There’s a scene in Neal Stephenson’s “The Baroque Cycle” in which the 17th Century English economy is described as almost completely run from lists of debts due to the lack of circulating coinage. Welcome to the wonderful world of Bitcoin!
There is no such thing as a bitcoin. When someone says “I own a bitcoin,” what they mean is “I know the code or codes that can authorize the transfer of up to one bitcoin.” If you buy a “loaded” physical token for 0.01 bitcoin on eBay, the token contains a code. Neither the token nor the code is “bitcoin,” but the code enables you to transfer amounts adding up to 0.01 bitcoin to other accounts.
Bitcoin’s foundation is a public transaction ledger called the blockchain. Every bitcoin transaction is recorded on the blockchain and anyone can inspect the transaction history going back to the creation of the first block of the chain. Because the blockchain is public, bitcoin transactions are not as anonymous as some people currently in prison had hoped. Every new account is anonymous, but that anonymity will probably be compromised by the first transfer of bitcoin into it because the bitcoins in the source account probably have a history–and there are companies whose business plan is to delve through the blockchain to link accounts to owners and sell the information.
Here’s how the blockchain works: people with codes that control bitcoin create transactions. Transactions can have one or more input accounts and one or more output accounts. Newly created transactions are sent to the cloud of computers running bitcoin protocol clients and added to a list of pending transactions. Anyone can download a bitcoin protocol client and run it on their computer, but running a full “node” takes a lot of disk storage space and Internet bandwidth.
Some of the computers running bitcoin protocol clients are “mining” bitcoin. To mine bitcoin, one selects transactions from the pending list and packs them together into a binary blob called a “block”. The block is then scanned to create a “hash” value. The last digit of a 16 digit credit card number is a hash value calculated from the first 15 digits. This is how web sites can automatically determine if you’ve mistyped a credit card number.
The hash value created by scanning a block isn’t a single digit. It’s 78 digits long, and it’s unlikely that the first hash value created for a block will “mine” the block because there’s a trick. The bitcoin protocol tries to make it so that a block is mined every 10 minutes. To do this, the protocol periodically adjusts the difficulty of mining by specifying a maximum value for the hash value. In addition to the selected transactions, the block contains a counter. When a block is first created, the counter value is zero. The block’s hash value is calculated. If the hash value is less than the current maximum value, then the block is “mined.” If the hash value is greater than the current maximum, then the counter is incremented and a new hash value is calculated. Subsequent hash values created by incrementing the counter are essentially random values from zero to 1.16×10^77. The process of mining a block is repeatedly incrementing the block’s counter and calculating the next hash value until the hash value is less than the current maximum value.
“… What?”
When a hash value is less than the maximum value, the winning block/counter/hash combination is sent to the cloud of computers running bitcoin protocol clients, and the block is added to the end of the blockchain. The transactions in the block are considered complete and removed from the pending list. All the miners start the process over again, create a new block from transactions in the pending list, and commence mining it.
As incentive to mine, the account of a miner who successfully mines a block is credited with (as of this writing) 12.5 bitcoins. This is how new bitcoins are created. The number of bitcoins created for each successfully mined block declines slowly over time. Miners can also keep any change left over from a transaction. If a transaction specifies an input account that contains one bitcoin and specifies the output account should get 0.99 bitcoin, then the remaining 0.01 bitcoin is kept by the miner. This is incentive for miners to include the transaction in their blocks.
Most mining is done by groups of miners who join together in a mining “pool.” A central computer creates the block which is sent to the members of the pool. Each member mines using a different initial value of the counter. If a pool member mines the block, the result is sent to the central computer and the pool members share the reward in proportion to their effort. Anyone can buy a mining rig on eBay and join a mining pool.
Bitcoin mining is almost exclusively done by specialized mining equipment, and the price of bitcoin is directly related to the cost of the electricity required to mine blocks. If the exchange value of bitcoin rises to the point where it’s very profitable to mine, then existing miners buy more equipment or new mining pools are created. This makes mining faster and blocks are mined more frequently than every 10 minutes. This makes the bitcoin protocol increase the mining difficulty by decreasing the maximum hash value. This means miners have to mine longer to mine a block using more electricity and reducing profits. Miners must sell some of their new bitcoins to pay for the electricity used, so the price of bitcoin is ultimately related to the cost of electricity.
Fascinating stuff. I like the explanation of how the price of bitcoin is related to the price of electricity.
You can estimate the amount of electricity used for mining bitcoin from the current price. On average a block is mined every 10 minutes, or six blocks an hour. This creates 75 new bitcoins worth, at $11.5K/bitcoin, $862.5K. If 80% of mining profits go to the electric bill then that’s $690K/hour. Miners try to locate their operations close to cheap sources of power. If electricity costs $0.05/KWH then bit entire bitcoin network is using 13.8MW every hour.
I’ve heard there is quite a bit of mining going on in Iceland, what with sitting on top of a plate meeting point and an endless supply of geothermal power. Even Alcan built an Aluminum smelter in Iceland, where they have zero other inputs to the product besides labor and electricity.
Or cheaper
https://www.wired.com/story/cryptojacking-cryptocurrency-mining-browser/amp
I also found that pretty interesting. A lot of the technical stuff was, frankly, beyond me, but it was interesting to see what’s driving that market.
The cost of electricity is really a second order driver of BTC price. The code itself has a difficulty scaling algorithm which effectively stabilizes the price irrespective of long term swings in energy costs.
I get the general idea of bitcoin and thanks for the explanation, but I’m still hesitant about crypto currencies. So, for example, when you buy a bitcoin you get a code that I guess is saved to your wallet on your desktop. What if your computer dies or something- is there a backup to your code?
I had a friend of mine that was dabbling in the Forex market and he told me to buy bitcoin four years ago or something. I demurred, because I don’t have faith in the third parties. He’s probably made over $100,000 off of his first investment which cost him something like $3,000. I’m an idiot, but I just stick with stock index funds, because I trust the third party.
I am not given to trust technology – probably because I work in IT. I have a similar wariness of anything stored digitally. I spend all of my time cleaning up after computers that break, after all.
All banking is done digital now. The other investments that I own are all digital. For me, though, it comes down to how much I trust the third party that is holding that digital information. And I trust Vanguard or JP Morgan over some rando who has a website
No offense to the randos that run this fine establishment
Randos?
Fine?????
As in minute, small.
I kid. Everything is meant in jest
Catbutt him to Hades!
What the hell, Q!
Why aren’t you posting bitcoin inspired girly pics?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=663456.40
In the current environment, I can be reasonable assured of getting some form of settlement either from the bank or the taxpayer (via FDIC) if something goes “plop” and my account gets fucked.
Cryptocurrencies have no such assurances. I still don’t trust the computers.
The currency I would like to see is block chain based but backed by something (my personal idea is SPY, call them SpideyBucks, where one SpideyBuck is 1/250th of a share of SPY, so about $1.06 today) with the 3rd party holding the SPY and controlling the block chain.
This has the problem of government interference or seizure, of course, so is only as safe as the banking/government in wherever it is located (say, Caymans).
It solves the 3rd party problem while providing most of the benefits of BitCoin, sans the Black Market. And even that could still happen in small doses.
In the end the only value is where you can trade your SBuck for another market holding of SPY.. the guys with guns still control that, and can look at the transaction ledger and say… tisk tisk, this went though a wallet we associate with Iran (OFAC, drugs, crime etc). .. no payout for you.
You only need these transaction currencies when you don’t trust the other markets… If you are in a trusted market, the transaction costs of using the current market are much lower than the Blockchain.
This is something bureaucrats never figure out. The reason street gangs proliferate in very poor neighborhoods is in large part due to the fact that the drug lords are actually more trustworthy than the police, teachers, etc. that all come from outside the community and coerce their way into everything.
