Topic: What are the most convincing arguments against Bitcoin? - page 3. (Read 9236 times)

This is very well put. This is what I was talking about earlier about ASICs causing centralization of the bitcoin.
And the fact of the matter is, all the major governments have a history of twisting the arms of companies for backdoors. See the snowden leak for the USA, while the rest openly admit it and say its for the greater good

Investment in mining hardware leads to logarithmic improvements in hashing efficiency rather than more desirable linear improvements. So for example 10 billion dollars invested in infrastructure to produce asics will lead to way more than 10 times as much hashing power as 1 billion dollars invested in infrastructure. This coupled with that fact that IC fabrication is potentially the best example of natural monopoly to ever exist, means that no one will ever be able to produce chips even 1/10th as efficient as intel or amd and there is simply no room in the market to create a robust array of companies that operate on the economies of scale of intel or amd. This means that the government could, in theory, twist the arms of all of the COMPETITIVE asics manufacturers into installing back doors in all of the top of the line asics in the future. Or they could even contract with intel to produce asics for them and then murder the rest of the network with even a hand full of asics produced with that sort of economy of scale.

there you go thats my best effort devils advocate argument against bitcoin.

1. He has since been proven right.
2. why shouldn't I call those who seek to make me into a slave an enemy?

You couldn't be further from the truth.
It is a continuum, but one where there is a direct connection between the variables. More communism = lower quality of life. More capitalism = more wealth "disparity" yet higher quality of life for even the poorest.

the main disagreement we have is on what the term "wealth disparity" means. You think it means "shrinking middle class, lots of extremely poor people"

Everyone else in the world thinks it means "if you take the X% top richest people, add up their property, you get a value which comprises a % of the total property in existence. The higher this value, the more wealth inequality"
This is a term that was invented by the communists and I am refusing to use it, but I don't pretend to seek to redefine it. There is no point in redefining it because it's definition is actually fairly accurate. The problem is that it looks at percentages instead of actual values.

I don't care if bill gates lives in a palace so long as I have a decent standard of living. I do care if stalin/mao/etc live in a palace if I have a horrific quality of living.

This is mostly because so few individuals had any wealth under such regimes.

The united states is also marching towards wealth equality. in 2012 we had 40% fewer millioneres than we had in 2008. It isn't JUST the poor that are getting poorer, the middle class are getting poorer, the rich are getting poorer. Everyone is getting poorer. Except for a few corrupt individuals who are getting richer, for now.

The labels are not the biggest problem.


"The terms of the enemy"? Come on, this is typical 1950s McCarthyist rhetoric. There are examples of so-called democracies with a high living standard on average and high median living standard as well as low poverty, and there are examples of the same with big income disparities, high average living standards, lower median living standards and high poverty. Both type of societies have high taxes and lots of bureaucratic rules, but the ones with lower income disparities are less stressful to live in because one doesn't have to face poverty, there is less crime and in general less tension.

There are examples of so-called social democracies where there is a lot bureaucracy like everywhere, but where the common man is well off middle class (as in absolute middle class on a western scale) and where markets do have a say and it is still possible to make one's own life according to pretty free rules in comparison to other countries that call themselves "capitalistic". I don't champion this kind of society at all, but pretending like all state intervention makes only complete ugliness for everyone at all times ever simply isn't true. Some of the best countries to live in for average Joe at the moment are rich social democracies in Europe - and that is a fact (these countries are also safe, have low prison populations and low recidivisy rates). Another fact is that we haven't really had any pure capitalist society in modern post-ww2 times.

I think your logic is completely binary, where everything is either communism or capitalism. If you want to use terms in this black-and-white manner you have to define what you mean by them. Both of these terms are loaded and need to be handled with care.

Just because the state uses force to accomplish it's goals doesn't mean it is always only evil and never has accomplished anything worthwhile. I think that mostly it is inefficient and often evil, but not completely anything. Apple Inc., on the other hand, is pure evil - a malignant cancer on mankind.

Well, yes. The biggest problem is all this communism that is being introduced into falsely labeled capitalistic societies.


You are using the terms of the enemy. Wealth disparity is the rallying cry of communists as they dismantle capitalism. A society with no middle class and masses with nothing has a disparity of freedom and of qaulity of life.

Wealth disparity is when people say "the top 1% has 70% of all money/property in terms of dollars". But in a communist society with no middle class there is no 1%, the people at the top are so very few, and relatively if you compare the ratio of wealth its not that big because society is so backwards that the only way for the wealthy not to live like animals themselves is to import it from non communist nations

Precisely. I'm saying that todays so called capitalist societies are not really capitalist. I'm saying that we don't really have any good examples of free markets anywhere.

I don't believe in taxes as I think it is forcing people to do something. But that doesn't mean I don't believe that truly free market capitalism might be prone to big wealth disparity with all the problems that lead to. I'm arguing that those wealth disparities are a problem in themselves.

Therefore it is important to think about what one can do to make sure that the wealth disparity does not become big enough to be a problem. What I'm talking about is that in a truly anarcho-capitalist society, culture is really important. A culture that embraces the fact that we live in a community and shouldn't stranger to one another, that one should try to help other people intelligently (by teaching them the skills they need to help themselves).

Wealth is important for your opportunities and if your culture is so confoundedly stupid that you can't understand that nor think that it has negative consequences, then I suggest you think again!

Too much imagining too little reality.

I don't need to imagine, I can see it in every communist country in history, ever.

And the fact that people use this as an argument for pushing communist agenda is absurd. You are stoking fear to attack the only thing that prevents what you claim to fear.

