Lol!  This one deserves a bump  

First of all, a good refutation of the "hoarding problem"  is here:

http://falkvinge.net/2011/08/21/bitcoins-deflationary-economy-not-a-problem-in-itself/

Second of all, I am curious how one could conclude that the value of transactions in Bitcoins has fallen.  Has anybody made the chart from the block data?     

I don't feel so desperate to nitpick, sorry if it came across like that.  New bitcoins are now being printed (issued really) at 50 every 10 minutes.  A quick read through his article might lead people to believe that no new bitcoins are issued.  In my mind that's an important difference and one that should be checked before going in the NYT.  If it were my article I would feel the need to publish an erratum.  However, I do agree with zby and netrin..  these are technical details and people will know to take them with a grain of salt from economists.  And you are right: the monetary inflation (of BTC) is fixed not variable.    


  

Hmm, yes you might be right about this but I still don't get the angle.  If he really disliked bitcoin then why bring all the press to it with the article in the NYT?  It didn't come across to me as entirely negative..   Most likely I don't see all the politics involved      

Good point.  Looks to me like he didn't spend 20 seconds to even read the wikipedia article about bitcoins.  The most directly false statement was:

"Bitcoin has [...], in which the money supply is fixed rather than subject to increase via the printing press."

Maybe he saw that it would be fixed at 21 million bitcoins, but mistook the tense for present and stopped reading there?  Even a casual read through any documentation of "what is mining" would make it clear that the money supply is indeed increasing via the printing press, in direct contradiction to his statement.

You're right that the movie industry represents an interesting case, perhaps more affected by IP laws the the other examples mentioned so far in this thread.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out as IP laws collapse and distribution methods change drastically.  Already we are seeing more and more advertising and merchandising and related spinoffs, as well as more streaming and other distribution methods.  Pre-pay by theatres to get new content is also emerging and "pay per view" type arrangements.   I don't know the industry at all but I suspect holly/bollywood budgets could come down as the industry is forced into an emerging free market economy.     

Yes, and it would have been cheaper to do so.  People love star wars for the story and charachters, etc., not because LucasFilms LLC paid the government a fee.  Also, they are in no way "protected" from copies being made after launch.  They still plan to make a profit. 


Sorry but that is simply untrue.   Entertainment can make money by bringing it to people easier than the people getting themselves for free, by selling value-added memberships, subscriptions, virtual items, etc..  add-ons..  advertisements and merchandise.. the list goes on and on.  I don't think IP lawsuits will be the big money maker for this game.   Futher, many far better spoken and educated economists have contended that so-called "piracy" actually benefits the bottom line of software companies.   More people use it, there is more demand, more buzz, more sales. 

Thanks very much for your help.  I am still a little unclear on the motivation for the "merged mining" proposed change and also surprised that there is not more discussion when an official change to the protocol is being proposed in the near future. 

The wiki seems self contradictory at times; for example it states: 

"One final reason is that Satoshi was opposed to putting non-Bitcoin related data into the main chain. As creator of the system, his opinion should carry a lot of weight with anyone serious about extending it. "

This seems like an argument against such a change for merged mining.   

From section "mining" in githu docs:

"When a miner submits a solution, the solution is submitted to both chains. "

This doesn't make sense.  A solution to BTC chain includes BTC transactions and hashes of previous BTC blocks.  How could this possibly be submitted to a NMC chain or have any relevance as proof of work for the NMC network? 

Finally, what is the motivation here?  I see added complexity and no greater security for either network. 



 

Hogwash.  What person really believes that the fictitious person "time warner" really owns the song happy birthday, and has a legitimate grievance if you sing it?  You claim society recognizes that as some kind of legitimate ownership?  What person believes that Microsoft will be able to prevent people from using old versions of XP they downloaded?  I know they wouldn't want to prevent that, but I think most people realize they couldn't anyway.  What portion of society is morally outraged when you photocopy a piece of sheet music for your class?     
 
