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Rand Paul Suggests Backing Bitcoin With Stocks
SonicSpike writes:
"In a recent interview, Senator Rand Paul said there's one thing he would change about Bitcoin: it should be backed by something with intrinsic value, like stocks. He said, 'I was looking more at it until that recent thing [sic]. And actually my theory, if I were setting it up, I'd make it exchangeable for stock. And then it'd have real value. And I'd have it pegged, and I'd have a basket of 10 big retailers I think it would work, but I think, because I'm sort of a believer in currency having value, if you're going to create a currency, have it backed up by — you know, Hayek used to talk about a basket of commodities? You could have a basket of stocks, and have some exchangeability, because it's hard for people like me who are a bit tangible. But you could have an average of stocks, I'm wondering if that's the next permutation.'"
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it
This space for rent.
Rand Paul farting makes more logical sense than anything coming out of his mouth.
...the concept of the "mutual fund".
I can almost smell his clutch burning as he mentally shifts back and forth between "currency must be free of government intervention" and "currency must be backed by gold or silver"...
Like 'real' money is backed up by anything.
Stocks have no more intrinsic value than our paper currency.
Love sees no species.
At least ones that don't pay dividends.
Can someone explain how this isn't silly? He wants it backed by intrinsic value, which I think may be missing the point of Bitcoin, and his example of the perfect thing with intrinsic value is "stocks"?
I'm sure this guy has some fans who can explain why this makes sense, but it just seems like more evidence that he's completely out of touch and doesn't know what he's talking about.
The second your backed by something, there is an authority. Gold? Who own/store the gold, what if the gold get stolen or seize? Backed by stocks? Who own the stocks, on what market? What about stock owning regulation? No! The idea is to having something you can trade without the paperwork, anywhere to anywhere for anything, from a phone instantly & borderless. If you like a backed currency, try your own and let the Bitcoin experient goes... time will tell!
Is he really that stupid?
The problem is that this is a classic "inside the corporate bubble" reaction to bitcoin. One of the supposed ideas of bitcoin is to not link money to governments. Since corporations are super-important to mindless bots like Rand Paul, the solution is, of course, to link them to corporations. If there is anything worse than linking the monetary system to governments, if you would be linking them the corporations that even worse about selfishness and tilting the playing field towards themselves at all costs.
Anybody else you want to add to the list?
Bitcoin has more intrinsic value than stocks because because it's a limited resource whereas stocks can split and reverse split and are available at the whim of the company offering them. The Bitcoin supply is less volatile. The demand may be volatile, but the supply is quite predictable. Trying to back bitcoin with stocks and peg it to something sounds like nonsense to me. How do you peg something that's already pegged to a pre-determined supply. Bitcoin is every bit as "pegged" as gold as far as I can see.
...you get what you deserve. Actually, you sould probably remove the word "financial" from the previous sentence.
I'm guessing you're the type of person who would argue that intrinsic value "doesn't exist". Am I right?
As for backing bitcoin with stocks, that would make bitcoin nothing more than a stock mutual fund, which there are already thousands to choose from.
People forget that bitcoin became popular during the advent of wikileaks, lulsec and the activism of Aaron Schwartz. Tying bitcoin to an exchange means the minute you start a website that publishes sensitive government secrets like warrantless wiretapping, Anone who feels compelled to help your efforts is just as vulnerable to government detention and surveillance as you. The point of bitcoin, dogecoin, and other cryptocurrency is to prevent the government from quietly telling banks to refuse your transactions on the basis of your dissent, and ferrying you off to some resort in cuba for waterboarding and lemon pepper fish.
And unrelated: Bitcoin is dead, for all intents and purposes. a combination of shit-tier security and unaccountable exchanges made it what it is today. switch to doge or something else, keep your wallet encrypted, and make frequent withdrawals.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm sure this guy has some fans who can explain why this makes sense, but it just seems like more evidence that he's completely out of touch and doesn't know what he's talking about.
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Value is not intrinsic in anything. Gold only mattered for thousands of years because it was rare enough and took enough work to extract and process that the poors couldnt just go get a bunch. it was a good representation of wealth. a ring or necklace made of gold is worth more than one made of dried feces because we subjectively attached a value to gold that is higher than that of shit. now, gold is used in all kinds of things that technology has allowed us to make (from medical devices, to the pins on RAM, etc) so it has more utility now, but not any more actual "intrinsic" value. carbon conducts electricity just as well, and if graphene interconnects or some metamaterial can replace gold in all the utility type applications, gold will have less of this "intrinsic" (ie: utility based) value than before. after all, carbon is made in stars, gold is only made in supernovae, and is far less abundant. But more to the point, stocks are peoples faith in a company, like enron or facebook during their IPO, or the thousands of failed companies whose stock prices fell through the floor. DANGER WILL ROBINSON. MY VALUATION IS FLAILING WILDLY
Looks like as far as Rand is concerned, the technology of Bitcoin has been accepted... double spend problems etc... now he is worried about 'intrinsic value'.
While tying it to stocks is only one idea, tying it to something 'may' reduce volatility in pricing... but what?
I like Bitcoin as it is. But a second new coin tied to 'something' could be an interesting spin-off... The new IPO coins are usually tied to Bitcoins themselves...
I always wanted to do a 'Just-Dice' investment coin. Your coin purchase becomes a 'Just-Dice' investment account. The coins behave like any other coin but as 'Just-Dice' investment increases in value so do your coins... strangely this is STILL tied to Bitcoin. They all are really.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Why should BitCoin be better than the US Dollar? I remember when a dollar bill was labelled "Silver Certificate". That went away when the dollar was allowed to float.
And both quarters were made of something other than coated base metal.
Maybe something proven like mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) then we can all don our black tennis shoes and board the mother ship.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Bitcoin is a joke at this point and trying to fix it with anything risks the anything, but even if it wasn't, Rand Paul may be completely, diametrically wrong with this idea. I found this article to be well worth a read, almost ten years ago:
http://mises.org/daily/1595
Good fun read, but it takes on the nearest equivalent economic situation involving a currency under siege.
I was impressed that he used the word 'permutation'. That made what he said not quite entirely pointless (but still close).
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Why does this sound like an absolutely horrible idea? It feels like the same thinking that went into creating CDOs.
... that stocks have any intrinsic value?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Wait, stock has intrinsic value? Can I eat it?
Given how QE has pumped up asset prices, backing e-currency with stocks is little better than fait.
I suggest backing Bitcoin with dog shit. At least it's worth something -- at worst, you can compost dog shit and use it to grow things, unlike electronically-traded (and soon to be worthless) stocks.
The more people like Rand Paul show they do not understand BTC the more likely BTC will be a success. :)
BitCoin's intrinsic value is a massive groundswell of anti-authoritarianism.
A senator said something dumb. If this frightens you, then please don't look up what your Vice President has said over the past few months. You will need new underwear. Not to mention another senator from Nevada calling his own citizens "domestic terrorists" for basically trespassing. Where was was he during Occupy Wall Street, when people were trespassing AND vandalizing? Oh yeah-- lauding those people.
My consolation is that this is probably the most awkward thing you'll hear out of Paul. I'm pretty sure I know what he meant, but it still doesn't make sense. Any non-government currency is naturally fiat or nearly so. When US currency wasn't circulating during the Civil War, private companies minted tokens. Usually, the tokens only contained metals worth a fraction of their face value.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Violence (and any means increasing the potential violence an actor has at his disposal) has intrinsic value.
In fact, in any system with potentially malicious actors, a currency must be backed by some degree of violence. Otherwise, the malicious actor can just take the currency by force (if he considers it valuable).
I'd back it up with the rack, or the guillotine.
If you really believe that, would you please cash out your 401K and sign over the check to me. Thanks.
Rand Paul is really proving just what an imbecile he is. Stocks are just pieces of paper that say you own 1/Nth of a company that may or may not be worth anything.
Every trade done with Bitcoins has a publicly available paper trail as the transfer of the Bitcoin must be public otherwise you could just copy your coin and respend it.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Pegging a currency to a basket of commodities is not the worst idea Hayek ever had. But the guy pontificated about small government and anti-socialism ferociously until Daddy Koch talked him into moving to the U.S. to take advantage of medicare for his serious ailments. Self-serving double-talking soulless punks the lot of them.
How much debt did Rand Paul start out with in student loans? Free ride? Daddy paid? Genuinely curious.
The best way to describe bitcoin in the stocks world is like the thirdparty stock registrars. Most people do not take possession of stock certificates or even bond certificates when they buy those instruments. Typically a thirdparty company maintains a register where it takes "possession" of the stocks on your behalf, and "delivers" them to the buyer when you sell them. Often your buyer and seller also would a member of the same registrar and so all that happens is your account is debited or credited with so many shares of such and such a company for every transaction. Mutual funds are required by law to keep the instruments they own with a registrar. It is even possible for you to exit a mutual fund by taking your share of the stocks and bonds instead of cash. To avoid triggering taxes, people could take the distribution in "kind" and move them to their name, probably under the same registrar.
So imagine having a completely open registrar, all the transactions are completely transparent and multiple parties verify and tally the ledger and confirm the final balances of all the members, that is bitcoin. Bank ledger keeps dollar amounts for each account. Stock registrar maintain multiple stock/bond shares for each account/member.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Tulips do have intrinsic value. In fact quite few are blooming in my yard right now. How many currencies can do that? They are biologically fixed to bloom only once per year which increases scarcity. The government is unable to produce tulips that are in bloom year round which would greatly reduce the value of the tulip. Also the government suddenly can't just quadruple the number of new tulips created one month in response to a crisis. You can only cultivate them at a certain rate, thus they are a natural hedge against hyperinflation.
A stock means that you own part of a company. The company itself may own land, computers, factories, etc. (It could even own guns and gold! yeehaw!) Those have intrinsic value, so the stock does also.
This is why stocks are recommended for people concerned about inflation. A fall in the value of paper money typically does not affect stocks as much as most other instruments.
Rand seems to be completely out of touch
Stocks don't have intrinsic value - they're worth what people are willing to pay, no more and no less. You might as well back BitCoin with LiteCoin.
Stocks do have intrinsic value because owning a stock is equivalent to owning a company, and all the company owns (factories, farmland, guns, whatever). Bitcoin, on the other hand, has no intrinsic value.
Partly because of this, stocks are also much less volatile than bitcoin and are better at being a store of value. For instance, compare this recent bitcoin chart with this S&P500 chart over the same period. As you can see, the difference between the min and max stock is about 4%, while bitcoin is about 40%. That's 10x worse.
Is there a way of transferring stock (for instance an S&P500 ETF) as easily as bitcoins can be transferred? I don't know, but it would be very cool, and definitely much better than Bitcoin. So anyway, his idea is probably unworkable, but it's not silly or ridiculous IMHO.
In case the bridge you were sold in Brooklyn goes down, you'll have something to keep you afloat.
I cant trade them in for pieces of the company, they are as worthless as the paper they are printed on. Want proof? See what happened to all the money people had in stocks during the last crash. Hell I have framed on my wall a Certificate for Pan American Airlines Stock that is 100% worthless.
You want your currency to actually have worth, you back it with Gold.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Dear Rand Paul,
Maybe we should back gold with a basket of stocks too?
Thanks.
Wow. I think he just blew his arguments for returning to the gold standard.
...kind of.
stock is nothing more than a logical representation of something we assign a value to for the purpose of exchanging it between owners. the value is not based on the stock itself, but based on the demand for the stock. Now replace the word "stock" in that statement with the word "bitcoin".
so hes proposing to back a stock like item with another stock like item. yeah. no sense made there.
the only difference really between stock and bitcoin is that stocks are fully regulated where bitcoin is not. the regulation is what helps stabilize to a point the stock market whereas bitcoin is insanely variable.
I prefer bananas. As a whole I find bananas much more influential at coercing monkeys, which of course dominate the current population. In particular politicians.
As for the Paul, I find the concept of stocks = 'intrinsic value' absolutely hilarious. There has to be a meme in this somewhere.
Rand Paul invents new currency called the SPIDERCOIN. It will be pegged to the S&P 500's value..... and wait am minute this already exists. (See stock symbol SPY.) Why would I buy crypto currency that is just a stock pool sounds like an awfully complicated way to set up an ETF.
According to the Austrian school of economics, there is no such thing as intrinsic value. This starting from Carl Menger, on his book "The origins of Money" https://mises.org/books/origin...
Naming Hayec (another Austrian economist) and intrinsic value in the same breath is an oxymoron, and actually if you look at Rand Paul's quote, he does not mention intrinsic value either.
Value is subjective, it exists _only_ in the mind of the valuator, and is equal to the marginal utility of the good (how much better off would you be if you got more of the good). For example, the same piece of broccoli would be valued differently by a kid that hates vegetables than a vegetarian who loves them.
Are there any major currencies that are actually back by assets with so-called intrinsic value? Doubtful. And even one would want to do that, the ideal asset would have as low risk as possible which stocks clearly are not. Also, he could easily set up Paulcoin to try for himself.
Rand Paul is not my least favorite Senator but he sure is the most disappointing one. Often he shows a good attitude, as though he doesn't necessarily think the purpose of government is to inflict maximum harm on the people. Your typical Democrat or Republican, on the other hand, can't even hide it in their public face: they'll come out in totally public speeches, and admit they're trying to hurt you.
When your attitude is that government should stop hurting people, then Bitcoin is a good idea and deserves support.
But then he says over-to-top unbelievably stupid shit like this. This is the kind of thing that makes me think that whenever Rand Paul happens to be right about something, it was just luck.
I want to tell people, "please don't ever vote for anyone like Rand Paul," but then when you look at how people do vote, they almost always pick someone worse. I think Rand Paul is just the kind of idiot that America is going to have to put up with, if we're ever going to get rid of the evil ones.
Not to be critical, but how would this be different from the bearer bond investing instrument. It went away because it was notorious for money laundering.
I don't understand.
What is the difference is between:
Having a centralized bank that will exchange a mass of noble metal for monetary notes.
and
Having a decentralized system of merchants that will exchange an amount of eggs, bacon and/or coffee for monetary notes.
Taking an item that is not useful for sustaining human life and trading it for another item that is not useful for sustaining human life. It seems rather silly to me.
I cant trade them in for pieces of the company...
That's because stock shares ARE pieces of the company. It is literally a share in ownership and a claim to a portion of the assets controlled by that company including future free cash flows.
Hell I have framed on my wall a Certificate for Pan American Airlines Stock that is 100% worthless.
But you seem to completely misunderstand why it is worthless. The stock certificate holds no value just like the paper in a dollar bill has no significant value. It's the assets it gives you claim to that have value. Companies most certainly have value while they exist and are generating cash flows. Think of owning a company as owning a mine that mines cash flows. Sometimes the mine runs dry and then it is no longer valuable. Pan-Am is a cash flow mine that ran dry similar to a gold mine that ran out of gold.
You want your currency to actually have worth, you back it with Gold.
What gives currency value? Belief that it has value. What gives gold value? Belief that it has value. Gold has magical properties that make it valuable for reasons different than any other asset, including currency. It's worth what people believe it to be worth based on supply and demand. Nothing more, nothing less. Tying the value of a currency to gold (a peg) has certain consequences but it does not change what gives it value in the first place.
Yes, *theoretically* ideas that we would call "libertarian" exist, and politicians who try to enact those ideas into *policy* could be called libertarian...but virtually all of those people doing that are...gasp!...democrats
The few 'independents' in our Congress both caucus with the democrats
It's about popular vs academic definitions...take "socialism"...by academic definitions, everyone in America is a socialist...we have gas/water/road/electricity socialism...there are other examples...
Others have elucidated the errors of "Libertarians" in politics today...but for my part anyone who claims to be a "Libertarian" these days is really just a Republican in disguise or a total self-righteous dupe being lead around by the nose by the GOP's masters
Thank you Dave Raggett
Bitcoin has more intrinsic value than stocks because because it's a limited resource whereas stocks can split and reverse split and are available at the whim of the company offering them.
A stock split has NO effect on the value of a company. A stock split is almost exactly like trading a $20 bill for two $10 bills. The total amount of money you have is unchanged. What gives a share of stock value is the assets (particularly future cash flows) that it gives you rights over.
Bitcoin CANNOT have intrinsic value because intrinsic value is defined as value independent of market value. A digital currency by definition has no value independent of its market value.
Your idealistic view of libertarianism is perverted by the actions of the those that preach in its name. I have never met a libertarian who stated that as a fact for being libertarian. They mostly ramble about free market, no government, guns , gun, guns, and maybe god.
How's about backing stock contracts with Bitcoin and remove some trust from the system.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Sma...
A blog I run for the wealth
total bullshit...this is what Libertarians do...they construct fantasies about how they **wish** things went and then act as if its true
there were virtually zero Libertarians at Occupy
stop it...forever...your ideas are total shit & it's obvious you're in a political fantasy world
Thank you Dave Raggett
Is there a way of transferring stock (for instance an S&P500 ETF) as easily as bitcoins can be transferred?
Virtually all stock transfers are done electronically so the answer is yes. In fact it is a fairly trivial exercise done daily by millions of people worldwide. Stock can be sold through exchanges but it can also be sold directly and the infrastructure to track all this is available.
Actually you don't need violence per se, but credible promise of violence is often enough...
You don't need to kill everyone on sight, you just need to convince everyone that you can, if you so choose.
Bit coin provides a a digital exchange mechanism, a digital wallet you (not Merrill Lynch) controls and is portable. Finally it has some degree of anonymity. But Bitcoin fluctuates wildly in value, the exchanges not regulated by any agency are run by anonymous people who are not trustworthy. (even Phil Zimmerman is puzzled why, just because he invented PGP, people assume he is trustworthy.)
If you have a stock exchange it's regulated by the SEC. the exchange is not anonymous. And the SEC can force it to have good accounting principles, audits, and proper capitalization to assure continued solvency.
Pegging it to stock at fixed exchange rate means that bitcoin's volatily will match the volatility of a stock bundle which can be quite small.
But it retains 100% of it's virtues: Bit coin provides a a digital exchange mechanism, a digital wallet you (not Merrill Lynch) controls and is portable. Finally it has some degree of anonymity.
US currency used to be on a gold standard. Since it is useful for nations to be able to devalue their currency, it went off that standard. But Bitcoin itself is not the currency of any one nation and thus there is no mechanism to devalue it.
thus this is a good idea. But the question is how to get it started.
An alternative way to peg the value of Bitcoin and have a trustworty exchange is if a country with good assets were to adopt this as the national currency or peg it's own currency to Bitcoin.
The stock bundle needs to chosen such that the companies are growing in total capitalization such that on average it approximately matches growth rate of total Bitcoin-- which is precisely known. Any difference in the growth rates needs to be small enough that arbitrager will stabilize the difference.
In short it's a great idea in principle.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Stocks do have intrinsic value because owning a stock is equivalent to owning a company
It's not equivalent to owning a company. It IS owning a company or at least some fractional amount of the company. No need for equivocation.
This proposal would make bitcoins a catastrophic currency. When stock market crash, money value crash too, so instant deflation trap, lovely.
Nobody is stopping you. Well, except maybe the government.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've always thought of Bitcoin as if it were a stock.
I don't know about BC backed by stock, but a form of e-Gold or even e-US-Dollars or e-Pick-your-fiat-currency modeled after BitCoins and backed by a bank or other reputable institution's guaranteeing the e-currency and regulators guaranteeing it didn't play hanky-panky with the blockchain is something I might use.
Bonus points if this were done as a consortium, with enough regulated-institution participants that at least half of the mining was done by regulated entities, leaving up to 49.9% to be done by anyone who wants a piece of the action.
For example, if MegaBank or LargeCreditUnion put a billion US dollars in escrow and issued a billion e-dollars, and made its money on a small transaction fee - small being much smaller than today's credit-card or similar transaction fees - I might use it.
Ditto if a large, reputable, regulated company did the same thing with gold bullion or even a particular stock-market-proxy such as an index fund.
They key elements of this would be:
* as convenient as a pre-paid debit card for consumers
* I can be a merchant without getting a merchant account
* as forgery-proof as actual currency, maybe even more so.
* value is just as stable as the underlying asset, e.g. US dollars. A e-dollar today will buy $1 today and $1 a year from now, minus transaction fees.
* I can invest in gold or whatever without going to a commodities or stock exchange or broker and without taking physical possession of gold.
I call these "convenience bitcoins" because they offer the convenience of not handling the actual goods with the convenience of not having to think about dealing with an intermediary like a broker or bank.
The only things I can see preventing this from happening are:
* unwillingness of large banks to do this, for fear of eating into their existing business models
* banks actively trying to stop this through regulation or abuse of market influence, for the same reasons
* naive governments who fear anonymous transactions, never-mind that with the public blockchain, the anonymity is actually less than a cash transaction unless special efforts like the transaction-washing that happens at some of today's BitCoin exchanges is used.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How does a stock have an intrinsic value? It doesn't, does it?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That's because we've already solved all the other problems. Why talk about it when the problem has been discussed and solved?
The problem we haven't solved is how to achieve an actual free market so those solutions can start saving the world. That's why we talk about it.
yeah, at Occupy Portland it was a group of 4-5 poly-sci majors dressed in business clothes walking around with "Ron Paul 2012" signs
see, "what is a libertarian?"
then it's chaos...
there are popular definitions, dictionary definitions, academic definitions...then the interest groups who use wedge issues that link certain policies to "libertarian" in popular media...arg!!
chaos! a full-on linguistic apocalypse
so then, it becomes a nothing word...sort of like a quantum particle in a state of quantum flux...Schodinger's Libertarian if you will
it's not until the "libertarian" is forced to **define policies they support** that we open up the system and see if the Cat is really a democrat or republican or just ignorant of how the government works in general
Thank you Dave Raggett
... a politician speak about something it din't understand.
The whole idea of Bitcoin, is that the value can't be inflated by printing more money. If you start to back it with 'assets' of nebulous value, like grossly over-inflated stocks, Bitcoin becomes just like other fiat currencies, and vehicles of financial fraud, that are huckstered by the corrupt and insolvent financial institutions of the crony capitalist regimes.
I'd go for a third category, the "confused anarchist".
The problem with non-coercive government is that it's a contradiction in terms. Government is entirely predicated on violence -- at its core it regulates when and how violence may be employed. A world without coercive government is an unstable state, and broken by the first two meatheads who decide not to backstab each other and instead plunder a third. Or, as Mao put it, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The law is what the people with the biggest guns say it is, and your rights are what the people with the biggest guns say they are. Your national boundaries are what you can enforce -- see also the Crimea. The only thing that pulling the fangs of the government will do is create a power vacuum for some other entity to step into.
Any definition of socialism would start with the concept of ownership, and it's not the common case that gas/water/road/electricity production is owned by the common man. Yes, you can stretch the definition to include utilities, but pretty much you're full of it. Only an American could take that position seriously.
Individual liberties are fictional. They are just as real as an isolated electron, as long as neither interact with anything. They are useful conceptually but in the real world it's the group interactions that matter. Liberties are what the people with guns say they are.
His suggestions on various matters are just precious.
...who said he wanted to start an a capella group, but with instruments.
This is meaningless gobbledygook, intended to support the illusion that libertarians actually do have an idea how to deal with bad effects of carbon dioxide emissions, while making sure it's something that's impossible to actually implement. Which is the actual libertarian plan: do nothing.
There are no entities that could implement such carbon charges other than governments. You could propose making an organization to implement such liability charges-- but anybody could then simply say "I chose not to pay." If the entity has enforcement power... then it is a government, and the "liability" fee is not "like" a carbon tax, it is identical to a carbon tax.
1) It applies damages directly to the parties responsible,
This sentence is garbled. Do you mean, it applies damages directly to the parties damaged?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Strawman fallacy. Libertarianism is not anarchy. Libertarians absolutely believe in the existence of a centralized government, which would handle enforcement of property rights. Pollution qualifies as encroachment/infringement on others' property rights.
Yes... but the devil is in the details. And the details not only don't exist, they are contradictory. I would say deliberately contradictory, so as to make it appear like a plan, but be impossible to accomplish. But maybe not. Famously, no two libertarians agree on anything, so it may just be that.
The sentence is not garbled.
Yes it is. It does not say what you meant it to say. Probably you meant "levied damages against" where you said "applied damages to".
In any case, there's no workable mechanism here. Proposing a "solution" with no workable mechanism is proposing no solution.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
First of all, the libertarian position is that we need a free market in currencies - not just picking one winning solution like gold or Bitcoin, or the idea / prediction that I present below. In the past, having a myriad of currencies would have made price tags and cash registers very complicated, but 21st century tech is making this ever-less of an issue. Banks, supermarkets and other businesses, neighborhoods, churches, charities, etc could all issue their own currencies, and conversion between them would be trivial. On a level playing field, as we already see in market segments like online encyclopedias and uncomplicated software, non-profits with the most open solution have the competitive advantage. The market will decide what the most popular way is, while dissenters will still be free to do their own thing.
As technology advances, all scarce chemical elements are vulnerable to long-term supply inflation risk - nano-bots gathering gold particles in the ocean, asteroid mining, stelar-scale antimatter-powered particle colliders, etc. Bitcoin (and the hundreds of other cryptography-based currency networks) are awesome, but they're designed specifically to confront the coercion-based "legal tender" of the present day, rather than for optimal transaction time, convenience, deterrence of theft, etc. It still remains to be seen which alternative currency networks do best in the face of (government-backed) DoS attempts, volatility, etc. National governments will surely try to hold on to power, but in the long-term more and more people will see them as obsolete - violence will only accelerate their fragmentation and collapse. In the long term, in a freer and more rational world, markets will likely go back to preferring a currency that is backed by something tangible and scarce. Most people don't want to risk losing their life savings if their laptop gets stolen or hacked (or if the party you trust to hold your wallet gets hacked, etc)...
I can think of no better "tangible and scarce" things in the universe than living biological specimens, that have to be kept alive. This solves two problems at once - backing currencies, as well strengthening the market incentive to save species from extinction. About 5000 years ago people decided that gold is scarce and thus a convenient medium of exchange, even if abstracted through paper money; in the 21st century people are realizing that endangered species are too!
Instead of holding gold in a vault (or worse, being backed by government promises and force alone), new banks would own safaris, aquariums, terrariums, insectariums, paludariums, etc that efficiently assure the proliferation of species, "mining" them through breeding. This of course would lead to inflation quickly if just a small number of species was involved, but currencies can be backed by a basket of MILLIONS of different (sub)species, weighed in value according to their rarity. The plant / animal's unique characteristics, health / quality of life, etc could also be a part of the formula. If done right, "mining costs" (the cost of housing, feeding, etc the life-forms) would make it very difficult to cause major inflation, and minor inflation would be nothing but a natural "tax" that makes it unlikely that any more natural species will go extinct.
There are believed to be 8.7 million varieties of species in the world, most being small and thus easy to preserve. For comparison, the variety of species of books published by humans is
Because $$$, which is what you can currently exchange bitcoin for, has no intrinsic value....
Rand Paul yet again demonstrating that he has no business leading a horse to water, let alone his constituents.
RTFM.
Libertarians have much better ideas for making people pay for externalities than statists, and these ideas are becoming ever-more practical as pollution-tracking technologies improve.
Pollution is a violation of Property Rights. It can be tracked from its source via ever-improving new technologies: imaging satellites, censor drones, floating / underwater / underground censor bots, etc. If dozens of Web-sites can have hundreds of millions of users, why can't all people verifiably affected by a pollution source, acting in their interests, sign on to class action lawsuits against pollutants? This naturally leads to an economic system where polluters pay their neighbors, creating incentives for filters, carbon sinks, etc.
--libman (old account)
This is true, but it's somewhat complicated. Whether { we can do away with all government tomorrow } and whether { coercive national governments with minimal powers are the perpetual ideal } are two separate questions.
Some libertarians (ex. "Anarcho-Capitalists" (not to be confused with any other kind of anarchist (a chickpea is not a chicken))) believe in no government - which of course is a long-term vision. This means universal recognition of NAP, and all higher-level governance being voluntary.
Most libertarians are gradualists - we recognize that coercive government is a consequence of human folly which is not going to disappear overnight. Pure free market is a more complex system of social organization, which requires a more literate populace with better access to technologies that will make the centralized state obsolete. Some pro-capitalist libertarian gradualists even go as far as advocating direct wealth redistribution, because it would be much more efficient than the welfare state - a step in the right direction.
The transition to a freer society is not inevitable (no "historical determinism" here), and the "powers that be" (and their moochers) will of course resist. But many trends are working in our favor. Globalization and cultural integration will make nationalist collectivism less potent. The Internet is making censorship very difficult. Secession movements are becoming more and more popular, leading to more intergovernmental competition. Intergovernmental competition rewards the freest economies with the inflow of brains and capital. You get the idea.
We'll end up with thousands of nations (including seasteads and some day space stations), and people will be free to vote with their feet. Some will have freer markets than others, but the more choice people have the closer we come to the ideal of doing away with involuntary government.
--libman (old account)
(1) Read Hayek's Choice in Currency .
(2) Charles Koch (not "daddy" Fred C Koch) informed Hayek in a 1973 letter that, since he paid into the US Social Security program for over 10 years, he is technically entitled to benefits. Charles Koch is guilty of stating a fact, possibly as a joke. Hayek is guilty of receiving a letter. It takes very little to give the socialist spin blogosphere an orgasm... With all blogs linking to The Nation article, that has since been removed from their Web-site... Guess they sobered up...
(3) "Moving to US to take advantage"?! Hayek worked and paid taxes all his life. Specific to the US, Hayek taught at the University of Chicago from 1950 to 1962, and later also taught at UCLA in late 60s / early 70s (before that aforementioned letter that you're trying to spin), and he intermittently worked on other things while residing in US and paying US taxes. He was by no means a moocher. He won the Nobel Prize a year later.
(4) There is absolutely zero logic to claims that libertarians are "hypocrites" if they don't reject anything and everything touched by the coercive monopolies of state. Hayek paid taxes / social security all his life - why can't he take back some of what was stolen from him?! Were slaves "hypocrites" for eating their masters' food?! (According to one theory (which presently I don't practice), libertarians should morally commit as much welfare fraud as possible! Was General Washington a "hypocrite" for using captured British cannons against them?!)
(5) "Until?" Neither of the two men you're slandering has significantly changed their positions (not that there's anything wrong with that if you're getting closer to truth).
(6) These "self-serving double-talking soulless punks" have saved millions of lives by intellectually confronting fascism and communism (among other forms of socialism). The Koch Family has saved millions more lives by being among of the world's greatest philanthropists (ex. cancer research).
--libman (old account)
A few points:
* Rand Paul is looking for a way to accept alternative currencies like Bitcoin as campaign contributions. That makes him technologically progressive, not backward as some people here are somehow trying to spin it! Read the whole article for more context.
* I don't see why some people interpret this as an attempt to regulate Bitcoin. He obviously supports a free market in currencies - some backed by governments (which is the reality that we presently live in), some backed by a secure distributed ledger (like Bitcoin), some backed by commodities (like e-gold or e-penguins), some by investment assets (like stocks), etc.
* He did not claim to have invented the concept of a mutual fund - he engaged in a thought experiment for a new digital currency, backed by stock(s) / mutual fund(s). This is not an attack on Bitcoin, just a different (and perhaps complementary) idea. If there's a way to do this already, I haven't heard of it. There's no reason why you can't set up a decentralized network for swapping stock / fund shares. Of course all major businesses are currently tied exclusively to national currencies, but hopefully this will soon change...
--libman (old account)
Any mathematicians in the crowd? Explain to me the difference between minimalist government and no government. Something less than epsilon? Less than one full time employee?
GGP is not correct. While I concede that most libertarians are minarchists, rather than anarchists, I reject that the libertairan ideal of government regulation is in the goal of increasing transparency. If they'd have said "dealing with externalities" or "lowering barriers to entry" they might have had a point, but the transparency clause does not well represent the libertarian ideal.
While libertarians do sometimes speak of a level playing field, they are typically referring to how some existing law or regulation gives a special group an advantage over others, and call for removal of such regulations. Libertarians are not typically egalitarian and reject state intervention for the puroposes of "levelling the field", e.g. taxation and monopoly break-up.
Here is a idea. What about backing the U.S. Dollar with something real other then than the "full faith and credit from the U.S. government". How about, say, gold, for example. This much important than Bitcoin. And stocks are crazy - the stock market is so insane they don't play by even Las Vegas rules!
Cows, sheep, goats. That sort of thing.
Amazingly enough, Slashdot does not allow users to delete their accounts. Worse, it does not even allow users to change their nicknames.
So, if you're concerned about Web analytics or analogous technologies connecting your Slashdot postings to postings made with stylistic language, zip codes, other inferred demographics, or even nicknames similar to those of your Slashdot postings, you're shit out of luck. And speaking as one who works in the field, such connections and inferences are far from mere paranoia. Analytics and inferential knowledgebase-driven tracking is what drives NSA data mining, many types of clicktracking, and magically targeted Netflix & Amazon messages, and these methodologies are still barely out of their infancy -- data collected today is likely to yield far more information when mined 5 or 10 years from now, when increased data-storage and processing capabilities eliminate some of the scalability constraints of current technology. DNA computing, anyone?.
Still unconvinced? As recently as last March (http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/03/11/218221/facebook-knows-if-youre-gay-use-drugs-or-are-a-republican), Slashdot itself reported that researchers, using only Facebook metadata (not postings), could generally predict a user's sexual orientation, political party, IQ, likelihood to use drugs, and other personal characteristics. Hence, prudence dictates that online users should ALWAYS delete unnecessary traces. And older Slashdot postings, which may be far more revealing than a Facebook "like," should certainly be high on the list of deletion candidates -- even if you always post as an AC.
Amazingly, Slashdot refuses to provide basic posting-deletion functionality. It refuses to allow even half-assed attempts to hide one's identify by changing a nick. And it won't acknowledge email requests to explain these policies. When I sent a message to Slashdot last month asking for clarification or assistance with deleting my account or past postings, I received a form letter apologizing for "Slashdot's inability to reply to every question about its new beta system."
Jeez, can't we even get kissed when we get fucked?
So what can a helpless Slashdot user do? Well, to start, I'll be continuing to submit this message as a story proposal until I get some kind of reaction from a Slashdot decision-maker who thinks I'm raising a valid issue. In the interim, I STRONGLY urge anybody thinking of opening a Slashdot account, or of posting other than anonymously, to think again. Search on Google (or better, on the Patent Office Web site) for terms like "web analytics," "inferential statistics," "knowledgebase," "big data," "natural-language prcoessing," or even just "cybersecurity." Or page through a copy of the already-outdated, but still relevant, book "Dragnet Nation." And remember that, once you open that Slashdot account, once you post that Slashdot message, there's no redo.
Shame on you, Slashdot! I could understand these kinds of policies on a Duck Dynasty fan-club forum, but you guys are supposed to have a clue.
The Anonymous Pisser
Let's back it with something that has value: fiat currency!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
I would say thirst for ice in the Amazon isn't at all subjective if you're dehydrated to the point of death and too far from the Amazon itself..
It's objective. That's the point bitcoiners don't get. 'Silver' is a resource. It's used in almost all industries. It's a great conductor, and has many other useful engineering properties. It's value holds far better as a result. It's always worth something to someone. It's intrinsic value is irrelevant. People will take it from you. Bitcoin, not so much.