| Except "real coin" isn't what we have --- we have fiat, which is no longer backed by anything.
Other than the collective agreement and binding contracts by the most powerful governments and private individuals on Earth, and a deep market for liquid and tradable property as well as productive real property.
Fiat currency is not "by fiat" automatically exchangable for a certain quantity of a certain kind of property with no market fluctuation allowed. But that doesn't mean it's not 'backed' by anything.
Bitcoin isn't by fiat exchangable for anything either---it only has constructed scarcity.
| The fed and the banks just will "federal reserve" monopoly bucks into existence.
Not quite "at will" but in specific economic & financial circumstances deemed to be legal and essential parts of commerce & business.
| But your implied argument is also invalid. "Free Market" does not mean "no rules" it means that you advocate for the minimum regulation possible while keeping opportunity equal for all involved. (Note that I'm saying equal opportunity, and not equal outcome.) Fraud needs to be illegal in a "free market".
Fraud needs to be illegal, and unprofitable and likely to be caught in a successful implementation of a good free market, and that often takes enforced regulation.
The problem is if, as is the case, a wholly deregulated "your loss is always your own fault" environment encourages free market businesses to engage profitable business models based on fraud and ever more sophisticated lying.
And this is bad for everybody except for criminals, and most sensible people (which excludes absolutist libertarians) believe that outcome is substantially worse than the harm from typical financial regulation.
Economists often use an index which does not to look at changes because the noise introduced by fuel and food prices in the short run obscures more significant economic signals. But all long-term deflators and considerations of purchasing power use full index.
If the governmental way is 'opaque', then why is it so obvious?
And given that there is in fact a free market in bonds which have inflation expectations built into their price and yield, what's the problem? Why do libertarians get so uppity about the 'value of the $FIAT_CURRENCY' as if hiding notes under the mattress should be a good solution? What's wrong with getting on with the rugged individualism solution and own investment property that isn't a $FIAT_CURRENCY_NOTE in your wallet?
"Because that works so well for every other form of currency, right? "
It works moderately. Which is better than not.
In the era of strict, actually enforced, financial regulation in the USA, which started with FDR and ended with Reagan, serious systemic financial scams, bubbles, frauds and failures were quite rare.
What's up with the absolutist mentality? Obviously when lots of money is involved there is overflowing motivation to cheat. Are police futile if they don't successfully catch and deter every single criminal?
| If we remove the dealer who is going to stock parts, deliver them, and install them
Um? An auto parts supply company? The distributors of the manufacturer?
| I'm sure you can come up with a thousand free market answers, but the fact is running that sort of business is _expensive_. Most of the obvious solutions become races to the bottom. Eventually either you stop getting parts and service for cars after 5 years or your start getting gouged in ways you can only imagine.
How would the economic incentives be different between dealers and a non-dealer parts supply company? Tesla would have an interest in supplying parts for N years by law or by sales because they don't want to inhibit sales because their customers are concerned their expensive purchases will be unrepairable after 5 years. They would make sure the parts are available.
And what's so special about cars compared to other equipment where there aren't franchise laws but there is a need for parts and maintenance?
(The answer is the profitability of dealerships and their campaign contribution habits)
Apple doesn't really seek significant revenue from litigation---it's not quite worth it.
It does seek to inhibit other phone companies from making phones which are too much like the Apple phone by making their profit margins smaller through litigation and patent license.
The car manufacturers are at the mercy of the dealers and dealer associations. In their heart of hearts, some would like to pursue Tesla's strategy or at least compete with the dealers.
You can punish the manufacturers but they can't do anything back.
Vehicle dealers and real estate developers are reliable large contributors to local politicians.
| I like how the naysayers are depicted as sober, rational minded individuals while those who see things progressing more rapidly are shown as crazy lunatics. They are both making predictions about the future. Why is one claim more valid than the other?
It's because the naysayers are the ones more actively working in the field and closest to the experimental and theoretical results and are trying to actually accomplish these kinds of tasks.
Obviously in 1895 heavier than air flying machines were possible because birds existed. And in 1895 there was a significant science & engineering community actually trying to do it which believed it was possible soon. Internal combustion engines of sufficient power/weight were rapidly improving, fluid mechanics was reasonably understood, and it just took the Wrights to re-do some of the experiments correctly and have an insight & technology about controls & stability.
So in 1895, Lord Kelvin was the Kurzweil of his day.
If in fact Dorian were Bitcoin's created, he wouldn't have agreed to talk with a reporter from Newsweek.
