That's exactly right. Not only that we should make it a punishable offense to say villain or sinister. After all, in doing so, we are vilifying whole communities.
The Ottoman Empire Controlled everything from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt.
Regardless of anything new borders would have been drawn up after WWI.
The Arabian Peninsular's borders are fine.
So are Lebanon's and Syria's.
The only thing truly messed up is Iraq and the Israeli / Palestinian problem.
Israel would have not been a problem if there weren't pogroms and other attempts to kill immigrant Jews during the 1920s and 1930s. If all was cool then Jews would simply be a minority population in the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan would include what is now Israel and Palestine. So the Israeli - Palestinian problem is NOT due to the borders made after WWI.
And Syria's Eastern Border and Iraq would have been a mess anyway with it's rivalries.
Kurd v Arab v Persian & Shia (mostly Persian) v Sunni v (the mix of "heretical" Muslim religions often Kurd) would have been as intractable in the 1920s as it is today, 100 years later.
The only place where you can say truly say that is the creation of Iraq and possibly the entire group of countries - Lebanon, Jordan (now Jordan, Israel and Palestine), Syria and Iraq. The other countries from Morocco to Egypt did not have border changes and the time that they were conquered was irrelevant. (Turkey was a foreign power in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula as well). There were no hard and fast borders in the Sinai peninsula so the marks on the map meant little. There was also close to no boots on the ground there because it was seen as a waste land.
I'm not a google fan. I think they've gone full evil (re censorship)
Been switching to Brave and DuckDuckGo and zoho. However, this is not an example of Google being evil. This is an example of Google being a good corporate citizen.
Yes. England invaded lots of places. So did Spain and Russia (as it expanded east) and China (as it expanded west) and the Zulus (as they expanded south) and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Persians and the... (you get the point).
Ruining it and causing migration - here's where you're wrong. English colonialism is not the reason for Pakistani immigration.
You might as well blame Karl Marx for Zimbabwe's collapse. It would be more relevant than the 80 years of British rule.
We may have speaking past each other. In one case (the one you're mentioning) it is a clear case of tax evasion. In the other case (the one I was bringing up) it was a case of emergency leave now because the SH!T has hit the fan. In otherwords you're fleeing the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, or fleeing Germany in the 1930s.
Can the government claim tax evasion? Yes. Of course.
Using Bitcoin for tax evasion is foolish. All transactions are on a public ledger and can be used to trace and convict you of tax evasion. Using Bitcoin as a store of value, like gold, has its place. Unlike gold it's easily transportable and divisible. So, imagine, you are fleeing China post revolution and you sell your home for pennies on the dollar and now you are walking down towards Hong Kong and the territories with tens of thousands of other refugees. Gold weighs a lot, it's bulky, it clinks and will be noticed by your fellow travellers as well as border guards. Tax evasion (if the government wants to call it that is the furthest thing from your mind.)
One of the problems is the very phrase "climate change." First "Global Warming". then that proved to be a PR disaster. Now "Climate Change."
And yes - adding billions of tons of sequestered carbon is NOT a F**KING good idea. But crowing "Climate Change"; spewing predictions; then being quiet when the predictions fail to come true and then crow again... is a losing strategy.
All you say is true. The blockchain is a ledger of accounts and can easily be traced by a government agency. Nonetheless, you've left the country with your assets. Now, it's true, you have a different set of problems: namely staying hidden from people trying to track you down.
If you're a solitary criminal (or part of a criminal organization) foreign agencies will collaborate to arrest you. If you're a refugee fleeing a country, one of millions of refugees that's another story. Will the government of Zimbabwe or Venezuela be able to track down, arrest, and return refugees from other countries? Don't think so. Could China? Yes if they care about that particular person.
One more factor is the delay involved between transaction to ability to act. The government agency will have to have hundreds, if not thousands of agents, to be able to catch people at point of sale. This is more than possible within a government's territorial boundaries as policemen and others could be routed to the crime. But it is a far different thing for these same agencies to do in a foreign land.
Say I, a Chinese citizen, go to a BTC exchange, show my passport (identify myself for KYC purposes) I could then cash out 1000s of dollars of BTC with ease, just paying the commission. Yes, China will know what I cashed out and when - but then what? I've already fled from China.
A wealthy person who can afford to travel to Australia or the US twice a year with jewelry that's converted to local currency; or who buys real estate or invests in businesses has options unavailable to poorer people. If I can save $10,000 in a year I don't want to spend over ten percent of my savings traveling; not to mention the loss in the jade/gold transaction. My $10,000 may very well shrink to $5,000 or less.
