So, let's imagine that there are no governments and that the rich and powerful have vast private armies. Let's also imagine that, as would be likely, there are a bunch of other private armies and though they are each far smaller, altogether the number of soldiers is greater than that in the private armies of the rich and powerful.

Now, let's simplify things a bit. Let's say that there is one big army of 1,000 soldiers owned by the rich and powerful and there are 500 small armies each with 100 soldiers owned by everyone else. If the big army were to attack any of the small armies one-on-one, they would win. So, it seems like whoever controls the big army, controls everything. But wait, what if the big army started attacking each of the small armies one after another to grab for that power? Would each of the small armies line up like dominoes waiting for their turn to be knocked down? I don't think so.

It's more likely that, even though the small armies are controlled by many different people, since they have a common enemy, they would unite long enough to take out the big army. It looks like it's not merely the biggest gun that wins. A bunch of smaller guns can win by working together and they have a motivation to do so, out of their own selfish sense of self-preservation. It's naive to think that you can just knock down army after army without being perceived as a threat to the others and taken out by a briefly united group of small armies.

It's simple. Find me all the raw materials and send them to me. I'll solder the cables together, make them look nice and pretty and send them back to you USPS.

There are two ways we can interact with other people, civilized or uncivilized. The civilized way to interact with other people is to interact voluntarily, meaning, you don't initiate violence against other people or their property. The uncivilized way, the barbaric way, is to interact involuntarily, meaning, you initiate violence against other people or their property, for any reason. If you support statist governments then you support barbarism. You're uncivilized.

Taxation is involuntary. Being a citizen is involuntary because we can't secede. We can't part ways with the government and keep our property. That's a form of slavery, extortion or theft depending on circumstances but it's always at least one of those. We need to leave our barbaric past behind us and fully embrace civilization. Stop advocating initiatory violence and stop supporting institutions that commit initiatory violence. Join civilization.

I saw a homeless guy standing on the corner today on my way home. I had to leave again to run some errands so when I saw him the second time I gave him $25 cash and 5 BTC along with a flyer explaining what Bitcoin is. This is what the BTC look like that I gave him.



I told him they are worth $15 each but he has to find someone to buy them and he said he would. So if you see a homeless guy selling these in Huntsville, AL then he's probably legit.

This might also be a good way to help spread the word about Bitcoin, getting homeless people to sell BTC.

I recently launched the client on my school's network and I got a bunch of syn flood attack warnings.

I'm offering to pay 0.10 BTC each to 50 people that will make their signatures match mine for 3 months (it must be the only code in your signature, exact same font family, style, size, etc). I'll check your signature periodically until a week from now (6/19/2011 if you do this today) and then pay you. After that, you will be bound by your word to keep it there for the remaining 11 weeks. This offer is only open to people that have registered their forum account before today and have 50 or more posts before today. I will check this so please don't start making new accounts or start posting like mad to bump up your post count. There is no agreement between us until I post your name below in this list. I reserve the right to refuse anyone that I perceive won't honor the agreement or will make a bad impression on my business.

Here is the code for your signature:

Code:

[b]Anonymous Cash-By-Mail Exchange: https://www.bitcoin2cash.com[/b]

There are 38 spots left.

The list of people that are committed are:

• gamekingx (paid)
• Insti (paid)
• GeorgeH (paid)
• Babylon (paid)
• Vinnie (paid)
• The Script (paid)
• darkpandora (paid)
• chmod755 (paid)
• sanchaz (paid)
• killer2021 (paid)
• ptmhd (paid)
• Aqualung (paid)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pissing+kool-aid

This is how I describe statists.

The American Civil War was fought primarily for two reasons, neither of them being the abolishment of slavery. On the southern side, the war was fought for political independence in order to continue and expand slavery. On the northern side, the war was fought to preserve the union and its power, as well as to preserve the political career of Abraham Lincoln.

The expansion of slavery was greatly contested during the Antebellum Era. The issue was hoped to be settled with the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which allowed slavery from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, south of the 36°30' parallel and in Missouri. However, the compromise ultimately failed in 1857 when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional. In the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford it was found that the federal government didn’t have the power to abolish slavery in the new territories (Manning, 2007).

