Please don't misstate my opinion. I never said everyone who is rich must be highly productive. I merely said that most wealthy people, probably the great majority, were highly productive.

Further, as one approaches a free market (which we are nowhere near having), without government favoritism, it becomes increasingly difficult to grow or maintain wealth without being highly productive. Many of those who, today, are both wealthy and "non-productive" are in fact able to subsist in that way because of government distortions in an otherwise free market. Bankers, who obtain vast wealth through the inflation of the fiat monetary system, are a great example. In a free market, a banker would actually have to provide a valuable service to become wealthy.

The first sentence in your Adam Smith quote is very important, and it has something to do with the last sentence. It is not the free businessman who should be your enemy - it is the violent government, which starts wars, protects its friends, and provides all manner of distortion and corruption upon the public. Remember too that without those "opulent merchants" mentioned in the quote, every one of the 100,000 families would be toiling in the mud. The wealthy did not put the peasants in the field They did, however, enable some to rise above it. The natural state of man is poor, hungry, and cold. It is foolish to see modern society, with all the wealth that we have, and then assume that such wealth caused those who don't have it to remain in that natural state. We would all be there, but for the business man.

Sir, you may some day realize that such a graph, along with all your fun statistics, are actually showing you a distribution of production and when you learn what production is, then you may re-evaluate your snide stance. Nobody is arguing that the rich don't own most of the wealth. Of course they do. They produced it - by creating things of value and trading them with those who were happy to part with the money. I will add the caveat that any "ruler" who made his money by theft of the population (like kings, etc) have no legitimate claim to their fortune. The Saudi princes, and the Queen of England, should all be on the street.

What you're actually showing me is a graph of how much rich people have already contributed to society. For every dollar in their vast bank account represents more than a dollar's worth of value they provided to someone else. If this were not true, the trade would not have occurred (of course there are exceptions, but the general observation is valid). The very small number of individuals who just "inherited" their money, still didn't take it from anyone - it was produced by the person who left it to them, and you have no right to seize such wealth by force to make yourself feel better.

Indeed, given that you've shown me a graph of who has produced what, it would not be unreasonable to make the argument that the poor should pay all the taxes, since the rich already produced billions of dollars of value for the world, and the poor have done little. Does that idea make you uncomfortable?

Note that I make less than $30k per year, so please don't write me off as a "greedy fat cat" or sling any other insults at me to cover up the fact that you think it's okay to steal from people who have more than you. I'm merely someone who knows the difference between production and consumption, and I respect the former, while you do not. I know where wealth comes from, while you seem to know where it should go - you simply see wealth out there, in a distribution you deem unfair, and you want to seize it from those who have it and give it to those who you think should have it.

You also perhaps have missed the real lesson of Robin Hood. He wasn't stealing from "the rich." He was stealing from the government, who took by force of taxation the production of the people. Some day I hope you'll realize you are on the side of that government - you advocate theft through taxation, while Robin Hood was on the side of the producers, taking back what was rightfully their property.

Your first sentence is false. One need not be a "millionaire" to care for their family. None of my extended family, nor any of my friends' families, are millionaires... yet somehow they're all able to care for their grandparents - usually because the grandparents were thrifty and prudent and made good life decisions. They didn't rely on others to pick up the slack.

Individuals should be responsible for themselves, and when they cannot be, they should rely on the voluntary efforts of friends, family, and charity. In no case is it moral, or justified, to forcefully take the property of other people - who have goals, family situations, and desires of their own - in order to satisfy your own needs. It is theft.

And no, people in general are not in both groups in equal portions. Many individuals TAKE much more than they give to the public trough. Most people actually, are net takers, and it is a minority of successful, very productive individuals who are forced by government violence and the threat of imprisonment to support the rest. I think it is immoral to steal wealth from any person, whether from poor to rich or rich to poor. It is wrong for the Goldman Sachs executive to steal from the poor through his lobbying of the Federal Reserve to inflate the money supply. It is similarly wrong of the poor person to lobby Congress to steal the money from the wealthy man and give it to him in the form of various "public services."

Regarding my age, I'm not sure why that matters, but I'm 27. When I was a teenager, as you assume I am, I thought much more like you do. Naive and with a very confused moral compass. I'm not here defending Ayn Rand, I'm here defending myself.

So what you're saying is: If you don't want to take responsibility for your own grandparents, it's perfectly okay to take money from your neighbors by force in order to help yourself pay for medical costs? Basically, because you and your family haven't saved money to take care of each other, and you don't want the trouble of asking for voluntary charity, you have the right to steal that money from other people? And then you dismiss any moral objections to your theft by saying you're only stealing it from "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?" And then you want to claim that you're the benevolent one?

Do you even know what percentage of taxpayers are "multi-billionaire trust fund babies?". Billionaires alone would be less than 0.000001%, and then maybe 5% of those could be considered "multi-billionaire trust fund babies".

So what the hell do you think you're doing by advocating the theft of property from the other 99.999999% of people?

You're a disgusting human being, because you steal from others to satisfy your own wants. Shame on you.

Why should that matter? Rate of new coins is constant whether 1 miner or 1 million.

Then I like her. "Medicare" is just a euphemism for stealing from Group A to give money to Group B. It's immoral, not to mention economically destructive.

1 coin sent.

Thank you, Atlas. Can't wait to see the result.