Society recognizes that we have backwards laws which can from time to time be taken advantage of for personal short-term gain.  It is 100% clear that the only way to keep ideas "owned" is to not publish them.  Once they are public, claims of ownership are basically ludicrous but sometimes still accepted in corrupt courts. 


Somehow your claim here without any example is not as compelling to me as articles by e.g. the Economist, inventors, musicians, researchers, and a growing chorus of people from all walks of life screaming how so-called IP laws make us MUCH WORSE OFF.  Medically, academically, technologically, economically, and ecologically IP laws have been DEVASTATING.  Seriously.  Don't take my word for it, read about it and think it through.     


You get what you wanted if indeed the bottler put what you expected and what they claimed into the bottle.  If not, they committed fraud.  This has nothing to do with Intellectual Property.  Budweiser of Czech is not committing fraud, they have a product also named "Budweiser" and they tell you it was brewed in the Czech republic.  Do you agree with the IP lawyers who don't think that should be legal?   


You might as well claim that we have a super-abundance of good things because you prayed for them on sunday.  The same quality of evidence exists backing up that statement.   


OK: here's something.  Abolition of IP laws.  That would clearly produce more goods for us as a society.  The proof is trivial: IP laws explicity prevent production, allowing only one party (the monopoly) to produce in a given area.  Opening up production to other parties could only encourage production of goods. 

       


 

Doesn't make a lick of sense to me, sorry.  I mean, I can understand a pool which switches back and forth between mining NMC and BTC or other block chains, based on market value and difficulty, but that is simply switching.  I fail to see how work done in solving one hash or share (effectively a set of lower difficulty solves on ONE block chain) can be applied to another block chain.  Auxilliary chain?  Can you point me to a description please? 

If I submit a batch of low-difficulty solved BTC blocks, which have in them the pool operator as the beneficiary, it is proof of work that I am working for the pool.  This work cannot possibly be accepted by a NMC pool as having any meaning at all in the NMC chain right? 

Ok, if you are talking about interesting pool software to give miner choices or enable intelligent switching, I understand.. however it seems you are discussing a core change to the client.  If you could figure out what I am missing here I would be greatly in your debt.  Thanks        

 

Who said anything about zero return? 

I claim that it is possible to make a profit even when competition is allowed.  Do you disagree with this statement?   

Yes, intellectual property laws are holdovers from monarchy, when the payments to "own" intellectual property would be made to the king.  Today they are made to the government in largely the same fashion, although the goverment no longer has as much power over the marketplace and so the power of the IP laws is dying (fortunately for the populace).  Also, look at the language used, e.g. "royalties". 

Are you defending the right to pay off government officials for monopoly control of a marketplace, and then suggesting that without said protectionism no investment could be made? 

Its also ironic that such a false statement would appear in this forum..  as bitcoin itself is a nice example proving the statement false.  Imagine, an entire community working on high-tech important research.  And all without a king's guarantee of unfair profits at the end! 

Face-palm..   and the language is "latin" as spoken e.g. in the Roman empire. 

Thanks for trying to explain, but I still don't get it.  Sorry...     What am I missing please? 

A block submitted for solve on the bitcoin network has the hash of the previous block, as well as BTC transactions, and the BTC address of the winning miner, as well as a nonce that was varied endlessly when trying to "solve the block".  To have a valid block you need all these.  Similar for a NMC block.  Right?  Thus, if you are looking for valid BTC blocks, you are looking for BTC blocks which couldn't possibly pass as valid NMC blocks.  I don't see how that could affect NMC in any way either via reward or via helping to secure the network. 

   

You make two interesting points here.  One is a quick suggestion that an "owner" of private property is a human.  Let me go out on a limb here and say that this suggestion has merit, when the ownership conflict in question affects humans.  However I don't see this one becoming mainstream in the immediate future, after an open system of money becomes mainstream if at all.  Currently, fictitious persons such as LLCs, AGs, etc. usually have full rights of ownership and often more rights than humans (lower taxes on ownership, lower liabilities).  As a bitcoin enthusiast we might define ownership of an object as the ability to create a recognized valid transaction of said object. 

