Is Bitcoin good enough; there aren't critically important improvements needed?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting, kickbacks, and other ways of gaming the system.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.

In other words, tax should never be mandatory and should always be by consent of the governed[1].

And this is why anonymity is so important so we can force the government to accept that we are each individually sovereign and must be respected as such, as opposed the current situation where we are owned by our government and enslaved as such. This is not black and white demarcation line, but a slider of comparative power. We individuals always need to be improving our decentralization technology.

Collective sovereignty is an oxymoron, because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

If you can appreciate the above point and my point about why the collectivized majority is always wrong, then you will understand how I define an anarchist. It doesn't mean chaos, it means maximizing mutual respect and degrees-of-freedom.

[1]

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/10/03/obama-holder-destroy-the-constitution/ The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose.  The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.  And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men — and women — are created equal. But those ideals have also been tested — here in Europe and around the world.  Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.  This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign. http://armstrongeconomics.com/library/books/considerations-on-representative-government-mill/ Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a change in the political constitution can not be durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself. A nation, therefore, can not choose its form of government. The mere details, and practical organization, it may choose; but the essence of the whole, the seat of the supreme power, is determined for it by social circumstances.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I didn't vote btw, because I don't know what you mean by jumping from Bitcoin - is it an all or nothing proposition?

No. Not exclusively. Just whether you would jump with any significant portion of your interest, effort, and money, i.e. more than an insignificant smidgen. Assume any quality of implementation required by you.

[Come-In-Behind]

"IMO, best to not state anything at all after you've done it once. If they refuse to adapt, when shit really hits the fan, then they'll learn."  

Though I can see both sides of the equation. Bitcoin's trying to gain mainstream adoption, implementing things you've proposed might hinder that and bring in more regulation.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Altcoins will never be meaningfully more efficient than Bitcoin, because they are built on the same technological foundation.

I know you are referring to efficiency of capital not being misallocated, i.e. the efficiency gained from decentralization.

Therefor I assert if Bitcoin falls to government regulation as I allege will likely happen, it is no longer as efficient as the decentralization ideal.

Thus I assert a regulation resistant altcoin can in reality end up more efficient than Bitcoin in terms of decentralized allocation of capital and resources in an economy.

If you were referring to other measures of efficiency, such as transaction speed. An altcoin could possibly improve upon Bitcoin.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Though I can see both sides of the equation. Bitcoin's trying to gain mainstream adoption, implementing things you've proposed might hinder that and bring in more regulation.

Exactly there is a valid duality to consider. I did a mea culpa on that.

I would phrase that not as "bring in more regulation" (government will attempt to avoid regulating something they can't although they fail to recognize in many cases, because it draws attention to their impotence), but rather that Bitcoin can gain more mainstream adoption in at least one sense, i.e. through government compliant providers such as Paypal.

I don't know if I agree if Bitcoin can get more adoption overall versus a hypothetical altcoin. The most decentralized coin will win that race of scaling. Bitcoin has a lead and it is compatible with the government approved world.

Experimentation can potentially answer that question.

[jbreher]

Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf didn't create the entire web.

Yet we did not throw out the mechanisms they gave us, and replace them with something altogether different. TCP/IP and HTTP still underpin nearly all internet traffic.

It was the layers built later atop these protocols that made the web the rich compelling experience we enjoy today.

One might argue that the base protocols might be improved apon (spoof resistant email, anyone?) However, they seem to have been good enough.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jbreher,

Unfortunately CoinJoin is jammable otherwise we could get on chain anonymity without a fork of Bitcoin's protocol. Btw, I (AnonyMint) was the first person to point out to gmaxell (in the CoinJoin thread) that his ideas to prevent jamming were not sound and that no ideas could possibly be. DarkCoin reiterated this by trading jammability for giving up the identities to the masternodes (which can be Sybil attacked). DarkWallet has not solved the jammability and will thus fail.

Also I don't know how you can pay-per-packet in real-time (i.e. 0 delay) for the Tor redesign I proposed with a 10 minute block confirmation delay. Well actually I do know how (one of my secrets) but 10 minutes is still too extreme (I can't yet describe problems but I anticipate complications the longer the delay). 1 minute may be fine.

Also let's not forget UDP and FTP came before adoption of TCP/IP and HTTP respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol#Differences_from_HTTP

HTTP essentially fixes the bugs in FTP that made it inconvenient to use for many small ephemeral transfers as are typical in web pages.

[cryptogeeknext]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.
...

Crypto-currency might not be the only way to transact for now, but the network effects will eventually make it one of the primary systems on the planet. Unlike unsustainable fiat's debt-spirals, current major PoW coins are all gain-spirals. It means that incentives are there for the replacement process to continue unhindered.

