Has the 'Bitcoin Experiment' changed your political or economic views at all?

[Rudd-O]

Heads up everyone: Note the surreptitious change of topic from "aggressive violence" to "violence", followed up by "well, violence is essential" (which is trivially true of some forms of violence, but definitely not of aggressive violence).

Classic sociopathic sleight of words; gato por liebre, we Spanish-speaking people say.  With the omission of one single word, firefop completely changed the category of action that was being discussed, thus sabotaging a discussion about aggression (well, attempted to sabotage, haha, such nonsense does not escape me).

There you go, gentlemen, you just witnessed -- right in front of your eyes -- one example of how liars, charlatans and other forms of sociopaths peddle their malevolent shit.

So, who wants to bet money that the next time someone addresses firefop about the topic, he'll fog and confuse the issue -- exactly like he just did -- once again?

[myrkul]

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

violence is essential to life. To try to 'educate' or 'socialize' it away is utter folly. You have a fear response for a reason, you have a rage response for a reason. Both act as safety valves on different situations.

Violence, yes. Aggression, no. Do try to keep them straight.

[Rassah]

That is why I compare you to a theologian. You are telling me what to think. You are telling me what you think is moral and immoral, and you expect me to agree with you.  If I disagree with your axioms, then you call me a sociopath. The theologian would call me a heretic. The theologian speaks of forbidden fruit. You speak of healthy and unhealthy fruit. To me they are just fruit. I hate you both passionately.

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

K, then. I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

That is quite ironic, since it is the libertarian's stance that you should be free to follow your own moral codes - as long as you do it on your own property- and that no one has the right to impose their moral codes on others, while it is the Keynesians' stance that politician economists should decide what is moral and immoral, and force those moral codes onto others (e.g. socialism).

So does that mean you regard those who pass such morality codes as minimum wage laws, social security/welfare, housing subsidies, etc as theologians?

[cunicula]

That is why I compare you to a theologian. You are telling me what to think. You are telling me what you think is moral and immoral, and you expect me to agree with you.  If I disagree with your axioms, then you call me a sociopath. The theologian would call me a heretic. The theologian speaks of forbidden fruit. You speak of healthy and unhealthy fruit. To me they are just fruit. I hate you both passionately.

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

K, then. I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

That is quite ironic, since it is the libertarian's stance that you should be free to follow your own moral codes - as long as you do it on your own property- and that no one has the right to impose their moral codes on others, while it is the Keynesians' stance that politician economists should decide what is moral and immoral, and force those moral codes onto others (e.g. socialism).

So does that mean you regard those who pass such morality codes as minimum wage laws, social security/welfare, housing subsidies, etc as theologians?

Those are legal codes. Why must you bring in morality?

[Rassah]

That is why I compare you to a theologian. You are telling me what to think. You are telling me what you think is moral and immoral, and you expect me to agree with you.  If I disagree with your axioms, then you call me a sociopath. The theologian would call me a heretic. The theologian speaks of forbidden fruit. You speak of healthy and unhealthy fruit. To me they are just fruit. I hate you both passionately.

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

K, then. I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

That is quite ironic, since it is the libertarian's stance that you should be free to follow your own moral codes - as long as you do it on your own property- and that no one has the right to impose their moral codes on others, while it is the Keynesians' stance that politician economists should decide what is moral and immoral, and force those moral codes onto others (e.g. socialism).

So does that mean you regard those who pass such morality codes as minimum wage laws, social security/welfare, housing subsidies, etc as theologians?

Those are legal codes. Why must you bring in morality?

Those legal codes are legislating morality. The legal codes make the statement that it is immoral to have people earn too little, it is immoral to let poor people starve, and it is moral to make sure everyone has a house. They also make a statement that it is moral to take things from those who have things to take, in order to make all those moral things happen. And since these moral decisions are made by Keynesian politicians, and forced upon even those who would disagree with them, by your own words those Keynesians are theologians

[cunicula]

That is why I compare you to a theologian. You are telling me what to think. You are telling me what you think is moral and immoral, and you expect me to agree with you.  If I disagree with your axioms, then you call me a sociopath. The theologian would call me a heretic. The theologian speaks of forbidden fruit. You speak of healthy and unhealthy fruit. To me they are just fruit. I hate you both passionately.

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

K, then. I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

That is quite ironic, since it is the libertarian's stance that you should be free to follow your own moral codes - as long as you do it on your own property- and that no one has the right to impose their moral codes on others, while it is the Keynesians' stance that politician economists should decide what is moral and immoral, and force those moral codes onto others (e.g. socialism).

So does that mean you regard those who pass such morality codes as minimum wage laws, social security/welfare, housing subsidies, etc as theologians?

