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Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

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Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#221

Post by JohnBooty »

zedshaw wrote: post #173
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

"Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws!"

I'm nearly as far away from libertarian as one can be, but no - it's not the same as not having laws.

Example: Old (American) West-style "frontier justice" where a bunch of townspeople form a posse or a lynch mob or whatever to right some (real or perceived) wrong.

(edit: I do understand that this is only one possible scenario, and not what all or even many libertarians want)

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#222

Post by interstitial »

dispense wrote: post #120
samstave wrote: post #88

SO, I am completely ignorant on exactly how bitcoin works; but how the hell is it not possible to secure a bitcoin one owns.

It is perfectly possible. Your only task is to secure the private keys. These are short enough to be printed as a QR code or written down. keep that piece of paper somewhere safe. Alternatively, it is possible to use a good, random, long passphrase as your de facto private key. That way, the keys to your wallet are literally stored in your mind and nowhere else. As of now, there are no known fatal flaws or weaknesses…

And you can always melt down your bitcoin into a pure gold.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#223

Post by DennisP »

zedshaw wrote: post #153
apalmer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your point, but I think you are missing the glaring nuance here... He is basically saying if you are reading this and you were affected its in your best interest to participate in catching this guy and 'persuading' him to give us the bitcoins... he isnt appealing to government or some over arching entity or morality.

Yes he is! In fact he appeals to morality just about every other sentence. It's rather hilarious.

Libertarians have a strong sense of morality based on property rights. You might be thinking of anarchism.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#224

Post by btilly »

zedshaw wrote: post #173
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

I've been having conversations on this topic recently with a libertarian who grew up in the Soviet Union. Let's just say, when you've seen laws and law enforcers monopolized by villains, it becomes quite hard to accept that justice is whatever the government and courts say it should be.

While I personally like law and order, when the choice is mob justice or a police state, there are some definite advantages to mob justice.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#225

Post by joe_the_user »

zedshaw wrote: post #173
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

Oh, I think the libertarians want something like the old posses that once went around stringing-up cattle thieves, so they would do something to the thieves if they caught them - unless fear of the state prevented this (why they think the state is unjust).

Not that there aren't multitudes of other problems in their schemes.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#227

Post by zanny »

chasing wrote: post #106
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for anyone who sees bitcoin as a 'wild west' environment, this sort of thing is obvious and just moves the bitcoin economy forward. problems found now are fixed, and won't be as big of a deal later.

But this isn't a beta test. People treat Bitcoin as if it's ready for primetime and ready to replace traditional currency.

If the worst problem in the fiat banking cartel industry was occasionally buggy client software, we would all be floating on a cloud of happiness and rainbows.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#228

Post by redthrowaway »

zedshaw wrote: post #173
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

>Ahahahahaah!... You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

You can make the same argument without being an ass about it.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#229

Post by dnautics »

joe_the_user wrote: post #208
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

I notice you don't question the "everyone is greedy" assertion, however. As I understand it, libertarians believe that justice can be attained through the adversarial institution of the market. That is, by everyone greedily fighting within the bonds of normal commerce, a just (but likely not equal), situation will arise. The gaping hole in this scenario is that those who are greedy and, say, losing or just not gettin…

no, libertarians don't necessarily believe that justice is attained through the market, but that market allocation of resources is more just than political allocation of resources.

"everyone is greedy" is not a good characterization of libertarianism; there are plenty of libertarian social benefit groups; a good example that ties into the OP is "sean's outpost" which is a bitcoin-based organization providing for the homeless in Pensacola and running up against a lot of adversarial actions by the state. Libertarian and libertarian-leaning groups (such as the Institute for Justice) regularly advocate against the state shutting down private social benefit groups helping the less fortunate.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Seans-Outpost/380918045363634

libertarians sometimes espouse the "everyone likes to be efficient" pro-market argument, but there are libertarians (like myself) that find that to be weak in the light of indivdiuals being irrational.

the core libertarian philosophy though really takes the "markets are moral because they are voluntary transactions" argument.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#230

Post by weavejester »

beat wrote: post #100
weavejester wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern banking is also largely reversible, so stolen funds can often be recovered, and insurance covers the other cases. Bitcoin has the problem of having irreversible transactions, and it's also a lot more difficult to determine whether or not an account has been legitimately stolen from. I don't think it's the case that the current banking industry is insulated from theft due to superior security. From what I've he…

Reversible transactions are a security mechanism. And not all mainstream financial transactions are reversible - short term bank to bank loans, which can run in the tens of millions of dollars over periods of mere minutes, are not reversible within the transaction process itself (set up another transaction to balance the books if necessary). Of course, this is hardly a realm for consumers! Only a rarified few that ha…

Sure, but the processes that make banking secure mostly rely on human interaction, insurance and centralisation, which are obviously difficult or impossible to apply to Bitcoin. The current batch of Bitcoin businesses are getting hard lessons in information security, whereas the mainline banking system can compensate for any deficiencies in their software with more traditional security processes.

To me, one of the more interesting results of Bitcoin is how critical information security is to the businesses that deal in it, and how a flaw in their security can make companies vanish overnight. It really provides some darwinian pressure to get security right!

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