I dont trust $ because it is fiat.
I dont trust BTC because it is fiat.
I would like a currency that can be easily used digitally while having physical backing.
I trust block chain technology more than whatever security the credit card companies aren’t using.
When you combine all of that, you end up with something like egold (but with a better technology) or my SBucks. I havent figured out how to do a backed currency that isn’t susceptible to government intervention. But backed is a key element to me.
I’ve heard it said that you can write down your bitcoin codes on paper and they’re good for as long as you have them.
There are many people who also store their bitcoin offline on thumb drives, which seems the smart thing to do.
I tried buying some bitcoin through an exchange a few years ago when they were only 75 bucks. The guy running the exchange didn’t have his shit together and something went wrong, and he sent me back my money, and I kinda gave up on the idea at that time. Dumb on my part, I should have found someone else.
I keep the codes for my bitcoin accounts printed out and in a safety deposit box at my bank.
How long are the codes? People have told me that they are stacks of paper long. Is that correct?
Nope, just a few lines of random-looking characters.
If you have a good memory you can use a brain vault.
You can make backups, but who knows how many btc have been lost due to losing thumb drives or whatever.
None if you still recall your seed or private keys, the only way for BTC to be ‘lost’ is to burn every machine with a copy of the ledger.
Lots have been lost already:
https://www.techspot.com/news/72169-man-whose-lost-bitcoins-worth-85-million-wants.html
Read the article. He lost his key, he didn’t lose the coins. He lost his ability to control the coins – that is an important distinction.
If you can’t spend them, it aint yours.
sucks to be him
You can keep as many backups as you want… and for security your storage wallet should be offline… and any “online” systems only transactional.. cash in.. cash out when you need liquidity..
but if any of the backups are compromised.. then it is gone.
Owning BC at an exchange is like having cash at the bank… it isn’t really yours, and you can get a run.. (like Mt Gox)
Joe Rogan has had Andreas Antonopolous on a few times, and his description of the Mt GOX story was quite an interesting listen.
A bunch of trading card geeks with a server who got way in over their heads with something totally brand new that they didn’t even understand.
What is even more interesting is how the bankruptcy is being handled now that they’ve recovered most of the coins.
I hadn’t been watching the latest issues, I thought most of the capital was stolen via security holes. As with most banks, only working cash should have been online, and the “investment” levels kept secure. But I would also expect the banks to be run as old school Ponzi schemes on the EURO/Dollar reserve side.
They’ve recovered pretty well every coin that was taken by the group who did the hack. The owners had already been compensated in bankruptcy, at a market value of the coins at the time. Those coins are now worth something like 100x~1000x the compensated value, naturally the owners want them back.
I’ve thought about it a few times. The reason I’m still not jumping in, is that our all benevolent government could just declare crypto currency illegal at any moment and you’re shit out of luck, no matter how much time and money you’ve invested. And if it ever gets big enough, that’s exactly what will happen.
That’s another thing that worries me
Yes, but would that remove value, or send it through the roof?. Prohibition creates black markets. It depends on if there are alternate goods, and the quality of the substitution. Or are you thinking of sabotage? corrupting and removing the blockchain network.
I’ve thought about how they would do legal but monitored.. would they ban “authorized traders” from transacting with a list of bitcoin wallets are are deemed off limits. Would this create a pool of “cashable Bitcoins” and “un-cashable BC” How would the two trade?
Prohibition also increases risk – the unknown is how much risk is increased if a government were to declare it illegal.
Then there’s the “partially illegal” element that government prefers – it’s legal as long as they get a cut (defined by them, natch) of each transaction.
I wouldn’t want to take a chance on getting caught dealing in an illegal currency and wind up in federal prison. It’s certainly not worth the risk.
Aside from the weather, Danbury FCI is quite nice.
I’d even bake you a cake.
The long term trend of the price of bitcoin is linked to the power/efficiency to mine a new one.. But not the short term price.
but here are the problems:
From a practical point its is a Ponzi scheme. The only difference is that nobody was promised any value for their BC.. which in its way makes it a legal scheme. when it crashes, nobody will be leagaly liable for fraud.
Early miners were rewarded by orders of magnitude more BC’s for their effort as incentive. These early holders can easily swamp the market at any time that they unload, and they will eventually cash out.
Current valuation is tied to an extremely tight supply as most miners are mining and holding.. The price can only go up.
The system will have the problems of the “fork”.. what happens when a large enough group splits the code and protocols (That has nearly happened already)
Now, on valuation.. BC is essentially a transaction medium… and how much transaction tokens does the economy really need?.. remember wealth is in durable goods, not fiat currency.
The transactions that dominate BC are black market transactions. These will obviously over-value the trade tokens. Holders of BC are like builders of a condo.. who had 1 property trade at $$$$… and are holding on to 99 others… and think “this is worth 99x $$$$”… .. why don’t I build another hundred…
Or a firearms manufacturer… that looks at the black market for Glocks… wow!.. if I made 10000, I would really make a killing….
Well, releasing the 10000 would of course crash the market. BC in in that building to the bubble stage.
There are other structural issues, we will see where the thread goes.
How do you define a Ponzi scheme? Lots of people throw this term around with regard to bitcoin.
Its not intuitive to me that its a Ponzi scheme, which is an investment scam where current payouts aren’t made with investment returns, but with new investments.
Bitcoin is a fiat currency. Its value isn’t dependent on new people investing in bitcoin, except as they provide the demand half of the supply-demand equation. If a Ponzi scheme is anything that requires demand to have value, that’s a description of the entire economy.
It isn’t intuitive because, as you correctly point out, it isn’t a Ponzi scheme – which should be rudimentarily obvious. Bitcoin has features of a currency but it also has features of a hard asset and the utility of these features circumscribes the value of BTC. Chiefly, BTC is the ultimate hard asset because the slope of the supply curve is zero. Therefore, it is a really great hedge against inflation. If the value of these features is undermined then value will shift to whatever new thing does what BTC does but better.
Would it be better to say pyramid scheme (early investors were orders of magnitude advantaged over later investors)?.. Bubble economy? What I see is that there are some systemic issues in how the system was started, that will significantly distort its long term viability as a stable currency.
Where are the loans in BC? Where do I lend my BC capital to do economic activity for future returns?. All other tokens, gold, $$, Euro, are stable in this. If there weren’t systemic issues BC should be only equal to the cost to mine (capital+ energy).. If the current BC value is above the mining cost, you get more miners.. and the system corrects.. if the BC value is below the cost to mine, mining should stop until the demand of circulating tokens equals the demand for transactions.
Technically it is a fiat currency.. that is 2/3’s allocated (until there is pressure to fork and raise the limit) .. and by its nature is all M1.. How much value should 12M in M1 back?
I am of the opinion that bitcoin is in its infancy. There isn’t even a futures market yet, although there will be one soon. Judging bitcoin by the standards of mature markets is a mistake, IMHO.
The thing I see as missing in the design was that it was all M1 and needs other institutions for M2, futures etc.. How much cash is held in our current systems? People think of it as savings/investments, but as you know your $10,000 in the bank isn’t sitting there in stacks, it is loaned out to others. markets have a minute fraction of their wealth in M1
BC only allows you to hold.. or release. I think that the inflection points will be when it splits (the reward rate changes) and when the cap is hit.
Is there a structural limitation on velocity? or just a technology limitation? once the hard cap is hit there will be pressure for a fork, and/or velocity of circulation will control the marginal price.
It depends on how you define structural, the limitation on velocity is driven by using Proof of Work as the consensus method and that is a hardware driven thing. High velocity, without needing massive computing power, will use other consensus methods. Most likely what we’re going to see is shape shifting between BTC holdings and faster coins.
