1621
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: Bitcoins are Peacock Tails
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on: June 22, 2011, 06:40:05 AM
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Hellooooooo ladies. Check out my collection of motherboards and video cards with fans pointed at them. That's right, I'm burning through about fifteen dollars a day worth of electricity. You might say I'm something of a high roller...
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1622
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Other / Meta / Re: Kill the Politics forum
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on: June 22, 2011, 04:01:13 AM
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And, just to recap, the complaint was: 1) Atlas was mean to me. 2) As a purveyor of adult services I represent the opinions of average merchants. 3) My Wall Street clients would rather pay me in Federal Reserve Notes than in Bitcoins. 4) 5) Shut down the Politics subforum.
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1623
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: This is where I stop believing Obama is possibly a rational, intelligent man.
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on: June 22, 2011, 03:35:25 AM
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Well, it's not really pertinent to the topic of the thread, but there are far too many erroneous assumptions in a statement like "land has little value nowadays" to even begin to deconstruct here. It's kind of like, if I burn down your house, and then give you a tent, and then erect a monetary monopoly that spends a hundred years forcibly subsidizing tents and burning down houses, and then claim that "value no longer comes from houses, it comes from tents".
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1625
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: Nuclear Energy. Do you want more or less?
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on: June 22, 2011, 02:29:40 AM
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Energy is the basis of all economic activity. So of course the world needs more energy, not less. And of course, until solar and wind can scale up, nuclear is the safest and cleanest large-scale source of energy, by at least an order of magnitude.
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1626
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: This is where I stop believing Obama is possibly a rational, intelligent man.
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on: June 22, 2011, 02:09:26 AM
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That's completely untrue. I'm being forced under threat of violence to conform to a society whose rules I do not agree with and whose "coercive" market forces (your definition, not the real one) affect my daily life even though I do not agree with the policies that created them - just like you living in our current society.
I'd also like to know which libertarian policies, specifically, you feel are oppressive. Saying "the market" is not sufficient since markets exist even in the absence of government.
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1627
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Other / Politics & Society / Real Economic Stimulus
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on: June 21, 2011, 10:44:00 PM
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"The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part." -Marc Faber, 2008 http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/prostitutes-and-beer-in-us/story-e6frezb0-1111117771124
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1628
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: This is where I stop believing Obama is possibly a rational, intelligent man.
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on: June 21, 2011, 09:52:42 AM
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It's pretty obvious that Obama doesn't understand the first thing about the economy. He is making the problems worse. He bailed out the failed, crony capitalists and destroyed jobs at the thousands of small businesses that could have picked up the pieces. He is engaging in massive wealth redistribution in order to prop up investors in McMansions and strip malls. He is continuing the retarded neo-liberal zero-tariff policy of free trade that enables outsourcing. Worse than that, he's allowed the Fed to give away half a trillion dollars to foreign banks on the off chance that it will eventually make it's way back to the US economy in order to stimulate jobs. He doesn't understand why, instead, energy and commodity prices are rising and the US is being drained of capital.
And, frankly, you're a retard too for giving the guy a pass. It's been over two years and he's a total failure. Bigger than Bush, even. And I for one wouldn't even have thought that possible.
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1631
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Other / Politics & Society / Re: Libertarians/ACists who support a rollback of MtGox transactions
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on: June 21, 2011, 05:08:24 AM
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Right so, since MT is going to revert all the fraudulent trades of stolen Bitcoins, because he owns the site they were made on and he thus has the ability to do so, that is somehow against the precepts of both anarcho-capitalism, which basically says that possession=ownership, and also libertarianism, which opposes theft through fraud or violence?
Once again, great thread, guys. Top notch logic, here.
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1634
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Economy / Economics / Re: The general flaw of fiat money and how its associated with Bitcoins
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on: June 21, 2011, 12:44:03 AM
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Trolling how-to for bitcoin forum: 1. Show why hoarding is bad for debt based fiat currencies. 2. Show that both debt based fiat currencies, gold and bitcoin are money. 3. 4. Hoarding must be bad for all types of money! 6. We need to change bitcoin so people don't hoard it!!!! This is just one tack that a Bitcoin troll can take. Here's an alternate method: 1. Human population grows exponentially. 2. Labor theory of value. 3. 4. OMG Bitcoin doesn't grow it shrinks! 5. We need to change Bitcoin so that it can keep up!!!!
