st434u

http://zuiprax.tumblr.com/post/1353730876/state-regulations-and-the-formation-of-monopolies

All schools are immensely evil, and anyone who needs something like this to form such an opinion about a particular school, really hasn't thought it through, or if they did, they are morally bankrupt themselves. All schools are government-run or government-approved indoctrination camps where all children are forced to attend at gunpoint, then further forced to sit down, shut up, and memorize whatever brainwashing nonsense they're being presented with, and they are further forced to prove they can at least repeat it afterwards in an exam which they also must attend at gunpoint. This goes on for 7-12 years. Few things in modern societies are as evil, harmful and destructive as schools.

Well it's not the entirety of the government. Just a few people in key places, and everybody else following orders. The way the chain of command works is that only a handful of people know the whole script, and everybody else knows only what they must, and fear keeps them from talking too much. Also, it wasn't kept quiet. Many people talked about seeing things that shouldn't have happened. In either case, once the controlled demolition hypothesis has been corroborated, you're left with the question: who else but the government would have the ability, access, and incentives to carry it out, and especially carry it out in this particular way?

If someone has the time to watch the full 1h:45m presentation that I linked to, I don't think any of the stuff about whether it was military or commercial planes or whether it was missiles and holographs matter much. The evidence for controlled demolition is just too vast, the hypothesis has been validated well beyond reasonable doubt. My default position is that all the speculation about there being no planes is too far out there, and possibly initiated as a rumor by the people responsible, but I admit I haven't delved deep into the evidence for that in particular.

I think the AE911Truth guys did a superb good job at showing how all 3 of the WTC buildings didn't collapse accidentally, but were demolished in a controlled demolition which had to be carefully set up weeks if not months in advance of September 11th, 2001, in order to minimize damage to adjacent buildings. I don't know anything about there being no planes, but that seems a bit far out.

I'm in favor of the no-state (stateless) position, but in this case, Jan won the debate by a landslide. This was Stephan Kinsella at his worst and Jan Helfeld at his best. Maybe Stephan shouldn't drink so much before and during a debate. His lack of concentration and of patience, tantrums, ill-will, unwillingness to follow a proper debate by it's terms and his constant insult-throwing were more reminiscent of the late drunkard and radical socialist Christopher Hitchens, than of someone with the high class and style that I seemed to regard Kinsella as having.

If it wasn't a serious claim, why would I make it?Maybe if you took the time to actually read what I'm saying before you reply. I didn't say the problem was that it could be split into a quadrillion pieces, but that *if* the claim is that bitcoin is just an information storage and transfer service, and *if* the amount of information that can be carried or stored by one quadrillionth of a coin is the same as that which can be carried or stored by a whole coin, then there is a problem with this claim. A pizza can be broken into a quadrillion parts but one quadrillionth of a pizza will only be enough to feed a couple of quadrillionths of a person. Same goes for gold. I don't know what you're talking about. If you're gonna claim that I don't understand bitcoin (which is certainly a possibility), then it would be a good idea to actually respond to what I'm saying, instead to talking a bunch of garbage about how bitcoin works, stuff that I'm perfectly aware of and which has nothing to do with what I said except that it confirms some of it. I never said anything regarding a money having to be "physical".Also, everything is physical. If it's not, it's supernatural.

