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Tim Hortons and Bitcoin Megathread


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On 3/19/2018 at 8:11 PM, Revates said:

I didn't know crypto currency was such a large facet of so many people's personalities.

I guess in a way it's kind of like furry. Nerds geeking out over a specific genre, thinking they're special or are involved in something great, where most outsiders don't really understand them, causing them to form a tight-knit community around which they base a part of their identity. Pretty much like any other fandom.

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17 hours ago, Rassah said:

I guess in a way it's kind of like furry. Nerds geeking out over a specific genre, thinking they're special or are involved in something great, where most outsiders don't really understand them, causing them to form a tight-knit community around which they base a part of their identity. Pretty much like any other fandom.

I feel like you took offense to that, I was genuinely surprised, especially enough people to warrant crypto furs.

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The funny thing is there might be some actual use for a record-keeping system consisting of blocks of content with a cryptographic hash of the previous block along with some metadata.

That being said the amount of hype around what is essentially a record-keeping system is insane. It'd be easier to take it seriously if there weren't so many vocal believers attaching messianic hope to it, mostly thanks to cryptocurrency mania.

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6 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

That being said the amount of hype around what is essentially a record-keeping system is insane. It'd be easier to take it seriously if there weren't so many vocal believers attaching messianic hope to it, mostly thanks to cryptocurrency mania.

No kidding.

zt4qrql0wvajb5tzkv0t.jpg

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On 3/23/2018 at 7:10 AM, Revates said:

I feel like you took offense to that, I was genuinely surprised, especially enough people to warrant crypto furs.

I didn't take offense, no. Just pointing out that it's like any other fandom. Even including the drama, unfortunately 😂

 

On 3/23/2018 at 12:34 PM, WileyWarWeasel said:

That being said the amount of hype around what is essentially a record-keeping system is insane. It'd be easier to take it seriously if there weren't so many vocal believers attaching messianic hope to it, mostly thanks to cryptocurrency mania.

A lot of people are really upset with banks, QE, inflation, currency restrictions, and in many countries with having really shitty currency. Especially after 2008 and the continuing economic, banking, and financial fallout. So I think people being excited about an alternative version of money that gives them freedom from restrictions or worries about their local politics is pretty easy to understand. It may even be a sign of just how bad things are economically around the world, and just how much distrust there is for banks and governments around the world.

 

On 3/23/2018 at 1:41 PM, Socketosis said:

Um, so? There's a lot of child (cub) porn in furry fandom too. Let's ban that?

This is actually old news that everyone who's been around as long as I have knew about back when it happened (likely placed there by SomethingAwful specifically to attack Bitcoin). We don't care. The point of BTC is that it's impossible to ban or sensor. If it was designed to withstand the ire of entire governments who fear losing their central banking and tax controls (the two things that literally keep them alive), who cares about some people being upset about links?

BTW, you should check out StorJ and MaidSafe. Those are designed to store any file or data in a way that is publicly available, but can't be stopped, censored, or deleted by anyone but the anonymous owner. Once those come out, laws against "illegal information" will be useless too.

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4 hours ago, Rassah said:

A lot of people are really upset with banks, QE, inflation, currency restrictions, and in many countries with having really shitty currency. Especially after 2008 and the continuing economic, banking, and financial fallout. So I think people being excited about an alternative version of money that gives them freedom from restrictions or worries about their local politics is pretty easy to understand. It may even be a sign of just how bad things are economically around the world, and just how much distrust there is for banks and governments around the world.

The distrust is warranted to a degree. Too bad the world economy is weighed down by real problems (eg diminishing returns, high levels of interdependence, increasing systemic costs such as pollution and aging infrastructure) that won't go away even if a sizable percentage switch to bitcoin or some other currency.

I suppose a major part of people's reactions to the way the world economy is going is that it is human nature to blame other humans for just about everything, rather than looking at impersonal forces like diminishing returns or finite resources.

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On 3/26/2018 at 5:21 AM, WileyWarWeasel said:

The distrust is warranted to a degree. Too bad the world economy is weighed down by real problems (eg diminishing returns, high levels of interdependence, increasing systemic costs such as pollution and aging infrastructure) that won't go away even if a sizable percentage switch to bitcoin or some other currency.

