I'm pretty sure I've explained myself well enough for everyone else to understand. As such, I'm not going to address each non sequitur.

I will address two things though.


First, I didn't say there would be "few" nodes. I said whoever wants to be a node will be a node, most people won't.

If there are a billion users of GEM there will not be a billion always on nodes burning 200W continuously. That seems silly.

If a million merchants see the benefit in running their own nodes, woot! If a million others want to watchdog them to make sure there is no corruption, woot! Certainly in that group of 2 million individuals there is someone I trust. If there isn't, I'm not trading with anyone. I need to trust someone to send me my goods.


Second, I'm trying to make a quasi-anonymous, peer-to-peer, implementation of digital currency that can be treated like cash but with the ability to magically change hands over the internet. I'm not trying to overthrow the fucking government. Not even the Iraqi or Syrian governments.


Oh well, one more time.


When Visa or the Government pries everyone's Bitcoin/GEM/EnCoin client out their cold dead hands, then everyone *must* change to new rules. Until then, the 99% of coin owners rule.

If Visa convinces 1% of coin owners run their modified client on a forked history, they give away 99 times as many free coins to the people they didn't convince. If they convince 99% of coin owners to run their modified client, they give away 1% free coins, but those attempting to continue the other fork have given away 99%. This holds for EnCoin as well. If Visa modifies the EnCoin client but forks from an existing Primary Block, they have the same power and risk the same liabilities.

In all cases (Bitcoin/GEM/EnCoin), it is probably easier and less risky for Visa/Government/EvilCo to just launch their own modified client on an alt-chain and tout their process improvements to the masses. But if Visa wants to go through all the sound and fury of forking the common history. And they successfully convince 99% of coin owners to adopt their improved client. Then I'll either cash out or go with them. Those are my only two choices. The people have spoken.

Yes, some people are poor. What makes them poor is they have less money then the middle class. Who are middle class because they have less money than the rich. I'm in that chain well below rich.

If you fall on hard times, your family helps, your friends help, your neighbors help, your local community helps. You do what you can to be productive and help the people helping you. If they seem to be doing well while you are mysteriously unsuccessful you take their advice and quit fucking up. Yes, sometimes you lose your shit. But unless you are a real fuck up, you always have your family, friends, neighbors, and community. If you are such a sorry fuck that none of those people will help you. Then you ask a church for help. And when people who have pledged their eternal souls to helping those in need give up on you. Well then... Why the fuck should I give a fuck about you!

Most every argument I've ever had about such things tends to come down to dignity. "Why should I have to lower myself to ask for help?" Isn't the fact that "I'm in need" enough?

NO! It's not fucking enough! Ask for fucking help when you need fucking help. If no one will help you, it's not because the rest of the world is a bunch of bastards. It's because no one sees value, for you, in the path you've chosen for your life, AND you are not even attempting to provide any assistance to others. If nobody will help you, then they are giving you advice. Take it. Change your ways. Be decent. Be useful to someone. And quit fucking whining.

You know what's great about common people? They can only fuck up in minor easily fixable ways.
You know what's scary about leftists who give organizations nationally critical responsibilities? They fuck up in massively catastrophic ways.

The fuck ups have ZERO to do with motivation or belief in the right cause. It has nothing to do with absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The folks that fucked up the mortgage situation really were trying to help those who didn't own a home to buy a home. Those people were elected democratically by the people to work for the people, and they were. They were honestly trying to do that job in the way they saw as most helpful. They created massive bureaucracies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They promised *all us citizens* would guarantee repayment of mortgages defaulted on by random anonymous needy citizens who didn't have to convince their neighbors of their need or even shared commitment to the community. All they had to do was fill out a government form and "poof" they were in need. It is a dignity thing. People in need shouldn't have to publicize their need. They should just magically get the help "they need". And they did.

And how many needy but too dignified to ask people did there turn out to be? A SHIT LOAD!

It wasn't wanting to help that fucked things up. It was changing a need into an entitlement solely to preserve the dignity of the potential needy that fucked things up. It was using anonymous bureaucrats evaluating forms by well defined but ill conceived rules. It should have been folks with a vested interest looking other people directly in the eyes.

For christ sake people got loans for 9X their annual salary with no money down. Terms that didn't even required them to pay the full interest on the loan! Your folks (leftists/liberals/socialists) made me guarantee these anonymous "sweet heart" loans.

Now the needy but too dignified to ask for help are defaulting on their loans. Why? Because without the prospect of others getting even better "sweet heart" loans, no one is left to buy their home and relieve them of the debt that YOUR FOLKS made me entrust to them.

