I've been kicking this around for a while. I've been thinking of bitcoin as the privacy currency.

Suppose you want to post on a web site but don't want to give them personal information. If you could just include a bitcoin, that would make clear you are not a spammer. Or if you are, at least the site gets paid for canceling your posts.

The same thing is possible for dealing with spam email. Sending email to someone and want to avoid their spam filter? Slip them a couple of bitcoins. Then they have some when they want to send an email to someone new.

This way there is a complete circuit for bitcoins without going back to cash.

As people start making distributed social networking things it could be even more useful.
 

Seconded with a smile!

People trade with people. They trust their value to people.

You will attract more cryptoanarchists but if you expect to attract the mainstream it means team building.

Quite frankly if someone told me he was joining an anarchist organization I would just quietly smile to myself and enjoy watching the show.

Somethings in life really are marketing.

There is a transaction flag that you can use to sign a transaction without signing the to address. I forget what the enum is called.

I think it is used for paying transaction fees. Because when you set up and send the transaction, you can't know who will generate the block and get to claim the transaction fee.

Thanks! I found it an interesting survey because the questions are so weird. They are not so much asking your opinion as correlating emotional tendencies.

My hypotheses is that bitcoin won't be successful in the long term unless the bitcoin community has strong community building tendencies. Meaning strong group loyalty. Also reasonable respect for authority seems required, and some purity in the sense of respect for traditions. But in this case that means *future* respect for the new traditions being created.

In other words if members of the bitcoin community go chasing off after every shiny new monetary trinket...


If you compare this to recent American politics, you can see that the Democrats, even though they have vast majorities in both houses, they can't form a team. They have little group loyalty, little respect for their own authorities, and no respect for their own traditions.

The republicans on the other hand can agree to stand arms folded giggling at them in perfect unity.

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Take note of the following in your real life.

If you talk to a conservative about your liberal ideas, they will say, "I understand what you are saying, but I think you are wrong (or an idiot.)"
If you talk to a liberal about your conservative ideas, they will say, "You really can't believe that. You are just saying that because..."

It is not politeness or diplomacy. They really don't believe anyone could possibly hold your opinion. This is the first coherent discription I've seen for why this is.
 

Bump can send just about any information. It is a neat concept.

No reasons you couldn't send a bitcoin address or an entire transaction. (One of those signed with the any receiver setting.)

You know this is what the PGP web-of-trust is right?

Trust in the PGP sense means, I have personally verified that this "public key" belongs to the guy stated in the PGP key. For varying senses of the words "personally verified".

It is quite reasonable that if I transact with you BrightAnarchist that I might sign your public key, so that my friends would know you are the specific BrightAnarchist I traded with. Even if I only know you pseudonymously.

Creighto please correct me if I'm wrong, but "all debts" is slightly overstated above. It is my understand that it means all agreed debts denominated in dollars.

It is perfectly reasonable to make agreements or contract denominated in other commodities. For example, I can loan you 10 chickens and require 10 chickens to repay the debt. I don't necessarily have to agree to a dollar equivalent value of 10 chickens. If I'm hungry for chicken, I can't eat dollars.

Futures markets operate on this principle.

Legal tender really tends to mean, if someone owed your grandfather $100 from 1920, you can't demand 100 silver dollar coins, $100 in silver certificates, 2 $50 gold pieces or any other form specific form of currency. You have to take FRN if they are offered, else the debt is forfeit.

Harm = 2.0
Fairness = 3.0
Loyalty = 3.5
Authority = 3.3
Purity = 2.2

I've been following Jonathan Haidt's research on the 5 foundations of morality for a little while now. He does a really interesting job of explain the differences between people based on 5 independent scales. He then shows how people who consider themselves conservative and people who consider themselves liberal tend to show similar patterns on these scales.

He gave a very interesting TED talk (20 min) where he explains the concepts.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

I my personal life, I find his hypotheses seem to match the people I meet on a day to day basis. They also hold for different sub-groups I tend to interact with.

The group that gathers on this forum however is a less common group for me. Most people don't consider themselves either conservative or liberal. Usually more libertarian and anarchistic. However, I still see certain tendencies that I think can be predictive of bitcoin's future success or failure.

