Topic: [2020-01-28] Your Bitcoin Should Be Seized to Pay for Climate Reparations (Read 720 times)

Part of me doesn't want to believe this person isn't so stupid but at the same time I know so many people are this stupid.

I believe that environmental protection deserves more attention than mining

A constitutional, representative republic is much preferred where the wolves are not legally allowed to vote to have the sheep for dinner even if it is 999 wolves and 1 sheep.   The US Founders, Alexis de Tocqueville and many other people have recognized why democracy is a bad idea, and anyone who has read history should understand it.  It is one reason why the US has the electoral college among other things.  It is another reason why the sheep in the US are allowed to be armed.  So the power-hungry wolves can't vote the sheep into slavery.  After all, the Democrat slave owners in the old Southern US States were a democracy and I doubt anyone with any sense would argue that the slaves did not deserve protection.


Check out Federalist 51 for example:
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/the-federalist-papers/federalist-papers-no-51/

Well ... I'm not going to  argue with that either. When I say "impossible", I mean that the chances of that happening are extremely low, but I completely agree that they are > 0%.


Yeah, right. But nothing better than democracy has been invented yet. Humanity has tried many times, in different parts of the world, to succeed in this endeavor, but all those experiments have failed badly.

Well.. I am glad that at least some of the users are agreeing with what I said. Democracy is practical only when the majority of the population is educated and hard working (Japan is an example). But in countries where the vast majority are lazy and don't want to do any work, democracy doesn't work (especially in third world nations such as Venezuela). The people there want to live on government freebies and don't want to do any productive activity. If the country is very rich in natural resources (Saudi Arabia for example), this model may be sustainable. People will elect governments which promise them freebies and in the end the economy will be destroyed.

Democracy is a tyranny of the majority and hence should not be the goal of anyone concerned with liberty. I was in Miami at the time and had friends from Venezuela who used to come and visit.  They thought no one would vote themselves into slavery and destruction.  They were wrong.

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner as someone once said.

All these social movements does need a culprit who does not have a face and if they fight against the big corporate they will be shut down instantly and so is the reason they are fighting against a global peer network so that no one will voice against their tune as it is run by nerds and techies who are not politically involved and so is the reason they found the bitcoin space as an easy target.

Well.. I am not going to argue. I agree that Cyprus can't be equated to nations such as Germany, France or even the United Kingdom. But still, Cyprus was part of the European Union and the haircut was done under the orders from the EU. And I agree with the second part as well. What happened in 2012-13 was not a typical event.

All that said, my point was that "expropriation of the funds which were legally earned is impossible in the present-day Western world" may not be 100% true. In extremely rare scenarios, it may happen. Cyprus may not be part of the Western World. But what about other countries which are facing debt managing crisis now, such as Italy and Spain? I know that the chances are extremely low. But they are > 0%.

Firstly, if you ask me, I don't think Cyprus can be called a typical Western country, as well as some other countries which currently belong to the EU, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and some others. People in those countries are striving to live the Western way, but the governments there are so corrupt that it can take another 20 years before the capitalist economic model starts working there.  Secondly, you are talking about the 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis, not a typical event by itself.

Yet, in my opinion, even there, in Cyprus, even during a crisis, the confiscation of holdings of everyone who works with Bitcoin, proposed by Eleanor Saitta, would never be approved by the government.

Seriously? After all the examples we had during the recent years? What is your opinion about the 47.5% haircut on savings bank deposits in Cyprus, which was implemented in 2013? I am not that knowledgeable about world geography. But I guess the Republic of Cyprus is located within the "Western World". Please correct me in case I am wrong.


Know what? In democracy it is the population and organized voting power that matters. I know what happened in Venezuela, because I was following the politics in that country even before Hugo Chavez became president. A majority of the people were living in shanties and slums when Chavez contested the presidential elections. He promised them free healthcare, education and a shitload of subsidies. And he won. During the initial years, everything went well (because the crude oil price was ~120 USD per barrel). But once the crude prices dropped, the model became unsustainable and the economy collapsed.

You are right. The lure of "free" stuff is extremely strong.  The people voting for them don't seem to realize that nothing is free and they are selling themselves and their progeny to these people, and trading their liberty and everyone's liberty in return for a few pieces of silver.  Once it is done it is extremely difficult to go back to freedom. You may be able to vote yourself into the slavery of socialism, but you can only fight your way out.

Look at Venezuela.  The richest country in South America 25 years ago with a ton of oil riches. They elected a socialist who promised "free" stuff to the people and promised to "equalize" incomes and wealth. He succeeded, he just equalized them down to a dollar or two per month.

People who think it can't happen somewhere are naive.  A power hungry group can seize power and eviscerate the constitutional protections over a short (or long) period of time. The left can play a long game, look at how FDR in the US undermined the constitution in order to advance his power and how leftist presidents since then have built upon that.

A Sanders with a Congress of like mind could easily take it to the extreme where there would be no return.  The courts would be of little use, look at how FDR threatened to pack the US Supreme Court and then, suddenly, got his way on the issues of the day.

If you think that if Bernie Sanders won the election the United States might become anything similar to the Soviet Union or Mao's China, you are terribly wrong, my friend. It's a common mistake of people from democratic countries to think that their rulers are sometimes similar to those of communist dictatorships. I'm not idealizing those presidents. They might want to be like communist dictators. But the thing that the Western political system will never allow them to.

