(Part 2) Top products from r/btc

>Stock market

OK, ~80% of your reply is on the stock market, and it's one claim more broken than the next. This is serious bullshit... No, I don't day trade. I work in finance, and see things from the inside. And your understanding of the stock market is so poor, it's no better than what a journalist might say. It's hard to accept, and you won't accept my word for it, I'm sure, yet it's true. "Pick good stocks", "real investors", "stocks immune from inflation", "re-invest profits", ... this is all empty talk of someone who has an amateurish understanding at best.

>Thus the market cap of a real company is how much the investors estimate that the company's assets (including those cash reserves) and future profits are worth. That is why Apple's shares keep increasing in value.

Sure, and the flood of money provided by QE has got nothing to do with it. Lol


>Stock investing, if anything, is the opposite: the older generation invests, and the new generation reaps the profits.

Right because it's the older generation that "needs to build a retirement pot", who contributes to their 401k every month, and the younger generation that draws annuities every month to spend as they please. LOLOLOLOLOL Please keep entertaining me.


>Smart investors (real investors) buy stocks for their dividends (or equivalent, like company expansion or stock buybacks from the company).

LOL So naive it's not even funny. But sure, keep believing that.

Once again, read "Where are the customers' yachts?". Written in the 1920s, still just as valid. It's actually a classic in investments.

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Are-Customers-Yachts-Street/dp/0471770892/


>Only fools and criminals invest in currencies

I'd gladly be a criminal fool like George Soros or others who made a killing from trading FX.

You also show very little understanding of fiat currency, which, with no exception, over time has gone to zero. The best we, as humanity, have been able to do with fiat is the GBP. Over ~300 years it is nothing but a shadow of what it was at first. (Hint: 1 pound stirling was... the equivalent of 1 pound of stirling silver. I'll let you calculate the inflation.)


I'm not gonna discuss the stock market with you any more, much like you wouldn't discuss CS with a philosopher getting all their information from popular books on CS.

 


 

>Funny thing for a bitcoin supporter to say ;-)

Ad Hominem. Lack of real arguments?

>Thus the fact that the toy LN that is out there (whose users are all there to shill BTC or help the LN devs) has processed thousands of transactions is no evidence at all that it can achieve that goal.

It also doesn't mean that it cannot. In 1990 the internet could not stream 4K. Not only that, it was damn hard for anyone to imagine that one day we could. Then MP3/MPEG and other compression algos came. People are building, you are talking. People are doing real CS research, absolutely needed to make it viable, you are talking.


>> Cost of fiat infrastructure

>And what does that have to do with investing?


You mentioned the daily $6m that miners make, and I replied with the correct analogy. It's the cost of securing the network. Or better, the current revenue for securing the network.


>But any crypto could do that too, without the LN: just have generous miners that accept 0-fee transactions.


Really? Did you really just say 0-fee could achieve the same? Honestly, I will start doubting your CS credentials if you keep it like that. How about a FREE DDoS attack that brings the entire network down if that was the case? Send 100m txs of 1sat each to myself, for free, and flood the network? And write a script that will repeat the same thing after they get confirmed?

>It is "create a functional payment system that millions of people will want to use instead of PayPal and the like, and instead of on-chain cryptocurrency."

You lack basic economics understanding. People will use it IF it is more convenient. Bitcoin offers something PayPal doesn't, censorship resistance. This doesn't come for free, it has a cost. Those who find that valuable will use it, others won't. Market competition. And it's also not instead of on-chain. God, how difficult is it to understand that they will complement each other? If absolute security is paramount, you'll do on-chain and pay the fee. This will likely be for large sums of money. For your coffee? Who freaking cares. You'll use the LN. Credit cards for coffee, you say? Sure, once could build CCs on top of bitcoin, too. But perhaps more importantly, the LN offers use cases previously not possible, like streaming money (stream content for money). Or true micro payments - $10c for reading an article, for instance. Or how about forgetting about the local currency when you travel?

All of these are absolutely legitimate cases for a "digital global currency". This is driven by market forces, nothing else. People who need it will use it, others won't. But if you can't, or refuse to see it, that's hardly anything that anyone can do.

There are some positive signs that thinking in economics is changing, and some good resources (linked to below) for anyone who wants to learn more.

> Romer’s huge mea culpa on behalf of mainstream economics is a sign that, after a decade-long hunt for trolls and gremlins as the cause of crisis, academia now has to begin the search for the cause of instablity inside the system, not outside it.