I'm wondering if anyone is interested in taking his "Moral Foundations Questionnaire" and sharing your results here. This is not a questionnaire about whether or not you "have morals". Everyone has morals. It simply asks what types of issues you personally see as being morally important. You might consider other things important for personal reasons, but not moral ones.

For example, many people here would consider that owning personal property as being very morally important. The same people might not consider cussing in public as a morally significant decision. (my made up examples)

Anyway, if you are. Here is a link. I understand if you are not.

http://www.yourmorals.org/

There is real research going on so their tends to be lots of available questionnaires, but initial one is called the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire".

I'll post my results first.

I'll post my hypothesis about how this is related to bitcoins future success later, for those who are interested. :-)

It's a pretty cool use case. I don't expect there will be much *generalized* fraud if the machine did its own validation. I mean I doubt somebody standing there in the laundromat with a basket of dirty clothes is also simultaneously trying to double spend those coins by buying a tropical fish.

However, it is probably worth defending against the case where someone is trying to double/triple spend to start multiple machines at once. That should be pretty easy to defend against though, since all machines are likely on the same network.

I have to agree with Creighto. I haven't seen any racism and there is barely any organization.

There are however, may people who have long been frustrated. If you live in a red state the tea party's themes have been common conversation for decades. The general public is very late to the concept.

I'm sure that a "public affairs" company does lots of media and takes lots of credit for doing things. I don't know if DCI has been hired at any point along the way. But I know they didn't start the conversation or the parties. But some PA/PR/Media buyer did arrange some radio spots at some point. I'd be hugely surprised if RJR paid for them!

I can guarantee however this is completely astroturf. It is also pretty unsuccessful!
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/

It's not that I don't find your roommate's argument coherent. It is just that I don't find it compelling. And I really have been to this rodeo a number of times.

Each new generation makes the same points with a slight variation on the enemy. It is like an internet chain letter. The "people are corporate sheep" argument really hit its stride in the 60's. Ironically, the few people who ended up changing anything did so by started their own corporations. Producing things is a mighty force for change.

But the key point he is trying to make is: People are not going to change anything to be more like I want, until things really start to suck. Therefore, wouldn't it be nice if things really sucked?

Well as it turns out, "No". Things wouldn't be better if they really sucked. That's the grown-up answer to the very common adolescent question. Yes, I've been an adolescent and I've raised adolescents. And yes I'm well aware that adolescence lasts well into the late 20's now.

But where he is wrong is that if you see a potential problem you really can fix it. Or maybe you can try and fail. But either way, don't expect people to care unless you actually fix one of THEIR problems.

That is the problem Obama is having. He keeps asking for people to be impressed with all the problems he sees that he is fixing.

Purely pragmatic needs to work more and earn more FRN. In my case at least. Nothing special about high school except kids want to go to the prom. Seriously! That and high school is where the hot chicks are! :-) those were my kids thoughts at the time.

It turns out it's not as hard a you would think. We home schooled our kids until high school. Then they just seemed to pickup bad habits.

It turns out public schools are just broken as designed.

Nice letter. It brought to mind the story of James Smithson donating a bunch of gold sovereigns to the unexpecting. :-)

Thank you for that quote.

It sounds just ordinarily anti-social until you get to "contribute to a massive increase in collective awareness" then it gets implausible and silly. No offense to your roommate, it's just not my first trip to the enlightenment rodeo.   

There was a thread on arduino that fits this use case nicely.

I'm not arguing that anyone need feel bad.

I'm suggesting that most Americans have never seen a Euro in their life. Most probably never will. They see prices in USD that only go down for sales but usually go up as a trend. No one says, they went up, because the the dollar fell against the Euro or etc.

If a merchant wants $10 for something, and I want him to have my $10 for that something, then there should be a process that is trivially easy and one that requires zero additional thought, rationalization or argument.

Because the taco guy really doesn't want to hear his woes about BTC fluctuations to the dollar either. If he was trying to overthrow the Fed buying corn and chicken in BTCs and then selling tacos in BTCs, perhaps he might understand. But he isn't. He's just selling the damn tacos.

What type of political bent is interested in increasing inflation? Seems either an extreme progressive, or just a crash everything because I want to need me to save it type.