111–120 of 140 posts
If you haven't read it, there are some great bits in Cryptonimicon that kind of captures the spirit of some of that crowd. Great book in any event.
What gets me is that I read that book before I discovered bitcoin. So when bitcoin was brand new and worth only cents I looked at it like sci-fi and doubted it would ever take off. I'm still kicking myself over that.
The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…
> FPGA and ASIC operators consuming vasts amount of energy Not vast at all when you compare it with the amount of energy used in traditional banking to move around the same amount of money.
Relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6hbis7/us_congress... TLDR; There's currently a bill to make cryptocurrencies illegal. (and other stuff that the government can't control)
Honestly, this seems like a reasonably sane bill. IANAL but it does not seem to make cryptocurrencies illegal, more the opposite: it recognizes them as cash and places the same requirements that other financial instruments have on them...with a review period of 18 months. That seems good for crypto more than anything else. If anyone knows more about this and wants to explain why I'm misunderstanding this I'd be thank…
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Honestly, this seems like a reasonably sane bill. IANAL but it does not seem to make cryptocurrencies illegal, more the opposite: it recognizes them as cash and places the same requirements that other financial instruments have on them...with a review period of 18 months. That seems good for crypto more than anything else. If anyone knows more about this and wants to explain why I'm misunderstanding this I'd be thank…
Don't know what the HN abbreviation, IANAL, means but in my ignorance it just looks quite distasteful. :\
I first saw it on Reddit, I presume that isn't its starting point though.
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It's not that there's anything wrong with the technology. It's just that people can be exploited. And they get exploited. So the hierarchical power structures remain in place. Seriously, what better dream to plant in the slaves' minds but the idea that "a simple little computer program" can set you free? And what better way to control them and stifle their rising-up than by the constant deception that they have more…
> what better dream to plant in the slaves' minds but the idea that "a simple little computer program" can set you free? Yet when people overthrow tyrannical governments to then establish democracy the planning is done secretly. And when tyrannical governments come to power the first thing they do is monitor and restrict communication. This has been true many times in history in the last hundreds years.
Another point is -- all governments monitor communications and we don't call them tyrannical. Take the Germans. They're notorious. But people consider the Germany government quite liberal.
Restricting communications does not have to be a tool of "cruel, unreasonable, oppressive or arbitrary use of power or control." It can be deliberate, reasoned and helpful. China restricts their communications and they enjoy a lot of civil harmony, and a huge amount of national pride.
The media in the US practice a form of "information restriction and control" by tightly directing the narratives, and editorial perspective ( and sometimes even the facts ) that people are consuming. That's been the case for a long time. No one's calling it a tyranny, even tho plenty of Americans distrust authority.
I think your model of tyranny and your belief in crypto are unrealistic.
The reason I don't believe in crypto is because I consider everything as "security theatre." IMHO, every single cryptosystem that exists has already been broken. The pretense that it hasn't is just a charade.
Note: I believe in the strong version of the above statement. That RSA / EC / AES / DES and so on are broken. But the weak version, that protocols, physical monitoring, side channel attacks, and other vectors make every practical cryptosystem broken is kind of born out by the events of the last few years.
Whether you believe in the strong or the weak version of that statement the net result is the same, no? I think so, anyway.
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whoosh...
Look, everyone knows that concepts have no intentionality. It was a figure of speech.
If you haven't read it, there are some great bits in Cryptonimicon that kind of captures the spirit of some of that crowd. Great book in any event.
What gets me is that I read that book before I discovered bitcoin. So when bitcoin was brand new and worth only cents I looked at it like sci-fi and doubted it would ever take off. I'm still kicking myself over that.
The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…
Incorrect on both counts. There are, and have been, both currencies and markets without (or outside) state purview. Though having a state helps standardise much about both. See the content of the Code of Hammurabi, much of which concerned both commerce and tort.
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Incorrect on both counts. There are, and have been, both currencies and markets without (or outside) state purview. Though having a state helps standardise much about both. See the content of the Code of Hammurabi, much of which concerned both commerce and tort.
Got any good literature on this because I haven't found any supporting what you said. Code of Hammurabi didn't standardize an existing practice in my understanding.
Wampum is the source of "clams" as a synonym for money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum
http://factcards.califa.org/mli/tannery.html
The use of cowhides as money is also discussed in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, a travellogue/history of early California in the 1830s. (Also mentioned at the URL above).
http://www.worldcat.org/title/two-years-before-the-mast-a-pe...
The code of Hammurabi: "Nearly one-half of the code deals with matters of contract, establishing, for example, the wages to be paid to an ox driver or a surgeon."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
Citing: http://www.commonlaw.com/home/legal-history-and-philosophy/c...
William Stanley Jevons wrote at length on money in the 1880s, and discusses early forms of currency, including several mentioned above: https://archive.org/stream/moneyandmechani01jevogoog#page/n4...
I'll leave you free to conduct further research on your own.
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Got any good literature on this because I haven't found any supporting what you said. Code of Hammurabi didn't standardize an existing practice in my understanding.
The persistence in the use of Roman currency throughout Europe after the fall of Rome, the use of various currencies in pre-Columbian America, including the continued use of same by post-Columbian Americans, as well as other commodity monies: beaver pelts, cowhides, etc. These were frequently (though not exclusively) used in frontier regions, where the notion of a government regulating trade was all but absent, or be…
Also native Americans had societies and government that rivalled European societies. Example the mound builders along the Mississippi. The 'primitive' tribes are survivors of greater failed states which developed currencies. They lived the way they did to prevent the horrors of 'civilization' from happening again.