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Suppose my group of people banded together to defend our rights starts oppressing you, infringing your rights. This is how decentralization helps: you also have the right to defend yourself, to join together with others to do so, etc. Basically there would be no problem whatsoever with you and I, in the same territory, belonging to competing institutions that defend rights - you could call them governments if you want. And it would be a very good way to protect ourselves, to prevent any of these institutions from becoming oppressive. It's a fantastic "check and balance."
That is why any legitimate government should allow people to secede. Rather than forcing people to accept its rights-securing services, it should permit people to decline to participate and to participate in competing service providers. The reason governments as we know them don't allow this is because what they really want, rather than protecting people's rights, is power.
I agree with pretty much everything you say until you get to secession. It's a nice thought, but other than granting exit visas (i'm sure that's not what you mean), there are just no practical ways to implement that without wrecking the whole system. If i'm understanding you correctly, there would emerge multiple city-states & even house-states in the middle of a country state? How would that work? (maybe i misunderstand what you mean by "secede") It would work just fine, as long as people respect rights, and as long as no central institution stops people from defending their rights. In the case of the "house state," how would that not work? They would be free to go about their business - free to "institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness" (another quote from the U.S. Declaration of Independence). There is no reason that any other state should compel them to be members/subjects/"citizens". The basic question is - can you and those who want to cooperate with you defend your rights without compelling others to support your cause? Or must you use force - must you compel participation and support? My contention is that when you start compelling participation, you become the very problem you are supposedly trying to fight against: you become rights violators. |
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what you say doesn't change the fact that there'd be more civil wars/fighting in an anarchistic society. I don't believe this would be the case. Most of the wars of the past century, at least, would have been eliminated if the subjects could secede. One reason I am pro-anarchy is that I am anti-war. |
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i just had a long discussion with an anarchist last night.. and i still don't quite understand his ideology. i think i've narrowed it down to him thinking that government is the root of all problems. i, on the other hand, think that government is only part of the problem. the main issue is the nature of man. The basic problem as I see it is that governments are no escape from the nature of man. They will not somehow lift us up and out of what we are. Taking a line from the Declaration of Independence - "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" - we see an attempt to deal with the problem of the nature of man. Basically, we have rights, and people want to infringe them. Great idea: establishing an institution to defend against such threats. So for example if you become a threat to my rights, I have the right to defend myself, and my neighbor and I have the right to band together against you. by decentralizing government, i don't see how this makes the situation any better. Suppose my group of people banded together to defend our rights starts oppressing you, infringing your rights. This is how decentralization helps: you also have the right to defend yourself, to join together with others to do so, etc. Basically there would be no problem whatsoever with you and I, in the same territory, belonging to competing institutions that defend rights - you could call them governments if you want. And it would be a very good way to protect ourselves, to prevent any of these institutions from becoming oppressive. It's a fantastic "check and balance." That is why any legitimate government should allow people to secede. Rather than forcing people to accept its rights-securing services, it should permit people to decline to participate and to participate in competing service providers. The reason governments as we know them don't allow this is because what they really want, rather than protecting people's rights, is power. if you banded with a group to take my rights away, and i have 3 guns to go against your 1,000 strong.. then i'll only fall under your power. if i group up with someone else, and i only have 2 hands and 3 guns to offer, then i won't be joining forces on my own terms, but instead i'd be at the whim of the guy who has more influence. so that means i have only a few choices as an individual: 1) allow the aggressor to dominate me in every way (especially economically). 2) sell myself to another powerful group, which would dominate me since i'd only be 1 strong.. i'd be agreeing to their terms if i wanted protection from them. 3) run away and give up my possessions What you just posted is a great argument against monopoly governments. Decentralization makes the threat you are describing smaller. Right now we are all facing basically only options 1 and 3 in response to oppression. If everybody suddenly faced option 2, then the oppressing institution would suddenly lose a lot of support and become a lot smaller - making it easier to defend against. I do not like the gangsters who run my state government. But I would love to have them actually stand up and defend me against the gangsters who run my federal government. That would be a valuable service they could perform for me, and I have a better chance of defending myself against the local state gangsters than the powerful Washington gangsters. Then my city or county gangsters could defend me against the state gangsters, and my local neighborhood could perhaps stand up to the city gangsters. This would be fantastic for freedom and prosperity! It wouldn't solve all of the world's ills, but it would certainly give us a fighting chance that we do not have now. |
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i just had a long discussion with an anarchist last night.. and i still don't quite understand his ideology. i think i've narrowed it down to him thinking that government is the root of all problems. i, on the other hand, think that government is only part of the problem. the main issue is the nature of man. if you set rules, many people will play by them.. but many other people will not - and those are the ones who are rewarded. by decentralizing government, i don't see how this makes the situation any better.
