Bitcoin adoption slowing; Coinbase + Bitpay is enough to make Bitcoin a fiat

[Keyboard-Mash]

So I would respectfully request that you guys take it over to the Economics subforum or somewhere else a bit more focused. There are MRO-specific topics to discuss here.

Due to the medium to long term focus of our discussion, and the short-term focus of building a positive community in light of an unrelenting torrent of drama since the day the coin was released due to reasons outside anyone's direct control, I must defer to Smooth's logic. Let's the conversation be lightened so as to not stamp out one of the few brighter horizons with such heavy issues simply because we couldn't find better spaces in which to discuss.

I raised similar issues last year as follows.

Transactions Withholding Attack

"Spiraling Transaction Fees Destruction" of bitcoin (Transactions fees are a Tragedy of the Commons)

Thanks for the update, it will again take me some time to take in and digest the information presented. I had just begun to make a few steps on the other issue you presented. A bit of looking has put me on something that I was alluding to as well, because I'm willing to accept that both TOR and I2P are not reliable. TOR specifically for reasons you've presented in the past, I'm still working on understanding I2P.

I would imagine it to be aimed at something much more main-stream than a cryptocurrency. Like an email system or some other sort of messaging system would seem a much more valid proof of concept

In trying to explain myself I came across an enlightening article today. As usual I don't yet have the full basis to understand the concepts, but I think this relates pretty well:
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/05/what-most-secure-email-universe-would-look/84247/

The paper linked in that article is here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.7347v1.pdf

In searching for anonymity on top of privacy, it seems that low probability of detection communication can be better leveraged than the tunneling solutions that I've seen presented. The amount of data that can be transferred is extremely low, but the process seems quite a walk in the right direction if one were to be seeking anonymity on top of privacy.

While there is no way to share a secret code in an invisible email, there is a way to share it in an encrypted email that would destroy itself if viewed by an outsider. Using quantum encryption, you could send a message between two parties containing the deciphering key and that message, while detectable, would also be unhackable.

University of Oxford quantum physicist Artur Ekert calls quantum encryption the ultimate physical limits of privacy. Other key distribution schemes such as the Diffie Hellman scheme, rely on the difficulty of mathematical problems to work, whereas quantum encryption does not. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, objects viewed on the atomically small quantum scale change their behavior when viewed. Quantum encryption offers the possibility of a message so secure that any attempt to read it without authorization will destroy it, not because of some programmer’s whim but because of the way subatomic particles operate.

“For quantum cryptography we need ‘only’ to transit quantum particles over a certain distance, and this is relatively easy. Quantum cryptography has been demonstrated in practice and there are even companies that can sell it to you,” Ekert told Defense One.

Quantum cryptography and Bash’s pulse position modulation technique are two very different animals. Cryptography makes messages difficult to decipher and pulse position modulation cloaks them so that they can’t be detected. But Bash’s method could go hand-in-hand with something like quantum key distribution, which a message sender would use in advance to share the key code. That, in turn, would be used in the future for covert communication.

Here’s what the most secure electronic message exchange in the history of humanity would like: You would first exchange the code key in a quantum encrypted message, and then, when the receiver and the sender both had the code, they could exchange an invisible — thus perfectly secure — message. A third party might be able to detect that two parties had exchanged a single message that had been quantum encrypted, containing the key code, but that third party wouldn’t be able to see any of the exchanges that passed after that or open the key code message.

Can this be applied to a cryptocurrency protocol, or would one have to be re-written around it?

[AnonyMint]

List of reasons Litecoin didn't re-attempt an ASIC-resistant PoW algorithm:

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=18166.msg152706#msg152706

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Real democracy can't exist because it is a power vacuum
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2014 9:43 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/the-death-of-representative-government-the-real-conspiracy-crisis-in-democracy/

It is a positive step (but unsatisfying) to see that Martin Armstrong has
dropped the illogical CIA plot red-herring, strawman argument (for now, we
he bring it back again?).

Now he reverts to his original reasoning displayed on his blog before the
Ukraine situation came into being.

Note I have read virtually EVERYTHING Armstrong has written which is
available on the internet.

Essentially Armstrong believes that the only possible solution for mankind
to avoid the repeating corruption of political structure throughout human
history, is term limits for politicians.

