With all due respect, Zoomhash is selling the 25mh/s gridseed g black units for .7 BTC.  Same chips, same hashing power, comes WITH a PSU, isn't a giant clusterfuck of 57 different units, and is new, not old and busted with half missing fans.  I would say if there is anyone trying to take advantage of another member it's you. 

Careful, that's blasphemy around these parts 
Why, you almost sound like a banker! 

If his white paper is believed,  his purpose in creating bitcoin was to create a completely irreversible payment system.  Any other purpose you may feel has "been lost sight of" never existed in the first place outside of your own imagination. 

I don't think so.  Obviously the problem goes beyond just one thing, or one cause.  The problems with wealth inequality in general are:

1.  I personally think there is a problem where, based on my particular station in life, I am afforded the opportunity to syphon off about 60% of my worker's productivity.  I don't actually produce anything, and yet I get the lions share of the profits of their work.  This isn't because I worked hard to get where I am, although I did.  I am well aware that it is based almost entirely off of where I was born and who I was born to.

2.  Looking at the larger picture we see that despite what the wealthy would have you believe, that they are wealthy because they earned it and worked hard, a quick glance at a list of the 0.1% will show you that in virtually every single case, they are there because they were born there.  As well, if you are in the 99.9%, you are there not because you worked less, but because you were born there.  And there is no crossover, ever.

3.  The wealth disparity itself makes it impossible to change the situation, bitcoin notwithstanding, simply because the wealthy are the ones that make the rules that everyone else has to follow.  In this day and age that often involves money policy but in previous ages it was land use, etc. 

And you will lose.  US courts are *very* generous when it comes to defending trademarks, and clearly you are using a trademarked image (not sure why you and everyone else keeps calling it copyright, this has nothing to do with copyrights). 

As stated before, it has nothing to do with them being afraid of bitcoin; if it can be demonstrated in court that they knew you were using their trademarked image and they did not oppose your use, you could then claim ownership of the trademark for yourself.

It would be (well actually no, fiat currency doesn't do it but I will assume it for the sake of argument).  And following your logic to it's conclusion, saying bitcoin will solve income inequality is like saying getting rid of guns will stop people from dying. 

Incidentally, yes wealth inequality is a problem, in that 99% of the people on the planet do 100% of the producing but only get to keep 40% of what they produce, while the other 1% that produce nothing, get to keep 60% based entirely on the luck of what family they were born into. 

No.  You can't copyright a picture.  This is a trademark.  In US law, if a company does not vigorously defend their trademarks, they lose them.  That is why you will see this all the time, a huge company filing suit against some small individual for things that hardly bare any resemblance at all.  They have to be able to demonstrate that they are enforcing their trademarks who they stand a chance of losing them.  It has nothing at all to do with perceiving something as a threat. 

This is simply common sense.  Enormous wealth inequality has existed since the beginning of recorded history.  Please explain, in your own words, how if fiat currency is the "primary tool that allows them to do this", the "problem" predates the cause by many thousands of years? 

Yea, I'm guessing "what to do when the package arrives", is probably not something any of you will have to worry about.  Just sayin.

It has absolutely nothing to do with fiat currency, and this is why bitcoin is not a solution to the "problem" or whatever you want to call it.  It is control of the means of production (historically through force, although the force is more implied these days then actually metted out) that leads to this inequality. 
Yes these days we call these people bankers and politicians; in the past we may have called them Lord, Your Majesty, sir, Pharoah, King, and far too many other titles to list them all here.  Wealth inequality predates fiat currency so it is obviously quite impossible that fiat currency is the cause. 

I know, and the fanboys like you would somehow find a way to make bitcoin the solution for that, too 
More seriously though, obviously if one is wealthy one probably doesn't consider it a problem, so there is no doubt that there are people who wouldn't consider it a problem.  However OP started a topic to discuss it, so why not just let the discussion go?  That's the whole point about having different threads, with different topics.  You could just easily start a discussion on how wealth inequality is not a problem and then everyone would be happy.

It is cut and dry.  Trickle down economics works exactly as  common sense says it would, reducing the taxes on the rich leads to the rich being richer, and no one else.  We tried it here in the US in the 80s for many years.  We tried it again just recently.  Exactly as you would expect, reducing taxes on the rich results in the rich being more rich.  None of that wealth ever "trickles down" because they simply pocket it.  The idea that you are taxing the "most efficient producers" is fallacious because it assumes the rich are rich because they are the most efficient producers.  In reality, with the exception of a few rare, lucky cases, the overwhelming majority of the rich are no different then anyone else except that their parents were rich.  Quite the opposite, the people at the top generally speaking don't actually produce anything at all, but rather use their power and position to siphon wealth off from the actual workers who actually create wealth. 

It is "the" problem because the OP identified it as such for this thread. 

I said I wouldn't comment anymore but since you could potentially kill someone I will chime in one last time.  No, drinking bleach will NOT cure malaria.  It has been studied (though really, common sense should answer this question for you) and does not in any way cure malaria except in the cases where it kills the patient.  The ONLY study ever done that indicated it was a cure for malaria was does by the person selling the stuff (and you have the balls to mention greed lol).  This is a prime example of what I mentioned earlier.  People like you start with the conclusion, and then any evidence that contradicts your conclusions are thrown out.  Obviously you won't get results that way (as evidenced by the complete failure of magic at curing disease) and this is why people like you hate the scientific method.  It isn't sufficient to simply declare something true, you have to be able to prove it, which is impossible when your entire premise is simply made up. 