It's fine. We'll probably not figure it out in time and just disappear like every other monkey civilization/zergswarm on this planet. It's all way too complicated. Give up like I did and let's play satoshi dice. yeah, i don't even know how i'd be able to help the cause even if i were an anarchist... maybe try to force my opinion on everyone? and when they don't agree, just say "people just misunderstand the meaning of an anarchy." i only know one thing for certain; being an extremist doesn't really solve problems, and i prefer to stay in the middle. Every single person hailed as "spiritually enlightened" has said something along these lines. The middle path. Live in the present, where you actually are -- not your thoughts. Etcetera. I fucking hate these people. Extremism, mental self-flogging and pretending you can "help save the world" while not causing 1000x misery to everybody else along the path of your tiny mind trying to figure out something that's so big....... is so much more fun than looking like a lobotomized happy retard that stares into the world and keeps babbling that this moment is all so breathtakingly beautiful blah blah blah blah To me, extremism is when people say, "Look, just leave us alone; as long as we don't violate anybody else's rights, don't force us to live by your laws," and the response is to force them to submit anyway. Take drug users for example. I have never used an illicit substance in my life. The people that I have known who have done so really have experienced quite a bit of damage in their lives. But none of them has ever done any damage to my life. The damage in my life comes from people who ruin the economy, people who take my resources and use them to fund wars and projects I don't believe in, people who destroy thriving markets and replace them with failing government monopolies, people who inflate the currency supply.... Those people are infringing my rights, but drug users never hurt me. Extremism would be if I supported the drug war. |
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i just had a long discussion with an anarchist last night.. and i still don't quite understand his ideology. i think i've narrowed it down to him thinking that government is the root of all problems. i, on the other hand, think that government is only part of the problem. the main issue is the nature of man. The basic problem as I see it is that governments are no escape from the nature of man. They will not somehow lift us up and out of what we are. Taking a line from the Declaration of Independence - "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" - we see an attempt to deal with the problem of the nature of man. Basically, we have rights, and people want to infringe them. Great idea: establishing an institution to defend against such threats. So for example if you become a threat to my rights, I have the right to defend myself, and my neighbor and I have the right to band together against you. by decentralizing government, i don't see how this makes the situation any better. Suppose my group of people banded together to defend our rights starts oppressing you, infringing your rights. This is how decentralization helps: you also have the right to defend yourself, to join together with others to do so, etc. Basically there would be no problem whatsoever with you and I, in the same territory, belonging to competing institutions that defend rights - you could call them governments if you want. And it would be a very good way to protect ourselves, to prevent any of these institutions from becoming oppressive. It's a fantastic "check and balance." That is why any legitimate government should allow people to secede. Rather than forcing people to accept its rights-securing services, it should permit people to decline to participate and to participate in competing service providers. The reason governments as we know them don't allow this is because what they really want, rather than protecting people's rights, is power. |
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I ran up against the same thing not long ago. Bitcoin hit a certain point where I thought it was sure to take a dip soon, and I wanted to make a sale and keep some fiat on an exchange. I hadn't actually used Bitstamp in awhile, and discovered I was unable to do so because I was not verified.
Sure enough there was a brief dip that day, but I missed it. Oh, well.
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My best suggestion is to take a second job, and put all of the money from that job into Bitcoin.
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If I may make a non-sarcastic troll-tastic point:
I like libertarianism and anarchism. But it's too easy to associate them with selfishness "Oh, that's what all the rich Bitcoiners would say, 'Everyone should be able to choose everything for themselves'. How convenient that you guys just so happen to be the richest swines in this techno-hell of a world we have found ourselves in!!!"
This is why I'm relentlessly attacking the political labels that we're all chucking around our discussions here; not because I'm trying to make some sort of high-brow joke that everyone else is the butt of, but to make you see that smart people will use these labels against you.
They will say "you are libertarian, that means you tolerate, but secretly hate the guts of gays/the poor/foreigners/trans-sexuals/welfare lifestylers/popular culture, and this is all because libertarians are right-wing"
So you must stick hard to the principles of these political positions. If someone tries to steer you into a position that corrupts or misrepresents your principles, you must argue effectively and vociferously against it. And you can only do that if you know your principles inside out, I'm pleased that there are good signs that people here do.
So, just remember, it's not about being a libertarian. Libertarian is a single word, and it can be made to mean something different to what you actually believe in, if someone is dedicated to making it so. And other, less informed, people will believe the new definition, not the intended one.
Individual words and their meanings can be subverted by the people with the means to shout the loudest, it has been done many times in the past and it can happen again. It is much more difficult to alter the meaning of principles. Because principles are logical statements, not just some label that can have any association tacked onto it with a pin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLCEUpIg8rE&noredirect=1Haha, right after posting that, I viewed this great example of how that word can be misused, and is in fact misused in the clip I posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYv9CHDc34w |
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but to make you see that smart people will use these labels against you. Absolutely. I have seen it many times. You make some very good points. |
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If I may make a non-sarcastic troll-tastic point:
I like libertarianism and anarchism. But it's too easy to associate them with selfishness "Oh, that's what all the rich Bitcoiners would say, 'Everyone should be able to choose everything for themselves'. How convenient that you guys just so happen to be the richest swines in this techno-hell of a world we have found ourselves in!!!"
