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801  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: A Heroin Store on: December 06, 2010, 12:31:44 PM
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Second, who the h*ll would want to go out into the cold and find their weed under a rock in central park......

The "uncool" people who don't have the "right" friends? Wink
802  Other / Off-topic / Re: Wikileaks... making the U.S. look good? on: December 06, 2010, 12:11:28 PM
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"transparency is always good" is incredibly naive.  The real world is not that simple, and peoples' lives really are at stake.

Transparency is not good because it's useful, or because it's safe, or because the world isn't simple.

Transparency is good because it's morally right, irrespective of the consequences it may or may not have.

Same can be said of a related concept - freedom.
803  Other / Off-topic / Re: Libertarians/Anarchists Answer Me This on: December 06, 2010, 10:32:23 AM
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A free market is always much more interesting and vibrant than a planned one, even if it is "imperfect" according to someone's theory.

Once you introduce more ice cream vendors and more types of ice cream, you are changing the parameters of resource allocation space. 

But even this new space has certain constraints (scarcity of resources), so mathematically, there will exist a new global optimum somewhere.

The free market may or may not lead to this global optimum, but it's by no means guaranteed.

I agree that the constraints of 1) there may be only two ice cream vendors 2) there may be only one type of ice cream, are somewhat artificial.

Still, this simplified model illustrates the general idea.
804  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Re: Pooled mining for official bitcoin client? on: December 03, 2010, 03:49:21 PM
I'm a purist and think that the official client should remain as simple as possible.

I don't think it should be bloated with mere nice-to-haves.

There are many different ways of doing pooled mining and many independent projects. Which project should then be chosen as the "official" one?  Too much centralisation IMO.

Also, even pooled mining with lose its appeal to Joe Average 1-2 years from now because by then the real specialists will dominate the mining market (with specialised hardware and such). 



 
805  Other / Off-topic / Re: Libertarians/Anarchists Answer Me This on: December 02, 2010, 02:43:28 PM
@Gavin:
Seatbelt law: Fail to wear a seatbelt, you're fined. Fail to pay: http://www.nostate.com/116/the-penalty-is-always-death/

Would that be any different in an anarchy though? If you violate a contract the other party will demand compensation, if you fail to compensate they will attempt taking the compensation by force by hiring a PDA, if you resist that force by threatening to retaliate with violence, the PDA will also retaliate with violence, etc....

Eventually, if you refuse to negotiate and keep resisting, the outcome is likely to be death too, even in an anarchy.

The only difference is that under a state you enter certain contracts automatically (the act of getting a driving license and getting inside a car means an implicit contract between you and the state).
806  Other / Off-topic / Re: Libertarians/Anarchists Answer Me This on: December 02, 2010, 01:46:16 PM
One thing that is important to make clear: free markets push to the best optimization in resource usage, balancing people demands and the scarcity of resources.

Free markets do not push to the most optimal resource allocation possible (aka "global optimum").

They simply push to a point in resource allocation space where no further optimisation by incremental change is possible (aka "local optimum").

In the real world the nature of resources and demand is changing all the time, so the market jumps from one local optimum to the next.


This property of free markets can be illustrated in a very simple economy:

Two identical ice cream vendors on a 1km long beach with a uniform density of customers.

There are only two variables in resource optimisation space: The position (x) of each ice cream vendor. The further away a customer is lying from a vendor, the less likely she is to make the trip to buy the ice cream.

The most optimal resource allocation would be if the ice cream vendors were evenly spread out (something like x1 = 250m and x2 =750m). In this configuration nobody ever has to walk further than 250m to buy an ice cream.

But in a free market, where the ice cream vendors compete against each other, this configuration is unstable. They would gradually migrate towards the middle of the beach (slowly grabbing each other's customers) until the free market equilibrium is reached where x1 = 500m and x2= 500m.  This equilibrium is globally suboptimal.

807  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Yes, the Bitcoin.org Site and Forum were Down on: December 01, 2010, 11:37:40 AM
Feel free to set that up.  Smiley

Usenet newsgroups can be accessed via the web using Google Groups, but to set up a new Usenet newsgroup (not just a "Google group") I believe you need a Usenet subscription.

Is there anyone here who has one?
808  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Yes, the Bitcoin.org Site and Forum were Down on: December 01, 2010, 10:50:44 AM
There has been discussion about somehow making a distributed Forum... or an auto-syncing forum...

A distributed, auto syncing forum?

What about Usenet?
809  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Setting up a Stock Exchange on: November 30, 2010, 02:44:21 PM
If the whole thing is based on "insecurities" rather than securities it may just stay inside the confines of the grey market.

Make it an informal, honor-based exchange, without binding contracts, and you no longer meet the legal definition of a security (which always requires some sort of contract). Make it a bit like crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter except that the giving goes both ways. Tit for tat. Use webs of trust to keep the "insecurities" as private and confidential as possible. Nobody but the parties involved need to know about them.

You could also follow the example of Wikileaks and go supranational, cherry-picking from the legislations that suit your business model most. There is no reason this website must be under the jurisdiction of any one particular country. Bitcoin itself is already supranational.
810  Other / Off-topic / Re: Political Assessment on: November 30, 2010, 01:57:20 PM
Apolitical, not big on ideology, more of a practical, "whatever works" type of person.

But I probably pass the duck test for a centre-left-libertarian.

I believe that a functioning society needs a balance of collectivism/cooperation/solidarity and selfishness/competition/individualism. However, I believe that collectivism can and should be strictly voluntary.  

