Greeks, like the rest of the PIIGS sheeple are pathetic brainwashed spoiled brats europinkos: they just want infinite bailouts so that everybody can suck from the ultra-corrupted state tit, and now they are lost when the bill is due and they cannot even imagine a way out of state's and fiat money's dependence. According the polls still 75% of them just want keep the euro-debt-bubble inflating. They cannot even imagine independence, freedom and self-sufficiency. Speaking 'bout the lowest grade of humanity. Disgusting voluntary slaves.
You're such a troll, but I'll bite anyway. 1) Doesn't Goldman Sachs deserve an honorary mention in your blag for their disgusting role as a predatory lender? Guess not. 2) The Greeks might be pathetic, maybe even brainwashed, but by-and-large the Euro zone is relatively self-sufficient. Whatever money-printing they do doesn't get foisted upon anyone else. America on the other hand, has been sucking off the rest of the entire world's teat for decades, courtesy of the dollar's mysterious "reserve currency" status. I wonder how that happened? Why don't you target some vitriol at them instead? 3) I'm sure there's some kind of long-term treatment programme available for your xenophobia. I don't think he's a troll, and I don't think blahblah was being xenophobic. He's condemning the Europeans for their actions, not for their ethnicities. His comments are reasonable, though perhaps not diplomatically stated  If goldman sachs deserves blame, it's not for being a "predatory lender" which is a silly term, but rather for their involvement in government coercion and privilege. A lender should lend at whatever best rate he can... if it's predatory then don't take the loan... if you take the loan it means it was your best option and thus thank goodness it was available. There are many things to blame Goldman Sachs for - seeking high rates of return on loans to desperate borrowers is not one of them. |
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What if someone said "Hey, I'm making up numbers and writing them in this book". Fraud?
+1 I'm opposed to fractional reserve banking, but I don't think it's fraud if it's disclosed as such. A bank should be free to act however it wishes, so long as it doesn't lie about what it's doing. If you don't like fractional reserve banks, don't use them. It's a shame that under the current regimes globally, we've all been forced to. Thank goodness for Bitcoin. |
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Words cannot describe how awesome this would be. No idea how it is practical or useful. But awesome, nonetheless.
Though, the google map link is pointing to the middle of the carribean...?
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In your sig, it's probably better to put something that already assumes they know about Bitcoin, because then it will create interest in them instead of the salespitch aversion.
For example, instead of "Ask me about Bitcoin", a better option is, "Tip me with Bitcoin" or "Bitcoin daily price chart" etc.
In the latter, you're showing Bitcoin in use instead of appearing as though you're trying to push something on someone.
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dude I'm telling you people are cheating, you can raise your edge to 50% and it wouldn't matter, you are only donating your btc to the cheaters.
Site is back in the black. I've had a couple statisticians review this now, and all systems seem normal. There are some interesting phenomena I'll need to address and tweaks I'm going to make, but the site is running as it should. I do not believe anyone is or can cheat, though certainly it's a risk I take. We're still making some technical improvements to make performance better, including a database upgrade and a new way to handle some of the scripting. Onward! Also, LOL http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions |
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I believe "creative destruction" is the appropriate term It is indeed very exciting to me as well to see this sort of productive chaos. The foundation to all this is whether a money such as bitcoin can actually work. It seems to work, and everything that happens around it will be in a perpetual state of trial and error. But if the core is solid, the scaffolding will rise. |
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The worthy will own Bitcoin and will profit mightily from its ascendance long before the unworthy are forced aboard the train.
+1 I actually like the train analogy beyond that - it is as if we're building the world's first train, and all around us people stare and say, "That's not a horse! It won't ever work!" Meanwhile the rails are being laid to their door. |
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Freedom is slavery, war is peace, and bitcoin is not currency. Move along, citizen.
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but a count-down timer is convenient too.
