Topic: Counter to "Why Bitcoin is dropping ...buying." AMA format / doomsday debunked - page 3. (Read 5604 times)

No.  France has never agreed to you your living there without paying taxes.  If you were born at my house, would you feel entitled to live at my house for the rest of your life?  Do you feel that you have a right to live in the maternity ward of the hospital where you were born for free?  How is that different from living in France without paying for it?


Then owning a piece of land is a crime against nature.  It is as repugnant as owning the air above that land.  In short, GET OFF MY LAWN, capitalist imperialist running dog pig

That's the problem with being a citizen--

The state (or law or government) bestows to you your rights and duties in that particular land. I agree with Elwar in theory, but wherever you end up being born, some governing body has been there long before your birth and will subject you to its desires.

As Elwar said, it's all about defending your rights. In the US this could mean protesting. In Somalia, this could mean shedding blood.

For most people, the truth ain't an option.


Winston Churchill

Your right to freedom is granted the day you are born. From there, it is all about defending that right.

Your right to free speech is not something the government gives you. You have the right to free speech simply by being alive. The government is just saying that they are being ever so courteous as to not interfere with that particular freedom.

The government takes away your freedoms and leaves you with your remaining "rights".

This is a feudal view on things.  Normally, people are not "subjects" but are in principle free.  They should be free to work together and organize them into bigger structures (like "states") if they want to, on their own free choice.  States should be subject to people, and people shouldn't be subject to states.  I know that this is not how things worked out the last 5 millennia or so, but that is exactly why states are thugs, submitting people to their will by using their violence.  As I said before, it is not because things are different than what they could be, that we should necessarily cheer for the way they are now.

Indirect democracy didn't submit states to the people, that is just a pipe dream.  It did improve a bit the situation over the established absolute monarchy, but not much.  We can only change the absolute monarchy every few years.  That did bring some softening, but didn't solve the fundamental problem you pointed out: that people are still subject to states instead of the other way around.

Sorry to nitpick, but I was a bit perplexed by this. How does one have rights not granted by some ruling body? Rights are what subjects have. Freedom is what sovereigns have, in theory of course.

This is a strange (Keynesian) statement, isn't it ?
Investing means to give up consumption in order to use resources to make capital (that is, means of production).  Indeed, certain resources available could be used to consume, OR they could be used to make capital, but not both.  They could also be wasted of course, but what is impossible is to consume and make capital with the same resource.  If you want to "consume time" (that is, if you want to have free time), you cannot use that time simultaneously to produce labor.  If you want to consume electricity for playing a video game, you cannot use that same electricity to make a machine that will build a car for instance.  You can only use a resource once, and it can be 1) wasted, 2) consumed 3) invested (that is, turned into a capital good).

There's no way in which "printing money" can invent resources that can be turned into capital, without not having them consumed or wasted.  This is why "printing money" or any other Keynesian technique doesn't really work in the long run: because resources cannot be double-spend in consumption AND in capital.
Of course, what printing money can do, is to take away resources from some and give them to others.  Whether that transfer of resources improves the economical structure or not is an open debate.  Usually, if the one spending has no choice over on what it is spend, and if the one receiving didn't have to earn it, wasting resources is probable, so usually, taking away resources from some, to give it "for free" to others is wasteful (because you are usually more careful with resources you had to earn, than with things received "for free" and taken from others).

Ideally, the decision not to consume, but to invest, is what is called "saving" and happens ideally with a "sound money" (that is, money that doesn't inflate its basis).  Then, the balance is clear: people earning money (in return for produced value) who do not want to consume this, put the money aside as a saving, and this can be lend out to people wanting to invest.  With sound money, the amount not spend on consumption is then equal to what is available for investment, as it should be.  The interest paid on the borrowed money is then ideally equal to the value of the capital in the new production and is the incentive for the saver to save. 
All printing of money is distorting these balances.

But there's nothing else in a state.  It is the definition of a state.  The day that you will understand that, a lot will clear out for you.  The state is nothing else but people like me, wasting taxpayer's money.  The only reason why they do SOMETIMES something that appears useful to the public, is to keep people like you cheering for paying taxes.  But the state is nothing else but a self-propagating bunch of bastards like me, who produce essentially nothing useful, on mountains of taxpayer's money, and live well off the production of others.  I agree however, that I'm pretty rare in being open and honest about that.  Many of my fellow spenders of taxpayer's money are on top of that deluded (or pretend to be so) and have a high esteem of their wasting practices.
It is the definition of a parasite.  Sometimes, by accident, it also does something useful.

Since I live on tax payer money :-)

Ok, they give me some, and take some back, but I live net, partly, on the French (and partly on British, and German, and ...) taxpayer's hard-earned money :-)

Before, I produced wealth and earned money.  But states took a big part of that away and I didn't want to be in slavery.  Now, I'm on the other side of the fence, where I produce almost nothing (of any value on the market), and live good on other people's stolen production.  I don't really think that is good, but it is better to steal, than to be stolen.  Given that in a pseudo-communist system, it is one or the other, and there is no fair earning what you produce, it is better to be on the state's theft side.  So that's what I do.