Armstrong's thesis is that politicians' vested interests become ingrained
if they are allowed to stay in office too long (Btw, an anti-dynasty law
is proposed now in the Philippines where I am).

I don't understand why Martin Armstrong can't grasp the point of Mancur
Olson's book The Logic Of Collective Action, which explains that voting
people into office creates a power vacuum wherein those who win are those
who promise the most to everyone. In other words, it hands away the
top-down control and power to privatize the gains from profits of banking
(and other corruptions) and socialize the costs of defaults from these
corrupt activities.

I've sent the following link to Armstrong numerous times, I guess he
hasn't taken the time to read it carefully. The following was written by
Eric Raymond, the progenitor of the open source movement and who is known
to have an IQ in the 150 to 170 range.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=984
(Some Iron Laws of Political Economics)

Creating some constitution or law to create term terms will not eliminate
the power vacuum, because the people who the term limits apply to are the
ones who are voting on the laws of the land. Even if they don't create a
law to absolve the term limits (one possibility), they can use their
influence while in office to gain employment after they leave office with
those corporations and entities which are benefiting from "the top-down
control and power to privatize the gains from profits of banking (and
other corruptions) and socialize the costs of defaults from these corrupt
activities.".

Thus creating a round-robin revolving door for political office
accomplishes nothing against the power vacuum of political top down control.

Even if we had the people vote directly on each and every action of the
government, the people could still be manipulated by mass media as they
are today. And because people are easily divided on petty issues, they are
easy to divide-and-conquer politically.

I long ago concluded there is no solution to politics. Martin sees that it
has been this way throughout human history, yet he thinks he is going to
lead some sudden change to the way it has always been? DELUSION! That is a
first stage of insanity! The power vacuum of political economics is a
natural effect. It can't be changed, because it is nature.

Come on Martin, come back to your senses. Get a grip on reality. You are
not God. Even the Bible explains this can't be changed in 1 Samuel 8. The
solution presented in the Bible is that those who believe are "not one of
this world" and should only answer to one King and not be concerned with
what happens in this flesh life.

Armstrong is correct that a Benevolent Dictator such as Caesar can provide
a brief respite from the power vacuum, but as Rome proved this is never
sustainable and the ill effects of the power vacuum re-emerge.

Armstrong is correct that the problem "is government" (specifically the
power vacuum) but he is incorrect to believe this can be changed.

There is only one change that has ever worked longer-term in the history
of the world. And that is for oppressed people to escape to a new frontier
wherein the government is small. This works until those people become
numerous and society becomes well-established, then the government grows
large again and the ill effects emerge.

Unfortunately now on earth, there is no more place for physical frontier,
because technology has shrunk the world. Even if you try to go hide in the
mountains between Argentina and Chile, there are roaming rangers who will
hunt you down. The U.S.A. even has satellites which can read the VIN
number plate on the dashboard of your car and identify your face from
outer space!

In the past at least we had physical cash (or gold/silver) to transact
with anonymously (out of view of the government) during oppressive times,
but now commerce is mostly electronic so tangible cash would mean a
cataclysmic implosion of the velocity-of-money (because it can't be
exchanged electronically), which is precisely what has been happening
since the blowup of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article45235.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money

M × V = P × Q ≈ nominal GDP


So now we come full circle to the only frontier remaining on earth which
has any chance of providing a solution to the current global cataclysm
ahead.

I described in great detail how the world is moving away from labor to a
knowledge age. One must read the following linked threads and understand
that labor could be financed and top-down controlled (c.f. the Theory of
the Firm), but knowledge is different especially now we have the means to
self-publish (internet) and self-produce (3D printers) our knowledge. At
the thread below I successfully debated Eric Raymond:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=495527.msg6065144#msg6065144

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=557732.msg6078778#msg6078778


The only frontier remaining is for us to move to a knowledge economy where
most commerce is hidden from the government (the power vacuum of
democracy) with anonymous crypto-currency.

The old labor-intensive industrial world is dying. Those bankster elite
are consolidating their economies-of-scale now with their geopolitical war
games and austerity programs driving revolutions, because IT IS JUST TIME.
What time is it? It is the end of their paradigm.

Finance will die. Because knowledge production no longer needs stored
capital.

This is a epochal shift and Armstrong is blinded. He can only see the old
world and old world non-solutions and plays right into the hand of the
elite's consolidation of power.

Whereas, the other side of the new technology is the birth of the
Knowledge Age and the death of the Industrial Age.