YES! Count-down timer is the solution. |
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Finally, if, for all practical purposes, it performs like a currency, but it doesn't satisfy all the conditions you set forth, then would you be happier if we called it a schmurrency instead of a currency? A schmurrency, you see, is an instrument which performs, for all practical purposes, just like a currency, but it doesn't satisfy the Brombergian demands of what it is to be a currency. And, here's a fact: Some people get along fine using currencies in certain contexts and some people get along fine using schmurrencies in some contexts. The end.
LOL +1 |
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To preclude money from society is to preclude trade.
And to say that society can exist without money is to say that nothing along that ordinal range of goods can ever be exchanged by anybody to anybody else. THAT is an absurd notion.
I disagree with this, and I wrote an article about how money is demonstrably different from simple exchange. As I wrote in my article, money is constructed through collective agreement. Money is not "constructed" and it is certainly not "constructed through collective agreement." When two people trade, they themselves agree are on the terms of the trade. When another set of people trade, they arrive at different terms. And yet a third pair of traders will arrive at a third set of trading terms. None of this is "collective", but rather a spontaneous occurrence. No two people who trade require the agreement on the value of their goods by anybody else. You have something I want, I have something you want, we come to an agreement and trade. No input from anybody else is needed. As we see humans often trading with each other, we might notice that they tend to start using a common good for these exchanges. This good is not "collectively agreed on," but spontaneously arrived at along the course of many individual decisions. The name given to whatever people tend to trade with is money. Your example of the gold watch and the guitar is a silly one. The reason you'd prefer the gold watch (which you don't want to use) over the guitar (which you do want to use) is because you can then trade the watch for a guitar + some bread, both of which you want. There is nothing weird about this - and it certainly doesn't indicate any nefarious property of money. I'd rather receive a helicopter than a car in exchange for my $20,000, even though I can't use the helicopter. Why? Because I can trade it again for still further goods - perhaps a car, and groceries for 50 years. In this case, I have used a helicopter as "money." I simply do not understand what is so difficult or contentious about the idea that money is intrinsic to trade... Set 100 people in a room and give them random stuff. As they start trading with each other for things they want, they'll begin to value certain stuff for its usefulness in trading that stuff to others. It is impossible to avoid this phenomenon just as it would be impossible to avoid the phenomenon of those same people talking to each other. The only way to prevent money, or prevent talking, is to use coercive force against them. What's the link to this article of yours, which tries to argue that money is demonstrably different from exchange? |
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Do you see the point here? All things are money along a gradient of usefulness as money, and this gradient may differ in different geographic locations (on a planet made of gold, gold would be a terrible money). So if one dude is arguing that oxygen is money, and another argues the opposite - both should stop. Oxygen could be used as money, but it would suck for that purpose. That's the end of the argument. In the same way, USD can be used as money (and works very well for that purpose). Yet, it is still an inferior money to gold and bitcoin in my opinion, because it can be printed at whim. Once one has an understanding of the ordinal nature of all goods as potential money, then one can really appreciate why Bitcoin is so excellent for this purpose. It is a beautifully engineered good, almost perfectly suited for usefulness as money.
...
And to say that society can exist without money is to say that nothing along that ordinal range of goods can ever be exchanged by anybody to anybody else. THAT is an absurd notion.