You're still failing to see the point. Long-term monetary demand depends on there being a source of C/P demand. Long-term jewelry demand does not depend on there being a source of cellphone making demand; etc. Every fiat currency in history has collapsed. Although, by definition, when it collapses it's because there's been a significant drop in demand, until there is no demand left. The Bretton Woods agreement was only totally broken up in 1971, when the US dollar (and with it all other fiat currencies world-wide) broke their link to gold. Mises died in 1973. Also, even when the convertibility into gold was stopped by Nixon, they called it a "temporary suspension" of the redeemability.Of course during Mises's time, the main issue was the inflation of the supply of credit, since the redeemability into gold was always supposedly still in existence, so the problem in Mises's eyes was that the supply of credit would at one point have to get crunched down to the supply of gold bullion. Yes, but we're talking about a situation where all things are equal except that one person chooses to sell their cash and get something else for it. This is basic supply and demand. What? Why doesn't the price of a piece of land give adequate explanation as to why a person wants it? It just doesn't. They could want it for a thousand different reasons. Also, you never made that question before. There's a lot of errors in your analogy, but ultimately, yes, that's how I'm saying bitcoin got started. With people buying it as a speculation because they anticipated greater demand in the future (from other speculators, who expected greater demand coming from other speculators, on and on and on); this is strictly different from how gold came to become money (not currency, a currency is a receipt for money stored somewhere, which can be redeemed by the bearer of the receipt, i.e. the currency unit). I don't know what you're talking about, if the money unit has no value then it can't be used as a medium of exchange. You always want a valuable money unit. No, the basis is the intrinsic value (or "industrial demand" if you prefer, which is a wrong term to use and I've explained why); and the monetary demand only adds value on top of the original value, i.e. the basis. In this case they are the same thing, and I've already explained why. But that's not what I said. I didn't say bitcoiners *could* end up with nothing, I said they *must* end up with nothing.

http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39445-401k-dillema/

No, you are the one who dismisses arguments out of hand and repeat yours as if they've never been answered before, while, as I said in the other thread, I address every argument.You don't even accuse me personally of doing it, you speak in impersonal terms and say that the arguments "are dismissed". Yes, they are dismissed, but not by me. I never said that the value at that point "is it's intrinsic value", I said the basis for the value is it's intrinsic value, then, now, or at any other point in history. Also, I defined carefully (and many times) what I mean by intrinsic value, and this strictly fits Mises's monetary theory, as does Rothbards', who improved on it. You continue to ignore this fact and say that "some people" mean other things by the term. No, you need to go back to a time when *bitcoin* was not being used as a money (currency is a different thing). Bitcoin is only one of many many thousands of encryption networks. Alright, then you're arguing that bitcoin is an information storage and transfer service, and that the coins in some way represent services provided or granted. But this is not the case. First, because each individual coin can be broken intro a quadrillion coins, and as I understand it, the same amount of secret, valuable (outside of bitcoin) information can be carried by a quadrillionth of a coin as can be by a whole coin.Secondly, as I understand it, the vast majority of the resources invested to run the network have nothing to do with transferring or storing personal information that the users added to coins or whatever. It's about solving mathematical algorithms that simply serve to grant the miner with a coin block. So you have a ton of waste here. What's more, because with every new transaction, every previous transaction must also be verified, the amount of resources needed to verify each subsequent transaction increase (again, as I understand it, I could be wrong here as with all things related to bitcoin's specifics, as I'm not an expert on bitcoin, I'm an expert on monetary theory).Thirdly, the bitcoin software can be copied in 10 minutes by anyone, and improved upon. In fact it already has. There are hundreds if not thousands of different copycats of bitcoin, all with their individual differences. And while they don't have the same network power since they don't have as many users, they have enough so that information can be transferred reliably.And finally, even if bitcoin was entirely a service provider of information encryption, transfer and storage (not related to the encryption required to run the service itself), it would have intrinsic value, but it would not be a form of sound money. Because, as I explained in the other thread, a sound money needs to be a store of value. And you can't store services. They must be consumed at the same time as they are being produced, and whatever is produced and not immediately consumed (or used in a further process of production) is gone. Without getting into the argument of roman coins: No, you can melt down a silver coin and get the silver. You can't melt down a bitcoin and get the encryption, or the computing power, or any of that. I didn't say it's not money, I said it's not sound money. US Dollars are money too, and they will still be confetti in 50 years. And so will bitcoin. (well, electronic confetti anyway)

