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I generally agree with your definition of unethical, but doubt this is being done much at all, so far. But over time the coins will circulate, and they will all have been used for unethical things.
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Although hurting the environment is bad PR and all that, most people only pretend to care about the environment. There is a "libertarianism and externalities" thread that kinda goes on about this: the consensus here appears to be "we kinda suck at controlling externalities, but so do governments". This is pretty weak. At a minimum, tradable emissions permits are a very capitalist solution, and there is already an international framework (Kyoto accord). Yes, it's not working perfectly and never will... But I have a lot more confidence in long-term diplomatic pressure than planetwide cooperation on a prisoner's dilemma. I'm sure this will attract a witty insult to my intelligence for supporting an already floundering, globally statist solution.  I eagerly await a free market solution that actually works better, if anyone has heard of one that I haven't seen... It should be theoretically possible. |
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is it only me or does the whole system of bitcoin mining favor those that have the ressources to buy alot of hash-power? the harder mining gets, the more miners are being sidelined because their mining efforts are not paying off anymore, leaving only the people that have invested massive amounts for multi-g-hasrates.. isnt that sorta like buildung a monopoly or a classic case of the rich become richer?
The main factor is whether or not "economies of scale" apply. Although I have not seen any hard evidence, I think it is probably a smaller factor, since a single mining rig is cheap in my country and mining pools are common. Plus, small-time miners have more frequent access to free electricity. |
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I don't think it's entirely accurate... Bitcoin is not decoupled from an economy, and the growth of that economy is why Bitcoin increases in value. |
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The poorest 10% of today are richer than the richest 10% from 1965.
Inequality is bunk.
Measured how? |
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Has the Silk Road reopened yet?  |
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See 'The Problem of Social Cost' by Ronald Coase. It's surprisingly readable.
IMHO libertarians rely too much on the Coase theorem. It's only meant to apply to cases where transaction costs are effectively zero, which is rarely the case (Bitcoin excluded ). |
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The site operator could steal several blocks worth of coins and probably get away with it. If the payoffs were very far from the mean for a long time, users would catch on and quit. Fortunately, most pools start small and establish trust first.
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Futarchy. All the egalitarianism of democracy, achieved efficiently through capitalism.
Better idea. Take the politicians out of the loop and just use Capitalism. Perhaps. I don't want to start yet another minarchism vs an-cap debate, but if an-cap does indeed work better, futarchy would transition us there eventually. Imagine a poorly-planned an-cap society that serves as "evidence that capitalism doesn't work". I'm arguing for a means; pure capitalism is one of many possible ends. |
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Futarchy. All the egalitarianism of democracy, achieved efficiently through capitalism.
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He's right, guys. You'll have to all just sell him your BTC for whatever measely price you can get on the way to 0.01 BTC/USD... |
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If possible, a modular design with extensions for optional features. Keep the core simple, so different exchanges/installations stay as compatible as possible.
SSH, Tor, or even Freenet compatibility? I see someone else requested bulletproof anonymity, count me as +1 for that.
Ability to manually set for how long logs are kept, with a different setting for each type of log (fiat/BTC trade, incoming/outgoing transactions from banks/users, user logons, etc). Default to something low, default to automatically publish what these settings are.
All custom settings stored in the same folder for easy backup.
.deb/.rpm/.exe installers for us newbs.
+1 to the server API idea too, it's more secure and easy automated trading is a must.
Ability to cap outgoing packets and bandwidth, to stay under the radar.
If any of this didn't make your eyes bleed, I'm 1BkVFVnCSgQPseMtQ4Yr4h426T6z6ug3Dw
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flat tax is not the issue. how long it takes the government to see that a VAT is their only solution, is.
I've seen this idea before, but I'm not clear why VAT is the exception. What about land value taxes and pollution taxes? Even a VAT could be evaded to some extent, depending on how far up the supply chain Bitcoin goes. Could someone elaborate? |
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I think they would have to avoid a flat tax if they wanted to remain competitive against Bitcoin. The days of taxed transactions (over free-market transaction fees) are numbered.
