Look at the chart of Rome's population falling from 1.4 million to 30,000. A model you'd like to follow? Global financial implosions are chaotic. a) No. There has never been one, so you wouldn't know. b) Aggregate human behaviour is chaotic. c) Chaos theory is a theory about the behaviour and evolution of complex dynamic systems. You seem to be confusing the general idea that things are unpredictable with different ideas of wanton destruction. You assume too much. And you don't seem to understand the issues. For example: Japan owes no debt to the outside world. What the media have labelled debt there is just credit. Some countries have it bad for various reasons, for example: deregulation of the banking sector which allowed the banks to become (more) corrupt and trade among themselves, while withholding credit from the people, thus turning the GFC into a real crisis rather than just imaginary bullshit where the banks' dodgy books didn't add up. So when you say "order is propped up by debt", you're completely wrong. If anything, credit is being propped by (relative) order. |
|
|
|
waste of btc for all parties involved. i'm guessing it's a scam that won't last long.
It's Bitcoin. The site operator couldn't reverse the transactions even if he wanted to. If, by some stroke of luck he changed his mind and decided to shut the site down: a) He's potentially got some very angry and dangerous customers. b) It would be difficult to convincingly get rid of the coins, say, by donating them to a charity, or do anything at all to protect himself from the wrath of other people. Either way, he risks not escaping alive. Therefore: serious concern that his plan is to get martyred. |
|
|
|
Chaos means you don't have time to keep up with all the freedom. Just ride it. Evil things happen because a few evil people were more organised. It's always like that. Bottom-up, individualism is a bitch of an adjustment psychologically when you've been accustomed to top-down, collectivism. ^ (Talk of "new paradigm" -- must be near the top of the bubble.) What you're talking about is extremist, full of flaws, and will not play out how you think it will play out. It's all fun and games when theorising on politics fora about "which ideological story is better: Anarchy or Socialism?" But when people start playing with others' lives, I think it's time someone told you that you guys need more theory homework. |
|
|
|
Who will have time to take down sites? I didn't suggest taking the site down by force. I'm suggesting somehow talking to him so he changes his mind. The difference is important. There's your game theory. Chaos my friend. You are not prepared. No one is.
But we can choose what kind of chaos we want to live in. I would prefer a nice kind. |
|
|
|
"False flag" is being called so often these days that it is losing any genuine meaning.
Plus it's too often the argument from ignorance - "Well, what else could it possibly be?"
Yup, if you cant prove it you must be a conspiracy nut (unless you're talking about WMD's and terrorists ofc). Guys, let's not get caught up in the semantics. Someone did it. They picked a really good moment (for them) with maximum public exposure. We don't know who this "Samurai" guy is, and I don't see how finding out would even be helpful, unless it somehow helps in talking him into taking the site down. |
|
|
|
A) Someone's "art project";
B) Someone trolling the Bitcoin community;
C) Someone trolling the sometimes-parallel-sometimes-not 'anarcho'-capitalist community;
D) Someone's giant "HEY LOOK AT ME I'M EDGY" attention-seeking statement to the world;
E) A potential opportunity for some guy to scam a bunch of BTC from white males with anger issues.
Thanks. Not to belittle your post but I really wish I could believe in those, even the scam one. "False flag" is being called so often these days that it is losing any genuine meaning.
Understood. I used the same words others were using in the press thread. Plus it's too often the argument from ignorance - "Well, what else could it possibly be?"
fear. I have a bad feeling/hunch that that site could be an ignition point for a whole lot of problems. What do we do? |
|
|
|
Yes, I think someone even talked about it in the 2012 Bitcoin conference, but now that "normal" people are sending the RT link around on Facebook, whole new game plan. Option 1: They swoop in and somehow botch the arrest. He becomes a martyr. Newer, better, sites doing the same thing pop up. Option 2: Ignore, ignore, laugh, etc. And before you know it. One million dollars on Obama's head, and wouldn't you know it? Someone "predicts correctly". Apart from sounding almost as unbelievable and crazy as Bitcoin itself, plz tell what's stopping either of those 2 options? |
|
|
|
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=337897.0TL;DR: Someone made an "assassination market" website in plain sight... false flag, predictable timing with the bubble/politics/press coverage and shit like that. However... on RT: http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-assassination-market-anarchist-983/Sanjuro’s FAQ shows that he is aware of the imminent prospect of arrest.
