You're still looking at the poll wrong.
I voted for: If you, [specific person], kill five blue-eyed people right now, I'll give you 200 bitcoins.
The reason is because I believe THAT is the kind of speech that should be banned.
Everything above it, well, whatever. Some of those other statements are more disturbing than others, and the "you should kill..." statement would make me take some sort of non-violent action, but those statements above my choice shouldn't be crimes for speaking them.
But saying "If you, [specific person], kill five blue-eyed people right now, I'll give you 200 bitcoins" SHOULD be a crime. To say that (IMO, perhaps not legally as far as the definition goes) is attempted murder.
I see. Hmmmm. You, [specific person], should go and kill five blue eyed people right now. - 6 (13.3%)
If you, [specific person], kill five blue-eyed people right now, I'll give you 200 bitcoins. - 18 (40%)
All of the above should be legal. - 15 (33.3%)
So on your reading, 33.3% of the voters are OK with offering to pay someone to kill, and 40% are OK with instructing a specific person to kill. Thanks for clearing that up. OK with, no. Think it's not automatically a crime, correct. The 13.3% choice, as I said, is disturbing, in part because of the trickiness of it. If it's something said by a mafia boss to one of his hitmen, then the implications are much different (i.e., criminal at that point) than if it's something some frustrated racist says to a friend to see what the reaction is (and I don't know where you live, but from my perspective, criminalizing that speech outright in some parts of the US will only lead to a lot of wasted resources, good intentions aside.) If I heard someone say that, I'd immediately try to determine how much of it was a jest. Even as a 4chan-level childish "joke" it warrants a response, but if the person is serious (but has no power to compel or attempt to incentivize [specific person] and no ability to profit) then some more serious non-violent action is warranted. I totally get someone thinking that the statement should warrant a potentially violent response on its own. I just think it's too much of a grey area to ban the speech itself as speech; the repercussions of the banning would be worse than the speech itself would tend to be. |
|
|
|
|
You're still looking at the poll wrong.
I voted for: If you, [specific person], kill five blue-eyed people right now, I'll give you 200 bitcoins.
The reason is because I believe THAT is the kind of speech that should be banned.
Everything above it, well, whatever. Some of those other statements are more disturbing than others, and the "you should kill..." statement would make me take some sort of non-violent action, but those statements above my choice shouldn't be crimes for speaking them.
But saying "If you, [specific person], kill five blue-eyed people right now, I'll give you 200 bitcoins" SHOULD be a crime. To say that (IMO, perhaps not legally as far as the definition goes) is attempted murder.
|
|
|
|
I think all presidential candidates should be required to take 3 normed IQ tests and have their average score publicly released.
While I don't think IQ truly reflects 'intelligence,' it's still a good indicator of how many variables -- and interrelationships among these variables -- a person can hold in their mind.
We need people who can truly parch a situation in office. Implementing nice sounding policies and laws does no good if you aren't sure how those policies and laws will affect everything else. It's like a gigantic rubix cube on steroids.
I think this would be a bad way to go about it. Putting intelligence above morality is, IMHO, only going to have disastrous results. You'd actually choose candidate A, who is morally weak but brilliant, over candidate B, who is merely of average intelligence but has rock-solid, no-compromise good morals (that you agree with?) Then don't be too surprised when new, brilliantly creative forms of corruption are used to continue stealing public funds, oppressing political dissidents, and generally contributing to the breakdown of the system. |
|
|
|
I have an bad feeling that we will see a very bad drop this time around.
