2013-12-10 Bitcoin Proves The Libertarian Idea Of Paradise Would Be Hell On Eart

[Mike Christ]

the reason why Somalia isn't Anarchy/Libertirism (like the "model") is the same as why Cuba isn't socialism: because they are stupid utopias which ignore totaly the nature of humans.

this is the point i've tried to make, but anarchists always retort with a "but government is that way too!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

You both miss the point: some people like self-governance, some people don't.  The only point of this article is to force one group (wouldn't you know it, just happens to be the anarchists) to follow another (and boy, what a coincidence: people who prefer hierarchies!  This is going in my book as "rarest journalistic pursuits ever.")  I realize you two haven't spent any time studying anarchism, which makes sense, because it doesn't interest you; this doesn't bother me.  What bothers me is that you still operate under the belief that there can only be one way the world is run.  This is as silly as the belief that there can only be one religion, or only one football team, or only one fast food chain; what these three things have in common, that methods of government lack, is the fact that nobody is forcing you to root for the Packers.

[capoeira]

It suggests that if everyone was dirt poor, but equally so, then that situation is preferable to some being dirt-poor and some being "filthy rich."

I never spoked about equal distribution, but showing that equal distribution would eliminate all poors should make clear that a more equal distribution would eliminate povertry also:

let's asume that:
 poor=$1
the most rich man (1 person, on top) gains 10x the income as the poor (which are 10 people)

left side: 10 poor people out of 55
right side (would be socialism; once again: I'm not defending socialism): 55 happy people gaining 3.6x above povertry








now imagine the real piramid where the top gain 1000-100.000 times the value of the poor;
and than imagine if there was a rule that rich only can gain 20 times as much as the poor. should be clear now that noone would be poor anymore

[beetcoin]

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-libertarian-paradise-would-be-hell-on-earth-2013-12

So the Bitcoin experience gives us a glimpse of Libertarian paradise: What life would be like with as little government interference as possible, in a market free of burdensome laws and taxes.

Unfortunately, that experience looks like a total nightmare. It's characterized by radical instability, chaos, the rise of a boss-class of criminals who assassinate people they don't like, and a mass handover of wealth to a minority even smaller than the 1% that currently lauds it in the United States.

If Bitcoin was a country — Bitcoinistan? — it would be like Somalia.

Somalia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtGkTRnocZI

the reason why Somalia isn't Anarchy/Libertirism (like the "model") is the same as why Cuba isn't socialism: because they are stupid utopias which ignore totaly the nature of humans.

this is the point i've tried to make, but anarchists always retort with a "but government is that way too!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

yes, this is somewhat a problem i experienced at a meetup.. it was a bitcoin/libertarian group. i got along with them all, but i also noticed that my ideology did not exactly fit with theirs. i agreed with them on most things, but i couldn't agree on their one-size-fits-all approach.. i didn't want to argue with anyone though, since that's what i did the first time and it achieved nothing.

[westkybitcoins]

It suggests that if everyone was dirt poor, but equally so, then that situation is preferable to some being dirt-poor and some being "filthy rich."

I never spoked about equal distribution, but showing that equal distribution would eliminate all poors should make clear that a more equal distribution would eliminate povertry also:

let's asume that:
 poor=$1
the most rich man (1 person, on top) gains 10x the income as the poor (which are 10 people)

left side: 10 poor people out of 55
right side (would be socialism; once again: I'm not defending socialism): 55 happy people gaining 3.6x above povertry

<snip>


now imagine the real piramid where the top gain 1000-100.000 times the value of the poor;
and than imagine if there was a rule that rich only can gain 20 times as much as the poor. should be clear now that noone would be poor anymore

I understand what you're saying. I'll address it below.

Basically, the Bitcoin technology does not address the issue of unequal distribution of wealth. Or does it? If not, what can be done about that?

Wealth will not be equally distributed until intelligence is equally distributed; which unless we start creating generically modified babies that are all equal, will be never.

+1

I find it interesting that in all the forum talk, blog posts, etc. I see about people worried about unequal wealth distribution, no one ever, even once, actually clearly states what the fundamental problem with it is (never mind addressing whether the wealth distribution was the cause or result.)

you must be from north europe to ask that.
I invite you to come here to Brazil where I make you understand very quick

Would you be okay with just stating it in a sentence or two?

you wouldn't understand it as you have suggestions implanted which wouldn't accept my explanations. rarely people in a privilaged situation understand how it is not to be

Privilege is relative.