There’s a huge structural limitation on velocity. Blocks are limited to 1MB and blocks are mined every 10 minutes. A simple transaction is 600 bytes so there’s about 1700 transactions/block. This works out to about 3 transactions per second. There’s already been a fork to increase the block size. Bitcoin Cash isn’t as big as Bitcoin Original Edition but it’s still doing well.
A recent enhancement to the bitcoin protocol makes it easier to implement a second protocol on top of the bitcoin protocol. The Lightning Network will eventually make bitcoin transactions faster and less expensive:
https://lightning.network
But it’s been calculated that even the Lightning Network won’t be enough to match current transaction systems.
I’m ambivalent about selling my BCH into BTC after the fork. I feel like it might have been like selling Berkshire B shares… but I’m also not sold on the technical merits of BCH and it appears there was a lot of pumping on the KRW/BCH pair. Now I’m thinking it will draw smaller investors.
Purely my opinion:
I think that BTC will become the reserve crypto-currency of a massive ecosystem of other coins and alternative currencies. If you look at how many of the Initial Coin Offerings are done, they are already treating it as such. We have already seen these alternative currencies in MMOs where massive amounts of in-game currency can be traded for dollars. On Twitch you trade dollars for Bits, which you then give to streamers that you like, who then trade them in for dollars again. I think Amazon is almost certainly going to come out with their own coin in the near future, which would be huge. Other big companies will follow suit; Facebook and Google won’t be far behind.
I think that BTC will always be there as that reserve currency, but it will rarely be used to actually buy “stuff”. You will trade BTC for these other currencies and use them to buy the actual “stuff”. I honestly think that a single satoshi might be worth $1 million dollars in the not too distant future.
That is where I see it long term as well Psycho. There may be incentive to hold others like Dash etc with stronger privacy but there isn’t enough definition yet in the regulatory framework to know how things will move. In other news, one of the big risks to longterm stability seems to be going away – there is now massive investment in hashpower outside China.
If you want to lend BTC, there are a number of providers but obviously the market depth isn’t the same as FIAT. Most of them are overseas due to the inability of US regulators to not fuck things up, and as a result if you want to lend nine times of ten you convert to FIAT wherever FIAT/BTC pair is in your favor. BTC is not FIAT because it has intrinsic value much like a commodity.
Furthermore anything forked from BTC won’t be BTC – it will be a BTC fork, the value of which will be determined by the utility of the forked coin. BTC’s supply, at the limit, is mathematically fixed so you can’t expect it to behave like a typical commodity in the long run – you literally cannot make more. Early investors in things that later turn out to be valuable are always advantaged because they perceived the future value and predicted it correctly, that doesn’t make 1980 Microsoft or Standard Oil circa 1870 a pyramid scheme (although I admit that may be poor analogy, maybe I should be thinking uranium investment or platinum).
Where theoretical returns to previous investors are paid with new subscribers and ledger “gains” make everyone rich.
If there is not an actual economic action fueling the gains, only trading activity. remember that Ponzi was supposed to be dealing in an international arbitrage of postal response coupons. The fact that he didn’t actually buy the coupons, and the fact that if he had actually done 1% of the coupon trading the system claimed to be doing the arbitrage would have disappeared immediately.
Bitcoin’s are economic tokens. If the cost of using bitcoin for a transaction is less than the other market methods of other currency, ETF etc… then BC would rise.. if greater, then it should fall. if BC’s were being used for actual transactions then they would be limited by marginal users switching transaction methods… the fact that BC is trading in excess of the comparable tokens indicates the bubble and and a “Ponzi like” behavior.. as I said it isn’t a true Ponzi since people aren’t being defrauded..
As above, BTC has value above mere execution of transactions. And even if everyone were defrauded into purchasing bitcoin above market absent fraud it still wouldn’t be a Ponzi scheme because a Ponzi scheme is a structural thing. Fraud is necessary but not sufficient for a Ponzi.
“BTC has value above mere execution of transactions. ”
No, it has no intrinsic value whatsoever. At the very least I can wipe my ass with a Trillion Dollar bill.
You’d need several, those individual bills are not that absorbant.
That’s like saying the practice of fractional reserve lending has no value because you can’t wipe your ass with it.
I hate fractional reserve lending. It’s a catastrophe just begging to happen.
You’re the one conflating “practices” with “hard assets”.
Your assertion is of the of the form “intangible things do not have economic value.” I offered an example of an intangible thing which has economic value. The hardness of an asset is determined by its supply function – not by whether you can touch it.
No, it has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
I’m not sure anything has intrinsic value. There is use value, which is related to how you can use something, and there is exchange value, which is what something can be traded for. We usually refer to exchange value as “price” or “market value”.
Value, like meaning, arises from context. Your box of .45 bullets would have no value in a society with no guns, or it could literally be worth someone’s life on a battlefield.
If there is not an actual economic action fueling the gains, only trading activity.
To me, that’s a textbook description of a bubble (and yes, current BTC prices stink of “bubble”). A Ponzi scheme is a very distinct type of fraud, and I just don’t see it (or anything Ponzi-like) with BTC.
Some of your other questions are really driven by the way that BTC is a non-sovereign fiat currency, and the current financial system doesn’t know what to do with it. I think that get’s back to BTC being pretty much in its infancy.
Then I will retract Ponzi, I just get the feeling of that parallel from how arbitrage should have reined in the asset inflation if the asset was doing active market work of a commodity/currency vs other alternatives.
So the analysis needs to look at the NPV of the long term pool of assets. If the allocation rate changes are not slowing or stopping the rise then people on the long hold expect the NPV when the total cap is reached to be much higher than the current mining effort. What then is the long term outlook? A rise or fall to the velocity limited transaction price? That indicates we won’t have a stable system until the cap is reached.
Well, there is something odd about people “mining” a “fiat currency”.
“mining” suggests there is a scarcity and a limit, “fiat currency” suggests there is no (practical) limit.
Usually in Misean writing you will come across the phrase “any amount of money will do” but that really isn’t true. You need enough of something for it to be subdivided at a practical level. Five ounces of gold in a society of 5 million people is not practical, nor is 50 decillion tons of gold.
Blockchain just doesn’t seem like a practical solution to daily, weekly, or even annual transactions. It might make sense for things like real estate deeds/titles which on average don’t trade more than a couple times a decade; it might make sense for things like automobile titles or medical histories which for the most part have a finite life.
BTC may be practically subdivided up to something like 8 orders of magnitude. The lesser units are referred to as a Satoshi. The problem with BTC is that it is not designed to handle the volume of transactions required to run a large economy.
By my analysis that is correct. You won’t see prices stabilize until it is mined out, at which point the miners are just reaping a transaction fee and BTC’s growth will be strongly bound to global economic growth and the money supply.
If you want to “invest”.. treat it as a gamble.. put in $100…. wait for a gain.. take out the gain and only leave $100… Everyone right now is in “double or nothing” mode… the bust will be epic.
I have my ceilings set, and once the respective currencies fall below them, I’ll start buying in. I’m gonna put $50/month into it until the bubble bursts, and then buy up the devalued cryptos.
f a transaction specifies an input account that contains one bitcoin and specifies the output account should get 0.99 bitcoin, then the remaining 0.01 bitcoin is kept by the miner. This is incentive for miners to include the transaction in their blocks.
Is there variability in how quickly a transaction takes place based on the “tip”? Or is 0.01 the going rate regardless?
Huge variability but there is a protocol mechanism so that miners are compelled to include transactions without a “fee” as the transactions get older. Bitcoin clients will usually recommend the optimal fee for a transaction. Currently it’s 0.001 bitcoin per KB of space in the block. Currently that’s $11.50. A typical transaction is 600 bytes so a good fee would be $6.75.
Very interesting. Thanks!
Milk just shot out of my nose.
