Topic: A _new_ currency has to be fair - page 3. (Read 6240 times)

People who acquired alot of Bitcoins without much effort are supposed to deserve it because they got in early / had alot of spare fiat or generated them before the public knew about it.

You're more than welcome to start your own digital currency.

Capitalism isn't fair. Capitalism awards speculators, and their ne'er-do-well children, and their mistresses and sycophants and shills and hangers-on. It keeps hard-working people locked in debt, sometimes to people who don't have to work at all.

I don’t think you understand, my point is that the market is struggling with this initial allocation and trying to spread it out, but in doing so lowering its usefulness.

lol I guess using the simplest of transactions.
 
Using your example with the candy bar, allow to make another point. Not all the time does one actually know he's losing out, furthermore don't think of it as losing out but instead 1 of them got the better hand.

So, using your example there are alot of factors we dont know.
How much did the original owner pay for the candy bar?
Was it the same price he sold it for?
What did he value the candy bar at? Did its capitalistic value go up or down?

No matter how the questions are answered, someone had to of gotten the better deal.

 

A man trades his candy bar for some money. Another man trades his money for the candy bar.

Who lost out?

You cannot have capitalism without someone losing out and thats precisely why Im a capitalist!

fair enough. indeed, Bitcoin could have been allocated differently.
but you do understand that the past is history, and that we are not going to change it, don't you?

I don’t think you understand, my point is that the market is struggling with this initial allocation and trying to spread it out, but in doing so lowering its usefulness. (you can’t tell me that the huge volatility we have seen and are seeing is NOT largely due to this, and NOT reducing Bitcoin’s value overall)

My theory with the sigmoid curve is that naturally, as the reward/block grows over time, the incentive to adopt Bitcoin actually grows, and the growth of the community will adapt to it. It simply spreads out more Bitcoins to later people (this is exactly what the market has done the past 6 months!) while still maintaining its basic properties, as "peak bitcoin" would eventually be hit.

Wage laborers are only victims because your "collective" that I call the state artificially raises the cost-of-living. People can live on $60 a month in other countries for a reason and it's because the state doesn't make everything overpriced.

GTFO TO YOUR PLAYGROUND @ Politics & Society. I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR LOLBERTARIAN RAMBLINGS AND PHILOSOPHY ABOUT EVERYTHING. I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS THE FAIRNESS OF BITCOIN.

THANK YOU

I think you could better describe this as "resource access redistribution". Since resources are scarce, we can't all have access to them. Essentially wealth is just a measure of access to resources. Is it fair that some people have access to more resources than others? No, but life's not fair.

We should give our resources (wealth) to help others, and we should encourage others to give as well, but I do not think anybody should be forced to give up their wealth.

Wage laborers are only victims because your "collective" that I call the state artificially raises the cost-of-living. People can live on $60 a month in other countries for a reason and it's because the state doesn't make everything overpriced.

No...its not.

Individuals are only free on the condition that the great mass of people taken collectively- are not. We could not have capitalism without a working class and they are not free within the capitalist system to cease being wage laborers. A people's capitalism is nonsense.

It's a non-concept. There is no wealth "redistribution". Wealth is infinite through technology and innovation. If you want riches, go stake your share through your own choices and actions. Don't just sit their begging for a share from the others.

I hate the left more and more with every passing day I see this bullshit.

Capitalism is fair.

I don’t think you understand, my point is that the market is struggling with this initial allocation and trying to spread it out, but in doing so lowering its usefulness. (you can’t tell me that the huge volatility we have seen and are seeing is NOT largely due to this, and NOT reducing Bitcoin’s value overall)

My theory with the sigmoid curve is that naturally, as the reward/block grows over time, the incentive to adopt Bitcoin actually grows, and the growth of the community will adapt to it. It simply spreads out more Bitcoins to later people (this is exactly what the market has done the past 6 months!) while still maintaining its basic properties, as "peak bitcoin" would eventually be hit.

Bitcoin is a currency. It is not a wealth redistribution system. Therefore, it does not have to be perfect, nor even good, at allocating wealth.

In any case, I don't think it matters that much. As bitcoins become more ubiquitous, fewer people will know or care about who jumped in early, and how well they've done.

From the perspective of someone who doesn't have a lot of money, Capitalism isn't fair. Capitalism awards speculators, and their ne'er-do-well children, and their mistresses and sycophants and shills and hangers-on. It keeps hard-working people locked in debt, sometimes to people who don't have to work at all.

Now on the other hand, from the perspective of someone with a lot of money, awards people who think outside the box; who take risks; and it gives their progeny special advantages. To someone who haS a lot of money, it's eminently fair.

Moreover, to middle-class Americans who think that someday they might have a lot of money (writ the "American Dream"), it's also fair.

Deep down, I agree with evoorhees. It's fair, albeit in a cold and evolutionary way. But I can see both sides of the argument, including as it pertains to Bitcoin.

I guess the thing that's worth remembering is that fairness is a meaningless term when it's thrown around by parties who have something to gain or lose. In the casino industry, fairness has a specific definition: Does the customer know what they're getting? Are the rules as written the same as the rules in play? If so, it's fair. Those rules might be completely skewed toward the house, but as long as all the parties are playing by the same rules, and those rules are out there for everyone to see, then that's fair.

So don't be a cheap winner, and don't be a sore loser. Any set of rules is fair as long as the participants all tacitly agree to them.

Bitcoin is a currency. It is not a wealth redistribution system. Therefore, it does not have to be perfect, nor even good, at allocating wealth.
Unlike many people on this forum, I do believe in wealth redistribution. However, this should be achieved by governments and taxes, not by the way a currency is allocated.

I know an alternative that wouldn’t have done so. It’s called a sigmoid curve and it happens with all extractions of resources, except for Bitcoin which was designed completely inelastic in a 4 year period, so that the gold miner Satoshi, who didn’t even own a pickaxe (CPU mining) in the beginning, could just carry home 1% or 10% of the total money supply.

I do think it would have been justified to use the assumption that surely, at the beginning there will be LESS adopters than later on, and I do think it would have spared us a lot of headaches because we would have seen LESS of a misallocation which the market had to weed out (and maybe still is), and by doing so, actually decreasing trust and usefulness (volatility etc.) of Bitcoin over a longer time period.

Can anyone explain why the Bitcoin mines should produce the same amount of Bitcoins on day #1 where 3 guys on a cryptography mailing list know about it, as on day #1000 where tens of thousands do?

I bring it up because I don’t like the way people think it’s perfect [...]