It's been a tenet of systems thinking for decades that systems cause their own behaviour, but government economists have shown very linear thinking over the same period of time. That's how central banks convince themselves that if low interest rates didn't work, lower and lower (or more and more negative) interest rates will at some point finally fix the economy, oblivious to the common sense reality that if you confiscate 5% of everyone's savings annually, there will probably be a qualitative change in how people (and hence the economy) behave. Unfortunately, mathematical models are incapable of capturing the diversity of goals and interests in a real economy, they assume everyone is identical and predictable.

I've been pleased to find some really good books published recently about applying agent-based thinking to economics. ABM allows each individual to be represented by an agent program with its own simulated goals and thought processes, and all are able to react to each other.

The first I've read recently is Complexity and the Economics, which makes the point that it is not enough just to change the modelling technology used to understand the economy, but the way we think about it. Complexity is the study of how simple things create structure, and then respond to the structures we create. The author talks about the economy as being not a container for technology, but being created out of it. So the hardware and software, but also the government systems, copyright laws, contract structures (and so on) make up the economy, and then people respond to it and try to exploit it to create something new with the pieces already constructed. Some bits of this book are very mathematical and I had to skim over them, but most of it is explained in prose.

There's another much more accessible book that I'm part way through, called Agent Based Modelling in Economics. This takes a very pragmatic, step-by-step approach looking at how an agent-based approach simulating diverse individuals can recreate economic problems more realistically. Early chapters look at phone adoption (in an economy with different incomes and social classes) and barter (of rations), later there's a chapter on fractional reserve banking, which I haven't yet got to. All the models from the book are written in a very accessible programming language NetLogo, and are available online. Anyone with basic programming and maths (simple algebra) skills can follow this book and the examples. (If anyone has read or is reading this book, please let me know!)

So I recently read this book https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Wild-West-Economics/dp/0804748543

Which provides a pretty good case study of anarchism in practice. People moved out west in the United States before governments and despite Hollywood portrayals of the West as a lawless place, people were able to create a number of informal institutions that keep the peace and allowed people to thrive and flourish.

Sorry. The sentence is not circular. It only appears to be circular. The ideas are clearly explained in text books on computability theory. Or if you are smart and patient you can just read Turing's original paper, or if you are really smart and really patient Goedel's work as well. Take your time and use your own mind to form your own opinion.

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems

My introduction was in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Computability-Unsolvability-Prof-Martin-Davis/dp/0486614719

For more original sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Undecidable-Propositions-Unsolvable-Computable-Mathematics/dp/0486432289#reader_0486432289

Why would you care if something is increasing so low. Its like from 0.0000001 to 0.001 it increased by 10,000% sounds like a huge increase but its not. Its propaganda. How to lie with statistics

Value does not magically appear.

Bitcoin derives its scarcity and value from Proof of Work, Nano derives its value from "something for nothing" economics and a transaction system that is economically unviable from bottom to top.

Read a book. I always suggest:

Basic Economics
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aQgDCb1NAPF63

Reminds me of the main character of a book I read years ago: https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Institute-Ahmet-Hamdi-Tanpinar/dp/0143106732

The book is about a brilliant "scammer" who sets out to found a company (institution) which help people set their watches correct.

> A contender for direct replacement is only good enough if it's better in literally every aspect, even then it might not win.

I'd say a replacement must be significantly better otherwise people won't bother. (That's a major theme in the book The Shock of the Old which discusses the history of technology)

How to buy End the Fed by Dr. Ron Paul on Amazon.com using BCH:

1. Sign up at Purse.io
   
2. Use link: https://purse.io/product/0446549177 or search "Ron Paul"
   
3. Add item to cart and use BCH
   
4. Happy reading!

like everything else, on Amazon. :P -> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YLCQ576

He deleted the last part of the URL presumably because he thought it was some kind of PII data.

https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Game-Hidden-Asymmetries-Daily/dp/042528462X/

Herd this was a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Meme-Machine-Popular-Science/dp/019286212X

​

He is indeed bargaining. However he terribly sucks at bargaining. He should take a few hints here and there https://www.amazon.ca/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0399594493

lol

> No. I have much more experience with universities than you do. I can guarantee that.

Emptying trash cans doesn't count.

> This is just illiterate in every way.

No, you just have a hard time understanding big words. Currency is part of an economy, not the whole of it. I realize that sounds complicated, it isn't. Perhaps you should try a book at you're reading level.

> You have absolutely no idea what "modern economists support" or don't support. Nor would you even understand how to judge or contextualize such.

Really, because there's about 5 universities in the entire world that have actual coursework regarding the Austrian School. And you're knowledge of the school is clearly broad, given that you named exactly 1 economist from the school that actually influenced mainstream economics (Menger and Wieser actually influenced modern economics, Mises didn't).

Given that the Austrian School is literally considered non-mainstream economics, I'm pretty sure I can say that modern economists don't support the school of thought or it would fucking be mainstream, moron.

> So fucking transparently stupid. Go back to your league of legends subreddit you fucking manchild.

LOL. Nothing like a combination of drivel followed up by creepy shit looking at my post history.

> "Widely held" among your dumbshit "friends" on the internet. Not by academics or anyone else with real educations.

Yes, my friends include Wikipedia, modern economists like Krugman and Skidelsky, Friedman.

When the Chicago School, Keynesian Economists AND fucking Marxists all agree that something is wrong, you can safely assume it's wrong. And had you read anyone besides Austrian School authors, you'd know the over-fucking-whelming majority of economists suggest that many of it's principles are downright harmful.

But keep insulting me without a shred of information because that would require you actually having any fucking idea what you're talking about. But like the Austrians before you, you're on the wrong side of this one. And much like Mises, you'll refuse to believe you could actually be wrong. The difference is, Mises was actually smart. You're a complete moron who can't even defend the very subject you are discussing because you have zero fucking idea what any of it means.

I kinda feel like you lost the plot of this conversation:
You: "We need to pay taxes so the government can protect us from evil corporations."
Me: "But the government sends your taxes straight to the pockets of the evil corporations and directly creates the problems you're complaining about."
You: "Well, that's not the government's fault."

How do you square those two beliefs?

Still, you did ask for sources, so here's a few (plus an upvote):

1. This one is not primarily about the government's role in the food industry, but you can see the problems it creates woven throughout: The Ominivore's Dilemma
   
2. A podcast episode specifically about the Wholesome Meat Act, from the Tom Woods Show: Ep. 656 How the Wholesome Meat Act Gives Us Less Wholesome Meat
   
3. A book I highly recommend that attempts to explain, from a practical/pragmatic standpoint, why nearly everything the government does is either useless or outright counterproductive to its stated goals: The Machinery of Freedom

You're wrong on this one (good lord I can't believe I'm with Luke Jr lol):

Guns are a tool. They can be used to deescalate a situation or to escalate one. It's not banning bad guys from owning guns that reduces crime, it's arming law-abiding, decent people (which 99% are). This has been proven statistically hundreds of times. You don't, and will never, stop criminals. And you especially won't do it by taking away the liberty of law-abiding citizens. Instead, give each of them the ability to defend themselves. Guns are often times a deterrent, in and of themselves. If a criminal knows or believes someone may be armed, they are more hesitant to rob/assault/rape etc. them. Criminals always want the easiest, most helpless victims.

book link

Basically, the above book was written by a Stanford University/ University of Chicago economics professor who was asked by a student one day what he thought about gun control. He had never really thought about it much, and had little opinion of it himself, so he started reading some studies on it. Being an expert in producing university studies, he began seeing that almost all of the studies on gun control that were done properly showed guns did not increase crime, and the ones that showed guns did, were done extremely poorly, and were often funded by anti-gun groups.

If you don't want to buy a book, spend a few minutes and check these out:

video 1

video 2

The issue of guns is actually very interesting, and much deeper than I once realized.

This is actually a really good point. Not to pull a Godwin's variant, as I'm really not comparing this in any way to the current Bitcoin situation, but just a response to your comment and the notion of a non-malicious leader being potentially still very dangerous: Having just finished a book on Pol Pot (amazon link, no referral code), I was quite surprised (having known almost nothing of the history before) to find a rather convincing argument that it wasn't actually pure malice and intention to murder hundreds of thousands of people that led to the events.

Granted, given that it was based on interviews with people who were heavily involved in the events, it's certainly a biased view. But I found it quite disturbing to consider the notion that such evil could result from arguably non-evil intentions and an apparently kind and friendly (from reports of students / followers) person. Of course, it makes some sense: if a person were wandering around foaming at the mouth shouting about how they were going to kill everyone around them, they might be less likely to reach a position of power.

It's really an argument that it's the quiet idealists you have to watch out for.