Bitcoin giveaway! :)

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Fri Mar 07, 2014 2:58 pm

Kshartle wrote: They just dug up that old fossil Greenspan on CNBC. The last question they asked him was about the viability of bitcoin. His answer really surprised me. It was a little rambly and comes across differently when you hear the nuance and umms which are tough to annotate.

"I perhaps am sufficiently embued with the notion of behavioral economics these days. To say that a.... what fundamentally attracts money or people to hold it (money in general, not bitcoin) as a transactional currency is either it has intrinsic value like gold and silver or it is convertable essentially into that. The dollar for example is the means by which everyone settles in a crisis. They all rush into the dollar. Why? Because we have the most gold."

I thought he was going to praise the dollar because of the US economy, the stability of the government etc. Nope. He said the dollar is the safe haven because we have the most gold.

Interesting that he never coached the Bernanke who thinks central banks hold gold for "tradition". He never explained the concept of intrinsic value to the professor.
So having a yellow metal at our central bank is more important than the guns we might point at the middle east if they stop accepting U.S. dollars as payment for oil?

In the end, I think it's guns and productivity more than gold, but it probably helps, as it IS an improvement on our country's stock of assets.
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by edsanville » Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:58 pm

I love how Bitcoin is like a Rorschach test to determine one's opinion about the source of "value."

By the way, I also love the fact that some idiotic Newsweek reporter claims to have "uncovered" the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin...  and the guy himself says that she completely misrepresented his statements during their "interview,"  and he has nothing to do with Bitcoin:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-576 ... right-now/

I love how worthless the media is.

It reminds me of the story told by Jimbo Wales (the creator of Wikipedia), about how our wonderful media completely misrepresented everything he told them about the supposed "Wikipedia Bush/Kerry Controversy."  Watch his story here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4&t=5m50s

The mainstream media is truly abysmal garbage when it is covering new, scary things that it doesn't understand.  Remember guys, the media is only there to stir up controversy that doesn't exist, so it can get as many viewers as possible for the "stories" it creates.  Pay no attention to the dumbasses behind the curtain and the media frenzies they cultivate about Bitcoin or anything else, (especially things that are new and scary).

P.S.  Sorry for all the scare quotes...  I just don't know how to write about our shitty media without them.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:21 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Kshartle wrote: They just dug up that old fossil Greenspan on CNBC. The last question they asked him was about the viability of bitcoin. His answer really surprised me. It was a little rambly and comes across differently when you hear the nuance and umms which are tough to annotate.

"I perhaps am sufficiently embued with the notion of behavioral economics these days. To say that a.... what fundamentally attracts money or people to hold it (money in general, not bitcoin) as a transactional currency is either it has intrinsic value like gold and silver or it is convertable essentially into that. The dollar for example is the means by which everyone settles in a crisis. They all rush into the dollar. Why? Because we have the most gold."

I thought he was going to praise the dollar because of the US economy, the stability of the government etc. Nope. He said the dollar is the safe haven because we have the most gold.

Interesting that he never coached the Bernanke who thinks central banks hold gold for "tradition". He never explained the concept of intrinsic value to the professor.
So having a yellow metal at our central bank is more important than the guns we might point at the middle east if they stop accepting U.S. dollars as payment for oil?

In the end, I think it's guns and productivity more than gold, but it probably helps, as it IS an improvement on our country's stock of assets.
:)

Moda.

You're a good guy. What drink do you like? Doesn't matter....I'd pour it if you were here.

Ponder the concept of intrinsic value.

What surprised me about Greenspan's words was he actually had a kernal of truth in them. He went back to his roots. He was a gold bug back when he was honest and showed an understanding of money.

Slips of paper aren't money....they are a fraud.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Fri Mar 07, 2014 8:23 pm

Calling a slip of paper money is worse than calling a jar of poo money.

If the government declared jars of 5h1t money it would literraly have more backing than the $.