You're welcome. The bitcoin network has value for it's application and people demand it for that purpose, but if bitcoins themselves have no value, then the network becomes worthless as I understand it. So the coins themselves must have value first, for the network to become valuable. (and by the network I mean transferring services) It's like how NumberSix brought up Western Union and Visa in the other thread. These services are valuable, but they are only valuable if and insofar as they function with a currency or money which has value (it doesn't have to have intrinsic value, but it must have market value, i.e. exchange value) Western Union and Visa don't give value to the US dollar in the first place. Rather it is because the US dollar has value, that Western Union and Visa can provide value and capture C/P demand by producing a service which offers advantages in transferring US dollars and debt denominated in US Dollars (or other fiat currencies). Of course US Dollars (or other fiat currencies) don't have any intrinsic value either. In fact, it could be argued that because Western Union and Visa make it easier to transfer US Dollars, and to settle transactions in US dollars, they reduce the demand for holding US Dollars; thus reducing the value thereof. Murray Rothbard has a very interesting piece on this, in his book The Mystery Of Banking, Chapter V.3: Clearing Systems, on page 63.

Someone has to want (demand) to consume the item, or use it in the production of other consumer/producer goods/services (we'll use C/P demand for short), otherwise as soon as the demand for holding it drops, the value drops without the balancing effect or backstop that would be provided by the abovementioned C/P demand.For as soon as the first person spends it, the second person now finds themselves with an extra supply of cash, which all other things being equal, he will not want to hold. And especially under a situation of diminishing value, or the expectation thereof, not only will he rush to get rid of his new cash, but he will also want to get rid of what he already has. So as one "uses" their cash holdings (gets rid of them in exchange for something else that they want), they are effectively generating supply*1 and reducing demand, as they become a seller of the money and a buyer of other things which the money trades against.The monetary demand which adds value to an already valuable item is not the part where the money is spent, it's the part where the money is held. But you're still putting the cart before the horse. The item must first have value, in order for anyone to want to hold it to purchase things with it. Unless of course, it doesn't have value right now, but the person speculates that it will have value in the future, and they hold it for that reason, but that's not monetary demand.As I argue, this is the basis for bitcoin's value, just like the basis for gold's value is it's intrinsic value. There's nothing wrong with speculation, but there are fundamentally two types of speculation when it comes to investments.The first type is the kind where you expect potential intrinsic value to develop, such as when you buy stock in a startup company that you believe may end up producing goods or services with actual C/P demand. This is just an investment which depending on the fundamentals may or may not be sound. There's another type of speculation where you don't expect any intrinsic value at all, indeed where such a thing is impossible, but you're just speculating based on the hope that others will speculate, and that they will only do that based on the hope that others will speculate, and so on and so forth. This is an investment which is never sound and where you will most likely lose 100% of your investment. You may however earn substantial profits if you can liquidate the investment after a lot more investors have bought in, but before a lot of them wise up. This is the basis for a pyramid scheme.Bitcoin belongs in the second category. You misunderstand. All Mises is saying here is that the current exchange value is not identical to the exchange value that existed prior to the item being used as a medium of exchange. He is still saying that the C/P demand (what he calls industrial value or nonmonetary services) is what constitutes the basis for why the item has value, which is exactly the opposite of what you said above. Are you going to concede this point? Hayek was a socialist*2, and although that one is possibly his best book (and a very short one I might add), his idea of the basket of commodities has been completely refuted by Rothbard, Hoppe and other austrians.Still, I believe he was on to something, and I have my own idea of how this could be applied to provide a variety of mediums of exchange which outperform gold and silver, but this idea is very complex and certainly not the type of thing I want to engage in right here (in this thread). ------------------------------------ *1 Not to be confused with the money supply, which is something else. *2 For more on Hayek being a socialist, watch this presentation by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: http://propertyandfreedom.org/2012/11/hans-hermann-hoppe-the-hayek-myth-pfs-2012/