Another major crisis occurred in 1832 due to South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification. Prior to that, Congress had passed a protectionist tariff in 1828 which aimed to help the industries in the north. However, the effects of the tariff harmed the southern states by forcing them to pay higher prices for imports to the region, as well reducing the amount of British imports. The reduction in British imports also reduced the amount of southern goods, mainly cotton, that were able to be purchased in return. This combination of higher costs and reduced income prompted South Carolina to declare that the laws were null and void within the state (Henretta & Brody, 2010). This crisis highlighted the antagonism between the sovereignty of the states and the authority of the federal government, as well as the feeling of sectionalism that was starting to grow among the southern states.

Eventually, sectional differences between the northern and southern states proved to be intractable. Each state’s motivation for secession was its own well-being. This well-being was, at the time, perceived to be inextricably tied to slavery. If slavery died, it was thought, so too would the economies of the southern states and, according to pamphlets published during 1860-1861, their very way of life. James De Bow wrote, “Without the institution of slavery, the great staple products of the South would cease to be grown, and the immense annual results, which are distributed among every class of the community, and which give life to every branch of industry, would cease.” (Wakelyn, 1996)

The introduction of new states into the Union further complicated the issue. Since many new states were going to be slavery-free states, the southern states felt their political power would be continuously diminished. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States of America was the turning point for many states. They believed that Lincoln would follow through with the platform on which he was elected, which among other things, was to prevent the expansion of slavery into any new states as well as support new protectionist tariffs.

However, even though slavery was a major issue, the American Civil War was not a war fought to abolish it. The Emancipation Proclamation did not take effect immediately since the president didn’t have any such authority, and it only applied to the southern states that were "in rebellion". Lincoln used the Emancipation Proclamation as a military strategy, not for humanitarian purposes. Lincoln was not interested in ending slavery in the southern states and admitted as much when he wrote in a public letter to the editor of the New York Tribune, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it…” (DiLorenzo, 2002)

Instead of the abolition of slavery, the American Civil War was a war for independence for the southern states due to feelings of sectionalism. The difference in political goals between the colonies and Great Britain was drawn as a direct parallel to the difference in political goals between the southern states and the rest of the country. Many southerners argued that just as independence was declared from Great Britain so too could and should independence be declared from the Union. The right of secession was argued to be a foundational right upon which the Union was originally built.

According to editorials written in northern papers there was agreement that violent coercion was not a legitimate way in which to respond to the southern states. The editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, wrote, "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of Colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons [sic] from the Federal Union in 1861." Greeley also wrote, "If the Cotton States can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be revolutionary, but it exists, nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have the right to do what another party has a right to prevent... We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets." (Greeley, 1860)

Yet, rather than a peaceful secession, the Battle of Fort Sumter was used by Lincoln as an excuse to go to war. Knowing that James Buchanan had made an informal agreement with South Carolina under which Fort Sumter would not be attacked if no attempts were made to reinforce it or resupply it, Lincoln purposely violated that agreement in order to provoke an attack (McQueen, 1861). There could have been no reason for the federal government to maintain control of a fort used to collect taxes in an independent south other than provocation. After South Carolina fired upon the Star of the West for violating this agreement, the American Civil War had officially begun (Manning, 2007).

In summary, the American Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. The southern states argued that they possessed the right of secession. The war itself could have been avoided had Lincoln not been determined to preserve the Union at all costs. Even considering the issue of slavery, the war was unnecessary since, in Europe, slavery had already been peacefully abolished. It’s likely that the same trend would have eventually followed in the southern states as, more and more, slavery came to be seen as immoral and advances in technology made slavery less economically important.
 
Bibliography
DiLorenzo, T. J. (2002). The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Roseville: Prima Publishing.
Greeley, H. (1860, 9 9). New York Tribune.
Henretta, J. A., & Brody, D. (2010). America: A Concise History, Volume 1: To 1877. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's.
Manning, C. (2007). What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
McQueen, J. (1861, 1 14). Richmond Daily Dispatch.
Wakelyn, J. L. (1996). Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-April 1861. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

You jelly?

As I read through the forums, I am dismayed at all of the hostility that exists between members. Why do so many people feel the need to speculate about the mental states of others? Does it really add anything to say "No serious X would do Y." or "That is just silly." or "Your argument is idiotic."? I don't think it does. As a typically impartial reader, I am forced to skim over these kinds of comments because I'm looking only for the meat of the issue, to see who puts forth the best argument based on logic and evidence. I really don't care if X thinks Y is a moron. Also, the fact that X is insulting Y doesn't change the truth of X's position, assuming X is right, or vice versa. However, it does make the entire experience less enjoyable for me.