Back to the topic though. An expropriation of the funds which were legally earned is impossible in the present-day Western world.

Don't think that it will never happen in democratic countries such as United States or the European Union. The Social Democrats of the west are moving more towards the radical left. I can give you numerous examples. The first one that comes to my mind is Bernie Sanders of the United States. He is having a good chance to win the Democrat nominations this year. Jeremy Corbyn of the United Kingdom is another example. I would rate him a step above Sanders as far as radicalism is concerned. And finally, we have Justin Trudeau of Canada, although at first glance he would look like a moderate left-wing politician.

She is a moron.  If she had any understanding of how BTC benefits  the global warming resistance she would not have posted  this at all.

 BTC can be used as a tool to create large solar power arrays.
She should say all USA states and all world governments should follow  New Jersey's solar power laws.
What this would do is allow the use of BTC mining to create demand which in turn allows for the creation of large solar arrays.

The  primary asset created is not the mining gear or the mining farms or even the crypto coins.  It would be the large solar arrays.


When I read stuff like she writes I know she is in part destroying the world by intent-ally spreading the wrong info on BTC.

BTC is the worlds greatest opportunity to increase solar arrays by a factor or 100x  and morons like her simply speak wrong info.

No hope as long as people  drink her kool-aid.

I've been thinking on this topic for some time, and here's what I've come up with. If the whole world was like the Soviet Union or Mao's China, these propositions/dreams of such a seizure could be translated into action. But in the democratic countries there's simply no chance for that course of action. Sorry, Eleanor Saitta. Go to North Korea, take your ideas with you, and maybe try your luck there.

^^^^ LOL.. try explaining this to today's youth. A large majority of them live in the left-wing dream paradise and never think about getting a job that pays well. I have seen a lot of these youngsters going for subjects such as Medieval history and gender studies. Now I don't have anything against these subjects. But the problem is that there are not enough jobs available in these niche fields to accommodate such huge number of students who are graduating out every year. So obviously, many of these losers will be left jobless once they finish their courses.

So what they will do next? They will brand themselves as activists and get associated to some tree hugging group. They will starge protests and demonstrations whenever a proposal for a major infrastructural project comes up. And in the end, we get people such as Eleanor Saitta.

I think a lot of the activity is just so that they can try to earn bitcoins with the spammy sig campaigns.  I am happy to donate to things I care about, but not to the nonsense "global poverty" BS.  People need to vote for freedom not authoritarianism (socialism, fascism, communism etc) if they want to get out of poverty.  Property rights, freedom, education and the rule of law will do more to bring people out of poverty than people donating.  

I started mining etc in July 2010. At any time anyone was free to involved in bitcoin, mining, developing, buying etc between Jan 2009 and today.  Everything is about choices though.  You could spend your money (for example) on netflix or spend it buying bitcoin in 2011, 2012, 2013 etc.  Likewise, you can spend your time watching netflix or learning programming or anything with regard to bitcoin or anything else.   You can play fortnite or you can learn something worthwhile, start a business or do something like that.   Don't later complain later when you missed an opportunity because you chose to watch TV, go out drinking, partying, playing video games or anything else that takes you away from spending at least some time doing something productive.  It doesn't have to be exclusively something productive, but don't complain later if you chose something else.

Just like people who complain about "the rich".  In most "1st world" countries, parents could easily save 1000 euros or dollars for a newborn - 84 per month in one year.  Cancel cable and netflix for a year and spend the time reading to your child.  Don't buy coffee at Starbucks and you could save a 3000 or 4000 that first year.  If you do that 1000 or 4000 and give it and invest it for the child, by the time they are retired, they'll have more than 1 million (or 4 million).  Do it for a few more years, and it will grow even more. If instead of that, teenagers take the money for their phone and travel expenses (e.g. petrol/gasoline) and invest it from 13 to 18 they'll likewise have a few million by retirement even if they never invest anything again.

It is about choices though:  instant gratification or understanding math and the power of compounding and acting on it.  People make their choices and then they pay the price later or reap the rewards later.  Don't expect people who are paying attention making smart choices to pay for your poor choices.

These idiots were hiding in their caves when the Bitcoin exchange rates were hovering around $5 per coin in 2012. All of them suddenly became active once the prices reached four digits. Even here in Bitcointalk, there are multiple threads requesting members to donate their Bitcoins to alleviate global poverty and all that shit. Those who became rich from Bitcoin are not liable to do anything to alleviate global poverty or to contribute to anti-climate change measures. We became rich because we took the risk in 2012 and 2013, when Bitcoin was relatively unknown. All these people who want others to donate their money are doing so because of jealousy.

Lawmakers' views on cryptocurrencies being bad for the environment shows us just how bad they want to take more and more money out from the industry. They have been using this reason for at least 3 years now and they always completely ignore other areas that are damaging out mother nature more, it just shows how bad they want more piece of the pie or how badly they just want to get rid of it all. @OP you are right to say that if they want to be a good environmentalist they must not exempt any contributors to pollution and must also pay for the damages they have done, but the thing is here we are also be the one who will be burdened ones these  oil companies and factories will be paying climate reparations.

Wow this is absurd.  I have heard a lot of crazy connections with blaming bitcoin but this one takes the cake.  Why should bitcoin holders pay for climate reparations?