I don't think anyone would argue against the notion that it can be. And I don't think anyone argues against the notion that if someone believes they have efficiently used their time according to their strengths, talents, and endowments, that they should not seek appropriate reward for their time and efforts.
However, just because someone has put a lot of time/effort/skill into something, why should there be a government policy in place that automatically grants a 70-120+ish year monopoly over the products of said time consuming work?
Instead of copyright laws which are unnecessary additional lines in the sand, why can't contract law provide all the benefits of copyright while eliminating many/most/all of the negatives? What do you, as an author, have against using contracts to protect your work? Why must we have additional laws to protect things which you can't prove actually belong to you? What can copyright law provide that non disclosure agreements and user agreements don't provide, except for monopoly controls over distribution channels?
Instead of copyright (which is automatically granted, application not necessary), would it not make more sense if the firm/individual actually had to apply to the people (we the taxpayers) that will be granting this distribution monopoly license (with a seemingly endless term)? Shouldn't the firm/individual have to prove to the people of its jurisdiction that protecting the fruits of its labour are necessary to the promotion and progress of the arts and sciences? How does providing you a distribution monopoly help the progression of the arts and sciences?
Why are libraries some of the most vocal critics against copyright? Please don't say: "vested interest in bolstering collection."
Most novels are only written because the author earns a reasonable living by doing so, and so can have "writing" as a full time job.
This is a form of No True Scotsman. Allow me to demonstrate:
Person A: True authors only write because they can expect to earn wages through their writing products (such as novels), as a result of the presence of copyright.
Person B: This might be true of less than 1% of authors, if it was ever possible to come to some consensus of "what exactly defines an author, professional or otherwise" and "how can our models actually determine the exact motivations for writing?"
Person A: Well, then these 99% of people are not true authors, as they don't earn a reasonable living by doing so through their writing products.
Fact of the matter is, if we really want to debate the notion of why novels/writing products are written, there is no way your statement can be proven correct any time soon (and it won't be anyways). Thus, I argue that (something more grounded in reality):
1) Most writing products (or narrowly defined by you as novels/ebooks) are written because one is either forced to through school or work. I'd put this at about 90% of the total writing products in existence.
2) The next largest percentage of writing products are produced out of pure creativity and enjoyment (best defined as leisure), such as the comments you and I have made here on SlashDot. I'd put this at about 9% of the total writing products.
3) I might be willing to say the next largest group of writing products is produced because one "hopes" to earn some wage through said product, whether or not there is a presence of copyright. I would put this percentage at about 0.8% of the total.
4) The next group would be the group that writes because they hope to earn a wage under the presence of copyright, and they otherwise would not write at all. I'd say less than 0.1% of writers act like this.
5) Then there is the next group group of writers that actually makes a living from their writing products, and there is absolutely no consensus as to whether or not total wages of authors are affect
This was a middle manager telling his engineers to make this happen "or else", and not much more thought put into it than that, because he read in a trade show mag somewhere it was his duty to defend the company from the evil pirates by any means necessary, ethics be damned. And the poor bastard fell into that pit trap and took the whole company's public reputation with him
Glengarry Glen Ross scenes just flashed across my mind, except they were transposed to IP related firms. The undying need for sales "leads" and aggressively asserting oneself over said "leads," as is well represented through Glengarry Glen Ross, shares so many parallels to the undying need to aggressively conquer more artificial territory of the mind.
You are saying people would becasue people might make n -x instead of n, they would rather make 0.
That's the entire reason for copyright. It's a government investment in the authorship industries so that people don't forsake authorship in favor of other vocations. Because people might make n - x instead of n, they would rather make 0 in authorship and n - (x / 2) in some other job.
Actually, the entire reason for copyright was such that the monarchy of England got to choose who the official printing presser (pressee?) was.
It currently stands as a useful legal mechanism to ward off competition under what is technically known as a downstream distribution monopoly which fundamentally endangers the property rights of every individual along the distribution chain.
Outside of industry funded research, you will find no recent opinion that suggests the current government investment is at the optimal level, nor that it should be strengthened. Simple contract law, and in extremely rare cases a limited royalty term are seemingly better alternatives.
Your above reply to "Because people might make n - x instead of n, they would rather make 0" is very weak. First of all, you are assuming that in some alternative profession those from the creative industries would earn half as much, and you are assuming that the absence of copyright is actually proven to improve the overall earnings of those in the "creative" industries.
As people have studied the music industry over the last 15 years we are finding that piracy, and the presence copyright laws, do very little to change the wages of creative professionals. Gander for a few moments on google scholar.
Thats a stupid argument. You are saying people would becasue people might make n -x instead of n, they would rather make 0.
Glad you said this.
This is a common argument defending the viewpoint that extended copyright terms help protect creative works (either their creation rates at certain term lengths, or revenue rates along the term lengths), and that without furthered copyright protection terms creative works would no longer be produced.
This flies in the face of logic, as you suggest in your above comment, as well as the notion of "creativity" and "art".
One does not need an incentive to be creative; we are all naturally creative to a certain degree, and we will all produce creative works on some level - all of which are inevitably the reflection of our experiences and culture around us. To suggest that anyone actually owns a piece or whole of any of this.........
But regardless, I understand that business is business, laws are laws, and history is history, and that we should always seek to compromise when there are arguments on both sides of the fence for the existence of copyright. Yet I struggle to find any sensible opinion that doesn't suggest that good 'ole contract law or some extremely limited short term royalty legislation (in very specific, targets cases) would be a better alternative to both the current copyright AND patent slate of laws (though patents are best left for a different rant). I have yet to see any recent academic report which suggests that current copyright levels are optimal, nor any report which suggest it should be extended further. If you want to turn your creative works into a business, you can use contracts to do so, preferably contracts that do not involve every single human being within its jurisdiction.
Unfortunately, many professional artists and their management would prefer not to have to force every listener to sign some user agreement or distribution contract, as this would seem rather, how do you say it, "lacking of the ideals of an artist". Not that contracts would solve or reduce the existence of "piracy" anyways (a ridiculous premise to begin with, alongside all the net social loss we have empirically seen from libraries across the centuries?), but it would provide a much more targeted legal scope for the party to pursue some sort of perceived injustice.
Things like breaking and entering (leaking a creative work ahead of release date, where someone was required to gain unauthorized access to something), or identity theft (mass for-profit manufacturing under someone else's label) are already legitimate crimes that can be punished elsewhere.
Simply handing what is called a "downstream distribution monopoly" to anyone is a dangerous thing. Doing it for decades and hundreds of years is seemingly an article off TheOnion. When was the last time anyone has ever breathed the words "monopoly" and "good thing" in the same sentence? The best that has ever been said about a monopoly is that it is the "best out of the available alternatives, given our current circumstances." Is copyright really our best answer to help these types of trades/industries/markets? Really?
This is simply not true especially if you live in the United States, and most Berne Convention nations. Thankfully I do not, but I have written and extensively about copyright and have been employed as a result. For basic reference, see:
"The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier."
Although you are mostly wrong, you can occasionally be right: The most common cases in which an author's work immediately becomes public domain information upon that author's death is if that author maintained no legal estate holdings (despite their already existing copyright claims, which are estate holdings), if the author has forgotten to write a will (doesn't necessarily matter), if the author has no offspring (doesn't necessarily matter), or if the author has chosen no benefactors at all (again, doesn't necessarily matter).
Basically this is rare and the 70 year after life extension is most commonly employed.
You can search around for all of this information, but as an example to demonstrate my facts simply search around for the Winnie-the-Pooh copyright saga, as it generally contains an element of the estate, the offspring, some random charity benefactor, a couple different publishers, large multinational corporations, splitting of various medium rights, and much more. Some cite Winnie-the-Pooh as being one of the primary reasons for the Copyright Term Extension act, as this book would have been public domain in 2001 under the pre-1998 laws. This is no longer the case.
In this example you will notice that the death of the author of Winnie-the-Pooh occurred in 1956, and that the copyright lasts on this piece of information until 2026. There is no "corporate authorship" involved in this case, though Winnie-the-Pooh's original publisher likely could have had some sort of leverage in negotiation over attribution at the time of publishing, though they haven't been in the picture for some time.
My favorite is the curious case of classical music score sheets, most of which are not in the public domain as publishing houses from 80-90 years ago still own the rights to distribute the scores for many works written hundreds of years prior to "re-printing". These types of "works" would generally fall under the case of corporate authorship. Thus depending on circumstance or business intelligence of the printing firm, these terms can last for either 95 or 120 years, depending when the work was published under corporate authorship and which end date comes first.
They [the healthcare industry] contain some share of public and private presence. Should the government be waiting for Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds from the Bitcoin taxbase to the Hospitals that need these funds for equipment, drugs, and payroll within the immediate future? If there are already examples of transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days, how do you expect to pay for refills and hospital payroll in a timely manner? People's lives depend on this.
Words can't describe how stupid this is.
Your words certainly don't: They just continue to show how ignorant you are. Let me restate the questions from the above quote, to see if you have better answers than the heaping pile of poo you just piled onto this thread regarding Bitcoin:
1. Should the government be waiting on Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds quickly to necessary medical services?
2. If there are already examples of Bitcoin transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days to execute, how do you expect time critical government services to be executed within a timely manner?
First and foremost, the "industries" in question are security manipulations and assistance with fraud.
