Thanks again hawkie. Just to clarify a couple of things without repeating myself ad nauseum, I think it would be regressive if we moved to a system of trading gold and silver coinage and I agree there are significant problems with cash - though I don't see the increase in online trading requiring anything other than what we already have. And, there is no reason why a gold standard should be in the hands of the government, but it most probably will be if it is ever reintroduced. Basically my position is that any move to a system that is solely reliant on technology is a bad move for Liberty and any move to a virtual currency still requires some physical form, which may negate the whole process, call me a Luddite if you wish, that label won't sit comfortably on me but I'll understand. :lol: I'll agree that the one sole attraction to Bitcoins I have is that it is not legal tender, therefore removed from government control but that appears to be the only point in favour of Bitcoins. There's no denying that the lack of government control is a tick in the Libertarian box, but it's removal from reality and the necessity to operate in a virtual world is a cross. I'll move on to your next point - Bitcoins will be superior to gold in holding value (therefore accepting that they have inherent value in the first place), after I've watched a bit more of the video. Suffice to say now, I'm sceptical that they possess inherent value. Just a warning too hawkie, I can see our discussion going in circles at times. :lol: Anyone else want to chip in would be good too.
At the end of the day Shiney, I'm all for competing currencies. Anyone should be able to start one, of whatever type they desire, connected to gold or not, and let the market decide. Unfortunately, the governments of this world don't agree and mostly try to shut them down. E-Gold for example. Even Google was scared off from creating their own currency due to stiff regulatory requirements. At the same time their own currencies are breaking down due to the continual abuse they heap on them. Classic forced monopoly behaviour. So crypto seems like the only option. It would have been interesting to see what a truly free market in money would have developed but we'll never know. The person who is savvy (hey yip) about both IT and money, and there is a few of us around, has a huge advantage in being able to understand this stuff. At the same time it's still uncertain and in it's infancy. Maybe we are wrong. Maybe the market will end up saying no. Like all investments, you have to put in the hours of research and then make your best guess and then keep an eye on developments. That's all I've done, I put my reasoning on here along with others and people can make of it what they will. No guarantees I've got it right. Oh, btw, I said Bitcoins will be superior to cash at holding value, not gold. One can be inflated at will and the other is cryptographically restricted to a certain amount. That's why I think of bitcoin as a cross between cash and gold taking each's best qualities but not having their downsides. EDIT: also wanted to say I've been a fan of Doug Casey for awhile and I have even more respect for him after listening to this podcast.
As Gavin Andresen the lead developer has said himself, it is an experiment. What I find interesting is that Satoshi could have formed a company (in which he held the majority of stock) and put the bitcoin IP into it with the hope of becoming Zuckerberg rich. Instead, he released the IP to the world but (probably) holds a large number of the bitcoins. The Bitcoin Co path would have had the advantage of Satoshi as CEO being able to dictatorially control the development, branding ie herding the cats. The path he took instead is an anarchistic organisational model, where it is a free for all. The problem is that you get uncoordinated development and product extensions and the crap ones damage the brand. It is an experiment in a leaderless organisational model, true libertarianism. It will be interesting to see if it can work and end up producing a product the mass market will use.
I beg to differ. Yes to the organisational model, philosophy of the product and it's use in it's defined market, but it's a huge no to any attempt at wider applications, ie every day use.
I wanna weigh in on this debate with a (maybe) unique perspective. I am a Christian. God created money in the form of Gold and Silver Metal - God is 100% trustworthy, and all powerful/all knowing. Many people say a belief in Gold and Silver is equivilent to 'RELIGION' - and that is true. Believing in Gold and Silver is a form of reverting to God's authority as opposed to the authority of people (who are becomming increasingly immoral). Bitcoin vs Gold Fiat vs Money Man Vs God God is going to win, Real Money is going to win, Gold is going to win The idea that man can 'reinterpret' 'redefine' 'deconstruct' 'create from nothing' has always been shown to be corruptable. But what God does has lasted forever, AND has attracted intense hatred from rebellious mankind. Creator is hated, Jesus the King is hated, Bible is hated, Gold is hated, ten commandments are hated, Christians are hated, etc etc etc Mankind loves Evolution, Mankind loves government, mankind loves philosophies, mankind loves leftism, mankind loves humanists/naturalists etc etc etc God, Gold, Jesus, The Bible, the Ten Commandments - are honest and applied universally - this is why mankind hates them - everyone wants to be their own King, their own God, their own Law, and Rich. The commentators are right - Gold IS financiers 'getting religion', I dont 'believe in Gold' I believe in the God who created Gold. I dont believe in fiat like I dont believe in Bitcoin. I want honest money, I want honest laws that applied to everyone, I want freedom of conscious and participation. thats my two cents of worthless fiat
If it had of gone that way, many of the current Bitcoin supporters probably wouldn't have been interested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a huge support base precisely because it's completely decentralized and open source. I personally couldn't see how a bitcoin P2P network would have flourished under such a centralized model? The term "anarchistic" encompasses many different aspects. I get the impression you're saying Bitcoin is an unorganized, chaotic system. This couldn't be further from the truth. If anything the bitcoin P2P network is orderly, systematic, and behaves in predictable manner. Despite having a diverse range of clients. Quite the opposite. Having a diverse range of bitcoin nodes creates a stronger P2P network. Whereas one uniform client may be susceptible to vulnerabilities. There is no need to wait and see. Bitcoin is here and now. It's proven, working, consistent, reliable. It has a $1-2 billion dollar market cap (depending on which day you check the prices). And it already has a very strong user-base.