Is Martin too old to have an epiphany?

Well I don't have more time to convince him. I have real work to do on
doing my role to make this Knowledge Age come to fruition as fast as
possible.

What is the solution for Ukraine? It is the same as the solution for
people all over the world. Learn to do knowledge work in your home. Hide
away from the chaos outside. Let the elite consolidate their power.
Meanwhile adopt anonymous crypto-currency and profit from your knowledge
work. Soon the old world will be bankrupted as we race forward into
prosperity.

Epochal shift. Can Martin open his eyes to what TIME IT IS?

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Private assets will also crash;  Armstrong doesn't know what TIME IT IS
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2014 10:16 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/understanding-the-new-era-we-face-no-more-general-terms-apply/

Armstrong is misreading his own computer model, because (per my prior
message) he fails to understand that:

1. Technology has shrunk the world thus all physical assets can be tracked
down by OECD+NSA cooperation. It will be extremely difficult to hide
tangible assets from the imploding industrial world taxman cometh.

2. Relevance (thus value) of stored capital is dying because individual
knowledge self-creation, self-publishing, and self-production is rising
which doesn't need much capital nor corporation coordination (Theory of
the Firm's relevance is dying).

3. Physical commerce is diminishing relative to electronic and virtual
services are rising. Heck people even expend a lot of time and effort on
virtual games, and thus this is an economic good now.


So while tangible assets will rise in fiat price, the fiat economy is
imploding exponentially while the hidden knowledge economy (will soon be
even more hidden in anonymous crypto-currency) is rising exponentially.

Thus all this stored capital running around like chairs on tossing around
on the deck of the Titanic searching for a safe home. There is no safe
home. Stored capital will decline in relative value.

This is the end of those fuckers. All those money managers can lick my
arse, they are going to lose relevance.

So now Armstrong's international capital flows model will become
increasingly irrelevant and blinded, if he doesn't find some way to
incorporate data from the new hidden paradigm shift.

Let those money managers buy ancient coins. It won't help them. WE DON'T
NEED THEIR STORED CLAIMS ON FUTURE LABOR. They are dinosaurs.

Checkmate.

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Armstrong's confirmation bias rules his intellect; extreme naivete
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2014 11:22 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/the-death-of-representative-government-the-real-conspiracy-crisis-in-democracy/

The people behind the curtain are bureaucrats, not
bankers. The bankers may try to manipulate these people, but they have now
lost the game to raw political power. The US is going after Credit Swiss
and expects to fine them $2 billion for assisting Americans to hide money
from taxes. They have destroyed the Swiss banking system and the Swiss
bureaucrats drew the line in the sand at 2008 for any Swiss bank liability
to the USA. That has led to the collapse of banking values.

Martin you consistently invent illogical strawmen arguments, which are
irrelevant. This is because you refuse to see the big picture.

The elite are quite happy to destroy banks since all the proceeds fall
into their lap. You don't seem to grasp that the controllers of the DEEP
STATE don't just own banks, they own everything. They even own the central
banks.

Their aims are not profits nor saving any single business they own, rather
like any smart asset manager, they selling some assets while obtaining new
ones that give them greater power. They used the banks to destroy the
nation-states, now they are consolidating their political power which is
much more valuable than those disposable banks. They can create new banks
and new financial systems from their consolidated political control.

You are such a disingenuous debater, because it is like a mature adult
with a high IQ who can visualize complex relationships, debating with a 5
year old who can only see simple concepts.

It is perplexing to me that you are smart enough to understand A.I.,
programming, disgest and categorize so much historic data, etc.., yet how
can you be so obtuse and naive on big picture analysis of political
structure?

Is it because you think you were on the inside thus you think you know
that politicians are just dumb? But why aren't you smart enough to see
that you and they are compartmentalized and not seeing the big picture.

It would be entirely unnatural outcome of the power vacuum of democracy if
the global elite did not exist. It would violate thermodynamics.