“All the money will be confiscated by the state, and I will probably be killed or spend a considerable portion of my life in jail. Provided the system is a success, of course. Which I am hoping for.” Did I read that right?How long did it take for fucking Silk Road to get taken down? 2, 3 years? Who gives a fuck about "whodunnit" and "oh it's just another bad press false flag by the haters." What if they "can't" take that website down because of say, magic wikileaks servers or some similar excuse??
UPDATE:
This is how I see things potentially playing out. At first, nobody takes the threat seriously. Everyone who has followed Bitcoin has seen so many scams and would-be disasters that were supposed to destroy Bitcoin but failed, that we've become numb to it all.
Occasionally a few coins get deposited, and it's seen as black humour for the lulz. Who cares if it's probably a scam and the creators will disappear with the money? It's Bitcoin -- stuff like that happens all the time. It's a risk people take when trying to remain anonymous, and 2-party escrow is still in beta. Authorities probably could take down the website if they wanted to. IF.
Meanwhile, the funds slowly add up and eventually they reach a tipping point. Whether it's because of slow accumulation or rising exchange rate doesn't matter. Some big-name politician gets killed, and that's when the SHTF.
Suddenly, the news is 100 times worse than Silk Road ever was. Massive regulation ensues. Innocent Bitcoin enthusiasts, miners, early adopters, and developers get arrested. Masses of people who don't care about any alternative political systems like Laissez-faire, Anarchy, Anarcho-Capitalism, Libertarianism, Zeitgeist Movement, etc., they see this from the POV of "normal" people: murder caused by Bitcoin and therefore it must be stopped.
And who gains in all of this? Not some phantom government which is supposedly evil and coercive -- they're just taking bribes like all good Capitalists. It's the fucking dinosaur banking sector.
|
|
|
|
RT version throws this curve ball, which I didn't notice in the Forbes version: Sanjuro’s FAQ shows that he is aware of the imminent prospect of arrest.
“All the money will be confiscated by the state, and I will probably be killed or spend a considerable portion of my life in jail. Provided the system is a success, of course. Which I am hoping for.”
The world has known a lot of martyrs. "False flag" or not, this kind of divisive shit could get serious. Doesn't matter who's behind it.  |
|
|
|
LOL! He's so funny when he's honest which is why I like him. Well that was last Feb. I would assume he's learned more sense then. Thanks! He's probably doubling down on a losing bet and hoping for something to bail him out. The funny thing is that he seems quite unable to comprehend what the various things which could save him might be. Or maybe he does but does not want to pick one. What's his business, though? If he's just a retail seller and then talking-up gold on the radio, then he doesn't give a shit. I find all this "intrinsic value" crap unconvincing -- anyone who cares enough can do their due diligence and google "value" and find out what the different theories are. Disclaimer: I bought a tiny amount of gold coinz right at the peak of the bubble, after listening to guys like Peter Schiff yelling "zomg dollar collapse imminent! Get ze gold while it's cheap." Now I'm a starving artist, so I'm not making that mistake again. Ohh cheap bitcoins!  |
|
|
|
Solution: The FREE market.
We won't have a true free market in Bitcoins until we have a fully decentralized exchange.
If it's not free right now, then what's stopping it? |
|
|
|
|
Bitcoin is still immature and not used very much. Once usage increases, the fee system will create negative feedback, which should reduce swings.
It's a very simple formula:
Exchange rate too high? --> Ramp up the fees so it cools off.
Exchange rate too low? --> Reduce fees to make Bitcoin more attractive.
Big stake holders will want to protect their stake against unwanted instability, and one way to do that is by being a miner (and/or running lots of nodes) and fine-tuning transaction fees so the monetary velocity doesn't get too high or too low.
The only thing is that it relies on human oversight, and I know that a lot of people here are really idealistic and imagine that fees can somehow can be set automatically and in a friendly decentralised manner. It won't work. If anyone tries, it will be gamed, just like all the other ideological stuff in the world seems to get gamed when people get greedy. Even the above formula will likely be a chaotic battle against speculators.
|
|
|
|
LightRider's idea of capitalism makes me think of trying to defend the idea that all sex should be banned, because while some people may be having sex for lovemaking or procreation, sex also involves rape, and rape is apparently just as much a part of lovemaking as everything else is.
In this case, making love, the voluntary exchange, is capitalism, and rape, which may have the same result (procreation, or in other sense profit), is corporatism and plunder. I and other pro-capitalists here are doing the equivalent of trying to point out that sex, and making love, has many uses and is the best way to progress forward, while Lightrider is doing the equivalent of saying that rape and making love are all the same thing, and that sex should be completely abolished.