And you are asking me to feel sorry for the defaulter you shouldn't have given the loan to. And the builder you shouldn't have started building. And the real estate agent you shouldn't have started selling. And the home depot guy you shouldn't have started improving. Fuck yeah all of these people used to be doing great! You were giving them my money for free!

---

The moral of the story is, don't trust ANY body or ANY organization with the power to fuck things up for EVERYBODY. Not Republicans. Not Democrats. Not even fucking God. Because whoever is given that responsibility will eventually fuck things up for everybody.

Spread the responsibility around even at the risk of non-optimality and non-conformance. Evolution shows that works best over the long term. Individuals will fuck up. We can fix individual fuck ups. Even leftists. But gather them all together and put their brightest in charge... That is a fuck up we cannot fix.

---

So you want to know why I'm out of work?

Because I don't feel like fucking working. I quit. I live off of my personal savings from having been productive and having delayed personal gratification. Now I get to smile and be happy. I do what I fucking want (including trolling web forums). I pay my "fair share" of taxes, which thanks to your folks was actually negative last year. Yes, I quit work out of spite, and your folks gave me an earned income credits. (Woot! Go Left!)

And you know what? I'm not going to pay off the loans you made me guarantee. Nope. Not a penny.

You see, there's this valley in Colorado...
well that's another story.

LMAO! Woot!

I earned my money. My money is my business. But feel free to feel sorry for me if you want. I'd give you a Bitcoin address for donations, but hey I'm not a leftist!



I googled for you.
The median annual earnings for a CEO in the United States were $140,350.
The Wall Street Journal reports the median compensation for CEOs of 350 major corporations was $6,000,000 in 2005 with most of the money coming from stock options.

Notice the part that says from stock options. That means the compensation comes directly from folks who buy the stock the CEO sells. It does not come out of the pocket of employees. Stock options mean, employees have the option to buy stock at the same price as the day the option was granted. If the CEO does well, he benefits. If he does poorly, he doesn't. As for golden parachutes. That is really between the stock holders and the board of directors. They have to pay those bills.



That is because there is a lot more ways to be wrong than there are to be right!



I didn't say squat about Orwell except that I didn't enjoy reading him. If he couldn't get his own message across in all those pages, please don't mandate I read the cliffs notes as well!

Ayn Rand...  Now that was a Utopia in Dystopian clothing!  I hope you read Atlas and are not just babbling on about it.
Can you imagine the outcry if we tried to make Atlas required reading! You liberals are really quite lucky Ayn made John Galt an atheist! (Which I am by the way. Yes, that's right. An educated southern conservative atheist. Us Republicans are all the same!)

Anyway, It's been fun pushing your buttons. I'll leave you to your dark dreary delusions, and I'll get back to my bright cheerful reality.

The problem I have with Liberals (and I guess Socialists too) is they never ask for anything that solves the problem.

Why don't we raise the minimum wage to a level where everyone can pay for their own health care, and can save for their own retirement. Why do we need to build government bureaucracies to get in the way? Certainly you can't think the government saves money through efficiency.


I don't have to look at the 9%. I am one of the 9%. But I still pay my own bills. Therefore, I'm entitled to say it.


If a CEO gambles millions of dollars of stock holders money on new machinery so that three workers can do sitting down what twenty workers used to break their backs over. And the gamble pays off by lowering expenses and increasing production. And his gamble both pays back the capital investment and returns extra profit. Then who deserves a reward? Who would take the fall if the decision turned out badly?

Don't give me abstract CEOs get rich. Workers get poor. Plenty of CEO's got fired. Plenty of workers started their own companies and became CEOs. In between, lots of workers stopped getting chewed up by antiquated machinery.

Nobody ever was lazy. But you don't earn what you want. You earn slightly more than what you can be replaced for.


It means I deliberately don't live with those people. It is a fallacy that conservatives don't understand the view of the left. We do. We often have the same goals. However, we think the mechanisms you propose for meeting our shared goals, are wacko. Most of us are too busy to talk to wackos.


There is a general liberal pattern that goes, 1) we have a problem. 2) find the smartest guy. 3) believe he'll save us. 4) everyone must do exactly as he says.

The results are invariably. 1) we still have the problem. 2) the smartest guy was the wrong choice. 3) the left blame the right for the failure because they didn't believe strongly enough. 4) the right blames the left because they made everyone do stupid shit that didn't solve the problem.


Really, this is a prime example of the point I'm trying to make.

It is not enough that we make every damn teenager in the country read Orwell. Now you want to piss and moan because we are not demanding he be read for the right (oops) left reasons.