Many people avoid ad hominems but have no problems with outright insults. I think we should avoid both. One is a logical fallacy and the other is just noise. If you need to vent, punch a pillow, scream at a wall, go play a first-person shooter or find some other outlet where hostility is welcomed. If you care about this community then please do us all a favor by sticking to the issues and leaving the other person out of it. Even if someone is making an obvious mistake or is clearly wrong, there's no reason to be nasty about it. Their being wrong isn't a personal attack on you so don't return the favor.

*title shamelessly stolen from Norman Swartz

Does anarchy mean that you can rape or kill whoever you like and get away with it? No, there will still be justice under anarchy. However, since it will not be supported by tax dollars, it will need to be paid for somehow. Who picks up the bill for justice? That's simple. It will be paid for by those receiving protection and also those that necessitate spending money in the first place i.e. the criminals. If you steal something, you will have to pay restitution, returning or replacing the item you stole, paying the costs of enforcing justice on you and also paying a fine to make it so that the incentive for stealing and risk of not getting caught vs. the risk of cost plus the fine, make it unprofitable, on average, to steal.

That's fine so far but it sounds like the rich will get more justice than the poor under such a system. It's a good thing nothing like that happens under our current system! (sarcasm) However, let's say that Bill Gates kills you and then writes a check to your family. Murder is just something else that rich people can buy now, right? Not quite. There's nothing stopping your family from killing Bill Gates and then handing the check back to his family. By killing people and paying for it, you are giving others the financial means to do the same to you!

Alright, what about the homeless? Many of them don't have families to pay so it seems like murder is free in that case. If you kill someone, there's still a claim against you and it becomes a sort of abandoned property. Anyone willing to enforce justice on you will be able to receive the payment that the family of the homeless person would have received. Also, if it's clear that you do this kind of thing for fun, there's a case to be made for locking you up so that you won't do it again. Self-defense is justified and imprisoning you would be a form of ongoing self-defense. You don't let up an attacker while he's still armed. The same goes for rich psychopaths.

Some might say "But, but, how can we put a price on human life?! I would never do that." Well, it would seem that millions of dollars is better than nothing. Anyways, there are already wrongful death suits. This would just be an extension of that. For the very dangerous, there will be prisons and many people would pay to keep them off the streets.

Is it perfect? No. No system is perfect. It's better than the current system, where we inflict evil on each other in the hopes of stopping other evil. Even though there will be problems, we can take comfort in knowing that we are living in a more just society.

I was recently talking to someone that works for a state Medicaid office and this is what I learned:

The way Medicaid works is that you get more money for having low birth weight children and because of that, a lot of women are intentionally smoking during pregnancy to cash in on the system even more so. Also, if you have a special needs child, the government gives you lifetime assistance, not just until the child grows up. So, instead of aborting children that would lead a life of suffering or place too large of a burden on the parents, these people are thinking "cha-ching!" whenever they find out their children could be at risk. We are encouraging deformities.

If these parents on welfare were forced to be responsible for their choices, they would think twice about giving birth to a child that's going to be codependent for the rest of his or her life. Instead, they are intentionally putting themselves at risk because not only is it not their burden, they actually benefit from it. There are other scams as well. Instead of getting married, these parasites just cohabitate so the money they receive isn't diminished by income from the spouse.

Also, instead of giving parents of special needs children 24/7 assistance, if you don't work and don't go to school, you only get 8 hours a day of assistance, enough to sleep and that's it. So time and time again these parents are complaining that "I got other kids to take care of too" and in most cases these children were born after the special needs child. That means that these people are counting on the government to take care of their children instead of thinking "Hey, this special needs child is going to take a lot of work, we better not have anymore". When the parasites realize that they can actually get more from working or going to school it's like an alien concept to them and they get what one observer calls a "deer in the headlights" look.

