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Yesterday I got a Notice of Class Action Settlement in the mail. It described a $6 billion dollar settlement against Visa and Mastercard. Their crime? Forcing users of their payment networks to pay excessive fees in violation of federal antitrust laws. The victims include any merchant who accepted Visa or Mastercard between 2004 and 2012. Details of the settlement are also online here: https://www.paymentcardsettlement.com/enOur primary payment service providers have been actively and illegally ripping us off for years now. Even worse, V & M have used their position as a must-have payment option to force merchants to obey the rules or risk being kicked out of their network. For examples, V & M made merchants sign agreements specifically preventing them from: - Charging customers an extra fee if they pay with V or M
- Offer discounts to customers who use cheaper, alternative forms of payment
- form buying groups to to give merchants more power when negotiating with V & M
Thankfully the federal judge ruling on the case saw the truth and ruled in favor of the people in this case. As you're watching bitcoin's exchange rate rise and fall today, remember the bitcoin is more than just an investment opportunity. It's an engine of financial revolution of a worldwide scale. The largest of the existing payment networks on the planet are actively, knowingly, and illegally screwing people out of their money. Bitcoin is our best hope to stop them in their tracks. Did V & M put guns to the merchants' heads to sign the contracts? Not providing a service has become a use of force now? Go check antitrust laws  I have, and they are complete bunk. |
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Yesterday I got a Notice of Class Action Settlement in the mail. It described a $6 billion dollar settlement against Visa and Mastercard. Their crime? Forcing users of their payment networks to pay excessive fees in violation of federal antitrust laws. The victims include any merchant who accepted Visa or Mastercard between 2004 and 2012. Details of the settlement are also online here: https://www.paymentcardsettlement.com/enOur primary payment service providers have been actively and illegally ripping us off for years now. Even worse, V & M have used their position as a must-have payment option to force merchants to obey the rules or risk being kicked out of their network. For examples, V & M made merchants sign agreements specifically preventing them from: - Charging customers an extra fee if they pay with V or M
- Offer discounts to customers who use cheaper, alternative forms of payment
- form buying groups to to give merchants more power when negotiating with V & M
Thankfully the federal judge ruling on the case saw the truth and ruled in favor of the people in this case. As you're watching bitcoin's exchange rate rise and fall today, remember the bitcoin is more than just an investment opportunity. It's an engine of financial revolution of a worldwide scale. The largest of the existing payment networks on the planet are actively, knowingly, and illegally screwing people out of their money. Bitcoin is our best hope to stop them in their tracks. Did V & M put guns to the merchants' heads to sign the contracts? Not providing a service has become a use of force now? |
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Far from perfect, but works:
You deposit bitcoins into your online wallet hosted on a reputable site, you only keep small amounts here for quick transactions like buying gas.
When you buy your stuff, the intermediary site issues an IOU to the merchant, which will be settled on the same day or something.
You risk only small amounts, merchant risks the last few transactions if the intermediary goes down, not a big deal. It's similar to how
things are today with credit cards, but still faster (for the merchant) and cheaper.
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Bitcoin and all possible applications of it is of much greater value to the world than its dollar value.
Its sad main stream media don't understand it and mostly focus on the speculative part of bitcoin.
Example of applications that noobs at Main-Stream-Media don't know about:
Messaging - using encryption and the bitcoin protocol to easily distribute messages. (BitMessage)
Digital contracts - using bitcoin to create contracts that cannot be double spent, much safer than paper contracts.
Exchange - creating a p2p bitcoin exchange with help of bitcoin itself or a modified bitcoin protocol
Voting - using bitcoin to enable direct democracy with secure voting
and so on... there are lot of applications that I am not aware, and that has nothing to do with the dollar value of bitcoin.
Bitcoin's dollar value may go to 1000$ or 1$ but its real value to humanity is infinite!