We live in world dominated by monopoly money and wonder why people get rich for no reason and so many are poor. It's so obvious.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:00 am

Slips of paper aren't money....they are a fraud.
Shouldn't we define as money anything that we use as money?  Are roads not "mediums of transportation" because they only exist as a result of government monopoly?  Of course, it's obvious that "the private sector could do it better" to .5% of the population that qualifies as anarcho-capitalist :), but does that not make them roads?  Are they just concrete prisons?  What about rail, boat and planes that use public rail, ports, and airports?  Not really mediums of transportation?
We live in world dominated by monopoly money and wonder why people get rich for no reason and so many are poor. It's so obvious.
1) We live in a world with lots of different units of "money," and a financial system that allows a sick amount of investment in foreign currencies at the click of a mouse, as well as the good ol' stand-by, Gold.  You don't have to have more than a bit of spending money in actual US dollars at any one time.  The rest of your savings can be in equities, inflation-indexed bonds, gold, foreign currencies, real estate investment trusts, silver, bitcoin, and beaver pelts for all the government cares.  Courts may require you to settle certain debts in U.S. dollars if they come to court, but you can not only barter if you (and the other party) wish to, but you can index your contracts to something, hedge your bets with future/options contracts, or just have them be short-term in nature, if you fear that much about the stability of the U.S. dollar.

Our options are so abundant in 2014 in terms of how to hold our savings.  It's almost laughable to complain, when you think about it.

2) It's certainly not obvious that a "money monopoly" is why rich are rich and poor are poor.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:42 am

moda0306 wrote: It's certainly not obvious that a "money monopoly" is why rich are rich and poor are poor.
I should have said "good money" rather than saying slips of paper are not money if you want to be extremely literral. You know what I meant though.

You don't think it's obvious when a group of people have the power to run money off a printing press and force everyone to accept it in exchange for things of real value that most of the items of real value will end up in the hands of a few people? It seems extremely obvious to  me.

Prented that the government stopped the presses completely and for whatever reason could not start them up again. Further suppose you have a printing press in your basement and there is no possibility that anyone could stop you from printing.

Is it obvious that you would become richer and so would your friends and family and people who provide you things you want? It would be exclusively at the expense of everyone else who would become poorer on a relative basis.
Last edited by Kshartle on Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 11:06 am

Kshartle,

Since "the government" can't be rich or poor, only its agents or preferred constituents can be (and most government agents are hardly "rich"), any "theft" that occurs by government has to either be allocated to individuals (either agents or preferred constituents, and we've mostly ruled out agents (even the president only makes $400k)), destroyed (they spend the confetti on destroying things rather than building them), or "held in trust" (national parks, public land, etc).

If I am the only agent of "my house," and money printed from "my house" was essentially all given initially to me, this would be the equivalent of the money Janet Yellen prints going into her bank account to spend, rather than being exchanged in pre-explained ways with the banking system.  It's a fraud if I do it because there's no honesty in the system whatsoever.  The fed is pretty clear and consistent on how it manages the balance between employment and price stability.

This isn't all good by any means, but certainly isn't the sole means for unearned income by the wealthy, or un-deserved destitution for the poor.  There was plenty of that in the gilded age as well.
Last edited by moda0306 on Mon Mar 10, 2014 11:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 11:30 am

moda0306 wrote: If I am the only agent of "my house," and money printed from "my house" was essentially all given initially to me, this would be the equivalent of the money Janet Yellen prints going into her bank account to spend, rather than being exchanged in pre-explained ways with the banking system.
You pointed out in the other thread that parties can't be racist, only individuals. Same thing with the government and the resources it steals/controls.

The ultra wealthy use the government to get the property of the rest. You know this. The ablility to print people's property away and get it for you and friends is only one mechanism. It is very effective since it's far less obvious than outright confiscation (taxes).

Please, you know the average government worker has nothing to do with this conversation. That's a diversion.

The money the Fed prints ends up in the government's hands via interest free borrowing. We've gone over all this. How do you think they can run their deficits so cheaply, do think it's because they're such a good credit risk? Why?  It's because they print and can print.

When money is run off a printing press the price of assets goes up. The people with the marjority of the assets get richer on a relative basis. Cheap money also allows greater use of leverage.

Anyway, for all the predations of the state that I despise, the monoploy money is probably the worst, though war is right up there. Of course without the monopoly money it'd be a lot harder for them to wage war.

It always cracks me up when I hear about how printing more monoploy money is going to help the poor.