Ok, so let me see if I understand this. When you say “There’s no such thing as a bitcoin” you really, really mean it. In other words, a “bitcoin” doesn’t exist outside of the context of its transfer, or put another way, if I have 1 bitcoin what I really have is a collection of debts incurred by other people using bitcoin. There isn’t a “prime mover” original bitcoin that just exists independently of transactions.
And so the process basically goes like this:
1. Via a client, I send a message to the bitcoin transaction cloud that says, “Hey, I’m giving this guy a bitcoin.”
2. Said cloud sticks the transaction on a list of pending transactions.
3. Clients pick transactions out of the pending list, assemble them into blocks, and attempt to generate a unique hash.
4. As soon as a unique hash is generated, it is sent to the cloud with a big “Done” stamp on it.
5. The transactions are considered complete by all clients. The blockchain is the list of the generated hashes, which means it’s a list of the completed transactions.
So, here are my questions:
1. Are unique hashes a first-come-first-serve type thing? What happens if the same pending transaction is included in multiple, different blocks being solved by various clients?
2. Is the complexity of the hash the security of the transactions?
(1) Successfully mining a block with a low enough hash value is a first come first served thing. The bitcoin protocol has provisions to deal with two blocks being mined simultaneously. Every mining pool’s block will be structurally different but will generally contain the same transactions. Pools will select their own transactions first (to distribute profits to pool members), high-fee transactions second, and old low-fee transactions last.
(2) The hashing mechanism makes it practically computationally impossible for a pool to rewrite history by re-creating old blocks with new-and-improved transactions and then hashing them. Transaction security uses private/public key encryption to prove ownership of bitcoins and to authorize transfers.
The complexity of the hash actually provides network security by making it very difficult to write transactions to the chain. It filters out bad nodes. In that regard, it may be a component of transaction security depending on where you set the boundary. There are multiple interactions required to actually do the deed.
Thanks for those answers. I’m starting to have a better sense of what the hell’s going on with this stuff. Now if someone can explain Ethereum…
Isn’t it that purple stuff you find on Pandora in Borderlands?
The short, short, version is that it is a Turing complete computer with operations executed on a distributed ledger.
Replace “$10 from Alice to Bob” in the bitcoin block with “When Alice pays Bob, release Glibertarians.com footie pajamas for shipping to Bob’s home address” and you have Ethereum.
BEGIN
Replace “Bob’s home address” with “#6 home address”;
Replace “Footie pajamas” with “Colt Python”;
END;
So it’s its own escrow account?
Thanks Richard. I’ve been looking for a simple bare bones explanation for a while now. Much appreciated.
Quick OT on Masterpiece Cakeshop: Haven’t read the transcript yet (going to write something up once I do), but taking this from SCOTUSblog’s article on the arguments. Kennedy’s playing both sides, as usual.
So a member of the “Colorado Civil Rights Commission” is comparing refusing to bake a cake to slavery and the Holocaust.
This opens up the possibility of a narrowly tailored decision in favor of the bakery that doesn’t actually solve anything. Doubt that happens, but it’s a possibility based on Kennedy.
Colorado
Civil Rights CommisionKangaroo CourtThe ruling in this case, I fear, is a forgone conclusion: Phillips loses. I don’t think that people who ostensibly care about restraining government realize how devastating this ruling will be. Instead of trying to expand religious accommodation to cover all people of conscience (as recent cases have moved toward) some so-called libertarians would rather just say “it’s not fair that they don’t have to follow the law”. That is some statist bullshit
Agreed. Frankly I’m kind of surprised he didn’t bring a 13th amendment challenge to this since it seems to be forced labor on the part of the government. This will be a disastrous ruling if Phillips loses and, in that case, I’d like to see people asking Kosher delis to cater Neo-Nazi gatherings, and openly feminist bakeries/restaurants/photographers asked to cover MRA conventions. Encapsulate two rules for radicals; make the enemy live up to his own standards, and punch back twice as hard.
If only. There’ll be a loophole such as don’t have to provide services to groups that promote illegal discrimination or hate or whatever, but the underlying premise would be left untouched.
“(going to write something up once I do)”
I hope you mean an article. I’d love to read other perspectives on this case
wouldn’t that sign still be permissible under 1A? assuming there was no content-neutral sign ordinance.
after living the first few years (decades ?) of their lives under state oppression, it’s understandable that these members of the gay community would want to wield the fist of government force to get some payback now that the pendulum has finally swung back.
I’m not denying that there was active government repression of the gay community in the past, but that ended decades ago. Not being allowed to marry is not so much government repression as it is unfair treatment (that other groups still face). I’m not trying to diminish what occurred in the past, but that doesn’t justify turning the tables on others. The Mormons have a good case to start exterminating people in the Midwest or trying to overthrow the federal government, but they don’t.
And besides, this doesn’t even have to do with discrimination against the gay community as the baker freely serves gay customers. His only qualm is that he does not want to have to make a wedding cake for a gay union.
yeah, that was basically my point too but i took the lower sarcastic road.
the plaintiffs look on the younger side of things. the most oppression they’ve probably experienced in their short lives was having a gay prom separate from the straight prom.
^that last part is stolen from a Patton Oswalt joke
Unless Nazism is a religion, the claim that religious beliefs were used to justify the Holocaust is specious, at best.
With the worship of the state as god, and the elaborate rituals, it certainly looks like a religious movement. But the various breeds of socialism often require a level of faith that would make all but the most zealous evangalist blush.
Or slavery. The entire abolitionist movement was religiously founded. The Nazis were pagans who had nothing but contempt for Abrahamic faiths. I think the main problem here is that people suffer from a severe case of historical ignorance
The Nazis were pagans who had nothing but contempt for Abrahamic faiths. I think the main problem here is that people suffer from a severe case of historical ignorance
Such as your own?
The actual membership of the NSDAP was overwhelmingly Christian and concentration camp guards were not worshipping Thor in their spare time (that’s why nearly every concentration camp had a guard chapel and local priest, right?).
There’s direct quotes from several members of the conference at Wannsee (i.e. where they planned the Holocaust) about how they have to remove the Jews because they ‘reject the Christ’. This is not to suggest that religion was the central motivation in creating the Holocaust, Nazism was, nor does it mean there wasn’t criticism of the Nazi regime by many of them, but this “oh the Nazis were never Christians” horseshit I see peddled by modern Christians is such blatantly dishonest propaganda and image control.
(Also don’t tell anyone but the Nazis really liked Islam for some reason)
(And I should clarify that the reverse of the Christian argument, the New Atheist one about how Nazism was all predicated on Christian bigotry is just as retarded)
Membership in the Nazi Party was overwhelmingly Christian in an overwhelmingly Christian country is not a real strong argument. The Thule Society, which was the forerunner to the Nazi Party, was explicitly pagan. The Nazis created a new state religion to combine the various Lutheran denominations and they feuded with the Vatican over the appointment of bishops. To argue that anything other than statism was the basis of Nazi ideology is politicization due to animus
To argue that anything other than statism was the basis of Nazi ideology
Which is exactly what I said in the last paragraph. My issue is that broad statements about Nazis being ‘pagans’ with contempt for Abrahamic faiths that are not reflective at all of their actual religious beliefs is politicization of another kind. The Thule Society’s influence on Nazi doctrine was largely limited to the SS because Himmler was into it (Hitler, however, was not and explicitly saw occultism as stupid) The more common goal, at least expressed by Hitler and other Nazi theorists, was a Christian religion controlled and manipulated by the state to serve its interests. This is not contempt, but its use as a means to an end.
Declaring people to be historically ignorant while making broad, inaccurate statements is not productive.
the Thule Society’s influence on Nazi doctrine was largely limited to the SS
*Forgot about Rosenberg as well, the little shit.