Requirements for transparency and accountability can be gradually put in place while governments are slowly evolving and adapting to the new way of doing things. Governments are not some alien rogue entities that were enforced on people from outside, but rather it is people themselves who created governments to make society civilized and keep things in order.

We need an outstanding example of an open transparent money system (which Bitcoin is first installment of) to compete with closed obscure and entrenched ones currently in place. There might be some demand for fully anonymous crypto, but I believe it will constitute a small niche. Remember what kind of outrage an opaque voting system caused in the recent Bitcoin Foundation elections? It's a shame, especially when blockchain technology allows for full accountability and transparency.

Open is the way forward.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.
...

Crypto-currency might not be the only way to transact for now, but the network effects will eventually make it one of the primary systems on the planet. Unlike unsustainable fiat's debt-spirals, current major PoW coins are all gain-spirals. It means that incentives are there for the replacement process to continue unhindered.

Requirements for transparency and accountability can be gradually put in place while governments are slowly evolving and adapting to the new way of doing things. Governments are not some alien rogue entities that were enforced on people from outside, but rather it is people themselves who created governments to make society civilized and keep things in order.

We need an outstanding example of an open transparent money system (which Bitcoin is first installment of) to compete with closed obscure and entrenched ones currently in place. There might be some demand for fully anonymous crypto, but I believe it will constitute a small niche. Remember what kind of outrage an opaque voting system caused in the recent Bitcoin Foundation elections? It's a shame, especially when blockchain technology allows for full accountability and transparency.

Open is the way forward.

I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

The solution to government corruption is eliminating (privatizing) government. Socialists hate this because they don't trust humanity. They think someone needs to force people to be caring and helpful. In reality, socialists create megadeath because they create the environment (government) for corruption and at the end game peak totalitarianism.

Socialism (and any other form of forced collectivism) is incongruent with openness and decentralization. I have no idea why a European or Obama socialist would support Bitcoin. They would need to be very confused (unless they are just fighting against anonymity improvements and thus want Bitcoin to be regulated).

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

[QuestionAuthority]

Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.

The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.

Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.

You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.

Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.

Yes, the Internet thing is an unreasonable argument. In fact, it's a total bullshit argument that I've seen thrown around a lot lately and I'm wondering what total goof started it. The Internet gave us something we didn't have before - big honkin buttloads of free porn. I still remember the BBS sites we used to download porn, music, videos and all kinds of shit for free. Much of it you couldn't even get at a store for a million bucks. Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system? PS: Don't give me that typical bullshit of, "nanny nanny boo boo I can send a million dollars for free to Tibet in the middle of the night in 6 seconds and Western Union can't." When you get the million dollars in 6 seconds it will take you five fucken days minimum to convert it to fiat to use and cost you 2-5% to do it.

The Internet is a bad fucking example. Bitcoin ain't the Internet. Stop using it!

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.
You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin. I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.
The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.
Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

I guess all that porn I downloaded from Usenet and BBS sites in the very early 80's wasn't real. I still remember when Rusty & Eddy's was busted for copyright infringement for having Playboy scans. You're obviously like 12 or something. I lived through it and porn was one of the biggest best sellers on the web before there was a web. I'll leave you with a little blast from the past.



1970s Porn goddess Terri Hall

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Maybe so but it's still worth remembering that there is no secure blockchain without the value inherent in the token "bitcoin"
They are inseparable

Yes, I don't understand why people can say the currency function has a less bright future than the blockchain when all the security of the blockchain actually depends on the value of the currency, because it triggers the motivation to mine and secure the network.

Also note that OpenBazaar is putting all their long-term persistent data on the Bitcoin blockchain. All these various block chain apps can't make their own block chain, because they wouldn't have sufficient hashrate to protect from 51% attacks. It is much more likely that only one or just a few block chains will win and all these apps win run on them.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/darkmarket

OpenBazaar is a cool idea, but so far the design is such that your store only stays up if you computer is always online. I think they need to put all the store items on a block chain. But I don't think they can do that using the Bitcoin block chain.

Yet another reason Bitcoin's block chain is not sufficient to do everything we need to do.

[cryptogeeknext]

...
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

If requirement is such, that taxes (obligatory or voluntary) are collected on an open blockchain, then existence of other payment methods will not jeopardize the transparency of government's spending, as the exit points to any anonymized system will be clearly seen.

I agree that open and closed systems should compete with each other, so that neither is abused. If there is too much taxes and they are wasted on things people don't need, then population will slowly move into a shadow economy. However the opposite is also true, if the shadow way of doing things doesn't bring much comfort and stability to society, people will be willing to fund a good government with their taxes to keep things in order.

