The people in Africa, Asia and South America are not starving because they don't want to eat. It's because they have no food to eat.
They are not starving because the free market has failed them, they are starving because they live in oppressive regimes with a lot of warlords, crime, and tribal skirmishes, which are preventing the free market from existing. Devil's advocate question here: If I moved into a TZM commune, what would prevent me from taking the "freely available" resources to the point where there is a bit of a shortage of them, and then selling them to people in exchange for, say, making them work to build me something that is otherwise unavailable? (example, I keep "needing" more and more water, which I store away, until there is a water shortage, and I force people to build me a yacht in exchange for letting them have a bit of water) |
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The biggest problem I see with this idea is that the VAST majority of voters will have no idea what they are doing. Even on these forums, where the topic is currency, there are A LOT of people with no financial or economic background. Uneducated votes at a time of crisis will likely (probably) make things much much worse.
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I would LOVE for at least a WORKING Android app before a cheap BitClip, though a BitClip device would definitely help in poorer countries.
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pick up a book.
Pegging ALWAYS caused massive problems. No slave, pick a book and learn how did the pegging end in Argentina. Literally overnight, the savings of all its citizens were devalued to 1/3. Thats the power of (suppresing) the markets. How is "the savings of all its citizens were devalued to 1/3" not part of "ALWAYS caused massive problems?" |
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Talk to china about pegging, I suppose you all know more than china.
Study how the dollar was pegged to silver and gold early on, and you say it cant be done. Where do you think chinas prosperity came from? THE DOLLAR PEG.
pick up a book.
Suggest you follow your own suggestion. The wa China is able to peg the Dollar to their own Yuan, despite a MASSIVE trade imbalance, if by constantly buying more and more dollars with yuan. That is a COMPLETELY unsustainable system, since they are basically amassing a huge amount of dollars and are forcing the value of their own currency down artificially. VERY soon (it's starting to happen already) China will not be able to continue doing this any more, and as a result, their propping up USD and pushing down Yuan will "snap," which will result in a rapid rise in the value of their own currency, and a huge inflation of USD (though that may be mitigated by our own banks). In the end, pretty soon China's products will become very expensive, US products will become very cheap, and China will crash HARD due to no longer being able to export anything. Read history. Pegging ALWAYS caused massive problems. |
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Didn't read it fully, but it sounds a lot like non-physical bitbills. Mine would be a full-fledged portable client capable to connecting to wifi. Ah. I see. These guys are working on a smart card, possibly with a keypad and display, that would securely run bitcoin with an encrypted wallet right on the card. They want to have it work like a credit card that can store your bitcoin more securely than a PC, and still be used at point of sale systems through smart card readers and custom software. |
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2.2 Automate the process as much as possible
2.3 People get access to the necessities of life without having to enslave themselves for profit, and can finally do something useful for themselves and for the rest of society
Maybe this has been answered already, but who will be forced to build and maintain the automation machines, and who will do the forcing? Also, who will decide how much each person needs, and what will prevent them from deciding they need more than others? |
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In addition, it is absolutely deplorable that when it is even mentioned that a man must care for himself, it is reduced to pathology. It's asinine to believe men should not have any reverence for himself but only for others. The only way a man can begin to care for others is if he sustains himself. If he fails to care for himself, the others he supposedly loves so dearly will just have to care for him, only resulting in a loss.
Social darwinism is highly detrimental, and produces inequality, wars, social segregation, neuroses, stress and overall a worse quality of life for most people. I have never advocated this. All I advocate is voluntary charity. The monetary system and associated profit motive actively inhibit this. If I believe that the person in need of charity will put my money to good use, and will use it to become a productive member of society that I am a part of, such as becoming a better employee or starting their own small business, that is charity that I may do for a personal profit motive, yet is still charity. |
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People with absolutely no economics or finance experience/education can sometimes make some pretty cute, if misinformed, comments...
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The only way that an apreciation could have occurred that is not due to speculation would be if the marketplace/usability of Bitcoin had grown substantially.
Are you saying that was NOT the case??? |
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There is a lot of daily volume of bitcoin being bought and sold. If it was just speculative, the price wouldn't be so stable. Stability suggests some people are spending it on SOMETHING out there. Also, speculation is not a bad thing, and I wish people would get off that idea. Also also, even at $5, bitcoin is still valuable enough for casual mining.
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I specified in the the first sentence that you can't do it without involving another currency.
The government is the insurer of last resort when it comes to banks... for example the FDIC in the US.
I would never deposit money in a bank that guaranteed my funds on the condition I didn't mind being paid back in Rubles.
Since its impossible to have an insurer of last resort for bitcoin the bank would have to work in reverse.
Not true. You can have your USD denominated cashflow insured with USD by putting some of that USD into a pool. If your cashflow is interrupted, you take your share out of the pool that everyone has been putting into. That's how life insurance works. With a Bitcoin bank, a bank can self-insure individual accounts by charging a small fee. If someone's account is lost, the bank can restore the money from the collected pool of fees. In the case of insuring an entire bank, there could be an insurance company that many banks pay a fee to (charged from individual account holders), and if the entire bank collapses, the insurance pool of money should have enough set aside to pay the people back. Best case scenario would be banks who insure a portion of their funds among many insurance companies, so if one insurance provider collapses, at least hopefully the remaining ones will restore some of the money. IMO insurances are the biggest legal scams ever.
Essentially insurances insure you for something that is very unlikely to happen,
That, for starters, is quite illogical.
