Topic: Department of Homeland Security (Read 7125 times)

department of homeland security, this must be fake

I don't feel like it's an issue of the US government not liking bitcoin. It's an issue of mtgox exchanging currency and not following certain laws.  Had mtgox handled there paperwork differently I don't think we'd be seeing this right now.


In the long run I think this is good for bitcoin. Mistakes mtgox continues to make is just helping everyone else get more educated on what NOT to do and how to successfully run an exchange.

While it may not be good for mtgox, it's good for the others because we/they get to learn from mistakes without being the ones committing the actual mistakes.

When I was a boy in sunday school, we were learning the commandments.  When we went over the one "thou shalt not kill" I asked a question.   I asked if it was a Sin to kill in war.  My teacher told me something along the lines that its also a sin not to do ones duty and fight for country.  

I scratched my head on that one.  I had read nothing about country and doing the bidding of man in the bible.  i was like 10 or so, but even then i knew the truth.  War is killing and killing is a sin.  

Today I know that my teacher was some how brainwashed out of the truth.  That something about country and patriotism was some how more important than a religion she not only professed to believe but was volunteering to teach.  

To this day i wonder why she couldn't just say that killing is killing and that killing in war is wrong.

but you're assuming when that attacker starts to enter the market for ASIC supplies for production that everything stays static.  that's not how markets work.

if suppliers detect get a whiff of a big buyer entering the market they will naturally increase prices. if they find out its a gov't, they might even mysteriously run out of supplies depending on their ideology.  this would happen up and down the supply chain driving the costs of materials way higher than expected.

it would be very difficult to keep this a secret and the network could prepare itself defensively.

And don't forget how our taxes actually trained and paid Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviets for us. I also recommend Chomsky's book. He's actually my favorite political writer. Definitely required reading for anyone who wants to understand the intricacies of American imperialism.

If you really believe the US Gov is out of control, the most effective way to reduce its power is tax resistance.

Reduce or eliminate your tax burden, and lobby congress for major tax reform (mainly in that companies like GE and Exxon pay a 0% tax rate through loopholes and armies of lawyers and offshore accounting). The majority of the tax burden - and the responsibility for the atrocities our government commits with those funds - falls on the lower and middle class, the same people who are being relentlessly exploited by corporate America and the 1%.

Im socially liberal and I do believe in some government programs but the level we have taken it to in America, and the huge levels of waste and inefficiency in these programs is borderline criminal. And forget our military budget. Im all for supporting the troops and people who would lay down to protect what our founding fathers created, but where we have taken it to post WWII is indefensible. We arent "defending America" when we invaded Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Shit, Bin Laden wasnt even in Afghanistan. Our current wars or "police actions" as defined by congress are simply an attempt to project American power across the globe and ensure American hegemony. It has nothing to do with "freedom," and everything to do with power, resources, and money (the defense contractors who pay congress to keep them in the black).

I highly recommend reading MIT professor Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, available here on Amazon, for an in depth analysis of post WWII and post 9/11 foreign policy in the US.

http://www.amazon.com/Hegemony-Survival-Americas-Dominance-American/dp/0805076883

Department of Hamhand Security

i really don't need to band together with anyone other than my brothers smith, wesson and remington for MY security. of course my three rotts love me

Based on 82Th and 50Gh@$1200(Avalon)x1000units=50Th right now anyone can break bitcoin with a 51% attack for around $1.2m.

Add to that some strategic targeting of mining pools etc for when the attack goes in: blocking of IP addresses/raids to confiscate mining equipment(you pirated a song, have your stuff back a week later)/cloak and dagger - oh no your house lost electricity cause someone stole the fuses.