However, your point is a logical fallacy.  You compared "paying taxes" to "paying rent when you live in a house".  I pointed out to you where that comparison fails:
1) living in a house for rent is a mutual agreement, while paying taxes isn't.
2) living "on earth" (so, in a country) is not the same thing as "living in a house" because earth is not a produced good that belongs to someone, contrarily to a house.  Living on earth is a natural state of affairs, like breathing the air is.  For many reasons, the country is not owned by a bunch of people calling themselves a state, no more than the air in the forrest is my property and no more than I could ask money for somebody who is breathing.
Only the result of production can ideally be owned.  Public land is public, and not owned by anybody, including the state.
I agree with you that USING INFRASTRUCTURE is something else, and should be paid for, on a voluntary basis, in order to be allowed to use it (such as a rented house, or a road).  But that's not the same thing as "being in a country".

Of course, actual states don't apply those rules, because they are maffia thugs.  But it is not because they are maffia thugs that that is a good thing, or should be wanted for.
In the good old CCCP, many things also happened, enforced by the state, that you may not find OK.  So it is not because a state can enforce things, that things SHOULD be that way, and that you should find that logical or normal.  Your parents fled from the CCCP exactly for those reasons.  It is a bit strange that you do not understand that yourself.

Bitcoin re-surfacing.

When did France agree to you living there without paying taxes?  I hope you saved the contract, because France tells me she didn't.


Not sure what the law in France is, but here in US the state doesn't "end" at my doorstep.  Owning a piece of real estate in US makes it "yours" in the same sense that owning an apartment in an apartment complex makes it yours.  It grants you some rights, but far from all.

You aren't allowed to breed cattle in your "own" apartment, for instance, and you need to pay building maintenance costs.  Not optional.  

Similarly, when you buy a piece of land in US, it's only "yours" as long as you pay your taxes, follow building & zoning codes, and comply with a bevy of other shit.
Oh, and if the jackbooted thugs ever need "your" land back, they can seize it via eminent domain.
Ownership is not quite as binary as you think it to be


Stop wasting your government's money, or, as a minimum, stop bragging about it.  It's unscrupulous people such as yourself who drive up the taxes.
Stop being the problem and become the solution.


You certainly don't think *you* own the country, do you?   What is it you feel that you have done that made you deserve it?

I think I get what you are saying here.  Sure, most of the time things are priced in USD.  Like EuroDolalr or YenDollar or whatever.  But people can just as easily talk about the EuroYen instead of the DollarYen when quoting prices.  This new country that just prints $ would see its FX decline in relation to all currencies, not just the USD.  Even BTC is quoted in dollars often but can also be quoted in EUR or whatever.  The reason that the USD is in control, as you say, is because well if I work in Indonesia or whatever and someone wants to pay me, I would much rather trust the USA than Vietnam or whatever so I would much rather you paid me in USD.  That's just because that country has good things going for it, there is nothing wrong with being preferred currency if that is the case.

I just don't agree that "we" set the price of these other things you reference.  The USD is not set by any one party.  Sure, the Fed has a lot of control over it because they control short-term interest rates, but there are so many other global factors that affect the value of the dollar that it is difficult for me to accept that our government controls it.  And even if they do - I just don't think it matters.  It only matters if you are doing business with the US, in which case other countries WANT our FX to be weaker so that they can sell us more stuff!  But in the long run it is inflation that affects the strength of a currency and this government has done a good job of keeping that in check.

Creating money out of nothing IS a good thing if that money is being used to invest in productive assets.  If a country prints its way into a fortune and has no economy, it is worthless.  But if a country prints a fortune and create unlimited, no-pollution portable power source or something crazy, that currency will be worth a lot.  It just depends.  And I think in this case the USD is doing well - they have the best tech industry, the best healthcare industry and a slew of other things going for them.  Sure, it could change tomorrow but that is speculation.  And having that argument is much different than saying the USD will be worth $0 in 100 years because it's much harder to think it through and say I think the US won't be competitive because of X or Y.  Those points can be argued but saying that it's screwed, well that's just an opinion.

You renting my house is a mutually free agreement.  We both agree on that, or not.  I didn't say I didn't want to pay for state (or other) services.  I only want to be able to choose them.   My house is mine.  If you want to live there, and I agree that you live there, then we make a deal, and part of the deal is that you pay some rent.


The point is that "the country" is not the ownership of a state.  If it is, then I'm the state in my house and my garden, and when I'm at home, the state around me has nothing to do with me, because I'm then the owner of my house, and not the state, and my front door is a state border.  

