Bitcoin Welfare System

[Anon136]

you make some very good points. admittedly i mistook your meaning. i agree that there is no black and white line where a person is doing everything in his power or is not. there are 1000 shades of grey between. the idea has to be to determine the trade off.

in order to abstract out the principal its best not to think of these things on the scale of societies, think about when its ok for you personally to take your neighbors vegetables out of his garden with out his permission, in order to remove pesky variables assume he did 100% of the work himself. i think we can agree that if you just wandered out of a desert where you have been lost for a month that its ok. i think we can agree that if you spend 8 hours a day watching tv and then suddenly realize that you have no money for food than it isn't. the trick is drawing that line in the right place. we would likely disagree on exactly where that line should be drawn but on the basic principal we are in agreement.

so then the question becomes how do we draw it efficiently? neither your opinion nor mine would be more valid than each others, they would just be our opinions. this is where the an-cap idea of a market in law comes in. basically judges would be tasked with determining the right trade off, every ruling that a judge made would offend someone but his job is to come up with rulings that cause the least offense on net. judges who did this poorly would soon find themselves out of work, and those who did it well would find themselves wealthier for it. thus we can apply the basic principal of market discovery, that works so at improving the speed of computers every year, to the discovery of the best trade offs in rights. markets dont reveal the right answer as soon as you implement them. in fact they can give rather bad and arbitrary solutions early on, but they discover better and better solutions as time progresses. compare this with the state which becomes less and less efficient as time progresses.

But the Eichstätter are not stupid - the homelords would never ever give some poor unemployed from Oberhausen a flat ...

than i say fuck them sure you would still have that problem we previously discussed, food would be cheaper in Eichstätter, but lets see how much the people of Eichstätter like life with out cheap labor.

[Itcher]

you make some very good points. admittedly i mistook your meaning. i agree that there is no black and white line where a person is doing everything in his power or is not. there are 1000 shades of grey between. the idea has to be to determine the trade off.

in order to abstract out the principal its best not to think of these things on the scale of societies, think about when its ok for you personally to take your neighbors vegetables out of his garden with out his permission, in order to remove pesky variables assume he did 100% of the work himself. i think we can agree that if you just wandered out of a desert where you have been lost for a month that its ok. i think we can agree that if you spend 8 hours a day watching tv and then suddenly realize that you have no money for food than it isn't. the trick is drawing that line in the right place. we would likely disagree on exactly where that line should be drawn but on the basic principal we are in agreement.

Fine, looks like we have found a point. But I am sure, we would find details to argue, for sure.

But let's not talk to much of the state, let's talk more about Bitcoin ... How do you think Satoshi Dice would serve as a welfare system? In abstract it does the same, as a welfare sate: It takes money from the one and gives it to some other. Redistribution by random.

The Satoshi Dice Tax' for income - the onliest tax you have the chance to get rich by paying it 

[Rassah]

markets dont reveal the right answer as soon as you implement them. in fact they can give rather bad and arbitrary solutions early on, but they discover better and better solutions as time progresses. compare this with the state which becomes less and less efficient as time progresses.

Heh, it's rather ironic, sometimes, hearing these politics and economics discussion on this particular forum, where it's as if people forget where exactly it is they are arguing their positions. That sentence above really reminded me of how Bitcoin was about 20 years ago. In short, compared to today, it was godawful in every respect. Like the quote by a certain person who's name escapes me, "Bitcoin is an idea that doesn't work in theory, only in practice." That probably applies to all these other ancap ideas we keep tossing around, too 

[Anon136]

markets dont reveal the right answer as soon as you implement them. in fact they can give rather bad and arbitrary solutions early on, but they discover better and better solutions as time progresses. compare this with the state which becomes less and less efficient as time progresses.

Heh, it's rather ironic, sometimes, hearing these politics and economics discussion on this particular forum, where it's as if people forget where exactly it is they are arguing their positions. That sentence above really reminded me of how Bitcoin was about 20 years ago. In short, compared to today, it was godawful in every respect. Like the quote by a certain person who's name escapes me, "Bitcoin is an idea that doesn't work in theory, only in practice." That probably applies to all these other ancap ideas we keep tossing around, too  

Yea i can only assume that I'm probably not right about the specifics, though its fun to try to figure it out. I really dont know how insurance companies would reconcile their differences, i only know that fighting is REALLY expensive so they would almost certainly find a way, and that if the basic principal of market discovery holds true in this market just like it does every other, than what ever their solutions are, they would probably become more efficient with time.

