Thanks BadBear.

No, I am not responsible for the debts incurred on a discussion forum. I did not join here to loan money.

Hi folks,

Sometime last year my account was used to borrow a few BTC from someone and it was never paid back.

I can make a pretty strong case that it wasn't me and that another account of mine (@sjalq on Twitter) which used the same username and password (yes, yes I'm not a security genius like everyone else on here) was hacked about the same time.

How do I go about clearing my name?

Hi guys,

Does anyone know of a crypto-currency where transactions are completely private yet?

No the concern is still valid.

Computer power will continue to double every year or two. The exponential effect will catch up with almost any algorithm much sooner than we expect.

Hey there

I want to loan 13 btc
I am going to pay back 15.5 btc in 3 days

Cheers!

btc : 18WMxaHsxx6FuvbQbeA33UZud1bnmD7xY3

My concern is that lots of the comforts we now enjoy are the result of fine divisions of labour and the ability to trade.

The city I live in has 7x the pop of the entirety of Iceland.

Goed, ek wil graag jou mooi land gaan besoek.

My concern with Iceland is that there are simply too few people.

Oh man I really want to see Iceland now! Sounds simply awesome.

From a survivalist point of view though I want a place where the people are relatively non-violent and the state is relatively non-interventionist. When the tropical fruit encounters the rotary blade you will need other people you can co-operate with. I live in South Africa in Gauteng and I really don't think it will be safe here if the supply lines are up-heaved. The people are already on edge. Cape Town in the south would probably truck along like nothing happened and it is probably one of the top 10 most scenic cities on earth. Botswana and Namibia would be ideal for survivalists, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of land and very few people (like 1 person per 3 square kilometers).

Another place on interest would be Zimbabwe. Since it was recently decimated by government hyperinflation I think they'll maintain some sanity and have already developed the means to cope with hard times and shortages and went through that time without going into full on genocide (not that I wish what did happen on anyone).

Praat enige iemand hier Afrikaans?

The non-aggression principle can be applied or ignored by both atheists and religious people. There is no monopoly on rationality and life is simply to complex to claim that you are rational on all fronts. Remember one of the least rational and most destructive systems ever was sold as "rational" and run by atheists, unless I've just misread this whole thing about the soviets and they were all closet Catholics.

Currently the truest and most consistent libertarian with any political power is a Christian named Ron Paul.

It's lulz me to see something as irrelevant as evolution being discussed in relation to Ron Paul. So what!?

If you are having a heart attack and need a qualified doctor do you quiz him on his religious beliefs just in case while he's working on you he decides to pray for you?

The man is the US' ONLY option. His beliefs have clearly given him a grounding and integrity that others severely lack.

Good point, let me then rather say I think it is in our best interest to not resist on this point.

As for paying in dollars I think it would put negative pressure on the BTC price. So maybe working towards getting revenue services to accept alternative currency would be a positive move, then money stays in BTC as long as possible not triggering any sell trades. It would also incentivise governments to spend in BTC since they have BTC on hand and it is internationally usable.

I've been milling this over a bit and I think it will be extremely beneficial to liberty get get Bitcoin on the taxation radar.

Here's why;
The government relies mainly of violence to operate. It hides the true cost of that violence by enforcing a monopoly on the creation of money and being one of the primary beneficiaries of that monopoly.

The government as a whole though is not an intelligent entity and consists of individuals, some more clued up than others. Most however have no concept of sound economics or how government really operates. Conclusion; they don't know which segments of government are crucial to maintaining the status quo. The two most important elements being the gun and the printing press.

By helping the government to tax Bitcoin, instead of trying to hide incomes and money flows, we might be able to create the illusion that Bitcoin is helpful to their "cause". IE "Hey look a new form of income". We will however in the process remove from their reach the ability enforce the money monopoly (break their printing press). This will happen since Bitcoin will, when in widespread use, continue to increase in value as measured in fiat currency. More people will leave the fiat currency and this will lead to its eventual abandonment.

Once the above happens the government, if it wishes to continue it's violent activities, will be forced to extract the full cost via direct taxation. Since stealth taxes like inflation and "business tax" are much more damaging to normal people than they realize the true nature of what government is doing will become apparent to people and those activities will lose their air of legitimacy. The chances of people opposing those negative policies and opposing paying for them will then increase as well.