I suppose a major part of people's reactions to the way the world economy is going is that it is human nature to blame other humans for just about everything, rather than looking at impersonal forces like diminishing returns or finite resources.

I think bitcoin will greatly increase interdependence. I'm actually really looking forward to that. And if it causes a massive increase in tax evasion, defunding governments and forcing them to sell off their infrastructure, that will solve the "aging infrastructure" problem too.

I'm not sure what you mean by diminishing returns, or believe that pollution is an increasing problem. But I know that finite resources is not a problem.

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5 hours ago, Rassah said:

I think bitcoin will greatly increase interdependence. I'm actually really looking forward to that. And if it causes a massive increase in tax evasion, defunding governments and forcing them to sell off their infrastructure, that will solve the "aging infrastructure" problem too.

I'm not sure what you mean by diminishing returns, or believe that pollution is an increasing problem. But I know that finite resources is not a problem.

You think that governments won't just come up with a way to tax bitcoin?

multiple-women-laughing-with-salad.jpg

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8 hours ago, Rassah said:

I think bitcoin will greatly increase interdependence. I'm actually really looking forward to that. And if it causes a massive increase in tax evasion, defunding governments and forcing them to sell off their infrastructure, that will solve the "aging infrastructure" problem too.

I'm not sure what you mean by diminishing returns, or believe that pollution is an increasing problem. But I know that finite resources is not a problem.

For some reason I can't be bothered making a wall of text to explain things like diminishing returns or resources. Forget it.

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9 hours ago, Rassah said:

I think bitcoin will greatly increase interdependence. I'm actually really looking forward to that. And if it causes a massive increase in tax evasion, defunding governments and forcing them to sell off their infrastructure, that will solve the "aging infrastructure" problem too.

I'm not sure what you mean by diminishing returns, or believe that pollution is an increasing problem. But I know that finite resources is not a problem.

I can't wait for the competitive infrastructure market, there will be 6 different motorways from here to Brisbane, all owned by different companies, it's gonna be great. And if someone forms a road monopoly someone with better road deals will just sell us better roads.

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11 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

For some reason I can't be bothered making a wall of text to explain things like diminishing returns or resources. Forget it.

Diminishing returns is an economic term, meaning every new thing is valued less. Like, you might really like eating the first burger, be okay with the second, not want the third, and be really sick from a fourth. You must've meant something else, so I got confused.

Limited resources aren't a problem because of supply and demand creating resource cycles. As a resource gets diminished, its price goes up. As price goes up, demand goes down, and people use less and less of it. So a resource can never really be completely exhausted, because eventually it just becomes too expensive. At the same time, other things that used to cost more now become competitive and start being used as alternatives. As they get used more, economies of scale kick in (cheaper per item to produce 1000 items than just one), and competition and innovation drives the price of alternatives down even more.

For example, we used to use wale oil, that got diminished so petroleum and electricity replaced it, and now solar is slowly starting to replace other electric energy sources, and more electric cars are coming out, as technologies for both become more prevalent and cheaper.

11 hours ago, Revates said:

I can't wait for the competitive infrastructure market, there will be 6 different motorways from here to Brisbane, all owned by different companies, it's gonna be great. And if someone forms a road monopoly someone with better road deals will just sell us better roads.

Or you'll just get around same way they do in Japan, where private rail is faster, cheaper, more convenient, always on time, and uses a fraction of energy that roads and cars do. Or hell, just use automated flying drones.

Why do statists love their roads so much, as if it's the only way to get around?

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7 hours ago, Rassah said:

.Or you'll just get around same way they do in Japan, where private rail is faster, cheaper, more convenient, always on time, and uses a fraction of energy that roads and cars do. Or hell, just use automated flying drones.

Why do statists love their roads so much, as if it's the only way to get around?

I know right!? Statists and their roads, roads are for losers imho. I'm glad that I live in a country with a similar population density to Japan allowing me to easily get around both rural and urban centers timely and efficiently without ever having to use a car, it's good because there's a station within walking distance from literally everything which is nice.