I am very concerned about neglecting this threat just because of perceived government incompetence. I'm sure many of you will passionately disagree, but I think a government which produced Tor has the capability of waging a very competent war against Bitcoin. We are not invincible and this shit may get very real. The advantages of being able to demand taxes in Fedcoin and demand that people accept it for debts may help a great deal... Maybe enough to overcome the inflation disadvantage.
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I think it's risk aversion. I don't know about you guys, but I'm scared to buy too much more Bitcoin in case the whole thing disappears tomorrow for whatever reason. I tell my friends that they should all buy some Bitcoin but not more than they can stand to lose. As more people buy in, others grow bolder, so they buy in... I doubt it will last too much longer. Eventually there will be arrests, more DDOS attacks, bugs discovered, and Bitcoin will be tested. If it survives, the value might become more predictable.
But I'm no behavioral economist and could be completely wrong. This is not financial advice, please don't act on this post and sue me when the bubble bursts, yada yada...
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The only thing the government is any good at is pointing guns and violence. The answer to bitcoin will be one of those two choices. ninja edit: who can they point guns at? We are legion.  Exactly. That's why offering a tax (guns) credit and link with the fiat (guns) currency is an advantage we will never have. |
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If I was a government and wanted to kill Bitcoin, I would fork it.
* Mining difficulty is fixed at 1, but only blocks signed by the government grant coins.
* Government mining with geographically distributed servers to protect against disasters.
* Grant a tax credit if those taxes are paid with the new coins.
* Peg its value to the existing national currency, and offer a simple API to convert back and fourth for existing banks and credit card companies.
Benefits:
* The same convenience benefits of Bitcoin
* Inertia of the existing currency and infrastructure
* A big trustworthy government telling you "it's gonna be OK".
* Association with a powerful people's government, instead of a cabal of selfish libertarian crazies.
* Ability to raise taxes with inflation
* Ability to shut down evil nodes and revoke their coins
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What moron sent 2 BTC?
And the network lasts another day. That was a close one! |
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Democracy is one person, one vote; all votes equal. I challenge you to find that at a nation-state level.
Does Switzerland count? They allow an elected legislature to handle the day-to-day, but still have the power to vote on whatever they want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Direct_democracy |
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Sure, but if 6 million BTC's or 21 million BTC's are to lent out where are the new BTC's going to come from to pay for the interest. Gold became unsutable for modern finance because of this scarsity, so fiat currency was created. how can an economy grow?
You do not need to have an inflationary currency to have interest-paying loans. This is not the reason gold stopped being the basis of currency. I hear this objection every once in a while, but it doesn't make sense. Let's imagine an island with three people in it, Aaron, Bob, and Charlie, and only 10 credits of money, which will never increase. Aaron lends Bob 5 credits at 5% interest. Bob buys a widget from Charlie. Bob now owes Aaron 5.25 credits. Where does this come from? Bob exchanges his services for it, from either Aaron or Charlie. Perhaps Bob has a job working in Charlie's widget store where he earns the 5.25 credits to repay his loan. Or perhaps he mows Aaron's lawn in exchange for the 5.25 credits he must repay. Or perhaps he sells some of his old DVDs to get the 5.25 credits. The fact that Bob borrowed 5 credits and must repay 5.25 credits does not in any way require that the money supply on the island grow to more than its set 10 credits. Let me get this straight, Aaron has all the credits, he lends Bob and Charlie 5 credits each at 5% interest each. Bob and charlie use the money to have fun and buy stuff from each other but they eventually have to pay these 10 credits back to Aaron, plus interest. Where is .5 of a credit going to come from? Like I said, a loan involving ALL the money, or anything near it, is completely unrealistic. Aaron would have to lend out less than 100% of the total. Then the other guys would have to sell him something to pay for the interest. |
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