Clearly it does not, and I defined what I meant by that. Maybe if you took the time to read what I actually post before mindlessly downvoting it and coming up with a half thought-out reply, we both would waste less time arguing. This is why it's wrong to think of the basis for the value of gold as being it's nonmonetary "uses". A "use" can mean anything. That is why I am careful to define things properly and say that the basis for gold's value is it's consumption demand and/or production demand. Sometimes in responding to somebody else who has already brought up that terminology in response to me talking specifically about consumption demand and/or production demand, I will talk more casually about the nonmonetary "uses", but it's not a proper term. It's not a contradiction. I'm not saying that the basis for gold's value is it's intrinsic value because I say so, or because Mises said so.Also, I'm not saying that bitcoin is not acting as a medium of exchange, I'm saying it's not a sound one and it will collapse. I don't "hunt down new bitcoin topics to spam", there was someone else who brought up the topic here and was being given the wrong advice about it.Also, how is it that you think this topic is "tired and overly discussed", and you find it annoying that I would talk about it, yet you still make a reply and try to argue against my points? You said you were sincere, but I don't sense much sincerity coming from you at all.

I would suggest being less structured. Planning out specific ways for children to learn is a residue of the indoctrination camp system. Before the State created this monstrosity, learning was just called life. There was no need for parents to set aside specific time to teach specific things to their children. Children would just learn from being around the parents and asking questions as they naturally do. If you can find a way to have your child be around you while you work, learning as they watch you engage in everyday life, this would be ideal. If you can't, then try and alternate work schedules with your wife, so that at least one of you is spending time with your kid. Since you said you had a home business, the having your kid around while you work shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you plan on doing specific things with your kid outside home, like going to the zoo, going camping, fishing, playing ball, or whatever, do it because it's fun, not necessarily as a way to teach them something. Kids learn when something is interesting to them, just like we all do. Unschooling is really about individual-directed learning. So it's not based in you providing a study plan or something of the sort, it's just, whatever they find interesting, they will learn about, and their primary way of learning is by asking questions and experimenting with things.

No, you said so yourself, he doesn't derive value from it himself, he wants to trade it for other things which he does derive value from. It is precisely because human action is individual that you can't explain away the basis for the value of gold in some sort of medium of exchange societal limbo. You can't explain it by saying that everybody wants it only to trade it for other things which they want. This does not explain why anyone would want it in the first place. But it doesn't disappear. And it certainly doesn't cease to be the basis for why gold has value. (and again, "industrial" is not the best term because some of the nonmonetary uses of gold have nothing to do with industry) It is a single supply chain if you look at the longer term. I don't know what or when or where you're talking about. Silver coins were more expensive than the silver they contained because private businesses were forbidden to mint coins? What's that got to do with the subject at hand? Also, there is always a premium in minted coins as opposed to the raw metal.

Without agriculture, there is no reason to have private property. Instead, tribal property (communal ownership) is the best form of socio-economic organization. This is because when others in your area hunt or gather food that the land naturally produces, they are extracting rather than adding to the overall production. Thus by extracting resources and keeping them for themselves, they are making less resources available for you and your children. Consequently, just about every aspect of production must be carefully controlled by the collective, and a concept such as freedom is completely foreign and it's application counterproductive or even fatal. Groups of people organize not as families, but as small tribes where they all must share everybody's production. Everyone in the tribe must contribute something, and no one should take too much. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Likewise, neighboring tribes must be regarded not as friends, but as mortal enemies. For their activities necessarily tax your tribe's production of food, and mean more of your babies have to starve to feed theirs. Peace is rare and only exists as a temporary standoff or truce. It is also risky, as allowing an opposing tribe to gather forces could mean your own tribe's demise. In this situation the attacker has the advantage of the surprise attack, and any chance at annihilating an enemy tribe should be seen as an opportunity not worth passing. I could go on and on. Rape, torture, even cannibalism, of both adults and children, are all not just common but beneficial in a purely hunter-gatherer world. If that sounds like the type of place you want to live in, go right ahead.