Well it isn't circular reasoning at all.  Having superior results (which you don't dispute) is the proof of having a superior methodology.  What else are we measuring here but results?  One way of doing things works substantially better then the other.   If you didn't want results you wouldn't go to either a doctor OR a witch doctor you would just let yourself die of plague.  If you would prefer, I will concede the point and instead of labeling one way better than the other, I will simply state that the scientific method produces vastly superior results. 

It deifies nothing.  That is a label YOU supplied, I suspect because you simply don't like the method (though I hesitate to assume).  Nor does it shut down logical thinking (how would you even define such a thing even if it did?).  It is in fact derived from the same process.  Start with nothing, and simply observe and let the conclusion follow. 
I strongly suspect what is happening here is that you simply don't like it, but can't actually come up with a rational reason why and hence we've resorted to this.


Hence the thought experiment of which works better.  You can include any placebo effects you want and consider them a success.  It doesn't change the result.  700 years ago in Europe as I'm sure you are well aware, 1/3 of the population died of this disease despite trying all manner of religious and magical incantations, prayers, etc.  Today?  As long as you have access to a modern hospital it is easily cured, but you won't even get it in the first place because modern medicine did overnight what thousands of years of magic couldn't do and the disease has been virtually eradicated. 

Anyways, pleasure having this discussion with you, but I think we have both said pretty much all we can really say for our respective sides.  Cheers.

And the point you are missing is that there is nothing "free market" about western style, free market economics at least in the United States.  For many people in the USA there is no choice at all.  The local cable provider is the de facto internet provider, take it or leave it.  In other parts of the country there is simply no high speed option at all (much like, prior to government intervention many parts of the USA did not have landline telephone service).  And typically, in western style free market economies, the typical response to competition isn't to improve service or reduce price, it is to use various forms of rent seeking to make it difficult or impossible for your competition to compete in your market (look how the local telecoms respond when google fiber tries to enter a market to see western style "free markets" in action).

But the point I would rather address is the anti government regulation rant that typically comes from western style capitalist.  And what is most interesting about it is that typically when a western capitalist talks about government regulation being bad, what they really mean is that one specific government regulation is bad because it may potentially cost them money.  You won't for example, here the congressman up there say anything about the numerous government regulations that allow these telecom companies to exist in the first place.  He doesn't mention the enormous tax grants and free money they are given (so much for survival of the fittest business huh).  Do they for example own all the land they run their lines on?  Of course not, I have some on my property as we speak.  Government regulations prohibit me from cutting the lines or charging them rent of course though.  So before we get too carried away with the evils of government regulation let's just remember that these companies wouldn't even exist without government regulation, shall we?

Incidentally, the argument "you must be a socialist, and stupid", isn't very persuasive. 

It is a well established fact that through various techniques of modern medicine all gleaned from the scientific method, people live substantially longer and healthier lives than at any point in history before (excepting of course, the people who do not have access to such medicine).  This is simply a fact and really I'm not sure how you can even debate it.


Naturally, we all have a choice.  You *could*, if you wanted to, forgo all modern technologies and ignore everything science has done for you.  You could do this if you chose to, and you would choose to do so if you honestly felt you would be better off.  And yet, you do not.  You sit there in your house, with heat, and electricity, and internet, writing on a computer, etc.  Why is that?  I would posit that despite all your protestations to the contrary, you rather like what science has done for you and enabled you to do.  Ironic, isn't it, that without modern science you would not be able to share your anti-science rant with all of us!

Well, not really.   If you were to contract say, bubonic plague, you would find that modern medicine would cure you rather quickly.  If you were to use voodoo magic instead, you would find that your survival rate is about the same as it would be if you did nothing.  See the difference?

Let me put it in another way.  Say you contracted bubonic plague.  Would you rather be located in say, Mass General in Boston attended to by physicians using modern medicine gleaned from the scientific method, or some village in India where a "modern day witch-doctor" performed some traditional incantation?  Don't answer, it's rhetorical and we all know the answer. 

There is a difference between saying "let's find X, and I bet it has abc properties" and "let's find x, which we know for a fact has abc properties".
The first is a demonstration of a rudimentary scientific hypothesis.  We expect it to have abc characteristics, but are willing to discard them if we discover we were mistaken.
The second is an example of psudeoscience.  We have decided it has abc characteristics, and if we discover it does not, we discard the contrary evidence and maintain that it does in fact have abc characteristics.  That is what an assumption is, assumed to be true.  This is why any fact based study tries to avoid them whenever possible.



That is a very poor example of what peer review is.  To continue with that analogy, you feel the elephant's toe and describe it as a certain way.  Everyone else then feels the exact same toe and either confirms your feeling, or says no you're nuts it feels like this.  The whole point is that everyone is testing the exact same thing, so that if you came to an erroneous conclusion we are much more likely to find it.

No, it isn't.  Banks have been issuing money for at most a few hundred years.  Wealth inequality has existed for many thousands of years.  Common sense tells us that a problem can not exist before it's cause.