Some background on Newsweek. This article is the first for Newsweek's newly relaunched print edition, and the first under it's entirely new owners after bankruptcy.
a) Motivation for Dorian to out himself, immediately following a high-profile bankruptcy/crash/fraud at an exchange? None whatsoever. a) Motivation for newsweek or reporter (reporter jobs are very scarce now) to somehow stretch the truth Putin-style? You betcha!
"Not trying to troll - why aren't there bitcoin deposit insurance agencies?'
The free market has spoken: the sound of silence.
Would YOU provide bitcoin deposit insurance? Or invest in a company which did? I didn't think so.
Actual insurance companies profit this way: They take in premiums. They model statistically predictable losses and try to welch out of paying them when they happen. They invest Other People's Money in the interim, and keep the proceeds.
|| Sometimes, even the government isn't big enough to fix our problems.
| That's just precious coming from the quadrant of/. that preaches government should be small enough (for bankers, apparently) to drown it in a bathtub.
Franklin Roosevelt was big enough to fix our problems.
No, the government allowed banks to make poor financial decisions, which they are known to do because of short term greed.
There were extremely few systematic securities failures, bubbles, or bank failures between 1933---when FDR & Congress cracked down on the deregulation which contributed to the crash & depression---and the 1980's, when free-market Republicans started the modern deregulatory movement in USA. Since then there was widespread fraud in the 80's S&L crisis from industry-driven fraud, in the 1990's concentrated fraud in the stock market & tech bubble, and in the 2000's massive widespread fraud in the even more enormous systematic financial bubble and crash.
With each iteration fewer and fewer people were prosecuted for their crimes and little useful regulation applied.
| the other side is DNC backed regulations requiring banks to make unsafe loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back.
This is false. There was an equally huge bubble from lenders not subject to the Community Reinvestment Act. Why?
And in any case, unprofitable loans which the government MAKES an unwilling bank to do for social/political reasons will not remotely be promoted the way the subprime loans were, with massive commissions and bonuses to originating brokers. They would be hard to access with lots of fine print. Face it, the bubble & fraud came because lots of people in the private sector were making money from it.
The government failure was deregulating Fannie & Freddie to open their acceptance criteria for insurance. And this was in the name of having Fannie & Freddie act more like "free-market businesses" instead of "government".
"Funny thing is that Bitcoin was never designed to be kept in exchanges in the first place."
So how are exchanges supposed to work, as in guarantee atomic transactions: "X pays bitcoin, Y pays other money, and if either side does not settle then both sides of the transaction are undone".
RIght now, an exchange is like mailing in a gold bar to somebody on craigslist with a note, "please give me money".
Well, since the big thefts happen internally, those regulations would be the auditability of the bank's systems and accounts, the requirement to have intrusive government inspectors, often on-premises for months, government subpoena power under pain of imprisonment, and laws making for civil and criminal penalties for those refusing inspection or failing audit.
No, a fiat currency is one which has been declared to be currency and is agreed upon by the mutual opinion of people to have value, by "fiat'.
A non-fiat currency is one which has an intrinsic use and a currency use. For example, cigarettes, petroleum, cocaine or twinkies, could be used as trading tokens in currency or used on their own for non-currency reasons.
Bitcoin is unusual that it is a fiat currency but it cannot be printed indefinitely by fiat, without the mutual agreement of all the users on the planet which will not happen.
| It's regulated, but in the same way Bitcoin is already regulated in the U.S.: by laws (regulations) against fraud and abuse. But they're not "banking" laws
That's right. It's commodity exchange laws. Forex trading is not regulated by the SEC (bonds & stocks), Fed/OCC (banks), but it is regulated by the CFTC.
And there has been fraud from small-time forex & commodities dealers & brokers stealing clients money. And one big one: MF Global.
The unspecified "investigations" might actually be the crimes themselves.
And funny, advertising Bitcoins as useful for criminals also attracts criminals who like stealing things. It's as if cocaine trafficking were really profitable, and funny unguarded cocaine warehouses ended up burglarized too! Are those thefts also a government conspiracy? Or just theft?
Slashdot Mirror
| Except "real coin" isn't what we have --- we have fiat, which is no longer backed by anything.
Other than the collective agreement and binding contracts by the most powerful governments and private individuals on Earth, and a deep market for liquid and tradable property as well as productive real property.
Fiat currency is not "by fiat" automatically exchangable for a certain quantity of a certain kind of property with no market fluctuation allowed. But that doesn't mean it's not 'backed' by anything.