Trusted nodes like any node, accept all valid transactions. I'm assuming you questioning what happens if a trusted node attempts to deny that a valid transaction happened? That was actually slated for a section I indexed but haven't written yet. But any node can easily spot nodes which are denying transactions. When it becomes a pattern, they simply cease to trust those nodes and broadcast the evidence. They can easily spot double spends as well and broadcast that evidence. Neither of those acts can be kept secret. Bitcoin chooses not to act on either of these actions. If I implement GEM it will.
 


In Bitcoin, everyone is forced to accept transactions because everyone else is accepting those transactions.
My process follows the same logic.
In bitcoin, a rogue client can run off accepting alternate block chains. No one else will care.
My process follows the same logic.



Certainly, but the function and process will be agreed upon in advance. Just like with Bitcoin.
The trusted parties will be non-anonymous and known to all. No one can be expected to trust anonymously.
Evidence of distrust will be published for all to see. Actions are not just denied. Known parties are publicly accused.



The major difference is, in Bitcoin, if any random anonymous individual shows up with a block chain that *NOBODY* has ever seen, but it has a greater proof-of-work. Then everyone *must* accept this as the new gospel truth even if it erases a month of valid confirmed transactions. That is just silly.



All of this holds for every block chain based crypto currency including EnCoin.

If the exchanges and the merchants all decide to do something you don't like. Well, sad for you.
Unless you happen to be among the 99% of the clients who decide not to follow them. In that case, they lose.

The 99% can take all their existing coins and trade amongst themselves on one fork.
And sell the 99% of coins they have on the other fork for goods. Never putting another dollar back into the exchange for merchants to use to cash out. Bye bye evil merchants. Bye bye evil exchanges. It's an OWS wet dream.

Trust me. The 1% has to follow the 99%, even if the 1% is all the merchants and all the exchanges.

The problem is you see social security and health insurance as mandatory because unlike you, other people are too stupid to save for retirement or pay their own medical bills. What I'm telling you, is my retirement and my medical bills aren't your or anyone else's problem. I've relieved you of the burden of worrying about me. Now either ask for my help in taking care of "you" or go take care of yourself.

But don't randomly declare there is an entire class of "special" people who are entitled to me taking care of them. Without need even for them to ask me for help. That is the part of socialism that fucks things up for everyone.


Woot! You pay your own bills. But for some reason you feel warm and fuzzy thinking maybe one day you won't have to.


Sure it does. They are off protesting to themselves happy as clams. I drove past them the other day. I didn't run them down or throw tomatoes. But I didn't bother to go over and offer them free soup either. They're not homeless. They're camping.


The point was not the folks from the most elite highly respected universities run the biggest banks. The point was these folks of the most elite, most respect, most highly educated order, ran them into the ground. The point was those barely educated folks from middle America, turned out a shit load more ethical and competent at banking than the highly educated elite.

If we are going to "help the needy" the last thing we should do is but some Ivy League fuck head in charge of a massive government bureaucracy with highly implausible goals. The salvation army will get there faster, the food will be better and they won't require you to believe in their cause is just.


I don't confuse them at all. My maternal grandparents left Europe to get away from the Communists. My paternal grandparents left Europe to get away from the Socialists. And my parents left the East Coast to get away from the Liberals. It's really not that complicated. Each time we build something, you folks show up wanting it.


Quite frankly I never liked Orwell. Didn't really like Huxley either. Dystopias are for whiners.

I'm really not trying to be obtuse. If I have been personally successful trading with amazon.com and apple.com, then yes I know and trust those merchant addresses. If every node I trust is on the same the same branch as me, that is 100% consensus for me.

There should generally be no invisible branches. That is true of bitcoin also. The only time an extended branch might exist that I don't know about, is in cases of network partitioning. With my version, everyone gets immediate notice of network partitioning. No one gets a surprise 8 hours later when 80 blocks magically get reorged from a previously hidden malicious chain.


The same is true of any chain. If a government says, "You can't use this client or this chain!" Then you either follow the law or break the law. No system can make something illegal into something legal. And no system makes it impossible for altered clients to fork the chain.


Branch dying is purely pragmatic. It does not need to be enforced by code.

Say there are 7,500,000 BTC in existence. Now say the US government says the American users (10%) *must use* the US branch, but the 90% of the world decides they want to stay on the original branch. So now the US branch has 7.5 million BTC and the world branch also has 7.5 million coins. That means 15 million independently spendable coins if the two forks persist. This is an untenable state.

If the US branch continued, the 90% of the folks on the world branch would just spend or cash out their 6.75 million *free* coins on the US branch. That would crash the US exchanges and bankrupt the merchants. They simply cannot continue. They would have abandon the 10% branch or abandon the coin system entirely.

