Tactics to help bring the system down

[derick]

What do you think of this, have you used any of these ideas?

http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1108.html

[Seth King]

Gary North is hit and miss with me.

This was one of his misses.

[ff42]

I am curious why you thought it was a miss.  Do you not believe a system can be gummed up?  Do you think it is not worth the effort/risk?  Did you not find a specific action you could do from this article?

[rahvin]

I suppose you could freedom of information act EVERYTHING.  That would be funny.

[Seth King]

I am curious why you thought it was a miss.  Do you not believe a system can be gummed up?  Do you think it is not worth the effort/risk?  Did you not find a specific action you could do from this article?

I think my time is much better spent creating alternative institutions rather than gumming up the old ones. For example, Bitcoin. The older generation of Austrian School economists have totally dropped the ball on Bitcoin, in my opinion. They're still droning on about how bad the dollar is and how good gold is, when they could be sidestepping the entire system with very little effort.

We have the older generation to thank for instilling the freedom philosophy in us, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, they are not going to be the ones that actually bring down the system. That will be our generation's doing.

[dpalme]

The older generation of Austrian School economists have totally dropped the ball on Bitcoin, in my opinion. They're still droning on about how bad the dollar is and how good gold is, when they could be sidestepping the entire system with very little effort.

We have the older generation to thank for instilling the freedom philosophy in us, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, they are not going to be the ones that actually bring down the system. That will be our generation's doing.

I have to agree 100% with this. After reading what they say about BitCoin over at LRC, I feel like they're kind of taking a step backwards. They agree to competing currencies, but only if they're something like the Liberty Dollar.

While I like gold and silver, something like BitCoin is the future. People are already using digital money; switching over to something like BitCoin would be a helluva lot easier than switching to gold or silver for most folks.

[derick]

The fiat money system is in the process of moving as far away from honest money as it can get. I expect in the near future we will all be using some sort of card to transfer our "digital money". In my opinion bitcoin plays right into this phony money scam of digital nothingness. Bitcoin is one solar flare away from evaporating into the strotosphere. Im sorry Seth, I just dont buy into the hype.

[Seth King]

The fiat money system is in the process of moving as far away from honest money as it can get. I expect in the near future we will all be using some sort of card to transfer our "digital money". In my opinion bitcoin plays right into this phony money scam of digital nothingness. Bitcoin is one solar flare away from evaporating into the strotosphere. Im sorry Seth, I just dont buy into the hype.

Have you read my article on this matter?

http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/10/02/i-was-wrong-about-bitcoin/

[dpalme]

I expect in the near future we will all be using some sort of card to transfer our "digital money".

They already have that covered http://www.paymyaddress.com/

[derick]

Have you read my article on this matter?

http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/10/02/i-was-wrong-about-bitcoin/

Seth, Im not going to try to change your mind on bitcoin because I know I cant. In your article you compare bitcoin to the FRN, my take on this is that almost anything would be better than the FRN, so I would agree that bitcoin would be better in that comparison. I instinctively do not trust anything digital because as I said earlier, a solar flare could wipe it all away or how about an EMP attack? I dont believe there is or ever will be a perfect money but I do consider gold and silver to be the best medium of exchange, the free market has consistently settled on gold and silver in the past and I expect any free market to do the same in the future. I read an article the other day that says Tide soap is being used as a medium of exchange in the drug trade, anything is better than the FRN.

[Seth King]

Have you read my article on this matter?

http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/10/02/i-was-wrong-about-bitcoin/

Seth, Im not going to try to change your mind on bitcoin because I know I cant. In your article you compare bitcoin to the FRN, my take on this is that almost anything would be better than the FRN, so I would agree that bitcoin would be better in that comparison. I instinctively do not trust anything digital because as I said earlier, a solar flare could wipe it all away or how about an EMP attack? I dont believe there is or ever will be a perfect money but I do consider gold and silver to be the best medium of exchange, the free market has consistently settled on gold and silver in the past and I expect any free market to do the same in the future. I read an article the other day that says Tide soap is being used as a medium of exchange in the drug trade, anything is better than the FRN.