Bitcoin isn't by fiat exchangable for anything either---it only has constructed scarcity.
| The fed and the banks just will "federal reserve" monopoly bucks into existence.
Not quite "at will" but in specific economic & financial circumstances deemed to be legal and essential parts of commerce & business.
| But your implied argument is also invalid. "Free Market" does not mean "no rules" it means that you advocate for the minimum regulation possible while keeping opportunity equal for all involved. (Note that I'm saying equal opportunity, and not equal outcome.) Fraud needs to be illegal in a "free market".
Fraud needs to be illegal, and unprofitable and likely to be caught in a successful implementation of a good free market, and that often takes enforced regulation.
The problem is if, as is the case, a wholly deregulated "your loss is always your own fault" environment encourages free market businesses to engage profitable business models based on fraud and ever more sophisticated lying.
And this is bad for everybody except for criminals, and most sensible people (which excludes absolutist libertarians) believe that outcome is substantially worse than the harm from typical financial regulation.
Economists often use an index which does not to look at changes because the noise introduced by fuel and food prices in the short run obscures more significant economic signals. But all long-term deflators and considerations of purchasing power use full index.
If the governmental way is 'opaque', then why is it so obvious?
And given that there is in fact a free market in bonds which have inflation expectations built into their price and yield, what's the problem? Why do libertarians get so uppity about the 'value of the $FIAT_CURRENCY' as if hiding notes under the mattress should be a good solution? What's wrong with getting on with the rugged individualism solution and own investment property that isn't a $FIAT_CURRENCY_NOTE in your wallet?
"Because that works so well for every other form of currency, right? "
It works moderately. Which is better than not.
In the era of strict, actually enforced, financial regulation in the USA, which started with FDR and ended with Reagan, serious systemic financial scams, bubbles, frauds and failures were quite rare.
What's up with the absolutist mentality? Obviously when lots of money is involved there is overflowing motivation to cheat. Are police futile if they don't successfully catch and deter every single criminal?
It's the analog stages and clean implementation & power supply which makes a difference. And yes, 20khz is fine if implemented well.
< $100 with HDMI, SPDIF, no. 2-channel almost never has HDMI.
Schiit Modi at $100 with USB in only is quite high quality.
Used Emotiva XDA-1.
The other automakers didn't like it either but they have too much invested and too much to lose.
Tesla is the only new major automaker in decades anyway, and therefore the only one without existing dealer relationships which would be at risk.
| If we remove the dealer who is going to stock parts, deliver them, and install them
Um? An auto parts supply company? The distributors of the manufacturer?
| I'm sure you can come up with a thousand free market answers, but the fact is running that sort of business is _expensive_. Most of the obvious solutions become races to the bottom. Eventually either you stop getting parts and service for cars after 5 years or your start getting gouged in ways you can only imagine.
How would the economic incentives be different between dealers and a non-dealer parts supply company? Tesla would have an interest in supplying parts for N years by law or by sales because they don't want to inhibit sales because their customers are concerned their expensive purchases will be unrepairable after 5 years. They would make sure the parts are available.
And what's so special about cars compared to other equipment where there aren't franchise laws but there is a need for parts and maintenance?
(The answer is the profitability of dealerships and their campaign contribution habits)
Apple doesn't really seek significant revenue from litigation---it's not quite worth it.
It does seek to inhibit other phone companies from making phones which are too much like the Apple phone by making their profit margins smaller through litigation and patent license.
The car manufacturers are at the mercy of the dealers and dealer associations. In their heart of hearts, some would like to pursue Tesla's strategy or at least compete with the dealers.
You can punish the manufacturers but they can't do anything back.
Vehicle dealers and real estate developers are reliable large contributors to local politicians.
| I like how the naysayers are depicted as sober, rational minded individuals while those who see things progressing more rapidly are shown as crazy lunatics. They are both making predictions about the future. Why is one claim more valid than the other?
It's because the naysayers are the ones more actively working in the field and closest to the experimental and theoretical results and are trying to actually accomplish these kinds of tasks.
Obviously in 1895 heavier than air flying machines were possible because birds existed. And in 1895 there was a significant science & engineering community actually trying to do it which believed it was possible soon. Internal combustion engines of sufficient power/weight were rapidly improving, fluid mechanics was reasonably understood, and it just took the Wrights to re-do some of the experiments correctly and have an insight & technology about controls & stability.
So in 1895, Lord Kelvin was the Kurzweil of his day.
If in fact Dorian were Bitcoin's created, he wouldn't have agreed to talk with a reporter from Newsweek.