Flying drones aren't so good imo, the skies are owned by Delta Airlines unfortunately, so you'll have to pay air tolls to fly anywhere. :c

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10 hours ago, Rassah said:

Or you'll just get around same way they do in Japan, where private rail is faster, cheaper, more convenient, always on time, and uses a fraction of energy that roads and cars do. Or hell, just use automated flying drones.

OF course, what Rassah won't tell you is that in the United States, when passenger rail was privately run it became so unprofitable that all the railways sought to drop passenger service entirely which lead to a Crisis and ultimately the formation of the Government corporation 'Amtrak'.  So let let Rassah cherry picking facts about JapanRail to show you that privatization of passenger rail in the uNited States will bring upon some kind of golden age.  No private railway wants to TOUCH passenger service in the United States.

Further more, and this is interesting from a railfan trivia nerd (That means you won't find it interesting at all) the Japan Railways group isn't even considdered a 'private' railway system by the Japanese.  It is a privatized series of government monopolies which maintained the monopolies and some of those railways maintain unique special rights that are codified in Japanese law.  Like, literally, the railway maps in Japan call all of the OTHER railways in Japan 'private' but not JR.  But this is what you get when you try to cite a very collectivist nation as an example of a 'libertarian ideal'.  Basically the government built the largest near monopolistic series of railways in the country.  The government then privatized this government monopoly.  The government establish monopoly has been maintained and grown in private hands.  Hurry, look how the private sector built that without ANY government help at all!  ...Oh wait...

...I like trains.  Sorry.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was bored so I glanced at Ashley's post. Oops.

Private rail in US was unprofitable (same for trolleys and other rail), because it had to compete with "free" roads.

No free roads, suddenly trains are competitive and profitable again.

Sorry, I like trains and train history too.

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4 hours ago, Rassah said:

I was bored so I glanced at Ashley's post. Oops.

Private rail in US was unprofitable (same for trolleys and other rail), because it had to compete with "free" roads.

No free roads, suddenly trains are competitive and profitable again.

Sorry, I like trains and train history too.

I never said rail, I said passenger rail.  Private freight remains profitable despite tax funded interstate systems for trucking.

Also Japan also tax payer funded roads... O.o

 

Finally I call bullshit, Rassah couldn't tell an F59PH from an F59PHI unless he googled it first.

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Rassah just needs to think of the government as a big company, they take a little bit of your pay and in exchange they let you drive on their roads and everyone is a shareholder! How cool is that, we all get to choose the ceo! Awesome.

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15 hours ago, Revates said:

Rassah just needs to think of the government as a big company, they take a little bit of your pay and in exchange they let you drive on their roads and everyone is a shareholder! How cool is that, we all get to choose the ceo! Awesome.

I don't know of any companies that force you to buy and use their products, and throw you in jail if you refuse to. Sounds like something those who like government would say would happen if we didn't have government.

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12 minutes ago, Rassah said:

I don't know of any companies that force you to buy and use their products, and throw you in jail if you refuse to. Sounds like something those who like government would say would happen if we didn't have government.

NO that's just them putting you on hold for customer service. I HATE the government, I think the government should be run by Walmart and everyone should have to buy bananas and flip flops and if you don't, you have debt collectors come harass you!

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On 4/15/2018 at 1:38 PM, Rassah said:

I don't know of any companies that force you to buy and use their products, and throw you in jail if you refuse to. Sounds like something those who like government would say would happen if we didn't have government.

That's funny, I don't recall being asked if I agreed to be barred from entering fenced-off private property or barred from directly sharing in the usage of resource-rich land so some business could exploit it for themselves.

I also don't recall being asked to participate in a this thing called an "industrial economy" where I have to work for such businesses (or the government that serves them for that matter) in order to accumulate made-up tokens to buy a part of their exploits because they claimed the land for themselves alone.

 

It seems that some force is indeed necessary in order to maintain private ownership and businesses that you seem to treasure so much.

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On 4/17/2018 at 10:16 AM, WileyWarWeasel said:

That's funny, I don't recall being asked if I agreed to be barred from entering fenced-off private property or barred from directly sharing in the usage of resource-rich land so some business could exploit it for themselves.