IT IS COMMUNISM. You are insisting that capitalism IS communism.

This isn't wealth disparity, its freedom disparity.

The cost of the electricity requirements to secure the transactions will eventually outweigh the benefit of the transactions.

Yes, many historical examples, but of course not christian examples, which is hypercollectivist terror against the human nature. Patriarchy is the opposite of anarchy.


LAW AGAINST CHRISTIANITY

Given on the Day of Salvation, on the first day of the Year I

(— 30th of September 1888 according to the false calendar)

WAR TO DEATH AGAINST VICE: THE VICE IS CHRISTIANITY.


Article. I. — Vicious is every sort of anti-nature. The most vicious sort of human is the priest: he teaches anti-nature. Priests are not to be reasoned with, they are to be engaoled.


Article II. — Any participation in church services is an attack on public decency. One should be harsher with Protestants than with Catholics, harsher with liberal Protestants than with orthodox ones. The criminality of being Christian increases with your proximity to science. The criminal of criminals is consequently the philosopher.


Article III. — The execrable location where Christianity brooded over its basilisk eggs should be razed to the ground and, being the depraved spot on earth, it should be the horror of all posterity. Poisonous snakes should be bred on top of it.


Article IV. — The preacher of chastity is a public incitement to anti-nature. Contempt for sexuality, making it soiled with the concept of ‘impurity’, these are the real sins against the holy spirit of life.


Article V. — Eating at the same table as a priest ostracizes: one is excommunicated from honest society by doing so. The priest is our Chandala, — he should be quarantined, starved, driven into every sort of desert.


Article VI. — The ‘holy’ History should be called by the name it deserves, the accursed history; the words ‘God’, ‘Savior’, ‘Redeemer’, ‘Saint’ should be used as terms of abuse, to qualify criminals.


Article VII. — The rest follows from this.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

There are many historical examples of either being quite 'non-state', or at least anti-the-current-regime.

If you gathered all the criminals in the world, then collected their total assets, and then looked at how much of it is btc, how much btc would be in their possession? And would they by any chance be involved in fiat money??

Like i said, if it's banned, then it will only exist in the underground.

Christianity or Islam is never 'non-state'. The complicity of militarism and 'patriarchal' religion constitutes the State (organized violence).

I have indeed heard of the "German mafia". They are a bunch of large companies with tentacles far into government and their control freak buddies in government that do their bidding. The difference you are talking about when it comes to cohesiveness is just that the crime is legalized and even more organized.

At least the Italian Mafia is honest about that they are forcing you to pay them. But the German mafia are much better organized and hence a devil that is easier to deal with.

Do you have any English-language sources of everything being de jure verboten in Germany until it is explicitly allowed? And are you actually saying that this applies de facto as well? Would I be arrested for picking my nose even though it is not expressly allowed? I don't believe it. At best it is a construct of no practical application.

1.
2. First of all I think you are wrong. At least in the sense of using the word "communism" - that is surely not what I'm taking about.

Rather I think you should use talk about the use of force. Taxes in a liberal democracy are collected at gunpoint.

What capitalist societies are you talking about anyway? I was not aware that there where any? Surely not the US, right?

What I'm trying to say is that while I don't approve of the use of force, one should not brush of the inequality as a non issue. Imagine immense ghettoization with just a few extremely wealthy and almost no middle class, yes one could argue that it is better than communism, but what we are talking about is whether it is a fortunate situation or not. In fact wealth disparities that big, make it hard for anyone to change their wealth position and these conditions are ripe breeding grounds for revolution.

  Every argument against Bitcoin is a hypocritical one.

Power grid goes down and gold might still matter. Nothing else will. Unless you like wiping your ass with thin green presidential toilet paper.

The first link is news to me! Thanks!

No VAT on Bitcoin spends in Germany. Fabulous!

1. what video?
2. When someone says wealth inequality they always misuse examples. They point at examples where you have LIFESTYLE inequality brought about by communism and say that the solution is to prevent WEALTH inequality.
Wealth inequality comes from either a capitalistic society where the standards of living for the poorest are better than they are for the average communist.
Or from a slave owning society where the slaves have 0 wealth and as such the ratio between the richest and poorest is infinity (X/0 = infinity) where the poorest have horrible conditions
Or it comes from a totalitarian society where the king is said to literally own anything in the nation, even if its owned by someone else its still the kings property (I can't think of an example where this didn't overlap with slave owning society)

The thing is, the latter two examples are non existent and are a binary status while capitalism and communism are a continuum where the more you move towards equality (communism) the worse life is for the average person.

True; and if's & but's were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas.  If you can come up with a workable way to do this, feel free to share it.

They are all verboten, and some are still ignored.  just because they are ignored, does not mean thty are not verboten.  Germany is, thankfully, unique among democracies in that the legal code assumes all things to be banned, until they are explicitly permitted, while just about everywhere else, all things are assumed to be acceptable until they are explicitly banned.  The fact that actual Germans ignore the flailings of their own politicos is a sign of progress socially, but it also means that the generations of strong social cohesion among Germans is drawing to a close.  The Japanese were once as socially cohesive as a nation as well, and look at what the influence of Western culture(s) has done to them.  Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese mafia are a relatively recent phenomenon.  Have you ever een heard of the "German mafia" or "Swiss mafia"?  Of course not, because it's a clash of cultures that presents the opprotunities that give rise to organized crime.  The original Italian mafia is so old because there has never been such as thing as a single Italian culture, only the dominate one.