Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 1074. (Read 2032266 times)

This changes nothing. A person living in a non-money economy will take something of value when he goes to a merchant to have some painkillers. How do we know this? Because it is going on today. That is barter. It also happens for other reasons, like tax avoidance, and if two persons just happens to both have something of value that they don't need. No mystery.

Gift economies is live and well in stable, tight local communities. It is debt, it is based on trust that you will get something back when you give. People think this is nice; I see some problems: The community has to be exclusive to have this level of trust. There is always a black sheep that is exclueded, also newcomers, and it falls apart when there are turbulent changes in the group. Also the payments are not exact, so some individuals may sacrifice themselves too much, others can get away with very little production (if they are pretty or smiling or lying or somehow can believably hold forth that they are worthy receivers).

Historical seasonal markets based on debt has been envisioned, don't know about hard evidence but it is completely likely. In a money-scarce economy, people meet to trade, and temporarily use a ledger to enable trade, and clear out at the end of the market. Debt based markets using promissary notes is even better and can be used anywhere today, and is used where bank loans are hard to get. Privately issued "credits" are used in local markets all over the place, for example nowadays in Argentina. Denoted in the local government currency, but has normally a lower value. They are usable due to "localism" and "big corporations fucked-us-ism", and possible due to misunderstanding of what money is.

So this is nothing new, and not contrary to austrian money theory. Debt is an extension to money to some degree, the easier transferable the more money-like. The money supply that ultimately decides the prices (together with demand to hold) is the combined supply of money plus debt.

The regression theorem is on shaky feet since bitcoin anyway.

If you want conspiracy theories check out which airlines avoided Ukraine and which ones didn't.  I'll save you the suspense.  British Airways and Air France did.  Germanys Lufthansa didn't. 

The US government seems a little too keen to pin the blame on the Russians, but under the circumstances I guess I can see why. What are the odds that Malaysia Airlines loses two 777s in the space of six months and both under suspicious circumstances? Probably just an unpleasant coincidence but I wonder if the Malaysian government has stepped on anyone's toes recently.

You gotta be impressed. We have eyes everywhere:

SBIRS is a network of four geosynchronous and two elliptically orbiting infrared satellites, and is run by the US Space Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25923-us-satellite-may-have-located-ukraine-missile-launch.html#.U8n_Jmlycuo

It's going to have to be forced down there throats, it shakes Mises's regression theorem at the core. At first I couldn't accept it but the earlier linked video sugar coats it and makes it taste nice.

It just happens to be what the empirical evidence suggests. Barter and then money evolved where there were relationships of low trust, your community was typically a high trust relationship so no need for money or barter.

Too much work.

I'll just wait for them to finalize their framework and then publish methods for breaking it.

Almost certainly the gift economy of small familial based tribes preceded barter and still is in widespread existence today, e.g. your father gives you some tomatoes he grew himself and you want to repay that by helping him with a ride to the airport, but is that really a debt as there is no expectation of repayment? ... whether money originated as a mechanism to track "debts" is a big stretch from familial gift economy.

Can't point to any study, but I read it on two occasions. One was when reading the german translation of Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Graeber explains the issue quite convincingly, citing many examples (very strange ones among them). I used to believe the barter-story, but after reading (parts of, I haven't finished it) that book, I'm now convinced money really came about as a means to track debt in groups of increasing size and/or accross groups.

This is the second time in a few days that I read this. Could you point to studies on the matter? I like that not even Austrians seem to be aware of this.

+2

this kinda reminds of the proliferation of mining nodes worldwide:

Growth for Bitcoin ATMs

http://www.coindesk.com/7-charts-show-year-growth-bitcoin-atms/

maybe you need to go into the consulting business.

So don't change the business model from the original application.

Licensing IP from a foreign company is just one example of how companies already shift profits around internationally.

except that every material change in business model from original application needs to submit to further review and approval.

well, i get that but when Dell's revenues are 34x higher than Overstock's, sit up.

One criticism I have for dell: they used to (still do) use custom power supplies and motherboards with 2 wires on the pinout switched, otherwise all ATX standard. Result after trying to replace a power supply in one of these machine: a flash, a bang... then smelly electronics smoke and a brand-new machine from a manufacturer actually honoring standards.

I still value the overstock story way higher, because that guy is really trying to trickle bitcoin acceptance down the supply chain.

Now if dell did that... I'd be really excited.

Well-done in my mind since it does away with 2 widespread myths:

• money emerged to replace barter transactions (wrong, it emerged to track debt)
• gold has intrinsic value