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The problem is that this is not true. The bankers adquired control of the money supply through government intervention. Some times the government intervention meant imposing some kind of gold standard (never a free market gold standard, and btw I dont support the gold standard). In the free market the bankers never managed to control the physical gold. They used all kind of regulations to control the money supply, sometimes under the name of godl standard.
The problem with the idea of "gold standard" is that it can refer to may systems who are completely different from each other, just because they have some kind of relation to gold. But, f.e. Bretton Woods, a "gold standard", is more similar to the present system, than to a gold based free banking system, that could be called a gold standard too. In reality, "gold standard" means nothing and everything because each person refers to a different thing by it.
I can agree with that pretty much 100%. The bank doesn't steal anything. It embezzles it. Demand deposits are used as collateral for nearly ten times the amount in loans. $1,000 in deposits becomes collateral for $10,000. The fractional reserve ratio is on their balance sheet which they post to public every quarter, something every depositor and shareholder can see. Perhaps this would be a good video to make. Go to every local bank, and ask to speak to the bank manager. You just have one very simple question. Lie and saying you're doing it as some sort of college research thing. Ask them on camera, to tell you what "Fractional Reserve Banking" is. Nine times out of ten, the manager does not know what it is, and in some cases has never even heard the term before. Therefore, to expect that the average joe will understand that banks do this when bank managers don't even know, is pretty laughable. With bitcoins, fractional reserve banking probably doesn't even need to be outlawed though, since a bailout is pretty much absolutely impossible. The money supply is too tight. |
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You pay taxes on dollars.
If your entire income is in bitcoins and you keep them in bitcoins, how many dollars did you make?
0.
(Yes, I know that they'd have to pay taxes on the dollar value on any products or services rendered, but this is pretty much impossible for the IRS to enforce)
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I'm not calling you name, idiot, dumbass, clueless, etc, and I'd appreciate it if you (and the other guy) would not call me names. Attack the statements, not the person.
Thanks. Ok, you are right. But I did not insult you. The thing is that I believed the nutjob because his movies are very well done and seem very real to someone not educated enough in economic and economic history. He sells you a dream and then become uncritical to him becose you get addicted to that dream. I felt so ashamed when I started reading economic history books that I just cant understand if the guy is very dishonest and has an agenda or he is really a complete nutjob. Its confusing people with stupid ideas and stopping real change. I've been in the same position with the gold standard. I failed to see that the bankers have most of the gold locked up and could manipulate the new government forced gold standard at will, I'm not married to an ideology like most people are. Knowledge is a process, it doesn't do anybody any good to just call other people stupid and then not really explain why, which is why I hate generic comments such as "Wow Comic genius! HHHAAAHA U ARE EH STOOPID" When something becomes bloody obvious to me I'll correct my facts. I'm interested in those history books you were mentioning. |
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Please read a real history book. Sources would be welcome you know. Who knows? maybe the southern states would have get independent as its their right under the constitution of the USA. Maybe the slaves would have been freed like in Europe by paying the slave owners, which would have been cheaper than the war and would have avoided a lot of deaths.
Btw, why The Money Masters does not explain how Lincoln passed the National Banks Act at the end of the civil war which centrallized the credit around teh big banks of New York? Because it does not bode well with the nutjob wanting to promote Lincoln as an anti-banker and insinuating his death was because he opposed the bankers, when in reality Lincoln gave them control of the credit.
