Technology support, like clients, transaction processing software, android app, ATMs...

Sorry, just sold $2,400 worth of Bitcoin over last 24 hours to pay for my flight and hotel to London. My bad!
Besides, I was just "using them" like the anti-hoarders/speculators said I should be.

Everybody hoads them, except for merchants who sell them as soon as they get them. And even they just sell it to another person who will hoard them.  If you buy 5 BTC for your wallet with the intention of using them to buy something tomorrow, you are hoarding them, and would likely avoid doing this out of fear they will drop 10% overnight.

How can you tell? I mean, how could people tell that email, HTTP, and online retail like Amazon weren't just internet memes? (All claims put forth at the time) What makes the bitcoin protocol different?

You mean, like, speculators and hoarders?

Why would they, if they only see it going down? Why risk buying the currency to buy something else, if what they buy is expected to lose value in a day?

I'm in too. The possible return WAY outweights the risk of the money I put in, and I'm willing to wait for years.

The part he missed is that simply holding Bitcoin does not earn you wealth, unlike cash or stocks. If/when Bitcoin stabilizes, and they become filthy rich, the only way for them to benefit from their wealth will be to sell i, trade it for cash/stocks/bonds, or use it to start a business.  Either way their bitcoin will end up getting redistributed into the economic system.


This doesn't seem to follow the hoarding = decreased supply = increased price basic econ theory. Sure, hoarding may support the price artificially, but I don't see how it can make the price go down. Can you elaborate please?

I did not mean to imply "that's the way things are,"I meant to imply that's the natural progression of things. Like there is a natural progression for people whi's rights are restricted for no reason to get more and more equal rights, there is a progression for business to becompe less and less regulated, or the government trying to regulate the business more and more corrupt by those they are trying to regulate.


I don't see why what I did wasn't that particularly hard. I didn't even have all that good of grades in high school. Just took some part time community college classes while working, then took out a loan to go to one university to finish my bachelors, then after graduating found a job (which i might add pays WAY below my skill level), and while working there took out a loan to get my masters degree, taking classes in the evenings part time.This isn't particularly hard. The only major difference between my friends and me is that I don't have every video game console out, don't buy games and movies all the time, don't buy junk and trinkets every time i want something, don't go to a restaurant every week, have only the most basic cable, don't buy clothes unless i need them, eat the cheapest stuff I can find, drive a crappy old car with 200k+ miles on it, and don't have a lot of free time what with the work, classes, homework, and some extracurriculars I do. So, you want to be the "bootstraps" rich guy? Just don't waste your money on shit and get better priorities. That's about it.



I'm not against the idea of infrastructure or welfare for those who genuinely need it. But if everyone was equal with no winners or losers, everyone would be a loser, since why bother working if you know you'll be taken care of anyway? What's the drive/incentive to be better if you know you won't be a winner even if you try to be?


Well, the reason for that is because not many can do the stuff the "rich" can, but plenty can do the stuff the laborers can. It's really just simple supply and demand. If laborers demand to get higher pay, someone else wil come around and offer to take the limited number of jobs for a lower pay (like Chinese and Indians did). The whole union and minimum wage thing may have worked when we were more or less isolated, but in a globalized world we entered just 15 years ago, free market is king. There's no more single all-encompasing rules to keep workers from competing for jobs. So, the only option we have, really, is to create a one-world government that passes minimum wage laws globally (impossible), or have workers become more and more skilled with more unique and specialized skills. Lucky for them, we now have plenty of evidence that the sweatshops people were complaining about ten years ago do, in fact, progress to more competition for employees, which means higher wages and better working conditions. Though if you have a better, WORKABLE idea of how to solve that problem, i'm all ears.


Finance is a tool and a service that at the very core simply tries to match up risk with the estimated cost of that risk, nothing more. People with too low an income are too much of a risk, and shouldn't attempt to buy things like videogames, junk, and even houses, with borrowed money.

It,s a lot less sinister than that. They are pumping out Chinese Yuan in exchange for USD in order to keep the value of the Yuan WAY artificially low, and thus the cost of their labor and exports artificially low. At this point it's practically the main reason stuff from China costs so little. That currency manipulation is now hitting a wall repeatedly, and once it can't be maintained any more, the value of the Yuah, and thus chinese labor and manufacturing, will shoot way up. Result will be a lot of fairly well off people, and a LOT of unemployment.

That's kinda the core of the problem. As the currency is allowed to increase in value, living expenses and paychecks will go up, and very soon China will find itself too expensive to outsource work to. Once that happens, they'll be no better, or worse, that US's economic woes.

     <.<  Furries..  

Seconded. China has been screwing with their currency so long, they are practiccally on the brink of an economic collapse.

Ah, so she's not just a shit for brains, and does know how to make money. Hopefully dady taught her well, so she'll be able to keep giving people things that people want from her. If not, she won't last long.


That's a ringtailed cat
http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Chester_Magreer

I'm extremely attracted to and admire very strong and courageous people. In the comics, he lost his parents, grew up as an orphan, and used his wits and skills (and loks) to still make an ok life for himself in the end. Now he is strong enough to be flamboyant and girly, i.e. himself, despite what anyone else may think, but is tough enough to defend himself and kick ass if needed. Most people in life just conform, hide their feelings, pretend to be someone they are not, all to gain acceptance of their peers and society. That's too boring, and I like strong, interesting people who aren't boring (even Atlas, despite flaws, is interesting). So that's what made me fall in love with that character, as well as be jealous of his strength.

Honestly? Education. When you learn how the system works, you learn thatthere's really not much you can do about it, and though not guaranteed, the outcome will usually be good in the long run. So, maybe education, and a bit of surrender and hope.


Hm, maybe? I wouldn't know. I don't go to Harvard. Just lucky to have gotten into this school (though busted my butt like crazy to get in there). My parents aren't rich, and I'm paying for the $30k a year or so that it costs pretty much entirely out of my own pocket and through loans.


If everyone was a winner, no one would be. We either have one very skilled and driver winner with 10 not so skilled and risk adverse employee losers, or we have one somewhat lazy welfare recipient with "needs" as a winner, and 10 people working and payi g taxes as losers. I'm all for equality, I just don't think it will work, since it will naturally degenerate to communism or free-market libertalianism over time. Always has.


Finance doesn't actually suck money off labor. It sucks money off debtors and investors. Human resources sucks money off labor. I don't know if human capital management degrees are free-market capitalists.
Likewise i can say the same about you. You didn't learn something that led you into supporting socialist-democratic principles, you just saw that some people had things you didn't, got jealous, and wanting to have what they have succumbed to your greedy nature. Everything in the world is done for selfish greedy reasons, even if the reason is so that you can feel good and smug about yourself.

So, we're almost all slaves then...

You're making the same mistape I pointed out in my OP. Take total control of an asset, someone else will create a substitute. Or people will substitute nothing for the assets, and the business will lose money until they lower the price.

Hers, or her father's?

From what I remember of my history, the "slaves" that built the oyramids were actually local farmers, who would work the fields when farming was in season (flooding from the nile), and when farming was over with, would go work on building pyramids in exchange for food and shelter. Questionable on how much of a choice they had between working or starving, but not technically slaves.

Why are you assuming that people can not group together and pool their wealth and resources? Almost no one starts a business with just their own savings any more.