Are Bitcoiners Neoliberals?

[DumbFruit]

The problem with neoliberalism is...

Who's a NeoLiberal exactly? You know I'd find this whole discussion less whimsical if someone could point to a person that self-identifies as a neoliberal and then criticised their stated positions.

We need to help people who are in need, using taxes to build infrastructure for everyone for example leads us to a much better society.

Then help people! You don't have to steal from people in order to make the world a better place, that's what voluntary transactions are all about.

Rockefeller literally saved the whales through "heartless competition", earned huge sums of money by providing to everyone what they needed at a price that was better than anyone else could do while running Standard Oil. In case you're not paying attention, that means his business made oil less expensive than nearly any company in the United States, improving the lives of anyone that used gasoline/kerosene; Rich or poor alike. The monster then turned around with his profits and gave no less than a half a billion dollars away to charities.

Adjusted for inflation that's $9,119,254,050.44 if you use the latest year that he made donations. (1934 adjusted to 2013)

That was just Rockefeller, in the "real world". What's with this "we" crap? What are you doing to help the poor?

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/rockefeller-gifts.html
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

It makes me sick to my stomach when I see you self-righteous thieves conspiring against so-called "evil robber barons". I'd prefer our country were run by the Mob. At least when they take your money for "protection", they don't expect you to be grateful for it.

https://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

Edit: Gasoline/Kerosene

[Walter Rothbard]

https://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

Wow - didn't realize you could get that book in PDF form.  I need to read that one!

(It's by a much smarter Walter than me.)

[DumbFruit]

https://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

Wow - didn't realize you could get that book in PDF form.  I need to read that one!

(It's by a much smarter Walter than me.)

Walter Block is fantastic. He's one of the best debaters I've ever seen. If you haven't watched him debate I would definitely suggest looking those up on YouTube. He really bombed out badly when debating Sam Seder, I'm really not sure why... But all the other ones I've seen are great.

Though I don't like Molyneux because of his DeFOO and UPB nonsense, he's also one of the best libertarian debaters alive today. He's great when he's explaining and criticizing other people's works, but for some reason when he comes up with something himself, he falls totally off his rocker...
In fact, Molyneux did a really good debate against Sam Seder, also available on YouTube.

[practicaldreamer]

I'd prefer our country were run by the Mob.

What ? You mean, it isn't  ?

[DumbFruit]

I'd prefer our country were run by the Mob.

What ? You mean, it isn't  ?

Haha. It's run by a "mob"(Ochlocracy) not the "Mob".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia

[red-jet]

ok, few tins the night, but I am keen on all this neo-liberal/ anarcho capitalism debate.

I want to ask a question only those that have been in the situation can answer - Have you ever suffered ABH or GBH with intent - and wished for a smaller state?

Corse some thug life character will say hell yea - get revenge after 4 months recovery.

But as a 19yr 150pound 5'9 guy in a new city, so close to lights out save for the fantastic work of the paramedics - you shrink that? Cost me those vital 15 min?

[HELP.org]

ok, few tins the night, but I am keen on all this neo-liberal/ anarcho capitalism debate.

I want to ask a question only those that have been in the situation can answer - Have you ever suffered ABH or GBH with intent - and wished for a smaller state?

Corse some thug life character will say hell yea - get revenge after 4 months recovery.

But as a 19yr 150pound 5'9 guy in a new city, so close to lights out save for the fantastic work of the paramedics - you shrink that? Cost me those vital 15 min?

If you listen to people like Free State Radio or Roger Ver they would explain that the people that helped you were really the murderers and the violent ones.  http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k22av/silk_road_prevented_violence/clhcglw

[Krona Rev]

Oh good. This thread is not yet dead.

There's still an open question from people on this thread:

Does anyone self-identify as a neoliberal?

I decided to generalize a bit and consider the following statement:

According to X, Y is/was a neoliberal.

Someone would self-identify as a neoliberal if the statement is true for some X and Y where X=Y. I still have no examples of this.

However, I now have several examples with X different from Y. I read the introduction and first chapter of David Harvey's book. (David Harvey is an expert in "Marxist Geography" -- you might think I'm making that up to be funny, but I'm not.)