I also don't recall being asked to participate in a this thing called an "industrial economy" where I have to work for such businesses (or the government that serves them for that matter) in order to accumulate made-up tokens to buy a part of their exploits because they claimed the land for themselves alone.

It seems that some force is indeed necessary in order to maintain private ownership and businesses that you seem to treasure so much.

Force is necessary, sure, but to defend yourself and your property, not to force your property onto others. Imagine if you were forced to be locked into Walmart, forced to pay for their bananas and flip-flops, forced to pay for it, and if you couldn't find work at that Walmart because all the cashier, stocker, and cleaning jobs were taken, and you couldn't afford to actually buy bananas or even stay at that Walmart, you were still forced to stay in it, while being told you can't sleep there without paying for it (pretty much what some homeless in some counties deal with).

 

Also I'm going to come over and take your stuff, because no such thing as private ownership, and one of my tenants needs your stuff more, cause she might go homeless or hubgry if she doesn't sell your stuff for money.

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2 hours ago, Rassah said:

Force is necessary, sure, but to defend yourself and your property, not to force your property onto others. Imagine if you were forced to be locked into Walmart, forced to pay for their bananas and flip-flops, forced to pay for it, and if you couldn't find work at that Walmart because all the cashier, stocker, and cleaning jobs were taken, and you couldn't afford to actually buy bananas or even stay at that Walmart, you were still forced to stay in it, while being told you can't sleep there without paying for it (pretty much what some homeless in some counties deal with).

 

Also I'm going to come over and take your stuff, because no such thing as private ownership, and one of my tenants needs your stuff more, cause she might go homeless or hubgry if she doesn't sell your stuff for money.

Funny that you talk about defending "your" property, yet you fail to consider the initial acquisition of the property.

Remember that before the advent of agriculture, property was communally owned (ie by the tribe). Therefore in order for one person or a minority within the tribe to claim property for their own private use they would need to force others or threaten them with the use of force to restrict their access, thus curtailing their freedoms to use property that was once open to all within the tribe.

Since you're depriving other people of their liberties by fencing off communal land for your own use isn't "private property" going against libertarian principles?

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I mean... I GUESS it's an improvement that Rassah is turning to boiler plate 'Baby Talk Libertarian Explanations' instead of pleading with the forum to validate him?  But it's kinda only an improvement because I don't think there's a lower bar than his begging for validation.  I have to admit though that even I thought Rassah was above the 'Libertrian 101 Explaining' stuff but it's not like he's never excelled at finding new ways to be disappointing.

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56 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I mean... I GUESS it's an improvement that Rassah is turning to boiler plate 'Baby Talk Libertarian Explanations' instead of pleading with the forum to validate him?  But it's kinda only an improvement because I don't think there's a lower bar than his begging for validation.  I have to admit though that even I thought Rassah was above the 'Libertrian 101 Explaining' stuff but it's not like he's never excelled at finding new ways to be disappointing.

Now I kind of wish we had a hardcore communist in the forum as well. With some fortune they both might even realize how similar they are (espousing fantasies that have never happened in reality, ignoring human social structures, ignoring human history, etc).

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6 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Now I kind of wish we had a hardcore communist in the forum as well. With some fortune they both might even realize how similar they are (espousing fantasies that have never happened in reality, ignoring human social structures, ignoring human history, etc).

I mean at least maybe there's be some nuance to the discussion?  See's Rassah go 'THE GOVERNMENT IS JUST ROBBING YOU AT GUN POINT!' is the kinda discussion points I'd expect from an 11th grader arguing for Libertarianism after he just read about it on Reddit the night before.

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6 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I mean at least maybe there's be some nuance to the discussion?  See's Rassah go 'THE GOVERNMENT IS JUST ROBBING YOU AT GUN POINT!' is the kinda discussion points I'd expect from an 11th grader arguing for Libertarianism after he just read about it on Reddit the night before.

I'm not sure if one can expect nuance if two idealists on extreme ends of the spectrum bicker with each other.

It would liven up the forums at least.

