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Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

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Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#421

Post by Nursie »

baddox wrote: post #393
mden wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand how that gives you personally more control. It seems to give more control to whoever wants to hurt you as he is the one purchasing the services. So with one body of force, I only need to worry about them coming after me, but with multiple bodies, I have less control as any one of them can come after me (even worse, without my knowledge of their existence in the first place). What am I missin…

> I'm not sure I understand how that gives you personally more control. Because you don't pay for the services you don't want, unlike with government. Government can decide to come after you and hurt you, after a lifetime of taking a large portion of your income. Again, it's just like any market. Obviously one individual doesn't have direct control over what bread a supermarket stocks, but a competitive market of gro…

But you may still be subject to someone else's concepts of justice, with no control over that at all. It removes even the illusion of democratic control and makes you subject to the whims of others, especially if they have more money.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#422

Post by pielud »

MartinCron wrote: post #203
Crito wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are currently thousands of different sets of laws and legal systems that you can choose to subscribe/submit to. Potential victims of crimes can shop around for the legal system that they prefer, and those who intend to commit crimes can do the same. Generally this "shopping around" cannot be done retroactively; there are a few exceptions to this however. The way that you pick the one that you wish to be associa…

That doesn't do anything to answer my question about where libertarians stand on the question. I still don't get what a civilization without a "monopoly on laws and law enforcement" would look like.

As another reply has suggested, David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom is an excellent book which describes how private defense, law and dispute resolution might happen.

This video is a good introduction to the ideas presented in the book http://youtu.be/jTYkdEU_B4o

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#423

Post by username223 »

baddox wrote: post #383
username223 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If governed regions are worse, why aren't you living in one of the ungoverned ones? Where (roughly) do you live now, and where would you live if moving were free? Thanks to government, my landlord can't kick me out without due notice, big guys with weapons can't "protect" me for a fee, and I can travel for free wherever I want on well-maintained roads without paying arbitrary fees. If your point is that agriculture m…

> If governed regions are worse, why aren't you living in one of the ungoverned ones? There are, practically speaking, no ungoverned areas. The ungoverned areas are either unsurvivable due to circumstances unrelated to the existence of governments (like the oceans and Antarctica), and the otherwise survivable areas that briefly don't have governments (like Somalia) are undesirable due not to a lack of government, but…

I meant "protect" in the sense of "protection money." I'd be happy to continue this discussion off-forum. You can probably PM me via reddit.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#424

Post by xenophanes »

kaonashi wrote: post #418
xenophanes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "classical libertarianism"? Google doesn't seem to know either.

I guess just what libertarianism was from Belsham into the 20th century, before the influence of Rand and Rothbard. The comment was in response to a statement saying that Rand spoke against libertarianism, which was true.

Can you explain more?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Belsham

> [Belshan] used the term libertarian in a discussion of free will and in opposition to "necessitarian" (or determinist) views

The use of the word "libertarian" in free will debates is separate from political libertarianism.

But it's worse than that:

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers...

> This essay is cited as the first to use the term "Libertarian." For Belsham it was a term of abuse. Liberty was nearly synonymous with libertine, a description of a person with no responsibility.

> Belsham dismisses the ideas of the Libertarians, citing the foreknowledge of God, as did Hobbes and the religious leaders Luther and Calvin before him.

> Belsham is a Necessarian, as he describes his fellow determinists.

So, what are you talking about?

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#425

Post by ivanca »

zedshaw wrote: post #347
ivanca wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this the top comment? ... Oh, the author.

No, because it's funny and points out the stupidity of most objectivist arguments using their own words. It's the same thing when we all found out the original DPR clumsily ordered overpriced hits on people after spouting off that he wanted a world free of violence. The universal thing about most of these people is that if they believe that everyone should only think of themselves then they cannot be trusted, yet peo…

What's the alternative? The goverment? You mean, like when HSBC launders billions of dollars from cartels and gets away with it?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/14/hsbc-money-l...