If something is very unlikely to happen, that is usually reflected in the price you pay. The chances of you getting killed or losing a limb in an accident are extremely tiny (compared to dying of health issues), and so AD&D (accidental dismemberment) insurance is only about $2 to $4 a month. The chances of you needing some sort of really expensive healthcare service when you are 80 is rather high, thus insurance is high. For exemple, if an actuary assesses that your risk is extremely very low, then why the hell do you need an insurance in the first place?
You could cover that risk by yourself.
You could actually deposit a portion of your income in a jar (or invest it) and have yourself insured for when "shit happens" and there would be plenty of money available when it happens, since the probability of happening is quite low. If you collect your own money for each time that shit doesn't happen and use it when "shit happens", you should amass a considerable amount of money in your little jar.
You know how bitcoin hashing works. Accidents work the same way. Your chance of getting into a car accident that costs you $50,000 is extremely low, but it could happen today. Obviously the BEST method is to both pay for insurance and save up money. Specifically, when you buy insurance, yo pay for a certain amount of coverage, say $50,000. As you save up $10,000, lower your coverage to $40,000, and so on, until you are self insured. In some cases, though, it is much better to buy insurance than to self-insure. For example, if I'm running a business that needs $100k in liability insurance, but likely will never use it, I would much rather pay a small monthly insurance payment and let the professionals work things out should anything happen, while using the $100k to actually do business and make money, than tying up the $100k in some untouchable bank account where it sits doing nothing, and then looking for lawyers and help on my own when something happens. Because of this I still don't understand the compulsory nature of certain insurances.
If you have a freaking low risk, you should be exempted from having an insurance.
The compulsory part is because "freaking low risk" does not mean 0 risk. Low risk people still get into accidents, get infections, and even get cancer, yet because they thought they are low risk and didn't buy insurance, when they go to the hospital and get treated, everyone else who actually DID buy insurance ends up paying for them in higher insurance costs. Options are either force them to buy insurance too (and pay much lower premiums), or force hospitals not to treat them, and send them off to some island to die so the don't bother anyone here. The gov decided t go with option 1. If this isn't enough: If you are insured and shit happens, be ready to be rejected because of a definition in cryptic minute clause in the corner of the backpage of the insurance policy that technically excludes you from certain conditions from collecting the insurance.
If that isn't conning I don't know what it is.
That's called "free market" and "read the damn contract"  Anyhoo, a bank that insures their money from being stolen in the very high risk environment like the online medium would be a freaking suicide, unless... you have placed extremely safe measures and extremely reliable redundancy to make attacks and data loss extremely unlikely, otherwise offering insurances would be totally senseless and stupid, business-wise.
Obviously I imagine that the fees or the premium for such warranty would be quite expensive and the investment for such infrastructure and personnel would be quite considerable.
That's true. So, that just means that the bank will have to weigh it's expense options between setting up extremely good security, or pay extremely high insurance premiums. Likely, it'll do what everyone does, and balance the costs somewhere in the middle (though since securing digital things is much easier than physical things like in a bank, I suspect they will exhaust every digital security option before going on to buy insurance.) |
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Unfortunately bitcoins are essentially uninsurable.
Assuming no breach occurs the insurance depositors earn "interest" from the fees in proportion to their deposits.
Why are Bitcoins uninsurable? A bank can take out an insurance contract in USD in the amount larger than the current bank holdings to allow for BTC currency to increase in value, or eventually get a contract in BTC. The fees will be smaller than the total holdings, but hopefully the insurance company will have more stashed away than needed in case problems arise. Also, the point of insurance is that the fees can't be paid back. They are only big enough to cover losses (most of the time ongoing losses) from some members. If they are large enough to pay you fees or money back (Whole Life insurance, among others offered around the world), they are essentially ripping you off and paying you back your own money they don't actually need to insure you. (I sold insurance for a while, so I know all the BS behind it) |
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Hmm, needs some minor proofreading. I still wouldn't really call it interest, since that implies a return on the money deposited. Since the money will not be lent out or invested, and proceeds will come from mining, selling advertising space, running financial services like escrow and arbitration, or whatever else, the payments are actually closer to "proceeds from company revenues," aka Dividends. |
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Can you put up a listing selling a USB stick with a wallet.dat file, with a link pointing to a blockexplorer.com adress showing how many bitcoin are currently in that address? eBay likely won't find it if there is no mention of Bitcoin, and those in the know will know what they are buying and how much is in there.
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I hate people who used the overused "Wake up" phrase. Wake up people, wake up America, wake up this and that... Just be honest and say "Look here, dumb-ass!"
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But as much people talk a big game about wanting a legitimate Bitcoin marketplace, few have done anything about it.
It takes time. Although Bitcoin has existed for about two years, it has only "existed" in the public view for maybe two months. I'm working on setting up some exchanges in other countries, and that alone will likely take months, even before people can use those exchanges with their local stores to actually use them to sell stuff. |
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It's not really a store of value in the system it has now though - disregarding any possible future of it becoming more than it is right now, it's merely a game of hot potato.
All the speculation and valuation surrounding Bitcoin right now is from people looking at what could be not what is. If that "could be" disappears, and the groups of people who end up wanting Bitcoin dry up, value goes to the shitter.
By that assumption gold, which also really doesn't have much of an economy, can be considered a "hot potato," too. It's not just the economy of Bitcoin that we have to consider, but the market surrounding it. If some third-world country (or US) has its currency tank, and people decide to use Bitcoin to secure their savings, because buying gold is not an option, that "speculation" or store of value alone will keep its price up. In that case, Bitcoin can even survive and grow before any economy is actually built to use it as an actual currency (kind of like what it's doing now) |
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