Topic: Is Bitcoin good enough; there aren't critically important improvements needed? - page 3. (Read 6007 times)

I need to take a break from posting in this thread.

I haven't gotten any work done since we started these debates  few days ago.

The poll indicates 25 - 30% of the readers are interested in an anonymity improvement.

Thus I already accomplished what I needed to do in order to hopefully motivate that outcome.

Feel free to post away in this thread. I might come back after some days and provide any summary response I think would be useful. Otherwise take all my prior posts to be a statement of my position on all future rebuttals.

Any reader who can't comprehend the following, thus does not understand how democracy really operates.


http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=984

Some Iron Laws of Political Economics
Posted on 2009-05-27 by Eric Raymond

Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action, highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the entire population.

The result is a scramble in which individual interest groups perpetually seek to corner more and more rent from the system, while the incremental costs of this behavior rise slowly enough that it is difficult to sustain broad political opposition to the overall system of political privilege and rent-seeking.

When you add to Olson’s model the fact that the professional political class is itself a special interest group which collects concentrated benefits from encouraging rent-seeking behavior in others, it becomes clear why, as Olson pointed out, “good government” is a public good subject to exactly the same underproduction problems as other public goods. Furthermore, as democracies evolve, government activity that might produce “good government” tends to be crowded out by coalitions of rent-seekers and their tribunes.

This general model has consequences. Here are some of them:

There is no form of market failure, however egregious, which is not eventually made worse by the political interventions intended to fix it.

Political demand for income transfers, entitlements and subsidies always rises faster than the economy can generate increased wealth to supply them from.

Although some taxes genuinely begin by being levied for the benefit of the taxed, all taxes end up being levied for the benefit of the political class.

The equilibrium state of a regulatory agency is to have been captured by the entities it is supposed to regulate.

The probability that the actual effects of a political agency or program will bear any relationship to the intentions under which it was designed falls exponentially with the amount of time since it was founded.

The only important class distinction in any advanced democracy is between those who are net producers of tax revenues and those who are net consumers of them.

Corruption is not the exceptional condition of politics, it is the normal one.

So? You think they will implant our brains with zombie chips and turn us into automatons? I was against anonymity at first, but I reversed my position in light of the surveillance technologies. Anonymous money will be the only privacy we'll have left. Cameras are the technology to fear, not money.

I will reply one more time. You are really naive and uninformed.

Note Austria may be one of the more conservative and better countries in Europe.


Oh little grasshopper, I can never teach you to understand political economics. You will always rather choose to believe they are unrelated events, because you love social welfare. That link explains that promising the constituents benefits is intimately connected to regulatory capture of the government. Until you understand that, you will remain ignorant of how the world operates. You choose not to view the model of political economics systemically and instead want to cordone off events as uncorrelated, because you are irrational and love social welfare.

Btw, the guy who wrote that is Eric S. Raymond, the progenitor of the term "open source" in his famous The Art of Unix and The Cathedral and the Bazaar books. His IQ is self-reported to be in the 150 - 170 range. Read his blog for a while and you will conclude he is that smart.


Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).



In fact, government spending as a percent of GDP is roughly inversely correlated with GDP growth rate over long enough timescales.

TADA.  

I don't really want to defend Wikipedia, it has enough flaws. But when you say, Wikipedia is wrong in a specific case, you should at least provide some source. I really hate how people always say, that some information somewhere is wrong, but their only source is a fairy tale.

The problem with governments is, that they spend more than they earn. I think most people would agree with that, but blaming it on socialism is just wrong. In Austria we have to pay some billions for a bank that got bankrupt, because some politicians made some shady deals with it. That is the most recent event, that really hurts our national debts. That example has nothing to do, with socialism, not the slightest.
The subprime mortgage crisis which hit most countries in the world pretty hard, had nothing to do with socialism.
The tax cuts George W. Bush made which increased the US-debt significantly had nothing to do with socialism.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

The governments haven't really started confiscating yet but they are planning to[1][2].


My mea culpa upthread was to acknowledge that Bitcoin has virtues and will continue.