Government is always and forever a tool of the ultra wealthy. It's the mechanisim by which they fleece the rest of the population. When government has at it's disposal the tool of a printing press and the guns to force everyone to accept slips of paper in exchange for items with real value.....it's blazingly obvious how this widens the gap between the wealthy and the poor. The more they print the worse it gets. You can see this in action right here in the US.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 11:57 am

You pointed out in the other thread that parties can't be racist, only individuals. Same thing with the government and the resources it steals/controls.

The ultra wealthy use the government to get the property of the rest. You know this. The ablility to print people's property away and get it for you and friends is only one mechanism. It is very effective since it's far less obvious than outright confiscation (taxes).
If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
When money is run off a printing press the price of assets goes up. The people with the marjority of the assets get richer on a relative basis. Cheap money also allows greater use of leverage.
To the last part, yes.  To the first, it helps asset prices in nominal terms, but not real.  It has a REAL affect on debt levels for borrowers.  So, yes, if done beyond expectations, cheap money will "punish" savers and "reward" borrowers.  However, the fed is NOT doing this beyond expectation.  Unemployment is high and inflation is low.  Their options are obvious given what they've set market expectations to be when everyone signed their contracts with guesses about future inflation/growth.  It would be theft to now generate deflation after setting the opposite expectation of the market.
The money the Fed prints ends up in the government's hands via interest free borrowing. We've gone over all this. How do you think they can run their deficits so cheaply, do think it's because they're such a good credit risk? Why?  It's because they print and can print.
That, and the same reason stable countries can borrow during recessions at modest rates.  Excess supply of productive capacity.

Further, if they use these deficits to give poor people "safety hammocks," how does that help the rich?  They're not using this money to give $1 Billion SS checks to Bill Gates.
It always cracks me up when I hear about how printing more monoploy money is going to help the poor.
There is no monopoly.  You just think there is because you're in the U.S. and you feel like you have no options because other parties don't want your bitcoins for payment.
Government is always and forever a tool of the ultra wealthy. It's the mechanisim by which they fleece the rest of the population. When government has at it's disposal the tool of a printing press and the guns to force everyone to accept slips of paper in exchange for items with real value.....it's blazingly obvious how this widens the gap between the wealthy and the poor. The more they print the worse it gets. You can see this in action right here in the US.
So we can either get rid of it (never going to happen), or advocate for government to serve not just the wealthy's interests, but everyone else's, in some ways, and have taxes be higher on the uber-wealthy. 

Why wouldn't the latter work to a better benefit than advocating for something that will NEVER happen?
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:09 pm

moda0306 wrote: If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:16 pm

moda0306 wrote: There is no monopoly.  You just think there is because you're in the U.S. and you feel like you have no options because other parties don't want your bitcoins for payment.
It is monopoly money. It has no real value just like monopoly and they have a monopoly on the printing of it.

And you are forced to accept it as payment of debts here, so there's another monopoly.

BTW- I've never owned a bitcoin and will never own one. :)
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:20 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
What do you mean by "screw them?"  SS?  Medicare?  Public education?  Or moreso stuff like wars and fractional-reserve banking?
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:22 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
They buy the votes of the poor with their handouts and promise to steal for them. They then steal from productive people, some of which we classify as wealthy even though they are victims of the system.

They promise they will steal from the 1% or something.....they end up stealing from anyone who produces more than he consumes though by taxing him and inflating away his savings. This way the middle class is prevented from becoming wealthy and the poor are trapped in their hammocks and used as a weapon against them.

I think safety net is a better term than hammock now that I've pondered it. Animals get trapped in nets.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:25 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
What do you mean by "screw them?"  SS?  Medicare?  Public education?  Or moreso stuff like wars and fractional-reserve banking?
Destory their opportunites with things like the min wage and regulations that discourage people from getting jobs or starting businesses. Discourage them from saving by inflating the value of their money away. Trap them in the saftey nets.......
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:25 pm

Kshartle wrote:
moda0306 wrote: There is no monopoly.  You just think there is because you're in the U.S. and you feel like you have no options because other parties don't want your bitcoins for payment.
It is monopoly money. It has no real value just like monopoly and they have a monopoly on the printing of it.

And you are forced to accept it as payment of debts here, so there's another monopoly.