Exchanges and merchants simply can't trade on multiple forks of the same chain. They have to pick one and only one. If you want to trade with them, you have to go with their choice.

It's really not a hard problem to solve. You maintain and trade on the branch you can see. So does everyone else. Normally there is only one branch everyone sees at the same time. If people disappear, then re-appear on a different branch, then there was an honest network partitioning. You settle it according to pre-agreed upon rules. If a new branch nobody has seen comes out of the blue, everyone simply ignores it.

Exactly. Thank you! I should learn to be so concise.

I reordered this to put the important question at the top.


I really want to be open minded about this. Can you give me a single example of when, as a GEM owner and client, I should trust the anonymous opinions of unknown individuals over a 100% consensus of merchants that I personally know, trust and do business with?

Keep in mind, very little of my money goes to anonymous individuals like Guido the killer pimp or Silk Road merchants. Most everything I buy comes from horrible evil corporations like Taco Bell, McDonald's, Amazon, Apple, Safeway and Exxon. I could be biased by the fact that these evil corporations seem to have business models based upon *not* cheating me. I'm not quite as confident in the business models of random anonymous coin users.



If you are on the fork with 99% of people, you win. If you are on the 1% fork, you lose. The great mass of humans retain all the power.

If the US citizens and the rest of the world chose to follow what the US government decreed then they are the 99%. Should the US Government turn out to be the 1% or even 10%, their branch will die. Otherwise, we all have free coins on both branches and we all win. This is not GEM specific no coin chain can be forked and have both branches continue.

In bitcoin, if some anonymous party takes everyone down a malicious branch, you'd have to change code and issue new clients. In my model people just have to say "You are malicious! We are not going to trust you anymore. Bye bye!"



It is centralized accounting (there is only one valid block list). But with redundant copies and watchdogs. 1,000 redundant copies and watchdogs is probably sufficient. We don't need one billion copies and watchdogs.



See above.

I do too. I really can't get excited about coins when speculation is the real focus. I really want to buy things!


Thank you!

I'm going to work on some simplifications and then see how few bitcoin changes I really need to make to get this thing to work.

Fair enough.

I'm just concerned with the general Pollyanna view that everything can contract now, but eventually those one billion new adopters will come around. My basic map shows that not all paths lead to global adoption. Between now and next December's 50% coin generation point, if adoption doesn't get significantly broader, it never will.

Are you saying Obama and his troops better not cross the Rubicon?

Exactly

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "core". But the crux of your post seemed to be, "It doesn't mater if the core is small, so long as the core exists."

The point I'm trying to make is, this core size does matter. Not to the "core members" themselves, but to the perceptions of those you expect to come later.

If your core was say 500 individuals who owned the current 7,500,000 BTC. That would likely be viewed quite hostilely by the majority of the billion or so individuals you wish to attract to Bitcoin.

If your core was 5,000,000 individuals owning the current 7,500,000 BTC. Then the next billion adopters are less likely to view Bitcoin as benefitting the BTC rich, at the expense of the BTC poor.

It is not so much about "improvements" as it is about marketing spin. The "best" currency is the first one a billion people can (1) understand and (2) trust.

To me, only place Bitcoin has issues is in convincing the next billion people they *are required* to purchase their future currency from the relatively view people who got to Bitcoin first. Why that needs to be a *requirement* is what will be tough for most future newcomers to understand.

If each of these one billion people brings only $1 each, their billion dollar investment dwarfs all the investments made by all of those who came before. I find people grasp this intuitively.

I'm not proposing stability based on interventionism or centralization. I'm proposing stability based on inherent electrical cost in Joules. The cost comes from POW difficulty just like with Bitcoin, but the difficulty is scaled over time by Koomie's law.

That means a variable number of coins are created based upon mining interest. That is kept in check (as it is in Bitcoin) by very real electrical expenses. Miners compete based upon the coin price of the moment. If the exchange price starts to rise, they will mint and sell before other drive the price back down. If the exchange price is below cost, they stop minting.

Clients only see a price that hovers around the break even point of the most efficient miners. The can put $10 into their wallet and know it will buy $10 worth of stuff in the future.

Yeah, I guess it happens. I was just struck by the combination of zero outside transactions, fast generation time, and increased difficulty all at once.

I just notice the below block at http://blockchain.info/

http://blockchain.info/block-index/786604/000000000000003a857b3d977333cf16276af30d16ada38ac4f838d33ba4a206

Is it odd that someone found a block with 1 transaction in 1 minute with a target hash that is almost 16 times (4 bits) more difficult than the prior or subsequent blocks? Or is this just the luck of the draw? I understand random chance, just have never seen it so dramatically.

Woot! Exactly! Changing the world, one politician at a time...