Current governments will be faced with a choice at some point: wether to keep accumulating debt in fiat or start adopting crypto, in which case a fierce competition for control over the crypto will make sure that people's opinions on how to proceed forward will need to be taken into account. Government would need to present a service that people will be willing to support.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

...
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

If requirement is such, that taxes (obligatory or voluntary) are collected on an open blockchain, then existence of other payment methods will not jeopardize the transparency of government's spending, as the exit points to any anonymized system will be clearly seen.

I agree that open and closed systems should compete with each other, so that neither is abused. If there is too much taxes and they are wasted on things people don't need, then population will slowly move into a shadow economy. However the opposite is also true, if the shadow way of doing things doesn't bring much comfort and stability to society, people will be willing to fund a good government with their taxes to keep things in order.

Current governments will be faced with a choice at some point: wether to keep accumulating debt in fiat or start adopting crypto, in which case a fierce competition for control over the crypto will make sure that people's opinions on how to proceed forward will need to be taken into account. Government would need to present a service that people will be willing to support.

Government provides the service of promising more than it can collect in taxes. And the people always love it. Again this is an IRON LAW of Political Economics. This can never change because it is human nature. Everybody loves something for nothing. And politicians are expert at telling them it is plausible. Since Mesopotamia humans have been falling for it. And they will be falling for it for eternity.

The only escape is anonymity where the socialism can't extract its horrible nature from you.

Putting every transaction on the block chain does nothing to stop the government from borrowing money. It does nothing to stop kickbacks from government transactions. Are you going to prevent every contractor's employee from using an anonymous coin?

http://armstrongeconomics.com/library-research/encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure/

Abuse of Position

If I Help You Land This Multimillion Dollar Contract, Will You Give Me a Job?

A former government human resource director was sentenced to two years of probation for violating conflicts of interest laws, 18 U.S.C. § 208, and lying on his financial disclosure report.

You see if you require the government always conduct on transparent block chain, it becomes an enslavement for everyone, otherwise you can't stop the leakage and ways of gaming the system.

The supply of Bitcoin will never be limited to 21 million coins unless you can find a way to outlaw finance and debt. But the people love debt and that is something that will never change. Usury was illegal and it coincided with a Dark Age. It was when the restriction of usury was removed that the Enlightenment and the economy began moving again. Because most people don't function on savings. Money is always power-law distributed, because most of humanity lives for today.

Statists always think they can create a nirvana. They are so delusional.

Edit: However I agree with you that there is one valid function of government. To resolve conflicts. If there is no authority with bigger guns, men fight to resolve who has the bigger gun. So here is where you vote with your feet. You withdraw your consent to that authority when it is being abused by employing your anonymity (withdraw funding by non-reporting of taxable activities), e.g. the USA military resource is being abused.

Disclaimer: I am not advocating any illegal activities. I am not a professor adviser. Please consult your own.

[cryptogeeknext]

...
Government provides the service of promising more than it can collect in taxes. And the people always love it. Again this is an IRON LAW of Political Economics. This can never change because it is human nature. Everybody loves something for nothing. And politicians are expert at telling them it is plausible. Since Mesopotamia humans have been falling for it. And they will be falling for it for eternity.

The only escape is anonymity where the socialism can't extract its horrible nature from you.

Putting every transaction on the block chain does nothing to stop the government from borrowing money. It does nothing to stop kickbacks from government transactions. Are you going to prevent every contractor's employee from using an anonymous coin?

You see it becomes an enslavement for everyone, otherwise you can't stop the leakage and ways of gaming the system.

The supply of Bitcoin will never be limited to 21 million coins unless you can find a way to outlaw finance and debt. But the people love debt and that is something that will never change. Usury was illegal and it coincided with a Dark Age. It was when the restriction of usury was removed that the Enlightenment and the economy began moving again. Because most people don't function on savings. Money is always power-law distributed, because most of humanity lives for today.

Statists always think they can create a nirvana. They are so delusional.

Edit: However I agree with you that there is one valid function of government. To resolve conflicts. If there is no authority with bigger guns, men fight to resolve who has the bigger gun. So here is where you vote with your feet. You withdraw your consent to that authority with anonymity when it is being abused, e.g. the USA military resource is being abused.

If we look at a good half of Ukraine, we will see that a lot of people there wish they had a stable government. Things aren't pretty when they are out of balance.

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

If we look at a good half of Ukraine, we will see that a lot of people there wish they had a stable government. Things aren't pretty when they are out of balance.