BTW- I've never owned a bitcoin and will never own one. :)
The banks can essentially "print money" by showing an income-producing asset and/or credit worthy borrower to back it.  There is no real reserve requirement.

Those deposits can be used as "final means of payment," even though they're not base money.  Further, other things CAN be used as money... most people just would rather not take them as payment.  The only way the government can force the issue is if an issue goes to court, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me to have one standard means of payment in judgments, rather than having someone required to deliver hours of a service that another person doesn't want done from said service provider. 
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:34 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Kshartle wrote:
moda0306 wrote: There is no monopoly.  You just think there is because you're in the U.S. and you feel like you have no options because other parties don't want your bitcoins for payment.
It is monopoly money. It has no real value just like monopoly and they have a monopoly on the printing of it.

And you are forced to accept it as payment of debts here, so there's another monopoly.

BTW- I've never owned a bitcoin and will never own one. :)
The banks can essentially "print money" by showing an income-producing asset and/or credit worthy borrower to back it.  There is no real reserve requirement.

Those deposits can be used as "final means of payment," even though they're not base money.  Further, other things CAN be used as money... most people just would rather not take them as payment.  The only way the government can force the issue is if an issue goes to court, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me to have one standard means of payment in judgments, rather than having someone required to deliver hours of a service that another person doesn't want done from said service provider.
Moda.......you can use gold as money sure....but you must record your purchase as a sale of your gold in dollar terms and record the dollar price you paid for it....even you traded something else for it. That way you can pay your taxes on the gain if you have one.

The same goes for anything else you would use as money here. Nothing else is practical save the USD.

The point is....if you want to operate economically without the fear that you are breaking the law.....the USD is what you will use here. Come on man. Any other option will increase your costs dramatically and serve no purpose.

People don't use the USD because they like it. Why do you think they use the Pound in the UK? Why do they use the Euro in Europe?

What do the banks have to do with anything? Ok, they can print money too. Does that mean the US government doesn't have a monopoly? Ummmm, it gives the banks the right.

This is like saying McDonalds doesn't have a monopoly on the right to the use of the Hamburgler because it has franchisees.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:48 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: If the printed money is being used to spend on "safety hammocks," how is that helping the rich?
It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
What do you mean by "screw them?"  SS?  Medicare?  Public education?  Or moreso stuff like wars and fractional-reserve banking?
I could write a whole book on this (oh wait ::) ), but yes, most of those services are indeed screwing poor people. When the government provides ostensibly "free" (not really free) services that are discriminatory and of terrible quality, it not only hurts the people who rely on them but it also acts as a huge disincentive for the market to provide better solutions because they're fighting the massive subsidy of the service being "free." Public education falls right into this category.

Medicare does too and additionally screws people by skewing payment such that doctors have to charge more to non-medicare patients, starting and contributing to the death spiral of rising prices or both care and insurance, which (again) hurts poor people the most.

This is of course to say nothing of the drug war which disproportionately kills and imprisons poor black and hispanic people, and foreign wars which are fought predominately by poor people who are most susceptible to the propaganda they're fed by public schools and most benefited by the meager financial incentives dangled in front of them.
Last edited by Pointedstick on Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:00 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote:
Pointedstick wrote: It's basically vote-buying, along with divisive social wedge issues. In these ways, the rich and powerful can get poor and disadvantaged people to continue voting for them despite the fact that after their election, they will usually turn around and screw those very people, secure in the knowledge that political ignorance will shield them from most of the blowback and they can engage in further divisiveness and vote buying to regain any lost votes from their plutocratic policies.

I mean, we are talking about the American government here, right?
What do you mean by "screw them?"  SS?  Medicare?  Public education?  Or moreso stuff like wars and fractional-reserve banking?
I could write a whole book on this (oh wait ::) ), but yes, most of those services are indeed screwing poor people. When the government provides ostensibly "free" (not really free) services that are discriminatory and of terrible quality, it not only hurts the people who rely on them but it also acts as a huge disincentive for the market to provide better solutions because they're fighting the massive subsidy of the service being "free."

Medicare screws people by skewing payment such that doctors have to charge more to non-medicare patients, starting and contributing to the death spiral of rising prices or both care and insurance, which (again) hurts poor people the most.