Titor, you love to argue over minutia, which must be a favorite past time in Canada after drinking shitty Molsons and imagining how much better life would be in America. The Thule Society was very influential with the SA and the SS. Every fascist movement in history was irreligious, with the exception of Franco’s Spain, which was the oddball. To suggest any connection between Nazism and any variant of Christianity is a purposeful slander. If you agree on that, than I’m not really sure what your beef is other than the fact that you want to make it clear that some Nazis might have referenced Christ and one point or another.
Don’t be a stereotype of a bad atheist.
Just Say’n, nitpicking is a Glib favorite passtime. The Canukistanis don’t have a lock on it.
I know. I do it myself. I mean no offense
A few other points:
-Although no one can say what Hitler’s actual beliefs truly were, from everything I’ve ever read about him, which is a fair bit, he was not a practicing Christian and did not believe in the Christian God. When he invoked the spiritual, he spoke of a vague “divine Providence”.
-The SS was the elite of the Nazi movement. There used to be a joke in the Heer that there were two differences between the Army and the Waffen-SS: the SS had better equipment and no chaplains. The SS discouraged the celebration of Christian holidays and promoted neo-pagan “Germanic” substitutes, harvest festivals and winter festivals and the like. Now, you can argue that these substitutes weren’t widely accepted even in the SS, but that doesn’t change the fact that their promotion was official policy.
-To that end, the SS also encouraged non-religious wedding ceremonies for its men. Additionally, contrary to Christian sexual morality, the Lebensborn system promoted out-of-wedlock childbirth to increase the stock of good Aryan children. Racially pure young women were put into group homes and impregnated by SS men, who would have no responsibilities of fatherhood. The children would be adopted by Nazi Party members.
-Beyond the Thule Society, there was Guido von List. It is impossible to say how much influence List may have had over the young Hitler, but we know he was an influential part of the zeitgeist of early 20th century Vienna at the time that a young Hitler lived there and began developing his beliefs. His mysticism and occultism was a major component of many of the völkisch movement of that era, a movement from which the Nazi Party emerged. His influence is particularly evident in the interests of Himmler, with his obsession with runes and ancient Germanic spiritualism.
-As Jusy Say’n, um, said, Germany was a Christian nation and thus most Nazis were indeed Christians. However, the party itself continuously sought to reduce the influence of the churches on German public life via the means he mentioned. They created their own Protestant “German Church” to co-opt the Protestants into a theology that served the interests of the NSDAP rather than Christ. In addition to fighting the Vatican over bishops, they also tried to eradicate the Catholic Church’s influence by creating Nazi replacements for the Catholic social clubs and youth groups, making membership in the Nazi versions compulsory.
-It was fear of the influence of clergy opposition that led to them making the T-4 euthanasia program highly classified, and indeed it was outcry from the churches that led to the end of T-4 upon the program becoming public knowledge. T-4, of course, can be viewed as the trial run to the death camps that came a few years later.
Many Nazis were Christians, but nothing about Nazi policy and philosophy was grounded in Christianity.
In this, my time of great embarrassment, I beseech Thicc Edit Faerie to save me!
Titor, you love to argue over minutia…
…I’m not really sure what your beef is other than the fact that you want to make it clear that some Nazis might have referenced Christ
I tend to argue about history moreso than anything else, because I prefer accurate to blatantly politicized history. You made a broad, declarative statement that is not reflective of the reality. You’re choosing to make this a politicized debate rather than an argument of accuracy, which is the difference between an ideologue and a cynic.
Every fascist movement in history was irreligious, with the exception of Franco’s Spain, which was the oddball.
This, for example, is entirely inaccurate. Rexism in Belgium, Iron Guard in Romania, etc.
To suggest any connection between Nazism and any variant of Christianity is a purposeful slander.
And you declaring Nazis to be ‘pagans’ is not purposeful slander? If only Bear Odinsson was here, he’d burn a few monastries in response.
Don’t be a stereotype of a bad atheist.
Perhaps you should scroll up a little and actually read my statements in regards to atheism. You really do have the habit of completely ignoring statements I made so you can take cheap shots for no reason.
“This, for example, is entirely inaccurate. Rexism in Belgium, Iron Guard in Romania, etc.”
Well, then one would have to acknowledge these movements as being ‘fascist’. Mussolini didn’t think that the system Franco created was ‘fascist’. Mussolini denounced Franco as a ‘reactionary’. Which leads to a whole other argument over what is and isn’t fascism.
Regardless, I think chipwooder argued the case far better than I and I meant no offense if you took any.
How about that? Good?
Needs moar “fuck you, you lying prick”.
A minor quibble, perhaps, but: Franco is invariably described as a fascist, but I’ve always thought that was inaccurate. At heart he was a monarchist, which is why his chosen successor was Juan Carlos. He co-opted the true Spanish fascists, the Falange, into his own movement. The original Falangists under Primo de Rivera were kind of ambivalent about religion. They paid lip service to Catholicism and claimed to support freedom of religion. The hardcore Catholics were the monarchists (like Franco) and the Carlists.
Chipwooder, you make a fair point. I could see the argument for including Franco only because the Germans and Italians helped Franco seize power. But, even the Italians and the Germans disagreed over what was ‘fascism’ as the groups they supported in Austria openly fought against one another.
Here’s a relevant section from Wikipedia regarding Franco’s convenient use of the Falange towards his own ends:
Well, then one would have to acknowledge these movements as being ‘fascist’.
You make broad statements about the religious beliefs, or lack of thereof, of fascist movements, but then when I point to actual historical fascist movements (ones who actually were backed by Mussolini and the Nazis) you suggest I’m being too broad. I think we’re done here.
I meant no offense if you took any.
How about that? Good?
I’d rather settle for you actually reading what I say next time rather than having to repeat myself multiple times while you construct your neocon/atheist/whatever strawman.
In the end, to me Franco seemed like a pretty ordinary military dictator.
(ones who actually were backed by Mussolini and the Nazis)
The fact that Hitler and Mussolini were content to use groups like the Rexists or the Ustashe, which were both religious as well as nationalistic, to their own purposes doesn’t mean that the NSDAP and the Italian Fascist Party were themselves founded on a religious basis. They were nothing more than alliances of convenience, really. Mussolini was stridently atheist; Hitler less so but not in any discernible way a practicing Christian.
That was not what I said, I was directly addressing Just Say’n’s declarative statement. Nor did I say anything related to anything following that.
We’re just talking past each other and I’m out of time anyway, later.
There were some religious argument used to justify slavery by some of its apologists. That having been said, I highly doubt religious convictions had anything to do with why most people in the U.S. kept slaves.
“That, Kennedy suggested, would be “an affront to the gay community.”
You fucking assholes aren’t charged with preventing affronts to the gay community. Your goddamned job is preventing affronts to the Constitution but after that dumpster fire you crapped out on Obamacare I guess we know where you stand.
Sweet. Bookmarked for later…
OT
Anyone in the Chicago area: Comic Dave Smith will be doing stand-up at the Laugh Factory on December 8. If you intend to go, I will be the guy who is telling the bartender how Bombay gin is the Nick Gillespie of gin (that will be my code)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9tmqrTMQPs
Here was his interview at Reason as a re-fresher
I was just listening to his interview with Scott Horton.
Nowhere near Chicago, however.
“Bombay gin is the Nick Gillespie of gin”
YES. Why do people like Bombay, it’s disgusting.
Gin tastes like twigs.
Depends on the gins, different ones use different botanical blends, some are juniper forward, others anise forward, and some are even citrus forward.
Even if the flavor is reduced, there are other options for getting anise and citrus in booze that don’t involve an undercurrent of twig.
I was referred to Bulldog Gin a little while ago. Pleasantly surprised. Inexpensive, and makes a good martini.
Monkey 47 was surprisingly good.