Part of the problem there is you have two powerful governments (USA and Russia) fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. So the Ukrainian people don't have enough military power to protect and enforce their collective will.

These powers are preventing Ukraine to split by language and culture and needs to probably be two countries.

So this is an example of the problem of a groups' collective military being too small. One long-range, idealistic solution is if the USA and Russia also adopt the "vote with your feet" and they reduce the size of their militaries to put a stop to this abuse of Ukraine. But the Russian people support Putin with 80% approval rating. But they support him because they are ignorantly trapped in top-down oligarch economy and haven't tasted decentralization. They were manipulated by the powers-that-be that funded the Bolshevik revolution (to bring communism to Russia) and then after the fall of USSR the powers-that-be awarded all the collectivized (from communism) national resources to a few well connected oligarches.

So the process of freedom from decentralization is going to have to first break down a lot of inertia.

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

I agree with you that decentralization technology must improve matters, because empowering the individual always does improve prosperity because decentralization has more degrees-of-freedom, i.e. is more efficient.

I don't think we will have decentralization without anonymity, because otherwise the government can regulate what it can find (all the details of how this entirely plausible is covered in the links from the OP of this thread). That is why I remain diligent in my stance on this forum.

[cryptogeeknext]

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

I agree with you that decentralization technology must improve matters, because empowering the individual always does improve prosperity.

I don't think we will have decentralization without anonymity. That is why I remain diligent in my stance on this forum.

It's an interesting topic and I'm only developing my opinion on it.

Anonymity feels somewhat darkish and shadowy. If everything and everyone is anonymous, it is quite scary.
Historically societies converged towards having a government instead of anarchy and anonymity. Maybe because government outlines a clear vision, a goal and a way to achieve it. It is a public service, and it needs to be open about everything including finances and spending.

When people are open and transparent about their intentions it brings comfort and direction in life. People can only achieve great things if they work together. Building complex machines, space-shuttles, submarines would not be possible in a totally anonymous society where everyone is hiding in a shadow looking only to satisfy self-interest.

I would compare anonymous society to a dust-cloud in outer space, where it remains cold and dark. Only when the dust in the cloud starts to coalesce, it forms clusters of gravity, which eventually give birth to stars. It is the stars that give light, heat and produce a whole ton of useful stuff.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

cryptogeeknext,

If anonymity requires us to give up collaboration and interaction, then we've failed to implement it properly.

For example, just because the government can't identify a transaction to tax it, doesn't mean the parties to the transaction can't know each other.

All prosperity is created in the private sector. They can still collaborate with anonymous transactions. This will be even more so as we move to the Knowledge Age economy, where for example you don't need to know the identity of the person you are collaborating with on some digital work project (programming, 3D printer designs, marketing, etc). One day those complex physical machines you mentioned will be designed collaboratively via online interaction and anyone can print any part on a 3D printer. You want a space shuttle, okay download the designs and print the parts and assemble it.

The government doesn't create any prosperity, it only takes some from one group and redistributes it to another group, and sells debt bonds to finance any short fall.

Transparency of government doesn't solve the problem that collectives consume more than they produce, because government is forced to promise what voters want to hear regardless of available resources. The government that promises less, gets voted out to replaced by the government that promises more.

Surely Europeans love all their benefits (e.g. 35 hour work weeks, 1 month paid vacations, free health care, free schooling, free natal for mothers, guaranteed retirements, inducements to stop working by age 50 or so, etc). And their governments are bankrupt because of it and will soon implode economically with great hardship on the people.

A gorgeous super intelligent female:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8EA_1YHztE (Brave the New World)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp6C4g23uYo (so you can learn about Russia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5gqROO2Zc (wow)

[cryptogeeknext]

Unun,

I mostly agree with what you said.
I'm not saying that current model, where governments borrow from banks and have to pay back with interest thus getting themselves deeper and deeper into the debt blackhole, is sustainable. It is not, it needs to change.

I think historically governments represent pieces of land occupied by different cultures. It is quite different from companies and businesses that can have offices and producing facilities in many different places. People in various companies have managers and receive tasks, they usually have no say in what the company is doing and the direction it is going with. Governments, on the other hand, don't task people with anything, they only tax the gain, keep things in order and make sure that companies don't fight each other for pieces of land that they need.

So, while anonymous transactions might be normal and workable for businesses, it conflicts with the idea of having a government. I know we have bad examples of governments and the word itself starts to have a negative connotation. But I'm not so sure that a world where companies and businesses are the top players is the place we want to live in.