Damn, then when the "false value" reaches the "real value" (infinite), nobody will be able to buy a bitcoin, so it will disappear forever! I'm sad now.  |
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i can imagine how the tax office would have a nightmare and actually lose revenue by legitimising bitcoin investments
by taxing it didn't they just legitimize it? Something can be illegal and taxed at the same time, funny but true. |
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Why would I give money to an organization where the majority can vote against me, instead of just donating it to something specific I personally support?
You can donate it to an organization which claims to support your goals and then decides how to spend it without any vote whatsoever. I don't see how that is better. Or you can just donate to very very niche things and dilute your voice. I think there's room in between for a organization that listens to members. The same is true for you, you or the board might do what you claim or not, voting doesn't change anything in this regard. If I want to dilute my voice, then I join an organization like yours where there is a majority vote; if I don't want to do that, I just support those groups that are very close to my goals and have a good reputation. And they don't have to be niche at all. I'm not entirely against majority voting in a voluntary association, but in this case I don't see any benefit to it. Maybe if you come up with specific plans and goals, I might. |
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Why would I give money to an organization where the majority can vote against me, instead of just donating it to something specific I personally support?
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OK, so, force is moral if the suffering inflicted is outweighed by the suffering prevented?
Does that sound acceptable? It's difficult to know how much "suffering prevented is", especially if it lies in the future, so it's a bit problematic. But yes. A lot of people are dying because there isn't enough organ donors. By killing you and distributing your organs, we could save a lot of lives. The math is pretty simple in this case. Would you support this idea? Or are you an exemption to your own rules? |
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Ultimately it's a very simple concept. Either you:
1) Decide what's good for others, and forcefully apply such life on them (violence)
2) Don't (non violence)
I prefer to never pick 1. You're saying "Well, 2 will never work so let's pick 1", or in other words "Well, good will never work so let's pick evil."
Except that statists think that forcing others to do something can be a good thing. And resisting that is bad. They just want to make the world a better place, but you always get in the way. Maybe we should put you in a cage, that would teach you how to behave. |
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It's on my list, though I thought Friedman was an ancap, so no conscription and such. But I'll see what his issues are and we can get back to it. It's interesting that you think you know what my ideal society would look like, and you're sure that there would be a compulsory fire service. Maybe the future will be a little different from what you can imagine. |
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Taxes are needed.
1. I don't go to school, and my kids are not old enough, and will go to private when they are.
Why should I have to pay for schools? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
2. I hardly use the roads, and when I go long distance, I pay a toll to use the road.
Why should I be paying for roads all over the state of Florida? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
3. I don't go to hospitals, why should I pay for others to go? Don't get yourself injured.
I hardly leave my house, why should I pay because some idiot ran into a tree on his motorcycle?
As you can see, I'm selfish, just like most of the population. If I don't use it, why pay for it?
Though, knowing society will fall without everyone else to using my money, I will pay up.
Those are valid questions, though i don't see why society would fall because you're sitting home alone, unmolested. If no one was paying money into things they don't use, society will fall. You are right but brace yourself for frantic whines of people who insist that the time to charge for a fire service is when the fire has already started. You mean nobody would pay for any kind of insurance, unless they're forced to? |
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Taxes are needed.
1. I don't go to school, and my kids are not old enough, and will go to private when they are.
Why should I have to pay for schools? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
2. I hardly use the roads, and when I go long distance, I pay a toll to use the road.
Why should I be paying for roads all over the state of Florida? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
3. I don't go to hospitals, why should I pay for others to go? Don't get yourself injured.
I hardly leave my house, why should I pay because some idiot ran into a tree on his motorcycle?
As you can see, I'm selfish, just like most of the population. If I don't use it, why pay for it?
Though, knowing society will fall without everyone else to using my money, I will pay up.
Those are valid questions, though i don't see why society would fall because you're sitting home alone, unmolested. If no one was paying money into things they don't use, society will fall. Why? |
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Taxes are needed.
