Topic: Penn & Teller : Bullshit! Bitcoin - btc foundation : non-political economy??? - page 2. (Read 4121 times)

You are welcome. It is a useful episode, perfectly accurate.

I didn't have their figures but when friends and family tried to get me into various network marketing schemes before I had heard of them I sat down, did the math, and saw them for the scams they are... meant to exploit the so called "sellers". You can either lose money as a seller of product, lose money by exploiting new "sellers", or make money by exploiting "sellers" (not the customers, the sellers).

A shame so many people are bad at math

Thanks for going through it; Daichi was just making a funny after all

That is an episode mostly on multi level marketting. If bitcoin is mentioned it is somewhere later in the episode, can someone link it with a "starting at" option for the start point of the bitcoin discussion? (if any)

EDIT: I watched the entire episode, there is not a single mention of bitcoin, it was entirely about network marketing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsXxUKjklt8

Considering how popular bitcoin is with libertarians and AnCaps, he's more likely to endorse it than condemn it; it's voluntary and can't be blown up to fund empires.

Penn and Teller did make an episode on Bitcoin.

Easy Money
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep3pO7X7fEQ

Thank you for the thought provoking comment.

"
To give you a for instance, say your country democratic or otherwise decided to borrow a lot of money(perhaps to pay for a war you do not believe in) and they pay it back by printing it out of thin air.  This would make your money less valueable and be in a way a hidden tax.  Theorically bitcoin would give you the ability to vote with your pocket book and dump your country's soon to be worthless currency. Thus freedom from state controlled monetary policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller:_Bullshit!#Cancellation

If you can't see the underlying implications of this statement as on the front page of the bitcoin foundations [website](https://bitcoinfoundation.org/about/why) you might be an engineer. If you really think about it and then do not see anything wrong with it, you might have voted for W.

Politics is 'who gets what where, when and how', there is nothing as misleading as suggesting taking the politics out of something to fix it. It's this festering idea especially in the United States and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom, that regulation leads to bureaucracy and that kills everybody. This bureaucracy is the logical outcome of 'politics'.

The liberating power of money (decentralized, not decentralized, whatever)    how is that going to liberate well at least something close to a significant number of the populace (forget us frapuccino slurping yuppies for a moment.) I presume these claims are made for the benefit of all, not just the initiators of the foundation - which are in turn self-proclaimed strong advocates - and being an advocate that has never anything to do with politics either.

'Freedom' is a word to our western culture as meaningful as 'enjoy' is to Coca-Cola. Empty hollow phraseology that doesn't mean _anything_, so no-one can take offence.

The bitcoin foundation is an interest group in civil society with very strong and clear political ideas (ie. money should not be regulated by a form of consensus/democracy, but must be made by a machine that nobody can fiddle with). That can be your conviction, but it is politics.

Penn and Teller could do a good one about this. "Basically here you have a currency that became popular because it allows you to do all kinds of illegal things and get paid for it while you stay completely or somewhat anonymous, and this is going to save the world... and it is completely politics free... that suonds like a lot of... right, bullshit"

Bitcoin is not going to change the power structures in society much, they just might decide to buy a lot of bitcoins, or do the Chinese thing. It is a neat way to get marijuana though...