Governments need to be stable and self-sustainable, businesses are volatile and profit-driven.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

cryptogeeknext,

Brave the New World. You are the company, don't enslave your potential in your fear. The antithesis of risk and profit, is insured poverty and failure. You are most likely European and have been indoctrinated by the culture and school system to believe you can't prosper without the government (or unlikely very young and a recent product of Obama education system). You will soon (couple more years to go) learn that all governments are bad (it takes a while for the accumulated damage to manifest in ways you can recognize from inside the system). Governments can only interfere with the free market. The free market is optimization, because simulated annealing is nature's only known optimization method for dynamic systems where no limits on diversity are known a priori.

Without failure, there can not exist success. Without white, black can not exist. Uniform distributions have no change, thus don't exist (aren't alive). Diversity is beautiful.

Sorry to be so closed minded on this. I know you are trying to be amicable and open discussion oriented. You are intelligent and articulate. It is what you've been taught that has influenced your understanding.


Edit: the fact that many people think that government is necessary is precisely why we need anonymity, so that another person's ideas can't force me to adhere to their chosen failure mode. I will be sovereign if I can make your government impotent against me. You will then have no right to force me to be included in your preferred tax and spend master plan. I will have the power to disagree, instead of being your slave.


I will say these opinions as loud as possible, and if encourages more downvotes, much better. We need to know realistically if there is any sanity out there.


There is no limit to the damage government can do if they are not limited by technologies such as anonymity. We always had anonymity. It was here-fore known as "cash". You take away that feature of society with non-anonymous electronic money, and the government will be unchecked in power and they will murder every single person on earth.


Edit#2: the government tasks you with paying your taxes. The multi-national corporations capture the government via regulatory capture. You are squeezed. With anonymity, they can't control you with their forced slave labor tax. You then have time to work for yourself, you innovate faster than the slow moving dinosaur corporations, driving them to extinction.  Nothing in the universe is sustainable and constant. The fundamental matter of our universe is change. If you expect that, you will always chose insured failure over risky chances for success.

[franky1]

3 pages in on this topic and more pages on the other topic and the OP still has not got the point.

his anonymity worries are not bitcoin protocols problem. they are human decisions locally at those humans own computers. maybe some people want to be highly anonymous, maybe they dont.

bitcoin is not suppose to be a monetary system where people need to download 3 different programs, and lease a different building every 2 months to avoid arrest if regulations make it a offense to mine. bitcoin has no jurisdiction and it is a free market. all bitcoin needs to care about is the most simplest way to secure the bitcoin ledger. ...

human identification should be the purpose of humans to protect and be fully aware that what they transmit by mouth, on paper or on the internet, can be used against them..

there are atleast a couple dozen ways for people to become anonymous. but thats a human choice. and should be left to human freedoms to choose, and not to bloat bitcoin protocol in such a way it can reduce bitcoins base purpose, reduce the security of the ledger(bugs due to bloated code) or increase the resistance to access of bitcoins by having bloated software people need to download/configure.

in short: OP if you dont like bitcoins.. go play with darkcoins, and if EVERYONE wanted it, everyone would be using darkcoins and thus darkcoin would be the new leader.(or some other altcoin that is bloated with supposed 'anonymity' protections)

as for the decentralization stuff. i hope by now you have realized that decentralization has not been broken, and i can atleast see that you have edited the title of the other topic, so you are atleast moving slowly to see this.

now lets move onto centralization
it is a human preference to want to be centralized in regards to pools. bitcoin has not forced it... people have due to greed!.
bitcoins decentralization bases still exists and if people choose to they can EASILY decentralize their mining farm warehouses to help increase the physical security of their human body from being arrested, if regulations made mining an arrestable offense.

but thats all about human decision, human laws, and human jurisdictions, which are not applicable to the bitcoin protocol.

all bitcoin should be doing is concentrating on securing the ledger.... end of..
what people choose to do with those funds, what identifiable information people choose to give away is their choice. and no matter what extra code could be injected into any altcoin protocol to attempt to hide identity. anonymity can still collapse by people chatting to much about their real world lives. thus it makes it a fools errend,

bitcoin has never asked for people birth certificate registration numbers, never asked for social security numbers, never asked for an IP address that is registered to you the person, never asked for email or home addresses. thus any identifiable information gleamed from the blockchain, is because of humans lack of protecting themselves.

take bank notes for instance. people consider them anonymous because there is no electronic trail, it never asks for identification just to use. but because of human decision, many people will still get funds seized. again its not the fault of the bank note. but the human.

so in practice as long as a currency does what it is suppose to do(fungeability/secure value), then it does not matter what governments try to do. its upto the people to choose their own preferences on how they use it. and that's something no protocol in the world can dictate.