Before I address your other concerns I'd just like to say that unless the solar flare completely knocked out all internet throughout the world, PERMANENTLY, then Bitcoin would not be affected, considering that the network is global.

Speaking of network, I used to feel the way you do now about gold and silver. I used to think about money as a commodity. I've since come to view money more as a network.

At the end of the day the strength of money is all about who will accept it as payment. As we see now, despite MASSIVE debasement by the Federal Reserve, the Dollar remains strong because so many people will accept it around the world. As more and more states and individuals stop accepting the dollar(like what Ron Paul talks about, rejecting the Dollar) the Dollar's strength will diminish.

As more and more people accept Bitcoin its strength will increase. Ask yourself, do you see more people accepting the Dollar as payment in the next five years or decreasing. Then ask yourself if you see more people accepting Bitcoin as payment in five years or decreasing.

[Tom J]

Professor George Selgin is a very respected intellect on the subject of money and banking from the standpoint of free market and/or libertarian principles. He recently made some remarks on the subject and wrote a paper as well.

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"George Selgin discusses privatization of the money supply based on Bitcoin
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62659
February 05, 2012, 08:19:41 AM  #1  

From the Market Monetarist, economist George Selgin discusses a privatisation of the money supply based on what he calls a Quasi Commodity Standard (QCS). QCS is inspired by the technological development of Bitcoin. Basically he sees a three step procedure for the privatisation of the money supply and going from the present fiat based monetary monopoly to what he calls a Free Banking system based on a Quasi Commodity Standard rather than gold.

http://twitcam.livestream.com/8eouu

You need a bit of patience if you want to watch the whole thing. It starts out in Italian but at the 5 minute mark switches to English. The presentation lasts around 45 minutes. He talks about QCS at 37 minutes and Bitcoin at 40 minutes."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the paper he wrote addressing the subject, titled "Quasi-Commodity Money":
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2000118

[JustSayNoToStatism]

Before I address your other concerns I'd just like to say that unless the solar flare completely knocked out all internet throughout the world, PERMANENTLY, then Bitcoin would not be affected, considering that the network is global.

For the record, I'm not yet ready to take a side in this debate. But I need to address the above point. Won't you lose all your money in the event of an EMP? The network might survive, but all the bitcoins in the wallets that got fried would be inaccessible...I suppose there are work arounds though. You could EMP proof a flash drive that you use to back up your wallet each night or something. But I'm not the expert. Feel free to correct me if something is wrong.

[Seth King]

Before I address your other concerns I'd just like to say that unless the solar flare completely knocked out all internet throughout the world, PERMANENTLY, then Bitcoin would not be affected, considering that the network is global.

For the record, I'm not yet ready to take a side in this debate. But I need to address the above point. Won't you lose all your money in the event of an EMP? The network might survive, but all the bitcoins in the wallets that got fried would be inaccessible...I suppose there are work arounds though. You could EMP proof a flash drive that you use to back up your wallet each night or something. But I'm not the expert. Feel free to correct me if something is wrong.

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about EMPs. Electromagnetic pulses don't really fry all electronic equipment. They merely reverse or disrupt the the propagation of other electromagnetic radiation and electric currents (Edit: and do create currents of their own in conductors, but if the current generated is great enough to fry your computer you've got bigger things to worry about, like radiation poisoning).

For a very short period, the duration of the pulse, your electronics will fail. So, you don't want to be flying an airplane during a pulse. But I doubt your computer would do much more than experience a hard shut down.

But even IF all electronics got fried to oblivion, if you're really concerned about your Bitcoins getting fried you can always print out a paper copy of your private keys as a low-fi backup.

The solar flare is also nothing to worry about unless you're dealing with transistors Edit: transformers, like the power companies.

[rahvin]

I had an interesting idea. 

The post office has been losing tons of money and is suffering from a poor public image. 

An easy way to help this along would be to mark all junk mail "return to sender" instead of throwing it away.  It's a free way of getting mail sent twice.