I'm too cynical to believe that true anarchy is sustainable. Humans are a very hierarchial species by nature, and some thug will always dominate unfortunately; that thug may as well be democratic government (the least of all evils). That government should be as small and as accountable as possible.  Utilitarian, "harm-reduction" based government interference should be minimised; if it can be justified at all it must be based on reason and empirical evidence.
811  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: continuous function for generation ? on: November 30, 2010, 01:01:33 PM
Speculators will anticipate that there will be fewer coins hitting the market after 210,000. The price will rise to reflect this supply reduction, long before the day of the switch. I bet that price fluctuations on that day will not be any more untypical than on any other day.

What will happen is a dramatic reduction in difficulty. That's only a minor issue, because even if difficulty drops from 10,000,000 to just 1,000,000, the chance of a double spending attack remains zero for all practical purposes.
812  Economy / Economics / Re: Wealth comes from serving your customers. on: November 30, 2010, 08:27:21 AM
I don't think it's as simple as this.

Amazon and Walmart were initially successful because they gave customers what they wanted, at a lower price, yes. Once they reach a certain size, however, network effects come into play, and network effects will give you an automatic advantage over your smaller competitors even if your customer service isn't better.

A company that makes lots of money in absolute numbers is a good sign, I agree.

A company that sustains excessive profit margins (over 20%) over more than 3 years is often a bad sign however, because it indicates an uncompetitive market. In a perfect market profit margins always tend to zero.

In the long term an uncompetitive market is bad for everyone, even for the companies making those kind of profits, because they encourage complacency.
813  Other / Off-topic / Re: In the "Rise of the Millenials" section on: November 28, 2010, 10:07:49 PM
I am not sure that it means that kids are hard to teach.  There is a dynamic of attention span.  The attention span for listening to a lecture is certainly decreasing.  This is due to age of media.  It is not to be seen as a put down, it is more about the reality of our age.

Humans should be able to concentrate, focus on a subject or task for more than 10 minutes.  Smiley  It is only reality if we permit the general loss of skills like attention to detail.

What's the point of learning every last detail of a technology if the technology will be obsolete after 10,5,3 years anyhow? Transferrable skills, meta-skills, and flexibility, that''s what you need to survive in a double exponential growth, high tech economy.
814  Other / Off-topic / Re: I am 19. WTF Do I know? on: November 28, 2010, 10:01:10 PM
Am I such a fool for believing such a crazy idea like bitcoin can succeed?

What's so crazy about the idea? To me it seems like an obvious way of using the internet. Wasn't something like Bitcoin bound to happen sooner or later? But WTF do I know? I didn't think Wikipedia was crazy either when I first came across it in 2003.
815  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: The Robotic Courier Network Thought Experiment on: November 26, 2010, 03:05:51 PM
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Robots belong to people.  There is no point building a robot who belongs to no-one.

They would be the physical equivalent of open source software which also "belongs" to no one. 

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I also disagree about vandalism being discouraged.  If I had such a robot in front of me, I could destroy it, not for the bitcoins, but just for fun.

The more BTC stored inside the robot, the smaller the chance of vandalism.

Destroying a "wealthy" robot for fun would be the equivalent of you  finding a safe on the street that you know has $100,000 inside it, and then dumping that safe in the ocean, just for fun.
816  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: The Robotic Courier Network Thought Experiment on: November 26, 2010, 01:27:57 PM
Fully homomorphic encryption would open the possibility of 100% autonomous robots.

The robots store Bitcoin private keys inside a fully homomorphically encrypted program.

Whenever the robot gets repaired or refuelled (by whoever feels like doing it - there is no central authority maintaining the robots), the robot rewards that person with a few BTC.

Of course the robot would require some unforgeable proof that it has been refuelled or repaired, before sending a BTC transaction. I'm not sure how this could be done.

The robots could also "earn" BTC by delivering stuff for people and getting paid.

Vandalism is discouraged, because if you destroy the robot the BTC stored in its memory are gone forever. Remember that simply copying the memory is useless because it's encrypted, and decryption is only possible by interacting with the robot.
817  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: getting my cash out on: November 26, 2010, 11:11:41 AM
If that's too inconvenient for you, this trader will buy your Bitcoins for Paypal USD:

http://www.nanaimo-gold.com

In your Paypal account you can instantly convert USD to GBP, then transfer the balance to a UK bank account.
818  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: getting my cash out on: November 26, 2010, 10:42:05 AM
when it comes time to pay my bills etc, how to extract my UK bitcoin?

I've found vendors that require swift transfer but that costs me 40 pounds.

Is there an easy UK was of getting my money out?

Many thanks guys

Find a user who has a UK bank account and do an over-the-counter trade with them:

http://bitcoin-otc.com/
819  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Hub Culture on: November 26, 2010, 09:53:18 AM
Have you guys ever checked out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_Culture

I have the impression that they are being deliberately secretive as to how exactly the price of the Ven is determined. At least I couldn't find a satisfactory explanation of the mechanics anywhere on the site.

Is the price fixed by the central authority (Gekko Global Markets - deliberately ironic choice of name?)  using a basket of commodities?

Or is the price allowed to float freely?

Seems to be both, or a combination of the two.  In any case this currency is far too centralised and far too closed for my taste.

But I really liked their idea of pavillions.   Would be a great way to promote bitcoin and to allow people to trade face-to-face.
820  Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: The World's First International Bitcoin Users Meet-up on: November 26, 2010, 09:01:30 AM
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We can have a day of skiing together in Feb or March 11! :-)

Good idea. Perhaps Valais/Wallis as it's accessible from both sides of the country? Crans Montana would maybe be easiest transport wise. I haven't skied in Zermatt yet and would love to go some time this season.
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