I am not positing a total annihilation of Bitcoin by an anonymous protocol coin. Rather in this poll I am asking if there is any interest in such experimentation.

---

I kindly request that the same detractors please stop posting for a while so we can hear from some others. You've had your opportunity to make your points. You don't get to continue ad nausea. If you don't comply, I will close the thread, because I don't want to waste all my time here in this thread arguing with the same 3 guys. This thread is a marketing survey and I need to hear from as many people as possible.

This is obnoxious, tiring, and wasteful.

If you need to rebutt, please try to make it two or three sentences, then I will let you have the last word on our debate.


Compare the true story:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9666280

To the Wikipedia version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martin_A._Armstrong&oldid=630836560


The fact is that Europe's debts exceed its income by a horrific margin. So Europeans aren't working enough and are taking too many benefits.

Arguing over pedantic semantics about data won't change that undeniable fact.


I never claimed the USA wasn't fucked up before Obama. Socialism has been growing in the USA since at least FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.

Europe is also royally fucked up too by socialism. I know you think it is all the hydra of the US military killing machine that is the main problem in the world today. Europeans have been indoctrinated to believe that and ignore their own horrific bankruptcy.

Oh, the "powers-that-be" you always like to talk about, you mean Illuminati?

It is so nice, that everything you say is just fact but you don't provide any evidence.
Show me some evidence that people in Europa are working 35 hours a week on average. Show me some evidence that people in Europe retire with 50 on average?
You saw some documents from a friend is all the evidence you got? Oh, the "powers-that-be" must really be powerful, if they can prevent you from providing some more convenient evidence.

You can't even see, that the whole US-government was fucked up, long before Obama. How brainwashed can a person be?

And it is lying with for example the case of Belgium where people are paid to not work and discouraged from working. And it omits data on Norway, because Wikipedia doesn't want to admit it is only 33 hours. Wikipedia is often a disinformation vehicle of the powers-that-be when it comes to social issues.


You will not be able to refute it, because it is a fact. Belgium operates the way I have stated. There are ways to be paid for not working starting about age 50 (I know I saw the government documents and checks my friend receives) and the "black work" is very much prevented. Why don't you actually do some research so you can know what is going on in the world.

In the USA, we have long-term unemployment assistance and corrupt disability claims which achieve a similar but not as thorough result.


$128 trillion in unfunded social welfare liabilities:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/17/you-think-the-deficit-is-bad-federal-unfunded-liabilities-exceed-127-trillion/

I know you Europeans think the only problem in the USA is that we are in debt because of our military. You all think we waste our deficits on the military and we don't have a glorious social welfare program as you do. Fact is Obama has been doing a good job of emulating your megadeath-directed system, as he has reduced (inflation adjusted) military budgets (which means we can't defend your ass against Russia) and still managed to run $1 trillion annual deficits with for example 57 million Americans on food stamps.

You try to argue that your social welfare systems are not bankrupting you, hahahaha. DELUSIONAL.

STFU you fool.

I wrote, that it is not counting overtime and therefor is of course inaccurate. It is the minimum working hours.

And please don't tell me some fairy tales about how a friend told you about a friend yada yada, and call it life experience. I heard so many of such stories, which just lacked important details. There are so many stories in Austria which are circulation for years even thought they have been disproved since the beginning.
You took your retirement at 50 from that story? And you really thought someone would take that serious?

USA welfare system is a joke. Are you really telling me, it is the reason for the big US-debt?

Here have a graph, about how well you have done under Bush:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration#mediaviewer/File:Deficits_vs._Debt_Increases_-_2008.png

Not when anonymous decentralized cash is gone and all we have remaining is non-anonymous centralized block chain that tracks every thing we do.

---

I can't understand why any rational human would say it is not okay for us to experiment with anonymity?? Why would the detractors be against us trying to improve and provide other technologies which you can optionally use if you want to??

Are detractors that afraid of their Bitcoin investment that they can't tolerate freedom to innovate??

The Euro tied you all together in a horrific conundrum as I explained to you before, thus yes one can make the claim that France is Europe, but any way I don't need to make that claim in order to refute you.