What Jones says is irrelevant, he's just one person. He doesn't decide the basis of why gold has value. He doesn't have to know.If he was a knowledgeable man, you could keep asking why others would take his gold for other things of value, and eventually he would come to the answer that through a chain of exchanges, gold flows from those who produce it, to those who consume it (or use it to produce other producer/consumer goods/services); and it's only in the middle of this chain of exchanges that gold is used as a medium of exchange. Or, put another way, gold must first be wanted for nonmonetary purposes, before it can serve as a good medium of exchange. There is only one value in the sense you're talking about, and it's price; i.e. exchange value. Saying that "silver traded for more than it's industrial value" is a meaningless statement.

You're making my point. You said that the basis for gold's value when it was used as money, was not it's intrinsic* value, which is wrong. Not only is it wrong, it's strictly contradicted by Mises's monetary theory, which you brought up. You said other things that are wrong, but I'll be satisfied with arguing that one point here.-----------*paraphrasing; using the term as defined above by me

Of course I do. Read this book. It provides enough theory and references to keep you busy for years. http://www.amazon.com/Democracy--The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684 You may also want to consider these threads, the latter of which can still be seen in the first page of this subforum: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/32990-democracy-an-improvement-over-what-came-before/ http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38831-liechtenstein-the-freest-nation-in-the-western-world-because-its-a-monarchy/

Then please illuminate us, oh Lord of Linguistics and Master of the Universal Dictionary.

Cenk Uygur is a radical socialist and he worships the State far more than any religious fanatics worship their God. "this is OUR land"... "we're not supposed to solve this with violence or threats of violence"... Rolls eyes.

An image of your body /= your body. Such as? That's what socialists say. Sure, no initiation of force, but really you are initiating force by "exploiting" someone, therefore socialism. Once you get down this slippery slope anything is possible. If law is gonna be defined by whatever anybody wants it to be and change as often as the wind, then it really isn't any different from what we have now.There's a huge difference between what should be a crime, and what is simply not an ideal behavior. For example, snorting cocaine is not ideal for your life, but it doesn't constitute an act of aggression against someone else. Keeping your promises is a good behavior and something to be strived for and rewarded with trust. Not keeping a promise is not the same as walking up to someone you've never met and punching them in the face. No. Here you have torture and rape, it's got nothing to do with the situation we were discussing. ++

I disagree. Once you send a copy of a picture to somebody else online, they own that copy of the picture. They can do whatever they want with it, and it would not be a violation of your property rights. Again, it might not be a nice thing to do, but it shouldn't be against the law. This is comparable to disclosing a secret that you told them. It may show that they're untrustworthy (assuming it was unprovoked), but the act does not constitute an initiation of the use of force.

There's no such thing as "cyber bullying". Bullying is a nice word for beating, there's nothing of the sort online. All you have to do is press a block button, close the program or turn off your device. If you make pornography of yourself and share it with someone else, then at that point that person also owns a copy, and they can do with it whatever they want. It may not be nice of them to release it without your consent, but that's a risk you chose to take in the first place. The only thing you could realistically do is preemptively get a non-disclosure agreement. But of course, that would only bind the person you're sharing the pornography with from releasing it, it wouldn't bind third parties who didn't sign your NDA. There is nothing fundamentally different about this, as disclosing any other information. Bottom line is, if you don't want something to be public, then don't record it in the first place. Or if you really have to, don't send it to someone who's untrustworthy. Of course, it would be an entirely different matter if the images were obtained criminally (stealing them, hacking, secret surveillance, etc). Also I think it should constitute a crime if they were recorded without your consent in a place where there was a reasonable expectation of privacy (which is open to interpretation, yeah). In either case, once something is out, there is no taking it back. The only legal action you should be able to take is against the person(s) who originally stole it from you, or those who broke the NDA they had signed with you.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Which is fine, but maybe you shouldn't be telling someone else that they need to read up on Mises's monetary theory when you clearly don't understand it. The intrinsinc* value of gold is the only reason it has value in the first place. It is only after this that it can be used as a medium of exchange. ---------------------- *by intrinsic value I mean value coming from consumption demand and/or production demand (demand from producers who want to use the item to produce something else which in turn has consumption and/or production demand)