*narrows gaze*
/clutching bottle of Bombay Sapphire
So, are you going to see Dave Smith?
In principle, I like the idea of bitcoin and crypto-currencies in general. However, I am not particularly inclined to buy in on the craze. Crypto-currency is just that, a currency. Currencies are not investments. Ultimately, for something to be an investment, to me, it has to lead to something of value being produced. If you’re buying a stock, you’re buying a portion of a company engaged in the production of goods or services. If you’re buying a bond, you’re buying the debt of either some enterprise engaged in the provision of goods or services or some government engaged in the coercive provision of certain “services”. A slightly different, but essentially similar story can be said of farmland, timberland or energy assets. In every case, there’s some future cash flow that is expected to be generated as a result of what is being done with the money invested. Even bitcoin mining (thanks for the explanation, by the way) strikes me as creating a future cashflow for the service of liquidity creation. But, a straight investment in bitcoin isn’t an investment, so much as a form of speculation. There isn’t a future cash flow to assess. Only the willingness of someone else to pay more (or less) than you.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with speculation. It’s necessary and useful to provide market liquidity (as well as being your right). But, speculation entails risks that aren’t readily predictable, controllable or understandable.
Repeat after me – BTC is a commodity.
A commodity is something I can have delivered and put to an actual use rather than a market fiction.
Pork Bellies are a commodity, I can make bacon from them.
Gold is a commodity, I can make corrosion resistant connectors from it.
Bitcoins are at best a denomination of account.
Whether pork bellies or gold or anything is a commodity or an investment/speculation vehicle ultimately comes down to what you do with it.
If it is an input to a process for making something else, its a commodity. If its something you plan to flip without using it, its an investment/speculation.
Yes, and commodity investing (yes, even gold) inevitably comes down to speculation, unless you’re investing in commodity extraction or processing.
Again, I’m not using speculation as a “bad word”. It’s not. But, what you’re ultimately betting on is the willingness of other people to pay more than you did. That has a bunch of risks that differ from other forms of investment analysis. You can sometimes make educated guesses about supply and demand. But, if you aren’t reselling your investment, you aren’t ever going to realize a return.
In my case, I’m betting on governments continuing to print money.
And again, that’s not necessarily a terrible bet. But, if a lot of other people are making the same bet, even if they change their mind about the pace at which they think governments will print money, you can see dramatic swings based solely on market sentiment.
Naturally. I’m not debating the short term stability or instability of BTC.
I think BTC is a currency. A non-soveriegn fiat currency. You don’t really “invest” in any currency under the definition of investment wdalasio is using. You can speculate in currencies though, and I wouldn’t be surprised that more money has been lost in FX speculation than any other kind of speculation.
To say that money is ‘lost’ in speculation is to look at only part of the transaction. Someone got that money when they sold the item to be speculated upon to the speculator. The speculator might not have shown a profit when he sold to the final owner, but the money was still in circulation.
I’m comfortable with the vernacular expression “I lost money on that trade”, even though the money is really just in someone else’s pocket.
Is there an ETF for shorting cryptos? Right now seems to be a potential opportunity.
You can always do it yourself on Bitfinex, their margin requirements aren’t terrible.
don’t do margin trading. You’ll lose.
the exchanges themselves run trading bots that wash trade the prices up and down in spikes to liquidate (and therefor collect) margin minnows
Hence my desire to start an exchange. Legal front running… Of course, Bitfinex allows you to do margin lending as well…
Two futures markets are starting up in a few days:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launch-bitcoin-futures-on-dec-10.html
the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent
-some super smart investor
Ahhhh, thanks
Need a volatility instrument for BTC.
Jeff Berwick has been following the rise (and corrections) of BTC for awhile now.
He’s like those ‘make HUGE money in real estate!!’ dudes.
He can be a bit over the top, to be sure. He’s like the Milo of anarcho-capitalism and BTC.
I thought Peter Schiff was the Milo of anarcho-capitalism, in the sense that he does stunts and makes over-the-top predictions? I like him anyways
Schiff predicted the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and his stunts include trolling OWS protestors on YouTube.
Works for me.
Bitcoin is roughly equal to the Wright Brother’s Flyer. It is a proof of concept. It won’t be whatever becomes “the” crypto-currency that everyone knows and uses.
This! Bitcoin is MySpace. You’re gonna be quite wealthy if you can pick Facebook out of the crowd.
That reminds me, I need to start encouraging people to use Minds.com so I’ll see a positive return on investment.
Thanks for this, Richard. It is a really good primer.
In your opinion, what will differentiate the newcomers from BTC? What do they bring to the table? Better security? Better and easier mining?
Both those things and more. Bitcoin mining is hugely energy intensive and I wouldn’t be surprised if future government interference is based on the “unfairness” of burning valuable power just to arrange bits. Think of all those children going cold in the Winter! Alternate ways of securing the history of the blockchain have yet to be validated, IMHO, but some of them are designed to be low-power.
Other crypto-currencies are designed to be more anonymous making it virtually impossible to link accounts with identities.
Ethereum was designed to be much smarter than Bitcoin with built-in provision for smart contracts, initial coin offerings, and easier ways of implementing protocols on top of the Ethereum protocol. Ethereum has had several security issues but if/when the protocol is foolproof it will be a mighty platform.
The reasons I’m not writing off bitcoin are two. First there’s a lot of money behind bitcoin and that money isn’t going to turn quickly to support an alternative. Second bitcoin is simple and well-proven. There have been a few successful forks that haven’t damaged the original edition. I think it’s going to be survivor.
Thanks!
Pump the exhaust heat from the servers into the orphanage.
I ran a mining rig last Winter. It was like a 350W space heater. When I first got it it produced 0.001 bitcoin a few times a week. At the end of the Winter the mining difficulty increased to the point where it was producing 0.001 bitcoin twice a month. When the Winter ended I couldn’t justify running it any more.
See, with that kind of heat you could build a rig, and a pump and make hash rosin at minimal cost.
Already being done… just not in an orphanage.
That’s….brilliant.
Now, put the orphans on treadmills to generate electricity, and you got a real solution.
Rick Sanchez has already put this idea to good use.
There is a Ukrainian company building BTC mining equipment into water heaters for home use as well.
Venezuela has already been shooting power kulaks.
Do they have crypto currency index funds? Does anyone know?
OT but has anyone else watched the latest season of Harmonquest? My question is whether it gets any better and whether it gets less…’social justicy’ and prog after the first couple episodes? Because it’s not like they’re just lecturing but the vague statements that come up out of nowhere are just dull and unnecessary for a glorified D&D game.
There’s a bit in the first episode where a portal opens up between a Baba Yaga’s house-on-legs weird thing and Harmon jokes that before he goes through the portal he ‘asks for consent’. Erin, said Harmon’s ex-wife and only consistent woman on the show (also seems to have zero career outside of ‘knowing/fucking Dan Harmon’, but I digress) says something like “I’m sad that that is considered a joke”. Which is retarded because the central point of the joke is not making fun of consent, but the idea that you’d have to ask for consent from a fictional non-sentient object for non-sexual activity. The entire room’s vibe is immediately brought down by the comment, like the audience has no idea how to respond to it (and these are probably California progs).
Next episode they had some Indian woman on who I’ve never heard of, but there were episodes in season one with guests like that. Every single joke she made falls completely flat. Looking her up she seems like a prog token but I haven’t seen anything else she’s actually made.
I’m just wondering if the dumb show is worth my time or if it’s just going to gradually fall apart because of the stupid.
Never heard of it.
“that’s sad that is the joke” is a recurring theme with humorless scolds. a prog friend on derpbook posted the Andrew Jackson portrait in the back of Trump’s speech honoring Navajo and i commented he was next going to honor Japanese Americans in the Roosevelt Room and her response was “it’s sad this is the joke now”. obviously i was just tweaking her about uberprog FDR who imprisoned 200,000 minority-Americans.