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On 4/20/2018 at 5:14 PM, WileyWarWeasel said:

Remember that before the advent of agriculture, property was communally owned (ie by the tribe). Therefore in order for one person or a minority within the tribe to claim property for their own private use they would need to force others or threaten them with the use of force to restrict their access, thus curtailing their freedoms to use property that was once open to all within the tribe.

Right. That's when we used to live as tribal communities, the size of the pie was fixed, and someone taking more literally meant others would end up with less. This is how our reptilian brain is programmed to make us think, so we fight for more of the pie, or to divide it equally, and how we lived, in general misery, for hundreds of thousands of years.

Then we invented capitalism, and figured out how we could grow the pie, where someone taking more leads someone else to produce more to fill that need, and everyone else benefits from scale.

22 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Now I kind of wish we had a hardcore communist in the forum as well. With some fortune they both might even realize how similar they are (espousing fantasies that have never happened in reality, ignoring human social structures, ignoring human history, etc).

I'm a student of history. My beliefs are based on observations of the last 100+ years, and based on the current reality. The one that a lot of people seem to not even be aware of, as they advocate for more of the same that has been destroying their lives. Should I cheer on people's fights for free stuff and wage price controls, which I know will lead to even worse situations?

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15 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

See's Rassah go 'THE GOVERNMENT IS JUST ROBBING YOU AT GUN POINT!' is the kinda discussion points I'd expect from an 11th grader arguing for Libertarianism after he just read about it on Reddit the night before.

I mean, how far down should I go until the concept is understood? Bad man take stuff, say no go boom boom? I tried going higher level, but it just confused people.

Maybe I should just go "Use bitcoin, buy stuff you want even if it's illegal, avoid taxes so governments go bankrupt, and if you have a problem, you can go fuck yourself?" That's a pretty basic concept, right? :)

 

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16 minutes ago, Rassah said:

I mean, how far down should I go until the concept is understood? Bad man take stuff, say no go boom boom? I tried going higher level, but it just confused people.

Maybe I should just go "Use bitcoin, buy stuff you want even if it's illegal, avoid taxes so governments go bankrupt, and if you have a problem, you can go fuck yourself?" That's a pretty basic concept, right? :)

So... Who do you actually expect to successfully reach with your message when you use words like this?

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4 hours ago, Rassah said:

Right. That's when we used to live as tribal communities, the size of the pie was fixed, and someone taking more literally meant others would end up with less. This is how our reptilian brain is programmed to make us think, so we fight for more of the pie, or to divide it equally, and how we lived, in general misery, for hundreds of thousands of years.

We have always lived on a finite world, and you're incorrect about living in general misery before capitalism.

Plenty of people were happy with less material goods and even with higher death rates. Thankfully there's even an example off the top of my head: the Piraha tribe, that persists into the modern day.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-suicide-paradox/

Here's a handy transcript of part of the podcast that might interest you:

"

Stephen Dubner (host): “Dan Everett is a college professor. A linguist. Off and on for the past thirty years he’s lived with a tribe in the Amazon called the Pirahã.” 

Dan Everett: “I originally went to the Pirahã as a missionary to translate the Bible into their language. But over the course of many years they wound up converting me and I became a scientist instead, and I studied their culture and its effects on their language.” 

Host: “The Pirahã live in huts, sleep on the ground, hunt with bows and arrows. But what really caught Everett’s attention is that they are relentlessly happy. Really happy.” 

Dan Everett: “This happiness and this contentment is really what had a lot to do with me abandoning my religious goals and my religion altogether, because they seemed to have it a lot more together than most religious people I knew.” 

Host: “But this isn’t just another story about some faraway tribe that’s really happy even though they don’t have all the stuff that we have. It’s a story about something that happened during Everett’s early days with the tribe. He and his wife and his three young kids had just finished dinner. Everett gathered about thirty Pirahã in his hut to preach to them.” 

