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Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

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Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#91
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here. The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)

Yes, the EU is ahead, but just like every other part of the future it is unevenly distributed. Some country in Europe will pioneer a concept, others will follow, some faster some slower. The US usually catches on long after the concept has already become normal in a fair chunk of the EU. As for your constitution, America gets it right on paper, but in practice God (the Christian one) is all over American politics, wh…

Define "long after." Gay marriage became legal in France in 2014, the UK in 2014, the US in 2015, and is still not legal in Germany.

Abortion was legalized in the U.K. in 1967, abortion bans were made illegal in the US in 1973, in France and Germany in the mid 1970s.

Sure some Scandinavian country might be ahead in those issues, but if Vermont was a separate country the US still wouldn't be behind. Also, this is really a great example of why the EU is such a terrible idea.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#92
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that Johnson had been better prepped for some of his interviews. I really don't like where the democons are headed in this country.

No amount of prep was going to help that train wreck -- Johnson never had a reputation as a particularly smart politician (he was rather proud of his ignorance, actually), but he showed less knowledge of world affairs than the average evening news viewer. And he's still the most credible candidate the Libertarian party has posted! If you want libertarian views to gain political credibility, you'd probably be better a…

The GOP has made it clear they don't want a libertarian a la the Pauls. I don't think it can happen with the hard push to the social right they've made in the past 8 years.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#93

It has offered Edward Snowden a new place to call home. I love Iceland. I truly do. My wife and I visited twice last year. I think it would be a wonderful place to live. Given a choice between Russia and Iceland I would pick Iceland without hesitation (although I have to admit that I have never been to Russia). However, I do not believe that they would be able to protect Snowden from the CIA. I hope Snowden sees this…

So you have no idea what is Gluggaveður then=)

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#94
post #15
post #8

Could Iceland become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin (or an alternative crypto) as its national currency? If the Pirate Party wins, this could be one of the numerous cool experiments in government to take place.

Bitcoin can't handle the number of transactions required. It's simply not technically possible for the blockchain to be used as a country's (or medium sized city's) primary currency.

Really? I always thought it was very powerful. Any place to read up more about this?

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#95
post #40
post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

Simply not true. In two party system radical ideas are taking over the parties and changing their agenda. It's not like OWS has no influence in the Democrat Party. Or Tea Party in thevRepublucan Party. Both are mainstreamed by the parties, but that's a good thing. By civilizing radical elements you can actually still enjoy democracy vs having it destroyed by radicals like nazis or communists. Never thought why US nev…

I don't think it's that clear cut. Germany had multiparty system before turning fascist. But in early 30's elections in Germany, the communist and the fascist had combined popularity of over 50% on two elections. These parties could have been under same flag in two party system. It's completely possible that similar autocratic popular vote in USA would have resulted similar shit-show.

Alternatively fascist could have sided with SDP if the communist are too bad. And this time we have over 50% popularity in all of the elections in early 30's.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#96
post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

There are advantages and disadvantages to all systems.

In European PR systems where many parties routinely end up in parliament, the real governing is done by elites stiching up a deal between themselves and all the proportinal voting just slightly alters the barganing chips brought to the table.

The biggest case of this is Germany, which will be ruled by the grand-coalition for the forseeable future, more or less regardless of what happens at elections.

This has worked OK in countries where people mostly trust their elites. But it is still not particularly democratic.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#97
post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

All the time these days I here people describe economies and political systems as "rigged". Do you actually mean the US political system was deliberately lain out by a mastermind with the goal of preventing the emergence of alternative parties? Or just that the system has evolved (without design) to be hostile to minority parties? If the latter, the word "rigged" seems misleading and inflammatory to me. If the former…

The impression I got from studying the subject is that it is actually rigged, as in deliberately designed like that. Unfortunately I usually don't remember the details, only my takeaway, but I read very good objective treatise on the subject, I think it was in A People's History of the United States. I highly recommend it for a balanced and critical look at American history.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#98
post #83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here. The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)