Lagarde promised to save Italy with 80 billion Euros to
prevent the economic crash. However, Berlusconi  had to go. The EU
dictatorship known as the Troika, wanted to seize Italy and control that
country before it too might break from the Euro under Berlusconi. Lagarde
is a very dangerous woman. She is the one dictating to Ukraine they must
go to war with Russia to hold the East and the proxy for the West. While
the conspiracy buffs only see the CIA, they cannot explain why then has
the West declined to send in troops or admit Ukraine to NATO. The reason –
there is no money on the table to grab as was the case in Iraq and Syria
was a ploy for the pipeline to displace Russia. If there was a CIA plot
that was serious, there would have been an invasion. Lacking money to
attract Obama, Ukraine is just about saving people and that is just an
excuse – never worthy of invasion.

Hey Martin, you just can't seem to grasp my email yesterday wherein I
explained to you Obama has drawn Putin into a trap to force him to expend
$1 trillion on Ukraine occupation, which will make Putin more desperate
and lead to great conflict in Europe, which will help to obfuscate the
true cause of the coming economic collapse of Europe.

We astute observers all predicted this. The elite always operate this way,
to create misdirection of public blame and focus.

This renewed cold war between great powers (USA vs. Russia) will help
drive the youth clamor for "international cooperation" solution by 2032.
Thus the elite get their greater economies-of-scale NWO (world or regional
governments) control over the financial and political systems of the
world.

Martin are you really this obtuse to how the power vacuum of democracy
works? You act like a naive 5 year old who can only see very small picture
of what is going on. It is like if I show a 5 year old my left hand with
spider on it, and tell him all spiders originate from my hand, while with
my right hand I am covertly dropping a spider in the naive 5 year old's
back pocket.

According to the FT, Angela Merkel is said to have been
outraged at Obama’s arguments. This may be why he had the NSA tapping her
phones. Merkel is reported to have told Obama that she could not pledge
the German silverware, because ECB chief Jens Weidmann had been vetoed.

According to FT, it was the Obama Administration and French who realized
at this point that they had gone too far. A decision was postponed until
the next morning when nothing else happened. This illustrates what we are
facing. Career politicians are far more dangerous than the CIA, Illuminati
or the Bilderberg Group.

Again you construct a strawman argument. Yes of course the politicians
can't commit suicide and the global elite have to adjust their plans to
manipulate the people into the desired outcome. And yes politicians are
not the global elite, are partially compartmentalized, and have to be
manipulated into doing the desired actions (e.g. see how Putin has been
sucked into the desired action).

Nothing you have written has even one shred of disproof of the existence
and actions of the global elite. In fact, the more you write, the more it
supports the modus operandi of the global elite.

Your confirmation bias is very likely due to your desire for a solution.
You believe that if the problem is just the dumb politicians, then maybe
humanity could get rid of them and have a solution.

That is just dumb. Dumber than dumb. It defies logic and nature.

Only frontiers have ever been the escape route for those who seek freedom
from the collective.

And that will NEVER change.

Hope you wise up.

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Who is coordinating that REAL CONSPIRACY?
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2014 11:39 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/the-death-of-representative-government-the-real-conspiracy-crisis-in-democracy/

Everyone at the helm of governments today is on board
with this agenda. This is the REAL CONSPIRACY and the public is being
misled into every other direction purposefully to prevent anyone from
stopping this agenda. The G20 is now coordinating as a single cooperative
entity to hunt down money everywhere. Welcome to the new face of Marxism.
Not even the bankers, Bilderbergs, or the Illuminati are invited.

Martin Armstrong, it is right there in what you wrote and you can't see
it? How blind can you possibly be.

How could all those governments be so coordinated towards a globalist
agenda and yet no one is pulling strings to coordinate that?

Impossible.

You seem to misunderstand that the global elite own the politicians and
everything.

You continue to ignore the research, for example out of all the evidence I
sent you previously, don't forget this one:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

The global elite own all the multi-national corporations, they own the
central banks, they own most of the world's gold, etc..

They control the world. The politicians are just their pawns.

You will never wakeup. You are a sheep.

[AnonyMint]

Cross-posting...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6698221#msg6698221

I have asked about the bloat on the chain before, and the consensus was that with the visible competition enforcing a 10% tax on mining to afford some privacy, then the storage space used to hold the blockchain would be a much less cost. I would like to know much more about this though, because the blockchain is noticeably larger in this protocol by a lot.

The issue is not only the cost of the storage. There is the download speed also. And other complex factors. A tax is probably also going to have Tragedy of the Commons effects, as I explained in my numerous discussions of why transaction fees will never work for Bitcoin in the long-run. There are other articles out now about these by others. Such discussion will take us off on tangents I don't feel like having right now.

Someone from your group private messaged me and ask I provide references.

Here is the recent article I was referring to:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/04/bitcoin-what-happens-when-the-miners-pack-up-their-gear.html

I raised similar issues last year as follows.

Transactions Withholding Attack

"Spiraling Transaction Fees Destruction" of bitcoin (Transactions fees are a Tragedy of the Commons)

Well I see as January 2014, others below started to expound upon what I had explained in November 2013 at the threads given by the quoted links above.

On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed
Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies

5.4 The Increasing Fees Argument
The question of why fees are not enough to support miners has been brilliantly
explained by Robert Scams in [20].

The argument is that basically sooner or later "defationary currencies" and
"growth currencies" will be in competition. Then all the other things being more
or less in equilibrium, in defationary currencies most of the prot from appre-
ciation will be received by holders of current coins through their appreciation.
Therefore less prot will be made by miners in these currencies. However min-
ers control the network and they will impose higher fees. In contrast in growth
coins, there will be comparatively more seigniorage prot and it will be spent on
hashing. Miners will make good prots and transaction fees will be lower. Thus
year after year people will prefer growth currencies due to lower transaction fees.
Overall we see that this is crucial question of how the cost of the infrastruc-
ture necessary for the maintain a digital currency is split between new adopters
(which pay for it through appreciation) and users (which pay through transac-
tion fees. It is obvious that there exists an optimal equilibrium between these
two sources of income, and that there is no reason why the creator of bitcoin
would get it right, some adjustments will be necessary in the future

Btw, the above linked paper is a siren call for strictly CPU only alt-coins, with constant perpetual debasement and 0 tx fees, and which have some mechanism to limit pool sizes.

The rest of the point of the above paper regarding tx timestampes is really a flawed ad hoc way of attempting to achieve the decentralization that the prior sentence would achieve more correctly.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0534.pdf#page=29

A big question is whether timestamps are needed at all, see Section 7.3. An
alternative to timestamps could be various pure consensus mechanisms without
timestamps by which numerous network nodes would certify that that they have
seen one transaction earlier than another transaction. In this paper we take the
view that they should be present by default and further conrmed by (the same)
sorts of additional mechanisms.

[Asrael999]

I would be interested to know what you make of Peter Mair's book "Ruling the Void", in it he discusses the disenfranchising of the masses from politics, and as a consequence the movement of decision making from popularly elected politicians to unelected specialists, which by implication erodes the power of the voting populace to influence those decisions.
Thus term limits on politicians or not, you end up with decisions being made by those who are not elected and are unaccountable to voters, large parts of the European Commission being by way of an example.

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Not confiscation, rather illiquidity and declining relative value
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Wed, May 14, 2014 6:06 am
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/will-government-confiscate-assets/

There is no real precedent for confiscating everything
other than communism and the crazy antics of Maximinus, who they killed in
rather short-order. Nevertheless, the movement of assets like gold that
use to flow between nations may not be possible given the metal detectors
and the laws that presume money laundering if you try to take more than
$10,000 without telling the government.

Agreed. To clarify my prior message quoted below, my point is that
tangible assets will become immovable and illiquid, whilst they also
decline in relative value to Knowledge Age capital because although the
fiat value may rise, the relative value of the fiat economy will be
declining (imploding).

Stored value will be in the form of knowledge, i.e. knowledge capital
which is claim on the future production you can do with it.

Competing crypto-currencies will force stored capital to be devalued
relative to the transaction value. See this research paper:

On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto
Currencies

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Private assets will also crash;  Armstrong doesn't know what TIME IT IS
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, May 13, 2014 10:16 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/13/understanding-the-new-era-we-face-no-more-general-terms-apply/

Armstrong is misreading his own computer model, because (per my prior
message) he fails to understand that:

1. Technology has shrunk the world thus all physical assets can be tracked
down by OECD+NSA cooperation. It will be extremely difficult to hide
tangible assets from the imploding industrial world taxman cometh.

2. Relevance (thus value) of stored capital is dying because individual
knowledge self-creation, self-publishing, and self-production is rising
which doesn't need much capital nor corporation coordination (Theory of
the Firm's relevance is dying).

3. Physical commerce is diminishing relative to electronic and virtual
services are rising. Heck people even expend a lot of time and effort on
virtual games, and thus this is an economic good now.


So while tangible assets will rise in fiat price, the fiat economy is
imploding exponentially while the hidden knowledge economy (will soon be
even more hidden in anonymous crypto-currency) is rising exponentially.

Thus all this stored capital running around like chairs on tossing around
on the deck of the Titanic searching for a safe home. There is no safe
home. Stored capital will decline in relative value.

This is the end of those fuckers. All those money managers can lick my
arse, they are going to lose relevance.

So now Armstrong's international capital flows model will become
increasingly irrelevant and blinded, if he doesn't find some way to
incorporate data from the new hidden paradigm shift.

Let those money managers buy ancient coins. It won't help them. WE DON'T
NEED THEIR STORED CLAIMS ON FUTURE LABOR. They are dinosaurs.

Checkmate.

[CoinCube]

Well I see as January 2014, others below started to expound upon what I had explained in November 2013 at the threads given by the quoted links above.

On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed
Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies

...

Btw, the above linked paper is a siren call for strictly CPU only alt-coins, with constant perpetual debasement and 0 tx fees, and which have some mechanism to limit pool sizes.

Very interesting link thanks for sharing. Gave it a quick skim will have to read it in more depth this weekend.

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Sheeople rising into revolutions; expect herd outcomes
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Wed, May 14, 2014 11:22 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=564097.msg6736214#msg6736214

Totalitarians always think there are not enough reality checks for "the
rejects" and "low-life".

In their view, all problems are always caused by the scum and not by the
collective growing to be 75% of the GDP.

Remember the propaganda from Hitler about the how the weak and impure were
the drag on the great Aryan society. No one paid attention to the fact
that he was printing money and the government was the economy.

Totalitarians always end up with the megadeath they foment and deserve.

I will say one more time, make sure you find the opt-out frontiers. See my
latest posts in the Dark Enlightenment and Mad Max threads.

Adios numbnuts.

Numbnuts (nuhm-nuhts)
Noun

1. The stupidest of the stupid. A complete dumbass, one whose intelligence
quotient does not surpass that of the average rock.

2. An utter disgrace of humanity.

3. One whose purpose in life is meaningless; a complete and total waste of
life.

4. An ignorant, arrogant asshole.

[AnonyMint]

I hope everyone realizes that Windows 8 phones home to Microsoft and Microsoft built backdoors into it. If you are running Windows 8 or Skype on any version of Windows (and maybe on any operating system), you may have no secrets as everything on your hard disk could have already been recorded. And any communications you are doing, even with something like Bitmessage, Tor, or other anonymizing client, could be revealed to the powers-that-be.

[cryptos]

As you post so much about Armstrong, here is video interview with Greg Hunter dated May 11th in case you haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vABHfXRlAI

[tspacepilot]

I think that Coinbase + Bitpay provide certain services to certain types of folks who can use bitcoins in a certain way.  It's hard to understand how services to a subset of bitcoin users is equivalent to setting up a governmental fiat.

[AnonyMint]

I think that Coinbase + Bitpay provide certain services to certain types of folks who can use bitcoins in a certain way.  It's hard to understand how services to a subset of bitcoin users is equivalent to setting up a governmental fiat.

This was explained in detail upthread.

And now Richard Branson jumps in. The globalists are taking over Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is really about to take off. Billionaire Richard Branson just invested $30 million dollars in BitPay. WOW.

Read the full story: RICHARD BRANSON INVESTS $30 MILLIONS IN BITPAY

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Eliminating career politicians doesn't eliminate the power vacuum   of democracy
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Wed, May 21, 2014 8:24 pm
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
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http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/21/return-of-corruption-sorry-lobbying/

it seems remarkable that companies would do anything but
lobby. A particularly vivid example was in 2004, when an aggressive
corporate campaign prompted Congress to grant a one-off tax holiday for
American companies to repatriate foreign earnings. The outright return on
lobbying costs, according to one of the various studies that served as
inspiration for the Strategas index, was $220 for each $1 spent. (see also
CNBC).

An you wonder WHY I say we FIRST need to get rid of career politicians –
one term only. Do that, and most else will start to fall into
place.

Martin, setting term limits won't resolve the perils of socialism and
collectivism.

You are naively expecting that if the people who are elected have no
incentive to remain in office then they will try to do what is best for
the citizens rather than appeasing lobbyists.

Again you fail to understand the deeper implications of the reference I
have sent you numerous times as follows.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=984

Some Iron Laws of Political Economics

Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action,
highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits
of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular
special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic
growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the
entire population.

The result is a scramble in which individual interest groups perpetually
seek to corner more and more rent from the system, while the incremental
costs of this behavior rise slowly enough that it is difficult to sustain
broad political opposition to the overall system of political privilege
and rent-seeking.

Let me spell it out for you. The "special interest groups" are the
citizens. The citizens form groups that demand the government give them
benefits. For example, you documented this recently "Germany is promising
a Woman’s Mother’s Pension  for those mothers whose children were born
before 1992. They will be entitled to early retirement at 63":

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/05/18/german-politicians-promise-unfunded-pensions-just-to-win/

Politicians get elected when they promise everyone everything. Term limits
won't change the fact that citizens view government as a collective trough
from which each citizen should vote to get their fair share. Problem is
that to appease this it requires politicians to promise more and more
share, i.e. government becomes a larger and larger share of the GDP
crowding out the private sector and ultimately reaching Totalitarianism as
we are entering now with the NSA and the hunt for all wealth to fund the
for example $200 trillion of actuarial obligations promised by the U.S.
government.

Martin you are just masturbating with the term limits idea. In fact, you
play right into the plans of the globalists, because reform of the
nation-states is part of the globalist agenda taking us towards
"international cooperation and oversight for transparency" which is a code
phrase for global hegemony and enslavement of the global citizen in the
power vacuum of global collectivism.

The only solution to rising to periodic end game of collectivism (when it
reaches Totalitarianism) has always been for the intellectuals and
forthright to seek out frontiers. In fact, your masturbation delusion
about term limits as a nirvana is in direct defiance of the your own model
which tells you there must always be a cycle. The cycle has always been
and will always be an oscillation between rising socialism and rising
frontiers.

So now the frontier of geography and cash are gone. So what is the next
frontier? It is of course technological.

Sooner or later you will realize I am correct.

[AnonyMint]

Cross posting...

Oh Lord, I will not enter this discussion in earnest, otherwise I would never get any work done.

On the debasement debate interleaved upthread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6988668#msg6988668

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg6995625#msg6995625

I add a more recent post of mine:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=557732.msg6720958#msg6720958

In that thread above you can find a debate between bitfreak! and myself on debasement.

As for animorex's diversionary red herring tactic on the word "selfish", I offer this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.0

Focus on the "Rise of Knowledge" essay and understand why savings must decay otherwise knowledge doesn't advance.

I expounded on a later blog:

http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Thought_Isn%27t_Fungible

[Nicolas Dorier]

This OP is completely ignoring the entrepreneurial effect on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not adopted by the mass, as is.
But there is a huge entrepreneurial traction, these are the one that will catch the mass.

Your post is like saying : "Quantum mechanic" does not fill a well defined need for the mass.
This is certainly true, but thinking Quantum Mechanic will not take significant part of our life through invention later ? this is naive.

[AlexGR]

I hope everyone realizes that Windows 8 phones home to Microsoft and Microsoft built backdoors into it. If you are running Windows 8 or Skype on any version of Windows (and maybe on any operating system), you may have no secrets as everything on your hard disk could have already been recorded. And any communications you are doing, even with something like Bitmessage, Tor, or other anonymizing client, could be revealed to the powers-that-be.

Would it be a stretch to assume hardware (cpus, mobos/bios'es, phones etc) created post-2013 will be rooted specifically for reporting / tracking / spying cryptocurrency use, and that a safer way to use cryptos would be to use older hardware (prior to crypto-boom)?

[tspacepilot]

I hope everyone realizes that Windows 8 phones home to Microsoft and Microsoft built backdoors into it. If you are running Windows 8 or Skype on any version of Windows (and maybe on any operating system), you may have no secrets as everything on your hard disk could have already been recorded. And any communications you are doing, even with something like Bitmessage, Tor, or other anonymizing client, could be revealed to the powers-that-be.

Would it be a stretch to assume hardware (cpus, mobos/bios'es, phones etc) created post-2013 will be rooted specifically for reporting / tracking / spying cryptocurrency use, and that a safer way to use cryptos would be to use older hardware (prior to crypto-boom)?

Or you can just remove the rooted software (ie windoze) and install debian or some other GNU/Linux flavor where you own the computer.