This is of course to say nothing of the drug war which disproportionately kills and imprisons poor black and hispanic people, and foreign wars which are fought predominately by poor people who are most susceptible to the propaganda they're fed by public schools and most benefited by the meager financial incentives dangled in front of them.
Well I hope your book has evidence that Medicare makes healthcare more expensive, and that the services such as SS, snap benefits, etc are of "terrible quality" compared to what the market would/does provide.

This is stuff conservatives say all the time but I see no real evidence of it.  SS is a lot more reliable than most annuity salesmen out there, for example.

Most of this is because of informational asymmetry. 

Lastly, propaganda is pushed by schooling in general... by no means is this limited to public schooling.


And further, how can one "buy votes?" I am offered nothing for voting.  It costs me money, as does it most others.  For that money, I get a 1-in-several-million chance at affecting an election to my benefit.  It seems that's a nasty value proposition.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:09 pm

moda0306 wrote: Well I hope your book has evidence that Medicare makes healthcare more expensive, and that the services such as SS, snap benefits, etc are of "terrible quality" compared to what the market would/does provide.

This is stuff conservatives say all the time but I see no real evidence of it.  SS is a lot more reliable than most annuity salesmen out there, for example.

Most of this is because of informational asymmetry.
…which is true of every industry and every person. Information asymmetry is a BS excuse for government programs, IMHO, because, as usual, is assumes that the present condition will continue forever and therefore makes this true by eliminating everyone's incentive to improve. If there's informational asymmetry in the retirement product market, SS is basically giving up on the possibility of people ever being smarter and more informed about the options for their financial futures and better, more comprehensible products to exist, thereby reducing the reasons for it these things to happen.

moda0306 wrote: Lastly, propaganda is pushed by schooling in general... by no means is this limited to public schooling.
Sure. But I hope you'll agree with me that some forms of propaganda are more damaging than others. Being taught to believe that mass murder can be a good thing is probably a worse form of propaganda than being brainwashed into buying new clothes, no?

moda0306 wrote: And further, how can one "buy votes?" I am offered nothing for voting.  It costs me money, as does it most others.  For that money, I get a 1-in-several-million chance at affecting an election to my benefit.  It seems that's a nasty value proposition.
You're looking at it too rationally. Most people don't think this way. They're who I'm talking about.
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Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: Lastly, propaganda is pushed by schooling in general... by no means is this limited to public schooling.
Sure. But I hope you'll agree with me that some forms of propaganda are more damaging than others. Being taught to believe that mass murder can be a good thing is probably a worse form of propaganda than being brainwashed into buying new clothes, no?
even if the public education system (or any other) were 100% propaganda free, they still FAIL because they have stopped teaching critical thinking. A public that cant think will never know the difference between good information and bad , be able to separate the wheat from the chafe or avoid being manipulated by the emotional arguments over the rational ones, and if you cant do that you fall prey to being easily manipulated in both the political arena and as a consumer of products in the market place..

no matter how much lip service the public education system pays to critical thinking it provides none, at least in the world of private education you have a small few that still do really teach..
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 2:27 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
moda0306 wrote: Well I hope your book has evidence that Medicare makes healthcare more expensive, and that the services such as SS, snap benefits, etc are of "terrible quality" compared to what the market would/does provide.

This is stuff conservatives say all the time but I see no real evidence of it.  SS is a lot more reliable than most annuity salesmen out there, for example.

Most of this is because of informational asymmetry.
…which is true of every industry and every person. Information asymmetry is a BS excuse for government programs, IMHO, because, as usual, is assumes that the present condition will continue forever and therefore makes this true by eliminating everyone's incentive to improve. If there's informational asymmetry in the retirement product market, SS is basically giving up on the possibility of people ever being smarter and more informed about the options for their financial futures and better, more comprehensible products to exist, thereby reducing the reasons for it these things to happen.

moda0306 wrote: Lastly, propaganda is pushed by schooling in general... by no means is this limited to public schooling.
Sure. But I hope you'll agree with me that some forms of propaganda are more damaging than others. Being taught to believe that mass murder can be a good thing is probably a worse form of propaganda than being brainwashed into buying new clothes, no?

moda0306 wrote: And further, how can one "buy votes?" I am offered nothing for voting.  It costs me money, as does it most others.  For that money, I get a 1-in-several-million chance at affecting an election to my benefit.  It seems that's a nasty value proposition.
You're looking at it too rationally. Most people don't think this way. They're who I'm talking about.
So poor liberals are too stupid to realize their votes are being bought, but wealthy conservatives/libertarians are voting their true conscience?