Those are legal codes. Why must you bring in morality?

Those legal codes are legislating morality. The legal codes make the statement that it is immoral to have people earn too little, it is immoral to let poor people starve, and it is moral to make sure everyone has a house. They also make a statement that it is moral to take things from those who have things to take, in order to make all those moral things happen. And since these moral decisions are made by Keynesian politicians, and forced upon even those who would disagree with them, by your own words those Keynesians are theologians

Why are you assuming that the law was constructed with moral objectives in mind? Did God create the law in your book?

I thought politicians created the law and that politicians were self-serving. Why would they have designed laws in order to make moral things happen? I think rather that they designed self-serving laws. In societies with strong, powerful states, these self-serving laws tend to coincide with the interests of average people. In societies with weak states, laws coincide with the interests of a narrow group which the ruler depends on for support. Typically, it is a happy thing to be a citizen of a strong state. You can then live in an environment with reasonable laws that support general prosperity. It is a very sad thing to be the citizen of a weak state. You then live in a state with arbitrary laws designed to support the prosperity of a small group at the expense of everyone else. The main reason why places like China are oppressive is that the rulers/ruling institutions are not stable enough to ensure control over the country.

There are exceptions when rulers do stupid things, of course. But stupid rulers are not the main problem. Even when a strong state does something really stupid (e.g. Soviet Union), their citizens still tend to fare much, much better than citizens of weak states. The main problem is that states are too weak. Weak states are forced to rely on brutal measures that leave the bulk of their citizens poor, while enriching small elite groups.

AnCap, in my view, means many weak states. This is equivalent to enslavement, poverty, and brutality. Statism means freedom, prosperity, and security. Yay Statism! Down with AnCap.

[Rudd-O]

That is why I compare you to a theologian. You are telling me what to think. You are telling me what you think is moral and immoral, and you expect me to agree with you.  If I disagree with your axioms, then you call me a sociopath. The theologian would call me a heretic. The theologian speaks of forbidden fruit. You speak of healthy and unhealthy fruit. To me they are just fruit. I hate you both passionately.

I am simply stating what I believe.
I regard anyone who would accept aggressive violence as moral as a sociopath.

K, then. I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

That is quite ironic, since it is the libertarian's stance that you should be free to follow your own moral codes - as long as you do it on your own property- and that no one has the right to impose their moral codes on others, while it is the Keynesians' stance that politician economists should decide what is moral and immoral, and force those moral codes onto others (e.g. socialism).

So does that mean you regard those who pass such morality codes as minimum wage laws, social security/welfare, housing subsidies, etc as theologians?

Funny how cunticula accuses people of being "theologians" while he has unwavering faith in a certain class of Holy Scriptures.

Funny how a man who doesn't want to be the victim of aggression is a "theologian" while a man who supports aggression is somehow not a "theologian" while he certainly defends and supports the actions of embodied deities on Earth and their Holy Commandments.

Funny how "do not aggress against people" is a "theology" (that miraculously does not involve obedience or reference to any representative of any god or other sociopathic authority), while "obey these papers" (which obviously involves obedience to representatives of gods or other sociopathic authorities) is somehow not a "theology".

Do you see how the sociopaths operate manipulatively by reversing and perverting fundamental ethics?

Of course the sociopaths are going to be supporting a particular morality they identify with -- the morality of obedience to the people who can have you shot or caged.  Of course they won't call that morality a "theology" -- that's just an insult they reserve to denigrate the ethics of decent people who don't support such atrocity.

Strike at the root already.

[neptop]

I feel more fond about my guesses. I feel like I've been pretty correct with what I considered wild guesses and found out that they actually were kinda conservative.

I consider it to be way less occultism and learned that it is way more based on kinda random human behavior than I thought. I now understand that it's more like you can, if you have many "users" (agents?) in a system use statistics and compare them with empirical data to find out what's going to happen, but you can have really bad luck with choosing the data. Most likely I am just really bad at it.

This manifested my (wild) guess that economic systems are based on societies and makes me think things could change rather quickly, if people are educated. However, while I consider this to be way more possible (in theory) than before Bitcoin I also consider it to be way harder (practically) than I thought earlier.

I now have a more global view on things and an even bigger aversion from generalizing ideologies. They are way too big and too complex and a communist socialist can be closer to to a libertarian capitalist than another communist socialist and vice versa, even if they usually would never acknowledge this to themselves. I am the same, but it doesn't matter, because people seem to do a a pretty good job overcoming this as long as they know what they actually want and aren't just blindly agreeing with what they consider to be their ideology. Makes me think of nationalism and religion/atheism.