This gives me enough data to support statements of the form:

According to Harvey, Y is a neoliberal.

So far, I can say the following.

According to Harvey, the following are examples of neoliberals:

Deng Xiaoping, Paul Volcker, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet, Milton Friedman, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Keith Joseph, the Shah of Iran, Richard Branson, Lord Hanson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch

Of course, according to many people on this board, many bitcoiners including Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are neoliberals.

So if you want to better understand what "neoliberal" means, just think about what all these people have in common.

PS: It seems, given the work I'm putting into this, I might be interested in this topic. If anyone wants to help me gather information about what "neoliberalism" is supposed to mean, bitmessage me.

[HELP.org]

According to Harvey, the following are examples of neoliberals:

Deng Xiaoping, Paul Volcker, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet, Milton Friedman, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Keith Joseph, the Shah of Iran, Richard Branson, Lord Hanson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch

Of course, according to many people on this board, many bitcoiners including Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are neoliberals.

Erik Vorhees and Roger Ver have no relation to those people.

I once tried to explain to Vorhees that "fiat" has more than one definition.  Government fiat current is based ona government decree/law.  Another definition of "fiat" is more general and means it just has the faith of its users.  Some say Bitcoin is the ultimate fiat currency since it is just based on the faith of its users.  Vorhees jumped in and said we had to coordinate one definition and he pulled out a link to an online dictionary to "prove" his case.  I had to explain to him that there is no definitive dictionary and that there were more complete dictionaries than the web site he linked to.  From that point on I knew that Vorhees had no idea what he was talking about and he just repeats meme's and cute slogans.

As for Roger Ver, just look at his videos about Mt. Gox and Bitcoin Bounty hunter.  No wonder he ended up in jail over fireworks.

[DumbFruit]

So far, I can say the following.

According to Harvey, the following are examples of neoliberals:

Deng Xiaoping, Paul Volcker, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet, Milton Friedman, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Keith Joseph, the Shah of Iran, Richard Branson, Lord Hanson, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch

Of course, according to many people on this board, many bitcoiners including Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are neoliberals.

So if you want to better understand what "neoliberal" means, just think about what all these people have in common.

Wow, that's a challenge. I suppose they're all human and none of them are African or black.

Some say Bitcoin is the ultimate fiat currency since it is just based on the faith of its users.

Some people have the intellectual capacity of a goldfish.

I'm actually kind of at a loss for words, because it represents such a fundamental ignorance of history, economics, and language that I'm not sure these people actually live in the real world. Perhaps they're kind of pan-dimensional beings that just kind of accidentally step into our universe from time to time and are totally bewildered by everything they see.

I guess the best I could do is point these sorts of people toward the information they'd need;
http://www.englishclass101.com/how-to-speak-english/
http://mises.org/daily/1333
https://mises.org/books/origins_of_money.pdf
https://mises.org/books/tmc.pdf
http://mises.org/money/3s11.asp

Certainly you're not one of these people right?

[HELP.org]

Some say Bitcoin is the ultimate fiat currency since it is just based on the faith of its users.

Some people have the intellectual capacity of a goldfish.

I'm actually kind of at a loss for words, because it represents such a fundamental ignorance of history, economics, and language that I'm not sure these people actually live in the real world. Perhaps they're kind of pan-dimensional beings that just kind of accidentally step into our universe from time to time and are totally bewildered by everything they see.

I guess the best I could do is point these sorts of people toward the information they'd need;
http://www.englishclass101.com/how-to-speak-english/
http://mises.org/daily/1333
https://mises.org/books/origins_of_money.pdf
https://mises.org/books/tmc.pdf
http://mises.org/money/3s11.asp

Certainly you're not one of these people right?

I am one of those people who knows that there are unabridged dictionaries that show many different definitions of the work "fiat."  I am also aware that people who study economics have written articles where they use the general definition and discuss Bitcoin as "fiat" currency as opposed to the more specific "government fiat" where there is no ambiguity.