Maybe our opinions on "what is right" is simply colored by our socioeconomic position, and both rich and poor alike tend to vote in alignment with their best interest, with reasonable understanding that their voting is mostly on principle.


Regarding different forms of propaganda, I'd agree that the extremes you mention are an example of one propaganda being much worse than another.  I'm not sure I ever heard mass-murder being advocated for in the public school I went to, though.  War was obviously discussed, if that's what you mean, but I'd be surprised if all the private schools and home-schooled kids out there, but for a few examples, are teaching that all U.S. involvements in war have been essentially "mass murder."



Informational asymmetry makes economic transactions more difficult in varying degrees.  Especially when it comes to the risk of something uncertain happening (the business owner KNOWS he needs to hire an engineer to work daily on the assembly line, even though it's too complex for him to understand... it's more difficult for him to engage private healthcare with any degree of being able to measure cost/benefit).  Me picking my favorite flavor of ice cream is VERY different than someone picking their favorite insurance policy (filled with hundreds (if not thousands) of different procedures that may-or-may-not be covered)), or someone who just had a stroke picking which surgical procedure he'd like from Med-Ebay.com.

I'm not saying that any time someone is confused by something the government should step in, but the worse it is the more it's going to look like an area that the market is failing to use the profit motive to generate superior service, because the profit motive is too busy motivating the more educated party to trick the other... and maybe government will be able to improve the overall situation for most people.

But of course, any intrusion in medicine is to turn the poor into dependent lemmings and the uber-rich into... even richer... somehow.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 2:37 pm

I still don't understand how the super-rich benefit from deficits that are just paid to the poor.

Which implies that the super poor are just lemming boobs, the super rich are somehow unfairly scheming the whole system (even though they pay (gasp) the vast majority of the federal income taxes (the only tax that seems to matter when we discuss who's paying them)), and everyone in between is just being steamrolled.

I've got an idea... if being super-rich is unattainable, and the safety hammock is so generous (though it is simultaneously collectively screwing poor people (but not as much as upper-middle class... but not the super rich just the kinda rich  ::))), why not just live off of it?
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 3:17 pm

moda0306 wrote: I've got an idea... if being super-rich is unattainable, and the safety hammock is so generous (though it is simultaneously collectively screwing poor people (but not as much as upper-middle class... but not the super rich just the kinda rich  ::))), why not just live off of it?
Millions would agree with you. For millions it is the best option unfortunately.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 3:18 pm

Kshartle wrote:
moda0306 wrote: I've got an idea... if being super-rich is unattainable, and the safety hammock is so generous (though it is simultaneously collectively screwing poor people (but not as much as upper-middle class... but not the super rich just the kinda rich  ::))), why not just live off of it?
Millions would agree with you. For millions it is the best option unfortunately.
Maybe we're missing out.  Let's quit our jobs and jump in the hammock!
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by Kshartle » Mon Mar 10, 2014 6:09 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Kshartle wrote:
moda0306 wrote: I've got an idea... if being super-rich is unattainable, and the safety hammock is so generous (though it is simultaneously collectively screwing poor people (but not as much as upper-middle class... but not the super rich just the kinda rich  ::))), why not just live off of it?
Millions would agree with you. For millions it is the best option unfortunately.
Maybe we're missing out.  Let's quit our jobs and jump in the hammock!
I'm a subcontractor. My contract ends in Nov. They keep asking me come onboard but I'm actually looking forward to the unemployment and significant tax break next year when I start up again mid-year. I think between unemployment and lower taxes I'd be better off working 6 months on 6 months off.
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Re: Bitcoin giveaway! :)

Post by moda0306 » Mon Mar 10, 2014 6:29 pm

Can you collect on unemployment if you're not laid off and aren't actively searching for work?
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