That work week data is hilariously inaccurate and sanguinely non-informational. Not very many serious career Americans nor Japanese work only 40 hours per week and are often not paid hourly so there is no "overtime".

http://wdsm710.com/news/articles/2014/may/08/end-of-oil-boom-threatens-norways-welfare-model/


Can you even learn to do fact checking before you make feeble posts?

You are young and inexperienced. That should be accompanied with humbleness and a desire to learn from people who are older and have more experience and knowledge than you do.

Please don't waste more of my scarce time with more idiotic posts.


The USA doesn't have long-term unemployment payments, Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare, HUD assisted housing, 57 million on food stamps, since Obama $1 trillion annual budget deficits every year, etc.  

There is always someplace nice in the world to live. Go there. 

The white Caucasian Germany today is not (yet!) Nazi Germany of the 1940s. The white Asian China today is not (yet!) Mao's 57 million executed killing fields that it was. The brown Asian Cambodia today is not (yet!) Pol Pot's genocide that it was. The white Caucasian British never considered black Africans to be humans in the Boer Wars atrocities. The white Caucasian Americans have caused the genocide of at least a million innocents in the Middle East.

The list goes on and on...

Westerners are smug in their 80 years of uninterrupted peace domestically (propped up by central banks which never let the debt default and contract), but this is coming to an end and before 2020 they will be reunited with the horror of government (as the insane level of debt comes imploding down into economic destitution).

Incorrect. There is no centralized ledger of serial numbers that tracks each exchange of cash notes.


Correct.


That doesn't make Bitcoin equivalent to cash in terms of anonymity, because in Bitcoin the proof-of-ownership is not the decentralized possession of a physical evidence as it is cash, but rather being able to cryptographically sign a key which is digitally verified against a centralized public ledger (albeit decentralized consensus, there is only one, mulitiply-referenced instance of the ledger, thus centralized) which is fully traceable and linkable.

You mentioned the physical exchange of Bitcoin private keys implying these are equivalent to cash, but you failed to realize that you have no protection against a double-spend in that case because the transfer hasn't been recorded on the centralized ledger and thus the entity formerly in possession can transmit a cryptographic spend before the new entity who is possession does! Whereas cash doesn't have a double-spend threat (other than counterfeiting which affects the entire society proportionally, not disproportionately you individually), because the proof-of-ownership is being in possession of the decentralized physical note.

This is why Bitcoin can not be decentralized without anonymity.

You can blabber mouth until you are blue in the face, but you can't change that fucking reality with the drooling.

It is one of the hallmarks of Dunning-Kruger wannabes that they see some common trait between two phenomena and then proclaim the two phenomena are equivalent. As if analogy makes them smart. Sorry. No it makes it obvious they are stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect


It is Cryptonote, not cryptocoin. You have no mathematical nor logical clue about what you blabber about. You can carry on with your erroneous UNtechnical, n00b assumptions.

We experts need to ignore people like you who are unwilling to learn.

Ha
Hahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahah

Perhaps it is so endemic that you don't even recognize it as such. Tax is one thing, what about the time you expend in filling out the interminable forms? That's not a task? Ever stand in line to get your drivers license renewed? Military conscription? ACA for any of you Americans? E-Verify? Shovel your walk within 24 hours of snowfall? Cut your weeds or answer to the council? Provide an authority approved mailbox, and don't use it for any other purpose? Send your kids to an authority approved school or be hauled in? Blow into this tube? Clear the sediment runoff out of this creek that runs across your land? Replace your toilets with low flow models? No transacting without the appropriate licenses?

Are you freaking kidding me?

I've not yet had a need for externally assisted anonymity. Perhaps someday I will.


I think that merely serves to strengthen my point. These relatively ancient protocols are still in widespread use,  no?

No thanks, I will stay with bitcoin and will never switch up ever.
BTC is where it all started...I am here for the long-haul.

Yes, and "how much they can get" varies widely across space and time.  USA is not North Korea.
Governments are made of individuals.  Étienne de La Boétie's discourse still applies.