Rant: politicizing gun violence

[Lucyfish]

 

Edited December 14, 2015 by Lucyfish

[AlexInsane]

On 12/13/2015 at 11:46 PM, Rassah said:

Depends on where. You'd be very unhappy in Greece, probably a bit angry in France, and probably suicidal in Sweden or Finland.

Yeah, but, y'know, I'm all those things already. And I'm here. So really, being one out of three in the other places is not that bad. 

[Rassah]

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

You can't get a brand new Tesla for 12K OR LESS on OpenBazaar. Let me know when you can.

You, uh, don't judge a business platform by what you can do with it now. Otherwise you end up like Kodak, which invented the digital camera in the 80's, said "you can't get good resolution on that" and completely dropped the idea until it was killed by other digital camera manufacturers. 

Also, incidentally, I would be concerned about a $12k Tesla being stolen. Unless your auction site is a penny auction site, in which case you're working for scam site. In which case, yeah, OpenBazaar (which, in case you don't know what it is, is eBay merged with BitTorrent) is not a threat to you.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

Next up: Man can make it, man can break it Think otherwise all you want, history has proven your line of thought wrong every time.

Yep, and Bitcoin had many broken things found. So what? It's an open platform, so they were quickly fixed. And more things will be fixed in the future. I'm just saying that your claim that it has been powned by black hats in secret and can be taken down at any time is BS. Hell, the claim that it can be taken down permanently is BS and evidence that one doesn't understand what it is or how it runs. Or evidence that someone (a developer no less) doesn't understand the difference between a product and an open source protocol.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

Part of 'BitCon' is in the pretend commodity, because this is a completely shallow, liquidless market. When you know that there’s, what, 13 million coins in circulation, and more than 50% of the them are owned and managed by about 950 people, you realize how shallow the market it is and how subject the market is to manipulation.

Er, I guess $50,000,000 in trades a day is shallow, but so what? It started at zero, with 5 people owning 100%, and it's continuing to grow without slowing down. Who cares as long as it keeps growing and being adopted? Did you claim internet or email was worthless because only a few hundred computer nerds used it at some point?

Bitcoin is great at separating those who can understand technologies' potential, from common ludites who have no vision or imagination who dismiss things out of hand.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

It’s essentially a pump and dump scam.

How does the dump part of it actually work? Let's say I dump a bitcoin at $500. That requires someone to pay $500 for it, and means now someone else has a bitcoin valued at $500. If they dump it at $500, it's still valued at $500. And whoever owns it can actually spend it directly (at Microsoft, Dish, Expedia, Starbucks, Amazon, Target). Dumps only work if you end up with something you can't spend or sell, but that's impossible with bitcoin.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

And then I see these snake oil salesmen like the Winklevoss twins get on TV and tell people that bitcoin is going to be worth $40,000 per coin. And nobody is challenging them, asking, “What are you smoking?” Bitcoin isn’t an investment, it’s a slot machine. Or, more accurately, a loaded roulette wheel.

Waaaait, you think bitcoin price is totally random, and it's valuation is pulled out of thin air? Do you know why they claim that it will be worth that much? Did you look at their business comparisons, asset valuation, technology assessment, economic development, and other stuff? You kinda have to know that to challenge them on it. Sure, you can ignore the actual business/asset valuation and simply say "What are you smoking?" and claim it's all random numbers, but then you'll just sound like an uninformed idiot.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

But it’s not a classic pump and dump because there is a base of ideological support for bitcoin. At the very least, there is a motivated group of people who want bitcoin to succeed, and aren’t just speculating. Rassah is one of these people.

Hundreds of thousands of people with ideology, who are supporting, financing, and developing an open source project, regardless of whether they even get paid to do it... Kinda sounds like Linux. How did that turn out?

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

Rassah is part of the libertarian faction that drives the support for bitcoin. One of his supposed colleagues, Jon Matonis of the Bitcoin Foundation, has suggested that bitcoin is signaling the start of a post-legal-tender era. Where? In what country?

Um, that's kinda the point of post legal tender. In NO country. Legal tender is restricted by borders. Bitcoin, like email and internet, is not. Isn't it funny how we can communicate and deal with people all over the world without caring where they are, until it comes to the point of having to exchange money? That's what post legal tender means. Like with the rest of the internet, you no longer need to care which legal tender area the person you're doing business with resides in. You can pay them, in seconds, without institutional risk or intermediaries.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

There’s not a legitimate economist of any note on the planet that thinks it’s a real currency.

Except, like, a ton of them? Also, Bitcoin has been hilariously awesome at proving economists wrong  Like the "bitcorn" guy who predicted that it will be worth $10 by last summer. Or the guys who claimed it's deflationary property will kill it because "why spend today when I can buy more tomorrow," when deflation actually increased spending thanks to "wealth effect."

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

That same anarcho-libertarian wing of the bitcoin party tends to believe in Austrian economics, but the three most prominent descendants of Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek say it is not money, and Hans Herman Hoppe, another Austrian economist, says the same thing.

Because they were stuck on gold and didn't understand bitcoin before, but now do and actually do say it's money. There's plenty of Austrians who, like you, don't understand what it is, so it's not surprising they're confused. But bitcoin fits all the definitions and requirements of money perfectly.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

So while the most enthusiastic supporters of bitcoin say Austrian economics matters, actual Austrian economists say that bitcoin doesn’t matter.

Yeah. Back in 2013.

9 hours ago, 6tails said:

It's a wonderful thing when the actual experts shit all over their supporters.

"Actual experts"

It's a wonderful thing when self described experts make uninformed claims, and make fools of themselves and those who listen to them. Remember the expert who claimed the internet won't have much more of an effect on business than a fax machine?

Incidentally, in all of that, you forgot to actually explain why Bitcoin is actually worthless, or doesn't work, or has been hacked...

[Dr. Doggo]

im too drunk to study economics

but i ask rassah if id be better off with buttcoins or not

i heard something like one coin is like 400 bux, but that was a while ago

isn't buttcoin unstable as FUCKKK??!?!

i'd rather invest in ammunition or nonperishable goods to prepare for the economic crash

[Rassah]

52 minutes ago, Sir Gibby said:

im too drunk to study economics

but i ask rassah if id be better off with buttcoins or not

i heard something like one coin is like 400 bux, but that was a while ago

Yeah, that was, like, a week ago. It's $460 now. And it was hovering around $250 throughout Spring and Summer. Looks like it may be starting another price runup, and who knows where it'll end up this time.

Quote

isn't buttcoin unstable as FUCKKK??!?!

Somewhat. It's still small, but the bigger its been getting, the more stable its been getting (like big company stock vs small company stock). Besides, you don't want an investment to be stable. That just means it's not growing. And unstable in the upwards general direction is fine.

Quote

i'd rather invest in ammunition or nonperishable goods to prepare for the economic crash

That's fine too. Though I don't expect a Mad Max level of collapse...

Edited December 15, 2015 by Rassah