Animals use all of these, yet they do not AFAIK use money. Placing an abstract value on resources is a reified (religious) notion and entirely unnecessary. Who said anything about abstract value? All that is important is the exchange rate - meaning the price, which is merely a ratio of one good voluntarily traded for another good. My 12 eggs traded to you for 1 loaf of bread, puts an exchange rate of 12 eggs/1bread, and thus the market price for a loaf of bread is 12 eggs. There is nothing abstract about that, and I'll suggest that it is not "religious", and that it is in fact wholly necessary to establish a rate of exchange before an exchange can be made. Try making an exchange without determining at what rate such exchange will occur, and I'll cede the point. You are coming from an a priori argument. You posit that price and exchange rate is not an abstract notion, yet would offer nothing but an ad populum argument. Markets themselves also are not necessary, therefore money is not necessary. What I like about Bitcoin is that it exhalts and glorifies the abstraction to the point of being ridiculous and is therefor a near perfectly designed religion for money based economies. I'm sorry but I have no idea what you're talking about. |
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Do you see the point here? All things are money along a gradient of usefulness as money, and this gradient may differ in different geographic locations (on a planet made of gold, gold would be a terrible money). So if one dude is arguing that oxygen is money, and another argues the opposite - both should stop. Oxygen could be used as money, but it would suck for that purpose. That's the end of the argument. In the same way, USD can be used as money (and works very well for that purpose). Yet, it is still an inferior money to gold and bitcoin in my opinion, because it can be printed at whim. Once one has an understanding of the ordinal nature of all goods as potential money, then one can really appreciate why Bitcoin is so excellent for this purpose. It is a beautifully engineered good, almost perfectly suited for usefulness as money.
...
And to say that society can exist without money is to say that nothing along that ordinal range of goods can ever be exchanged by anybody to anybody else. THAT is an absurd notion.
Animals use all of these, yet they do not AFAIK use money. Placing an abstract value on resources is a reified (religious) notion and entirely unnecessary. Who said anything about abstract value? All that is important is the exchange rate - meaning the price, which is merely a ratio of one good voluntarily traded for another good. My 12 eggs traded to you for 1 loaf of bread, puts an exchange rate of 12 eggs/1bread, and thus the market price for a loaf of bread is 12 eggs. There is nothing abstract about that, and I'll suggest that it is not "religious", and that it is in fact wholly necessary to establish a rate of exchange before an exchange can be made. Try making an exchange without determining at what rate such exchange will occur, and I'll cede the point. |
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Do you know why there are always poor and starving people? It's because the poor and starving continue to procreate.
I also highly disagree with this. Each new person, when properly allocated as a resource, is a net-positive for production. Humans, on average, each produce more than they consume in resources. A world with twice as many people will be more than twice as wealthy, I assure you. Indeed, how much wealthier has the world become with every doubling of the population? Do not merely look at the mouths of people and assume they must be fed. Look also at the hands and mind, and realize they can produce and create. |
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What do you do when 99% of all labor is "divided" into the responsibility of robots, automation and AI? What kind of economy do you expect to have then? Shall all 7 billion people continue to compete for the remaining positions of labor just to live? What kind of sickness are you people promoting who still cling to the ancient and useless ideas of pre industrial society and economic theory? Why don't you start recognizing what is actually happening and start participating rationally?
How is this different from a Luddite fallacy? +100 Anyone who worries about "robots stealing all the work" doesn't realize that it's not work we want, but production, and to the extent production can occur more efficiently, means more wealth for humanity. Furthermore, every time a robot is invented to do something humans used to do, the cost savings of that production frees up new capital to be put to better use elsewhere, and employment will likely be found in that new industry. In 1700 almost everyone was a farmer. Machines completely changed that - and food is almost exclusively produced by robots now (what percent of the population still farms??). Yet, is everyone sitting around without work? And this is with a population increase of billions of people since the year 1700!! Where did that new work come from? Machines, so long as they are profitably employed, will almost always create more new job opportunities than they destroy. If you want more people to have a job, you should hope for more machines, not fewer. |
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Many interesting ideas moving around in this thread. I'd like to further address this whole money thing... I realize there is a lot of arguments regarding "what is money" but I think that's a highly appropriate discuss for these forums, no?
On the definition of money: Too often people think money "is" or "is not". They say a dollar "is" money. Gold "is" money. Bitcoin "is" money. Or, they'll say gold "is not" money, or fiat "is not" money, or Bitcoin "is not" money, etc. Astonishingly, I've now heard that oxygen itself "is" or "is not" money. Enough of this silliness, money is not a binary condition, but rather exists on a gradient of utility.
