I like what Rand Paul had to say about one of the people involved in this: "I've come to New Hampshire today because I'm very concerned. I want to see the original long-form certificate of D****d T***p's Republican registration." (I edited his name out because he doesn't deserve anymore attention).
It's encouraging to see there's some sanity left somewhere. Donald Duck is just riding the wave attempting to gain popularity so he can run for President. And the fucker had the audacity to say Ron Paul is unelectable. |
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I realize reading economic theory is probably not on anybody's list of things to do on a weekend....  but if you do, then you may know my answer to your questions. Actually it is something I would do on a weekend...can you say nerd?  The problem with this, though, is:who's economic theory? Austrian? Keynsiansim? Chicago school? The conclusions we'd come to would vary depending on which school we "followed". This is why it's better if you actually explain your stand on Bitter Tea's questions instead of making us guess. That way, too, we can start the name calling when we discover we don't agree on economic theories. |
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Either government is voluntary (you agree that some person will make decisions for you, maybe a good example would be modern hierarchy in catholic church) or it's a criminal organization that uses violence and extortion and in the principle is just a large mafia with traditions.
What, you didn't agree that they can use violence against you/others? Are you sure you didn't? I would be very surprised if you didn't already agree to this, I have only ever met one who has not agreed to allow violence against him/others. Maybe I misunderstood your comment....but this is off-topic anyway. Please don't say "social contract". |
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While the pragmatic belief that we cannot convince people may be true, it won't stop me from trying. The Koch brothers, lol, like they support anarchy. They just want *their* version of the state.
Fought and died for the services the state now render us? If someone was stupid enough to get themselves killed so I could get a monopoly of service from someone, let them roll in their graves. I do support those who died to *keep* a monopoly of power from interfering in our lives, though.
But you do not need to convince everyone. You just need to convince a few people. They can convince a few more. Eventually it will grow, or it will not. Eventually it will hit a genius who will invent something to make it so it does not matter what other people think, and we can live our lives without interference.
But there is no harm at all in teaching people that violence is wrong, even when its done by people with special uniforms.
(Emphasis mine) Exactly! I was just debating with a friend the other day whether or not taxes really are theft. I had to start the argument by explaining to him why the State does not own all his possessions. He was willing to admit they they owned all money and therefore all his possessions, but when I suggested that the State then owned him, he didn't like it. The legitimacy of the State is so engrained in us that many people practically offer themselves up as voluntary serfs. |
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New ideas take time to be accepted. When the concept of "zero" was first imagined by mathematicians, it took centuries to be accepted as being real and meaningful. The same with the idea of the sun at the center of the solar system. And evolution is still not universally accepted.
People were murdered for attempting to tell people outside of the fold about the square root of one. The heck?!? What's the story behind that? |
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I wouldn't be too surprised if, instead of a 3,000USD cheque, Gavin would receive some nice bracelets once he arrives there:  Not if they openly approached him. If they weren't going to play nice, they wouldn't have bothered with a ruse. Like I said, openly inviting him to speak and offering him a speaker's fee tells me that they intend to play nice. It's a very bullish signal. You've obviously never heard of companies catching hackers by offering them jobs. It goes like this: *hacker is messing with a company* Company: Hey wow thats impressive why don't you come on over for a job interview? *hacker goes and gets arrested* I think Valve tried to do it recently.....yup found the article. FBI helped set it up. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/Wasn't the only reason they offered him a job interview to get him to come to the United States where they could arrest him? Gavin is already in the United States so if they wanted to arrest him they would just do it. |
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I don't know much about this stuff, but based on the fact that a 5870 can get up to 2.7 Teraflops, that would make the government computer 370,370 times faster. I hear that 5870s get about 300 Mega hash/s so that means that the Exaflop computer would get like 111 MILLION Mega hash/s or 111 Tera hash/s. That's a block every 59 minutes on average, at the current difficulty level. Did I do my math right?
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Bitcoin is not about democracy. You are probably in the wrong forum. Bitcoin is about having total control over your money.
But you only control your money if other nodes recognize that you do, right? There is a certain democratic nature there. It's true that you really only have property rights to anything so long as the majority of people recognize and agree to those property rights. However, the difference between the bitcoin "system" and democracy is that there is no coercion involved. In a bitcoin democracy if 51% of the community decided to change the block chain and add inflation to bitcoins, the 49% would be forced to go along with it. In our bitcoin community, the 51% would go create their own block chain while the 49% stuck with the original. |
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Also, the tulip bubble from way back when dinosaurs, black and white TV and floppy discs ruled the earth.