I am only mediocre in English though.  I got a master's degree in Physics and bachelor degree in Physics and computer science from Rutgers so I spent most of my educational time doing math formulas and writing code.

Do you have a degree in meme-based debates on reddit?

[DumbFruit]

I am only mediocre in English though.  I got a master's degree in Physics and bachelor degree in Physics and computer science from Rutgers so I spent most of my educational time doing math formulas and writing code.

Do you have a degree in meme-based debates on reddit?

In other words, you're totally unqualified to talk with any kind of authority about economics or language. Plus a nice little ad-hominem tacked on at the end. Classy.

If you're going to do the "argument from authority" fallacy you should at least do it right...

[Krona Rev]

Well, on a positive note, at least there seems to be some agreement that Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are not neoliberals in whatever sense Harvey means it.

A lot of disagreements come down to definitions. This could be avoided if people would simply agree during the discussion to be clear about their definitions and assign different words to different definitions. It's easy enough to discuss fiat1 vs. fiat2 as being different concepts and during the discussion to explicitly say fiat1 or fiat2 to indicate which one is meant. I wonder why people are reluctant to do that.

[DumbFruit]

Well, on a positive note, at least there seems to be some agreement that Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver are not neoliberals in whatever sense Harvey means it.

A lot of disagreements come down to definitions. This could be avoided if people would simply agree during the discussion to be clear about their definitions and assign different words to different definitions. It's easy enough to discuss fiat1 vs. fiat2 as being different concepts and during the discussion to explicitly say fiat1 or fiat2 to indicate which one is meant. I wonder why people are reluctant to do that.

Correct. It's a good thing to debate using the same kind of vocabulary as the person you're speaking with, whenever possible. If someone is arguing about fiat currency and you respond that, "That isn't a fiat currency", and then the other guy says, "Well no, this is the definition I'm working with." The correct response from that position is to just use that definition whether you like it or not, not go into a hissy fit because he refuses to use your definition unless his definition is so esoteric that no one could be reasonably expected to have a rational discussion using it.

[practicaldreamer]

According to Harvey, the following are examples of neoliberals:

Deng Xiaoping,...........

Thats stretching credulity a little too far IMHO.

[HELP.org]

I am only mediocre in English though.  I got a master's degree in Physics and bachelor degree in Physics and computer science from Rutgers so I spent most of my educational time doing math formulas and writing code.

Do you have a degree in meme-based debates on reddit?

In other words, you're totally unqualified to talk with any kind of authority about economics or language. Plus a nice little ad-hominem tacked on at the end. Classy.

No, it means I did research and I listened to people who knew what they were talking about and not a bunch of people on discussion boards who repeat meme's.  I generally don't talk about economics.  Most of the economics discussion on here is based on the claim that the entire word will switch over to Bitcoin so they are just thought experiments and not realistic discussions. 

The issue is you don't know how to argue about with a Bitcoin supporter who doesn't agree with your ideology.  The arguments usually are that someone is a Bitcoin hater so, therefore, they are stupid and any objections to our arguments are because they are stupid.  Well I am a huge Bitcoin supporter and I say the Bitcoin protocol is great ... but I am also saying that the so-called "heroes" of Bitcoin are not just wrong, they are delusional and the loudest voices don't even do basic research beyond their self-serving discussion boards about what they are trying to talk about. 

I never realized that Free State project was so bad until I got involved in Bitcoin.  In fact, I used to think it was a good thing.  Apparently they have isolated themselves from the real world and they sit around reinforcing each other with nonsense and then they act like the rest of world is stupid.  Right, we are all stupid and we can't read dictionaries and we can't read experts in economics. 

[DumbFruit]

...the so-called "heroes" of Bitcoin are not just wrong, they are delusional...

You keep making these wild assertions about how certain Bitcoiners/libertarians/"pseudo-liberals" are wrong and delusional about their "arguments". Then you don't even bother to mention what those arguments are, and then when you can be bothered to actually state the argument and what you think is wrong with it, you ignore any counterargument.