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1636
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Economy / Economics / Re: The Labor Theory of Money w/ regards to Microeconomics...
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on: June 20, 2011, 10:44:02 PM
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That's more accurately described as a labor theory of cost. Value is subjective. Labor has nothing to do with it.
Bingo. Labor theory of value is only useful as a lower bound on cost. And even then, only when "labor" is defined as "thermodynamic work". Otherwise it is the most totally and completely worthless theory of anything ever to gain widespread acceptance.
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1637
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Other / Meta / Re: Kill the Politics forum
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on: June 20, 2011, 11:51:38 AM
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I see some are still making accusations that Bitcoin has some sort of political slant one way or another. Really this is very simple to debunk, because Bitcoin is not a political phenomenon in the least. As an anonymous distributed open source currency, Bitcoin is about as politically neutral as it can get. Anyone is free to post in the Politics section about how Bitcoin supports technocratic communalism or Islamic banking or liberal localism or libertarian isolationism or satanic globalism. Because it's true; Bitcoin supports all of those things, as a neutral medium of exchange. But that also doesn't mean that Bitcoin's creation was not motivated by the political actions of others, and that we can just skip out on addressing political issues completely. Bitcoin has almost no compelling features aside from those that stand in contrast to the inherent political nature of government-issued fiat currencies. So for anyone who might be under the delusion that Bitcoin is just another payment processor, and should strive to be something banal like the next Paypal, take a look at this chart. Because this is the reason that Bitcoin exists: In my view it's extremely foolish to merely be interested in taking over Paypal's measly 20 billion dollar market cap, and to groom and mold Bitcoin's image towards that end. Replacing just 1% of the 2.6 trillion Federal Reserve Notes in circulation is a much more noble, and frankly realistic, goal.
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1639
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Other / Meta / Re: Kill the Politics forum
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on: June 17, 2011, 10:07:40 PM
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Frankly, most people don't have the slightest clue about anything. They're all perfectly happy to use cash laced with cocaine and banks that cater to violent cartels and to purchase prescription drugs from pharmaceutical companies that kill more people than any illicit drug ever has.
The entire point of currency, let alone a de-centralized apolitical currency like Bitcoin, is that it isn't a popularity contest and its value isn't even remotely connected with the number of people who approve of it because of whatever stories the media has told them.
One of the major themes of the Politics subforum, for anyone who actually reads it, is that so-called "anarchists" actually aren't. Most of them are actually quite interested in functional government. And the use and promotion of an apolitical, non-inflationary grass-roots currency is actually more an act of "government" than all the ridiculous nonsense carried out by existing "governments" through force and fraud and blatantly stolen resources.
Silk Road is arguably one of the safest drug delivery systems ever devised, including licensed, government-regulated medical doctors who accidentally kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.
And since one of the founding principles of the US government, at least, is the right to freedom of speech and accountability to the average person, this entire proposal reeks more of oriental despotism than a defense of rational government.
So, no, I'm not buying it. And I've yet to see evidence of a coherent argument that the dumb masses will buy into Bitcoin either, if only it were neutered and taxed and regulated and marketed in just the right way so as to make it completely indistinguishable from any of a dozen existing alternatives.
All I see here is a bunch of intellectual whores pushing a very short-sighted agenda.
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1640
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Other / Meta / Re: Kill the Politics forum
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on: June 17, 2011, 09:11:11 PM
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There's a lot of confusion in this thread.
A Merchant subforum is a good idea.
But, ultimately, these are the facts. Bitcoin has enough innate advantages to grow slowly and surely even without catering to established merchants. Turning it into just another Paypal alternative, however, will kill the project dead in it's tracks.
The Politics subforum isn't highly-trafficked anyways. I question the narrative that is being presented here, that merchants were turned off by it. The political implications of Bitcoin are fairly obvious. This just sounds more like an excuse frankly. And the proposed solution, quelling political speech, wouldn't really solve that problem.
Really we should also consider the possibility that anyone who can't handle the political implications of distributed digital currency is more of a liability than an asset.
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