Topic: I am very confused. - page 5. (Read 10235 times)

I'm quite a fan of Democracy myself. I'm also one of those people with my own will. You, however, don't seem so interested in enacting the will of the people I know. That I find, troubling and a bit tyrannical.

Express a point of view and i'll tell you if I'm with your or against you.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the Wall Street bailouts. My sentiments are not, however, because bankers are evil. It is because any banker who needed to be bailed out, by definition "sucks at banking!" I think people who suck at their jobs should lose them.

However, for every banker that needed to be bailed out, there are 10 more who are actually good at their jobs. If you make a histogram of bailed out bankers vs the universities they attended a pattern will become clear. Those who sucked at their jobs, tended to go to very prestigious often liberal universities. (Harvard, Columbia, Yale) Very few went to Iowa State, University of North Dakota, or other random state universities. There are plenty of bankers doing a good job of managing, loaning, and stimulating the economy using other people's money. They went to go to universities you've never heard of where you are sure that only mediocre people must go.

To big to fail banks are a really bad concept to implement.
The same is true when it comes assigning power to governments. Smaller competing societies are better and more stable than ostensibly optimized large ones. I'll put my democracy up against your democracy any day.

Holy crap! People like you are the reason totalitarian governments ever came to be.

Possibility to receive remote payments with no VAT nor need to declare income or any other sales taxes, just like you'd do with cash payments. Not enough? You get zero credit card fees as a gift.

And there's no problem if you convert it back to cash to make your daily expenses, as long as you avoid the banking system which may track you down. But if you manage not to convert it and make your expenses in bitcoins as well, more profits to you. And even more profits if you manage to convince your suppliers to accept bitcoin payments as well.

No system of government is immune from mistakes. Thousands of years of civilization have taught us all we need to know of so-called "benevolent" dictatorship.  Democracy has the benefit of at least striving to enact the will of the people, instead of the whims of tyrants or oligarchs.  

Both mindsets make sense. People who are inclined to the left think of redistribution as getting a competitive amount of sustenance for doing what they are trained to do. They don't feel personally responsible about the place in society they happen to be, which makes sense up to a point. Another part of the picture is the ability to become who you want, be omnidirectional, not have to put your social status or background into the equation, which makes sense too. Both are practically impossible. Bitcoin is a simple tool which might in some circumstances help with the latter, both for being independent of the banking structure and for being subject to only the least common denominator of regulations (weak point being exchanges). This helps with redistribution of wealth, especially if you think globally. Imagine you are free to compete or cooperate with anyone else on the globe; Bitcoin is an enabler in this aspect. It's not a magical solution to the distribution problem, but neither is occupy movement or such. Arguably, Bitcoin has more serious practical consequences.

Wow what a fun bit of mixed metaphors!

Where does rulership by benevolent unelected bankers fit on the scale? Would that be better or worse than legalized slavery?

The greatest freedom that America affords you is the freedom to work two dangerous jobs to pay for the medical bills you incurred from working two dangerous times.


If you are really upset about this, next time pick to be born to a family of investment bankers.

Good or bad, it's the will of the people.  It has legalized slavery and it has outlawed it.  It is a far better system than rulership by corrupt unelected bankers.  In the case of switching to a Bitcoin economy, it would most certainly be a good.

Because a "democratic process" decides, (first everyone must do (X) then (Y) will happen) doesn't make the idea any less folly. Ken Burns has a really good documentary about Prohibition out at the moment.

That scourge was much worse than the current banking scourge. The solution was successfully tested locally among the willing. It was imposed on everyone popularly with the best of intentions. And yes, it turned out to be complete folly.

^ The Democratic process will be the source of this change as people tire of our long running and long failed current experiment.

Good for you then. Have fun here!

For reference I believe that only ideas of folly start with, "First everyone had to do (X) exactly as I say, then (Y) can never happen and the world will be a better place!"

If your idea is a good one, start with 100,000 people and completely open accounting. If it makes these 100,000 people's lives genuinely better, everyone else will notice and come over willingly.