Madness!
Now you're just trolling. I for one, already pointed out several times that trade is mostly not voluntary. Which reminds me, @kjj, you still haven't provided any example of voluntary trade. You don't know the half of it.
I think you missed the part where he was showing that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Capitalism is about voluntary exchange. How about: Alice wants an apple for 80c. Bob wants to sell an apple in exchange for $1.20. They meet in the middle and settle on $1.00 and the swap proceeds successfully. Was that a voluntary exchange?? ...In before a Stefan Molyneux fan says "yes, mutual gain, everyone's happy, end of story"... Actually NO! Alice needed the apple because she was hungry. In the language of Libertarians, "her stomach brutally coerced her and forced her hand." What about Bob? Did he really volunteer to be selling apples? Actually, no. He'd rather be doing something else, but he needs to feed his family and they can't live solely on apples. Even that fairytale example has hidden complexity because of the made-up accounting unit called "$". The story has surely been retold 1000 times on this forum: given that things were scarce all over the place, people needed something that was liquid, fungible, divisible, recognisable, and hard to fake, i.e.: money. In Bob's case he needed other things more than he needed the apple. We could explore the example further, making it more realistic and trying to figure out some things like why Bob initially wanted 20c more, and why some apples are left to rot on the ground. But first we must get past this "free trade = voluntary" dogmatic nonsense. |
|
|
|
2) I provided one example out of an infinite number of examples I could have chosen. Here, I'll do three more: a - a = 0 is really (1)a - (1)a = (1)0 1 + 2 = 3 is really (1)1 + (1)2 = (1)3 "Apple" is really (1)Apple Yes, you actually can do this with math, and yes, it actually can teach you something. In this instance, math shows us that "1" is analogous to a distributive property of identity. This is interesting because it shows that for anything to exist in a mathematical landscape, each thing has a characteristic that is shared by every other. To learn more, I suggest thinking about some more interesting number relationships. Of particular interest to me, aside from the number '1', are 'zero' and 'infinity'. Take 'infinity' for instance. Since 'infinite' represents a sum but literally means "not-finite," it's obvious that some infinities can be larger than others. Consider the following scenario: "Hey Bob, I like your...yard." "Oh yeah? How big do you think it is?" "I don't know, but it looks HUGE! You know how big mine is?" "Not sure, but definitely smaller than mine." "  " And there you have it. Obvious proof that some infinities are bigger than others. And can you believe that the mathematical proof of this was touted as a huge breakthrough? Give me a break. Philosophers have the one-up on scientists and mathematicians all-day everyday (because it's the only academic discipline that is comprehensive enough to include the tools of both the scientist and the mathematician). 3) Ascribing a probability to an event is akin to saying "I don't know." Knowing that you can't know is still knowing. It also makes for a better surprise. 4) If you were a microbe on an elephant's butt, would you know that the ground you're walking on is an elephant? Jesus Christ! OK, I'm not going to be kind any more. Your logic is absolutely shocking and what's more, you are well aware of it. You are deliberately deceptive and will be treated as such by me from now on. You aren't interested in truth at all. You just want to play with people. Multiplying something by 1 only means you are saying there is one of this thing. Nothing more. It does not mean those things have a characteristic in common. Actually there's some significance because it means all of those things belong in the same set of countable things. Oranges and grains of sand may seem completely different, but they're both countable types of objects, so they belong in the same set. This is pretty common in (OOP) computer programming where various classes of objects all inherit from a super class called 'object'. Now if I try something special, like create an assumption about reality, that assumption is also countable -- there's one -- so it also belongs in the same set together with the other objects. Admittedly I'm not quite sure where he was going with this. Perhaps if I count the number of Greek gods, and you count the number of oranges, neither of us have a pre-existing basis to say "my things are more real than your things" because we both used the same technique: counting. And even if one of us does have a pre-existing basis, that basis is also a countable object that belongs to the same set. The "pot calling the kettle black" situation fits perfectly. Infinity is an idea, not a number. And numbers are not ideas? Having some infinites be bigger than others is complete nonsense. It's like when my brother used to say I hate you infinity + 1 times in response to my I hate you infinity. It's not a number, it doesn't have a size.