Had to search for those people on the Internet. All of this makes me want to smack young people around like so.
The idea of cryptocurrencies is interesting to me. I’m relatively risk averse when it comes to investing so I’ve stayed away, but it’s not hard to see that the future of monetary transactions may consist of cryptocurrencies. Governments are so feckless and have so much power vested into a central bank, that a decentralized currency that operates off a fixed algorithm may be more stable long term than anything. Think about the USD, it’s been the de facto world currency for what, 75 years? That’s probably the longest of any, and it won’t last with how irresponsible and corrupt the Fed (and by extension the US govt) is. It might not be BitCoin itself, but I could see digital/cryptocurrency becoming the world standard in the next 100 years.
If I were going to start mining, I’d start off with one of the lesser ones that’s not so expensive and hard to mine now. I remember way back when people were mining Bitcoin on their personal computer and actually getting some bitcoin. Then people had to get special rigs with several GPUs specifically built only to mine Bitcoin. Now a consortium of people with those machines is required to mine a single coin.
ethereum is a popular hobbyist miner coin, since it’s still profitable on a small scale (like $1-2/day for 20-30c/day in electricity)
Sounds like a good place to start. Will probably take a while before inflation control kicks in.
Nah, they’ll just microchip everyone and put it under the control of a Czar over a new mega bureau in DC. Basically if you do anything they don’t like, like owe child support or engage in any wrong think, they’ll just cut your chip off and you won’t be able to engage in commerce of any kind. They’ll also be able to track your exact location at any time and also probably be able to check if you’re having too many sugary drinks. WIN/WIN for the state, they’re all having wet dreams about it right now.
Discovered: Dianne Swinestein thinking about your plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6LylgJzQ4A
Sounds about right. I’m guessing it’ll be a mass orgasm when they really start thinking about it. I mean, you know many of the left are already thinking about it, and plenty of establishment Republicans probably think it’s a swell idea as well.
Wait… if I’m reading this right, it says if I try to buy something with these Bits, there is no way of kowing how long it will take before the transaction gets processed and takes effect, with the best you can do being trying to bribe people into giving it a higher priority.
Exactly!
Under normal circumstances with an appropriate fee most transactions will be processed in the next few blocks, about half an hour. Sometimes the list of pending transactions gets very long and the system gets backlogged. Then only a large fee will insure timely processing.
So that’s the selling point of Litecoin, right? That it processes much faster?
Or XRP, or Waves, etc…
We need blockchain transaction neutrality!
https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/938119786663432192
Credit where it’s due. Good on Soave
Yeah, good on him. And he’s doing a yeomanlike job fighting the good fight in the replies, too.
Color me surprised. He gets one libertarian point; still needs about 5000 more to get into positive territory.
he came out swinging but then this..
Robby SoaveVerified account @robbysoave
33m33 minutes ago
You’re not listening. I’m saying this is a case where the market provides the desired thing. In your hypothetical, I would say maybe government is necessary. If gay people can’t get thing X at all, okay, there’s a market failure. That didn’t happen here.
b/c gays have a right to buy cake from someone somewhere.. and as long as the market has at least one participant, then there’s no market failure ? but if there is a “market failure” (defined as what?), then the govt can fine and force someone to bake a cake for somebody else ?
i have to read some more of that feed. maybe Robbie expounds on that.
Yeah, that’s bullshit. If gay people can’t get thing X at all…. then some enterprising entrepreneur will open a business to cater to that market segment. There is no such thing as “market failure” except in cases where government interference creates moral hazards.
They’re throwing asinine hypotheticals at him. I give him a pass on that point. At the end of the day he is taking an extremely unpopular position among his peers and he is willingly advertising that. No cocktail parties for him anytime soon
Well, he’s making the consequentialist argument, not the deontological argument, which jibes with what seems to be the popular Reason/Cosmo take on libertarianism. Of course, the problem with consequentialism is that it’s always a moving target. It’s a poor foundation for ethics, but it lets you off the hook when you can’t come up with a viable rule that’s consistent with your ideological beliefs. So you don’t have to say that you think the government should force people to bake cakes or that maybe some gay people should get in the cake business because there happen to be cakes available.
Consequentialism rapidly degenerates into utilitarianism which can be used to justify any number of atrocities. This is why Cosmos can’t really be considered libertarian at all; they may get the right answers sometimes, but if their logic is faulty they can reason their way into horrifying things (see: GayJay’s Nazi cake debacle).
Yes and that has always been my problem with consequentialism generally. That’s probably the big philosophical divide within libertarian circles.
It’s somewhat disingenuous to claim that somehow, magically, there will be a vendor *somewhere* prepared to bake a cake. The issue is not that there ought to be somewhere, mandated by law, but that at some price point, someone will step up and fire up the oven.
It’s almost like the inverse of someone’s comment yesterday about auctions. “If you’re the one that gets to bake a gay cake, you’re the one who will settle for the lowest fee”.
Nonsense, it isn’t disingenuous at all. You offered to bake cakes up thread. Don’t tell me you’re going to Welsh on that offer?
“Don’t tell me you’re going to Welsh on that offer?”
If he is, we’ll just have the government force him to do it.
If I didn’t make that road – the government did – the government can bake the fucking cake too.
In your hypothetical, I would say maybe government is necessary. If gay people can’t get thing X at all, okay, there’s a market failure.
If he’s saying that, in the hypothetical remote town with one baker, the government should force the baker to make gay cakes, then he is committing a fundamental error.
Your rights are what you may not be prohibited from doing, not what you should have the ability to do. My rights do not violated if I do not have the ability to exercise them. I have the right to buy a Bugatti Chyron; I do not have the ability to do so. This does not mean that Bugatti should be forced to sell me one at a price I can afford. Hell, we don’t even have a Bugatti dealer in this town; does that mean that they should be forced to open one?
Robbie is always going to slip at least one ‘to be sure’ in everything.
Market. Failure. I hate that ridiculous term.
he’s getting some weapons grade command/control for responders..
ABJ @michgirlindc
41m41 minutes ago
I bet you would have something to say when I use the business tax credits and deductions bestowed upon me by the government so I could discriminate against you or you family.
b/c the benevolent govt let the cake maker keep some of his own money.
“I bet you would have something to say when I use the business tax credits and deductions bestowed upon me by the government so I could discriminate against you or you family.”
No I wouldn’t have anything to say. I’d go to a different vendor who isn’t an asshole and give my money to them.
I bet you would have something to say when I use the business tax credits and deductions bestowed upon me by the government so I could discriminate against you or you family.
I’m not sure how you could use tax deductions to discriminate against someone, but leaving aside the incoherence of his sentence (and likely incoherence of his thoughts), this is just “You didn’t build that” as a justification for the Total State to stick its nose in anywhere it damn well pleases.
Only one reply will suffice: “Fuck off, slaver”.
I dont usually twit but I couldn’t resist and said essentially that.
“Whomever people choose to associate with in a free society is none of your damned business.”
I am sure that will go over well with the crowd of jackboots there.
Nazi confirmed.
My question: is the DC journalist culture going to wear Robby down into the “BUT MUH CAKE” position, or will arguments like these harden him up to wear he sheds some of his wokeness? Failing that, will he at least learn how to change a tire?
Leisurely evenings as a cocktail bar fly or a life as an outlaw Road Warrior. Which is more likely?
You’d hope that the bitter payoff of cozying to the woke crowd would turn him away. It has others, I think, so there’s a chance. Plus what is he, 24? He’s got plenty of time for the dumbassery to be ground away.
Or even “…where he sheds some of his wokeness”. I blame autocorrect. It’s not active on this computer, but its absence somehow caused this error.