Last, but not least I learned that money isn't as important as I considered it to be. It's really nothing, but a random tool and whether it exists doesn't really matter at all; just like the free market. Sociology seems to be way more important and as someone who hates it or doesn't even consider it a real science that's probably the biggest change of views.

Also politics doesn't seem to matter at all. So basically, if people are stupid, neither money, nor politics won't change that. The same is true for smart people. So all in all being critical in the way a real scientist/researcher/philosopher is (with that I exclude people that just have some title/degree and/or are on TV shows) seems to be the most worthwhile thing. So if you want to change something, maybe figure out how to make people like that and maybe teach them self-criticism. Or just don't care, because nothing matters anyway. Seems to be both true.

[Rassah]

Why are you assuming that the law was constructed with moral objectives in mind? Did God create the law in your book?

I thought politicians created the law and that politicians were self-serving. Why would they have designed laws in order to make moral things happen?

Because politicians want to get reelected, so they do things like, "I want to be seen as a nice, moral guy, so lets pass laws that help the little guy. There are a lot more voters who are 'little guys' so that will surely help my reelection." Same reason they pass laws and resolutions banning gay marriage, abortion, etc. They believe it is moral to do so, and hope the rest of the country does too. They don't do it because they've sat done with a pen, paper, and a ton of economics books, to try to figure out how to make things better.

I think rather that they designed self-serving laws. In societies with strong, powerful states, these self-serving laws tend to coincide with the interests of average people. In societies with weak states, laws coincide with the interests of a narrow group which the ruler depends on for support. Typically, it is a happy thing to be a citizen of a strong state. You can then live in an environment with reasonable laws that support general prosperity. It is a very sad thing to be the citizen of a weak state. You then live in a state with arbitrary laws designed to support the prosperity of a small group at the expense of everyone else. The main reason why places like China are oppressive is that the rulers/ruling institutions are not stable enough to ensure control over the country.

There are exceptions when rulers do stupid things, of course. But stupid rulers are not the main problem. Even when a strong state does something really stupid (e.g. Soviet Union), their citizens still tend to fare much, much better than citizens of weak states. The main problem is that states are too weak. Weak states are forced to rely on brutal measures that leave the bulk of their citizens poor, while enriching small elite groups.

AnCap, in my view, means many weak states. This is equivalent to enslavement, poverty, and brutality. Statism means freedom, prosperity, and security. Yay Statism! Down with AnCap.

Holy shit!   . This is the most genuine example of double-think I have seen yet! Weak states are bad because they use their total and absolute power to enslave and brutalize their citizens, and strong states are benevolent overseers with no power over their citizens, who let them do whatever they want and prosper? Damn, you are NUTS!
You know what the difference between USA and Stalin-era USSR was? One country was afraid of it's citizens, too weak to control them, and relied on their input and approval for everything it did, and the other country was too strong for any of it's citizens to oppose it, and controlled every aspect of all its citizen's lives, to the point of being able to take over 6,000,000 of those lives. Either you are some seriously f'ed up Orwellian psychopath, or you have some crazy notions about what strong and weak mean.

[myrkul]

AnCap, in my view, means many weak states. This is equivalent to enslavement, poverty, and brutality. Statism means freedom, prosperity, and security. Yay Statism! Down with AnCap.

Either you are some f'ed up Orwellian psychopath, or you have some crazy notions about what strong and weak mean.

It's clearly the former. WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

[cunicula]

Holy shit!   . This is the most genuine example of double-think I have seen yet! Weak states are bad because they use their total and absolute power to enslave and brutalize their citizens, and strong states are benevolent overseers with no power over their citizens, who let them do whatever they want and prosper? Damn, you are NUTS!
You know what the difference between USA and Stalin-era USSR was? One country was afraid of it's citizens, too weak to control them, and relied on their input and approval for everything it did, and the other country was too strong for any of it's citizens to oppose it, and controlled every aspect of all its citizen's lives, to the point of being able to take over 6,000,000 of those lives. Either you are some seriously f'ed up Orwellian psychopath, or you have some crazy notions about what strong and weak mean.

Nah, the USA was and is an extremely strong state. Perhaps the strongest in the world. The USSR eventually collapsed (though in its heyday it was a relatively strong state). States that are prone to collapse are called weak states. It means the rulers/ruling institutions have a weak hold on power.

When you have a strong hold on power, then you collect revenue through things like income taxes. When you have a weak hold on power, then you collect revenue through methods that are much easier to enforce (i.e. the printing press, taxes on imports, state control of mineral resources).

When you have a strong hold on power, you can collect revenue fairly evenly from all citizens. When you have a weak hold on power, you can only target your extraction efforts on social groups that are too feeble to oppose you (typically the poor). If you target rich elites, then the military shows up at the presidential office with the tanks pointed at the dictator.

