and either offer or force others to contribute resources to that security.  It may, or may not, be based upon geography; and may or may not be coerced.  So I would consider a phyle to be a state, even if citizenship is voluntary and services are not dependent upon a citizen's geographical location.

As for considering it necessary, I don't consider it necessary.  I believe that others will consider it necessary, for protection against threats both real and imagined.

I addressed that comment directly towards the prior post that suggested that an anarchist society consisting of members who were all morally opposed to the use of force could exist.  Basicly, I believe that this is a contradiction, for no other fact than that sociopaths willing to use violence exist; and therefore such a society could never arise in the first place.

I'm saying that most people are actually indifferent to the state, and very few people are actually dependent upon the state as a matter of practicality.  These people would adapt to the disappearance of the state better than the average statist primarily because the average anarchist is not a threat to a dying state, and therefore will be much better able to stay out of the mad arm of the state.  Also, in part, because most anarchists that I know believe in forming a stateless society rather than simply allow one to evolve naturally, and so (by my own definition above) are really intent upon co-opting the state, not abolishing it.

EDIT:  I ment tht the average statist is not a threat to a dying state

Only if the pro-rapists in the argument were the pacifistic anarchists.

Which, BTW, is pretty much the Brady Campaign's argument against the licensing of firearms for young women; that since rapists exist, the presence of a firearm only increases the odds of death.

To which I would respond, damn right it does.

Well, I use the term "state" a bit more generally than that, but would be open to the evidence that such a non-state society could actually exist, and that a path of change to that end could exist.  I've read much, and seen much, that supporters of such a society have presented; and have yet to see an argument that I couldn't undermine.  And if I can undermine the theory, a sociopath could undermine the reality for fun and profit.


This is the case, it's just that very few people realize that it's the case.

What some people would call something is irrelevent.  Some people would call Mormanism a sect.  Some people would call a Buddist a godless heretic.  Some people would call what you are doing here in this tread, trolling.

All of those people have a higher claim that they are correct than you have to claim that you know what I should believe, based upon what you believe about the proper definition of a word.

You didn't read the thread, did you?  I wasn't saying that other methods didn't exist, nor did I make any comments about the levels of risks.  All that I did was comment that glass is an effective vapor barrier to the smell that drug dogs are trained to locate.

And until there are no others who seek authority over others, or are otherwise willing to use violence to achieve a political end, the above society remains impossible.  And that, right there, is why I am not an anarchist.  Not because I don't believe that 99.9% of the human race can co-exist in an entirely peaceful manner sans Big Brother, but because the remaining 0.1% will refuse to comply.


Yes, exactly.  The reason for this is that the majority of the population are already functioning peacefully in society regardless of the nature of the state; and would, therefore, readily adapt to the absence of the state.  Their own political viewpoints concerning the utility of the state notwithstanding.

Who is being paranoid?  If you were in this business, wouldn't you consider intelligent steps to avoid detection a prudent use of resources?

Perhaps only mining companies will have their clients set to run as full nodes; but even if end users don't want their client running in full node mode, doesn't conclude that it won't have the capacity to do so at the user's will.  Those projections are highly speculative anyway, and depend upon the dual assumption that Bitcoin grows to nation-state-economy levels while never developing parrallel systems to mitigate traffic along the way.  Large assumptions, particularly since mitigating systems have already been considered by this forum.

It only took 3% of the population to fight the Revolutionary War and defeat the British Army.  Anyone who believes that theft and violence is incompatible with their beliefs must also be willing to use violence in kind in order to prevent same.  Anyone who believes that violence have never solved anything isn't a student of history.

That said, my own experiences with anyone who is willing to self-identify as any form of anarchist is anti-this-state, not necessarily anti-state.  The vast majority of whom wouldn't know how to act in a real condition of anarchy, while the majority of the remainder of the population probably would.  The sudden absence of the state is only dangerous because of the kind of people that don't have the will or capacity to govern themselves.