1. I don't go to school, and my kids are not old enough, and will go to private when they are.
Why should I have to pay for schools? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
2. I hardly use the roads, and when I go long distance, I pay a toll to use the road.
Why should I be paying for roads all over the state of Florida? If I had the choice I wouldn't.
3. I don't go to hospitals, why should I pay for others to go? Don't get yourself injured.
I hardly leave my house, why should I pay because some idiot ran into a tree on his motorcycle?
As you can see, I'm selfish, just like most of the population. If I don't use it, why pay for it?
Though, knowing society will fall without everyone else to using my money, I will pay up.
Those are valid questions, though i don't see why society would fall because you're sitting home alone, unmolested. |
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I'm thinking a great deal about how we could make the world a better place.
You just want to classify me as unthinking manipulated robot, because you don't care to do so. I think you have a big problem trusting other people (maybe because you were disappointed a lot?).
If you really want to make the world a better place then advocating more coercion and calling others stupid is not the best way to start. |
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Hey Birdy buddy, you sound dumb.
You want a tax, which literally means "let's pool our money together and decide together what to do with it". But you're dumb, about as dumb as a monkey. I don't want to pool my money with a monkey and then negotiate with him what to do with it. What if he wants to eat the money? Or throw it away? Or build bombs?
Screw you, you can take my money from my cold dead hands.
P.S. nothing personal, I don't know you I'm just trying to make a point.
P.S.S. Pro-tip: never assume that new technology has to adapt to old folks like you. Usually new technology presents a new world which is different than the old.
Come on dude, that first P.S. was really unnecessary. |
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We all have different levels of what we are willing to contribute to support a community. Some people would rather live alone on their own without having to deal with taxes. And others would prefer the state of things now. I don't have a problem with either option, but bitcoin should support both. Integrating a tax model will only cater to one of those groups.
We essentially are paying for those that are not willing to contribute, so they rob us of moneyUnless they are erimits. I see that a lot of people here are are very ego-centric and it will be very difficult to agree on something. But there are benefits to gain, if we do. So those who don't wish to be robbed are the real robbers. Orwellian doublespeak at its best. |
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And those who don't agree with your idea of public education, should be put in a cage, right? You have to pay for public education right now. So you want Bitcoin to be a model to flee from this? Public education was an important step for mankind, if you want to go back to the days where 90% of the people didn't had any school. Then yeah... then I think you are stupid. Previous robbery is not a justification for future robbery. I thought that was pretty obvious even for a person with public education. People were less educated in the past because they were poorer, not because private education sucked. States didn't take over because their way was superior, but because education is the key to control the youth and thus the whole population over time. And because they could (by force), of course. Anybody with eyes can see that public education has been a disaster. It's insanely expensive, doesn't give useful skills to the students (for the most part), and it produces unthinking robots (like you) who are easily manipulated. |
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No thanks.
Why? Could you provide some reasoning to this? You will have to pay taxes one way or another, unless you betray. So why not approach an open, fair way to do so? So if I don't want to get robbed by some criminals, that's betrayal? Gosh, some statists are really heavily indoctrinated. But yeah, without our wise overlords, we couldn't possibly figure out how to build roads and schools. There's no way, even if it happened already in the past. I'm not saying that the current people in poltics are doing a great job. But providing a fair taxation model will lessen the abilities for a state and the people in it to rob someone. How would giving them more money lessen their abilities? You think they would just say "Hey thanks, now we can erase these other taxes"? Things don't work that way. Btw the only fair tax rate is zero, in my opinion.  |
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No thanks.
Why? Could you provide some reasoning to this? You will have to pay taxes one way or another, unless you betray. So why not approach an open, fair way to do so? Betray? Taxation is not the downfall of bitcoin, bitcoin is the downfall of taxation. Anarchist, huh? There are things that the community has to pay for together, if you like it or not. E.g. I want a country to have schools, because I don't want to live in a world where everybody is stupid. And those who don't agree with your idea of public education, should be put in a cage, right? |
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