The second is that intellectual property pertains to an object, as you put it:  "an object that resembles [] characteristics [] of an object owned by another []".
This might not pertain to e.g. a band performing a song for which ownership is claimed by a fictitious person, or a teenager who had chunks of bits which could be encoded to recreate said performance whiz through the random access memory of her computer.  However, it may be a good way to think about it, for the RAM itself is an object, as is the band on the stage.  In some sense then, it is the shirt with the Carmody number on it which is illegal under US law..  not the abstract number itself    a little better?

It is important to distinguish that if I sell you a product, and and lie to you about its manufacturer, I have committed fraud.  Further, if I claim your work is my own I have committed plagiarism.  Fraud and plagiarism are crimes in their own right with their own retributions from different institutions.  Intellectual property laws outlaw activities that are not fraud and are not plagiarism, and it is those aspects of intellectual property laws which stifle innovation and lead to gross inefficiencies:   


"There was the American public service National Public Radio / This American Life with the longer in-depth When Patents Attack. New York Times is calling the whole deal “disturbing”. The Economist has a piece which explains why patents hinder rather than help innovation. The Guardian notes that patents make companies find it more valuable to sue each other than “actually making things”, and calls the whole construct “foolish”. Washington Post writes that “instead of spurring innovations and entrepreneurship, patents are being used … by cynical lawyers to stifle and discourage them.”"

(last paragraph taken from http://falkvinge.net/2011/08/24/sudden-mass-support-from-oldmedia-patents-do-prevent-innovation/
)   




     

Charles Stross "Accelerando"  has some interesting discussion of alternative currencies and systems of economics, as well as some rather substantial computing structures  

OK, I know that the whole point of the system is that bitcoins are decentralized.  However, it seems that some of the advantages of the block chain system (e.g. non-counterfeitability, transferability, security) could be implemented in a centralized system.   Curiosity led to  a cursory search of this forum for discussion, but I didn't find any other than discussion of centralized control of software clients / protocol changes. 

In such a system there could be various degrees of centralization, at one extreme all new blocks would be made by the central authority (no hashing necessary ... ) and and also control over the reward per block.  In this "dollarcoin" the central issuer would still have control over the money supply (monetary inflation) however the amount printed would be public.  This would be similar in some ways to the USD or EUR system except that there wouldn't be professional economists arguing about whether 15 trillion or 30 trillion had recently been created...  could mean better transparency..  lower transaction fees and higher liquidity..   

Of course, various degrees of decentralization could be applied.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if others were thinking about or directly planning such systems and so.. your thoughts and job offers please

cheers - 

   

Right, we "lose medical research" completely as you say because everybody knows the only reason to ever do medical research or perform medicine is to collect money by monopolist market manipulation.  If we don't have the king pay us off in unearned dollars, why would I want to do medical research?       

Further, we all know that medicine in the sole pursuit of collecting money unfairly is extremely efficient and just suits all our needs perfectly, leading to valuable research, collaboration, and a truly healthy populace.   


 

I am trembling in fear of the loss I will feel when beverage bottlers are forced to compete in a free market.  The horrors!
And the audacity to think that a car company would have to also make parts at competitive prices..   sacrilege!  The Ford family and shareholders should be able to profit from the work of 100 years ago and not have to compete with current markets.   



Hmm, well some people might argue that free markets do provide benefit to society, but I won't bore you with that tired old line. 

Sadly, as IP laws die their last gasps in the coming years, drug research will stop.  And by drug research, of course I mean research of new litigation to increase profits from drugs which cannot compete based on their effects, propping up of prices and strongarming competition, and pushing inappropriate medicines when well-tested "non patented" medicines are safer.   However don't worry, there will still be people selling snake even without the incentive of market protection by the king.