800x600 as a common desktop size? Maybe in 1993 =)  I'm sure your average BitcoinPorn images are larger than that!!

I'm confused. Why does everyone hate Paypal?  Yes they charge fees. Yes chargebacks are annoying. Yes accounts can be frozen. Those negatives, to me, seem vastly overshadowed by Paypal's usefulness in online transactions. Besides, nobody is forced to use Paypal... how can they be evil? Save terms like "evil" for coercive organizations like the US Department of Education, or the IRS.

I still think Bitcoin should put Paypal out of business, because it's more efficient, but that's just a matter of competition and free markets. But why the "evil" moniker??

Check out the chart/graph here of USD value since the start of the country.  http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2009/07/record-of-federal-reserve.html

150 years without The Fed and with an (imperfect) gold standard = zero devaluation in the dollar (appreciation, actually)
100 years since The Fed's creation and without a gold standard = more than 95% devaluation in the dollar

And one reason the Fed was created was to "stabilize the value of the dollar."  I wonder why they don't teach this in public schools?

THIS IS WHY BITCOIN IS SO AWESOME

I think the average Tea Partier is "more intelligent" than the average American. But indeed it is foolish to generalizing to such a degree - there be both idiots and geniuses within the Tea Party, probably within almost any group, and to say "Tea Partiers are morons" makes he who posts such appear as though he is one himself, does it not?

That said, I think Tea Partiers, on average, would be at least open to the idea of Bitcoin if approached from the "anti-fed" angle - and indeed isn't that the most important angle from which to approach Bitcoin, regardless?

With due respect, you may be a bit misguided here. The industrial revolution created MORE wealth, for MORE people. The very reason peasants came in from the fields to the cities was because the dirty factory job, miserable though it may be, provided a higher standard of living than did the fields. If that were not true, why would anyone move in the first place?

Further, income disparity will always occur due to simple math. If a rich man and poor man both increase their wealth 10%, the "gap" will still grow. So what? Both are still better off, and indeed as the income disparity rises, you find that those at the bottom still tend to be improving their lot in life. Case in point: a poor family in America has a car, two TV's, refrigeration, running water, soap, food, and an Xbox.  

Claiming that people "need" welfare is disingenuous, because you cannot define what "need" means. Not to mention that is a disturbing and immoral act to steal from one man in order to be generous to another. If you wish to help those who are less fortunate than you, please do so with your own money, or convince others voluntarily to help. Don't steal property and then pretend to be charitable with it...

You're correct, to a point. If banks or governments issue certificates that are actually not backed by gold, but only "claiming" to be backed by gold, then the inflation can still be very pervasive. However, even in this situation, banks can't print completely at whim, else they risk bank runs (until the FDIC removed this check). Without any backing, the printing never need end.

Sir, there is a very very big difference! Backed by gold (when properly defined) means that your dollar is SET at a specific weight of gold. You can hand in the dollar, and receive a SET amount of the gold, like 1 gram or whatever. What this means is that the money unit (dollar) is essentially just a measurement of weight. 1 dollar = 1 gram of gold, in this example. This is proper "sound money" in the traditional sense.

When dollars equal gold in this way, the government is restricted from printing them at whim, and this is all the difference in the world. The government cannot arbitrarily increase the money supply, as it does now. This means inflation is non-existent (or at least is bound to gold production capabilities, not political whims). The value of the dollars in your bank account, under a gold standard system, cannot be stolen from you by the politician who makes use of his printing press. It means savings is encouraged, not discouraged. It means spending is not artificially encouraged. It also means interest rates cannot be as manipulated by central banks, but that starts getting more complicated. Suffice to say, the housing crisis in 2007/2008 would've been impossible under a hard money system in which interest rates were set by market forces, not politicians.

We live now in a world where Bernanke is continually printing dollars, thereby devaluing every dollar in existance. This is why you see prices rise over time - it's not a phenomenon of nature, it is the result of printing money. Gold standard prevents this.

Perhaps one of the greatest articles ever written on this subject, was written in 1966 by none other than Alan Greenspan. It is truly a must-read, and raises some amazing questions in light of Alan's latter career. http://www.constitution.org/mon/greenspan_gold.htm

Maybe I'm a noob here... but how are these figures relevant when there are "dark pools" which hide X amount of orders?

Furthermore, how many people just sit on the sidelines watching, without putting in formal bids? If I want to trade at X price, it doesn't mean I'll have a standing bid.

Seems that these are very big unknowns, no?

Hello,

I'm selling a used-but-in-great-condition Polycom SoundPoint IP 550 SIP phone. If you know what it is, then you know how wonderful these things are for VoIP. Awesome sound clarity, I have a second one that I will never sell =)

Includes everything you need:
Phone unit + handset + cord
Base stand
Power adaptor
Ethernet cable

Price = 8 btc (includes shipping in the US)

Hello,

I have access to a coin mint, and am considering producing a run of 1oz pure silver bullion coins, resembling the beloved bitcoin. The print will be something like this, embossed relief, but will indicate silver content and year, and will be silver and not copper color, etc.




So my question to all of you is, what would you be willing to pay for such a coin? Obviously it will be quite a bit over spot price until I could produce a huge volume (any investors?).

Do you want BitcoinBooty.com? 

I own BitcoinBooty.com... any takers? 

Did everyone see this... TIME

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/06/29/bitcoins-does-an-internet-currency-mean-the-doom-of-the-dollar/