All things equal, if everyone adopted bitcoin today do you honestly think there will be no fraud and security manipulation?
You can already trade future contracts with bitcoin, and bitcoin is trying to lobby to be removed from "commodity" status such that you can trade bitcoin options contracts. When you start trading Bitcoin options, how much fraud and manipulation will be involved?
Tell me again which industries you have a problem with, and how this is a reflection of the currency system? Tell me again how bitcoin represents a better alternative to the current system in this respect, and how it helps move our society to a more socially optimal outcome?
Second, no healthcare system should deny urgently needed procedures for any reason, least of all for approval of payment.
But as we see already, it can take up to 20 days to approve a bitcoin transaction. Payroll is due every 14 days, and supplies need to be restocked weekly. People need to be paid and equipped in order to provide urgent healthcare. If you are denying these people their payments and equipment, they will deny people urgent healthcare services. So yes, moving to a community based currency system with no accountability will fuck up other essential services so hard no one knows where to begin.
It's not practical because medical records must be available already, so existence of insurance coverage, if needed, can be confirmed immediately.
Umm I said nothing about medical records.
Stop trying to confuse the issues with your red herrings. I only said things about government run healthcare services receiving TIMELY FUCKING PAYMENTS , and that timely payments are already proven to be an issue with bitcoin - as the community can take days to approve the validity of any one bitcoin.
But no shit sherlock: of course medical records always need to be available for both public and private purposes, yet still no system has perfect information symmetry. This once again has nothing to do with the currency systems in question.
Third, private healthcare without reliable public alternative can kiss my ass.
What the fuck? I clearly stated that all Western Democracies that I am familiar with have some element of both public AND private healthcare. For you to suggest one can exist without the other is logically fallacious and factually incorrect.
It sucks that you live in America and don't have a reliable public system - but don't blame the currency system for this: Blame the people you continuously vote in year after year. I lived in America for 5 years and yeah, it sucked paying 10 k for
You do realize that empirical evidence shows that the government has maintained a quite stable money system for a long time, yes?
Depends on what you mean by "stable".
I meant whatever the previous commenter meant, to which the user provided no sources nor definitions. How would you like to define stability? If you would like to argue this point, feel free to provide definitions and sources. I am not the one trying to supplant the system in favour of the bitcoin system. Keep in mind I will make no claims for the stability of one particular government currency without considering the global context. I'm not going to sit here and defend Zimbabwe's currency management, nor am I going to suggest that the value of the US dollar has not been stable over the last few years (relative to the value of other global currencies).
The government has maintained a money system that slowly bleeds savers for about a hundred years now. That's not the kind of stability I'm interested in.
Which government do you belong to? Man that sucks! You should vote for a change in management. This is also not true of all government backed money systems, so I feel for you if you live in, say, the USA. Forced regional chartered membership ownership (which also gives special voting powers for that region's federal reserve bank) of each regional federal reserve bank is not necessarily a good thing, among other things that the USA system includes.
If it was much more simple and available to the public, say with the Canadian system, this would probably be a lot easier for the common American to understand.
Well, actually that wasn't me, since I don't respond to ACs. But since you've summoned the energy to actually log in......
Correct, you didn't respond to that, and I made a mistake with my comment in this particular comment reply line. If slashdot allowed it to be so I could edit and/or remove my own comments made with haste, I would have made my above comment disappear from the generally public eye - as it adds nothing to the conversation like the two comments before it.
I have never once made an AC comment on slashdot, nor never will. One does not learn by being an AC, nor does one help others become educated behind the veil of AC. In all cases I prefer flying under my flag, and even if I am breaking the laws of my jurisdiction I would prefer to be a civil disobedient rather than and anonymous coward. Allow me to further explain my thought process regarding my previous (terrible) comment though:
I hurled the AC's insult at the follow up commenter, and in haste wrote that you and the other username were the same username. Apologies for this. My original comment was made at 4:25am (my time), and should not have been made at all. I was not attempting to call you out, I was attempting to call out the commenter that followed up this thread with "Or maybe you do...". I have seen way too much rampant ignorance in bitcoin threads on slashdot (on all sides of the issue), and in this particular instance I wanted to call out some dude that was merely resorting to flaming another - by using a flame of his opposition, again. If the username fredprado actually had knowledge about the current monetary system and wanted to engage in civil discussion that would be nice, but for whatever reason my high horse decided to take issue with the flame, and I decided to use the previously used foxnews flame to show it can easily be used both ways in the Bitcoin/monetary-system debate (as yet again, the ignorance is rampant on all sides).
Once again, apologies for resorting to the same tactics of those I am apparently trying to be better than.
..... let me reply that if you don't realize dollars are backed only by debt you have some serious reading to do. This isn't even a controversial point.
My 5+ years of monetary economics training would like to have a word with you, and I am certainly not going to argue that the current money system is not backed by debt (in essence, within 140 characters of twitter explanations). But riddle me this:
How is the commodity backed system a better system (as you suggest with your initial comment in this reply line) than the fiat system, and how does it provide for more socially optimal outcomes, and why is this evidence that a proposal like bitcoin should be considered for mass adoption? I doubt you can make this argument without sounding like Ron Paul or some ignorant Foxnews analyst (At least Ron Paul is no longer ignorant about the issue, he just postures for states rights in general and uses the money system as a talking point to show there are other ways for each individual state to pursue - if they wished to).
But before you answer this question, let us both agree that I made a bad joke and terrible comment.
Well, actually that wasn't me, since I don't respond to ACs. But since you've summoned the energy to actually log in......
Correct, you didn't respond to that, and I made a mistake with my comment in this particular comment reply line. If slashdot allowed it to be so I could edit and/or remove my own comments made with haste, I would have made my above comment disappear from the generally public eye - as it adds nothing to the conversation like the two comments before it.
I have never once made an AC comment on slashdot, nor never will. One does not learn by being an AC, nor does one help others become educated behind the veil of AC. In all cases I prefer flying under my flag, and even if I am breaking the laws of my jurisdiction I would prefer to be a civil disobedient rather than an anonymous coward. Allow me to further explain my thought process regarding my previous (terrible) comment though:
I hurled the AC's insult at the follow up commenter, and in haste wrote that you and the other username were the same username. Apologies for this. My original comment was made at 4:25am (my time), and should not have been made at all. I was not attempting to call you out, I was attempting to call out the commenter that followed up this thread with "Or maybe you do...". I have seen way too much rampant ignorance in bitcoin threads on slashdot (on all sides of the issue), and in this particular instance I wanted to call out some dude that was merely resorting to flaming another - by using a flame of his opposition, again. If the username fredprado actually had knowledge about the current monetary system and wanted to engage in civil discussion that would be nice, but for whatever reason my high horse decided to take issue with the flame, and I decided to use the previously used foxnews flame to show it can easily be used both ways in the Bitcoin/monetary-system debate (as yet again, the ignorance is rampant on all sides).
Once again, apologies for resorting to the same tactics of those I am apparently trying to be better than.
..... let me reply that if you don't realize dollars are backed only by debt you have some serious reading to do. This isn't even a controversial point.
My 5+ years of monetary economics training would like to have a word with you, and I am certainly not going to argue that the current money system is not backed by debt (in essence, within 140 characters of twitter explanations). But riddle me this:
How is the commodity backed system a better system (as you suggest with your initial comment in this reply line) than the fiat system, and how does it provide for more socially optimal outcomes, and why is this evidence that a proposal like bitcoin should be considered for mass adoption? I doubt you can make this argument without sounding like Ron Paul or some ignorant Foxnews analyst (At least Ron Paul is no longer ignorant about the issue, he just postures for states rights in general and uses the money system as a talking point to show there are other ways for each individual state to pursue - if they wished to).
But before you answer this question, let us both agree that I made a bad joke and terrible comment.
This seems to be your incorrect assumption. I don't care if you take me seriously. You are just a slash troll.
So you want me to take your bitcoin proposal seriously, yet you do not provide one single source to defend your notions?
Who is the troll?
Me for suggesting you use logic and reason, as well as sound argumentative processes when trying to supplant a government system?
Or you, for trolling the entire goddamn monetary system without a single goddamned source to defend your viewpoints?
For anyone else unfortunate enough to have fallen down this thread. I doubt anyone actually has their head buried deep enough in the sand that they are unaware of government tracking of finances.
Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable.
The fincern ruling itself is a government declaration that they require financial institutions to gather this data for them. The DEA can raid you if you have purchased x number of common household and hardware chemicals/cleaners within a short span of time where those items can potentially be used to manufacture methamphetamine.
Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable.
There was a semi-popular tv show that covered the DEA raiding these "bad guys" left and right. How exactly is it that the DEA is supposed to use your acetone purchase to find your evil meth lab if they aren't reviewing your purchases?
Pleas source this "semi-popular" tv show which likely uses ample circumstantial evidence no one beyond a 10th grade education would use. Then please consider the following:
"Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable."
I don't have an investment in Bitcoin.
Then why are you defending a system you don't understand, when trying to supplant a system you probably will never understand?
Personally I think currency speculation and speculation in general is just a form of high stakes gambling.
Do you honestly think that speculation will go anywhere with a new currency system? Welcome to the real world my friend. Do you even know what the differences between speculating, hedging, and arbitraging are?
I believe the Bitcoin system itself is numerically sound....
