Topic: bitcoin changing my ideology from socialism to libertarianism! What about you? - page 8. (Read 33774 times)

No scarcity, huh? You need to have a pretty peculiar definition of scarcity to support that proposition.

Any solution we propose for how people live must be in their enlightened self interest. Call it whatever you will, but our current society is about blind consumption and short term thinking. It's pretty shit and could be much better.

I feel like the people arguing here, are mostly arguing over terms than real substantive differences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_in_anarchism#Definitional_concerns

For how socialism could be achieved through markets:

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Practical_Post-Scarcity_Video

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_anarchism#Left-wing_market_anarchism

This left-right thing is nonsense anyway, I don't even believe in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-left_anarchy

As an ideal anarcho-capitalism is just as utopic as anarcho-communism. I've never heard a good answer as to who enforces property ownership. It's worth understanding that ownership of land (on which we were all born and belonged to nobody) is a purely western concept. Property is connected to labour- you might own the building, but you cannot own property titles to unused land without an enforcer/mafia.

In a capitalist system, money is power. Handing over Bitcoins would be transferring power from one person to another. For the anti-capitalist, Bitcoin is not ideal. Freicoin would be better-suited for participating in an anarchistic community. I confess, I have not yet contributed hash-power to that alt-coin. I have also failed to set up a testnet server for darkwallet testing.


I vaguely recall believing I "owned" my ideas. I don't know if that was nature or nurture. I have since realized that ideas do not happen in isolation. Independent co-invention is common when conditions are just right. There was I time when was about 5 that I thought I invented the word "okey-dokey." It turns out that when trying to come up with a non-sense word, I simply came up with one I had probably heard about once or twice before.

Patents scare me because independent co-invention is not a defense. Violence is clearly implied when people are prevented from using their own inventions for a period of up to 20 years. For example, GM was not able to use the battery technology developed for the EV1 in the Chevy volt. They sold the patents to an oil company that went on to restrict high-capacity NiMH batteries (over 3 Amp-hours (AA size)). It took me a while to figure out how Toyota was able to use NiMH batteries, and still offer a "plug-in" hybrid. The answer: the "plug-in" model uses the more expensive Lithium-ion battery chemistry.

I recently had my bike helmet stolen. It is a nice helmet, worth about $70 new. I realized that used helmets have no resale value. I hope somebody is making good use of it, rather than it sitting in the trash somewhere. I am a pack-rat, so I have a spare I can use until I can buy a replacement.

and who are those  agents in this hopelessly enslaved matrix world...

funny how libertarians can  view the agents as those who come and collect the tax.

and socialist can view those agents as vangaurds of the capitalist system...

I guess I'm just not ready to be unplugged from the matrix
and ascend to the Shangri-La of wisdom as you have.

Pity, huh? 

The tricky thing about that is... I do understand you. I was subjected to the same indoctrination you were.

spot on:

I agree with the claim that those who believe that private property is wrong should share their bitcoins with other people who are asking their bitcoins....

after all the bitcoin is asked without any force and those who believe in private property shall safely hold on to their bitcoins...

and some people who begin to say let the government rule be set so that everyone should share their bitcoin, then I will share...

let us watch how this sharing would happen without force and violence

now how do you modify this selfishness which is genetically hard coded in majority of humans?

by teaching empathy at school and making them watch socialism movie?

by hanging socialist sign boards across the city?

Well right now you're speaking the language of "making others wrong".  
You sound like that "Dank" guy right there, no offense. lol.
 
Loving people seek to understand others first rather than
be understood.  Not sure I see that much of that in you.
But I think you would be understood better if you stick
to one context at a time and to allow yourself to explain
things within other people's worldviews and definitions.

take care JF

It's not just different perspectives friend, we are speaking different languages entirely. I speak the language of love, you speak the language of fear. I speak the language of future, you speak the language of past.

Empathy is a language much older than words, look within yourself and find it, and then we can speak truthfully.

I will say the only thing that matters, "I am suffering."

And you will reply, "I suffer too."

And we will see that we are all suffering, and we will begin to imagine ways to live without this suffering,  and our thoughts will flow to a better possible world. And then we will create a new reality as our species has done so many times before. Soon.

It's a deal.

My point was the intellectual impasse that seems to be happening
here may be one of context.  2 people speaking from different
perspectives may be coming from different "domains" of reality.

Within their own sphere, they may be both correct.

