Topic: Kill the Politics forum - page 11. (Read 19963 times)

Oh my, the ideologues are not going to like this thread at all . Personally I find it highly ironic that the greatest hurdle to widespread adoption of bitcoin right now is the perception that it is for drug dealers, anarchists, and other shady characters. Then, anyone actually wanting to research bitcoins comes here and sees such wonderful threads discussing secession, bringing down governments, revolutions, etc etc. Here's a hint for you guys:


You may as well change the official logo to read "Bitcoin: Currency of teh crazy"

Unless catering to a specific crowd, legit businesses don't mention politics. Its a good way to alienate at least half of your potential customer base. There are not enough Libertarians in the world to support bitcoin. Satoshi chose his initial adoption crowd well, but bitcoin is outgrowing the "herp! all governderp is bad!" crowd. You were useful, now it is time to put the politics aside and let real businesses step in and see this through to its maximum potential. You get a nice reward for early adopting, but bitcoin is a digital currency, not a revolution. Try to bill it as such and it will utterly fail with the general public, and condemn bitcoin to being a footnote in Wikipedia.

I would find it extremely amusing if the reason bitcoin 1.0 died was because the anti-gov't ideologues couldn't stfu from their rants long enough to let it grow. The absolute best thing the dev team could do would be to kill these forums and let other sites continue the conversations. Maybe leave the technical discussion and have it heavily moderated.

Have I REALLY used these words? Honestly?


People, if bitcoin has no political-economical view built-in, then why in hell do you think it has a logarithmic growth, with an asymptotic limit? Stable monetary supply is an economical position supported only by Austrian economists. All mainstream "economists" support monetary inflation.

And, again, like it or not, using bitcoin instead of dollars or euros or whatever is a political position. It is not like "overthrowing government", but it is at least the equivalent of saying "I do not authorize the government to finance itself nor its banker friends with the inflation of my money." This political position is built in bitcoin. If you don't agree with this position, sorry but you should not use bitcoins. You should just keep using the currency of your government.

Saying that bitcoin has no political/economical view built-in at all is just wrong. It does.

Now if you don't like the political debates here, just don't join them. Honestly, I doubt that these debates scare more the condescending subjects of governments than stuff like SR for ex.

Yes you can!

I have to disagree with you. I myself am a nanorchist (that's the guy that always must take the fight from both anarchists and minarchists) but that's personal. Let's move over to business...

Do you want to see bitcoin succeed as a global internet commodity ? If yes, you have to put all your politcal associations aside, its a revolutionary easy way of transfer money. And let's stop there, no it wont take down the fed nor will it replace euro nor SDR, stop there, noone has till now monetized the web and we are about to do it!

You have to make it appeal as more than something pure ideological. (trying to make it have people believe it will oppose or replace the fed is totally ridiculous)

I agree with you.  This is an open source project.  It behaves beyond the scope of one.  That works against it in many ways.

If the treasury department or the Federal Reserve had a politics section (or a forum at all), it would be crazy beyond measure.

For bitcoin to succeed, it needs to lower its value as a target.  That means losing, not just politics, but the vast majority of this forum and let third party sites distribute the political target value.

Whenever you allow someone enter information, you put your site at risk.  If bitcoin.org is limited to the technical aspects of the project, the administrators can put bigger restrictions on the nature of discussion.

Bitcoin.org is obligated to secure the code and protocols and rules related to the bitcoin, not to guarantee every lunatic's freedom of speech.

The internet will not stop allowing people to say or do whatever they want.  Not any time soon, anyway. Setting up a forum is trivial.

if they are inseparable, that means the Bitcoin logo is an inherently political logo? You can see the problem, say Amazon might have with your politics?

I know it would be nice to piggyback your political views on the Bitcoin and gain wider acceptance, but it's not not going to happen- it's like wrapping barbed wire around a nice juicy steak- no ones going to eat something that dangerous just because the steak looks good.

You are saying Bitcoin is not simply a currency- but a delivery vehicle for the overthrow of the existing political system. Do you REALLY think that's widely marketable? Honestly?

That is clearly a mistake, and making it is not worth the minor inconvenience of a forum migration. The Politics forum on Bitcoin.org has absolutely no relevance to the development of Bitcoin and is only detrimental to it's adoption. How long until the Bitcoin founders are actually confronted in a television interview with some of the inflammatory content ON THEIR OWN SITE and have to backpedal and say "oh well it's...".

True, but Bitcoin and bitcoin.org are not business. Like it or not, bitcoins have a political and economic background, you cannot really separate them.

Instead, I advice you to link your friends to apolitical sites like weusecoins.com or that Bitcoin Consultancy I saw somewhere, and maybe prevent them that if they come to this forum they will see heated political discussions. That's inevitable and should not be banned, IMHO.

I got some fellow small business owners interested enough to check out, first they could not post or ask any questions (awesome move that), then once they dug around the tax evasion and "lets overthrow the government" derp scared them off.

Most of us would not think of plastering our political party logo on our business. As far as customers are concerned, Bitcoin.org is the face of Bitcoin. The two are largely inseparable. You come here to get the client software, and linking to it or advocating it leads your customers (as well as others) to think that you subscribe the the values expressed here. What kind of crazy business owner is going to link their business to a site and brand that advocates tax evasion and the overthrow of the government?
 
Yes, Bitcoin MAY change things- but it will never get a chance if people don't keep their politics on political web forums. You may be able to get people to adopt your currency- but not if you insist on linking it to your politics.

It's all well and good for Atlas etc. to use his allowance money and play "Come at me bro" with the US Government from behind Tor and three proxies- but real businesses don't have that option so would prefer he take the chest puffing and false bravado elsewhere.