As someone who stocks up on bitcoins for the long-term, I certainly hope so.  These numbers are just to show an example of why bitcoins even at $2.00 is way over valued. Bitcoin has still proven to be as useless as ever, even with time. Your opinion is noted, although I again wonder why you're wasting time here if it's truly useless. Just go and do something more fruitful. You'll be more profitable, and you'll avoid all the hassle and grey hairs. I am sorry to say guys that if you hold bitcoins now, expect to lose lots of your value. Expect bitcoin price to head into the $1's. Thanks for the advice, but I intend to keep holding my savings for now. And for next month, and next year. And for quite some time after that, actually.  |
|
|
|
It would be interesting if your forum posts had demurrage  I just imagined LoupGaroux's eloquent essays slowly degenerating into psy's crude attempts to smash his fists on the keyboard. lol. Something like that. No I meant your status on the boards would degrade if you didnt keep posting. A hero member would eventualy go back to newbie status if they stopped posting for awhile. Hence, creating post inflation. |
|
|
|
This looks great, guys! Again, with the option for direct deposit to a bank account, there's little reason for a driver with the smartphone tech to NOT accept bitcoins now (he can always charge a premium if he wants.) |
|
|
|
|
I get what you're saying, but anyone can make a collectible product and put bitcoin imagery on it; not much we can do about it. There is a market for this, so confusion isn't the goal. They'll likely only be seen/bought by metals enthusiasts who know what bitcoins are anyway, so I don't think it's that big a concern.
Personally, I probably wouldn't show them off to anyone who didn't already know about bitcoins, or at the very least I'd explain how they just used the bitcoin imagery, that it wasn't the actual currency.
EDITED for grammar
|
|
|
|
Advertisers beware... This site is pretty much a scam for you. The site makes you pay for ad's but the people who come to this site just click your ad's in hopes that they will win more BTC from the faucet then normal. The conversion rate of these clicks to sales is pretty much 0% as the people who frequent this site are looking for free Bitcoins, not to spend bitcoins.
James @ BitVPS
I gotta say, I still visit the site occasionally; more so for the ads than for the bitcents given. I keep hoping to catch some neat new bitcoin product/service that I hadn't heard of. |
|
|
|
Saw the title, and thought I'd be able to buy bitcoins by dropping cash off at an office. Dang.  Still, seems like a useful service; good luck. lol, i should change that if it's misleading. Dropping cash at an WU or MoneyGram office to buy bitcoins would be good ? It would be awesome. Forget having to go to Bank of America to use BitInstant through CryptoXChange to deposit into an exchange, make bids and finally withdraw some bitcoins. Being able to drop cash, get coins would bring Bitcoin to the masses. I'd go so far as to predict: the first person to allow average people to drop $10 cash within a 30-min. drive and get bitcoins within the hour for a reasonable % fee (I'd do it for 10%-25%, myself) across most of the U.S. is going to get rich. |
|
|
|
Saw the title, and thought I'd be able to buy bitcoins by dropping cash off at an office. Dang. Still, seems like a useful service; good luck. |
|
|
|
Good stuff! Currently $387.95 for a "bag" of 250 (@$1.55) or $37 for a tube of 20 (@$1.85). Discounts for buying multiple bags or tubes. Not bad. So, who wants to resell some for bitcoins? |
|
|
|
Did you calculate the increase in difficulty that happened twice in the past 3 weeks?
And that p2pool has found 3 blocks in 4 hours? Make that 4 blocks. Bam! 5. 6. Are we having fun yet? Geez, what did you miners do, triple your hashrate overnight or something?! (Yes, I know, randomness, etc., etc., it's still kinda funny though.) |
|
|
|
Most great inventors don't give a damn about money. They tend to be easily exploited by Capitalist hippies that sit around the pool collecting dividends. The real hard work of Capitalism is the lawyers that sue startups over patent infringement.
Sure, some innovation is done by greedy inventors, but original ideas tend to come from people not interested in money itself.
For the sake of argument I will say your right (although I disagree). Without capital most ideas go nowhere. How does one acquire capital ... by working harder (or having a ancestor who worked harder). Yes even people who acquire wealth through fraudulent or dubious means had to work at it. A system where acquisition of wealth is impossible because everyone's share of the pie is equal means no rich greedy investors to "exploit" inventors by bring products to market. Even when inventor is "exploited" by Capitalists the system is made stronger. Quality of life for the aggregate population improves due to access to new and improved products & services. Democracies aggregate capital through taxation and choose progressive commons based on the best information available to improve the (theoretical) quality of life for the many. I'll defer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs to point out the usefulness of a baseline of equality. Besides, the system is broken and there are few ethical occupations where one can aggregate any personal wealth anymore. It follows then that individuals that do manage to acquire capital are not ethical and should not be trusted to make decisions for the many.That seems like a pretty disturbing collective view. Even if it were true that most modern "rich people" (however you choose to define that) become wealthy through unethical means, it doesn't mean they all did. What about the guy who invented something great and had people throw money at him for it? What about someone who inherited wealth that was generated 150 years ago by some ancestor he barely knows about? What about me, should the value of my bitcoin holdings skyrocket? To try to lump the innocent in with the guilty isn't going to achieve anything good. That said, I still agree, in that NO ONE should be trusted to make decisions "for the many." Everyone should make their own decisions, and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences accordingly. |
|
|
|
But real quick: “Preferences” are required for life, thought, language and debating.