       

SEWARD, NE—Claiming he wasn't afraid to let everyone in attendance know about "the real mess we're in," Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly got drunk Tuesday and told everyone at Elwood's Corner Tavern about how absolutely fucked the U.S. economy actually is.

Bernanke, who sources confirmed was "totally sloshed," arrived at the drinking establishment at approximately 5:30 p.m., ensconced himself upon a bar stool, and consumed several bottles of Miller High Life and a half-dozen shots of whiskey while loudly proclaiming to any patron who would listen that the economic outlook was "pretty goddamned awful if you want the God's honest truth."

"Look, they don't want anyone except for the Washington, D.C. bigwigs to know how bad shit really is," said Bernanke, slurring his words as he spoke. "Mounting debt exacerbated—and not relieved—by unchecked consumption, spiraling interest rates, and the grim realities of an inevitable worldwide energy crisis are projected to leave our entire economy in the shitter for, like, a generation, man, I'm telling you."

"And hell, as long as we're being honest, I might as well tell you that a truer estimate of the U.S. unemployment rate is actually up around 16 percent, with a 0.7 percent annual rate of economic growth if we're lucky—if we're lucky," continued Bernanke, nearly knocking a full beer over while gesturing with his hands. "Of course, if everybody knew that, it would likely cripple financial markets across the entire fucking globe, even in various emerging economies with self- sustaining growth."

After launching into an extended 45-minute diatribe about shortsighted moves by "those bastards in Congress" that could potentially exacerbate the nation's already deeply troublesome budget imbalance, the Federal Reserve chairman reportedly bought a round of tequila shots for two customers he had just met who were seated on either side of him, announcing, "I love these guys."

Numerous bar patrons slowly nodded in agreement as Bernanke went on to suggest the United States could pass three or four more stimulus packages and "it wouldn't even matter."

"You think that's going to create long-term economic growth, let alone promote job creation?" Bernanke said. "We're way beyond that, my friend. There are no jobs, okay? There's nothing. I think that calls for another drink, don't you?"

While using beer bottles and pretzel sticks in an attempt to explain to the bartender the importance of infusing $650 billion into the bond market, the inebriated Fed chairman nearly fell off his stool and had to be held up by the patron sitting next to him.

Another bargoer confirmed Bernanke stood about 2 inches from her face and sprayed her with saliva, claiming inflation was going to "totally screw" consumer confidence and then asking if he could bum a smoke.

"Sure, we could hold down long-term interest rates and pursue a program of quantitative easing, but c'mon, we all know that's not going to make the slightest bit of difference when it comes to output, demand, or employment," Bernanke said before being told to "try to keep [his] voice down" by the bartender. "And trust me, with the value of the U.S. dollar in the toilet, import costs going through the roof, and numerous world governments unprepared for their own substantial debt burdens, shit's not looking too good for us abroad, either."

"God, I'm so wasted," added Bernanke, resting his head on the bar.

Later in the evening, Richard Kampman, a truck driver who was laid off in 2010, said Bernanke approached him in the men's restroom and attempted to strike up a conversation about various factors contributing to the current financial crisis.

"He stumbled up to the urinal and started mumbling on about the depressed housing sector or something," said Kampman, who claimed Bernanke had to use both hands on the wall to steady himself. "Then after a while he just sort of stopped and I couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying."

"Then he puked all over the sink and the mirror," Kampman added.

Customers at the bar told reporters the "shitfaced" and disruptive Bernanke refused to pay for his drinks with U.S. currency, claiming it was "worthless." Witnesses also confirmed that near the end of the evening, Bernanke put money into the jukebox and selected Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" to play five times in a row.

"This is what it's all about," said Bernanke, who reportedly danced alone in the middle of the dark tavern. "Fucking love this song."


http://www.theonion.com/articles/drunken-ben-bernanke-tells-everyone-at-neighborhoo,21059/

Ah, you must be a dolphin or perhaps an ant? 

Enhanced self image is often correlated with poor performance.