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The Face Behind Bitcoin?

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Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#631

Post by gnarbarian »

craigyk wrote: post #621
gnarbarian wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a federal/state contractor myself. That's what happened to me. My job has driven me to a libertarian viewpoint over a period of years after seeing inefficiency and wastefulness of the organizations I deal with. This is across many state and federal departments. And I do make an effort to push them toward more cost effective technologies and processes but the sad truth is they don't want to hear it because they pre…

The thing is... you'd likely see inefficiency and wastefulness in most private sector jobs as well. Almost guaranteed. There are some types of services, like crucial infrastructure, where failure is not an option, hence government, hence sacrificing efficiency in favor of dependability.

Except that I also work in the private sector as well. I have both private and public clients. It's MUCH MUCH worse in government. Also if you're seen as wasteful at a large company you're more likely to be shown the door.

The larger the organization the more room there is for waste within its ranks. No organizations are larger than the government.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#632

Post by prostoalex »

bane wrote: post #609
prostoalex wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one gain a first-hand knowledge of a corrupt system unless one has experienced it himself? It's quite possible to be the user of the system due to the lack of other alternatives and oppose it in principle. People with mortgages or shares do not necessarily support corrupt Wall Street practices and financial institutions getting "too big to fail", yet benefit from low mortgage rates or bullish runs in the sto…

It turns out experiential knowledge is not the only way we can learn things.

Why have the silly laws protecting the whistle-blowers then?

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#633

Post by declan »

smsm42 wrote: post #501
dharma1 wrote: post #298

For a professional journalist to sink to such a level - with zero consideration for others in order to advance their own career - never ceases to amaze me.

Isn't that what professional journalists routinely do?

Those would be journalists who are not acting professionally.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#634

Post by bane »

crazy1van wrote: post #387
bane wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, performing actions that are different than your beliefs is literally the definition of hypocrisy. The fact that somebody else might take the actions anyways is irrelevant.

Working for the government does not grow the government. The government has decided to grow by hiring a new employee. Your action to take or reject the job doesn't change that. However, believing the government should be smaller and then voting for politicians who want to grow your sector of the government does seem hypocritical.

> Working for the government does not grow the government.

Working productively for the government, specifically when non-government alternatives exist, does.

Let's say you work in transportation, should you work for the DoT or the company that owns all the toll roads in the region?

Let's say you do a damn good job for the DoT and because of your work you drive the the cost per traveled mile per person (or whatever the applicable measure is) to a fraction of the same for the private toll roads. You've just justified that government is in fact better than the private sector. The local general assembly passes a law that the toll road should become public property and a forced takeover is instituted. Government is grown.

But you could work for the toll road company, drive their costs down while expanding their owned network, demonstrate that private road ownership, a pay-for-what-you-use system is the best. It beats paying taxes on roads you won't even drive on! Private road companies start taking over all the roads and the DoT becomes nothing more than a small regulatory body. Government is shrunk.

You have a choice, participate in government or not. If you believe the government cannot be effective, and you still take the government job, you become part of the problem and that's hypocrisy full stop. If you do a good job, you defeat your own argument. If you do a bad job, willfully (to try and prove government can't work) or not (just laziness and incompetence), then I question the need to retain you either way.

The U.S. at least has such a large private sector, it dwarfs the public sector, that there's very little excuse in going government vs. finding a commercial job somewhere.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#635

Post by baddox »

gnarbarian wrote: post #616
baddox wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights. Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.

more commonly known as Anarcho Capitalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users. They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as a…

I'm well aware of anarcho-capitalists, as I consider myself one.

> AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.

There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds.

> They are an extreme minority.

Perhaps, but they are an extremely powerful influence in libertarian ethical and economic thought. Murray Rothbard and Benjamin Tucker are (in my view) the fathers of the modern American libertarian movement, and they happen to have been anarchists. Even some popular conservative constitutionalist limited-government libertarians like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are anarchists who essentially lie about their views in order to deliver libertarian principles to a wider audience (I don't really approve of that technique, by the way).

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#636

Post by disbelief »

jxf wrote: post #402
dabernathy89 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you even call it "outing" when he didn't bother to hide his identity?

There's a huge difference between knowing: * your name is Alice Smith and knowing: * your name is Alice Smith * your age * your car's license plate * the street address of where you live and work * the names and identities of your close family members * the fact that you are worth ~$400M

Still though, if you're even somewhat worried about protecting your anonymity, why would you use your full name?

It might seem that being one "Alice Smith" amongst thousands is pretty good anonymity, but cross-reference that against people with the expertise and ability required to implement something like Bitcoin, and I bet that list gets really short really fast.

For the record, I do still think it was sleazy and unnecessary to publish his car's license plate and a photo of his house, (even though they would have been easy enough for people to figure out based on the other personal information unearthed in the article).

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#637

Post by astrange »

gnarbarian wrote: post #616
baddox wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights. Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.

more commonly known as Anarcho Capitalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users. They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as a…

Out of the things you just listed, I don't think the Republican party supports _any_ of them.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#638

Post by gnarbarian »

astrange wrote: post #637
gnarbarian wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more commonly known as Anarcho Capitalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users. They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as a…

Out of the things you just listed, I don't think the Republican party supports _any_ of them.

And you'd be wrong for a good number of representatives. I suppose I should have also added "Small Government" and "less taxes" which is what the republicans are at least ostensibly for.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#639

Post by gnarbarian »

baddox wrote: post #635
gnarbarian wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more commonly known as Anarcho Capitalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users. They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as a…

I'm well aware of anarcho-capitalists, as I consider myself one. > AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users. There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds. > They are an extreme minority. Perhaps, bu…

I'm saying that AnCaps and RMS are both ideological extremes and do not represent the vast majority of their respective movements.

But I suppose I did paint with too broad a brush. My statement about law enforcement is the equivalent of someone saying "Democrats don't believe in a totalitarian communist regime where we are all forced to have vegan diets", By and large it's true and for the sake of brevity it makes sense to say it, because those views are not a good example of what the Democratic party as a whole is actually about. This also helps some of the more naive people in this thread get a more realistic perspective on what most self identifying libertarians actually believe.

Cheers.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#640

Post by frogpelt »

mpyne wrote: post #608
frogpelt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's probably not completely safe from governments either.

Well if it was this easy to track him down then I somehow suspect that the U.S. gov't, at least, was not actually trying to do it.

They don't usually write articles about the people that they find.
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