What is the moral legitimacy of bitcoin?

[Foxpup]

Let's suppose that someone leaves his/her family and gets his/her independence. If the primitive accumulation of capital doesn' t matter, then why not to be a whore (male or female) in order to start his/her life with an amount of money?

Why not, if that's what he/she is willing to do and others are willing to pay for it? That's the whole purpose of money: if a person is willing to offer something (anything) that other people want, money allows them to make a fair and equitable trade.

What is the evolution done with bitcoin relative to the true gold: we are not mining with hands but with algebra and encryption theory due to suitable hardware/software

Nobody mines gold with their hands either, or even picks and shovels. It's all done with big, expensive machines.

What is the difference between bitcoin community and the community of bankers? They didn' t care at all about the first origin of money (read history to ensure this)
Why to replace an inmoral and cynical money system with a similar one then?

Asked and answered. See my previous post.

The problem of scarcity in economics again here: "bitcoin has value because it is hard to make it"(!):

• This argument is ancient! I thought that a currency of new era could by-pass this... How? Wait for new currencies, after bitcoin..

Scarcity, in economics, simply means that people want more of something than they've got and can get. For example, people want lots of gold, but they don't all have lots of gold and they can't all get lots of gold - that's what it means to say "gold is scarce". A moments thought will make it clear why scarcity is an absolute requirement for something to be used as money, which cannot be "bypassed": if money isn't scarce, that means everybody has all the money they'll ever want, and they don't want any more than they've got. But if nobody wants any more money than they already have, why would they accept your money as payment? It doesn't make any sense.

I think you're confusing money and wealth again. Money is not wealth. Money is a representation of wealth. You want everyone to be wealthy. Who doesn't? But there's only so much stuff of value in the world, and not everyone will necessarily have all the things of value that they want. That's not fair, but life isn't fair, and it's got nothing to do with money, as money is just a representation of value: if you have money, it means you provided something of value to someone, which they paid you for. And that's the only thing it means to have money. If everyone were given money that they didn't obtain by producing things of value, what would that money represent? Nothing! That money would be worthless, as it does not represent actual value that someone produced.

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in order to start his/her life with an amount of money?

Not sure if i got that right, but do you want to give some kind of starter-money to every single person on this planet? How would you do that?

Like Foxpup says, if he and others want this, they should make it happen. Surely nobody is going to stop them. The point that he seems to miss however is that he will then have to pay for it. And suddenly this great moral idea is going to look a lot less interesting.

[odolvlobo]

I disagree with your post on many points.

* You are confusing the creation of money with the earning of money. For example, the Federal Reserve creates dollars because it can, not because it is doing something better than other people.

* Money is amoral and its legitimacy is inherent in its use.

* The value achieved by work is the value of the result, not the value of the effort.

[FreeMoney]

Gold is expensive because it is hard to get!

That's not right. It's nearly the opposite. Gold is hard to get because it is expensive.

There is all kinds of stuff harder to get than gold, no one bothers to get it because it isn't wanted.

[odolvlobo]

Gold is expensive because it is hard to get!

That's not right. It's nearly the opposite. Gold is hard to get because it is expensive.
There is all kinds of stuff harder to get than gold, no one bothers to get it because it isn't wanted.

Neither is correct. There are 3 variables, not 2: supply, demand, and price. Simply stated, gold is expensive because the supply is low and the demand is high. Also, the causality is not clear cut because although the price is determined by the supply and demand curves, the system is dynamic and the price affects the supply and demand curves over time.

[NicS]

Luno was right, actually. You do have to go get the stuff. But I think the other two were correct a well. The supply/demand curves are evident. Just ask Siri.

Beyond that, platinum has the potential to build HHO generators, or the mystical "Car that runs on water" (depending on who you ask. I think HHO is possible, but there are too many scams). Same for Bitcoin. Depending on who you ask, it's either anarchists tying to buy guns on Tor or a Ponzi scheme or a future currency like USD or JPY or its some Savior or none of the above.

Frankly, I have yet to see an orphanage built in Russia thanks to Bitcoin. But, man, is Silk Road fun to browse.

I know I didn't help. 2 posts to go until I'm out of he newbie forums. Woo!