I really like the idea behind the service, enabling merchants to accept Bitcoin payments easily. However, it turns out that it's not all that easy. The documentation is nonexistent and support responses are slow. I understand why. It's free and you usually get what you pay for. With that in mind, I'd like to buy the website and code from the owner. My intention is to keep all the features as they are and also improve upon them, hire a dedicated support team, etc. To pay for this I would eventually start charging a tiny transaction fee for merchants while keeping the rest of the ewallet stuff free. I'd love to negotiate a deal. Please get in touch with me at sales@bitcoin2cash.com if you're interested. Thanks!

I've got the auto-forwarding feature setup and it shows my two incoming test payments and then two outgoing payments but nothing shows up in blockexplorer or my client. Is there some kind of built-in delay?

You folks are big on sexual freedom, be it homosexuals, deviants or whatever. I hear the phrase "between two consenting adults" all the time. My question is, why do you people disable your logic circuits as soon as these two consenting adults leave the bedroom? If two consenting adults agree that one will work for the other for less than minimum wage, what business is it of yours? Why is it only sexual acts that get this special treatment?

I can already hear the word "exploitation" ringing in my ears but who are you to decide what counts as exploitation? If someone desperately wants to work for $3 an hour then obviously they prefer that situation over the alternative, doing nothing and getting nothing (or getting an equivalent $3 an hour welfare check). Why are you willing to override personal freedom when it comes to work but not sex? Someone please make sense of this for me because all I see is hypocrisy right now.

I'm an anarchist, voluntaryist, agorist, whatever term is fashionable these days. I think personal liberty should apply to all spheres of interaction, bedroom, workplace, front lawn, whatever. If you want to run around nude or work for next to nothing then I think you should be free to do so, even though I wouldn't do either of those things personally.

Does anyone know how to install/boot Windows 7 without needing a local disk? I know it supports iSCSI but I've never done it before. I'm sure this would be useful to other people starting up a mining farm too.

Is there any service that exists that does what PayPal does right i.e. provides a payment API, transaction notifications, cart integration, "buy now" buttons and also keeps the BTC pegged to USD/SEK/whatever at current market prices?

I've searched around but I've had no luck.

To understand why you are wrong, you need to understand the genesis behind the idea of Bitcoin.
 
Interestingly enough, it started with the goal of stopping bulk spam. The reason why there aren't dump trucks backing up to your mailbox each morning to unload massive amounts of spam is because there is a larger cost associated with sending postal mail versus email. There's the cost of the ink, paper, envelope and stamp. This means that any spam that can't recoup those costs simply doesn't get sent. Contrast that with email which is orders of magnitudes cheaper, the price being whatever it costs to send a few bytes over an Internet connection.
 
So, the idea was to attach a higher cost to emails in much the same way that postal mail has a higher cost. There are several schemes. One of these is run by a company called "GoodMail". They convinced a bunch of email providers to give certain emails a special icon in your inbox. These icons only display if you pay an extra fee to send the email. This prevents spammers from having such a huge economic incentive for sending spam, if they want the special icon. The service still exists but it really hasn't caught on.
 
However, a precursor to this idea was called "HashCash". Instead of charging money outright, it is based on a proof-of-work system. Under this system, you run a program and it starts generating tokens by using CPU resources. You attach a token to each email you send and the recipient can verify your token for relatively no cost. This makes it easy for the typical user to send and receive emails while making bulk spam prohibitively expensive.
 
After this system was proposed, someone came to the natural conclusion that there would be individuals that wouldn’t want to run the program but instead would rather buy the tokens outright. This gave rise to the idea of an entire market based on buying and selling tokens. Fast forward over a decade later and the creator of Bitcoin says, “Hey, who cares about email? Let’s use this stuff for money!” The rest is history.
 
So, what's my point? My point is that Bitcoin is a proof-of-work system which has value as a good because people, even if not used as money, would still want to use Bitcoins to prevent bulk spam. I imagine that if/when Bitcoin becomes widespread, we will see an actual implementation of this where sending an email costs a tiny fraction of a BTC.
 
I really hope this will put to rest the myth that Bitcoin has no possible use aside from being a medium of exchange.

Intellectual property laws are incompatible with Libertarian philosophy. If you're not a Libertarian, the first part of this argument will do little to persuade you since you must first accept the two foundational beliefs of Libertarianism, the non-aggression principle and the legitimate assignment of property rights. Just a reminder of what these two beliefs entail:

1. The non-aggression principle is the position that violence cannot be used against property you don't own unless in self-defense of your own property.