I think bron's use of the term anarchism is in relation to free association of members as opposed to state controlled coercion - not lawlessness.
Wouldn't have worked. You'd have the state breathing down your neck at every turn, taking you to court for money-laundering and such. At the same time, open source currencies would be able to take the idea and set themselves up and people would flock to them rather than the centrally controlled version. At least people like myself and many others on bitcointalk. Satoshi, whoever he/she/them was, knew what they were doing. They had all the angles figured out.
Yes. To use an analogy... Arranged marriages is control. Non-arranged marriages is anarchism. I mean, we can't not have arranged marriages... how will people get married in such a world? Anarchism is no rulers, ie whenever there is a situation where you get to make the decision for yourself, that is anarchism. When someone makes the decision for you, that is control.
and that arbitrary limit is based on what exactly?? Instead of 21 million why not 22 million or 220 million? or ten thousand? at least if its based on gold then that will limit the amount of bitcoins to how much gold is backing it. One prerequisite for something to be money is that it must be - of itself - something with tangible value. Bitcoins satisfy one of the other requirements to be money, and that is that there must only be a finite amount of it available, and it must be hard to come by... However, it fails the requirement of being of tangible value, so bitcoins will never be money - unless they are 100% backed by gold.
Apparently it is algorithmic. Now to me that means once the full allocations of bitcoins have been produced, the algorithm then shuts down ie like a password that's expired, it just won't work. That's in theory anyway.
Who says a gold standard has to be controlled by the state? It definately should NOT be. A gold standard would stop the government stealing money via 1. inflation 2. deficit spending
I think it's intrinsic value, not necessarily tangible. 95% of gold's value is based on investors. Less that 5% is used in industry. So in that sense there's not a lot of difference between gold and bitcoin. They're both valuable because a certain number of people believe they're valuable, and they're both in limited supply.
Most people who've tried to setup a private gold standard have gone down for money-laundering or similar type crimes. Even though we know it's nonsense of course. If there was someone for the Federales to target for bitcoin I'm sure they would do so.
Let's say for argument's sake that only the devil exists. Let's say the devil decides to create a universe (since he's all powerful) for his own amusement where lots of people die and get killed and suffer etc. Then let's say he appears to some of the people, when civilization is still very primitive and he calls himself God and gives them certain instructions and does certain immoral things (like killing a whole lot of innocent people by drowning everyone) but says he is good. Basically, he's like one of those evil people who is always giving conflicting messages. Do as I say not as I do. How do Christians know that the above reality is not the true reality? Remember this is an all-powerful being. He can essentially do whatever he likes and make people think whatever he wants. And let's say one of us with all our modern gadgets went back to that period of time. The people would no doubt think we were a god. In fact, there are modern manifestations of this in the cargo-cults of the 20th cen. If a god did appear, how would we know it was God and not some very powerful being playing tricks on us with technology so advanced we can't conceive of it. The universe is a big place, so you can't say it's not possible. So even if you claim the bible is proof, it's not really proof of anything when you think about the actual possibilities.
If there was only evil ie 'satan' - there would be no creation because evil doesnt have the motivation to intricately design it all. Things in our world are so complex and intricate - its obviousle that if there is a creator - that creator would be 'good'. Evil would never kill evil people and save a good guy and his family. Is it not true that you are trying to hypothecate a 'god' who cant really exist? There also wouldnt be any motivation other than love and care because an all knowing being doesnt need to create something to learn something new. Learning something would be impossible for an all knowing all powerfull being. I doubt people would think you are a god, people had a massively hard time believing Jesus was God despite his 'signs and wonders'. People knew he was God when he was ressurected from the dead. Dead men dont rise to life - you dont have to have a medical degree to know that. The other way we would know God was God, is because Time itself is a physical property (mass acceleration and gravity) so if God is spirit (would have to be because God cant pre-exist the creation of matter, if he is made of matter) - therefore God is completely outside of the time domain - which he exploits for authentication - ie declaring the end from the beginning. I never said the Bible is proof, but thinking of the actual possibilities - no i dont believe anything is actually possible. And yes you can proove the Bible is superintended from a being outside space/time. Christians know that the biblical reality is real, for exactly the same reason anyone can know it is real - when the bible is read and obeyed, the consequences or effects are true. For example God actiually does speak to people, but only to people who diligently seek him. Which from your possition i understand, its an unfalsifiable idea if you are completely unwilling to test genuinely that hypothesis. So I can only realy tell you about God speaking to people, you probably have never experienced it. Therefore I understand how hard that would be to accept, if you dont believe the reality in the first place. The truth is if I dont believe you yourself exist, you writting the above message - i could easily explain away by some rational logical method - it would just be removed from reality - be cause you obviously do exist. But lets not get into a debate.
As much fun as it is to debate the merits (or non-merits) of the onotological, cosmological, moral and appearance of design arguments, I will keep to the thread topic (for once). In terms of personal preference and current systems I'm essentially in Shiney's camp. As I posted in the Bitcon thread, although I see Bitcoin as a viable form of money until we have a fully internet connected world and/or are having interplanetary civilisations and trade, the potential for virtual currencies with no meterial backing like Bitcoin is limited compared to material currencies that can be traded virtually. The changing nature of the way the economy does business is a current strength in the rise of bitcoin but it is also a hinderance as it is technology dependent. Admittedly, openly transferred digitally encoded information seems highly likely to be here to stay, but peer to peer open transfer (or whatever the technical terms are) can be stopped overnight by a particularly virulent computer virus that encourages everyone to substantially reduce the level of digital sex. http://www.mises.org/daily/6399/The-Moneyness-of-Bitcoins