And your stupidity is also part of this, he never asked for police enforcement, he asked for the members of the site itself to look for the thefts.

Plus, when is a mistake made by the goverment the proposed solution is not "We need the goverment to disappear"; same way here; pretending the only solution is to spawn one is just as dumb. If Silk Road was just a forum instead of actually holding bitcoins none of this would have happened. But you don't expose solutions such as those; you only want to transform this in a circlejerk argument that support whatever you already believed before, a confirmation bias.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#426

Post by redthrowaway »

zedshaw wrote: post #336
redthrowaway wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ahahahahaah!... You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here. You can make the same argument without being an ass about it.

It's funny how me pointing out the stupidity and bullshit of a group of criminals makes me an asshole... But a guy who has actually lost people's money, put them at risk of reprisal from drug dealers, helped people (potentially young people) commit major crimes, enabled future addicts, and potentially is lying about the security flaw to steal all this money while spouting hypocritical contradictory statements...is a…

How did "stop being a jackass" turn into "I support the guy who stole the money"?

Zed, I want to make myself clear, here: I have absolutely nothing to say whatsoever about whatever substantive claims you might be making. I'm just telling you to stop being a asshole about it.

But fuck it, I told you pretty much the exact same thing[1] almost 3 years ago, and you haven't changed since then. It's not your message that turns people off, it's your delivery. I still suspect it's a calculated ploy for pageviews and name recognition.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605957

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#427

Post by gweinberg »

pekk wrote: post #411
baddox wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same thing as not having laws. That's like saying that a competitive market for food is the same thing as having no food.

a war of all against all is not law.

It's also something that has never existed outside Hobbes' imagination

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#428

Post by baddox »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #353
baddox wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Laws" and "law enforcement" are just products, similar to any other service. If you can imagine what a civilization without a monopoly on food production, or house cleaning services, or medical services would look like, you should be able to imagine with a civilization without a monopoly on laws and law enforcement would look like. Most people believe that monopolies are not economically efficient for producing "ord…

Law enforcement is ultimately a license to use violence. Having multiple coalitions or companies selling violence as a product seems like a recipe for a truly nightmarish society.

Multiple coalitions competing for customer dollars will lead to more economically efficient distribution of violence, just like if you replace "violence" with anything else like "bread" or "automobiles."

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#429

Post by baddox »

res0nat0r wrote: post #410
baddox wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on recent Somalian history, but I have heard people suggest that Somalia improved during its period of "anarchy," while others contend that it wasn't really anarchy, but rather a battleground of neighboring states and factions battling to be the "one government." Also, Somalia's government before it failed in 1991 was a military dictatorship; hardly something even most advocates of government would advo…

Feel free to list your choice of countries without any government and we will see what their quality of life ranking is vs. standard countries with functional government. Here is a handy chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality...

Which of those countries doesn't have a government? And which of those countries has a society like what I'm advocating? Note that I'm not simply advocating that we have anything so long as it's not government. I'm advocating a specific alternative to government.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#430

Post by baddox »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #392
arg01 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when it comes to force. I've read a couple of libertarian leaning books after having similar conversations on HN and they all seem to believe that a monopoly won't spring up on force due to market forces and people wisely deciding to pay someone else to stop a company getting to large. It just seems naive, one of the key premises of the free market is that those who do a job better (cost/quality) grow…

It's notable that a role of government is to regulate against monopolies. There is no such thing as natural market equilibrium (which is an underlying false assumption you see a lot) and this is a reason you need external governance for a healthy functioning market. You can argue over quality and whether interests are fairly protected but that's a different question. Also worth considering the history of firefighting…

You're suggesting that the possibility of market failures justifies government power. Unfortunately, government is also vulnerable to market failures, and I don't know of any argument for why government's market failures (also known as "government failures") would be less common or harmful than market failures.
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