Hawker, what if the most powerful entity in the area (the state) explicitly denies that they own the now vacant land? To whom does the land now belong?

Ok, then you are just disagreeing with the Lockean view of property and you are simply saying that "might makes right". Basically you are acknowledging that the state is constituted by a bunch of very powerful robbers. Did I understand that correctly?

Ah yeah, I should have prefaced that this takes place in AnCapistan or in an area with no government.

But consider, by what legitimacy do you think that the state can claim the land?

I would like to put forth a scenario to be considered by those who advocate strong property rights.

Let's take the Lockean view of property that something becomes property when someone mixes their labor with a natural resource, and after that the owner can use and trade it in whichever way he sees fit.

Now consider a farmer that comes across an unclaimed piece of land. The farmer builds a house on the land, plants crops, digs an irrigation ditch etc. Many years later all of the land around the farmer has been claimed by others, and he comes out with a 20 acre parcel of land (or however much). The farmer now dies in some accidental way. He did not specify any heir that should inherit the land, and he was the only one that worked that piece of land at all. All of the surrounding residents believe that they have as much of a right to his land as everyone else. What is a reasonable way to decide to whom the land belongs?

I'm still curious about this.

Let us say that you have more food than you can eat, and your surplus food will rot if it is not given away. Is it legitimate for you to deny the starving man food in that situation?

Who do you think is in control of Washington? The american people? If so, LOL!

While I too would prefer a protest against the Federal Reserve since that is really the source of corruption, Wall Street is absolutely a good target. These motherf***ers all went bankrupt then got the government to bail them out, stealing from the many to enrich the few. It really epitomizes what is wrong with america.

How are you going to deal with citizenship/borders? I'm sure that plenty of the cities will take a stance against "illegal immigration". If all of the cities have different regulations for consumer goods that will make trade very problematic.

I was thinking about this a while ago too. It seems like there will still be poverty and large disparities in wealth, even if we were to have a fully automated economy that produces everything that we need with very little effort. There will still be an elite who have all of the high tech weaponry/make the laws and are able to have a monopoly on these fully automated industries.

Nevermind, just thought about it some more and you are right.

If this were the case, what would prevent me from "protecting" property that belongs to someone else? How does someone adequately say that some piece of property belongs to them? As I said, it would only exist as an agreement.

Ok, let's say that everyone has some sort of suit that makes it impossible for any other person or group of people to harm them in any way. I agree that it is extremely unlikely to ever be possible, but I am just using it as what could be considered an ideal society for a libertarian.

It seems to me that the libertarian/anarcho-whatever ideology hinges on a couple of key ideas. The most important in my view is that every individual has inherent rights to security, self-determination and property (unless of course that individual violates the rights of others).
I want you to consider a scenario: Imagine that every individual had the means to protect themselves from any physical attack, kidnapping and therefore coercion. This seems, in theory, to be the ideal for a libertarian. No one would be able to harm you and you also could harm no other individual; no violent crime of any nature could occur.

However, consider for a moment what that would mean for property. There would be no physical means to preventing theft, and property would only be able to exist as an agreement (Don't steal any of my shit and I won't steal yours). Would this reduce property to a theoretical idea that would not actually exist in practice?

I got this email from dwolla. My email linked to mtgox was not the same as the one that I had linked to dwolla, so that made me think that it probably wasn't a phishing attempt.
It still looks really suspect though.

I wish that there were some island we could send violent criminals to, like the british used to do with australia. In an ideal society violent crime would be punished with banishment and non-violent crime with reparations imo.

This isn't completely accurate. You only have to accept USD from someone who owes you a debt.

I think you should be clear: using/possessing bitcoin right now is not a legal grey area, it is very clearly legal.

I have a question that might be stupid and might have already been asked before, but I am gonna ask anyways.

Why would you ever want to hold an inflationary currency versus a currency that isn't? If someone has the option between using an inflationary currency or a deflationary one, why would they ever choose the inflationary one? I mean you personally.

OK like this scenario: 40 years in the future the US dollar is still being inflated, while bitcoin is fairly stably deflating (and it is not subject to the large swings that it is having now). Would you want your paycheck in US dollar or in bitcoin?

They are not different at all, very clearly bitcoin is exactly like beanie babies. You are an insightful visionary imo.