Lay out all things in the world, from air to gold to steel beams, eggs, sand, human hearts, goat eyeballs, fighter jets, US dollars, and bitcoins... lay it all out in a row. While some might try to sort them into two piles, "money" and "not money," that is a fool's errand. Instead, all these things can be arranged in order of their usefulness AS money. In other words, each thing makes a superior money to something else, and each thing is an inferior money to something else as well. People don't need to agree on the specific arrangement, but it should be self-evident that such arrangement is not very difficult to do.
Precious stones are better money than sand (unless one lives where such stones are plentiful and sand is rare). Gold is better money than precious stones (because it's fungible/divisible/etc). Steel beams are worse money than cigarettes. Why? Because the value to weight ratio of cigarettes makes them far more convenient to be used as money (though steel is more durable, so perhaps you'd argue steel is the better money). Oxygen would be a terrible money wouldn't it? Because, simply, it's far too plentiful. How much oxygen would I ask you to trade me in exchange for my car? How would it be delivered and stored? Absurd!
Do you see the point here? All things are money along a gradient of usefulness as money, and this gradient may differ in different geographic locations (on a planet made of gold, gold would be a terrible money). So if one dude is arguing that oxygen is money, and another argues the opposite - both should stop. Oxygen could be used as money, but it would suck for that purpose. That's the end of the argument. In the same way, USD can be used as money (and works very well for that purpose). Yet, it is still an inferior money to gold and bitcoin in my opinion, because it can be printed at whim. Once one has an understanding of the ordinal nature of all goods as potential money, then one can really appreciate why Bitcoin is so excellent for this purpose. It is a beautifully engineered good, almost perfectly suited for usefulness as money.
This whole argument hearkens back to the fact that money is intrinsic to barter - when you trade your eggs for a loaf of bread, and then use that bread to trade for a steak, you've used bread as money. Bread works okay as money, but it's not great (it spoils, has low value to volume ratio, etc). Thus, people who argue against money are arguing against exchange itself, as I have said before. To preclude money from society is to preclude trade.
And to say that society can exist without money is to say that nothing along that ordinal range of goods can ever be exchanged by anybody to anybody else. THAT is an absurd notion.
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Zhou, I think you contributed more to Bitcoin than you know. Remember the recent Reuter's article Bitcoin, the City traders' anarchic new toy? That story was re-brodcast by other new outlets like RT and HuffPo and seen by who knows how many new non-bitcoin people. The journalist, researching largely on this forum, was looking for an angle to portray Bitcoin. I believe Bitcoinica, mentioned prominently in the article, largely influenced the positive coverage and gave Bitcoin credibility (look at the financial industry it already has!), so people could associate it with something other than Silk Road. That's big positive momentum IMO Thanks, and best of luck! +1 Thanks for the note Zhou, you will be missed. Bitcoin is better when you are involved. |
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So how much profit has satoshidice made so far?
I will tell you it's a negative number so far which has totally ruined my week  etotheipi - I'll have the developer check on your info, thank you for the analysis. |
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Greetings Marketplace! Greetings Vendors and Merchants! Are you advertising your wares on Twitter? No? But why?! It's so damn cheap! Using FeedZeBirds.com you can create a promotional Twitter campaign and pay less than 0.001btc CPM (cost per thousand impressions). This means 1000 Twitter followers would be exposed to your message for about half a penny. The audience is not mainly Bitcoiners, but includes all different types of people around the world. So you can advertise whatever you want, or use it to spread messages you think are worthy of saying. Again... $0.50 to put a message in front of 100,000 potential viewers? Give it a try! You can have a campaign launched 30 seconds from now.FeedZeBirds.comBonus: First ten people to post your campaign URL here will get .1 btc donated to their campaign (campaign must be funded with at least .5 btc to be eligible). |
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