Economics, politics are not really science, are they?   I mean, politics is about deciding what's good for society.  And science has very little to say about what's good or wrong in the way people live their lives.

Any "social design project" stinks.   Society is not something that has to be designed by anyone.  It is an phenomenon that emerges from a collective behavior, not from the wicked mind of some lunatics.  You know what kind of people used to talk about science in order to defend their views on society?  Eugenists, and not just in the german third reich.

To me this whole Zeitgest movement seems to be in the direct lineage of Francis Galton.  It's not the same theory, but there is the same way of trying to defend it.


But let's just give you the benefit of the doubt, one second.  You say "science is based on facts".  Ok, what facts are you talking about?  Which reasoning exactly leads you to think that your crappy socialist project is the way to go for humanity?  And please don't just point me to a youtube video or some weird esotheric website.  If you are not capable of summering it yourself here, I suspect it's either because you did not understand it, or because there is just not much to understand.

What the heck I gave her .2 BTC.   I remember the first time I got bitcoins.  It was on IRC and a guy gave me bitcoins just like that.   So I guess I can give a bit to a self-proclaimed homeless girl begging on the net.

Well, I disagree.

I'm not a native english speaker though, so I'm not in best position to talk about word definition.  Still, I do right now consider my life worthwhile, and yet I would not say I am happy in the sense this millionaire guy we're talking about in this thread is, for instance.

I very much doubt this is happiness.  When I talked about it, I did not mean "transcendental joy".  I meant happiness as what I can imagine it is through its description in standard cultural stereoptypes (familly, fullfilling job, love and stuff like that).

I know what satisfaction, tranquility and thrill are.  But I would not call that happiness.   Maybe happiness is what describes what we feel when we have it all.   Then I doubt it is reasonable to hope for that.

IIRC, bouddhists believe in something they call renouncement.  I'm pretty sure that's why they don't call their ultimate goal "happiness".  It's just much more complicated than that.

The linux kernel is under GPL.  That did not prevent Google from using it with Androïd.

Also, if they don't want to use cbitcoin because it's GPL, at least the very existence of cbitcoin will show them it's possible to port bitcoin into C.  So they'll rewrite their own C code.   That's good enough to me.

Very few people think there is nothing beyond what they currently experience, because we experience very little of the whole world.  Think about astronomers.  They might believe there is nothing beyond what could possibly be experienced, yet they don't lack any imagination to create new ways of seeing beyond what could previously be seen and thereby discover new worlds.  And sometimes, these new words blow our minds:  there are many quite amazing stuff in the universe.

So believing there is nothing beyond what can be experienced does not produce stagnation of the mind, on the contrary:  it gives an incentive to expand our ability to experience things.


Yes, imagination is great.  And fantasy is often an effective way to exercise it.  But you don't need to actually believe it.  I like Star Wars movies and yet I don't believe in the power of the Force.

You smoke?  Do you buy your own cigarettes sometimes?

That would be kind of ironic for someone who asks for bitcoin donations.   I sure would not give bitcoins to someone who would just burn them.

This is true, but off topic.

Does happiness exist, anyway?   I mean, I know some people experience it.  Good to them.  But is it really reasonable to seek for that in your life?  Can't there be more "modest" goals?   Achievement, for instance?  Peace of mind?  Or just curiosity about what this amazingly changing world will be in thirty years?

I don't remember having experienced anything that looked like happiness.  I can't say I had a miserable life, it was just "ok", I guess.

Do you really need to be happy to make your life worthwhile?

First you say that "the entire economy of the world is based around stealing from the poor", and now you say it affects the whole world economy.  Please clarify, because to me, this is not the same thing at all.

To me it seems that what you wanted to say is that there is a minority class whose economic activity is based on stealing from the poor in the whole world.    There is some truth in that.  This minority takes a bit from a lot of people.

But what you actually wrote was kind of reversed:  you said that the entire world economy is based on stealing from the poor.  This is silly.

I was comparing to the worldwide drug market.  And those derivatives are, by definition, based on other financial instruments, which can very well be "real" economic assets, with real economic activities behind, with real workers and production and so on.  So I'm not sure it makes your point.  It's probably quite a complicated subject anyway.

This guy is right about a few things.

I'm amazed he keeps that much money in cash though.  You need to seriously trust the USD to do that.