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Assuming it happens for no apparent reason I can probably get a lot for my wife.
PM me a pic and I'll make an offer.  |
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Why would we want additional people in the CIA to understand bitcoin?
Finally someone who shares my view about this! Because we have nothing to hide? I sense much of the community members mentality have some irrational extremist hate against the government. Any slight injustice is taken to the extreme and paranoia rules their logic. Why would anyone ever feel hatred towards governments? They only murdered (NOT including wars) more than 150 Million people in the last century alone. Including: 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime I guess in your book, that is only a "slight injustice." I for one, want absolutely nothing to do with the CIA. I wish they would stay far far away. 262 million, according to RJ Rummel: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTMAdditionally, governments survive off of what is commonly known as "taxes" but which is the same thing as "theft". |
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two thoughts that haven't gotten too much attention on this thread.
1) Why do we think Gavin's talk will be available to the public? It's the CIA, not TED.
2) If Bitcoin is decentralized, why do we look to Gavin as a leader? Shouldn't the whole project exist more like a headless mob?
He's not the leader, he's a "prominent community member".  I had this thought as well. |
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I voted "I'm afraid to have an opinion" because that option had the least amount of votes and I am trying to redistribute the percentage to make things more fair. I feel good about doing the right thing. In all seriousness, though, I think the market is far too volatile right now to have much confidence in making even short term predictions. There appear to be some large trades going on which are causing the price to fluctuate wildly. I am, if not content, at least willing to wait until things settle down before making any predictions. |
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Explaining new concepts to people is a difficult skill to develop. Knowing your facts is critical, but once you do the "soft skills" are all that matter. If you don't have the soft skills to do it well, please don't bother. Opinions on new things don't really harden unless someone argues with you. Then you become committed to your prejudgement and much harder to sway later. Nobody needs to won over today. Most of the time, you should let bitcoins do the talking.
This is a solid analysis. I do think it is important to correct misconceptions about bitcoins, but even that certainly requires tact. |
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In the areas where there are a lot of dumb questions (Bitcoin Discussion, Economics) I haven't seen much pro involvement other than wrangling noobs. Discussion and Economics have a very low signal-noise ratio, but all the valuable signals usually fit better in other areas anyway.
Holy shit. You're speaking my language. Are you a comm engineer? That's a common expression among educated people, you don't need to be a comm engineer. I rarely hear it used by non engineers. That probably says something about the company I keep... |
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I have a Mises account. I'll take a look and might make some contributions. I'm really frustrated with the Mises crowd for not bothering to correctly apply their own damn theories about money correctly to bitcoins. If I get too pissed off I'll just tell them to eat some fucking carrots. You really think most people on the mises forums actually understand economics? Ha, ha. Well they should with all the free material available there. |
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The second meaning makes no sense to me, as gold does not have intrinsic value, it's only useful as money because I know that I can trade something I have for gold, then trade gold for something I want.
That's not exactly true. Gold is a good electrical conductor and also does not oxidise, hence why it is used in electronics. It's also a good EM reflector and is hence used in satellites. NASA doesn't launch gold components into space because of its monetary value Granted it's overvalued in respect to its intrinsic properties (except its scarcity), but it does have intrinsic value. All value is imputed by human action. Nothing has intrinsic value in the economic sense of the word. Gold has value because human desires give it value. This is the diamond/water paradox. |
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Will BitCoin ever come to a complete stop? I mean, if more and more people find out, start mining, and join pools. Wouldn't BitCoin have inflation? Does BitCoin ever "start over" or get rid of BTC to stop inflation? I'm just wondering, cause it says that it increases the level of mining, but what if you got 1 million computers that you have access to and stick a couple of minors on them? Wouldn't that actually increase inflation? In my point of view, BitCoin seems as if it has one flaw. Who ever has the most computers or better hardware gets the most BitCoins. Just wondering  . BUY CARROTS! |
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I have a Mises account. I'll take a look and might make some contributions. I'm really frustrated with the Mises crowd for not bothering to correctly apply their own damn theories about money correctly to bitcoins. If I get too pissed off I'll just tell them to eat some fucking carrots. |
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In the areas where there are a lot of dumb questions (Bitcoin Discussion, Economics) I haven't seen much pro involvement other than wrangling noobs. Discussion and Economics have a very low signal-noise ratio, but all the valuable signals usually fit better in other areas anyway.
Holy shit. You're speaking my language. Are you a comm engineer? |
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