That is false. In order to live it's not merely preferred to breathe, drink, eat ect, it is required. Same goes for anything else. As soon as you have an subjective goal(staying alive), you also have objective requirements(breathing, drinking, ect). Without a goal you merely have a subjective preference. Subjective preferences != objective requirements. Debating requires that both parties hold “truth” to be both objective and universally preferable.
According to who? You? Unless your subjective goal is to be objectively correct than your statements about what constitutes to a debate is merely your own subjective definition. Thus the very act of debating contains an acceptance of universally preferable behaviour (UPB).
Nope, I could be debating with you with an alternate goal in mind(trolling) and a 3rd party observer could still reasonably conclude we are having an debate. Btw look at politicians on TV having a debate, does your definition apply to them? No. But they still call it a debate. Theories regarding UPB must pass the tests of logical consistency and empirical verification.
The subset of UPB that examines enforceable behaviour is called “morality.”
As a subset of UPB, no moral theory can be considered true if it is illogical or unsupported by empirical evidence.
Moral theories that are supported by logic and evidence are true. All other moral theories are false.
Therefor UPB is invalid. And there you go. It's all just Stef's opinion, nothing less, nothing more, unfortunately. Nice. I think I'll keep a copy if this post handy for next time I come across Stef's writings (I always suspected serious logic flaws, but never cared enough to dig into his material and find it.) As to the OP, I don't think the intent was to spread FUD. That said, her perspective, IMO, still wound up causing it to happen to some degree. |
|
|
|
Tip sent. |
|
|
|
<snip> Yes. The US system, before the involvement of government in health care, accounting for technological differences between the times. The UK's own system back then would probably work too, but I know less about it.
Thought experiment: take the current UK system. Keep it basically the same. Slash everyone's taxes in proportion to how much goes toward national health care. Charge people for services up to that amount. Let people pay any extra they wish, or keep any unspent portion. Finally, take the money, manpower and time spent propping up the system from the political and bureaucratic angles (including the proper portion spent on tax enforcement) and refund all that as well. Of course, it's a given that charity should be encouraged, and allowed without restriction.
Do you not see any advantages to that adjustment in terms of health services per £, in the short-term also but especially in the long-term?
The problem is that medicine costs the same in the UK and the US. It all comes from the same companies. But delivery of medicine is far more expensive in the US because you have to pay for insurance advertising, drug advertising and because very often Americans are gouged by the system "Pay this stupid bill or you die screaming in pain." If it helps, thats how it used to work here. The NHS was introduced because WW2 destroyed the economy and there was not enough money for the marketing side of the health industry. Given that it works, I can't see how you can make a case for transferring the delivery staff from the state payroll to a company payroll - all you have done is create an entity that will demand a return on capital and this raised your running costs.The UK has private hospitals and charities - thats sort of a side issue. That's kind of what I'm pointing out. You correctly assess that there will be a profit motive once health care is privatized, but you're not assessing the extra costs of having something public as opposed to private. Perhaps an example might work better for me: 1) Tinytown has a tiny population. Health care costs are, let's say, "average." One day there's a town meeting, and the mayor brings Joe to the podium. Joe has no clue what's going on. The mayor suddenly announces that Joe, being poor, and struggling to pay each health care bill he incurs, is now going to be guaranteed health care by the town. He states that everyone, including Joe, will pay a small tax for the service, which will be available to all. A big grin crosses Joe's face. Now, considering the months and years after this, do you think there is any reason to suspect that the actual costs of Joe's health care might wind up being dramatically greater than average, even if the cost of each individual service remains average? 2) Do you think that the long-term cost of each individual health care service in Tinytown might be impacted by this announcement? |
|
|
|
...snip...