Sources please. Also, do not confuse me with a Lincoln fan, I believe that the states absolutely have a right to secede from the union if the federal government violates the contract that they are bound to. If you love the freemarket you can't hate fractional reserve banking. It's same as hating motorcycles, because cars are safer.  I like both fractional, and conservative banking, so long as the bank is open about it. Fractional reserve is nothing worse than an investment fund that leverages their captial by xx:1 gives you higher interest at the risk of a bank collapse. Fractional reserve banking is fraud. If you were to engage in it in any other commodity you could be sent to jail. It's one thing if a bank is open about it and people know the risks of depositing their money there, but as of right now it's done in secret. Everyone that has money in a demand deposit account thinks that the bank actually has that money with their name on it sitting in a vault somewhere, when they don't. Fraud isn't part of the free market. |
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Well, you are making some sense here, but its not that simple. First, the gold was not confiscated by the bankers, Roosevelt did it. I guess you forgot that the politicians pretty much own Washington? Roosevelt confiscated the gold because the bankers told him too. Just like Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Reserve in the first place, because the bankers told him too. It wasn't to benefit the people, that's for sure. Yes there is a debt problem, but that is not how it happens. The excessive debt happens because the government regulates the banking system allowing the banks to overextend credit. The debt in the present system is not based on savings, its based on the government money monpolly and the banking cartel it creates. Fractional reserve banking can still exist with Bitcoins, the only difference is bailouts of 10:1 overextensions of credit would be impossible. Fractional reserve banking IMO, should absolutely be outlawed and one of the primary things Bitcoins has going for it is that it puts it in check, you can still engage in it, but if you go too far and you fail, you'll be hung. Again, we're all pretty much on the same side, we all hate the monopoly on the money supply, we all hate the federal reserve, we all seem to hate fractional reserve banking. We all love seem to love free markets. I'm not calling you name, idiot, dumbass, clueless, etc, and I'd appreciate it if you (and the other guy) would not call me names. Attack the statements, not the person. Thanks. |
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Where do you come up with this stuff!? It's comic gold! I'm waiting for you to prove me wrong instead of just shouting "comic gold". The US Constitution outlaws it as well. The British outlawed it in the colonies because the colonial bankers were cutting into their game. Now it's outlawed in the states so that state banks cannot cut into the federal game. It's still a game, as in the "don't bet against the house or you will lose, but don't refuse to bet either or you'll die" sense. Because of the experience of hyperinflation of their paper currencies, which was caused by the British counterfeiting. Perhaps not. There is that risk. It's an absolute certainty, it will just take generations for it to happen. Don't think that the bankers will sit idle why they lose their power. Monetary policy is the single biggest cause of wars. One thing that is certain, do nothing and we will continue to get what we have been getting. I agree. I dont think bitcoin will be the only game in town. The free market tends to foster lots of competition, and the people will choose their currency instead of it being forced upon them by government. I think we can both agree that this is a good thing. First, you can actually. And second, you really believe that 3% is what you have actually been getting?
First, not efficiently, and especially if your enemy is using a larger amount of inflation (fabricating a boom) in order to beat you. Second, of course not. They are lying about inflation by removing things from the consumer price index. Programming code on the other hand, doesn't lie. Finally, you don't have to get hostile with me, we're pretty much on the same side we just have minor differences in things that could be considered technicalities. I worry about a centralized entity getting control of enough bitcoins down the road to be able to manipulate the economy. I don't plan to make a bitcoin alternative, but I'm certain someone else will with different attributes. The free market will decide it's fate, and we can both agree that this is a good thing. By the way, what would have the outcome been during the civil war, if Lincoln didn't inflate the currency with the Greenbacks? |
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Ok, you follow the nutjob. That movie is pure nonsense and the peole who follow him become ilogical. I have dealt with the few of you enough to know there will be no logical discussion. For example, you are admiting that your early point about inflation distributing the wealth was not true, but then keep defending inflation because supposedly it keeps money in the economy and that magically creates new resources. And you dont care that it hursts the people who earn a wage! Anyway, good luck.
Ah, so someone you disagree with = nutjob. That's pretty sad. Please tell me, how do you solve the manipulation problem then, where the wealth is eventually concentrated among the few, they make credit cheap so that everyone is put into debt with them, they then make credit expensive (while everyone still has outstanding debt), and then forclose on everything that was created? How do you pay for a $11,000 debt if only $10,000 exists in the monetary system? You'll be forced into default with the bankers. Also, why do you think the bankers had to confiscate all of the gold in the 30's? Too much gold was in the hands of the average joe and they had to consolidate it. They didn't need to confiscate the gold for all of the new deal programs, they could have just abolished the gold standard then and printed the money to pay for those programs (which were a sham). Once the foreigners figured out the scam in the 70's they finally ended the convertability. 'Temporarily' of course.  Can you point one example in history when money printing was not abused? Tally sticks. LOL! Even that was abused! The king declared tally sticks ursury and had them outlawed after forcing all of the goldsmiths in London to accept them in trade for gold so that he could pay for his war with France. And since they were now illegal, no one could come to the treasury and claim their gold deposits. They were then burned so that there wouldn't ever be any chance that the goldsmiths might come back in the future and be able to make a credible claim. This is actually were we get the phrase, "he got the short end of the stick" because the tally sticks were created by taking a common stick, etching on both ends, breaking it in half, and then the treasury kept the long end while the (mostly unwilling) goldsmith was left with the short end as a receipt. I'll stand corrected then and fall back to the colonial script example that the British had to outlaw. But it seems pretty much every monetary system in history has been abused, either by the issuer or by governments wanting to destabalize other governments. Don't think bitcoin will be an exception to this rule, this has been going on for thousands of years. Its funny how governments always use inflation to pay for wars and yet some keep defending it. It will be use for good, it will be used for good. They are sold a dream and loose the habitility of thinking critically.