I believe bitcoin is not numerically sound. Please provide a source which indicates it is MORE numberically sound than the current money system, and how this works towards a better
.... and also that the cryptographers who designed it had a far better understanding of mathematics and mathematical models than economists whose mathematical expertise does not extend further than the general math and basic algebra required in their field.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you do realize that pretty much all PHD Econ students are pure math/actuarial/engineering/CS students? They just use real world number
Of course not. (Almost) no technology will ever solve the built-in greed and scandal problem.
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve the built-in greed and scandal problem better, given the set of other alternatives.
(Aside from Zero-Point Energy, but that is a discussion for another day...)
No, no we will not discuss this. I don't care what you want to call your device, get the fuck off my lawn. Why bring this up at all?
However, technology can make it easier to track the "paper-trail"
We already use technology to do this. Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will make it easier to track the "paper-trail", given the set of other alternatives. Please also state how this same source suggests that having more anonymity is a more desirable social outcome?
(utilizing BitCoin then could make it easier to hold those accountable who mismanage their responsiblity / fraud others).
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will make it easier to hold those accountable who mismanage their responsibilities, given the set of other alternatives. I posit that this is not possibly true as nobody within an open-source community based project (like the bitcoin monetary system proposal) has any responsibility to anyone but him or herself. It should be your goal on the bitcoin system to mismanage responsibility and to defraud others, otherwise you are not playing this market correctly.
The key issue though is as long as the governed holds those in power responsible for their actions then any technology is largely irrelevant -- technology has the advantage that those wiling to make excuses "We don't know where the money is/went." harder to lie about.
This is a problem with your elected officials, not with currency itself, nor the current currency system. Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve this problem better, given the set of other alternatives.
Sadly, the general populace doesn't really care about accountability even WITH with the current tech; I don't see this changing anytime in the foreseeable future.
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve this problem of accountability, given the set of other alternatives. I posit, that no, it won't as no member of the bitcoin community is accountable to anyone but itself.
One of the positive things about BitCoin I see is that people are starting to ask "Why isn't the money trail more traceable?"
The money is already traceable, to a degree, and government budgets are already traceable, to a degree. If you have problems with the transparency of government expenditures and law enforcement in your jurisdiction you need to vote to change this. Then you need to understand that this is a problem with your government and your law enforcement, and not the currency system in general.
Why do you we continue to let the Army go extremely over-budget?"
This is the definition of a red herring, has nothing to do with the money system, and you are using it to distract from the issues at hand:
Your two sources do in fact support your red herring but have nothing to do with the currency system.
But yes, I agree, the american military spends money in stupid places, and too much money in general. How is this a fault of the currency system? You literally vote people into office to spend this money in a stupid way for you. Don't like it? Vote someone else in.
If BitCoin were to ever become popular guess who will be the first to "discredit" it ?
Thank you for not addressing all my my points, many of which I called you out on for being factually incorrect. I am once again going to address each and every one of your sentences in faith that you have more fight in you to defend the bitcoin system.
"After you have proven both these two things, you then need to realize this is a policing problem not a currency problem. "
Can you address this again? Because you clearly are not able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Once again, you are the one trying to supplant the system: You need to provide the evidence, you have the burden of proof.
Aside from demanding I support claims I never made like the 100% anonymity of Bitcoin....
You did in fact claim this when you said:
The anonymity that people talk about with Bitcoin comes from the fact that there is nothing to indicate who any particular address is controlled by.
Do you need me to offer you the definitions of "anonymity" and "nothing" within this context? If you are not implying 100% anonymity with this, what are you implying? If you don't believe Bitcoin is 100% anonymous and can't prove how it is a better alternative than the already pseudo-anonymous currency system, what are you trying to show? I have seen you throughout these threads: You may be a successful investor and hedger of the Bitcoin currency, but you are a wolf in sheep's clothing. You are leading the blind into your profit margins.
And once again, in my previous comment I addressed each of your use cases for where Bitcoin was apparently "better" due to its levels of anonymity, and showed how in each case, your claims were false or argumentative of a different standpoint/issue (you mostly have issues with law enforcement, you must have a petty MJ felony from high school or something).
Please continue to talk yourself away from those use cases though.
(which you cleverly supported with my example of the lack of 100% anonymity of Bitcoin)
Thanks. I am pretty clever. And I have 5+ years of monetary economics training, so I also know a thing or two. You talk theory with no basis nor sources, yet want to supplant a system that has taken hundreds of years to develop.
, your odd insistence that my references to how irreversable Bitcoin transactions somehow requires me to prove that all transactions of any kind are not reversible,
What the fuck does this mean? Let me repeat your claim: "Anonymity is usually optimal for transactions where payment can't be reversed." Now let me ask you again in 140 characters or less: What types of payments can not be reversed, and how is more anonymity better than the current system or some other alternative like a gold standard?
and your winning point about how my suggestion that escrow works out better than reversible transactions somehow requires that I prove Bitcoin is the first and only place escrow became available.... everything you said can be reasonably summed with the above.
I pointed this out because clearly you do not understand what Escrow is nor how people use it. You still don't, if you read your above comment and your previous comment on the matter: "Most of the rest [of transactions] can be better solved with escrow or a deposit in escrow than current methods." If you put this in conjunction with your previous statement, this implies that all "transactions where payment can't be reversed" are better solved with Escrow. Both statements are simply untrue, and you have failed to provide any evidence for your case, nor have you addressed the fact that the majority of Escrow payments are executed with a government back currency. Once again: you have the burden of proof as you are trying to supplant the system.
I will ask this again since you didn't answer with your most recent comment: all things equal, if everyone adopted bitcoin today, ho
I'm agreeing. I think bitcoin has some serious problems. Just adding my 2 cents.
Haha, no kidding.
Based on some in person conversations about the topic, threads like this on SlashDot over the last 1.5 years at least, my five+ years of education in Economics (with a Finance/Investing/Monetary specialization), and ample personal research on the topic, Bitcoin has theoretical problems of its own as well as the most logical incongruent fallacious basis to begin with: It cannot achieve stability in scale without the backing of the people (and their representatives, the government). To suggest that all people are always sitting at their computers all the time ready to manage the monetary system is wrong, and to suggest that the people of the world are willing to hand over their monetary system to a group of people that are sitting at their computers (but that they didn't vote for) is wrong.
Simply put, scale can only be achieved if all (or most) people have faith in the system. How do people have all faith? With a vote.
Going into the technicalities of their system itself (which has many validities, and likely even some theory that can be adopted by the current money systems) is mostly an exercise in futility. I do it to practice my knowledge on these topics in which I am quite familiar, as it expands my knowledge base about the actual, scaleable, money system each time I do.
Ah fair enough: I half expected it was copied from somewhere in haste.
It is always important to pay credit forward in some fashion or another, especially since my last comment seemed to imply that your initial comment was "your" mini poem. That being said (note:::trolling-flame-bait::: sorry this is really my passion and how I ended up in the slashdot community in the first place), if Universal and Access Industries (or whoever currently maintains global distro rights for this particular album) had their complete way with the use of those lyrics, Slashdot and yourself would pay some fee to keep that post there under both your names - as that is very much "their" content. In this case though, I am glad we fight for fair use, and it is people like you that show why fair use is so important: Educated people will pay their credit forward.
That being said, now that I know these are Dire Straits lyrics (could have searched the lyrics anyhow) I will now go contribute to the bands existence by listening to this song on a medium of my choosing (your youtube link for now). Who knows, one day I might even purchase and add this album to my collection if I can find a copy I enjoy on a medium that suits me. I picked up an old shitty beat up copy of their first album on vinyl, mostly for the artwork and my bland walls, and for whatever reason I've never ventured much further into their discography. I most certainly would have paid to see Sultans of Swing live, if I had the chance.
"As it stands in the real world in 2013, currency, by definition is pseudo-anonymous."
There is nothing in the definition of currency that assures it is anonymous.
Don't put words in my mouth when I'm not asking you to feed me.
I made no claims about your assurances in the jurisdiction you live in.
I only made the claim that, by definition, money (or currency) is pseudo-anonymous. Allow me to explain this definition, starting by using your very next sentence as you have clearly not taken a monetary economics (300 level undergrad or higher) class:
In the US cash is far from anonymous.
Once again, I never said US cash is 100% anonymous. I said money (or currency) is pseudo-anonymous. And yes, US Cash fits this definition.
In some forms, US Cash is anonymous and in some forms it isn't. In some forms it is representative of anonymity (like the trillion "missing" dollars). In many (most) cases, the choice is yours as to how anonymous you would like your cash to be, but it will be very difficult (if not impossible, much like with Bitcoin as we will see at the end of this comment) to actually achieve 100% currency anonymity on any legitimate scale. The world is not as absolute as you'd like to think it is.
Pseudo-anonymity can can be contrasted with a currency like Bitcoin, which claims complete 100% anonymity (though it is not). Until the system is broken or until there is a warrant out for someone's arrest, you might feel as though you are 100% anonymous. This is how people felt when they first started posting things to livejournal/myspace/facebook, and it is how most people feel when they are using Torrents or some form of proxy.
Now that we have definitions out of the way, moving the current currency system closer to 100% anonymity has not yet been proven to produce more desirable outcomes than a definably pseudo-anonymous currency. Sometimes, for society, it is pretty important to know where, when, and who the money passed through, and there must be devices in place to access this information in the case of catastrophe.
Obviously, if you are receiving a direct deposit from your employer, and are paying for rent/mortgage with cheques/e-payments, and are withdrawing said cash from the bank where said payroll was deposited you should expect 0% anonymity in this case. Do you honestly think you have complete anonymity when you transfer those same dollars into Bitcoins, and from there on out?
If current US Cash were 100% anonymous for example, you would likely have more difficulty finding the person that hired the super-cool-ninja-assassin who to tried kill you in your sleep last night (thank god for the anonymous Bitcoin-purchased gun under your pillow). One way investigators (private and public) could do this would be to "follow the money" and its paper trail. But because the current government backed money systems in the Western Democracies I am familiar with are already pseudo-anonymous, the person who hired your assassin has ways to ensure his/her name is not associated with the act.
Everybody already wins.
Furthermore, many legitimate professions like Bartenders and Cab Drivers are paid in largely in cash and at no point are they required to be subject to said aforementioned tracking mechanisms. You can always ask your employer to pay you in cash. Where did you employer get that cash from? Who knows, only they do. Your employer doesn't want to pay you in cash, but you only want to be paid in cash? Find a new employer.
You do realize that there is already a lot of cash in circulation, yes? Much of it is "claimed" to be missing, yes? No currency that is already in circulation necessarily has to be associated with any one person's name. This is how drug dealers operate and provide their necessary services. Bitcoin is an alternative for them, as for now it provides them with more assurances regarding anonymity. Drug dealers will still be taking col
Well here is an E-Handshake for you good sir. Glad to say I shared a sentence with a person that worked for a service I valued highly for a while. Thank you for your efforts, for however long you may have been doing them.
I guess that mini poem you wrote at the top of this comment reply line hit a little too close to home then, huh. Too bad I had to comment in this thread, otherwise you would have had my mod.
Apparently, you didn't read my previous comment (which you decided to respond to (twice) anyways) where I stated this exact same thing:
But in all fairness to your incorrect statement, perhaps the second part of my original statement was off-base, simply due to semantics........... [followed by a justification for the term i used which made this second clause incorrect : a description regarding the definitions of a purely competitive market, which I have explained to you ad nauseum throughout this thread, but will no longer engage in your trolling of your absolutist, incorrect opinions]
Why the fuck are you responding to my comments if you are not even reading what I am writing? At the top of this comment reply line you make a terrible flame-baiting comment, and I call you out on it. Then you refuse to debate your trolling comments because you have no leg to stand on. I have the ability to admit I am wrong, do you? Because the second clause of your first statement in this comment reply line is wrong, yet you refuse to admit or provide justification for the terms you used.
Can you please address the fact that the Internet is the most pure Capitalist system known to man, yet somehow this is not evidence of Capitalism having some merit? You have literally ignored this for three straight comments now, while I acknowledge that Communism has merit.
I addressed all of your examples to show how subsistence farming, sharecropping, and collective farming are not very good examples of either Communism or Capitalism while they most certainly are not scaleable on any level.
Why bother engaging in conversation or debate in an online setting via a written word forum if you are not fucking reading?
The aforementioned comment where I explained my second clause wasn't even that long, but apparently it was too long to keep your attention. This is slashdot, not twitter. I put a lot of this comment in bold, so that you actually made it to the end this time.
There are so many industries where transaction speed is critical.
And all of them deserve a bullet in the head.
This comment is so ignorant I don't know where to start.
But allow me to provide you with one example for your mind to chew on for a while: An example of an industry that should not be taking a bullet in the head anytime soon, as those that take bullets will need this industry.
Consider the healthcare systems of most major Western Democracies: They contain some share of public and private presence. Should the government be waiting for Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds from the Bitcoin taxbase to the Hospitals that need these funds for equipment, drugs, and payroll within the immediate future? If there are already examples of transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days, how do you expect to pay for refills and hospital payroll in a timely manner? People's lives depend on this.
If you are pursuing some form of private healthcare, should you have to wait any longer than the blink of an eye for your transaction to be approved? You might be pursuing private healthcare because you feel there is better quality, or it is an elective procedure, or many less obvious reasons. But take for example the case of Dentistry, which is not covered by a public health system like Canada. Should you really have to wait any amount of time for emergency dental surgery, if in the case of serious mouth/teeth problems that is actually causing you pain?
I will repeat this until necessary: The problem is not with Currency itself, the problem is with laws that govern Currency. Bitcoin does not currently present a better alternative to Currency itself. Once upon a time there was E-Gold, then there was Bitcoin. CyberPunkMoney is no different than all other alternative currencies, like cigarettes and gold, which existed before the internet. It may have a fresh approach, but its end result is no different. If it wants to achieve legitimate scale, it will be government controlled.
I originally had a whole bunch written out to prove how malicious your logic was, but figured it was not best to poke the flamebait any harder. Instead, I am simply addressing one of your points, because what I ended up writing for this one point actually made myself laugh:
How is the Muslim ideology that much different than that of the Jewish and Christian faiths when all three schools of thought believe in the exact same mythical character that governs the universe?
You read the books and cannot tell the difference? are you *sure* you read them? the differences are stark!
I think it is quite obvious that all three of these religions have different prophets and theories about the one true God, but it is hard to deny that they all share the exact same one true God.
Let me break this down for you as simply as possible: If the Jewish faith worshipped the Computing Device in front of you as God (instead of God himself), then you must also accept that all sects of the Christian faith worship that same Computing Device in front of you (if you don't, you clearly are not familiar with the Old and New Testament). The Computing Device for these two people is often referred to as Yahweh, maybe for the sake of this story we can call it Apple.
In Christianity, they believe that this Computing Device gave birth to your Mobile Computing Device which they worship as Jesus Christ, and a USB Cord to connect the two, known as the Holy Spirit. Together, the Computing Device , the Mobile Computing Device, and the USB Cord compose the Holy Trinity of God for Christians, but that the Computing Device remains the father of all devices.
In Judaism, they do not believe that the Computing Device has yet produced a Mobile Computing Device and USB Cord that is good enough for them. Both Christians and Jews have written many Manuals as to how to best use your Computing Device .
Many centuries after your Computing Device gave birth to an empirically non-existant character known as your Mobile Computing Device, an empirically existant dude named Mohammed rolled around and claimed that we may have had it wrong about using a USB Cord connection with our Mobile Computing Device in conjunction with our Computing Device . He thanked the Mobile Computing Device and the USB Cord connection for their framework, though he was slightly pissed that only some of the software and hardware were open sourced. He then created his own Manual for how one should use said Computing Device , while many others created more Manuals. The Muslim Computing Device is known as Allah, but is still an AppleComputing Device
Moral of the story: The Computing Device still reigns supreme over all three of these groups.
It's kind of fun to watch the Bitcoin people act like they invented the whole moneypunk scene, though.:-)
No kidding, it is quite funny. I even got into a live debate with some people regarding this recently (I was an Econ student that went to a CS/Engineering school, thus you can imagine who my friends are and how poor and nerdy this debate was), and none of them had heard of E-Gold. I was using E-Gold many years ago, as far back to high school, and none of these people were aware of it.
I'm surprised you got the jist of my last comment based on how poorly it was written.
All my friend (singular......tear) always state that half my humour is pointing out the obvious.
When it comes to websites like these, and seeing general stupidity in public, I have typically made it my goal to at least share my knowledge with these people. At the bare minimum I want them to question their own belief system, much like people make me do every day. It's not easy telling other young people that the money systems we use today are actually kind of okay overall. Logic and empirical evidence, along with the scientific method are typically used to back my argumentative standpoints.
Sometimes I do get a joy out of it, almost like a bully, but I don't find a consistent need to do it. It really is that certain kind of intelligent (or well trained) wackjob (seemingly found in abundance on this website) that is knowingly blind and knowingly paints the world as a set of "cartoonish" extremes rather than a spectrum of solutions and possibilities (this could even be a function of this website having started out appealing to those that write binary computer code). I do not feel like a bully when facing these people, as they are bullies themselves. Bad, poor, and mis-information must be stamped out. Much like your sig, it is human duty to do so. The blind may not lead the blind./high-horse
All this is why I am even willing to entertain the notion of bitcoin in the first place: I am willing to entertain the notion of the spectrum of solutions, alternative currencies, and that the bitcoin technology might have some validity which can help make government currency have more checks, balances, accountability, and transparency. But to suggest that bitcoin will supplant all government currencies? The notion is fallacious as you say, and totally misses the point of the current currency system. If any one singular group of people had the ability to supplant government currencies in one fell swoop such that the majority of people actually had faith in said currency, it would be some conglomerate of banks, much like it was before gold standard and fiat currencies.
People have always wanted to store shit, and banks have always been there to store said shit. Currency is just a different pile of said shit, in representative form.
I remember living in America, in a relatively small town, needing to use E-Gold in order to buy stuff online. Bitcoin is fundamentally different, yes, but alternative currencies have and always will exist. Don't like the currency you are using? Fortunately most of us commenting on these forums live in a country that provides the opportunity to use a different currency.
Slashdot Mirror
Writing a novel is a lot of time-consuming work.
I don't think anyone would argue against the notion that it can be. And I don't think anyone argues against the notion that if someone believes they have efficiently used their time according to their strengths, talents, and endowments, that they should not seek appropriate reward for their time and efforts.
However, just because someone has put a lot of time/effort/skill into something, why should there be a government policy in place that automatically grants a 70-120+ish year monopoly over the products of said time consuming work?
Instead of copyright laws which are unnecessary additional lines in the sand, why can't contract law provide all the benefits of copyright while eliminating many/most/all of the negatives? What do you, as an author, have against using contracts to protect your work? Why must we have additional laws to protect things which you can't prove actually belong to you? What can copyright law provide that non disclosure agreements and user agreements don't provide, except for monopoly controls over distribution channels?
Instead of copyright (which is automatically granted, application not necessary), would it not make more sense if the firm/individual actually had to apply to the people (we the taxpayers) that will be granting this distribution monopoly license (with a seemingly endless term)? Shouldn't the firm/individual have to prove to the people of its jurisdiction that protecting the fruits of its labour are necessary to the promotion and progress of the arts and sciences? How does providing you a distribution monopoly help the progression of the arts and sciences?
Why are libraries some of the most vocal critics against copyright? Please don't say: "vested interest in bolstering collection."
Most novels are only written because the author earns a reasonable living by doing so, and so can have "writing" as a full time job.
This is a form of No True Scotsman. Allow me to demonstrate:
Person A: True authors only write because they can expect to earn wages through their writing products (such as novels), as a result of the presence of copyright.
Person B: This might be true of less than 1% of authors, if it was ever possible to come to some consensus of "what exactly defines an author, professional or otherwise" and "how can our models actually determine the exact motivations for writing?"
Person A: Well, then these 99% of people are not true authors, as they don't earn a reasonable living by doing so through their writing products.
Fact of the matter is, if we really want to debate the notion of why novels/writing products are written, there is no way your statement can be proven correct any time soon (and it won't be anyways). Thus, I argue that (something more grounded in reality):
1) Most writing products (or narrowly defined by you as novels/ebooks) are written because one is either forced to through school or work. I'd put this at about 90% of the total writing products in existence.
2) The next largest percentage of writing products are produced out of pure creativity and enjoyment (best defined as leisure), such as the comments you and I have made here on SlashDot. I'd put this at about 9% of the total writing products.
3) I might be willing to say the next largest group of writing products is produced because one "hopes" to earn some wage through said product, whether or not there is a presence of copyright. I would put this percentage at about 0.8% of the total. 4) The next group would be the group that writes because they hope to earn a wage under the presence of copyright, and they otherwise would not write at all. I'd say less than 0.1% of writers act like this.
5) Then there is the next group group of writers that actually makes a living from their writing products, and there is absolutely no consensus as to whether or not total wages of authors are affect
Don't know who you are but you have had some thoroughly entertaining posts throughout this thread...
This was a middle manager telling his engineers to make this happen "or else", and not much more thought put into it than that, because he read in a trade show mag somewhere it was his duty to defend the company from the evil pirates by any means necessary, ethics be damned. And the poor bastard fell into that pit trap and took the whole company's public reputation with him
Glengarry Glen Ross scenes just flashed across my mind, except they were transposed to IP related firms. The undying need for sales "leads" and aggressively asserting oneself over said "leads," as is well represented through Glengarry Glen Ross, shares so many parallels to the undying need to aggressively conquer more artificial territory of the mind.
I swear this would totally work as a film....
You are saying people would becasue people might make n -x instead of n, they would rather make 0.
That's the entire reason for copyright. It's a government investment in the authorship industries so that people don't forsake authorship in favor of other vocations. Because people might make n - x instead of n, they would rather make 0 in authorship and n - (x / 2) in some other job.
Actually, the entire reason for copyright was such that the monarchy of England got to choose who the official printing presser (pressee?) was.
It currently stands as a useful legal mechanism to ward off competition under what is technically known as a downstream distribution monopoly which fundamentally endangers the property rights of every individual along the distribution chain.
Outside of industry funded research, you will find no recent opinion that suggests the current government investment is at the optimal level, nor that it should be strengthened. Simple contract law, and in extremely rare cases a limited royalty term are seemingly better alternatives.
Your above reply to "Because people might make n - x instead of n, they would rather make 0" is very weak. First of all, you are assuming that in some alternative profession those from the creative industries would earn half as much, and you are assuming that the absence of copyright is actually proven to improve the overall earnings of those in the "creative" industries.
As people have studied the music industry over the last 15 years we are finding that piracy, and the presence copyright laws, do very little to change the wages of creative professionals. Gander for a few moments on google scholar.
Thats a stupid argument. You are saying people would becasue people might make n -x instead of n, they would rather make 0.
Glad you said this.
This is a common argument defending the viewpoint that extended copyright terms help protect creative works (either their creation rates at certain term lengths, or revenue rates along the term lengths), and that without furthered copyright protection terms creative works would no longer be produced.
This flies in the face of logic, as you suggest in your above comment, as well as the notion of "creativity" and "art".
One does not need an incentive to be creative; we are all naturally creative to a certain degree, and we will all produce creative works on some level - all of which are inevitably the reflection of our experiences and culture around us. To suggest that anyone actually owns a piece or whole of any of this.........
But regardless, I understand that business is business, laws are laws, and history is history, and that we should always seek to compromise when there are arguments on both sides of the fence for the existence of copyright. Yet I struggle to find any sensible opinion that doesn't suggest that good 'ole contract law or some extremely limited short term royalty legislation (in very specific, targets cases) would be a better alternative to both the current copyright AND patent slate of laws (though patents are best left for a different rant). I have yet to see any recent academic report which suggests that current copyright levels are optimal, nor any report which suggest it should be extended further. If you want to turn your creative works into a business, you can use contracts to do so, preferably contracts that do not involve every single human being within its jurisdiction.
Unfortunately, many professional artists and their management would prefer not to have to force every listener to sign some user agreement or distribution contract, as this would seem rather, how do you say it, "lacking of the ideals of an artist". Not that contracts would solve or reduce the existence of "piracy" anyways (a ridiculous premise to begin with, alongside all the net social loss we have empirically seen from libraries across the centuries?), but it would provide a much more targeted legal scope for the party to pursue some sort of perceived injustice.
Things like breaking and entering (leaking a creative work ahead of release date, where someone was required to gain unauthorized access to something), or identity theft (mass for-profit manufacturing under someone else's label) are already legitimate crimes that can be punished elsewhere.
Simply handing what is called a "downstream distribution monopoly" to anyone is a dangerous thing. Doing it for decades and hundreds of years is seemingly an article off TheOnion. When was the last time anyone has ever breathed the words "monopoly" and "good thing" in the same sentence? The best that has ever been said about a monopoly is that it is the "best out of the available alternatives, given our current circumstances." Is copyright really our best answer to help these types of trades/industries/markets? Really?
This is simply not true especially if you live in the United States, and most Berne Convention nations. Thankfully I do not, but I have written and extensively about copyright and have been employed as a result. For basic reference, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
"The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier."
Although you are mostly wrong, you can occasionally be right: The most common cases in which an author's work immediately becomes public domain information upon that author's death is if that author maintained no legal estate holdings (despite their already existing copyright claims, which are estate holdings), if the author has forgotten to write a will (doesn't necessarily matter), if the author has no offspring (doesn't necessarily matter), or if the author has chosen no benefactors at all (again, doesn't necessarily matter).
Basically this is rare and the 70 year after life extension is most commonly employed.
You can search around for all of this information, but as an example to demonstrate my facts simply search around for the Winnie-the-Pooh copyright saga, as it generally contains an element of the estate, the offspring, some random charity benefactor, a couple different publishers, large multinational corporations, splitting of various medium rights, and much more. Some cite Winnie-the-Pooh as being one of the primary reasons for the Copyright Term Extension act, as this book would have been public domain in 2001 under the pre-1998 laws. This is no longer the case.
In this example you will notice that the death of the author of Winnie-the-Pooh occurred in 1956, and that the copyright lasts on this piece of information until 2026. There is no "corporate authorship" involved in this case, though Winnie-the-Pooh's original publisher likely could have had some sort of leverage in negotiation over attribution at the time of publishing, though they haven't been in the picture for some time.
My favorite is the curious case of classical music score sheets, most of which are not in the public domain as publishing houses from 80-90 years ago still own the rights to distribute the scores for many works written hundreds of years prior to "re-printing". These types of "works" would generally fall under the case of corporate authorship. Thus depending on circumstance or business intelligence of the printing firm, these terms can last for either 95 or 120 years, depending when the work was published under corporate authorship and which end date comes first.
They [the healthcare industry] contain some share of public and private presence. Should the government be waiting for Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds from the Bitcoin taxbase to the Hospitals that need these funds for equipment, drugs, and payroll within the immediate future? If there are already examples of transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days, how do you expect to pay for refills and hospital payroll in a timely manner? People's lives depend on this.
Words can't describe how stupid this is.
Your words certainly don't: They just continue to show how ignorant you are. Let me restate the questions from the above quote, to see if you have better answers than the heaping pile of poo you just piled onto this thread regarding Bitcoin:
1. Should the government be waiting on Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds quickly to necessary medical services?
2. If there are already examples of Bitcoin transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days to execute, how do you expect time critical government services to be executed within a timely manner?
First and foremost, the "industries" in question are security manipulations and assistance with fraud.
All things equal, if everyone adopted bitcoin today do you honestly think there will be no fraud and security manipulation?
You can already trade future contracts with bitcoin, and bitcoin is trying to lobby to be removed from "commodity" status such that you can trade bitcoin options contracts. When you start trading Bitcoin options, how much fraud and manipulation will be involved?
Tell me again which industries you have a problem with, and how this is a reflection of the currency system? Tell me again how bitcoin represents a better alternative to the current system in this respect, and how it helps move our society to a more socially optimal outcome?
Second, no healthcare system should deny urgently needed procedures for any reason, least of all for approval of payment.
But as we see already, it can take up to 20 days to approve a bitcoin transaction. Payroll is due every 14 days, and supplies need to be restocked weekly. People need to be paid and equipped in order to provide urgent healthcare. If you are denying these people their payments and equipment, they will deny people urgent healthcare services. So yes, moving to a community based currency system with no accountability will fuck up other essential services so hard no one knows where to begin.
It's not practical because medical records must be available already, so existence of insurance coverage, if needed, can be confirmed immediately.
Umm I said nothing about medical records.
Stop trying to confuse the issues with your red herrings. I only said things about government run healthcare services receiving TIMELY FUCKING PAYMENTS , and that timely payments are already proven to be an issue with bitcoin - as the community can take days to approve the validity of any one bitcoin.
But no shit sherlock: of course medical records always need to be available for both public and private purposes, yet still no system has perfect information symmetry. This once again has nothing to do with the currency systems in question.
Third, private healthcare without reliable public alternative can kiss my ass.
What the fuck? I clearly stated that all Western Democracies that I am familiar with have some element of both public AND private healthcare. For you to suggest one can exist without the other is logically fallacious and factually incorrect.
It sucks that you live in America and don't have a reliable public system - but don't blame the currency system for this: Blame the people you continuously vote in year after year. I lived in America for 5 years and yeah, it sucked paying 10 k for
Depends on what you mean by "stable".
I meant whatever the previous commenter meant, to which the user provided no sources nor definitions. How would you like to define stability? If you would like to argue this point, feel free to provide definitions and sources. I am not the one trying to supplant the system in favour of the bitcoin system. Keep in mind I will make no claims for the stability of one particular government currency without considering the global context. I'm not going to sit here and defend Zimbabwe's currency management, nor am I going to suggest that the value of the US dollar has not been stable over the last few years (relative to the value of other global currencies).
The government has maintained a money system that slowly bleeds savers for about a hundred years now. That's not the kind of stability I'm interested in.
Which government do you belong to? Man that sucks! You should vote for a change in management. This is also not true of all government backed money systems, so I feel for you if you live in, say, the USA. Forced regional chartered membership ownership (which also gives special voting powers for that region's federal reserve bank) of each regional federal reserve bank is not necessarily a good thing, among other things that the USA system includes.
If it was much more simple and available to the public, say with the Canadian system, this would probably be a lot easier for the common American to understand.
Well, actually that wasn't me, since I don't respond to ACs. But since you've summoned the energy to actually log in......
Correct, you didn't respond to that, and I made a mistake with my comment in this particular comment reply line. If slashdot allowed it to be so I could edit and/or remove my own comments made with haste, I would have made my above comment disappear from the generally public eye - as it adds nothing to the conversation like the two comments before it.
I have never once made an AC comment on slashdot, nor never will. One does not learn by being an AC, nor does one help others become educated behind the veil of AC. In all cases I prefer flying under my flag, and even if I am breaking the laws of my jurisdiction I would prefer to be a civil disobedient rather than and anonymous coward. Allow me to further explain my thought process regarding my previous (terrible) comment though:
I hurled the AC's insult at the follow up commenter, and in haste wrote that you and the other username were the same username. Apologies for this. My original comment was made at 4:25am (my time), and should not have been made at all. I was not attempting to call you out, I was attempting to call out the commenter that followed up this thread with "Or maybe you do...". I have seen way too much rampant ignorance in bitcoin threads on slashdot (on all sides of the issue), and in this particular instance I wanted to call out some dude that was merely resorting to flaming another - by using a flame of his opposition, again. If the username fredprado actually had knowledge about the current monetary system and wanted to engage in civil discussion that would be nice, but for whatever reason my high horse decided to take issue with the flame, and I decided to use the previously used foxnews flame to show it can easily be used both ways in the Bitcoin/monetary-system debate (as yet again, the ignorance is rampant on all sides).
Once again, apologies for resorting to the same tactics of those I am apparently trying to be better than.
..... let me reply that if you don't realize dollars are backed only by debt you have some serious reading to do. This isn't even a controversial point.
My 5+ years of monetary economics training would like to have a word with you, and I am certainly not going to argue that the current money system is not backed by debt (in essence, within 140 characters of twitter explanations). But riddle me this:
How is the commodity backed system a better system (as you suggest with your initial comment in this reply line) than the fiat system, and how does it provide for more socially optimal outcomes, and why is this evidence that a proposal like bitcoin should be considered for mass adoption? I doubt you can make this argument without sounding like Ron Paul or some ignorant Foxnews analyst (At least Ron Paul is no longer ignorant about the issue, he just postures for states rights in general and uses the money system as a talking point to show there are other ways for each individual state to pursue - if they wished to).
But before you answer this question, let us both agree that I made a bad joke and terrible comment.
Well, actually that wasn't me, since I don't respond to ACs. But since you've summoned the energy to actually log in......
Correct, you didn't respond to that, and I made a mistake with my comment in this particular comment reply line. If slashdot allowed it to be so I could edit and/or remove my own comments made with haste, I would have made my above comment disappear from the generally public eye - as it adds nothing to the conversation like the two comments before it.
I have never once made an AC comment on slashdot, nor never will. One does not learn by being an AC, nor does one help others become educated behind the veil of AC. In all cases I prefer flying under my flag, and even if I am breaking the laws of my jurisdiction I would prefer to be a civil disobedient rather than an anonymous coward. Allow me to further explain my thought process regarding my previous (terrible) comment though:
I hurled the AC's insult at the follow up commenter, and in haste wrote that you and the other username were the same username. Apologies for this. My original comment was made at 4:25am (my time), and should not have been made at all. I was not attempting to call you out, I was attempting to call out the commenter that followed up this thread with "Or maybe you do...". I have seen way too much rampant ignorance in bitcoin threads on slashdot (on all sides of the issue), and in this particular instance I wanted to call out some dude that was merely resorting to flaming another - by using a flame of his opposition, again. If the username fredprado actually had knowledge about the current monetary system and wanted to engage in civil discussion that would be nice, but for whatever reason my high horse decided to take issue with the flame, and I decided to use the previously used foxnews flame to show it can easily be used both ways in the Bitcoin/monetary-system debate (as yet again, the ignorance is rampant on all sides).
Once again, apologies for resorting to the same tactics of those I am apparently trying to be better than.
..... let me reply that if you don't realize dollars are backed only by debt you have some serious reading to do. This isn't even a controversial point.
My 5+ years of monetary economics training would like to have a word with you, and I am certainly not going to argue that the current money system is not backed by debt (in essence, within 140 characters of twitter explanations). But riddle me this:
How is the commodity backed system a better system (as you suggest with your initial comment in this reply line) than the fiat system, and how does it provide for more socially optimal outcomes, and why is this evidence that a proposal like bitcoin should be considered for mass adoption? I doubt you can make this argument without sounding like Ron Paul or some ignorant Foxnews analyst (At least Ron Paul is no longer ignorant about the issue, he just postures for states rights in general and uses the money system as a talking point to show there are other ways for each individual state to pursue - if they wished to).
But before you answer this question, let us both agree that I made a bad joke and terrible comment.
"you will if you want me to take you seriously"
This seems to be your incorrect assumption. I don't care if you take me seriously. You are just a slash troll.
So you want me to take your bitcoin proposal seriously, yet you do not provide one single source to defend your notions?
Who is the troll?
Me for suggesting you use logic and reason, as well as sound argumentative processes when trying to supplant a government system?
Or you, for trolling the entire goddamn monetary system without a single goddamned source to defend your viewpoints?
For anyone else unfortunate enough to have fallen down this thread. I doubt anyone actually has their head buried deep enough in the sand that they are unaware of government tracking of finances.
Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable.
The fincern ruling itself is a government declaration that they require financial institutions to gather this data for them. The DEA can raid you if you have purchased x number of common household and hardware chemicals/cleaners within a short span of time where those items can potentially be used to manufacture methamphetamine.
Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable.
There was a semi-popular tv show that covered the DEA raiding these "bad guys" left and right. How exactly is it that the DEA is supposed to use your acetone purchase to find your evil meth lab if they aren't reviewing your purchases?
Pleas source this "semi-popular" tv show which likely uses ample circumstantial evidence no one beyond a 10th grade education would use. Then please consider the following:
"Once again, for anyone else down this thread: This is not a problem of the currency system, this is a problem of the powers granted to law enforcement within Shaitland's jurisdiction. Shaitland is unable to separate the two issues, as he believes they are the exact same issue. I have continuously asked Shaitland to separate the issues, yet Shaitland is unable."
I don't have an investment in Bitcoin.
Then why are you defending a system you don't understand, when trying to supplant a system you probably will never understand?
Personally I think currency speculation and speculation in general is just a form of high stakes gambling.
Do you honestly think that speculation will go anywhere with a new currency system? Welcome to the real world my friend. Do you even know what the differences between speculating, hedging, and arbitraging are?
I believe the Bitcoin system itself is numerically sound....
I believe bitcoin is not numerically sound. Please provide a source which indicates it is MORE numberically sound than the current money system, and how this works towards a better
.... and also that the cryptographers who designed it had a far better understanding of mathematics and mathematical models than economists whose mathematical expertise does not extend further than the general math and basic algebra required in their field.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you do realize that pretty much all PHD Econ students are pure math/actuarial/engineering/CS students? They just use real world number
Of course not. (Almost) no technology will ever solve the built-in greed and scandal problem.
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve the built-in greed and scandal problem better, given the set of other alternatives.
(Aside from Zero-Point Energy, but that is a discussion for another day...)
No, no we will not discuss this. I don't care what you want to call your device, get the fuck off my lawn. Why bring this up at all?
However, technology can make it easier to track the "paper-trail"
We already use technology to do this. Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will make it easier to track the "paper-trail", given the set of other alternatives. Please also state how this same source suggests that having more anonymity is a more desirable social outcome?
(utilizing BitCoin then could make it easier to hold those accountable who mismanage their responsiblity / fraud others).
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will make it easier to hold those accountable who mismanage their responsibilities, given the set of other alternatives. I posit that this is not possibly true as nobody within an open-source community based project (like the bitcoin monetary system proposal) has any responsibility to anyone but him or herself. It should be your goal on the bitcoin system to mismanage responsibility and to defraud others, otherwise you are not playing this market correctly.
The key issue though is as long as the governed holds those in power responsible for their actions then any technology is largely irrelevant -- technology has the advantage that those wiling to make excuses "We don't know where the money is/went." harder to lie about.
This is a problem with your elected officials, not with currency itself, nor the current currency system. Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve this problem better, given the set of other alternatives.
Sadly, the general populace doesn't really care about accountability even WITH with the current tech; I don't see this changing anytime in the foreseeable future.
Please provide a source which indicates that the bitcoin proposal will better solve this problem of accountability, given the set of other alternatives. I posit, that no, it won't as no member of the bitcoin community is accountable to anyone but itself.
One of the positive things about BitCoin I see is that people are starting to ask "Why isn't the money trail more traceable?"
The money is already traceable, to a degree, and government budgets are already traceable, to a degree. If you have problems with the transparency of government expenditures and law enforcement in your jurisdiction you need to vote to change this. Then you need to understand that this is a problem with your government and your law enforcement, and not the currency system in general.
Why do you we continue to let the Army go extremely over-budget?"
This is the definition of a red herring, has nothing to do with the money system, and you are using it to distract from the issues at hand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
Your two sources do in fact support your red herring but have nothing to do with the currency system.
But yes, I agree, the american military spends money in stupid places, and too much money in general. How is this a fault of the currency system? You literally vote people into office to spend this money in a stupid way for you. Don't like it? Vote someone else in.
If BitCoin were to ever become popular guess who will be the first to "discredit" it ?
It
"After you have proven both these two things, you then need to realize this is a policing problem not a currency problem. "
Can you address this again? Because you clearly are not able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Once again, you are the one trying to supplant the system: You need to provide the evidence, you have the burden of proof.
Aside from demanding I support claims I never made like the 100% anonymity of Bitcoin ....
You did in fact claim this when you said:
The anonymity that people talk about with Bitcoin comes from the fact that there is nothing to indicate who any particular address is controlled by.
Do you need me to offer you the definitions of "anonymity" and "nothing" within this context? If you are not implying 100% anonymity with this, what are you implying? If you don't believe Bitcoin is 100% anonymous and can't prove how it is a better alternative than the already pseudo-anonymous currency system, what are you trying to show? I have seen you throughout these threads: You may be a successful investor and hedger of the Bitcoin currency, but you are a wolf in sheep's clothing. You are leading the blind into your profit margins.
And once again, in my previous comment I addressed each of your use cases for where Bitcoin was apparently "better" due to its levels of anonymity, and showed how in each case, your claims were false or argumentative of a different standpoint/issue (you mostly have issues with law enforcement, you must have a petty MJ felony from high school or something).
Please continue to talk yourself away from those use cases though.
(which you cleverly supported with my example of the lack of 100% anonymity of Bitcoin)
Thanks. I am pretty clever. And I have 5+ years of monetary economics training, so I also know a thing or two. You talk theory with no basis nor sources, yet want to supplant a system that has taken hundreds of years to develop.
, your odd insistence that my references to how irreversable Bitcoin transactions somehow requires me to prove that all transactions of any kind are not reversible,
What the fuck does this mean? Let me repeat your claim: "Anonymity is usually optimal for transactions where payment can't be reversed." Now let me ask you again in 140 characters or less: What types of payments can not be reversed, and how is more anonymity better than the current system or some other alternative like a gold standard?
and your winning point about how my suggestion that escrow works out better than reversible transactions somehow requires that I prove Bitcoin is the first and only place escrow became available.... everything you said can be reasonably summed with the above.
I pointed this out because clearly you do not understand what Escrow is nor how people use it. You still don't, if you read your above comment and your previous comment on the matter: "Most of the rest [of transactions] can be better solved with escrow or a deposit in escrow than current methods." If you put this in conjunction with your previous statement, this implies that all "transactions where payment can't be reversed" are better solved with Escrow. Both statements are simply untrue, and you have failed to provide any evidence for your case, nor have you addressed the fact that the majority of Escrow payments are executed with a government back currency. Once again: you have the burden of proof as you are trying to supplant the system.
I will ask this again since you didn't answer with your most recent comment: all things equal, if everyone adopted bitcoin today, ho
I'm agreeing. I think bitcoin has some serious problems. Just adding my 2 cents.
Haha, no kidding.
Based on some in person conversations about the topic, threads like this on SlashDot over the last 1.5 years at least, my five+ years of education in Economics (with a Finance/Investing/Monetary specialization), and ample personal research on the topic, Bitcoin has theoretical problems of its own as well as the most logical incongruent fallacious basis to begin with: It cannot achieve stability in scale without the backing of the people (and their representatives, the government). To suggest that all people are always sitting at their computers all the time ready to manage the monetary system is wrong, and to suggest that the people of the world are willing to hand over their monetary system to a group of people that are sitting at their computers (but that they didn't vote for) is wrong.
Simply put, scale can only be achieved if all (or most) people have faith in the system. How do people have all faith? With a vote.
Going into the technicalities of their system itself (which has many validities, and likely even some theory that can be adopted by the current money systems) is mostly an exercise in futility. I do it to practice my knowledge on these topics in which I am quite familiar, as it expands my knowledge base about the actual, scaleable, money system each time I do.
Ah fair enough: I half expected it was copied from somewhere in haste.
It is always important to pay credit forward in some fashion or another, especially since my last comment seemed to imply that your initial comment was "your" mini poem. That being said (note:::trolling-flame-bait::: sorry this is really my passion and how I ended up in the slashdot community in the first place), if Universal and Access Industries (or whoever currently maintains global distro rights for this particular album) had their complete way with the use of those lyrics, Slashdot and yourself would pay some fee to keep that post there under both your names - as that is very much "their" content. In this case though, I am glad we fight for fair use, and it is people like you that show why fair use is so important: Educated people will pay their credit forward.
That being said, now that I know these are Dire Straits lyrics (could have searched the lyrics anyhow) I will now go contribute to the bands existence by listening to this song on a medium of my choosing (your youtube link for now). Who knows, one day I might even purchase and add this album to my collection if I can find a copy I enjoy on a medium that suits me. I picked up an old shitty beat up copy of their first album on vinyl, mostly for the artwork and my bland walls, and for whatever reason I've never ventured much further into their discography. I most certainly would have paid to see Sultans of Swing live, if I had the chance.
Thanks for the tip!
"As it stands in the real world in 2013, currency, by definition is pseudo-anonymous."
There is nothing in the definition of currency that assures it is anonymous.
Don't put words in my mouth when I'm not asking you to feed me.
I made no claims about your assurances in the jurisdiction you live in.
I only made the claim that, by definition, money (or currency) is pseudo-anonymous. Allow me to explain this definition, starting by using your very next sentence as you have clearly not taken a monetary economics (300 level undergrad or higher) class:
In the US cash is far from anonymous.
Once again, I never said US cash is 100% anonymous. I said money (or currency) is pseudo-anonymous. And yes, US Cash fits this definition.
In some forms, US Cash is anonymous and in some forms it isn't. In some forms it is representative of anonymity (like the trillion "missing" dollars). In many (most) cases, the choice is yours as to how anonymous you would like your cash to be, but it will be very difficult (if not impossible, much like with Bitcoin as we will see at the end of this comment) to actually achieve 100% currency anonymity on any legitimate scale. The world is not as absolute as you'd like to think it is.
Pseudo-anonymity can can be contrasted with a currency like Bitcoin, which claims complete 100% anonymity (though it is not). Until the system is broken or until there is a warrant out for someone's arrest, you might feel as though you are 100% anonymous. This is how people felt when they first started posting things to livejournal/myspace/facebook, and it is how most people feel when they are using Torrents or some form of proxy.
Now that we have definitions out of the way, moving the current currency system closer to 100% anonymity has not yet been proven to produce more desirable outcomes than a definably pseudo-anonymous currency. Sometimes, for society, it is pretty important to know where, when, and who the money passed through, and there must be devices in place to access this information in the case of catastrophe.
Obviously, if you are receiving a direct deposit from your employer, and are paying for rent/mortgage with cheques/e-payments, and are withdrawing said cash from the bank where said payroll was deposited you should expect 0% anonymity in this case. Do you honestly think you have complete anonymity when you transfer those same dollars into Bitcoins, and from there on out?
If current US Cash were 100% anonymous for example, you would likely have more difficulty finding the person that hired the super-cool-ninja-assassin who to tried kill you in your sleep last night (thank god for the anonymous Bitcoin-purchased gun under your pillow). One way investigators (private and public) could do this would be to "follow the money" and its paper trail. But because the current government backed money systems in the Western Democracies I am familiar with are already pseudo-anonymous, the person who hired your assassin has ways to ensure his/her name is not associated with the act.
Everybody already wins.
Furthermore, many legitimate professions like Bartenders and Cab Drivers are paid in largely in cash and at no point are they required to be subject to said aforementioned tracking mechanisms. You can always ask your employer to pay you in cash. Where did you employer get that cash from? Who knows, only they do. Your employer doesn't want to pay you in cash, but you only want to be paid in cash? Find a new employer.
You do realize that there is already a lot of cash in circulation, yes? Much of it is "claimed" to be missing, yes? No currency that is already in circulation necessarily has to be associated with any one person's name. This is how drug dealers operate and provide their necessary services. Bitcoin is an alternative for them, as for now it provides them with more assurances regarding anonymity. Drug dealers will still be taking col
Well here is an E-Handshake for you good sir. Glad to say I shared a sentence with a person that worked for a service I valued highly for a while. Thank you for your efforts, for however long you may have been doing them.
I guess that mini poem you wrote at the top of this comment reply line hit a little too close to home then, huh. Too bad I had to comment in this thread, otherwise you would have had my mod.
Some say there is life beyond slashdot, others have attempted the venture in vain.
The closet has its advantages, but I prefer to wear the clothing it holds in daylight.
Yes. The second clause of that sentence is false.
Apparently, you didn't read my previous comment (which you decided to respond to (twice) anyways) where I stated this exact same thing:
But in all fairness to your incorrect statement, perhaps the second part of my original statement was off-base, simply due to semantics........... [followed by a justification for the term i used which made this second clause incorrect : a description regarding the definitions of a purely competitive market, which I have explained to you ad nauseum throughout this thread, but will no longer engage in your trolling of your absolutist, incorrect opinions]
Why the fuck are you responding to my comments if you are not even reading what I am writing? At the top of this comment reply line you make a terrible flame-baiting comment, and I call you out on it. Then you refuse to debate your trolling comments because you have no leg to stand on. I have the ability to admit I am wrong, do you? Because the second clause of your first statement in this comment reply line is wrong, yet you refuse to admit or provide justification for the terms you used.
Can you please address the fact that the Internet is the most pure Capitalist system known to man, yet somehow this is not evidence of Capitalism having some merit? You have literally ignored this for three straight comments now, while I acknowledge that Communism has merit.
I addressed all of your examples to show how subsistence farming, sharecropping, and collective farming are not very good examples of either Communism or Capitalism while they most certainly are not scaleable on any level.
Why bother engaging in conversation or debate in an online setting via a written word forum if you are not fucking reading?
The aforementioned comment where I explained my second clause wasn't even that long, but apparently it was too long to keep your attention. This is slashdot, not twitter. I put a lot of this comment in bold, so that you actually made it to the end this time.
There are so many industries where transaction speed is critical.
And all of them deserve a bullet in the head.
This comment is so ignorant I don't know where to start.
But allow me to provide you with one example for your mind to chew on for a while: An example of an industry that should not be taking a bullet in the head anytime soon, as those that take bullets will need this industry.
Consider the healthcare systems of most major Western Democracies: They contain some share of public and private presence. Should the government be waiting for Bitcoin transaction approvals in order to appropriate funds from the Bitcoin taxbase to the Hospitals that need these funds for equipment, drugs, and payroll within the immediate future? If there are already examples of transaction approvals taking upwards of 20 days, how do you expect to pay for refills and hospital payroll in a timely manner? People's lives depend on this.
If you are pursuing some form of private healthcare, should you have to wait any longer than the blink of an eye for your transaction to be approved? You might be pursuing private healthcare because you feel there is better quality, or it is an elective procedure, or many less obvious reasons. But take for example the case of Dentistry, which is not covered by a public health system like Canada. Should you really have to wait any amount of time for emergency dental surgery, if in the case of serious mouth/teeth problems that is actually causing you pain?
I will repeat this until necessary: The problem is not with Currency itself, the problem is with laws that govern Currency. Bitcoin does not currently present a better alternative to Currency itself. Once upon a time there was E-Gold, then there was Bitcoin. CyberPunkMoney is no different than all other alternative currencies, like cigarettes and gold, which existed before the internet. It may have a fresh approach, but its end result is no different. If it wants to achieve legitimate scale, it will be government controlled.
How is the Muslim ideology that much different than that of the Jewish and Christian faiths when all three schools of thought believe in the exact same mythical character that governs the universe?
You read the books and cannot tell the difference? are you *sure* you read them? the differences are stark!
I think it is quite obvious that all three of these religions have different prophets and theories about the one true God, but it is hard to deny that they all share the exact same one true God.
Let me break this down for you as simply as possible: If the Jewish faith worshipped the Computing Device in front of you as God (instead of God himself), then you must also accept that all sects of the Christian faith worship that same Computing Device in front of you (if you don't, you clearly are not familiar with the Old and New Testament). The Computing Device for these two people is often referred to as Yahweh, maybe for the sake of this story we can call it Apple.
In Christianity, they believe that this Computing Device gave birth to your Mobile Computing Device which they worship as Jesus Christ, and a USB Cord to connect the two, known as the Holy Spirit. Together, the Computing Device , the Mobile Computing Device, and the USB Cord compose the Holy Trinity of God for Christians, but that the Computing Device remains the father of all devices.
In Judaism, they do not believe that the Computing Device has yet produced a Mobile Computing Device and USB Cord that is good enough for them. Both Christians and Jews have written many Manuals as to how to best use your Computing Device .
Many centuries after your Computing Device gave birth to an empirically non-existant character known as your Mobile Computing Device, an empirically existant dude named Mohammed rolled around and claimed that we may have had it wrong about using a USB Cord connection with our Mobile Computing Device in conjunction with our Computing Device . He thanked the Mobile Computing Device and the USB Cord connection for their framework, though he was slightly pissed that only some of the software and hardware were open sourced. He then created his own Manual for how one should use said Computing Device , while many others created more Manuals. The Muslim Computing Device is known as Allah, but is still an Apple Computing Device
Moral of the story: The Computing Device still reigns supreme over all three of these groups.
It's kind of fun to watch the Bitcoin people act like they invented the whole moneypunk scene, though. :-)
No kidding, it is quite funny. I even got into a live debate with some people regarding this recently (I was an Econ student that went to a CS/Engineering school, thus you can imagine who my friends are and how poor and nerdy this debate was), and none of them had heard of E-Gold. I was using E-Gold many years ago, as far back to high school, and none of these people were aware of it.
I'm surprised you got the jist of my last comment based on how poorly it was written.
All my friend (singular......tear) always state that half my humour is pointing out the obvious.
When it comes to websites like these, and seeing general stupidity in public, I have typically made it my goal to at least share my knowledge with these people. At the bare minimum I want them to question their own belief system, much like people make me do every day. It's not easy telling other young people that the money systems we use today are actually kind of okay overall. Logic and empirical evidence, along with the scientific method are typically used to back my argumentative standpoints.
Sometimes I do get a joy out of it, almost like a bully, but I don't find a consistent need to do it. It really is that certain kind of intelligent (or well trained) wackjob (seemingly found in abundance on this website) that is knowingly blind and knowingly paints the world as a set of "cartoonish" extremes rather than a spectrum of solutions and possibilities (this could even be a function of this website having started out appealing to those that write binary computer code). I do not feel like a bully when facing these people, as they are bullies themselves. Bad, poor, and mis-information must be stamped out. Much like your sig, it is human duty to do so. The blind may not lead the blind. /high-horse
All this is why I am even willing to entertain the notion of bitcoin in the first place: I am willing to entertain the notion of the spectrum of solutions, alternative currencies, and that the bitcoin technology might have some validity which can help make government currency have more checks, balances, accountability, and transparency. But to suggest that bitcoin will supplant all government currencies? The notion is fallacious as you say, and totally misses the point of the current currency system. If any one singular group of people had the ability to supplant government currencies in one fell swoop such that the majority of people actually had faith in said currency, it would be some conglomerate of banks, much like it was before gold standard and fiat currencies.
People have always wanted to store shit, and banks have always been there to store said shit. Currency is just a different pile of said shit, in representative form.
I remember living in America, in a relatively small town, needing to use E-Gold in order to buy stuff online. Bitcoin is fundamentally different, yes, but alternative currencies have and always will exist. Don't like the currency you are using? Fortunately most of us commenting on these forums live in a country that provides the opportunity to use a different currency.
He's a closeted (or not so much) fascist ......... BLAH BLAH BLAH
I'm a closeted fascist as well: An omnipotent, omniscient singular leader would likely be the best and most effecient form of government for all.
Unfortunately no such person/hero/god has or ever will exist.