I would absolutely want and expect the state to opt out. In many cases, it opts out of providing services it is "supposed to" anyway, while still forcing folks to pay.
There is nothing the state does that cannot be done more efficiently and more morally by NOT initiating force against innocents.
Lets stick to facts shall we. The NHS in the UK provides health care nationally and efficeintly to all. Its free at the point of delivery. Its run by the state. Can you point to a private system that is more efficient? Yes. The US system, before the involvement of government in health care, accounting for technological differences between the times. The UK's own system back then would probably work too, but I know less about it. Thought experiment: take the current UK system. Keep it basically the same. Slash everyone's taxes in proportion to how much goes toward national health care. Charge people for services up to that amount. Let people pay any extra they wish, or keep any unspent portion. Finally, take the money, manpower and time spent propping up the system from the political and bureaucratic angles (including the proper portion spent on tax enforcement) and refund all that as well. Of course, it's a given that charity should be encouraged, and allowed without restriction. Do you not see any advantages to that adjustment in terms of health services per £, in the short-term also but especially in the long-term? |
|
|
|
What I love about the Politics forum (and, indeed, any politics subforum in general) is that people rage at things like this, but nobody ever proposes a politically feasible solution.
Opt out. If you truly don't believe in the system you are a part of, stop paying for it. +1 And note that this opting out doesn't have to be a total thing, or all at once, or even illegal. Find your greatest point of disagreement with the system, and figure out a way to reduce or eliminate your monetary and/or social contributions to it, in proportion to your priorities; the legality of the chosen method is up to you. In due time, continue for each next-greater point of disagreement until you reach a balance between your conscience, your safety, your desired standard of living, etc. Simply doing this would be enough for most people. "Opt out" is a 1 way street. You can stand outside the hospital with a placard saying you opt out. But if your woman is inside with your sick baby, the taxpayer doesn't opt out. So all that has happened is that you have freeloaded. How can that be a good thing? Who said anything about freeloading? If you get a woman pregnant, I would hope you and her have the ability to pay for medical care and raise the child, otherwise you are simply irresponsible. To opt out is to vote with something more powerful than your voice. The point is, if your child is sick, the state still picks up the tab. You can choose to pay privately if you want but if you can't the state does not have the option to "opt out" nor would you want it to. I would absolutely want and expect the state to opt out. In many cases, it opts out of providing services it is "supposed to" anyway, while still forcing folks to pay. There is nothing the state does that cannot be done more efficiently and more morally by NOT initiating force against innocents. |
|
|
|
What I love about the Politics forum (and, indeed, any politics subforum in general) is that people rage at things like this, but nobody ever proposes a politically feasible solution.
Opt out. If you truly don't believe in the system you are a part of, stop paying for it. +1 And note that this opting out doesn't have to be a total thing, or all at once, or even illegal. Find your greatest point of disagreement with the system, and figure out a way to reduce or eliminate your monetary and/or social contributions to it, in proportion to your priorities; the legality of the chosen method is up to you. In due time, continue for each next-greater point of disagreement until you reach a balance between your conscience, your safety, your desired standard of living, etc. Simply doing this would be enough for most people. |
|
|
|
That will never pass (especially in a socialistic country I live in).
I stated what I would like to see happen, not what I am going to make happen. In reality I will do nothing and pay my taxes as a good law abiding citizen. I just do not agree with the law that I do follow.
Yet the only thing that truly matters is reality, not the ideal world in your mind. This isn't entirely true. Ignoring reality as if it isn't real is clearly bad, but our perceptions of how things ought to be is how the world changes, whether small ("Maybe I shouldn't drop this litter here, even if everyone else is going to") or large ("Hey, wouldn't it be cool if a *machine* could copy books?") Spread your ideal to others, and the changes become significant. Given enough time, societal acceptance, and enthusiasm, our perceptions and imaginations become reality (within physical limits, of course.) That said, I agree with you--I think the idea of modern Western societies shunning taxes and government control is an ideal that's not going to be embraced anytime soon. Not that it means we should cheerfully accept and advocate for such things.... |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