But numbers don't have a size either. Look: 2 and 2 -- different font size, same number. |
|
|
|
Bitcoin -- a cesspit of criminal minds that are terrified of two things: 1) government shutting them down, 2) any attempt to create alt-coins that risks diluting their deflationary profits. Would you like to make an altcoin? Just follow this guideline: first you will be ignored. then you will be laughed at. then shitloads of criminal behaviour will happen to try and take out your threat. then Bitcoin wins. Did I get the humour right?  |
|
|
|
You want to wield the awesome power of a full node, but with 0 running costs? You want the exchange rate to keep increasing at a massive exponential rate because of speculation about Bitcoin's amazing potential, but you don't want the inconvenience of real-world usage coming into play? Explain me like I'm 5. |
|
|
|
Thanks, OP! For the most part I agree. A word you were probably looking for (or trying to avoid in order to stick to plain English) is seigniorage, which I've mentioned a few times before. Just like the issuers of governmental cash make profit from money supply inflation, the 'issuers' (early adopters) of bitcoins profit immensely from Bitcoin's growth. We steal other people's slices of the "global value pie". However, I have confidence that most people can adapt, so I'll put an alternative spin on your points: Re: The Bleak Future of Fiat CurrenciesI think it's only as bleak as governments are untrust worthy and unstable. I guess we'll have to wait and see how they'll cope, and how people will adapt their governments. Re: Wealth DisparitiesYou seem to assume people will continue to rally behind Bitcoin's brand-name chain, and that the spin-offs will continue to be small-time wannabes. Maybe, but I hope that Ripple (or something similar) takes off, enabling easier exchange between various esoteric "coin ideas". I doubt they made it Open Source just so everyone would religiously rally behind the real Bitcoin. The way I see it, the free knowledge is supposed to help redress the unfairness of seigniorage. Everyone is welcome to create their own crypto flight miles, crypto discount coupons, crypto shares,... whatever their imagination comes up with. Re: Law enforcementI suspect many law enforcement agencies are well aware (or at least have some awareness) of the economics of crime. The harder they fight against drugs or child porn etc., the more scarce and therefore more lucrative it becomes. But how would society react if politicians said "actually, we shouldn't take child pornography off the Internet. If we just leave it there and ignore it, it'll be freely available for all the sickos and the makers of new stuff will go out of business." Maybe there would be an uproar and it would be the end of that person's political career. Maybe not. Drug reform is probably a safer bet because it's less contentious. It will take time. Re: What should we do?Never stop learning. Government don't just want to stop criminals(non-government) from illegal lucrative activity, the government themselves profit from such activities. Drugs are a great example, as long as they can control it, they can profit from scarcity and the handling of supply. Then you have prisons, war and all that good stuff that the government loves to collect your money for. Government only care about reform when they have no financial stake in said reform, if they have nothing to gain from you then you can rest assured that they only care if they can instead divert you while pick pocketing you elsewhere. Old post, I know, but still deserving of a reply. There seem to be 2 popular alternatives when comes to governments and money: 1) government has full control over things like M0 supply and interest rates. 2) there's a separation of powers and central bank restricts access. There seem to be lots of historical examples where #1 resulted in lots of problems, such as a change in leadership followed by theft and hyperinflation. However, #2 also seems to have been gamed, whereby a hierarchy of banks form a shadow government and attempt to starve the real government of funds. Come to think of it, I wonder how long the banks have been trying to crash the US government? Maybe they're not all so bad after all, just misguided. Those dirty tactics like drug trafficking, wars, and prison slave camps all suggest that the US government may have been been short of funds for a long time, and therefore they had to develop alternative income streams. |
|
|
|
In Bitcoin land, YOU control the money. In Bitcoin land, you hyper-deflate the money. In Bitcoin land, Bitcoin crashes UP. In Bitcoin land,... Add your own. Let's get some memes in here  |
|
|
|
$500 will be broken through and then we will crash shortly after.  Spike up to $2000 and a disastrous collapse to $800 where it will stagnate for a few months? Sweet!  |
|
|
|
As long as there is no consensus a Resource Based Economy will simply not work, as the philosophy of a RBE does not permit coercion of any kind. That is also why I believe a RBE will remain a pipe dream for quite some time. At some point however I think we will realize that our technology has become so advanced that there really is no reason to keep people enslaved in silly unnecessary jobs and that there actually is an abundance of resources on our planet for everyone. Competition and survival of the fittest is not the apex of evolution. Cooperation, love, and sharing is. But maybe I'm just a stupid neo-hippie. Don't worry, US-style Laissez-faire Capitalism will collapse if people maintain their hard-line stance that free trade is voluntary and good, and if they maintain their belief that "moral will" can be executed automatically and without personal intervention. However, this does not bode well for the idea of putting computers in charge of resource allocation either. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