Some background on Newsweek. This article is the first for Newsweek's newly relaunched print edition, and the first under it's entirely new owners after bankruptcy.
a) Motivation for Dorian to out himself, immediately following a high-profile bankruptcy/crash/fraud at an exchange? None whatsoever.
a) Motivation for newsweek or reporter (reporter jobs are very scarce now) to somehow stretch the truth Putin-style? You betcha!
"Not trying to troll - why aren't there bitcoin deposit insurance agencies?'
The free market has spoken: the sound of silence.
Would YOU provide bitcoin deposit insurance? Or invest in a company which did? I didn't think so.
Actual insurance companies profit this way: They take in premiums. They model statistically predictable losses and try to welch out of paying them when they happen. They invest Other People's Money in the interim, and keep the proceeds.
And then, steal from their own creation!
Yes it is backed by the Fed's unlimited printing power.
The deposits insured by FDIC are backed by "full faith and credit of the US Treasury" like every Treasury-bond.
If the FDIC fund were depleted, the government would borrow/print money to pay off the insurance and then tax banks more to get it back.
I assume this is a satire, because it is a perfect example of the assertion.
|| Sometimes, even the government isn't big enough to fix our problems.
/. that preaches government should be small enough (for bankers, apparently) to drown it in a bathtub.
| That's just precious coming from the quadrant of
Franklin Roosevelt was big enough to fix our problems.
No, the government allowed banks to make poor financial decisions, which they are known to do because of short term greed.
There were extremely few systematic securities failures, bubbles, or bank failures between 1933---when FDR & Congress cracked down on the deregulation which contributed to the crash & depression---and the 1980's, when free-market Republicans started the modern deregulatory movement in USA. Since then there was widespread fraud in the 80's S&L crisis from industry-driven fraud, in the 1990's concentrated fraud in the stock market & tech bubble, and in the 2000's massive widespread fraud in the even more enormous systematic financial bubble and crash.
With each iteration fewer and fewer people were prosecuted for their crimes and little useful regulation applied.
| the other side is DNC backed regulations requiring banks to make unsafe loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back.
This is false. There was an equally huge bubble from lenders not subject to the Community Reinvestment Act. Why?
And in any case, unprofitable loans which the government MAKES an unwilling bank to do for social/political reasons will not remotely be promoted the way the subprime loans were, with massive commissions and bonuses to originating brokers. They would be hard to access with lots of fine print. Face it, the bubble & fraud came because lots of people in the private sector were making money from it.
The government failure was deregulating Fannie & Freddie to open their acceptance criteria for insurance. And this was in the name of having Fannie & Freddie act more like "free-market businesses" instead of "government".
"Funny thing is that Bitcoin was never designed to be kept in exchanges in the first place."
So how are exchanges supposed to work, as in guarantee atomic transactions: "X pays bitcoin, Y pays other money, and if either side does not settle then both sides of the transaction are undone".
RIght now, an exchange is like mailing in a gold bar to somebody on craigslist with a note, "please give me money".
Well, since the big thefts happen internally, those regulations would be the auditability of the bank's systems and accounts, the requirement to have intrusive government inspectors, often on-premises for months, government subpoena power under pain of imprisonment, and laws making for civil and criminal penalties for those refusing inspection or failing audit.
No, a fiat currency is one which has been declared to be currency and is agreed upon by the mutual opinion of people to have value, by "fiat'.
A non-fiat currency is one which has an intrinsic use and a currency use. For example, cigarettes, petroleum, cocaine or twinkies, could be used as trading tokens in currency or used on their own for non-currency reasons.
Bitcoin is unusual that it is a fiat currency but it cannot be printed indefinitely by fiat, without the mutual agreement of all the users on the planet which will not happen.
| It's regulated, but in the same way Bitcoin is already regulated in the U.S.: by laws (regulations) against fraud and abuse. But they're not "banking" laws
That's right. It's commodity exchange laws. Forex trading is not regulated by the SEC (bonds & stocks), Fed/OCC (banks), but it is regulated by the CFTC.
And there has been fraud from small-time forex & commodities dealers & brokers stealing clients money. And one big one: MF Global.
The unspecified "investigations" might actually be the crimes themselves.
And funny, advertising Bitcoins as useful for criminals also attracts criminals who like stealing things. It's as if cocaine trafficking were really profitable, and funny unguarded cocaine warehouses ended up burglarized too! Are those thefts also a government conspiracy? Or just theft?
Saying that Bitcoin is really *awesome* for criminal purposes in a way that regular money isn't is entirely true.