This is why I'm relentlessly attacking the political labels that we're all chucking around our discussions here; not because I'm trying to make some sort of high-brow joke that everyone else is the butt of, but to make you see that smart people will use these labels against you.
They will say "you are libertarian, that means you tolerate, but secretly hate the guts of gays/the poor/foreigners/trans-sexuals/welfare lifestylers/popular culture, and this is all because libertarians are right-wing"
So you must stick hard to the principles of these political positions. If someone tries to steer you into a position that corrupts or misrepresents your principles, you must argue effectively and vociferously against it. And you can only do that if you know your principles inside out, I'm pleased that there are good signs that people here do.
So, just remember, it's not about being a libertarian. Libertarian is a single word, and it can be made to mean something different to what you actually believe in, if someone is dedicated to making it so. And other, less informed, people will believe the new definition, not the intended one.
Individual words and their meanings can be subverted by the people with the means to shout the loudest, it has been done many times in the past and it can happen again. It is much more difficult to alter the meaning of principles. Because principles are logical statements, not just some label that can have any association tacked onto it with a pin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLCEUpIg8rE&noredirect=1 |
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What exactly are you proposing? That services require you to have a costly account to mitigate the potential to create thousands of accounts for free? Why donate to miners and not a set of charities? Why exclude people who only have an annual income of 200$?
Well, it's the miners and the blockchain that are verifying the veracity of the transaction that creates the identity, the idea is to send a special transaction with no recipient or amount, just fees. And I think the $200 figure is kind of notional, they imply that in the text. The fact that it's a fees-only transaction should give you an idea of the price range they will start from from for the cheapest. This has probably been answered already, but what stops me from keeping the transaction to myself (not broadcasting it) and mining for the block that contains the transaction myself, so that the fees go to me, and I essentially don't pay fees? (Or at least mining for it with a mining pool I control, so that I get some chunk of the fee back?) |
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more than that, we need to encourage everyone to spend some of their stash. Great, so what are you selling for Bitcoin?  |
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Is the price of anarchy is that we have to allow female genital mutilation? No, the price of anarchy is that if you want to make this your cause, you do so yourself, at your own expense, and you recruit help through persuasion, not force. Take Nazism in the 20th century, for example. You want to fight it, more power to you, but drafting and taxing other people to do so was wrong. Others might have seen it as evil but not as evil as, say, Stalinism. Or may have felt there were better ways to combat it, or whatever. Likewise with Islamic extremism in the early 21st century. And many, many other causes. Just because something is evil does not mean you have the right to use force to make other people fight it. |
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But I prefer a national set of laws that reflects my values.
No, too inefficient. How about a local set of laws you and your peers and their businesses all agree upon? That way you're not getting in the way of people you've never met before, nor will stupid laws like "ban alcohol" or "cut off a lady's clitter" stretch very far. You have no morality. Female genital mutilation is an abomination. The idea that the local majority can hire their own police force that will allow it disgusts me. I am not personally obligated to right every single wrong in the world at my own expense. Those who are concerned about this evil should apply their own resources and manpower to do something about it. While I might be said to "allow" some evils because I am not personally giving my wealth or time or efforts to fighting them, I would also be "allowing" you to use force to do something about it, because I certainly wouldn't stand against you. Personally, if I'm given a choice, I would be a lot more likely to give my efforts and wealth to help people escape from jurisdictions where these things are allowed to jurisdictions where they are not, rather than to efforts to try to go in to use force to stop such wrongs, which I consider to be a little bit impractical and utopian. |
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I first got involved with Bitcoin as a minarchist. Since then I've become a full-on libertarian - not through Bitcoin per-se, but through reading this forum and plenty of Rothbard.
It's clear to me now that libertarianism is the only morally-consistent position.
That warms my heart, friend. I hope many, many more come to the same conclusions through the things that are going on through this currency and the community that surrounds it. |
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I bought laundry detergent the other day, and I got only the $1 box, which is much more expensive per load than the $8 box.
Nobody had to make an incentive for me to do this - people buy this option all the time. It's the exact same decision as choosing to spend gold or Bitcoin which might be worth more tomorrow.
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where are wallets - QT?
bytecoin.in is down
Here is the version for Windows that I originally downloaded: http://goo.gl/e5rrcVI'll be happy to share it there indefinitely; I think you'll need 7-Zip to open it. I encourage you not to trust me - it would be good for other people to run virus checkers on this file, and for people who already have it to compare with what they have and publish their results. That would be far better than blindly trusting me and running code I am sharing. |
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