I don't care much about the things you're talking about.  Before bitcoin I owned gold.  So I was not much concerned about inflation, for instance.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's extremely biased to think Wall Street activity is representative of "the whole world economy".

I would not be surprised if the drug market in whole world represent much more money than WallStreet, for instance.  So your picture of an evil government-controlled economy does not fit well in my idea of what economy is.

Say the government steals 10% of each economic transaction in the world.  Well, that's 10% of the whole economy.  That's bad, sure, but that's not the entire economy of the world  (SIC).


I think you seem weirdly totally obsessed with monetary subjects.  Seems that starvation is not your only fixed idea.

Gold exists.  And now Bitcoin exists as well.  So stop complaining.

You were talking about "the entire economy of the world".   This was a grotesque oversimplification.


Reminds me of a discussion I had in an other thread with an other adept of these communist idea about redistribution of wealth.   He also kept talking about food and starvation.   Jeez, is the situation in US that bad that you are so obsessed with starvation?   Are you personally hungry right now or do you just take starving people as an excuse to steal from rich people?

No, I'm sorry but I do not share this very peculiar view of the world economy.


There is a "disconnect in the system".  Precisely:  people who are starving are far, far away from people who throw food away.   Either they are physically far away, and thus it would cost a lot to ship the remaining of food you're talking about (not to mention how humiliating it would probably be to accept to eat that), or they are socially far away (they don't know who they are, and they don't know they are starving).  They are literally "disconnected", as you said.

But if a guy sees a starving children in Africa on television, and a minute later he watches a documentary about LasVegas restaurant where they throw tons of food every week, he'll think "oh my god there is something wrong".

What is wrong is that he sees two things that are logistically, economically, socially and politically completely different and yet he thinks that everything would be just fine if we could, magically, teleport instantly this food from US to Africa with zero cost.

Then if it must happen, let it happen.  No need for your social plan.


I've said it many times, but I'll say it again:   you can't prevent people to sell things they own.

Say we embrace your silly idea of a planet we all share.   I'll go talk to my neighbor and I'll offer him a big amount of money for his share of the planet.  He'll accept and he'll use the money to have some good times, to party all night and to travel around the world during a year.   I'll use the extra-portion of the planet to make more money in the long term.  With the extra money I'll earn, I'll buy more shares of the planet from other neighbors.

Capitalism is not just a political doctrine:  it's a truth about human nature.  Some people like to own stuff, some other like to consume.   Some people value wealth more when it's in the present, and others value it more when it's bigger, even in a far future.   Therefore savers buy means of production from consumers.   Means of production allow to buy more means of production.  And the spread between those who own stuff and those who don't increases.

That's why your idea about people "sharing the planet" is naïve.  Try to understand this:  ownership is not a static concept.  It's dynamic.  And this dynamic is what we call the free market.

Yeah but what's your plan exactly to provide the means for people to have the comfortable and meaningful life you're talking about?  Does it consist on stealing the work and savings of those people who only care about profit and personal wealth?


If so, then I guess greed is not so bad after all, since it allows you to create the wealth you plan to steal.

Still, it would be great if we could compile your library with a classic "./configure && make"

I'm not good enough a GNU programmer, but if someone here is, please help.

Meanwhile, I'll read the automake manual and I'll see what I can do.

Anyway your project really seem like an awesome step towards a GNU version of bitcoin (C language + GNU license).  Please keep up.

I'm pretty sure that when someone spend years in the darkness of a room, working on a computer, at some point it has to have some negative impact on his physical appearance.

Maybe we should all believe in many gods in the same time because two of the most brillant civilizations, the greeks and the romans, were polytheist.  I guess we should all adorate Zeus and Jupiter.

This is so stupid.


I mean,  imagine I ask: "What did polytheism ever do for us?"  And then I start talking about mathematics, architecture, roads, medecine, atoms, Archimede, Pythagore, Platon and so on.

Everybody would laugh at me.  

What on earth does this has to do with religion??

Each time a scientist makes a discovery, do we have to ask him in which God he believes in (if he ever believe in such fantasy), and make a count of scores?  Isn't that totally childish?

Yes, the arabs made a lot of great discoveries and they preserved and transmitted the antique knowledge that we had lost in Europe.   They just happened to believe in Allah and his prophet during this time.   Big deal.

PS.  The arabs did not invent the astrolab.