How exactly do they intend to seize mt gox's bitcoins

"The reality is that without government and its laws, we would have to band together to ensure our safety-- perhaps regulating our agreement with a charter that defines the roles of our protectors and other regulators charged with defense and promotion of the common good. We would even give those defined groups a collective name. Something like "government." And those rules-- why heck, those are "laws."   -a good post from someone on reddit 3 days ago

I am not coming for you, or anyone, like I made clear in a few previous posts on this thread. You obviously don't understand sarcasm, capiche? I am done feeding trolls here. Im sure you anarchists will coornidate a wonderfull revolution any day now. Have fun with that 

uh no you don't need a government to build roads. the early roads of this country were mostly private roads known as pikes. it was a pay as you go system. many states adopted the model and we have toll roads all over.

yes we now have a government regulating environmental pollution.....hows that working out?
we have a government regulated energy dept. hows that working?
we have an fda run by monsanto. how we doing with that.
we have a dept of defense (offense) murdering hundreds of thousands of people around the world. guess that is working pretty good.
now tell us how many people anarchists have killed........uh huh
of course we have a government regulated finance sector ( cftc, sec, etc. remember 2008?

of course being a statist one has difficulty thinking critically or objectively.
state sponsored violence and oppression has far exceeded anything outside of the state.

anarchy does not mean out of control it means out of THEIR control.

actually when considered against the background of the entirety of human history government has only accounted for about 2% of the time humans have existed. governments are either mob rule (the tyranny of the majority) or totalitarian institutions.

your view of humanity is depressing and nihilistic. if we need external control then we might as well hang it up.
and if you come to put a bullet in my head for any reason you better come PREPARED capiche?

Sadly, that is the game theory outcome.  If you do not come to an agreement, you can always simply capture or kill your opponent and do what you want to do anyway.  If he refuses to use violence to protect himself, you can always win.

I would not be surprised if that were the case. After all, Zimbabwe is a great example to other African nations as to what debt-money means for their country. There's actually already a large financial infrastructure already established in most of Africa. The problem is, it's destroying other infrastructures (agricultural, telecommunications, cultural...etc)

+1.

Why care about what is happen around us when some sports team played some other team and lost? Or better yet... one of the Kardasians flashed her vagina? That is what is important! (
lol I couldn't resist. I flip the Kardasians a lot of well deserved shit.)

But seriously... I think this battle needs to be taken (and won) outside of the United States. The American people are probably not going to care much about any of this one way or another, unless it is somehow presented in a manner that related to our lives in the next few days/months. Big picture thinking is typically not valued. Unfortuently, my guess is the presentation will probably be mostly negative, and people will believe what the media says. (Although I have been surprised, it's not all negative.)

We need to take it to China or another "new money" country. If we can get people in those locations onboard, and start it spreading, the US will have to adopt or we will fall farther and farther behind the rest of the world. 

Speaking of possible places to try to implement, I think some African nations might be ideal because:
- They typically have unstable currencies and that must annoy the people (Look at Liberty Reserve and similar, doing well over there)
- They frequently use mobile phone based payment solutions, so are familiar with electronic mobile payments
- Can be difficult to send money in/out of some of the more unstable countries, bitcoin would solve this.

I know it sounds counter intuitive that their (In some people's opinion) primitive financial system is a good place for bitcoin, but look at it like this... Asia (China specifically) has a high adoption of mobile phone technology and lower adoption of land line based communications because they simply skipped a step in that development stage. Perhaps Africa is a prime location to "skip" the whole checking/credit card/debit card, traditional banking step. Don't waste time building an antiquated infrastructure, and jump straight to the future...

Meanwhile, on channel two, approximately fifty percent of everything anyone has ever worked for is forcibly confiscated under the pretense of 'government'.

For the ones that missed a great TED talk by Lawrence Lessig about Lesterland (USA).

http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html

Probably past time for /thread, but here's a quote for you:

  The fundamental political question is why do people
obey a government. The answer is that they tend to
enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by
tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent
action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall
when the people withdraw their support.

1577 Etienne de La Boetie

If you're into massively convoluted schemes to compromise the power structures that be....or just bored


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/centralization-will-bring-down-bitcoin-207764

1.  MtGox has a pretty good handle on this incident and they do not seem overly rattled for a lot of reasons. 
2.  All those in the government and other big business who keep talking about BitCoin being of no concern are obviously very concerned.
3.  Dwolla lacks balls and/or a legal department.  (Not sayin' they could have avoided this based on the US laws but...).
4.  This isn't gonna stop any time soon.
5.  A truly decentralized crypto-currency needs to find a way to work around these concerns.