MoonShadow
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July 28, 2011, 03:44:30 AM |
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The Two Laws of All Civilization
1) Do all that you have agreed to do.
2) Do not encroach upon another's person or property.
This shall be the whole of the law. 1st is good, but 2nd, how to define the ownership? First come first get? If every piece of land have already been occupied, then there will unavoidably be some criminal or war? I think the 2nd is defined by and supported by the 1st. If you have a contract that you will receive property for your work or money, then the other person has to do what they agreed to do, i.e. honor their contract to give you the property. Chicken and egg problem, who first get the ownership? In bitcoin world, the coin ownership belongs to who first find the block, and due to the rising difficulty, the earlier you find the block, the faster you collect coins. This is still a "first come first get" model Did you have a point? Or even an on topic train of thought?
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"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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BitVapes
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July 28, 2011, 05:17:59 AM |
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Mining for gold is also a net waste of energy, from the perspective that gold has nearly zero industrial uses outside of the monetary functions of gold. gold has lots of amazing properties and would be incredibly useful in industrial applications if it weren't for the monetary demand of the metal making it so expensive. Instead, we use silver in electronics in places were gold might do a better job due to its non-corrosiveness. Gold is still invaluable in spacecraft and other mission critical applications. It is even used as a lubricant in spacecraft. Silver is the best electrical conductor, we would use it in wires instead of copper if it weren't also so expensive
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johnyj (OP)
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Beyond Imagination
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July 28, 2011, 11:15:48 AM |
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Did you have a point? Or even an on topic train of thought?
Sure, the point is that these 2 rules do not solve the ownership problem, in any new world the ownership is the first concern
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MoonShadow
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July 28, 2011, 01:52:22 PM |
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Did you have a point? Or even an on topic train of thought?
Sure, the point is that these 2 rules do not solve the ownership problem, in any new world the ownership is the first concern Ownership boils down to a generally recognized legitimacy of possession. If the civilization in question doesn't already have a generally recognized chain of legitimate possession, then it's not a civilization. The two rules don't address those particulars any more than it addresses the particulars of what defines "encroachment" in this context.
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"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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cypherdoc
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July 30, 2011, 12:12:31 AM |
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In a deflation economy like bitcoin world, people waste lots of energies to produce the currency (thinking about how much electricity/computation power are wasted in the meaningless hash calculation to generate those coins)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the the hash calculation is not meaningless. Generating a block secures the transactions and continually hardens the network. Right now, there's a BTC bounty awarded for that, but that's not the ultimate model. Eventually, the hashing will just be create blocks to secure transactions, which is hardly wasteful. The bounty is just a reasonable means for initial currency distribution, and is, imo, pretty irrelevant overall. If you compare with how a bank secure the transactions, much less calculation power is required, they just need to make sure the balance of both account is correct based on the transaction history as well as pay out the multi million dollar bonuses and the hundreds of thousands for the janitors.
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MatthewLM
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July 30, 2011, 01:10:16 AM |
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Mining for gold is also a net waste of energy, from the perspective that gold has nearly zero industrial uses outside of the monetary functions of gold. Societies that produce more than they need to persist can afford to commit resources to such endeavors. Societies that are on the edge of starvation, cannot.
It's mostly used in jewellery and decoration. Only a small amount is used as money, surprise surprise. Apparently anyway. You might want to check that yourself.
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MoonShadow
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July 30, 2011, 04:14:59 AM |
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Mining for gold is also a net waste of energy, from the perspective that gold has nearly zero industrial uses outside of the monetary functions of gold. Societies that produce more than they need to persist can afford to commit resources to such endeavors. Societies that are on the edge of starvation, cannot.
It's mostly used in jewellery and decoration. Only a small amount is used as money, surprise surprise. Apparently anyway. You might want to check that yourself. Only a small amount is used as jewelry, for the jewelry that Indians buy is money. For they can't buy gold as bullion. The same is true for most of the world's population, and was true for American citizens for fifty years.
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"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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nhodges
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August 02, 2011, 09:44:02 AM |
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Mining for gold is also a net waste of energy, from the perspective that gold has nearly zero industrial uses outside of the monetary functions of gold. Societies that produce more than they need to persist can afford to commit resources to such endeavors. Societies that are on the edge of starvation, cannot.
We need gold to make mining hardware!
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Vinnie
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August 02, 2011, 03:44:36 PM |
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Free market competition is wasteful by definition because effective competition always requires some duplication of work before the winner emerges and specialization can occur.
It's less wasteful than central planning in most cases, but it's still wasteful.
Indeed. Urbanist thinker Jane Jacobs argued that duplication and waste is a highly important part of development work. She argued that small firms breaking off of old firms to pursue new ideas are how we get new, innovative ideas, goods and services. This process only works if there is a lot of "wasted" work being done in small, inefficient workshops, labs, etc. that fail more often than they succeed. She argues that this is one of the defining features and advantages of urban life. Cities provide an intense concentration of small businesses to support development work, and intense concentrations of people bumping into one another, creating networks, and constantly searching for new ways to build, assemble, conserve, deliver, etc, to meet one another's needs. I'd argue that this exact process is going on with the development work springing up around Bitcoin. There's a lot of "wasteful" duplication going on in the bitcoin economy. It's being developed by small groups of highly competent, enthusiastic individuals. Much of this work will fail, but its this exact process of creation and discovery that expands an economy. More here
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