Case in point was you saying "pseudo-liberals" are crazy because they think that Bitcoin will stop all wars. I then pointed out that war is actually very tightly linked to inflation, and that bitcoin is immune to inflation, and therefore there is a case to be made that Bitcoin could make war difficult.
You, of course, don't respond to that at all.

You do understand that when people are at speaking engagements they tend to use demagoguery, hyperbole, undefended assertions, and take incredibly optimistic long positions? That doesn't say anything about the foundation of their thinking, or how they got to that position, it just stirs debate, gets people interested, and makes the speaker more fun to listen to. It's just rhetoric, not some thorough peer reviewed paper that they've taken months to consider. You seem to be perfectly happy to take a few soundbites and go off on a tirade about how crazy certain people are.

Or, perhaps you're only listening to fringe wackos that don't even represent the majority position of the people you're referring to. I can't really know, since you are anything but specific about the problems you have.

[HELP.org]

...the so-called "heroes" of Bitcoin are not just wrong, they are delusional...

You keep making these wild assertions about how certain Bitcoiners/libertarians/"pseudo-liberals" are wrong and delusional about their "arguments". Then you don't even bother to mention what those arguments are, and then when you can be bothered to actually state the argument and what you think is wrong with it, you ignore any counterargument.

Case in point was you saying "pseudo-liberals" are crazy because they think that Bitcoin will stop all wars. I then pointed out that war is actually very tightly linked to inflation, and that bitcoin is immune to inflation, and therefore there is a case to be made that Bitcoin could make war difficult.
You, of course, don't respond to that at all.

You do understand that when people are at speaking engagements they tend to use demagoguery, hyperbole, undefended assertions, and take incredibly optimistic long positions? That doesn't say anything about the foundation of their thinking, or how they got to that position, it just stirs debate, gets people interested, and makes the speaker more fun to listen to. It's just rhetoric, not some thorough peer reviewed paper that they've taken months to consider. You seem to be perfectly happy to take a few soundbites and go off on a tirade about how crazy certain people are.

Or, perhaps you're only listening to fringe wackos that don't even represent the majority position of the people you're referring to. I can't really know, since you are anything but specific about the problems you have.

I have already explained that I agree with limited government and reducing their power.  I have also explained that any discussion about Bitcoin reducing or ending wars and many of the economic arguments are based on an assumption that the entire economy will switch over to Bitcoin.  Those discussion are, for the most part, are interesting as thought experiments but otherwise worthless.  I am not going to waste my time arguing minute details about that stuff.  The real discussion is when Bitcoin gets some significant percentage of the economy how that will effect the economy and policies of things like central bankers.  That is the rational discussion.  it is discussed now and then but most of the discussion if that we have almost 100% government fiat or 100% Bitcoin.

I would agree that the fringe wackos like Vorhees, Shrem, Mayer, etc. don't represent the majority but they are the loudest and they get the most coverage.  My issue is that people like that are making it difficult to present Bitcoin to the general public.  While they were champions early on they are now detrimental to the adoption of Bitcoin and are making it weaker.  Many Bitcoiners don't realize that because they don't interact with the public at large and they just call the public all stupid because they don't understand Bitcoin and generally like State-run institutions.  It is like an election where one candidate gets wiped out at the polls and their supporters stand around all confused because "everybody" they knew supported the losing candidate.

[DumbFruit]

If Bitcoin can't stand by it's own technical merits then no amount of excellent cheerleading is going to make any difference.

I don't really follow the people you're talking about, so I can't really defend them, but if you don't like what they're saying about bitcoin, then all you can do is make a better case yourself.

The way I think about cryptocurrency is that it is the basis of defacto libertarian society if it can live up to its goals. It is a borderless country without recognizing any authoritative leaders (anarchy).

Another way to look at it is a dramatic expansion of the black market (System D), and the increase in economic freedom that comes along with it.

That's if the problems with anonymity and the blocksize limit can be resolved.

[HELP.org]

Another way to look at it is a dramatic expansion of the black market (System D), and the increase in economic freedom that comes along with it.

Where do you come up with the claim that the black market is expanding dramatically?  That sounds like the people who keep claiming Bitcoin is expanding "exponentially."