Dan Everett: “I was still a very fervent Christian missionary and I wanted to tell them how God had changed my life. So I told them a story about my stepmother and how she had committed suicide because she was so depressed and so lost. For the word ‘depressed’ I used the word sad, so she was very sad, she was crying, she felt lost and she shot herself in the head and she died. And this had a large spiritual impact on me, and I later became a missionary and came to the Pirahã because of all this experience triggered by her suicide. And I told this story as tenderly as I could and tried to communicate that it had a huge impact on me, and when I was finished, everyone burst out laughing….When I asked them, ‘why are you laughing?’ they said, ‘She killed herself! That’s really funny to us! We don’t kill ourselves. You mean you people, you white people, shoot yourselves in the head? We shoot animals, we kill animals, we don’t kill ourselves.’ They just found it absolutely inexplicable and without precedent in their own experience that someone would kill themselves.” 

Host: “In the thirty years that Everett has been studying the Pirahã, there have been zero suicides. Now, it’s not that suicide doesn’t happen in the Amazon. For other tribes, it’s a problem.” 

Dan Everett: “And as I’ve told this story, some people have suggested that well, it’s because they don’t have the stresses of modern life. But that’s just not true. There’s almost 100 percent endemic malaria among the people. They’re sick a lot. Their children die at probably 75 percent; 75 percent of the children die before they reach the age of five or six. These are astounding pressures.” 

Host:: "A group of people that laughs at suicide? That doesn’t sound much like the U.S. does it?”

"

Funny how even the host remarks "But this isn’t just another story about some faraway tribe that’s really happy even though they don’t have all the stuff that we have."

Here's more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_people

"Daniel Everett states that one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; you simply don't tell other people what to do.[6] There appears to be no social hierarchy; the Pirahã have no formal leaders. Their social system can thus be labeled as primitive communism, in common with many other hunter-gatherer bands in the world, although rare in the Amazon because of a history of agriculture before Western contact (see history of the Amazon)."

 

Plenty more examples of other hunter-gatherer bands in the world, but that's the most detailed one I can think of at the moment. As you can see from their description, the Piraha social system is hardly unique among hunter-gatherer tribes.

Also before any rabid anti/pro communists comment they had primitive communism, not the modern mess that is best described as "industrial communism".

 

EDIT: yes there are also other examples of happy tribes, I just can't be bothered going into them as this post is long enough. Still, here's more info from a guy who visited multiple African tribes over seven years:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3320209/Photographer-s-intimate-portraits-African-tribes-says-lesson-happiness-from.html

While suicide is a problem in some tribes the point of the above information and examples was to show that the claim of living in "general misery" was false.

 

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

Then we invented capitalism, and figured out how we could grow the pie, where someone taking more leads someone else to produce more to fill that need, and everyone else benefits from scale.

Wrong again. Humans like most organisms consume more and more natural resources (ie the "world's pie" since you like thinking in pies so much) as their population grows. Up to a certain point there is no need to "figure out" how to grow the pie, the "pie" for humans (the sum resources being consumed by the species) obviously grows as the population grows. Unlike most organisms humans then eventually used agriculture and then fossil fuels to consume yet more resources from the rest of the world, outputting increasingly toxic by-products (eg waste metals, arsenic, pesticide run-off, plastics, etc).

Also to maintain economies of scale requires consuming vast amounts of resources and only those that can afford the end product/service benefit from the scale. A person taking more resources doesn't leave more for others, that doesn't make any sense. That merely forces others to make do with whatever resources they can divert their way.

The pie didn't magically grow from nothing thanks to capitalism, humans just figured out how to consume more and more resources in ever more sophisticated ways from the "pie" of resources available on this world. Kind of like a cancerous growth really. Such a pity that civilization can't grow forever on a finite world.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

I'm a student of history. My beliefs are based on observations of the last 100+ years, and based on the current reality. The one that a lot of people seem to not even be aware of, as they advocate for more of the same that has been destroying their lives. Should I cheer on people's fights for free stuff and wage price controls, which I know will lead to even worse situations?

Homo sapiens have been around for roughly 250k-300k years, so you might want to look a bit further ;)

 

Also it is amusing to see you yourself advocating more of the same (ie handing over more power to private enterprise which really just means handing over even more power to big business). The reality that hopefully even you are aware of is that multinationals and (in most countries) privately owned central banks already have the lion's share of influence in modern human society.

