Politics, statism, anarchism, racism; split from: Wall Observer thread

[Elwar]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

[JayJuanGee]

Fair enough, saying I'm an adult should be enough.

You're ducking his real point and you know you're doing it.

It makes no difference if you're 16 or 60,

thank you

the question is have you ever seen human brutality from anywhere outside of a computer screen? Have you ever witnessed it, experienced what it's like to be there, to be a victim of it? Because if you can't, then you really have no earthly idea how you would actually respond in that situation.

I've had some experiences with human brutality:
Witness of murder.
Witness of rape.
train suicide by brother.

It could always be worse, but I think my share is above average.

What are your experiences?

silence damn it, I'm on everybody's ignore list.

Even if you are witness to and experience a large number of negative life issues, you likely need to be able to effectively account for those kinds of experiences in your communications prescribing how you would like the world to be.  No one can force you to see the world in a different kind of way, yet listening and interacting, reflecting and considering the variety of possibilities can inform empathy.. and hopefully each of us are able to develop empathy as we experience a variety of negative outcomes. 

If you have adequately reflected and considered your life experiences, then you should let your thought stand as they are, even though several posters here seem to have concluded that you come off as a bit out of touch with real life sufferings.. 

[NotLambchop]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

[Elwar]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Thanks. Enjoy your statist paradise.

[wachtwoord]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Well cause and consequence. The market will make it advantageous for people to accept it and therefore they will.

[NotLambchop]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Well cause and consequence. The market will make it advantageous for people to accept it and therefore they will.

Or not  Or our Reptilian Overlords will ban it if it becomes a threat.
Anyhow, largely irrelevant, since Elwar's already got what he wants.

[wachtwoord]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Well cause and consequence. The market will make it advantageous for people to accept it and therefore they will.

Or not  Or our Reptilian Overlords will ban it if it becomes a threat.
Anyhow, largely irrelevant, since Elwar's already got what he wants.

Governments can make any law they desire. Whether they can uphold the law is a whole other issue (if too many oppose it they cannot).

[octaft]

Fair enough, saying I'm an adult should be enough.

You're ducking his real point and you know you're doing it.

It makes no difference if you're 16 or 60,

thank you

the question is have you ever seen human brutality from anywhere outside of a computer screen? Have you ever witnessed it, experienced what it's like to be there, to be a victim of it? Because if you can't, then you really have no earthly idea how you would actually respond in that situation.

I've had some experiences with human brutality:
Witness of murder.
Witness of rape.
train suicide by brother.

It could always be worse, but I think my share is above average.

What are your experiences?

silence damn it, I'm on everybody's ignore list.

edit: nevermind, already found the answer.

No, I've read numerous stories on what regular people experienced living under those conditions, and am very thankful I have not had to go through it, myself.

How does "I've never experienced living in a lawless state and am glad for that" equate to "I've never experienced human brutality?" Besides, with your examples of human brutality, I think almost all of us experienced that or the emotional equivalent at some point in our lives. Anyway, who's to say you're not making it up? Who's to say I'm not making it up if I do share my experiences?

I see no point to it, I was just pointing out that what he was asking you had nothing to do with your age.

[findftp]

you likely need to be able to effectively account for those kinds of experiences in your communications prescribing how you would like the world to be. 

Yes I can, but not in English, we've been there before.

[BrewCrewFan]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Well cause and consequence. The market will make it advantageous for people to accept it and therefore they will.

Or not  Or our Reptilian Overlords will ban it if it becomes a threat.
Anyhow, largely irrelevant, since Elwar's already got what he wants.

Governments can make any law they desire. Whether they can uphold the law is a whole other issue (if too many oppose it they cannot).

Please, your fooling yourself. It does not matter if us unwashed masses oppose anything. The only thing that matters is money and re-election, as for re-electiing, there are enough stupid people that would vote for whoever, even when its clear the intentions are not what they say.

[ElectricMucus]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Thanks. Enjoy your statist paradise.

You don't seem to really "get" statism, right? It's about a concious compromise around the establishment of rules, which is by definition no paradise.

[NotLambchop]

Ah, so you want to spend Bitcoin like money, but you don't care if anyone takes it as money.
Anarchist logic at its finest!

The few places that I need to spend money already take it. I can use localbitcoins for the rest.

Ic.  Well, enjoy your Bitcoin paradise then, glad you're content

Well cause and consequence. The market will make it advantageous for people to accept it and therefore they will.

Or not  Or our Reptilian Overlords will ban it if it becomes a threat.
Anyhow, largely irrelevant, since Elwar's already got what he wants.

Governments can make any law they desire. Whether they can uphold the law is a whole other issue (if too many oppose it they cannot).

Thus far it's been nothing but solid win for the governments.  Anarchists: zero.

If anarchy actually works, why is it the standing winner of the Darwin Award?

[findftp]

who's to say you're not making it up?

I will show you the evidence if you want.
This discussion is worth absolutely zero when we don't take each others word for what we say.

[octaft]

who's to say you're not making it up?

I will show you the evidence if you want.
This discussion is worth absolutely zero when we don't take each others word for what we say.