You can't fund a war on 3% inflation. |
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The problem is that in the real world the weatlhy people dont save in money. They basically invest, even with diverse degree of leverage.
As opposed to keeping their money outside of the monetary system and riding the natural interest rate of deflation over time. The one positive attribute about inflation is it that it keeps money in the economy, because if you take it out, you lose purchasing power over time. So please, can we stop this nonsense? Who the fuck is promoting this lie? Its evil, it says that the workers benefit from what its hurting them. Whoever is promoting and teached you that idea is pure evil.
I used to think the same exact thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswICan you point one example in history when money printing was not abused? Tally sticks. But just because money printing was abused, doesn't mean it was done by the government issuing it. Colonial script was so effective that the bankers had to have England outlaw it (which resulted in a depression), they also passed the STAMP Act as well. This was one of the leading causes of the American Revolution that the bankers have erased from history. And continental was massively counterfeited by the British, leading to the very popular term "Not worth a continental." As long as they just issue enough to enable it to be used as a medium of exchange, it works just fine. You only get into trouble when they expand the money supply too fast. A rate of inflation that is programmatically enforced and cannot be manipulated up or down by governments is immune from this problem. It is. You are not letting the price system work. Certainly is not stalist communism, but it does affect the price system and distorts it. It is central planning.
The money would not be spent from the dictates of a single central planner, but by the votes of the REPRESENTATIVE government. Central planning is typically where a single entity dictates whats going to happen whether the people want it or not, and there is no recourse. A central planner cannot lose his job by the will of the people. It is of no comparison to soviet style central planning. It does not matter what the money is, all that matter is that nobody controls the quantity. If a group of people eventually control a majority of the bitcoins, and no new bitcoins are created, they will be able to manipulate the money supply. It may take a hundred years, but it will eventually happen. Just like the gold standard was manipulated in history. Cheap credit, lots of debt, tighten credit, rinse and repeat. Bitcoin can resolve the manipulation problem with the proper attributes. Over time the bankers will eventually get control of enough bitcoins to manipulate the currency. Please show me a time in history where they have not gained control of the money supply. |
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I absolutely love the idea of city states.
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Actually I'll be selling with PayPal soon. What's your procedure for stopping fraud?
When the money is in my account..I send them the coins.. And then they tell paypal they never got their coins and paypal reverses the transaction. Then what. |
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We should not project the limitations of actual government issued currencies on to Bitcoin. Remeber that if currencies become part of the free market, and many free currencies can coexist, other free currencies will come along to fill the need for growth. The real problem is the monopoly of currency that the governments try to enforce. With free market currencies like Bitcoin and others to come, this is not a problem.
I absolutely support a free market of currencies, bitcoin doesn't have to be the only one. Perhaps another one can pop up using the same technology as bitcoin with different parameters some day. The market will determine who's the winner in the long run. As explained and discussed above, not all the money in the present system is debt based. Only the coins which are issued by the US Treasury are not debt based.
The governments does not pay interest on the money it gets from its central bank. Yes the government pays interest on the bonds the central bank buys, but the central bank returns the benefits it gets to the government (including the interest it charges to the banks), so for all practical matter the government is not paying it.
This is exaclty what its already happening in the present system. If that's the way it worked, then there would not be a national debt. Why do you think they need to raise the debt ceiling in order to borrow more money from the fed? The fed itself has said that if every debt was paid off that was owed to the fed, there would be no more money in our monetary system. Bitcoin is not a fiat currency. Fiat means imposed by force, usually by the government Perhaps you should do a little research on the term Fiat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_moneyThe term fiat money has been defined variously as:
* any money declared by a government to be legal tender.[3]
* state-issued money which is neither legally convertible to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.
* money without intrinsic value.