[demcp]

Let me make a synopsis:

*Bitcoin started probably from an ambiguous team and nobody still now knows exactly them: the prophet(s) doesn' t (don't) want to be revealed
*The characteristics of it are similar to every other currency, except from its digital security methods (algebra & encryption algorithm)
*There is no moral legitimacy of it: everything works like all other currencies or rare commodities
*There exist a similarity to an old fashioned crusade: Let' s be the pioneers in creating bitcoins, other people will put it in circulation and we shall be rich!
*There are many alternatives based on the same idea: Namecoin, Devcoin, Litecoin, Liquidcoin, Solidcoin, Ixcoin (not all identical of course to bitcoin)
*The community is α very "living" one and has many similarities to old mining communities and to a religion community
*Believers are so faithful like all other modern religions of our era, but history is not so promising for this kind of communities...
*There would be no more than 21 million bitcoins and the creation curve is a typical concave curve (diminishing marginal returns): this reveals by itself a team of economists that want to play with some aspects of economic theory in practice and does not guarantee the successful outcome of the project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png
*Every time the block creation is halved the enthusiasm of the bitcoin community (BitCom for abbreviation) probably will reduces by a similar factor
*The bitcoin project have already passed from a bubble phase:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Bitcoin_exchange.png
and nobody guarantees that will not fall by a similar way
(remember: the market penetration is still weak!)

Let me have this concluding opinion:

*The whole project is a living experiment started from a team which probably is laughing with us now...

Finally:

*Please bring me the Great Guru or at least His/Their Sub Guru(s) opinion(s) for convincing me!

[paraipan]

You assume too much...

• there is no reward for somebody who is intelligent: the only thing you need is just brutal computational force!

Have you tried Rugatu?

[Atruk]

You assume too much...

• there is no reward for somebody who is intelligent: the only thing you need is just brutal computational force!

Have you tried Rugatu?

I'll vouch, it is slow at times, but some rather fat rewards pop up from time to time. Beats the hell out of Coinworker on the demands it makes of your time.

[dennisn]

As has been mentioned earlier here, by odolvlobo and Aahzman, there is a distressing misunderstanding of what morality is, and hence the nature of the original question is quite silly.

Morality is something that can and should be universally enforceable. The original proposition seems to suggest that buying graphics cards, or electricity, or not rewarding smart people is "evil". That is an incorrect proposition.

[Walter Rothbard]

This whole question is confusing.  If you think bitcoin is morally illegitimate, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate so.  You haven't cited any grounds for bitcoin being immoral.  It's not any more immoral than a store that you don't like: if you don't like the product, don't buy it.

Now, if you think bitcoin is illegitimate as a currency, i.e., unsuited for a currency on some practical grounds, I wouldn't call that immoral.  I'd just state what your objections are to it and why you believe people would be better off not using it.

I like bitcoin.  Convince me not to use it.   My using it does not hurt you in any way.

[Driice]

How does a currency have moral legitimacy

[sorped]

Hello everybody,

I' ve been reading about bitcoin and other similar coins (solidcoin etc) and I have also been trying to mine all those coins by downloading a dozen of so promising software, but without any kind of success til now.

So I am wondering what is the moral legitimacy of such a coin when:

• in order to mine coins you have to buy an expensive graphics card and spend hours and electricity money operating it
• there is no reward for somebody who is intelligent: the only thing you need is just brutal computational force!

All kind of money have some kind of legitimacy: you earn more because you are doing something better than other people, not because you have bought an expensive ATI card for example.

So, why do you think that the future of money should be something that probably has not a moral legitimacy?

If you think that I am wrong, please convince me.

The morality is that you get a chance to NOT pay a greedy company for handling your finances just because you have to use them. I mean in most countries you have to have a bank account to get your monthly salary, so you are forced to accept their ridiculous fees, and also accept that you have to pay for ridiculous bonuses to greedy people that are only interested in making more money. That's just a few of the points behind Bitcoins (for me at least)

[demcp]

My concern is not to promote another kind of money built from the same material: greed, crusade, stupidness in the way it is produced (do you remember El Dorado?).
The other aspect is aesthetics: how do you feel for a coin produced by this way?

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSfgNSP4dsSMgYZLsednxcAi8i8rcZFkknhsWyas76PERIZoe3eNQ

[lassdas]

It seems to me you still didn't get what "mining" (and i really hate that term already, because it confuses people so much) is about.

The main purpose of generating new blocks is not to create new coins, it might be the main reason and main incentive for people doing that job, but that's only a side-effect of work, that's needed to be done anyway, not its main purpose.

To quote the wiki (as it seems you can't find it for yourself):
It is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions.
Transactions need to be recorded, so everyone can check and verify account balances.
And that's exactly what "mining", or rather generating blocks, does, it records all transactions and stores them in a blockchain.

The stupidness in the way it is produced isn't all that stupid, the opposite is true, a process that's needed anyway is used to initially distribute the coins.

I really can't think of any way that could be better, more fair, or less stupid,
if you find one, please enlighten us.

 

[Walter Rothbard]

My concern is not to promote another kind of money built from the same material: greed, crusade, stupidness

You can choose not to transact with people that you deem to be greedy or stupid or crusading.

But you will be limiting your pool of customers and limiting your own wealth.

You sound like you are trying to start a crusade to build a new money, actually...

[Gabi]

for convincing me!

No one is here to convince you. Either you want to use bitcoin or you don't, your choice.

[addi]

money has no morals