"But wait, they're using the governments to 'corrupt' the precious markets!" you might say. Here's a newsflash for you: the "pure" capitalist system that you love so much doesn't exist in complete isolation, and it never has.

 

4 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

So... Who do you actually expect to successfully reach with your message when you use words like this?

Are they even hoping to actually reach anyone with their ideology?

Come to think of it the only reason I'm posting at this point is sheer bloody-mindedness.

Posting like this also reminds me why I stopped posting walls before: it is very easy to make ridiculously stupid claims (eg "how we lived, in general misery, for hundreds of thousands of years. Then we invented capitalism,") but it takes much more effort to provide explanations, facts and examples showing that such claims are full of shit.

I wonder how many people even bother reading beyond the first line. Bloody-mindedness aside maybe I should just post one or two-liners like most others here.

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The world is finite. Innovation is not. We ran out of wale oil, we found alternatives. We were running out of lumber for paper, we found alternatives. Things get more scarce > price goes up > demand goes down > alternatives become cheaper by comparison.

I doubt people lived happier with less material goods. There's are still plenty of places in the world where people live they they have been for all those millennia. I don't see anyone dropping their material goods and moving there. Mostly people are trying to get the hell out of those places. But if you feel you would be happier there, I'll gladly help you move to such a place in exchange for your material goods.

The pie isn't growing because of population growth, it's growing because of innovation. Liberals love to parade the graph showing massive productivity growth compared to stagnant wages. What that graph really shows is growth of the pie - we have lots more material things for the same level of human input.

*Everyone* benefits from scale. How do you think $6000 flat screen TVs and $2000 basic brick cell phones became affordable enough to where you can get a TV for $300 and a way more advanced cell phone for $25? You may have heard about the guy who made his own sandwich entirely from scratch? Economies of scale is why he spent $1,000 on it, while a better one can be had for under $6 at any restaurant.

 

I'm not advocating more of the same. More of the same would be giving more power to government and contributing to increase regulations. The popular belief is that we're giving more and more power to private enterprise while deregulating, and that's why we're having more problems, but that's actually opposite from the truth. Regulations have been going up, even lobbied for by those corporations and banks that you vilify, because regulations help them maintain control and keep out competition. Your solution is more regulations. Even if purely capitalist system never existed, degrees of it do, and I want us to move more towards capitalism than keep moving more towards government and fascism as we have been for a century.

 

Yeah, I'm not trying to reach anyone on this form. My outreach efforts are elsewhere obviously.

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@Rassah I show you concrete examples of people living happily with less material goods, you dismiss them. You understand that the world is finite, yet it somehow lies beyond your comprehension that alternative resources are also finite.

Gee, it was certainly worth going into detail with explanations and examples.

 

In case you haven't noticed banks and corps are private enterprise, and like any good private enterprise they use whatever means possible to increase their profits. Also I never said that regulations were going down; I said that more power was going to private enterprise (of which big business makes up a large part of) and it is.

 

I do not propose any solutions. Human population growth, resource consumption and waste production mimics that of yeast in a jar of sugar with the added delusion that changing ideology can magic away the waste or magically add resources.

Fortunately like yeast in a jar the problem eventually resolves itself ;)

 

EDIT: Funny that you mention moving to a tribal community, I have been contemplating it for a while. One wonders how practical such a move is to make in reality though.

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I seem to vaguely recall research being done that concluded the most 'happy' societies were not those with the richest people, but those where the gap between the richest and the average person's wealth is the smallest. I don't know the name or how valid the research was, but it's an interesting thought.

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16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

@Rassah I show you concrete examples of people living happily with less material goods, you dismiss them.

There are always exceptions to the rule. You don't see the majority running to live like those tribes do though.

16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

You understand that the world is finite, yet it somehow lies beyond your comprehension that alternative resources are also finite.

They are finite, but alternatives to resources are not. Maybe if the sun dies and we don't get to find another source of energy in time, then yes. But that's beyond our lifetimes.

16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

In case you haven't noticed banks and corps are private enterprise, and like any good private enterprise they use whatever means possible to increase their profits.

I have no issues with that. Just with them using government to increase their profits.