Like I said, I never really asked, I just called you out for ducking the other guys question, to which you gave a presumably honest answer so I stopped focusing on it.

In spite of any of what either of us has been through, I'm not sure it would be worse than having to hold the fear of it happening every single day.

[ErisDiscordia]

Hey guys, how about we keep the debate well-spoken, friendly and polite?

Right now I have to praise octaft for the way he presents his arguments, that's the way of someone who is actually listening to what other people have to say instead of just waiting for his turn to speak. Remember friends, DISCORD CAN BE FUN! Just keep it friendly, eh? In the end we all want to make the world a better place.

This is not about big government vs. small government, is it? If it is, someone should let me know, because I'm pretty sure this is about government vs no government.

IMO this is about systems. We are critiquing the current system (centralized government) right now. Big government vs. small government has as much of a place in the debate as government vs. no government. Personally I'd be in favor in trying any form of shrinking and localizing of government, alas my bias here is that this just doesn't seem to work.  Just like some people seem to feel that no government doesn't seem to work. Regarding that idea:

We do have information: we can look at areas where government collapsed and listen to the stories of the people stuck in that kind of life. Those stories are never good, you never hear anyone say "man I was so happy we had roving bands of gangs out to rob our supplies and food."

You might say "well yeah but that's due to a sudden collapse," to which I would respond "well how else is it going to happen?"

It's one thing to say "I believe in smaller government, or more localized government." It's quite another to say "fuck government and who needs roads!"

addressing the bolded part: yes you are correct, that is my answer. So far we have had sudden collapses. I'll address the related question in a minute. First I want to point out something regarding this situation.

Today we are almost entirely reliant on government to provide many of our essential services. Education, health care, infrastructure, defense, dispute mediation, even food production in many cases - all of these are provided to a large degree by government and often by government only, with alternatives being forbidden. This puts us in a position of dependency. This is actually a decent argument for decentralizing these services. Even while assuming the general benevolence and competence of the government in providing the services (about which I have serious doubts but this is not the point right now) it seems clear that such a position of utter dependence is dangerous. Because what if the government fails? For several generations we are living with an expectation of our needs being met thanks to this big provider so why would we spend our time worrying about creating alternatives? We have no alternatives, because our culture claims we don't need them. So yes, a collapse of government in these conditions will almost always be a catastrophe.

So "how else is it going to happen"? The alternative to sudden collapse which catches us off-guard would be either a preparation for said collapse, or even the actual "controlled demolition" of government. This involves creating alternative infrastructure for delivering resources and services. Once functional and tested alternatives actually are in place, the fear of the aftermath, of the chaos following the collapse of established order, would diminish significantly I imagine. One reason why so many people are willing to accept government as a "necessary evil" is this lack of alternatives, which makes a future without government even more scary, because of the uncertainty. Better the devil you know...

I'm happy to say that we are actually proceeding quite nicely in terms of building the technological infrastructure for decentralized alternatives of government. Decentralized ways of sharing and storing information without censorship have been deployed throughout most of the world by now, so communication has largely been set free and we are working on doing the same with value-transfer - another, higher-level form of communication. Once that has proliferated I imagine we can finally start building tangible, open-source, crowd-funded things like homeless shelters, hospitals, schools etc.

One thing which is rather slow to change, but change it does nonetheless is the culture. Our collective operating system as I call it. We can debate the benefits of smaller government or anarchy forever, but as long as the culture which underlies these institutions remains unchanged, the institutions themselves won't change. So what sort of shift in culture is needed? That's a whole big discussion in itself but I'd say it begins with a deeper sense of awareness of the consequences of our collective actions and a deeper sense of personal responsibility for the world, our environment and the society that lives in it. Actually feeling compelled to clean up your street and save that forest in your backyard instead of complaining that the designated experts (government) doesn't do enough about it. That sort of thing.

Entering "JayJayWallsoftext" post-length territory...over and out.

[Globb0]

This argument again.

After the collapse and then the following anarchy, who will be providing the electrical power to run your local wallet? who will provide/maintain the network infrasrtucture and routing, etc. to make BTC trades possible?


etc.

[ErisDiscordia]

This argument again.

After the collapse and then the following anarchy, who will be providing the electrical power to run your local wallet? who will provide/maintain the network infrasrtucture and routing, etc. to make BTC trades possible?


etc.

Someone willing to make a shitload of money providing services which are so desirable I imagine.

Seriously, is that so hard to imagine?

[NotLambchop]

stuff

clap clap, very good dear.

Look at the mess you've managed to get urself into!  You've lost two thirds of your worth in 2014 alone!  And that's compared to the dollar, which we all know buys 1/10 of what it did last year because gubermint.  So you're basically worth nothing
Come to a real bank and let us help u!

[Elwar]

Seriously, is that so hard to imagine?

Some people have no imagination.

[findftp]

who's to say you're not making it up?

I will show you the evidence if you want.
This discussion is worth absolutely zero when we don't take each others word for what we say.

Like I said, I never really asked, I just called you out for ducking the other guys question, to which you gave a presumably honest answer so I stopped focusing on it.

Oh, I'm sorry. I misread it.