The Nobel Prize for Economics is not granted by the Nobel Prize Committee.  It's not really even related to the Nobel Prize.  It's given out by the Central Bank Board in honor of the Nobel Prize.  Basicly, if your economic theories are favorable to the central banks of the world, you're in the running.  Otherwise, you will never win.

Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (who was a recipient of the prize himself) and former Swedish minister of finance Kjell-Olof Feldt have also advocated that the Prize in Economics should be abolished. Myrdal's position of wanting the prize abolished was based in the fact that it had been given to such "reactionaries" as Friedrich Hayek (whom Myrdal shared the 1974 Prize in Economics with) and afterwards to Milton Friedman in 1976.

Inflation is actually low if one considers M3 (known monetary base + credit issued, etc) as opposed to simply M1 (monetary base).  The reason here would be because of the large amount of debt that was destroyed due to the real estate crash.  Even with the doubling of M1 since 2007, the paper value destroyed by the forclosures and general drop in home values exceeds the rise in M1.

Using price increases as your measurement for inflation, whether you include food and energy or not, is a fundamentally flawed method.

LOL!  What nonsense!  There has been numerous articles from real economists pointing out Krugman's poor prediction record!  One I've seen actually demonstrated how Krugman is only slightly better than throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded.  If you want to see an economist with a real track record for accuracy, try Mish (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/)  Peter Schiff (http://www.europac.net/) or Rich Maybury (http://chaostan.com/).  All of these guys actually make money, real fortunes, based upon their predictions.  Krugman makes money selling advice to readers of the NYT.  He's the economic version of "ask Nancy".

If you are taking your advice from someone who doesn't make a living from his own advice, you are an idiot.

So Big-Up-Yo-Self to jed and to all who wish to fundamentally improve on the wastefulness of the Bitcoin system!

I think you are going to annoy people and maybe get yourself banned if you keep this up.

I would argue that it will be even more consolidated. There will just be a few large mining operations and some big pools. This makes the issue of trust even worse.

BitterTea: It also doesn't mater how energy efficient the card is. They will just use more cards to mine then.

Everyone is a criminal. There are 10k+ laws and you don't know them and can't follow them. Criminal has been synonymous with person for a long while now.

Unless you mean something else by crinials. I don't know what it could be, but I also don't know how you can misspell a word you put in all caps.

This is a very, very good thing. Markets want to be free.

if mr rebutter had been elected or appointed to some position with the power to purchase vehicles on behalf of the residents of that area, then his argument would make some sense. 

as it is, his argument is a complete non sequitur as there was no act granting him the powers he's assuming himself to have.

see the funny thing is I agree with all of you
...
I am done arguing, I love you all.

Bitter Tea: Thanks for writing the script, but something seems backwards, when I put 15mhash it says profitable, when I put 1500Mhash its says not profitable.

if(magicNumber > baseline) alert('Mining is profitable!'); ...

You should read about him.  I'm sure he could come up with a way where the opposite was true.

The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)

Alright, so I'm a relative noob to the BTC world, but I keep seeing these doom and gloom predictions that mining will become unprofitable and I don't get it.  Yes, the network will increase in difficulty and yes, your rig may not be making as many bitcoins as it once used to, but considering bitcoins will become scarcer, their value should go up and keep it profitable.

I could be completely off base, but you can see the same thing happening in the real world.  Oil, gold, etc., as it get's harder to 'mine' something and you need ever more expensive equipment to do it, the item will be worth more when you do get it.

I know this is an overly simplistic view of things, but at some point, you will need to buy more expensive equipment to mine bitcoins.  I'm sure there's a lot of folks that used to CPU mine that had to move to GPU's, and at some point GPU's will be surpassed by the next big jump in mining power, but theoretically, the coins should be worth more, so it should be a wash.

Even assuming that miners behave in a purely rational profit-seeking way, this statement is only true in a weak sense. What you should write is, "Mining will always be profitable, given that you possess hardware near the current top of the line in terms of mining efficiency." It's certainly not obvious that mining with a GPU will always be profitable, and even less obvious that buying a GPU to mine will always be profitable.

If you're trying to imply that current hobbyist miners have nothing to worry about, you're off the mark.