However, I agree with you that using public services and infrastructure needs to be paid for.... on a voluntary basis !  If I want to USE a road, it is normal that I pay for it.  However, if I don't want to use a road, I don't see why I should *be obliged* to pay for it.  I might *choose* to step into a package deal that I pay for all roads, and that as such I also have the right to use them.  Whether I do or not will depend:
- on the price I'm charged (there's for instance no reason why the same service should be more expensive to me than to someone earning less than me)
- on the quality of the roads.

If I don't have this choice, then of course the state will build a lot of useless roads at too high prices for too low quality to give my tax money to their friends the road building companies held by their brother in law.  The only way to keep the ratio of quality, usefulness and efficiency in check with the spending is if there is the free choice to say no.  If not, we get exactly what is happening in almost all states: budgets running out of hand, rising taxation until the economy is strangled and a lot of spending on very low efficiency, bad quality and very costly stuff.

I know this, because I work with state money.  The more I waste, the more I spend, the better things go for me and my people.  At no point, any form of efficiency is demanded.  (on paper, yes, in reality, no).  I've had collegues who couldn't stand this going to the private sector, where they discovered all of a sudden that every Euro spent must be won too.  
Of course it is fun spending other people's money in truckloads.  But exactly because I know how it goes with tax money, I'm aware of the hypocrisy of the system and I want to keep wasting it because it is much more fun than having to earn it (and pay all those bastards like me wasting it on taxes).


The state doesn't own the country.  The state should ideally (haha) be a servant to the country.  In reality, the state is a huge parasite of the country.  The country doesn't get any better with all the wasting of tax money.  The state does.  That is, the state and his brother in law.

NotLambChop -

Where did the 2/3 go? -Into the pockets of worthless scoundrels who are taking speculators money. It's a damn theft market right now. You have a lot of money? -Start an exchange. Profit. Close up shop.

No country would adopt a currency it can't control? I never said they would. I am alluding to the idea of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights-Currency units). This concept already exists and is used by the US and a few other countries, but is in need of new lifeblood. This is where I believe Bitcoin's technology will take it.

BTC-

Comon? You really believe a country that can create its own money out of nothing is a good thing? Why aren't other countries doing because "in and of itself" it's good? Hell, why doesn't some small nation just get to printing? --They can't do it because everything is tied to the exchange rate of their currency to the reserve currency (the USD). We are in control of it; we set the price. This really is my only point out of all of my writings for you to see and internalize. The US is in control. That's why every thing I am saying to you sounds wildly outrageous. You are part of those in control. You are seeing it from one side and because that side is in control, you think that is reality for everyone.

The gold standard was dropped because after the war, Britain (the reserve currency at the time: the Sterling) had a massive run on the banks and they ran into a huge liquidity problem. They simply is not enough gold in the world to cover everything.

"The world is better off" as you say after dropping the gold standard was because this allowed the US most importantly to not have to keep reserves of a finite metal not because they just got rid of the stupid idea of gold. They instead used their own dollar (USD; which can be controlled and minted) as the new 'gold standard' for not only the US but the world. The US controls the "gold standard" of yesteryear today for the entire world. It's like being Midas pre-WWI. Dropping the gold standard allowed the US to boom as it could take on massive loads of debt without having to pay it back ever because they control it!

Problem:
Gold Standard = finite resource that cannot cover infinite growth

New Problem: The finite resource limits growth

Solution:
USD reserve currency standard = unlimited resource that can cover infinite growth

New Problem: Those who don't control the resource can't control their growth (anyone but the US -> dependency)

There's nothing wrong with creating money out of nothing, in and of itself.  I would rather a country can create money - which most in the world CAN since almost NO ONE is on the gold standard - and then backup that money by output, taxation, etc.  That is what fiat is.  Look at the last 50 years since we went off the gold standard - the world is 100x better off you cannot argue this fact.  You would rather we trade bits of gold and limit credit expansion?  Please.  Instead you have BTC which is backed by nothing, but is in a limited supply.  So what?  Who CARES that you cannot make more.  That does NOT mean that the value will be supported lol.  It just means there can't be more.

Two-thirds of the value lost over the past year.  Where did it go


No country would ever adopt a currency it neither issues, backs, nor controls.


Read up on what fiat money is and how it works.  Above makes no sense.


Nah.  Beanie Babies' artificially limited supply was a genius idea.  Bitcoin simply borrowed it.

I agree, that's the whole point of Bitcoin. You cannot create more Bitcoin after 21 million. That's all there will ever be.

However, I'd argue Bitcoin is not money. It's a store of value that can be exchanged for currencies to buy things. This technology will one day become the placeholder many countries will exchange their own currencies to hedge economic ups and downs.

When the digital currency store of value price has a favorable exchange rate for some country's own currency, that country will exchange back to their currency it and deliver it to their economy through any number of ways to drive their economy. Conversely, if their economy is tanking, they will borrow funds at a favorable rate and hedge the loss by exchanging into the digital store of value. Once their economy flips, they make the exchange.

It's a genius idea.