It's also incorrect to assert Europe is more progressive on abortion. Europe's two largest countries, Germany and France, only permit abortion during the first trimester (12-14 weeks), and have mandatory counseling. Germany has a 3-day waiting period, and France had a one-week waiting period until last year. The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, a…

Europe might be more progressive on abortion. Ever notice the rhetoric on the "rare" part of "safe, legal and rare" is entirely limited to preventing unwanted pregnancies? Presumably abortions should be rare because they are intrinsically bad in some way. We use the tax system to influence all kind of behaviors, many of them health related, but we're not willing to use the tax system to make abortions more rare...

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#99
post #25

This kind of change could only happen in Europe, due to the multi-party system. In America, as has so often been proven, the system is rigged to prevent alternatives to the established parties. I honestly believe this proves the superiority of this system, over the American one. The great advantage of democracy is that it provides an avenue for peaceful change, or, if you are more cynical, the appearance of such. Thi…

There are advantages and disadvantages to all systems. In European PR systems where many parties routinely end up in parliament, the real governing is done by elites stiching up a deal between themselves and all the proportinal voting just slightly alters the barganing chips brought to the table. The biggest case of this is Germany, which will be ruled by the grand-coalition for the forseeable future, more or less re…

To be honest, it's quite similar in the US too. That's why there isn't much difference between the Obama administration and the previous Bush administration - there was a real continuity in most respects. And even if Trump got elected, not much would change either.

Re: Iceland, a land of Vikings, braces for a Pirate Party takeover

#100
post #15
post #8

Could Iceland become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin (or an alternative crypto) as its national currency? If the Pirate Party wins, this could be one of the numerous cool experiments in government to take place.

Bitcoin can't handle the number of transactions required. It's simply not technically possible for the blockchain to be used as a country's (or medium sized city's) primary currency.

By direct analogy physical paper dollars cannot handle the transaction velocity in the NYSE financial markets or even the M1 / M2 accounts like checking and savings accounts, therefore the paper dollar cannot be the currency of the USA. I mean paper money at the small denominations currently issued would literally catch on fire if it moved fast enough to keep up with HFT.

You could get away quite easily with BTC only as a partial M0 currency or more interestingly as a (partial?) M3 reserve.

By partial M0 I mean we can abstract this "physical money currency" thing into paper bills and metal coins. Issue paper money down to thousandths of BTC as BTC certificates where theoretically one BTC worth of paper can be exchanged for one electronic BTC. Much like American Dollars used to be precious metal certificates.

People will have plenty of fun wat the expense of the BTC as M3 idea but fact of the matter is you stick something volatile and non-volatile together tightly enough and it averages out a bit. So the real question isn't what happens to Icelands M3 when it becomes as volatile as BTC, but what happens to BTC when its welded to comparatively non-volatile Icelandic economy. If that kind of welding happened, BTC prices couldn't vary more than a percent per month or whatever. That's likely to drive BTC traders nuts because they make piles of dough off volatility so the people most in tune with BTC will very loudly hate the idea for self interest reasons, even if it would be a good idea for a mere 99.999% of the rest of the population. As for the partial idea, much as large banks keep literal tons of gold tied up in vaults, its quite possible for the Icelandic treasury to keep a pile of BTC tied up as one of numerous forms of reserve and that would certainly kill price volatility of BTC or at least drag it down to precious metals levels of price volatility.

There's also the issue of putting on a show. The US Mint issues plenty of legal tender gold and silver coins, but those coins are not a major part of commerce. It would be trivial for the Icelandic treasury to allow payment of income tax in BTC or something similar that doesn't really change anything but makes some nice BTC related headlines. Frankly this is the most likely outcome. Perhaps you'll be able to buy a ticket for a tour of the Icelandic Dept of the Treasury with BTC, and this will be trumpeted very loudly, not much further real world impact. Yet it is a baby step along a path, and the result of buying tickets today might be in a decade everyone will pay taxes with BTC, who knows.

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