When you have a strong hold on power, no one significant wants to topple you. When you have a weak hold on power, there are credible threats out there that seek to oust you. To neutralize these threats, weak states employ brutal methods of repression. For strong states such measures are counterproductive.

You should consider reading up on political science. You are not familiar with the terms used to describe states in that field.

[Rudd-O]

Y'all talking to a truly mad person.

[Explodicle]

I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

Did you mean to say "philosopher" or are you saying there can be no morality without religion?

Regarding the latest part:
It looks like when you say "strong" states you mean "resistant to corruption", and everyone else is assuming you mean "more redistributive". In that sense, I can't see why you'd use the Soviet Union as an example of a "strong" state. It was big, but also very corrupt (even early on) and relied on brutal methods of oppression. Since we're talking political science, do you use some metric for measuring "strength" of a state quantitatively, or a ranked list or something? Basically I want to check that state strength (however defined) correlates with more/fewer human rights violations.

[lonelyminer (Peter Šurda)]

I don't know how we switched from economics to ethics, but Austrian Economics is strictly value free. Austrians are frequently libertarians, but that's a separate, philosophical, issue.

It is also not true that it is based on authority of books. There are plenty of points where various Austrians disagree. The Keynesians are dogmatists. You can see that when they analyse the Great Depression and the current crap we're in now. Both of these time frames correlate with unprecedented monetary, fiscal and regulatory expansion of the activities of state. The Keynesians conclude from this that these expansions were insufficient. Using the word "empirical" to describe the Keynesian methodology is a very long stretch.

[byronbb]

It has confirmed to me that humans don't need governments any more. The internet allows the collaboration of private individuals across all segments of society, geography, nationality, who can successfully work together to solve massive and complex problems. Linux is the huge example where private individuals developed massively robust software in a collective manner. A human is a human, the internet is a "nation" of humans. Open Source, Wikipedia, bitcoin, these are the beginnings.

[cunicula]

I don't know how we switched from economics to ethics, but Austrian Economics is strictly value free. Austrians are frequently libertarians, but that's a separate, philosophical, issue.

Hmmm... value-free huh? Well that would be an improvement, but I am not sure that most Austrians would agree with you.

Austrian’s core is two-fold; it is based upon a set of philosophical axioms that don’t need to be empirically tested. (By definition you don’t need to test a philosophical axiom!)  The heart of the Austrian’s philosophy is that humans should enter in voluntary relationships; that the institutionalisation of aggressive violence is always bad; no-matter the said ‘productive’ outcomes of such a policy.  It is not a question if a society would be more or less economically efficient with such policies.  All policies that require aggressive violence are not even considered as available (said moral) options.

Austrian’s then take the second step to explain why, (not just philosophically), but economically, voluntary interaction leads to the economically most efficient society.  Thus is built upon philosophical axioms, and makes use of logic and reason.  None of this is REQUIRED to be empirically tested. Why.   The same reason why mathematics doesn’t need to be empirically tested: Proofs.

Hmmm... either the word 'value-free' is being used in a bizarre way or these two guys are talking about completely different things. I don't know what to make of it. Someone care to reconcile these seemingly incompatible views?

[cunicula]

I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

Did you mean to say "philosopher" or are you saying there can be no morality without religion?

Yes to no objective morality without religion. There is a subjective morality that is a function of individual feelings. I don't know if that counts as morality in your view.

I'll get back to you on the next part. It is difficult to come up with an adequate definition of weak vs. strong state. A helpful, easy-to-read book here is "Why Nations Fail" by Acemoglu and Robinson. They claim far too much in my opinion, but it is a good book nonetheless.

[myrkul]

I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

Did you mean to say "philosopher" or are you saying there can be no morality without religion?

Yes to no objective morality without religion.

Stefan Molyneux would like to have a word with you.

[cunicula]

I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

Did you mean to say "philosopher" or are you saying there can be no morality without religion?

Yes to no objective morality without religion.

Stefan Molyneux would like to have a word with you.

I would not like to have a word with him. He is a piece of shit. Dostoyevsky would like to have a word with you.

[myrkul]

I regard anyone who would presume to decide for others what is moral and immoral as a theologian.

Did you mean to say "philosopher" or are you saying there can be no morality without religion?

Yes to no objective morality without religion.

Stefan Molyneux would like to have a word with you.

I would not like to have a word with him. He is a piece of shit. Dostoyevsky would like to have a word with you.

If you reject a philosophy simply because it disagrees with your beliefs, and not based on its merits, How does that make you better than a theologian?