... fiat money is based solely on faith in the government issuing the money. For purposes of simplification, we are relying on faith in the system. Milton Friedman was very wrong regarding monetary policy (he was right about other things). There is no reason why there should be a 2-3% inflation rate (why not 1%?, why not 5%?). There is absolutely no reason in monetary theory why it should be this way.
I used to think the same, that Milton Friedman was wrong about monetary policy. The trouble with no inflation is eventually over periods of several generations, the wealth will be consolidated among the few, inflation will make that harder, and with higher savings rate, it resolves the issue with loss of purchasing power. Once the few have most of the currency they can use it to pretty much enslave the masses. They can make credit cheap, putting everyone in debt, and then make credit expensive, forcing everyone into default. Boom and bust. But in order to do that, you need to have control of enough currency. Also, do you realize that "to create new things such as useful infrastructure" money has to "chase after the existing products and services in the market"?
Yes, but the new things that are created either will increase production, or money can chase after those new things. For example if the government prints $250,000 out of thin air, and uses the money to build a house, something now exists that didn't exist before (the house), and the money in the financial system can chase after the house itself. In other words, the money isn't being used just to blow it on non-capital goods. If the government prints $250,000 to build 10x $25,000 tractors, and then those tractors are used to increase farm production, you have more money in the system, but there are also more products. No doubt about it, printing money is a dangerous tool that can be used to cause incredible damage to the economy, but there are correct instances where it can be used to benefit. If they use it to build 10 tractors that just sit and rust, it's bad. If they use it to build a house that just sits empty and falls apart, it's bad. It's a tool. It can be used for good, and it can be used for bad. This is a fallacy. You are presuposing that the government without a price system can decide what is good and bad investments. There is a reason why there is a market and government central planning does not work. This isn't central planning, nor is it the abolishment of the price system (which for some reason you think it is). You can go and try to create an alternative, but there is a reason why the system your propose has never emerge from the civil society and the examples in history are all imposed by the governments using force. And btw, they have all hyperinflated creating big poverty. Because the quantity of the money was not controlled. It hyperinflates because the government goes out of control. A fixed-inflation bitcoin currency won't have the problem of a government going out of control with creation of currency units. It does not matter what the money is, all that matters is who controls the quantity. Um, no. Every fiat currency is debt based by definition because the paper note is an abstraction of value, not the value itself. A fiat currency is any paper money system that the government issues. A debt based currency is a form of money that is borrowed at interest, when it enters into the money supply. Let's create a monetary system similiar to what exists today. We're all stranded on an Island, you are the government, and I am the central bank. The people want places to sleep in, so they all vote to spend $10,000 that will be used to pay people to build huts. You then create $10,000 of government bonds that pay 10% interest. I buy those bonds for $10,000 and now you spend that $10,000 into the local economy. The money is spent in all areas of the local economy, such as collecting food, wood, leaves, etc. A medium of exchange has been established for the local population. However, the government now owes me $11,000 in one year. How are you going to pay it without getting into even more debt? You can't. And the sick thing of it all is, instead of printing $10,000 of bonds, you could have just printed $10,000 and told me to go screw myself. By the way, all online video games with economies, have debt free fiat currencies. EVE-Online is a prime example. The game companies have no reason to manipulate the game currency like real life banksters do. |
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Cool service, but I don't see how I could make a profit with this unless I'm banking on bitcoin prices rising dramatically. If I'm counting on the raise in price, I feel like I would make the choice to invest directly in bitcoins.
$1900 could buy me about 95 bitcoins today. 1 Gh/s would give me about 1 bitcoin a day at the new difficulty taking effect in about 3 hours (about 868,000). So if the difficulty stays _completely_flat_ for the next three months, I'll only make 90 bitcoins. But we know that the difficulty is rising, so the most we could count on is about 50, and even that is pushing it.
I don't mean to disparage your services on your own thread, I'm sorry. But the numbers just don't add up for me. Does this make sense for anyone else? Unlike investing in mining equipment, you don't even get resell money. Am I missing anything? Can anyone give insight on why you would choose to do this?