I'm not trying to persuade you that CC is superior to cash. I'm trying to think through this problem as if I lived in China or Venezuela or Nazi Germany or the Russia in 1920 or.... the millions of other times people had to flee an oppressive regime.
How is a CC a supply for emergency ethics? How portable is that CC? If you were a Jew in 1930s Germany, and had successfully masked your name, how would you like to have a single donation to the local synagogue with your CC suddenly get tracked back to you?
IF you want to have an emergency store of value, silver is probably your best bet. Incredibly liquid - you can exchange it for cash, on the spot, anywhere around the world without any records. You can buy it for cash the same way. It is low enough value per ounce that it won't break you to accumulate it or spend it, and it is still valuable enough that 10 pounds of the stuff is a couple of thousands of dollars in value.
First, as you plan your emergency "Get Out Of Dodge" wallet you won't transfer from any wallets you've used before. You'll acquire BTC (or some other cryptocurrency) and you will add to this secret wallet as you see fit. The wallet cannot be traced to you. Obviously you can't spend any of the money without giving some clue to the secret police, so once the money goes in, it isn't spent frivolously.
I would much rather be a refugee with cash for bribes AND have the bulk of my savings in a brain wallet. Obviously you can be tortured if they think you have a CC wallet. Best yet, before the sh!t hit the fan my wife and daughter left the country and, as they're safe, they can access the CC, transfer the money to a new, unknown-to-me, wallet and live free and clear.
Re cash and physical items: how do you smuggle stuff out when border guards are frisking you for gems and cash? Even swallowing gems is not a fool proof. You'll be gutted and they'll pull them right out of your intestines.
One reason that it might not be classified as a monopoly is that WE can easily bring Google down.
I've stopped using Chrome. I use Brave exclusively and have been very happy with it.
I use DuckDuckGo and use the !G to get google results. As far as I know (and I'm willing to be corrected on this) Google doesn't receive any revenue from this DuckDuckGo search.
So, instead of saying Google it - say Duck it.
You don't have to stop using Google but if Google's market share drops from 88% to 50% and Chrome takes a huge hit (after all Brave is basically as good as Chrome) then you will have done your part in slapping Google upside the head.
Oh - and protonmail is an excellent privacy-centric email server. (although it's free version allows only 150 emails per day).
Still testing out zoho.com so I don't know how they compare to Google Docs.
Can you easily acquire tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in jade and gold and diamonds with cash?
Can you easily leave China with said jade without anyone knowing?
The wealthier you are the more options you have. If you could buy expensive pieces of jade with cash and wear them and sell them OK. Two thumbs up. That works.
If so - that is far superior to CC.
But what if you're not that wealthy? What if the most you can squirrel away is $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 a year? Would REITs make sense? You would need to spend a lot of time investigating said companies etc. And, if you bought jade or gold you would spending $1000+ travelling to a foreign country, you would lose a fair bit of value when selling the jade to the US buyer. That takes a lot of time and a lot of due diligence. Is it really better than buying CC?
I don't know? I'm not arguing that it is. I'm actually very curious. One of the reasons I'm interested in CC is for just this reason: emergency ethics.
How does one survive the economic and political collapse of your country? Think 1930s Germany for Jewish people, or 1960s China, if you're tainted by the scourge of one or more of the 4 Olds, Or if you're living in Venezuela or Zimbabwe during the violence and massive inflation.
but with that gone - what's the attraction over gold, US dollars, or shares in a REIT?
What would be the attraction of CC over gold, etc?
1. You needn't find a company to trust and you won't need to sign any papers.
When buying REITs or Gold you need to do due diligence on the company. One to One cryptocurrencies are easier than REITs or Gold. Meaning, that if you feel BTC is a solid investment in and of itself, it's an easier purchase, an easier asset to own than REITs or Gold. Also, when purchasing gold, one is not buying "gold" one is buying a piece of paper promising that the paper is backed by gold.(Meaning even more due diligence on the company in question.)
2. In an existential emergency (the second coming of Mao or the horrors of the Cultural Revolution) you can transfer your CC to another wallet. At that point you are in violation of law; you are a criminal. But if you are already a criminal because of your education, status, wealth, business dealings (whatever) and you're trying to escape with your life - in that caset your assets are "safe."
We both know that if one is caught that torture is an effective password breaker but that is yet another story. Your wife, child may be safe; may have the money; may have already moved it to another wallet. You will be tortured but, at least, your family is safe.
BTCChina and Huobi are legitimate/legal (as far as I understand) CC exchanges in China.
Are you saying that it will be against the law for people to purchase BTC with yuan in China in the near future?
