I'm prax on IRC and I might be interested in some stuff but I will talk to you about it then. I might want some of the stuff like grass-fed beef/cheese and coconut oil, maybe even one of those filters for my lab. Do you have passionflower leaf extract? It takes a while to look through all of that and I didn't see it.

Got my Dwolla yesterday, so this is still going on. Who can argue with free money?

I still suggest Lessons for a Young Economist, now available in HTML too here. I really think that it is better to learn about praxeology first and start small before really tackling the problems we have today. Certain philosophical doctrines are so dominant today that people are unable to even consider that we could get genuine scientific knowledge from the social sciences, so I think it goes a long way to see why what we're doing is scientific and not just mere opinion or wordplay.

QFT

I like Mises' somewhat odd definition of democracy, 'secession down to the level of the individual'. Then, we don't have full-frontal majoritarianism in these places we say have "democracy". Following democracy-worship and various collectivist ideologies to their conclusion gets pretty absurd. Democratic republics are pretty much just a blip on the map of history so far and seem doomed to failure to me. What we have in this type of "democracy" is a popularity contest for "our" rulers. The economic consequences of this nice-sounding doctrine are laid out nicely in Hoppe's Democracy the God that Failed, which I highly recommend to those interested. You did read this one eh gene and Baby? I mean, I'm not pointing out your ignorance to prove anything, just saying that it is apparent from what you are writing and I don't really care.

The other error I noticed skimming through here is covered in Long's Response to 10 Objections. See #8 "the rich will rule", a statist fav, yawn.

What about this place https://exchangezone.com/en/Welcome

Anyone use them? I'd have to figure out what rate will get me LR, then 0.65% to Mtgox isn't bad.

This is the most important error out of all his silliness. If we're to presuppose as "good" things like protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, punishing crimes like rape, murder and theft (and I agree), then we can say that government is able to perform some of these "good" functions; however, none of these "good" things ever take place without the people taking part in government doing "bad" things. Mostly we're talking about extortion and robbery (AKA taxes), but it includes things like military conquest as well here.

This is the first thing any statist is going to struggle with, simply acknowledging the reality of the essential nature of states. If they can even start to do that, then it becomes a matter of thinking that these aggressive actions are justified on some sort of utilitarian grounds. At this stage comes a lot of wishful thinking along with whatever pseudo-economics, "If we just elect the right people, they'll be handing out new counterfeited notes to the poor next time."

After that, we're to the classical "But who will build the roads?" stage. Much more so in law than in economics is there work to be done in showing how problems are solved. Libertarian theory is in some ways quite new and still developing, though in some others time-tested, age-old wisdom. So, I agree that not only is not "directing" my actions toward (at least paying for) the protection of private property irresponsible, but knowingly directing my actions toward an inferior means (i.e. a state) of accomplishing the goals in mind is irresponsible. States only do "good" things by doing "bad" things first, so if we can figure out how to do more good with less bad, I'm for it, and bitcoin is an example of a way.

This is not to disparage solely you Babylon, the anti-capitalistic mentality is a common affliction, but I am really not interested in the type of faulty arguments you are putting forth. I'm not here to debate someone who isn't going to learn about what they wish to argue against. Please try to read some of the books people have suggested because there is a wealth of information out there. Bitcoin is a real life experiment regarding Gresham's law, viz. bad money driving away the good. See here for instance, What Has Government Done to Our Money? -- Fiat Money and Gresham's Law.

Even this is really an advanced concept. I suggest again Murphy's book or the first couple hundred pages of Mises' Human Action in order to understand the fundamentals.

Yeah, monetary debasement is still monetary debasement. You just get a different flavor of malinvestment if government plays Robin Hood. Look at consumption in houses and cars leading up to and after the car and home credits. If government really followed Keynesian doctrine they would cut spending during booms. In reality their counterfeiting is targeted at their rich cronies much more so than the poor they "represent". It seems gullible to me to foresee them ever doing any drastic cuts in spending without a serious crisis already fully underway, and then it's too late.

It seems like most I've encountered who are opposed to Austrian economics are also ignorant of it. Please educate yourself Babylon. Money not "flowing" was only a proximate cause of trouble in the past two years. Ultimately, various forms of government intervention only either cause crises or exaggerate normal business cycles. In this crisis, you have safety nets offered to those engaged in recklessly trading MBS's, legislation passed enabling looser loan underwriting than would have otherwise been in place and the manipulation of interest rates by central planners, to just name the big ones. Any recovery we experience will be in spite of, not because of, government intervention in the economy. With the second round of quantitative easing, the US is now inflating the money supply in order to support government's spending habits. It's the last out for any banana republic.

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."–Murray N. Rothbard.

I guess I looked away initially because of the $100 limit and 7 day delay. Maybe money order direct to bitcoin will work although I wanted to watch price fluctuations on Mtgox. I've known about bitcoin for a while but finally just started taking a look again about a month ago when the rate was still under .30

3% isn't bad at all. Maybe I will send you payment tomorrow if I don't find a way to get it faster.

edit: guess I am dumb and missed that check/money order also takes 7 days to clear.

What's that saying about something cheap and fast?

Coinpal is out right now.

LR directed me to this place for the best prices on exchangers: http://www.bsrates.com/

I was hoping to be able to use paypal or a debit card in the US for reasonable fees, but the couple places LR suggested on its page seemed pricey for like $200. I noticed that the random Indian-ran convenience store near me has a sign for free money orders, so maybe I will see how they are for other things like this, or maybe it is better to just go through the hassle of bank wires.

The reviews on the cheapest places at that BSrates for wire transfers doesn't seem good.

I think Bob Murphy's Lessons for the Young Economist is a much better starting point than Human Action of MES. I've read the latter two several times over though and can help if anyone has questions.

Praxeology goes beyond economics and I spend much more time working on the legal aspects and epistemology (when I even have time to do that), rather than economics, but I can try.

I knew an Icelandic guy in college and I remember him mentioning some sort of contact with Bjork. It's a rather small country. I'm horrible at keeping in touch with people, but this is a good excuse. I'll report back on this sometime...

He's also a fantastic graphic artist, so perhaps he could commission extra work and take payment in BTC.


Democracy isn't a good thing IMO. The actual two positives I see are Iceland's history of a stable stateless order, and that they've passed legislation towards making the country a media "safe haven". I forget the specifics of how the latter works offhand, but it's a positive if anything.