It doesn't make sense to me either. I'm fairly sure he's pricing it just below the bitcoin costs. He can't go too low because then it's just more profitable for him to mine the coins himself, and the risk just isn't worth the reward for the buyer in my humble opinion. |
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Fiat money is, itself, debt. The framers of the US Constitution referred to them as 'debt instruments' and banned their issuance in the Coinage Act. They are obligations of the bank itself, backed up by the "Full Faith & Credit of the United States". When you go work for a wage, the first thing that happens is that the employer is endebted to the employee. The employer then pays the debt by transfering that obligation to the government, via the Federal Reserve bank. They are not called "notes" without reason, just like a mortgage is a "note".
Fiat money does not have to be debt based, our current fiat money system however IS debt based because every dollar that exists came out of the federal reserve at interest. If the government simply issued the money itself without the federal reserve middle man, they could just print it without having to pay interest on it. We basically rent our money supply from the fed. The government doesn't need to do this, it could just print the money instead of printing the damn bonds. Bitcoin itself is a fiat currency (as it is backed by absolutely nothing except trust in the system), it is also not debt based. Two very important attributes. The only thing bitcoin is missing in my opinion, is that the money supply should expand infinitely at around a fixed 2-3% rate a year as Milton Friedman suggested. Since banks will not be able to engage in such heavy fractional reserve banking with bitcoins (because it will be impossible to bailout a 10:1 ratio of loans), the interest rates for depositors in banks will be higher than the inflation rate, protecting the purchasing power. Money printing is only bad when they start to exceed the amount of products and services in the economy, and the newly printed money chases after the existing products and services in the market, instead of going to create new things such as useful infrastructure. Printing money to create infrastructure that will be useful (NO BRIDGES TO NOWHERE): Good. Printing money to recipients that will just use it to buy goods and services with the newly created money: Bad. Bitcoin is an excellent project, it's not perfect, but it's far better than what we currently have. |
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If you keep your income as bitcoins, how many US dollars of income do you have?
0.
What's the tax rate on zero dollars?
0 dollars.
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I completely agree. But I also recognize that because of the large percentage of inexperienced traders in the Bitcoin exchange markets there is a great potential for fear/greed swings that more experienced traders are taking advantage of. I don't like to see miners loose their coins simply because they don't understand how the markets work and fall into pricing traps.
They should be allowed to fail if they choose not to do their homework, like everything else in life. In a free market, no transaction is made unless both parties benefit, they aren't forced to sell their coins and they should not be forced to hoard their coins by some cartel either. The inexperienced traders will eventually fail, lose their time and or money and move on. Let them go gracefully. Leave nature alone. Haven't we learned enough already from the past? When you try to make things idiot proof, mother nature comes along with a better idiot, and you end up causing more damage than if you just left things alone. |
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I've created a simple web site (changed: http://www.bitcoinreference.com) with a forum attached that displays what I believe to be a fair market value for BTC which is automatically calculated from the current difficulty setting and converted into several world currencies I believe that the market should set the value for BTC, not some guy trying to setup a cartel of miners. We already have been dealing with the Federal Reserve and the banking cartels long enough, I think it's a horrible idea to start yet another freaking cartel. That may be an unfortunate choice of words, but I don't think that is really what he is trying to do (anymore). I think, he's just trying to help miners with the Bitcoin trading side of their business by finding ways to provide good information and take emotion out of trading decisions. If someone is willing to sell coins under what he believes is a 'fair market value', he is free to buy them and resell them for his 'fair market value'. "fairness" is an arbitrary concept that is improbable to be agreed upon by a large population. |
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I've created a simple web site (changed: http://www.bitcoinreference.com) with a forum attached that displays what I believe to be a fair market value for BTC which is automatically calculated from the current difficulty setting and converted into several world currencies I believe that the market should set the value for BTC, not some guy trying to setup a cartel of miners. We already have been dealing with the Federal Reserve and the banking cartels long enough, I think it's a horrible idea to start yet another freaking cartel. |
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Painting your house without a permit is illegal.
Cutting someones hair without a license is illegal.
Telling people where they should put their furniture without an interior design license is illegal.
Government is full of shit.
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One thing I don't understand is:
How close are the rental costs going to be to the value of the bitcoins mined? If it's over 50%, it's hardly worth it due to the risk involved. If it's under a certain rate, then it would probably be more profitable for you to mine the bitcoins yourself.
And being as bitcoin mining doesn't use a lot of network bandwidth and everything minus the video cards (and motherboards in some cases) can be the lower end stuff, I don't see how it could realistically be more expensive than renting a lower end dedicated server.
Would rental reflect the price of the bitcoins mined? Or would they be fixed?
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