[NewLiberty]

Many bitcoiners are generous.  Welfare and other institutional pay-people-to-not-work programs tend to be less effective than local efforts, or direct aid workers that can operate globally.

Bitcoin100 actively seeks charities to accept bitcoin payments:
http://bitcoin100.org/charities/

Bitpay charges no fees to charities
https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-for-charities

You can mine directly for charity
http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/

There is a list of charitable organizations for bitcoiners maintained on the wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects

As well as many other projects that go unsung due to random acts of anonymous kindness.

[Richy_T]

Yea, that's the problem with libertarians.

They can't except any kind of walfare which lies beyond working or begging ... a little share of the wealth of the society should be everyones right, no matter, how usefull he or she is in senses of economy. But libertarias just see "violence" and "force" and so on, they don't see the miserable and factual deeply unfree state of someone having to beg for his own survival living inside an absurd wealth economy. So, this is it. I hate controll and I hate it to go to any institution of the state, but I am not with liberatarian. ++

Sorry, I will maybe tomorrow post a suggestion about bitcoin welfare economy ... maybe

They see it, they just won't take your money to fix it using threat of force and violence.

[Richy_T]

this would force [...] without invoking the violence of the state.

I am intrigued. Please explain.

[Lethn]

Yea, that's the problem with libertarians.

They can't except any kind of walfare which lies beyond working or begging ... a little share of the wealth of the society should be everyones right, no matter, how usefull he or she is in senses of economy. But libertarias just see "violence" and "force" and so on, they don't see the miserable and factual deeply unfree state of someone having to beg for his own survival living inside an absurd wealth economy. So, this is it. I hate controll and I hate it to go to any institution of the state, but I am not with liberatarian. ++

Sorry, I will maybe tomorrow post a suggestion about bitcoin welfare economy ... maybe

They see it, they just won't take your money to fix it using threat of force and violence.

That's the thing, I think proper charities etc. are fantastic ( when they aren't corrupt ), but even speaking from a fairly empathetic point of view I still think that saying threatening someone with jail if they don't give their money to someone else is a good thing makes you a self-righteous cunt, particularly when you don't consider that the person being forced into giving money has their own situations to deal with. They might be able to afford something like that for the first year or month but what if their business goes down the drain or they end up with less profits the next year? In the end you're going to be responsible for making them worse off than the person you forced them to help.

It's not generosity if a person is being forced, threatened or pressured into doing something on any side of the situation, in fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a form of blackmail and extortion though it's a very sophisticated form of it, the difference between a criminal and a politician is the politicians believe they are right to do what they do.

[Anon136]

this would force [...] without invoking the violence of the state.

I am intrigued. Please explain.

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

we have some precedent for this, i dont know if this is the case still today, but in japan it has been legal for very hungry people to take enough produce to feed themselves for 1 meal from a farmers crop with out compensating the farmer, assuming he had no means by which to compensate the farmer. there is some japanese word for this custom, i dont remember what it is, if someone else does i would be grateful to know.

so basically in effect this means that, inorder for a grocery store owner or farmer or restaurant owner ect... to be able to safely apprehend shoplifters free from fears of litigation, he would need to be able to claim that the shoplifter had some other means of avoiding imminent starvation. if no soup kitchen existed near by, than it would fall on him to provide one, else be at constant risk of litigation. of course there would be many food service businesses in any town and they could all share the burden of providing that soup kitchen.

ok so if you are wondering how we get from, "a bunch of judges are of the opinion that someone is due restitution" to actually enforcing that opinion with out involving a state, here is a video about historical precedent for non-state enforcement of common law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8oJsoliw0

[NewLiberty]

If there would be, as the OP proposed, an idea, how bitcoin could help to this welfare in a better and freeer way, it would give me one more reason to love Bitcoin.

Bitcoin does this by the simple virtue of what it is, a non-inflating currency and frictionless payment system open to everyone equally.

Inflation is the most regressive type of tax there is.  Government money when inflated hurts the poor and disenfranchised the most of all.  Newly printed money starts within the government, so the government receives the benefit of the money before the inflation takes effect, because the first time it is spent, the inflation has not yet taken effect.
The second time it is spent, the effect of the new money on inflation has only had its effect on the first recipients, to everyone else it is the first exposure.  In this way inflation ripples out into an economic system from the central bank out to the edges.  
Those that have high wealth, and high credit can get giant loans, the money to pay those loans are inflated, which makes them easier to repay.  The hard assets that were bought with those loans go up in value.  The richest are not affected by the inflation and many of them benefit from it.