I ask the question because the idea that wealth-distribution is the problem suggests an absurdity. It suggests that if everyone was dirt poor, but equally so, then that situation is preferable to some being dirt-poor and some being "filthy rich."

Do you believe that to be true? If not, then it's just the overall level of wealth (and the lack of freedom to attain it,) not it's distribution, that's the real problem, yes?

Just saying that extremely unequal wealth distribution is a bad thing, doesn't mean that all wealth has to be distributed equally. I know there is considerable debate on whether or not societies that are more equal are better off over all and in general more harmonious. But brushing that debate off entirely and simply stating it is something we can completely ignore and is always without consequence is at best arrogant.

The train of thought that when living a protected life of privilege one says that all the masses living in ghetto have only themselves to blame for their misery needs to be substantiated before I'll buy the argument. In fact there is plenty of evidence showing that there is little class mobility, at least in industrialized nations. That doesn't mean that all poor people are stupid and all rich people are smart, it means that society is NOT meritocratic. Of course the more meritocratic a society is, the easier it would be to accept more glaring inequalities. But then one has to determine what merits will be judged.

What I'm saying is not that equality is necessarily the most important thing of all, but it is not an issue one should brush off as inconsequential without a reasoned and thorough argument.

I think it's time this was spun off into its own thread.

So I've started a new one for this; hopefully you'll both join me there to continue discussing this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=370034.0

[nwbitcoin]

If people who used to have a $1 a day suddenly find themselves with $55 a day, it doesn't eliminate poverty in exactly the same reason that being Northern European doesn't stop you being poor.

Its called inflation and the cost of living.

If the poorest people in the economy is on $55 a day, then its no different to them being on $1 a day because the cost of what you have to own goes up.

What you get with a richer economy is more costs per transactions. A minimum wage in the UK is £1083 a month, but you can't afford to live an independent life on that.

The actual money isn't important, its having the guts to take a risk and push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

[capoeira]

If the poorest people in the economy is on $55 a day, then its no different to them being on $1 a day because the cost of what you have to own goes up.

what you don't understand is that if minimum wage goes up, what makes prices go up is that the top of the piramid also ups their wage. in a more iqual distribution prices don't go up because what "pays" the higher loans at the bottom are the lower loans at the top

[nwbitcoin]

If the poorest people in the economy is on $55 a day, then its no different to them being on $1 a day because the cost of what you have to own goes up.

what you don't understand is that if minimum wage goes up, what makes prices go up is that the top of the piramid also ups their wage. in a more iqual distribution prices don't go up because what "pays" the higher loans at the bottom are the lower loans at the top

And what you don't understand is the simple rule of marketing that prices are always set at the highest the market can afford!

If all the money of the world was redistributed equally, it would take a week or so before it was back in its original hands! ;-)

[jinni]

What they're talking about on the development and project forums here on Bitcointalk is really pretty exciting. We can create blockchain style document stores. We can use the blockchain we have to store identification tokens.

Great. Do you have links to some relevant threads?

I can easily see how record keeping is one of the most important uses for government, and once it is decentralized and cryptographically proven that feature will not be needed any more from governments.

Confusingly titled "Passports", but they're actually ID's stored in the bitcoin blockchain, bought with bitcoin: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140711.0

Blockchained data stores (but not in the bitcoin blockchain): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=348868.0


Can you trust a lawyer to not conspire against you in altering a contract after the fact? Can you trust your own government not to "borrow" your identity to commit a crime, or a foreign government not to invent an identity to deceive you?

These systems, designed and implemented right, could give us something close to absolute trust in verifying the truthfulness of all sorts of useful information. I suspect that these replacement uses may be the tip of the iceberg, people who have a feel for the underlying logic of these mechanisms will invent completely novel uses that will change the world forever.

Cannot overstate the significance of this development.

I will happily be reading those threads. Thank you

The idea about having contracts stored decentrally and veritably is great. It would make it possible to enforce the freedom of contract decentrally. To have a verdict about which party is in the wrong in a dispute one can use an arbitrage court for which both parties make an additional agreement to accept its verdict.

Of course I can see how such a system could grown in complexity and hence bureaucracy. But the idea is that one could jurisdiction shop and lawyers can open-source-build legal framework according to different design philosophies just like different Linux operating systems. So some will be full featured, where everything is pre-installed and have an easy to understand interface (like Ubuntu or Mint), but need some resources to run - perfect for your average Joe, others will have a focus on stability but not necessarily on usability (like Debian), and others will have a focus on being lightweight (like Arch) and hence cheap so they will be customizable but if you don't know what you are doing you can screw up badly.