I somewhat agree. If Ron Paul cannot remove the chains from the market in time and without massive opposition then they may very well blame him.

I don't know enough about the American legislation machine and how long it takes to implement change or in this case remove legislation. If he can simply get rid of what he wants to get rid of and implement the "opt-out" options he is suggesting within his first year, the economy will both crash and recover incredibly within 4 years.

Yes, Dr. Paul is HIGHLY educated in Austrian economics.

He has suggested several bills that would remove the barriers that government imposes on currencies that would compete with the dollar.

Thanks,

Any ideas why it would work with Aero on and GPU 0 not mining and there is no dummy plug? Sorry to sound so vapid, but I'm not sure what the interactions here are.

If you don't like Chile, you should maybe you should try the countries further down the list.

Those countries come from the Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index. They are quite "Austrian" compared to the countries further down the list.

Thanks man,

Stupid Question, I take it dummy plugs are...?

OK, I will explain briefly why I disagree with your take on things and on Salman Khan's take on things. If you do not agree with me I expect the same respect I show you and do not resort to name calling, it is unnecessary and polarises the argument.

Socialism is good:
Socialism appears good, the most extreme forms of socialism have been Soviet Russia and Communist China. Both those places only improved as people were allowed to engage in free economic activity. The one had to collapse before things got any better, the other is becoming increasingly free and as a result increasingly prosperous.

A less extreme example of why socialism is not good is Sweden. Despite being held up as the shining light of socialism their economy was built on free market principles until the 50s when socialists gained power and began a crazy tax regimen on the rich and a highly managed society. In the early 90s they realized the damage this was doing and starting privatising many industries and restructured the tax system to benefit the specific people who paid the tax initially.

Regulation is great:
I agree, regulation is great if you are an incumbent corporation. Contrary to what many people think, regulatory bodies have almost all been hijacked to protect the very companies they were meant to protect. I live in South Africa and here we have 5 cellular companies who basically dictate to the regulator who must be let into their little ecosystem. This undermines the one regulation that cannot be hijacked, competition on cost and product quality in the absence of such regulation.

Ponder this, was it the treasury and the Fed that bailed out the banks in the US after they failed? These are supposed to be the bodies looking out for the people, and here they are giving their friends $1.4 Trillion.

I take it you mention this in reference to Salman Khan's explanation. I have an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Khan but in this instance I believe he is missing a few crucial elements.
Debt based money
There is really no limit to the money supply in the United States. Fractional reserves are still in place but have long since stopped acting as a restraint on the increase in credit. The primary beneficiaries of the debt based money system is the banks. They have access to low rate credit that allows them to purchase real world goods. The higher up in the system you go, the cheaper the credit becomes.

This creates the very dubious situation where banks can create very large amounts of money that then syphon into the economy, jacking up the prices for the goods it's meant to purchase. In the most recent example it was housing, there was a large amount of credit available for the purchasing of homes which lifted the prices, started the mania and eventually reached the point where people were unable to service the debt. This lead to bankruptcies, defaults and the whole system contracting in on itself again. This time not because the credit was no longer available but because people could no longer produce fast enough to service the debt.

"Deregulation"
The thing people never mention here are that there are controls AND privileges under regulation. When you hear about "deregulation" it is hardly ever taking away of privileges, only controls. Banks are EXTREMELY privileged through regulation they can make money out of basically nothing for Pete's sake!). What libertarians are saying is remove the controls AND the privileges. What people hear is keep the government privileges in place and remove only the restrains. Without the government privilege to create money the big banks will not last the end of the year.

These products have existed for a long time
CDO's were first created in 1987.
CDS are very normal, very necessary contracts that act as insurance against defaults, either private or governmental. Imagine trying to invest in a poor country without taking out insurance against irresponsible government action? These have exsited since the early 1990s
MBS have existed since 1981.
All these things could not have caused the damage they did if their value was not implicitly backed by the easy money of the federal reserve. The people trading and creating them knew they could get away with abusing them because the US govt would step up and fill the gap. If that knowledge was not there, they would never have reached the pandemic level they did.

Lastly I would like to point out that it was libertarian economists who were making the loudest noise about this when it was happening and were laughed at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw