There's a small margin between asteroid strikes that require hiding out in shelters to survive, and asteroid strikes that lead to widespread ecosystem collapse, killing nearly everyone in the long term anyway.
That "small margin" is a few orders of magnitude, both in size and in likelihood.
How many of these smart weapons do we have? I doubt we have enough unless North Korea allows us to run another multi-week bombing campaign and puts all its gear out in the open to make things much easier for us. At least we know there's enough nukes to do the job.
But you should understand that a monetary standard defines value, not cost.
Wrong. Bitcoin is such a counterexample. There's nothing in the Bitcoin standard that allows you to recover the cost of electricity and cpu time that went into creation of a Bitcoin.
And as I have shown just above, the ability to directly exchange has no bearing on its value, as long as it can be exchanged for other things of that same value.
No, that is subjective not intrinsic value. Someone has to be able to make the trade directly via the standard or intrinsic value isn't part of the standard. The general public couldn't trade dollars for government gold directly, but central banks could. That's what created an intrinsic value for the dollar in terms of gold as part of the gold standard.
As I stated in my reply to your other post: I am done here.
Ok, then. All I want from you in turn is an apology for wasting the time of the Slashdot community. You have been shown to be wrong long ago. You can even go ahead and actually read the Bitcoin paper so that you're sincere when you make that apology.
Again. I did. You were wrong. And when are you actually going to quote whatever it is in the Bitcoin standard which you think backs up your argument?
If they use the same code, you would be generating Bitcoins!!!
Not at all. You can run the same code from scratch (as many times as you like). It'll generate a new set of hashes which have nothing to do with the Bitcoin market (aside from exactly implementing the standards of Bitcoins) and hence, no value.
Why not just give it up?
Why haven't you yet apologized to the rest of us for wasting our collective time with your broken argument?
First you claimed that the same process DID work for dollars, but you continue to claim that it can't work for Bitcoin.
No, I noted that someone, for example, the central banks could exchange dollars for gold. That has to exist or no one could cap the dollar versus gold. No similar mechanism exists for Bitcoins in the standard.
Economists from EVERY school of thought disagree with you.
No, they are merely discussing that the Bitcoin currency is limited in amount like gold was. You can't create arbitrary amounts and generate inflation in that way.
As an aside to this, I noticed when I was researching Bitcoins, that there will at some point be a transition from being rewarded for creating money to being rewarded for computing transactions. At that point, the people with the massive computing power are going to have incentive to throw at least some of these Bitcoins into the market just to generate more trade volume.
I find it very amusing to think of Timothy calling up a company in Russia for comment on why they just got blacklisted by the US Gov't.
I guess you've never tried. I talked to the US Department of Treasury once as a member of the press merely by being a volunteer for a not for profit prediction market which in case you're wondering is a lot less authoritative a position than being a Slashdot editor (though better than a drunk in bar). Some will talk to you. Some won't. All it takes is a telephone call or email to find out.
No, your elected representatives signed the contract you have. I think it's real convenient that you got what you wanted from someone who is in part beholden to you. Due to that conflict of interest on your part, I think you entered into this contract in bad faith as well.
What are these statements A, B, and C? And if you're speaking of trade-based transactions, they are transitive pretty much, but not reflexive. I might be willing to trade A for B, but that doesn't mean I'll be willing to trade B for A. So trading A for B and B for C pretty much means I'll be willing to trade A for C (unless B was necessary to shield me from a cost of trading A directly for C, for example, B might be a money laundering step). But this in no way implies that I'd be willing to trade C for A.
And the passage of time can change my preferences or the goods and services themselves (for example, the Bitcoin market collapsing completely may mean I no longer am interested in buying Bitcoins for anything).
That doesn't back your claim at all. It just means that someone values Bitcoins enough to pay for them with a certain amount of dollars. That can be because they have intrinsic value due to a standard of exchange. Or it can have value because of the utility of the Bitcoin market.
So I went ahead and settled this argument. I looked at the standard for Bitcoins. I saw that the standard indeed didn't establish or guarantee any sort of value for Bitcoins. Therefore, by the standard, Bitcoins have no intrinsic value. QED.
As I note in this post, you can create an arbitrary number of hash coin markets with exactly the same features and standards as the original Bitcoin market. And you won't get anything of value for that effort. That's another demonstration that Bitcoins and their copycats have no intrinsic value.
The fact that a direct exchange is impractical does not make it "not a standard".
An intrinsic value for Bitcoins is not part of the standard for Bitcoins. That is what makes it not a standard.
For example, I can make any number of copies of the Bitcoin market and dump as much computing power into those copycat hash coin markets as I want. They would have the same standard as Bitcoin since they use the same code. They won't be worth $100+ per coin. The value has changed (pretty much to zero) because hash coins don't have an intrinsic value no matter how much effort goes into their creation.
Yet -- and here is the important part -- there was STILL a gold standard
That still means that someone somewhere (for example, the central banks of other countries) could exchange dollars for gold even if it's not the general public. That had to hold or the dollar would not stay pegged at $35 per troy ounce. That only ended in 1971 with the complete dissolution of the gold standard.
The Bitcoin has no such feature. As part of the standard you can turn some amount of electricity and computing power into Bitcoins, but there is no provision for the reverse. Hence, value is not part of the standard or definition of Bitcoins.
Repeat: that is ONLY true if there is no standard.
I guess you haven't gotten to my reply on that yet, but intrinsic value is not part of the Bitcoin definition (that is, it can't be redeemed for anything) so there is no such valuation standard.
He did not release the information the the DOD Inspector General, to a member of the House or Senate intelligence committee, or even to a legitimate member of the press corp.
Wikileaks is just as much a "legitimate member of the press corps" as the New York Times is. Glancing at Wikipedia, the definition of press is:
"every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion."
Wikileaks easily qualifies. So Mann released the information in question to a proper channel.
The same guys who signed the highest contract in the land (the Constitution) and through it made promises to protect your freedom.
Nope. Check the signatures. You'll see that your contract doesn't have any of the founders' signatures on it either.
If the government cannot uphold its contracts to public workers, it does not speak well for government's ability to uphold its other contracts, including the ones it has with you.
I agree. But one of the ways government broke my contract, such as it is, was by making a pension contract in poor faith with you. I didn't authorize that pension and I'll be damned if I will let pensions and other out of control spending destroy my society. I consider the voiding of such dishonest contracts an adequate solution.
I might consider partially honoring that contract, if someone could be bothered to show me why that would be a good idea.
If you think the government is such an untrustworthy/incompetent party to uphold its contracts, the answer is not to just cut spending and entitlements. A deadbeat is a deadbeat whether you lend it $5 or $5000 or $5 million. The answer is to get out of there. Give up that citizenship, move out and cut your losses.
Nonsense. The US is my home. Plus I'd face the same problem anywhere I go and immigrants are traditionally the first ones screwed.
And not all deadbeats are equal. A deadbeat who owes me $5 is far less of a problem than a deadbeat who owes me $5 million. That's where spending reduction comes in. It controls the size of the deadbeat.
As noted many times, you are wrong. If you actually look at the standard for Bitcoin you will see that it can't be redeemed or exchanged for something of value as part of the standard. Hence, by its standard, it doesn't have an intrinsic value.
Again, you are wrong for all the reasons that have already been stated. But let's actually look at the standard on Bitcoins:
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned
by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides
a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.
The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending
resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended
As we see from the actual definition, resources are expended in creating new Bitcoins, but you can't redeem a Bitcoin for the effort (or for that matter anything else!) that went into its creation. So no, value is not built into the definition of Bitcoins.
Bitcoin was DESIGNED to have a built-in value standard
Nope, it wasn't. For example, a US silver certificate had prior to 1968 a built-in value standard. It could be exchanged for a certain amount of silver as part of the standard. Bitcoins can't be exchanged for anything of value as part of the standard. Hence, they don't have a built-in value standard.
The COST of a Bitcoin, today, is what the market is charging for it. (Cost is what you pay for something.)
The VALUE of a Bitcoin is what it is actually WORTH. That worth is PRE-DEFINED, and actually built in to Bitcoin.
Nope. Value is a perception or expectation of what you or others think they can get with a Bitcoin. Cost is merely what you would have to pay either in computing time or goods/services/currency in order to obtain a Bitcoin.
Slashdot Mirror
Angry Birds platform.
There's a small margin between asteroid strikes that require hiding out in shelters to survive, and asteroid strikes that lead to widespread ecosystem collapse, killing nearly everyone in the long term anyway.
That "small margin" is a few orders of magnitude, both in size and in likelihood.
How many of these smart weapons do we have? I doubt we have enough unless North Korea allows us to run another multi-week bombing campaign and puts all its gear out in the open to make things much easier for us. At least we know there's enough nukes to do the job.
Are you saying that the US does not have the coordinates of all major cities of its enemies programmed in to its nuclear war-heads?
This detargeting happened in 1994. Sure, the US can nuke anyone at the push of the button, but it doesn't have coordinates already entered.
I somehow doubt that translation is accurate
Are you kidding? If Mr. Kim thought it'd sound sexier to claim he had an arsenal of unicorns and sentient black holes, he'd say that instead.
But you should understand that a monetary standard defines value, not cost.
Wrong. Bitcoin is such a counterexample. There's nothing in the Bitcoin standard that allows you to recover the cost of electricity and cpu time that went into creation of a Bitcoin.
And as I have shown just above, the ability to directly exchange has no bearing on its value, as long as it can be exchanged for other things of that same value.
No, that is subjective not intrinsic value. Someone has to be able to make the trade directly via the standard or intrinsic value isn't part of the standard. The general public couldn't trade dollars for government gold directly, but central banks could. That's what created an intrinsic value for the dollar in terms of gold as part of the gold standard.
As I stated in my reply to your other post: I am done here.
Ok, then. All I want from you in turn is an apology for wasting the time of the Slashdot community. You have been shown to be wrong long ago. You can even go ahead and actually read the Bitcoin paper so that you're sincere when you make that apology.
That's pretty laughable. Look it up.
Again. I did. You were wrong. And when are you actually going to quote whatever it is in the Bitcoin standard which you think backs up your argument?
If they use the same code, you would be generating Bitcoins!!!
Not at all. You can run the same code from scratch (as many times as you like). It'll generate a new set of hashes which have nothing to do with the Bitcoin market (aside from exactly implementing the standards of Bitcoins) and hence, no value.
Why not just give it up?
Why haven't you yet apologized to the rest of us for wasting our collective time with your broken argument?
First you claimed that the same process DID work for dollars, but you continue to claim that it can't work for Bitcoin.
No, I noted that someone, for example, the central banks could exchange dollars for gold. That has to exist or no one could cap the dollar versus gold. No similar mechanism exists for Bitcoins in the standard.
Economists from EVERY school of thought disagree with you.
No, they are merely discussing that the Bitcoin currency is limited in amount like gold was. You can't create arbitrary amounts and generate inflation in that way.
As an aside to this, I noticed when I was researching Bitcoins, that there will at some point be a transition from being rewarded for creating money to being rewarded for computing transactions. At that point, the people with the massive computing power are going to have incentive to throw at least some of these Bitcoins into the market just to generate more trade volume.
So you talk to a lot of professional economists on the internet? Do tell!
I find it very amusing to think of Timothy calling up a company in Russia for comment on why they just got blacklisted by the US Gov't.
I guess you've never tried. I talked to the US Department of Treasury once as a member of the press merely by being a volunteer for a not for profit prediction market which in case you're wondering is a lot less authoritative a position than being a Slashdot editor (though better than a drunk in bar). Some will talk to you. Some won't. All it takes is a telephone call or email to find out.
but your elected representatives did.
No, your elected representatives signed the contract you have. I think it's real convenient that you got what you wanted from someone who is in part beholden to you. Due to that conflict of interest on your part, I think you entered into this contract in bad faith as well.
What are these statements A, B, and C? And if you're speaking of trade-based transactions, they are transitive pretty much, but not reflexive. I might be willing to trade A for B, but that doesn't mean I'll be willing to trade B for A. So trading A for B and B for C pretty much means I'll be willing to trade A for C (unless B was necessary to shield me from a cost of trading A directly for C, for example, B might be a money laundering step). But this in no way implies that I'd be willing to trade C for A.
And the passage of time can change my preferences or the goods and services themselves (for example, the Bitcoin market collapsing completely may mean I no longer am interested in buying Bitcoins for anything).
Bitcoins can be exchanged for DOLLARS
That doesn't back your claim at all. It just means that someone values Bitcoins enough to pay for them with a certain amount of dollars. That can be because they have intrinsic value due to a standard of exchange. Or it can have value because of the utility of the Bitcoin market.
So I went ahead and settled this argument. I looked at the standard for Bitcoins. I saw that the standard indeed didn't establish or guarantee any sort of value for Bitcoins. Therefore, by the standard, Bitcoins have no intrinsic value. QED.
As I note in this post, you can create an arbitrary number of hash coin markets with exactly the same features and standards as the original Bitcoin market. And you won't get anything of value for that effort. That's another demonstration that Bitcoins and their copycats have no intrinsic value.
The fact that a direct exchange is impractical does not make it "not a standard".
An intrinsic value for Bitcoins is not part of the standard for Bitcoins. That is what makes it not a standard.
For example, I can make any number of copies of the Bitcoin market and dump as much computing power into those copycat hash coin markets as I want. They would have the same standard as Bitcoin since they use the same code. They won't be worth $100+ per coin. The value has changed (pretty much to zero) because hash coins don't have an intrinsic value no matter how much effort goes into their creation.
Yet -- and here is the important part -- there was STILL a gold standard
That still means that someone somewhere (for example, the central banks of other countries) could exchange dollars for gold even if it's not the general public. That had to hold or the dollar would not stay pegged at $35 per troy ounce. That only ended in 1971 with the complete dissolution of the gold standard.
The Bitcoin has no such feature. As part of the standard you can turn some amount of electricity and computing power into Bitcoins, but there is no provision for the reverse. Hence, value is not part of the standard or definition of Bitcoins.
Repeat: that is ONLY true if there is no standard.
I guess you haven't gotten to my reply on that yet, but intrinsic value is not part of the Bitcoin definition (that is, it can't be redeemed for anything) so there is no such valuation standard.
He did not release the information the the DOD Inspector General, to a member of the House or Senate intelligence committee, or even to a legitimate member of the press corp.
Wikileaks is just as much a "legitimate member of the press corps" as the New York Times is. Glancing at Wikipedia, the definition of press is:
"every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion."
Wikileaks easily qualifies. So Mann released the information in question to a proper channel.
The same guys who signed the highest contract in the land (the Constitution) and through it made promises to protect your freedom.
Nope. Check the signatures. You'll see that your contract doesn't have any of the founders' signatures on it either.
If the government cannot uphold its contracts to public workers, it does not speak well for government's ability to uphold its other contracts, including the ones it has with you.
I agree. But one of the ways government broke my contract, such as it is, was by making a pension contract in poor faith with you. I didn't authorize that pension and I'll be damned if I will let pensions and other out of control spending destroy my society. I consider the voiding of such dishonest contracts an adequate solution.
I might consider partially honoring that contract, if someone could be bothered to show me why that would be a good idea.
If you think the government is such an untrustworthy/incompetent party to uphold its contracts, the answer is not to just cut spending and entitlements. A deadbeat is a deadbeat whether you lend it $5 or $5000 or $5 million. The answer is to get out of there. Give up that citizenship, move out and cut your losses.
Nonsense. The US is my home. Plus I'd face the same problem anywhere I go and immigrants are traditionally the first ones screwed.
And not all deadbeats are equal. A deadbeat who owes me $5 is far less of a problem than a deadbeat who owes me $5 million. That's where spending reduction comes in. It controls the size of the deadbeat.
As noted many times, you are wrong. If you actually look at the standard for Bitcoin you will see that it can't be redeemed or exchanged for something of value as part of the standard. Hence, by its standard, it doesn't have an intrinsic value.
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended
As we see from the actual definition, resources are expended in creating new Bitcoins, but you can't redeem a Bitcoin for the effort (or for that matter anything else!) that went into its creation. So no, value is not built into the definition of Bitcoins.
Bitcoin was DESIGNED to have a built-in value standard
Nope, it wasn't. For example, a US silver certificate had prior to 1968 a built-in value standard. It could be exchanged for a certain amount of silver as part of the standard. Bitcoins can't be exchanged for anything of value as part of the standard. Hence, they don't have a built-in value standard.
The COST of a Bitcoin, today, is what the market is charging for it. (Cost is what you pay for something.)
The VALUE of a Bitcoin is what it is actually WORTH. That worth is PRE-DEFINED, and actually built in to Bitcoin.
Nope. Value is a perception or expectation of what you or others think they can get with a Bitcoin. Cost is merely what you would have to pay either in computing time or goods/services/currency in order to obtain a Bitcoin.
which show that the actual value of the USD is very subtly going down-hill
Your currency subtly goes down hill? That's inflation. Goes to hell in a hand basket? That's hyperinflation.