The poorest, the rent-payers, and the last to get the money spent into their pocket only see it after the effect of inflation has taken its full effect.

Bitcoin avoids this, and has the opposite effect.  The banks and the central bank and the government are outside the circle of new money creation.  Bitcoin is already doing a good job of helping the poor, just by virtue of what it is and how it works and what it does.

http://bitcoin100.org/

When you add on top of this the massive charitable giving that is occurring from the bitcoin community, the notion of intercepting that charity and philanthropy with an institutional welfare taxation that pays people to not work or pays them to be sick seems worse than redundant.  It seems like it breaks a good thing by removing the joy of the giving from the giver and replaces it with the resentment and broken institutions that it can otherwise replace.

[Explodicle]

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

Would it be possible to keep one's savings in a brain wallet, while walking around eating free food every day?

[Anon136]

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

Would it be possible to keep one's savings in a brain wallet, while walking around eating free food every day?

absolutely. fortunately there is a rather simple and elegant solution to this problem. the soup kitchens could provide nutritionally well balanced and healthy food that tastes like shit. think of the white gruel that the crew of the nebakanezer eats every day for breakfast lunch and dinner in the matrix reloaded.

this way people have a social safety net that they can use to get back on their feet if they fall on hard times through not fault of their own while still having good incentive to actually work to rebuild their lives.

[Explodicle]

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

Would it be possible to keep one's savings in a brain wallet, while walking around eating free food every day?

absolutely. fortunately there is a rather simple and elegant solution to this problem. the soup kitchens could provide nutritionally well balanced and healthy food that tastes like shit. think of the white gruel that the crew of the nebakanezer eats every day for breakfast lunch and dinner in the matrix reloaded.

this way people have a social safety net that they can use to get back on their feet if they fall on hard times through not fault of their own while still having good incentive to actually work to rebuild their lives.

Could I load up my gruel with Denatonium and preservatives so my grocery store would save a lot of money? I'll assume that I can't add Chantix to help them quit smoking.

[Rassah]

Homeless people are stinky, and people don't like to see them. So, could people from around the country just donate to a single place like SeansOutpost, so that there will be free food in that area, and all homeless will just move there? It will keep the homeless out of areas where people don't want to see them, and the homeless will get food. Kind of like a homeless preserve (like for nature and endangered species). Win-win, right?

(I'm kidding. Mostly.)

[Anon136]

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

Would it be possible to keep one's savings in a brain wallet, while walking around eating free food every day?

absolutely. fortunately there is a rather simple and elegant solution to this problem. the soup kitchens could provide nutritionally well balanced and healthy food that tastes like shit. think of the white gruel that the crew of the nebakanezer eats every day for breakfast lunch and dinner in the matrix reloaded.

this way people have a social safety net that they can use to get back on their feet if they fall on hard times through not fault of their own while still having good incentive to actually work to rebuild their lives.

Could I load up my gruel with Denatonium and preservatives so my grocery store would save a lot of money? I'll assume that I can't add Chantix to help them quit smoking.

the whole point of the soup kitchen is to limit legal liability, if "Denatonium" causes cancer or something you would almost certainly find yourself facing some sort of class action lawsuit which would sort of defeat the purpose.

[Anon136]

Homeless people are stinky, and people don't like to see them. So, could people from around the country just donate to a single place like SeansOutpost, so that there will be free food in that area, and all homeless will just move there? It will keep the homeless out of areas where people don't want to see them, and the homeless will get food. Kind of like a homeless preserve (like for nature and endangered species). Win-win, right?

(I'm kidding. Mostly.)

what do you think of my idea rassah? stefan moleneaux and other denotological libertarians would no doubt find it abhorrent. as far as free market anarchists are concerned im something of a left wing apologist I agree with lefitists when they say that sometimes rights ought to be violated for the greater good, i just dont think thats at all a good argument in favor of the state or against markets in general.

[Rassah]

Homeless people are stinky, and people don't like to see them. So, could people from around the country just donate to a single place like SeansOutpost, so that there will be free food in that area, and all homeless will just move there? It will keep the homeless out of areas where people don't want to see them, and the homeless will get food. Kind of like a homeless preserve (like for nature and endangered species). Win-win, right?

(I'm kidding. Mostly.)

what do you think of my idea rassah? stefan moleneaux and other denotological libertarians would no doubt find it abhorrent. as far as free market anarchists are concerned im something of a left wing apologist I agree with lefitists when they say that sometimes rights ought to be violated for the greater good, i just dont think thats at all a good argument in favor of the state or against markets in general.

