I spend alot of money and I think I know a thing or two about money.
You might be very intelligent, but it is our experience that most of what people believe is true about "money" is wrong. Much of it is counterintuitive. For example; in a literal sense, I'd be willing to wager that you have never (directly) used real money to buy anything, and may not have ever even touched it. US $, Euros, Yen; none of these things are money. They are currencies, as is Bitcoin. |
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A simple exchange between two parties of things of equal value isn't capitalism. Both parties gain as much as they lose and therefore do not experience profit.
However, if party B takes the product of A's labor without giving back something of equal value, we have capitalism in the exchange and a state in the reason behind B's privilege. Perhaps it's B's perceived strength or holiness. Perhaps B has the backing of a more powerful authority. Without such a reason, there is no state and A won't consent to such a deal.
You really need to stop and think about what you mean to say, before you type. Capitalism is simply a concept that pulls together several economic laws under one word. Laws in the "natural" and "God created them" kind. The first being, the individual has a right to the fruits of his labor. (i.e. the capital) and he also has a right to trade it freely without coercion. The value of the two items being traded don't have a set value, the value of each thing is subjective to the perspectives of he who trades. The law of supply and demand also comes into play; as these two could be trading things on the (original) Silk Road, one trading silk from China and the other trading whatever it is that Europe made that Chinese people wanted. Each item is moving from a region that has more of it, and therefore it's market value is lower, to a region where there is less of it, and therefore it's market value is higher. That's called 'arbitridge'. Another law that you don't know is comparative advantage. Go google "the island trading game". What you think is capitalism, is corporatism, and a far cry from capitalism. A free market, by definition, is capitalist in nature; but that does not mean that capitalism only exists in a free market. As has been noted by another, capitalism exists always and everywhere, it's just illegal under certain political conditions. |
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What if initiating violence is profitable?
If you aquire your resources through violence, peaceful people will not want to trade with you. Just the history of the Roman Empire alone refutes this claim. |
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Oh, for Pete's sake!
Capitalism isn't a political ideology! It's an economic model! Capitalism is indifferent to the ideologies!
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No they don't. At least not without the aid of a state, and they do still exist in the absence of state support.
Just look at the drug cartels in Mexico. Do they need state support for an employee structure? Do they need state support for financing? Ah, but the Mexican cartels are states. People don't normally use that word for them because it gets confusing, but it's true. Businesses pay taxes to the cartels in exchange for protection. In a lot of cases, one can't even do business without permission from a cartel, similar to registering a business with an official state. Perhaps it’s better to think of government as organized crime, an entirely capitalistic organization. A cartel isn't a state as normally would be defined, as they tend not to have geographical bounderies. A drug cartel could be considered a phyle. I never said anything about tolerating them. I said that they exist. Just because you (or I) might not agree that human societies should function this way, it's an objective fact that they are and arrived this way in a straight forward (and probably entirely natural) way. If you believe that then must also believe that government is inevitable. Inevitable is a good word for it. Not desirable, nor irresistable; but certainly inevitable. |
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I wish I owned a lot of Gold. No, I don't hold any substantial value in Gold. But if I could, I would. I tend to think, others would too. Yea, we work with in established monetary systems but "WE" like gold.
I guess the test would be this, if you have the option to receive a $1000 Dollars in Paper or Gold, which option would you take. I would be willing to state that at least >80% would take the gold as change.
I'd prefer $1000 in silver or copper myself. |
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An interesting thought experiment. Put up a standing bounty for dirt on politicians. Be it sexual ,drugs or other peccadillo's. Eventually the dirt file would mean any move against bitcoin would result in mutually assured destruction.
If you have dirt on the majority of politicos in a given area suddenly you have leverage. All they care about is their public image and will go to any lengths to protect it. Thats why cops make the best drug dealers imo.
Now that's an idea. Like a crowdsourced version of insurance.256 |
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Would someone mind specifying the 'max block size' limitation is tight, well-defined systematic way? Is there a link to the problem definition, e.g. bug report?
I'm getting the gist of it only through the passing comments but hard to get a grasp on the complete animal that way.
The max block size is currently a hard limit of one megabyte. The current fee structure is designed to make hitting that limit prohibitively expensive, by limiting the free transaction section (to 20 kilobytes, I believe) and an exponentially increasing set of required fees for transactions to be included above certain arbitrary soft limits. I don't recall the actual fee schedule, but a block larger than half a megabyte would be very profitable for the miner that solved it. |
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O.K lets do the math
Network total - 0.506 Thash/s = 506Ghash/s = 50600Mhash/s / 600 = 85 (5970 cards) * 699 (RRP) = $59415 / 2 = 50% of the computing power of the network would cost $29707.50
Leaving aside the factor-of-10 error pointed out by cassacius, wouldn't an attacker have to double to size of the network in order to control 50% of it? In other words, suppose the current hash power of the network is xMhash/s. If the attacker adds 2 / x Mhash/s, then the total network power is 1.5 x, and the attacker controls 0.5 x, or 1/3 of the network. Yes. |
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This just moves the legal risks from the site owner to the mule.
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My point is:
Governments are nothing more than a collection of individuals concerned with looking out for what they perceive as the greater good. They mean well, but they are (political) scientists employing a false science
They most certainly do not all mean well. |
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In the absence of a larger state, landlords would have to establish a monopoly of force over territory to evict tenants who don't pay up.
Not necessarily a monopoly, although that is likely to occur, and it may be difficult to tell any practical difference between such a collective force structure and a state. Employers and usurers would have to do the same with capital.
No they don't. At least not without the aid of a state, and they do still exist in the absence of state support. Just look at the drug cartels in Mexico. Do they need state support for an employee structure? Do they need state support for financing?
