Making block space arbitrary scarce is worse then changing inflation schedule.

[Serith]

Making block space arbitrary scarce will subsidies miners at the expense of people who are using the network for transactions. If the network security is the ultimate goal then it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block because it will tax everyone equally not only those who are trying to make a use of the system by performing transactions.

My personal opinion is that free market in most cases works better then any arbitrary economic rule, therefore I am against subsidizing miners with more bitcoins then absolutely necessary.

[Walter Rothbard]

it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block

Then just use a blockchain that does that, instead of using Bitcoin.

[Serith]

it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block

Then just use a blockchain that does that, instead of using Bitcoin.

You should have finished reading my post, it's not that long.

therefore I am against subsidizing miners with more bitcoins then absolutely necessary.

[oleganza]

Your opinion does not matter. And mine too. Nobody is "making" block space scarce. It is not scarce today and will not be when transactions approach the limit. The limit will simply be raised.

Miners will find it more profitable to have *freedom* to increase block size when transactions start pushing the limits. Because with the limit in place, even with raising fees, no one can know that they earn the maximum revenue. As you can guess, as fees start getting higher because of tx competition, people will start using alternative solutions with lower fees. That is, escrows services. So now escrows will compete with miners. And, by the way, escrows will compete with each other and also would love to pay lower fees, thus voting for higher block limit. You will have: thousands of loud opinions of forum members (that do not matter), thousands silent self-interests of miners to raise the limit (to get bigger revenue), thousands silent self-interests of users to raise the limit (to pay lower fees) and thousands silent self-interests of escrows (to pay lower fees), they would naturally compete by providing extra services and instant verification.

So when the time comes and blocks become 1 Mb long, you would have many different loud opinions based on cheap philosophy and political manifests and a million of silent votes to increase the limit. The limit will be increased not because some people were smarter and more persuasive, but because it's economical to everyone. Loud proponents of raising the limit will take credit for their advocacy, but it will be dishonest. Everyone will calculate benefit for himself/herself without listening to any philosophy from anyone (including me).

The only scarcity that will occur comes from bandwidth limits (bigger blocks have more chances to be orphaned), storage costs (but this is negligible) and CPU time for tx verification (also negligible). For at least the next 10-20 years bandwidth will be the main factor. If suddenly people invent super-wide channels, then the main factor will be a cost of storage to keep 1TB blocks, or processing power to verify millions of txs coming in every couple of minutes.

[markm]

As far as I can tell the main objection seems to be that the limit is not being raised long before it needs to be raised, maybe combined with its not being raised "how high oh lord and master" the instant some loud forum voice says it should be done right away or as soon as possible.

I guess they have a fundamental distrust of the ability of the community to perform a co-ordinated transition to an updated rule or set of rules, despite the team presumably being able to streamline the process more and more each time it is done. We should be able to expect to get a new rule up and running with less lead time than last time, and for the next one after that to require even less lead time. Especially with something whose actual code-change is as simple as changing one integer. We could put it in a config file even so those who cannot just press a button to have new code validated, compiled, installed and run can just press a button to have one config file entry changed and the config file re-read.

-MarkM-

[hazek]

Making block space arbitrary scarce will subsidies miners at the expense of people who are using the network for transactions. If the network security is the ultimate goal then it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block because it will tax everyone equally not only those who are trying to make a use of the system by performing transactions.

My personal opinion is that free market in most cases works better then any arbitrary economic rule, therefore I am against subsidizing miners with more bitcoins then absolutely necessary.

So everyone should pay for a service only some require? Yeah... no.

[Serith]

Making block space arbitrary scarce will subsidies miners at the expense of people who are using the network for transactions. If the network security is the ultimate goal then it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block because it will tax everyone equally not only those who are trying to make a use of the system by performing transactions.

My personal opinion is that free market in most cases works better then any arbitrary economic rule, therefore I am against subsidizing miners with more bitcoins then absolutely necessary.

So everyone should pay for a service only some require? Yeah... no.

So, your point is that those who use bitcoin as investment doesn't benefit from the system and therefore shouldn't pay anything to make it more secure. Again, I started this thread to make a point that any arbitrary rule that redistributes money is a really bad thing, and shouldn't be used unless absolutely necessary.

[Walter Rothbard]

it will be better to have indefinite inflation of fixed or variable amount of bitcoins per block

Then just use a blockchain that does that, instead of using Bitcoin.

You should have finished reading my post, it's not that long.

therefore I am against subsidizing miners with more bitcoins then absolutely necessary.

So, again, use a blockchain that does what you want.