There are too many ways to game your setup. I mean, does every vendor who sells groceries have to have gruel available? Who is responsible if the homeless person eats the gruel and gets sick? What if homeless people find some other use for your gruel and resell it on the street, as, say fertilizer? What if they get together, along with non-homeless supporters, start protesting gruel as inhumane, and try to force laws that make the shop owner have to give up actual valuable groceries?

[Anon136]

There are too many ways to game your setup. I mean, does every vendor who sells groceries have to have gruel available? Who is responsible if the homeless person eats the gruel and gets sick?

Laws in my ideal society would be made by judges operating on the free market. They would understand economics and incentives problems. Societies are FULL of thousands upon thousands of subtle and complex problems that judges have been wrestling with for centuries, thats why we have an entire academic field of law that is every bit as intricate and complex as electronics or neuro-science. im talking about commonlaw here, judge made law aimed at dispute resolution, not statutory law which i would see done away with entirely. we already have legal precedent for how to handle situations where soup kitchens make people sick and that doesn't stop soup kitchens from existing in a legal framework where there isnt even any legal pressure for them to be provided.

What if homeless people find some other use for your gruel and resell it on the street, as, say fertilizer?

thats simple enough, the kitchen gives one serving per person

What if they get together, along with non-homeless supporters, start protesting gruel as inhumane, and try to force laws that make the shop owner have to give up actual valuable groceries?

than they will meet in court and the judges will attempt to resolve the dispute in the most economically efficient way. in this case the judges would recognize the incentive problem this would create and would almost certainly rule in favor of the grocers.

[smscotten]

Sorry there is nothing libertarian about the confiscation and redistribution of private property by the state under the threat of violence.

Don't take it the wrong way but if you can't realize the obvious logical fallacy then you are merely "libretarian" in name only.  Because  it is the "cool, edgy, nonconformist" shade of Republican.

http://splicer.com/2011/07/18/wino

Come on, back off a bit. It is, I believe, possible to agree in general principle and disagree on specific issues. I used to go to county fairs and other public gatherings in the hot sun to hand out Nolan charts for my local Libertarian Party and talk to people about the talking points. And what we always said was, if you're on the left half, you're liberal. If you're on the right half, you're conservative. If you're on the top half, congratulations, you're a libertarian. And of course, the bottom half of the diamond is authoritarian.

I still describe myself as libertarian from time to time. I've voted in seven presidential elections, and voted for the LP candidate four of those times. I read Reason magazine and I'm in favor of scrapping the vast majority of the IRS in favor of the FairTax. To the vast majority of America (perhaps the world) I am an extremist wingnut. Yet I get called Libertarian In Name Only most times I have conversations with other libertarians because I support taxpayer-funded education like Thomas Jefferson did. And I believe in federalism; I'm much more liberal (in the modern sense) when it comes to local decisions than I am regarding the State and much more willing to consider spending at the state level than I am the Federal Government. So that argument about pointing a gun at my neighbor to pay for the local library always comes up and I'm judged a very unlibertarian libertarian.

First, I don't buy it. Reasonable people can disagree about what parts of the multiple governments we live under ought to be dismantled, and believing in keeping one of them ought not be cause for alienating someone who is fundamentally an ally.

Second, it's the wrong conversation to have. Should we do away with welfare programs? Well, maybe. I'll even say probably. Should we do away with them immediately and suddenly? I don't think so. Do we have threats to liberty that loom more menacingly? Oh yeah. Picking winners and losers and creating moral hazard on the individual level is damaging, but it does help some people, too. Picking winners and losers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare could be done away with like tearing off a band-aid. No one would notice the difference except the people who are becoming billionaires on the public teat. Never mind the surveillance states we now live in with militarized police. There is a matter of priority here.

So while I saw the bit about "libertarian" and "welfare" in the same sentence and did a double-take too, I'd like to take that poster's word for it that she or he is a libertarian.

[Richy_T]

Homeless people are stinky, and people don't like to see them. So, could people from around the country just donate to a single place like SeansOutpost, so that there will be free food in that area, and all homeless will just move there? It will keep the homeless out of areas where people don't want to see them, and the homeless will get food. Kind of like a homeless preserve (like for nature and endangered species). Win-win, right?

(I'm kidding. Mostly.)

Just put two homeless people in a ring and throw in a can of soup and an opener.

(Just kidding too)