If you don't like the state for maintaining monopolies of force over territory (and capital), you shouldn't tolerate employers, landlords, and usurers.
I never said anything about tolerating them. I said that they exist. Just because you (or I) might not agree that human societies should function this way, it's an objective fact that they are and arrived this way in a straight forward (and probably entirely natural) way. |
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You still are, you just don't really understand what the term means. Well, if I do not have authority over anyone else, and I no longer aspire for such status, how am I still a capitalist? Case in point. Capitalism has nothing to do with authority or influence over other people. It is entirely about authority and influence over resources. It's the 'anarcho' part that deals with human relationships. |
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The problem with gold, silver, copper, or thorium coins/bullion is still divisibility, which would result in a relatively inelastic money supply. The problem with representing them with certificates to get around this problem is that it makes them just as easy to fractionalize, which has probably already happened with many gold/silver accounts. Physical representations of currency, like metals, will always have this problem. As such they are best suited as a store of value, not as a currency. This is fine and dandy, this long term store of value can still function as a component of the overall money supply, but there are better things to use for currency.
Divisibility isn't really an issue, because these days we can encapsulate metals down to grains. So you could use thorium coins struck down to dimes, and anything smaller coudld be sealed into clear Pyrex glass. Sure, one would have to destroy the glass case in order to audit the mint, but that would still be a workable solution. On some level, metal coins still require some level of trust that the mint that produced it is honest, and isn't trying to pull a fast one by wrapping a depeleted uranium coin i na 2 mm layer in gold; and the only way to know is to occasionally cut such a coin in half. Granted, Bitcoins are much more divisable and much easier to audit, which is why bitcoins make such a great currency. But bitcoins are not a money, and probably make a poor store of value in the long run. It does not help the argument for jingly currency by saying that divisibility isn't really an issue... And then to proceed with a description of how divisibility is an issue. It does not matter how small an accountable unit a metal is divided into. To do so adds to the overhead for minting, counting, transporting, storing, and verifying such a currency... Beyond a certain scale it becomes infeasible. This problem of divisibility is one that digital money systems such as Bitcoin seek to solve. And it is a problem which commodity currencies will always have. Perhaps I should have said that it wasn't an insurmountable issue. |
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Also, what do you think of the valuable data from 200 years of experimental minarchy? Namely the US constitution.
I can't speak for him, but I think that it's proof enough that it doesn't really work long term. "Either the Constitution explicitly authorized the government that we have now, or was powerless to prevent it..." |
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Every bitcoiners here know how bitcoin and how the economy works, roughly.
I would seriously doubt that. |
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I was a capitalist once, too, you know...
You still are, you just don't really understand what the term means. |
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Both fascism and communism as political ideologies would qualify as capitalist under such a definition. Both societies are capitalist. It's probably hardest to see the capitalism under communism, but it's easy when you realize that the state is the only legal capitalist in such a society. This is in line with the political defintion of "capitalism", but not the economic one, which is notablely different. Is it? A landlord has whatever monopoly of force the state allows him over his land. Without this larger state, he must establish the monopoly, and therefore create a state, himself. This arrangement seems nice until the landlords start hiring mercenaries, and then we have the beginnings of a larger state. Basically, landlords cannot exist without states. The same goes for employers and usurers. Landlords and employers can both exist sans a state, and have historicly. I'm not sure what you mean by usurers, but if you mean money-lenders, then they have existed without state support as well. Regardless, this thread highlights the problems with debates among lay thinkers using technical jargon. Your defintion of capitalism is too broad to even have a conversation about the merits or faults of such an idea. |
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I literally mean that gold is capital. It is a means of production. It is also money but that's not what I said.
Gold is not a "means of production" unless you are a goldsmith, or maybe a banker. This is correct. Unless gold itself is being traded and could be used to cover production costs. Not even then. Neither gold, nor any other commodity money, is capital unless it's being used in production. The capital that such gold could be traded for is the only capital, and is valued in gold. |
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...Plutonium, Uranium...  Some people might find these commodities unacceptable as stores of value as they have built-in inflation imposed by nature due to their half-life.  You mean deflation, right? Some people are easily confused. No, I mean that your value is slowly being eroded and dwindles to zero, which is more like inflation than deflation. Now I'm confused. If/When a true thorium fuel cycle is established in India, thorium coins become a viable alternative because thorium isn't very dangerous and the energy content provides for the most basic of use values. Honestly, I'd be kind of surprised if someone like the Hunt or Koch brothers don't already have thorium bullion waiting for the shift. Thorium is radioactive, but it's half-life is so long it was only theoretical for 100+ years until it could be observed. 99% would still be here when the Sun overtook the Earth as a red giant. The problem with gold, silver, copper, or thorium coins/bullion is still divisibility, which would result in a relatively inelastic money supply. The problem with representing them with certificates to get around this problem is that it makes them just as easy to fractionalize, which has probably already happened with many gold/silver accounts. Physical representations of currency, like metals, will always have this problem. As such they are best suited as a store of value, not as a currency. This is fine and dandy, this long term store of value can still function as a component of the overall money supply, but there are better things to use for currency. Divisibility isn't really an issue, because these days we can encapsulate metals down to grains. So you could use thorium coins struck down to dimes, and anything smaller coudld be sealed into clear Pyrex glass. Sure, one would have to destroy the glass case in order to audit the mint, but that would still be a workable solution. On some level, metal coins still require some level of trust that the mint that produced it is honest, and isn't trying to pull a fast one by wrapping a depeleted uranium coin i na 2 mm layer in gold; and the only way to know is to occasionally cut such a coin in half. Granted, Bitcoins are much more divisable and much easier to audit, which is why bitcoins make such a great currency. But bitcoins are not a money, and probably make a poor store of value in the long run. |
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