I went back into that tire-change thread, and this comment by The Late P. Brooks is right on point:
Unlike ENB, I think Robby has the right idea at least some of the time. His problem is that the libertarian beliefs that he does have bring him into conflict with people he considers his friends and social peers, which seems to distress the poor lad.
Principles or appletinis. Tough call.
“His problem is that the libertarian beliefs that he does have bring him into conflict with girls he wants to have sex with”
FIFY.
I imagine tribal instincts are what keep a lot of people away from libertarianism in the first place.
Damn. He really took it in the shorts in that thread.
Why is this comment here
Via Instapundit: ‘Foreign Policy’ Names Chelsea Manning Top ‘Global Rethinker’ for 2017. Glenn also gets in a good jab at the Tom Nichols types: ” These are the foreign policy “experts.” Is it any wonder people are talking about the death of expertise?”
That’s simply pathetic. Manning is beyond lucky that Captain Zero is the king of virtue signaling, otherwise he’d still be rotting in a cell. Calling him a “leader” or a “thinker” or anything remotely positive is beyond insulting to servicemen who do their jobs properly everyday. Manning is a traitor and a criminal. Full stop.
holy shit Russia was just banned from Pyongyang 2018
Great. Alternative Olympics.
Time for a consortium of nations (or better, private businesses) to buy a Greek Island, set it up as a permanent Olympic Center and have the AltOlympics every 4 years at that venue.
Is that like the Special Olympics?
I’m thinking more along the lines of the all drug Olympics.
Well, that takes some of the sting out of NHL players not participating.
KHL hardest hit
KHL will not take a break for the Olympics and will not release players.
Khartoum Hockey League?
Krakatoa Hockey League. Like, duh.
The payments to the IOC didn’t go through?
The IOC should have insisted on BTC. I mean, who takes a post-dated third-party check from some guy in a track suit?
^Pyeongchang
whatever
Potato, potahto.
The ’80s called, they want their foreign policy back.
Richard – not to get all on topic or anything, but you note that BTC carries a transaction history with it and so is less than anonymous. What are your thoughts on BTC “laundries”, where you deposit your BTC into an account and the account gets churned with other BTC. How effective is that in breaking the transaction history so that the laundry acts as a dead end for anyone tracing the BTC history?
Mixers make it more difficult to trace bitcoin history but not impossible. If values A+B+C+D+E go into a mixer and values very similar to A+B+C+D+E come out it’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on.
One of the reasons I think governments won’t ban bitcoin is that the transaction history is public. I think truly anonymous schemes like Monero are going to be stomped on hard.
The block is then scanned to create a “hash” value. The last digit of a 16 digit credit card number is a hash value calculated from the first 15 digits.
Nitpick: Isn’t that a checksum and not a hash?
All checksums are hashes but not all hashes are checksums?
Both. A checksum is necessarily also a hash.
If you’re interested in the technicalities of the terms.
OT: Banning yellow in Catalonia?
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-42219702/catalonia-elections-prompt-crackdown-on-colour-yellow
They can’t do that! If any colors need banning, they should at least start with ginger.
Given the Spanish climate, I don’t think they have a problem with gingers.
The ban might work then, unlike banning yellow.
Yeah, that’ll work.
… buys options on all the yellow fabric in Portugal and France.
Will everyone have to wear blu-blockers when the sun is out so they can say it’s not the Y word?
… I wonder if they use sodium lighting in Barcelona…
Bannng yellow? You’d think the Spanish government has enough on its plate without starting something with France. Do they have time to accept the surrender of France now?
The Green Lantern Corps is running Spain!
OT: The advertisement youtube selected for me was for a long-acting schizophrenia drug. I clearly hang out here too much.
Sorta OT: Anyone interested in buying a Mateba Unica 6 in .454 or an NDM-86 / SVD in 7.62×54? I’ll take payment in Crypto, or cash if you’d rather.
Some folks talked about this earlier, but I have a specific situation. I’m 95% sure I had an account with Mt Gox and put like 10 or 25 bucks in an account there to buy BTC years ago. I wanted to finally get in on the ground floor of something. Never did anything with it. Life happened. I don’t even know if I bought any coins or whatever. I just went to the actual website, but it has a notice on the home page that is lawyer speak, but it appears they are still in bankruptcy court so I assume it will be a while before thats resolved.
I don’t care about the money i put in but what if I bought coins and they are worth… *in my best Dr Evil voice* …millions? Any ideas on how I go about it? Anyone use Mt Gox before?
I will look into it more as I have time, not looking for anyone to do the work.
Did you ever actually buy BTC on Mt.Gox and were you a party to the earlier bankruptcy settlement?
Not sure. No.
This was likely when it all started years ago. i read that Mt Gox started in 2010, but I feel like it was before that even. Not enough brain cells left I guess…
Interesting in theory – thanks a ton for the detailed article – but until I can use something like this or any other crypto currency easily to buy a blu-ray from amazon or a DVD from “Small Serbian shop” or an import CD from yesasia or any of the dozens of other estores I use (not to mention buying gas at the pump) – even via paypal or something similar – it’s purely academic.
At least with gold, I can cash it in with “minimal” effort and carry out a “normal” transaction. I just haven’t seen that yet. (I think I may have seen one or two estores that listed BTC as a currency exchange – but with online security being what it is and BTC “Value” being what it is – would you trust your codes to an estore more than your credit card?)
Asking seriously? Because it just seems insanely impractical for normal consumer use even 10+ years later….
You’re correct in every respect. At this point in time bitcoin is not practical for consumer use. A few years ago it actually was practical but the recommended transaction fee is currently about $7. Right now bitcoin is a speculative investment with insane potential, IMHO. It’ll be a few years before it becomes practical again.
I would be interested to hear if any early adopters have cashed it out for something “techie” like a Tesla preorder or something similar.
I would have if I was a really early adopter, if I’d not been fucking lazy I’d be sitting on $62 million of ETH. But I was too much of a pussy to be rational. As it is I’ve cashed out some to buy my stealth Lamborghini but It’ll be years before I make my first million. That is, unless, any of you here want to start a mining pool.
“Every bitcoin transaction is recorded on the blockchain and anyone can inspect the transaction history going back to the creation of the first block of the chain. Because the blockchain is public, bitcoin transactions are not as anonymous as some people currently in prison had hoped. Every new account is anonymous, but that anonymity will probably be compromised by the first transfer of bitcoin into it because the bitcoins in the source account probably have a history–and there are companies whose business plan is to delve through the blockchain to link accounts to owners and sell the information.”
That a cryptocurrency like bitcoin is less subject to the inflationary pressures of government spending and problems like the 1997 Asian debt crisis should make it especially popular as a safe haven currency. I’d think that its portability would make it a popular way for wealthy Chinese people to get their money out of the country when the levee breaks to escape all the torches and pitchforks, too. The Chinese already buy huge amounts of foreign real estate for that purpose.
Bitcoin looks to me sort of like the appeal of driverless cars. I have little doubt that people will choose to go that route in the future, but I dread the loss of privacy.
I see a future where no one can communicate, travel, make money, or spend it without the government’s knowledge, and the government not being able to monitor something seems to be the most important protection against government control. Like I always say, the inability of the government to track our phone calls was a bigger factor in preventing mass data collection than the Fourth Amendment. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t buy or sell things without the government’s consent, and that seems to be only a step away from living in a world where no one can buy or sell anything without the government’s knowledge.
Talk about international free trade concerns? What if the government could control what people can or can’t buy inside the country?
Maybe it’s my fundie upbringing seeping to the surface, too:
Revelation 13: 16-17 KJV
Point being, that’s been a scary proposition for 2,000 years–for good reason. Here we are, knocking on that door, when the government involves itself in everything it is able to do?
It’s a cookbook!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIufLRpJYnI