st434u

I don't know why it doesn't feel that way to you. Whether someone is evil or not is not determined by a "vibe".

Yes, of course I do. And I explained why.

It's absolutely not 99.99% of people who openly and unapologetically demand that more money be robbed from everybody else under threat of murder and given to them. This man is evil and you are making an excuse for his evil behavior based on a personal preference for his work.

Someone who calls for more taxes to fund NASA (and therefore, himself) can't be described as "awesome" in my opinion.

No, the difference is that if you live in the US, or if you live in other countries and engage in several forms of international trade, you are forced to use US Dollars to transact and to pay taxes in. And even this has not been enough to force acceptance of the dollar in the first place, only to somewhat maintain it after the initial inception where it was redeemable in gold. Since leaving the gold standard the dollar has lost 98.5% of its value, even with all the force of the mightiest military in the world behind it, plus partially that of many other countries. Bitcoin doesn't have this. Normally this would be a good thing. And it is in a way. Just don't fall into the trap of assuming that everything that is voluntary is good. Both Bernie Madoff's investment scheme and social security are pyramidal investment schemes; but the second has vastly outlasted the first, precisely because there is force there being used to coerce people into participating. Bernie Madoff's plan only hurt a relatively small number of people who chose to participate of their own accord, while social security will hurt just about everybody in the countries where it is enacted. In this sense, Bernie Madoff's plan was less harmful. But you should fully realize that while social security is worse both in terms of morals and in terms of its underlying fundamentals, it's still temporarily a safer place to be in, because it has the force of government preventing investors from leaving, and forcing new investors to participate.

Often when people accuse someone else of something without sufficient evidence, the criticism applies to the criticizer far more than to the criticized. Peter Schiff wants to help people get rid of their bitcoins and trade them for something better. He realizes that a lot of people made a lot of money with this bubble, and he wants to help them make good investments with it. He doesn't want any bitcoins himself. In fact he has the transaction set up in a way that his business never even has to touch a single bitcoin. As soon as the payment is made, it is automatically converted to US dollars by a third party, and his business only gets the US dollars transaction after the conversion takes place. The client is really being billed in US Dollars, they're just able to pay with their bitcoins instead. And he doesn't really hold any US dollars either. At any given point in time, his balance sheet in US Dollars is always negative.

Well, I suggest you read more about what the term consumption means in economics. If ever you get the attention span you said you lack, the answer to this is also explained in detail in the two threads I linked to.

Note that a can opener has consumption demand (i.e. people who eat canned foods want to consume the can openers and are willing to give other things of value in exchange for them in order to consume them), and it also has production demand (demand coming from producers, i.e. restaurants).

Read the threads I linked to. I don't want to have to repeat long explanations that I already typed many times. This part is entirely correct.

Capitalism is a mode of social organization (or lack thereof) as well as a set of beliefs/predictions about what will yield the best results in organizing a society, and in living life at the individual level. My point was that if it's wrong to insult a religion, then surely it should also be wrong for him to do the same with beliefs systems that he disagrees with. You could technically say capitalism is your religion. You could even go as far as to say that capitalism is a religion, and you wouldn't necessarily be wrong, depending on your definition of religion.

Is it impossible for bitcoin to be valued at = 25kg of gold (about 1 million dollars today) at some point in the future? No, it isn't. It may be extremely unlikely, but there's always a possibility. There's no telling how big a bubble will get. What you need to understand is that, in the long term, bitcoin can't be worth anything of significance (say, enough to buy a stick of bubble gum), because the *only* value that bitcoin will ever have is speculative. From empty speculation that is, not the kind of speculation that gets you to buy stock in a company that may or may not perform well. Bitcoin can't perform well, because it doesn't produce anything. Nobody wants to consume a bitcoin, and nobody wants to employ them in the production of anything else which in turn has consumption demand. People who are saying "see, I told you so" because bitcoin went from $1200 to $200 -and they were making arguments similar to mine- are just trying to make hype. Bitcoin hasn't collapsed just because it went down by 85%. It could just as well rally to $10,000 within the next few months. When it takes 1000 bitcoins to buy a pizza, then I'll say "I told you so", because I really don't think bitcoin can ever recover from that sort of crash. Two threads where I have explained this in detail and addressed the many counter-arguments of numerous bitcoin supporters: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38337-bitcoin-intrinsic-value-and-mises-regression-theorem/ https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39541-bitcoin-fanatics-say-the-darnedest-things/

And yet he can insult capitalism any chance he gets. How does that work?

Wow this guy is beyond evil. But I personally don't believe that those services that he named really don't store the data anyway.

And then you wonder why the world is so sick...

You should know that Elliot Hulse has admitted to using steroids in the past to build muscle. Some people believe he still does, I don't know. I used to think his ramblings were interesting, but eventually I started to get a sinking sensation when I was watching them or when a new one would pop up, and when thinking back, I think most of the ideas were just rehashed empty motivational speak.

I tried just about every nutritional approach out there. First I tried low carb, low fat, high protein, which was ok but left me hungry all the time. Then I tried vegetarianism and eventually veganism, which also was ok but left me without much energy and unable to build much muscle. Then I tried paleo, which was ok but I didn't stick with it for too long, plus it made me gain weight. Then I tried high fat, low carb, moderate protein, which was great for losing weight and I could go days without eating if I wanted to, plus I had tons of energy for exercise as well as mentally, and would never get very tired. But eventually it gave me heart problems, so I had to stop. Interestingly enough, mosquitoes wouldn't touch me when I was on this diet, whereas before they always feasted on me before anybody else. I never figured out if it was that they didn't want my blood because it was so healthy and low in sugar, or because it was so sick it would kill them too like it was killing me. Now I'm trying something different, it's a 100% raw food diet, including meats and animal products. It's too soon to tell how it will work out, and there's always fears that I will catch some infection and die, but if it does work out I think I should be healthier on this diet than on anything else I've done before. It just makes so much sense to me. Non-human animals eat everything raw and full of bacteria and they don't seem to get diseases in the wild like we do in modern life. But I don't know, I'm not an expert on this. I still have a lot to learn.

I cringe whenever I hear this phrase on the media or movies. Humanity is not a race, it is a species. Within the human species, there are many races (or if you prefer the term, subspecies) which have evolved differences as a result of living in different environments and with significant genetic isolation over thousands of generations.

So let me get this straight. *You need to be an expert in economics in order to evaluate how much somebody knows about economics. *You believe he is an expert in economics based not on what you know about economics, but on his credentials. *You are not an expert in economics, yet you believe that I know very little about economics, and much less so than Murphy, because... Well because I disagree with him on something, and he has a phd in economics. I could have a phd in economics as well for all you know, but clearly research is not needed to form your opinions. *I should be more humble, and only express strong opinions about a subject if I am an expert in that subject. This requirement does not apply to you, however.

Having a degree on economics usually signals how much you don't know about economics, or rather how much you know that isn't so. Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize in economics, and he's calling for minting trillion dollar coins and going to war with aliens to solve all of the world's economic problems. Similarly, writing books on a subject or teaching classes on it does not make somebody knowledgeable about it. Right now the debates that come to mind are the one with the monetarist Warren Mosler and the one with Chicago economist David Friedman. Interestingly enough, Peter Schiff is a stock broker and banker, has no degrees in economics, never taught any classes, and the only economic book he's ever written is a remake of an illustrated children's storybook; yet he understand economics far better than Bob Murphy. Yes, he's a better speaker also, but so is Paul Krugman, or Barack Obama for that matter. Being a good speaker doesn't make one's ideas wrong. If so Stef would be wrong on just about everything. I'm not basing my criticism of Murphy on his tone or presentation.

He was always on the bitcoin bandwagon. This, along with his poor performance in debating pseudo economists has led me to realize that he doesn't really understand economics very well. At least someone like Tom Woods is honest about the fact that economics is not his area of expertise, but Bob Murphy likes to present himself as some sort of expert on austrian economics (or at least that's the impression I got), when he's anything but.

I'm not sure what you're petitioning for. I'm sure an effective and relatively safe birth control pill for men would be very profitable for the company developing, producing and marketing it. Of course, someone has to come up with the pill first. I have no moral qualms with it either way, if men want to use it, they should be allowed to. I know I would never in a million years take such a pill willingly. Birth control pills for women are already very harmful in my view, and based on what yagami said, it would probably be a lot worse for men. *EDIT: I just read the story, and the husband is complete garbage. That's like reverse spermjacking+demanding child support. Probably worse, since she can't get back those years no matter what; whereas child support can be repaid. I'm not sure if this is why you brought up the story, but if there was a birth control pill for men, and he was doing that without telling her, it would be the same. **EDIT2, after reading the updates: I'm actually relieved to find out that the garbage husband married a garbage wife, and they both deserved each other. Now I see why you brought up the story for this thread. The writer's wife is another issue, but I don't wanna delve that deep into the story.

I get a sinking sensation when I read these posts of yours. And when I see everyone cheering.

This idea that the State can't do anything right because it is so inefficient is completely misguided in my view. The State does plenty of things right. The State is very efficient at stealing money, at forcing people to do what they want, at preventing people from doing things that threaten the State agents's power (and that of their backers). If you can't see how 9/11 fits perfectly in that scheme of things, you should take a look at history; i.e. the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Shelling of Mainila, the Gleiwitz incident, the Manchurian incident, Operation Northwoods, etc. I'm not saying that just because the US State benefitted from 9/11, that therefore they carried it out themselves. I have plenty of other reasons to believe that they did it, as explained in the almost 2-hour presentation I posted here. What I am saying is that the idea that they couldn't have done it even if they wanted to is what is ludicrous, rather than the other way around.

Very interesting, thank you for posting.

And you keep making excuses for evil bootoo. Sam Harris is someone who preaches about morality every chance he gets, and what's more, he claims that his views on morality can be "derived scientifically". As far as I could tell from comments in this thread, this debate was about whether Islam is more or less immoral than other religions, while his own religion is the most immoral of all, and yes it is hardcore. His views on moral issues and his own moral character are absolutely fair game here.