2. The legitimate assignment of property rights is the position that everyone owns themselves, unowned property that they homestead and any property that is obtained through voluntary title transfers, valid contracts, gifts, gambling, etc.

Holding these two principles, it logically follows that intellectual property is illegitimate. If I own ink and paper, I get to do whatever I want with it as long as it doesn't violate your property rights or the non-aggression principle. That includes copying a novel you wrote, word for word and selling it, either with proper attribution or with no attribution at all. False attribution would be an act of fraud which invalidates a contract but that is a wrong committed towards the buyer, not the original author.

Some people might object that using my ink and paper to copy a novel is theft of your novel and therefore does violate someone's property rights. This mistaken assumption that one can own ideas stems from the belief that a person necessarily owns the product of his or her labor. That is false. If I own some wood and you steal it to make a chair, you don't own the chair. I own the chair and you owe me for damages to my wood. The only way labor brings about ownership is when mixing labor with unowned resources, land, things found in nature, etc. You can pen a novel, but you must already own the ink and paper. A cake pan can only be used by one person at a time. A cake recipe can be used by many people at the same time. Ideas, such as cake recipes, aren't scarce and therefore are not subject to property rights.

Telling me what I can and cannot do with my ink and paper, which is scarce, is claiming ownership of my property, which is theft because it wasn't done voluntarily but rather through the threat of violence or imprisonment.

Anyone that says this is all well and good but wishes to abandon Libertarianism for special cases where it would benefit every individual has a burden of proof. While it seems obvious that without intellectual property laws, people would be harmed through the loss of created work, what goes unnoticed are the people that are currently harmed by the very laws meant to protect others. There are cases of people wanting to make derivative works but cannot do so or will not do so for fear of legal repercussions. Such examples include books written from different points of view, such as the slaves from Gone With The Wind, video games that have been abandoned or not developed often enough, such as Chrono Trigger and Lemmings, music such as covers of Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga songs, and so on. We know that people will be harmed if intellectual property laws are repealed just as we know people are currently harmed by their very existence. The only question for those that want to abandon Libertarianism is, which outweighs which? Nobody can give a definitive answer and therefore it's irresponsible to support such laws, even on non-Libertarian utilitarian grounds, which aren't proven to be beneficial to more individuals than they are harmful.

[1HXD5xHpz6cxbrqNekzGFTow6gjeuTNR4j]

I'm organizing a Bitcoin event at my university, http://uah.edu where forum member PLATO will be stopping by along his coast-to-coast journey, which you can read about on his website http://therealplato.com/ if you haven't heard about it. I'm hoping to get several hundred people to attend. Giving away free money seems like a pretty good way to encourage that. I'll be setting up a system where one-time-passwords are handed out at the event that can be redeemed for 1 BTC. I'm using my own money to pay for flyers, refreshments, room and board for the speaker as well as the printed cards and bitcoins. If any of you want to donate to help spread the word about Bitcoin, please send as much BTC to 1HXD5xHpz6cxbrqNekzGFTow6gjeuTNR4j as you can spare. I'm going to be trying to attract not only computer science majors but political science and finance majors to the event as well. Here's some information about UAH so you can understand exactly how beneficial it could be to get these students and faculty interested in Bitcoin.

UAH scientists managed the first "commercial," non-government rocket programs (Consort and Joust) in the U.S., the first "high-temperature" superconductor was discovered at UAH and the first U.S. experiment flown aboard the Soviet Mir space station was from UAH. UAH is a Space Grant university, and has a history of cooperation with NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal. In conjunction with helping NASA reach its goals, UAH makes NASA's research and technology available to all of Alabama's colleges and universities. The National Space Science and Technology Center is on the UAH campus.

The UAH Propulsion Research Center ([PRC]) is a research center that promotes interdisciplinary research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students. The PRC was founded by Dr. Clark W. Hawk in 1991 and has since provided support for NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. Research topics explored include air breathing propulsion, solid, liquid & hybrid propellent combustion, magnetoinertial fusion, electric propulsion, high temperature materials, and space and terrestrial power systems.

If you are in the Huntsville, AL area please attend the event. I'll post the exact time and date as soon as I know but we are aiming for next week, between April 25th and April 29th. Thanks for reading!