16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Also I never said that regulations were going down; I said that more power was going to private enterprise (of which big business makes up a large part of) and it is.

It isn't. Private enterprise isn't getting more power, government is. All that "more power" that private enterprise is throwing around us actually being enforced by government, not the companies themselves.

 

16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Fortunately like yeast in a jar the problem eventually resolves itself ;)

Agreed. See: USSR, Venezuela, Greece, soon to be Europe and us.

I just propose an alternative to it to put in place to switch to when it happens. Or for individuals to put themselves outside of the system so they aren't affected, like I did 

16 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

EDIT: Funny that you mention moving to a tribal community, I have been contemplating it for a while. One wonders how practical such a move is to make in reality though.

Go practice camping. I'm sure they won't appreciate a freeloader who can't even hunt and feed himself 😁

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@Rassah Jesus Christ, there's no way I'm posting another wall to correct your fallacies, from "alternatives to resources" (you can't eat an ideology you moron you need physical resources and if you're thinking about recycling in many cases recycling items especially complex items uses more energy than to extract the original resources), to completely forgetting that you need other resources to even attempt to extract intermittent energy from the sun (solar panels, inverters and other equipment don't spring up out of nowhere) to completely misunderstanding the analogy of yeast in a jar (which I thought was pretty fucking obvious but apparently I need to spell everything out).

Then you compare camping (bringing industrially-made food, water and tools to some site and relying on those for shelter and sustenance) to hunting and gathering in a tribe using entirely local resources and tools made from those resources.

Fuck it, have fun talking to @AshleyAshes instead.

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34 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Hey now, don't stick me with the cheque. D:  I just sit around and wait for him to leave openings where he reveals how emotionally empty he is.  I don't actually desire to CONVERSE with him.

Aha, so you seek to fill the emotional gap. You two are indeed a pair ^^^^^^^^

In either case I'll leave the actual conversing to someone else (provided someone else actually wants to converse with em).

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18 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

@Rassah(you can't eat an ideology you moron

You can't feed the world with the style of farming, or even the crops, we had just 50 years ago either. Instead of starving because we ran out of resources, we came up with better farming methods, and GMOs that produce bigger yields. Alternatives to resources like, for example, high yield GMOs as alternatives to low yield old crops. Or petroleum as alternative to whale oil. Or what's becoming cheaper and more efficient solar to natural gas power. You're the moron for not getting that simple concept.

 

Quote

to completely forgetting that you need other resources to even attempt to extract intermittent energy

I didn't forget. You just think it's impossible because the current technology doesn't allow it, and I think it's possible because other people actually use their brains to think and come up with new ideas, instead of apparently thinking that what we have now is all we'll ever have.

 

Quote

to completely misunderstanding the analogy of yeast in a jar (which I thought was pretty fucking obvious but apparently I need to spell everything out).

Oh, no, I got the analogy. People were warning about overpopulation and how we're all going to die since late 1800'sm stupid people with no imagination who were all wrong then too. I just twisted it to the modern example of a forced closed economic system such as a highly socialist country that keeps breeding more socialism until it dies because it used up all the resources in the system.

Quote

Then you compare camping (bringing industrially-made food, water and tools to some site and relying on those for shelter and sustenance) to hunting and gathering in a tribe using entirely local resources and tools made from those resources.

What, you can't learn to hunt and gather using local resources when camping in your country? Do you not know how to make and use tools from stuff in your local forests? I don't get it.

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53 minutes ago, Faust said:

I invoke Godwin's Law: YOU'RE ALL HITLER!

Hell, just take this, and add pronouns and a few mentions of having autism / bpd / did / etc to everyone's profiles,
and we're most of the way there to being twitter.corvidae.org.

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Yo, Rassah, just wanted to apologize for any rudeness I might've done towards you in the past. 

I've made fun of the bitcoin thing a bit but really I think its neat that you're so passionate about something.

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On 4/28/2018 at 2:16 PM, Rassah said:

Btw, I'll be taking a tour of Canada with my furry friends end of May. Niagara, Toronto, and Montreal over a span of 1.5 weeks. Will be sure to eat at Timmy ho's

Enjoy your trip, make sure to only drink pure maple syrup.

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