I understand that the Chinese KYC laws are being strengthened; that takes away the specter of tax evasion. But it allows people to protect some of their assets outside of China; have some assets not tied to they yuan or local real estate. Of course the government can always ask them politely to repatriate their CC but the decision of having to flee is postponed.
So as of right now having a CC is extremely risky for people in China so people are dumping them as quickly as possible so they can have actual cash instead of a piece of digital code
You just made that up out of whole cloth. The Chinese people don't trust their fiat. They are trying anyway to convert their cash into anything that they can use to take currency out of the country.
BTC, foreign real estate (for those with a lot more money), are great ways to protect themselves and their family from a future collapse in China.
If they buy NY real estate and they lose 10% over time - they still have a piece of real estate that's worth something.
If they buy BTC at $2000 and it goes up to $20,000 great. If they buy it at $4000 and it goes down to $1000. At least they were able to save 25% of their savings.
How is that hacking or bad for bitcoin (it's bad in that it's less decentralized) but that is not hacking.
Everyone is using ASICS now. One cannot CPU or GPU mine anymore.
GPUs produced hashrates of below 1GH/s and using 450w/hr (motherboard+cpu+ gpu)
Then ASICs came out hashing at 100GH/s for the same wattage; then 400GH for the same wattage and now 14TH/s (14,000 GH/s) for 4 times the wattage.
This makes the BTC mining community more centralized but it isn't a hack and it isn't directly harmful until there is a 51% attack.
Yes. In many ways you are correct. I would love for the coin of choice to be CPU or GPU based as opposed to ASIC. But there it is.
Still you have thousands of people who own a few Antminer S5s and S7s and S9s whose combined power make up a pool. Are there some operators with farms of 1000s of ASICS? Yes, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly right. Not only that we should make it a punishable offense to say villain or sinister. After all, in doing so, we are vilifying whole communities.
I don't know sounds too phallic too me. If you want to be inclusive: How about Homo Flaccid instead? Or Homo Labia. Or Homo FoMe?
The Ottoman Empire Controlled everything from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt.
Regardless of anything new borders would have been drawn up after WWI.
The Arabian Peninsular's borders are fine.
So are Lebanon's and Syria's.
The only thing truly messed up is Iraq and the Israeli / Palestinian problem.
Israel would have not been a problem if there weren't pogroms and other attempts to kill immigrant Jews during the 1920s and 1930s. If all was cool then Jews would simply be a minority population in the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan would include what is now Israel and Palestine. So the Israeli - Palestinian problem is NOT due to the borders made after WWI.
And Syria's Eastern Border and Iraq would have been a mess anyway with it's rivalries.
Kurd v Arab v Persian & Shia (mostly Persian) v Sunni v (the mix of "heretical" Muslim religions often Kurd) would have been as intractable in the 1920s as it is today, 100 years later.
Well. There is a southern coast. Mexico isn't a rectangle, it curves. Guatemala and Belize aren't due south.
The only place where you can say truly say that is the creation of Iraq and possibly the entire group of countries - Lebanon, Jordan (now Jordan, Israel and Palestine), Syria and Iraq. The other countries from Morocco to Egypt did not have border changes and the time that they were conquered was irrelevant. (Turkey was a foreign power in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula as well). There were no hard and fast borders in the Sinai peninsula so the marks on the map meant little. There was also close to no boots on the ground there because it was seen as a waste land.
I'm not a google fan. I think they've gone full evil (re censorship)
Been switching to Brave and DuckDuckGo and zoho. However, this is not an example of Google being evil. This is an example of Google being a good corporate citizen.
What does aspirations have to do with it? Are you telling me Alexander's aspirations or Kublai Khan's aspirations were any less?
They didn't have matching technology - but if your objection is aspiration of world conquest, the original point falls apart.
No. Because what you said is foolishness.
... (you get the point).
Yes. England invaded lots of places. So did Spain and Russia (as it expanded east) and China (as it expanded west) and the Zulus (as they expanded south) and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Persians and the
Ruining it and causing migration - here's where you're wrong. English colonialism is not the reason for Pakistani immigration.
You might as well blame Karl Marx for Zimbabwe's collapse. It would be more relevant than the 80 years of British rule.
Actually - they did and didn't at the same time.
We may have speaking past each other. In one case (the one you're mentioning) it is a clear case of tax evasion. In the other case (the one I was bringing up) it was a case of emergency leave now because the SH!T has hit the fan. In otherwords you're fleeing the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, or fleeing Germany in the 1930s.
Can the government claim tax evasion? Yes. Of course.
Using Bitcoin for tax evasion is foolish. All transactions are on a public ledger and can be used to trace and convict you of tax evasion. Using Bitcoin as a store of value, like gold, has its place. Unlike gold it's easily transportable and divisible. So, imagine, you are fleeing China post revolution and you sell your home for pennies on the dollar and now you are walking down towards Hong Kong and the territories with tens of thousands of other refugees. Gold weighs a lot, it's bulky, it clinks and will be noticed by your fellow travellers as well as border guards. Tax evasion (if the government wants to call it that is the furthest thing from your mind.)
The parchment was much to expensive, much to valuable to simply burn. It was a relatively easy task to scrape off the old ink.
all stretched out now?
They do. Of course. :)
But now your talking about CC as tax evasion as opposed to fleeing. (And yes countries can and do conflate the to.)
Still cash, as you put it is preferable.
One of the problems is the very phrase "climate change." First "Global Warming". then that proved to be a PR disaster. Now "Climate Change."
... is a losing strategy.
And yes - adding billions of tons of sequestered carbon is NOT a F**KING good idea. But crowing "Climate Change"; spewing predictions; then being quiet when the predictions fail to come true and then crow again
Yes. But you're out of the country at that point.
.... the millions of other times people had to flee an oppressive regime.
All you say is true. The blockchain is a ledger of accounts and can easily be traced by a government agency. Nonetheless, you've left the country with your assets. Now, it's true, you have a different set of problems: namely staying hidden from people trying to track you down.
If you're a solitary criminal (or part of a criminal organization) foreign agencies will collaborate to arrest you. If you're a refugee fleeing a country, one of millions of refugees that's another story. Will the government of Zimbabwe or Venezuela be able to track down, arrest, and return refugees from other countries? Don't think so. Could China? Yes if they care about that particular person.
One more factor is the delay involved between transaction to ability to act. The government agency will have to have hundreds, if not thousands of agents, to be able to catch people at point of sale. This is more than possible within a government's territorial boundaries as policemen and others could be routed to the crime. But it is a far different thing for these same agencies to do in a foreign land.
Say I, a Chinese citizen, go to a BTC exchange, show my passport (identify myself for KYC purposes) I could then cash out 1000s of dollars of BTC with ease, just paying the commission. Yes, China will know what I cashed out and when - but then what? I've already fled from China.
A wealthy person who can afford to travel to Australia or the US twice a year with jewelry that's converted to local currency; or who buys real estate or invests in businesses has options unavailable to poorer people. If I can save $10,000 in a year I don't want to spend over ten percent of my savings traveling; not to mention the loss in the jade/gold transaction. My $10,000 may very well shrink to $5,000 or less.
I'm not trying to persuade you that CC is superior to cash. I'm trying to think through this problem as if I lived in China or Venezuela or Nazi Germany or the Russia in 1920 or
How is a CC a supply for emergency ethics? How portable is that CC? If you were a Jew in 1930s Germany, and had successfully masked your name, how would you like to have a single donation to the local synagogue with your CC suddenly get tracked back to you?
IF you want to have an emergency store of value, silver is probably your best bet. Incredibly liquid - you can exchange it for cash, on the spot, anywhere around the world without any records. You can buy it for cash the same way. It is low enough value per ounce that it won't break you to accumulate it or spend it, and it is still valuable enough that 10 pounds of the stuff is a couple of thousands of dollars in value.
First, as you plan your emergency "Get Out Of Dodge" wallet you won't transfer from any wallets you've used before. You'll acquire BTC (or some other cryptocurrency) and you will add to this secret wallet as you see fit. The wallet cannot be traced to you. Obviously you can't spend any of the money without giving some clue to the secret police, so once the money goes in, it isn't spent frivolously.
I would much rather be a refugee with cash for bribes AND have the bulk of my savings in a brain wallet. Obviously you can be tortured if they think you have a CC wallet. Best yet, before the sh!t hit the fan my wife and daughter left the country and, as they're safe, they can access the CC, transfer the money to a new, unknown-to-me, wallet and live free and clear.
Re cash and physical items: how do you smuggle stuff out when border guards are frisking you for gems and cash? Even swallowing gems is not a fool proof. You'll be gutted and they'll pull them right out of your intestines.
One reason that it might not be classified as a monopoly is that WE can easily bring Google down.
I've stopped using Chrome. I use Brave exclusively and have been very happy with it.
I use DuckDuckGo and use the !G to get google results. As far as I know (and I'm willing to be corrected on this) Google doesn't receive any revenue from this DuckDuckGo search.
So, instead of saying Google it - say Duck it.
You don't have to stop using Google but if Google's market share drops from 88% to 50% and Chrome takes a huge hit (after all Brave is basically as good as Chrome) then you will have done your part in slapping Google upside the head.
Oh - and protonmail is an excellent privacy-centric email server. (although it's free version allows only 150 emails per day).
Still testing out zoho.com so I don't know how they compare to Google Docs.
Brave loads a lot faster than does Vivaldi and is more privacy-centric.
Can you easily acquire tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in jade and gold and diamonds with cash?
Can you easily leave China with said jade without anyone knowing?
The wealthier you are the more options you have. If you could buy expensive pieces of jade with cash and wear them and sell them OK. Two thumbs up. That works.
If so - that is far superior to CC.
But what if you're not that wealthy? What if the most you can squirrel away is $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 a year? Would REITs make sense? You would need to spend a lot of time investigating said companies etc. And, if you bought jade or gold you would spending $1000+ travelling to a foreign country, you would lose a fair bit of value when selling the jade to the US buyer. That takes a lot of time and a lot of due diligence. Is it really better than buying CC?
I don't know? I'm not arguing that it is. I'm actually very curious. One of the reasons I'm interested in CC is for just this reason: emergency ethics. How does one survive the economic and political collapse of your country? Think 1930s Germany for Jewish people, or 1960s China, if you're tainted by the scourge of one or more of the 4 Olds, Or if you're living in Venezuela or Zimbabwe during the violence and massive inflation.
but with that gone - what's the attraction over gold, US dollars, or shares in a REIT?
What would be the attraction of CC over gold, etc?
1. You needn't find a company to trust and you won't need to sign any papers.
When buying REITs or Gold you need to do due diligence on the company. One to One cryptocurrencies are easier than REITs or Gold. Meaning, that if you feel BTC is a solid investment in and of itself, it's an easier purchase, an easier asset to own than REITs or Gold. Also, when purchasing gold, one is not buying "gold" one is buying a piece of paper promising that the paper is backed by gold.(Meaning even more due diligence on the company in question.)
2. In an existential emergency (the second coming of Mao or the horrors of the Cultural Revolution) you can transfer your CC to another wallet. At that point you are in violation of law; you are a criminal. But if you are already a criminal because of your education, status, wealth, business dealings (whatever) and you're trying to escape with your life - in that caset your assets are "safe."
We both know that if one is caught that torture is an effective password breaker but that is yet another story. Your wife, child may be safe; may have the money; may have already moved it to another wallet. You will be tortured but, at least, your family is safe.
Interesting.
BTCChina and Huobi are legitimate/legal (as far as I understand) CC exchanges in China.
Are you saying that it will be against the law for people to purchase BTC with yuan in China in the near future?
I understand that the Chinese KYC laws are being strengthened; that takes away the specter of tax evasion. But it allows people to protect some of their assets outside of China; have some assets not tied to they yuan or local real estate. Of course the government can always ask them politely to repatriate their CC but the decision of having to flee is postponed.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Oh, you're funny.
China or not cryptocurrencies are here to stay.
Just like the intertubes and that new fangled electronic mail. WTF is that? If it don't take a stamp. It ain't mail.
So as of right now having a CC is extremely risky for people in China so people are dumping them as quickly as possible so they can have actual cash instead of a piece of digital code
You just made that up out of whole cloth. The Chinese people don't trust their fiat. They are trying anyway to convert their cash into anything that they can use to take currency out of the country.
BTC, foreign real estate (for those with a lot more money), are great ways to protect themselves and their family from a future collapse in China.
If they buy NY real estate and they lose 10% over time - they still have a piece of real estate that's worth something.
If they buy BTC at $2000 and it goes up to $20,000 great. If they buy it at $4000 and it goes down to $1000. At least they were able to save 25% of their savings.
How is that hacking or bad for bitcoin (it's bad in that it's less decentralized) but that is not hacking.
Everyone is using ASICS now. One cannot CPU or GPU mine anymore.
GPUs produced hashrates of below 1GH/s and using 450w/hr (motherboard+cpu+ gpu)
Then ASICs came out hashing at 100GH/s for the same wattage; then 400GH for the same wattage and now 14TH/s (14,000 GH/s) for 4 times the wattage.
This makes the BTC mining community more centralized but it isn't a hack and it isn't directly harmful until there is a 51% attack.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non...
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Min...
Yes. In many ways you are correct. I would love for the coin of choice to be CPU or GPU based as opposed to ASIC. But there it is.
Still you have thousands of people who own a few Antminer S5s and S7s and S9s whose combined power make up a pool. Are there some operators with farms of 1000s of ASICS? Yes, of course.
Right now the top 4 pools could, theoretically launch a 51% attack.
https://blockchain.info/pools