Share your life with me and I'll share my life-sustaining tools with you. Money is just one of them.



Like my heart.

You are mistaken. We are the collective shapers of both our ideals and our lives. The difference between them is up to us. We're just very slow to adapt from our old ways based on myths and superstitions.

You may believe in such ideals, but in the real world, you
would not just hand me over your bitcoins just
because you have the opinion that ownership/property
is a false/flawed/bad/primitive/whatever concept.

**CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG AND GIVE ME YOUR COINS **

Therefore, there is the context of ideals, and there is the
context of everyday life. 

2 totally different things....And if we are not speaking
from the same context, then it is
difficult to have a meaningful discussion.

Earth doesn't claim to own anything, nor does the universe, nor does any other known form of life. Only Homo Sapiens claim ownership, and only for around the last 5,000 years of our 100,000 year existence in our present genetic form.

We created this destructive concept out of convenience. Now is the time our species to mature beyond simple selfish convenience and embrace our role as planetary stewards.

How does a gigantic rotating non living rock a.k.a earth own and claim the fruits belong to it...

it would be acceptable if atleast you say the tree owns the fruit..

I'd say both men are confused about the reality of the relationship between temporary animals (which we Naked Primates are) and the relatively permanent Earth.

The civilized man operates under the very dangerous delusion that the Earth and its fruits belong to him, when in reality man belongs to the Earth. Until human civilization rids itself of this delusion, we will continue to destroy ourselves and everything around us.

"The white man seeks to conquer nature, to bend it to his will and use it wastefully until it is all gone and then he simply moves on, leaving the waste behind him and looking for new places to take. The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry, and what he eats is land."
-Chiksika, to Tecumseh





Yours with nature's righteous fury,

World Citizen Beliathon

I have not been following this thread much, and don't have time to explain how Bitcoin has refined my views of the world. However, I still think anarcho-capitalists are delusional. Capitalism always involves violence. Before Bitcoin, I thought this was simply because the "price system" relies on government intervention. However, it goes deeper than that. Note: No "C" word below this line.

Property rights revolve around the concept of scarcity. One of the left-wing anarchists on this board pointed me to "Sex at Dawn". That book explains that in hunter-gatherer societies, there is no scarcity. The commons provide all that is need. If supplies need to time to replenish, they can simply move to the next area. With no property to defend, wars are avoided simply by walking away.

Scarcity is now being applied to ideas as well. It was devastating to read right-wing accounts (no link, sorry) of how homesteading is a fair way to decide who owns property; immediately after reading Melancholy Elephants. In that short-story, the set of possible copyrighted works has been homesteaded. The crisis the story revolves around is that legislators are considering perpetual copyright terms.

You failed to answer a simple question without
using the "C" word...lol...

anyway, by your logic, the 2 people
trying to trade an orange for the
apple have already "failed" by
claiming they own said fruit.

is that correct or incorrect?

and they are acting "violently", I presume?

We just wanna know where you stand.

Property is the First Theft - the creation of a state of non-equilibrium among men.

Capitalism concentrates the wealth of humanity in the same manner that gravity concentrates the matter of the universe. Larger bodies of wealth have more "financial gravity" -  they siphon wealth away from smaller bodies. This creates inequality, instability, crises, and eventually total collapse.

Private property also creates poverty. With poverty comes desperation and crime. With crime comes violence. So to answer your question, free trade breaks down into violence the moment a starving person tries to take an apple from a wealthy person, and force must be applied to prevent the Second Theft, nature's urge to return to equilibrium.

All things tend toward equilibrium and homeostasis. Capitalism creates a temporary state of non-equilibrium among men; thereby sewing the seeds of its own destruction. This imbalance cannot last forever, judging by present global circumstances I'd say ~300 years is already stretching the limits to the maximum.

So you see, property is cirime; capitalism is violence; hierarchy is chaos. All our instincts compel us back toward equality, compel us to feel empathy, repulse us from tolerating the starvation and suffering of our peers. Capitalism, my friends, is a damned, doomed, dying system.



All things based on myths and lies are mere shadows, and they will melt away when bathed in the light of the information age.

Take a step back from abstractions for a minute, and try to answer from
a down to earth point of view.... where/when do you think free trade
breaks down into violence?  Surely you can't argue that 2 people peacefully
trading an orange for an apple is violent.  So under what condition
do you think it begins?  (Please try to answer in simple terms without
saying the word "capitalism"    )