If the first 100,000 fails to benefit from the wisdom of your idea. Well, that's the definition of being wrong.

Tell it to Warren Buffet too, or George Soros, or Mark Cuban.  People can be wealthy without being selfish.


http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-tax-the-hell-out-of-wall-street-and-give-it-to-main-street-and-other-advice-for-the-protesters-2011-10

I don't know, man. 99% of the so-called "poor" have refrigerators these days. Even Czar Nicholas II didn't have one of those. Game. Set. Match.

If there's one thing I've learned from Bitcoin libertarians, it's that true freedom mainly involves working 18 hours a day for a dollar an hour and living in a tin-roofed shack (look Ma, no building regulations!).

Seek professional help.

Oh please, the 400 richest people in America hold more wealth than the bottom half of the population combined.  There is only one direction in which corrupt central banking distributes money, and that is why it must be destroyed.


It is for those people I use my voice to try and save us all from the tyranny of the rich.  When the job is done, I'll be glad to pass along my rig.  For now, I'll concentrate on supporting policy that will give them potable water, food to eat, education, electricity, roads, and healthcare.  

I grew up wealthy and have done very well for myself in my own career, I'll be happy to see my money be taxed at a higher rate to support those in need.

Maybe someday you'll realize that the entire purpose of the central bank's inflationary activities is precisely for wealth redistribution - both from the rich to the poor (to buy votes from government spending programs) and from the poor to the rich (via inflation). In both cases, the government is strengthened at the expense of individual freedom.

How about we stop "redistributing" property justly acquired by humans. It's a lesson mankind is unfortunately taking thousands of years to learn - don't steal from or harm people, and society will be good.

It's incredible how "socialists" are always so eager to be charitable with other peoples' money, while typing their nonsensical tyranny on computers which could surely be donated to more needy children in 3rd world countries...

Precisely because of the lack of anonymity compared to cash, yes.  There is no reason to reverse engineer out all the addresses, the government simply assigns an address to each citizen and these addresses are the only legal means of sending or receiving the coins.  Anything outside the whitelist is considered illegal by default.  This system does not interfere with the actual network at all, it just defines how the network is legally used in a country.

Debated it more in depth here:  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47916.60

By means of currency production with the people I mean as opposed to the out of control printing of wealth done by central banks and handed off to the wealthy in the form of bailouts and favorable regulation.  With Bitcoin the government can't create money out of thin air, it is mined by the people and all transactions are public and easily monitored.  There will be no more need for something like campaign finance reform, for example, when every donation to a campaign is recorded and mad publicly available for the voters.

So are you saying you are a fan of Bitcoin because of its *lack* of anonymity?


Means of currency production? You are well aware of the fact that Bitcoin doesn't have a means of currency production right? It just slowly allocates the existing 21 million coins. By the time the government takes notice and reverse engineers who holds each address (say 5 years) 75% of bitcoins will already be in the hands of the bitcoin rich. How are "the people" going to produce more or redistribute existing wealth from the bitcoin rich?

I guess a link might be in order.

I've actually already debated this extensively in other threads.  In the primal state bitcoin is not good for redistribution, but once you have a government that identifies the users by address it is perfect for it because of the transaction log.  I know you would have some doubts of that but I don't feel like running through the debate I just had in the other thread, I'll link you if you are interested.

The bottom line is Bitcoin allows you to take the means of currency production out of the hands of corrupt central banks and the corporations who rule them and gives it to the people.

I have to laugh at the irony of this post. I'm not laughing at you Rarity. But I'm laughing with... well, I guess with all the folks who started this forum!

Bitcoin is the crypto-anarchist libertarian's wet dream of a currency. Its core premise is that there is no way for anyone to force redistribution of wealth. There is nothing particularly egalitarian about bitcoin. Sure the leftist ideologues, libertarians, and tea party folks are all trying to pull down the current system.

However, everyone is trying to pull it down from opposing directions. It is all very self defeating and amusing to watch.