Why the claim that copycat currencies are a threat to Bitcoin is a nonargument.

Why the claim that copycat currencies are a threat to Bitcoin is a nonargument.

The value of a currency is the value of goods or currency that are demanded for the currency minus the transaction costs of that currency. These transaction costs tend to be so small that they may as well be ignored for established currencies.

Take for instance, paper money. Anyone can actually design and print paper money. Ignoring instances where people attempt to copy money, unique paper currencies not issued by a government are valueless for one reason: people are less likely to accept them, and it is more difficult to transmit them across vast geographic distances (no banks, no cheque clearinghouse). Both increase transaction costs, if one accepts the paper money, in order to purchase intermediate goods or pay for labor, one can either pay for it in paper money (which wouldn't be accepted), or exchange it for government money (which would be accepted).

You might note that there is a tautology there, value is linked to what you can exchange a currency for minus the transaction costs. If you can't exchange a currency for anything, then the transaction costs are high, and those high transaction costs will discourage people from accepting it because the currency has low value. The reverse will also be true. This is what gives the American dollar it's high value.

Now lets compare ACoin to BCoin. ACoin is accepted at as many places as American Express. BCoin is a new currency. ACoin can be exchanged for hard currency. You have to exchange BCoin for ACoin to get to government money. Which would you use?

Quote of the Week

In China, you pay a bribe and it gets done quickly. In India, you pay the bribe and it gets done slowly. In Russia, you pay the bribe and it may or may not get done at all. - Unknown Businessman

Electricity should be a public good

Electricity should be a public good.

Why? It effects everyone, and benefits everyone. Coal spews carbon dioxide and particulate pollution into the air, influencing global warming (personally I'm not certain of the strength of the coefficient of CO2 on climate change however), and causes 13,000 deaths in the US from particulate pollution per year. A greater number then deaths from Chernobyl or Fukushima. Three Mile Island had no fatalities either.

And Chernobyl was caused by managerial incompetence, it was caused by an experiment on what would happen if the power to the nuclear power plant was cut off. Fukushima was preventable. Three Mile Island was caused by an error, but no one was harmed.

Oil is a scarce commodity, uranium however makes up a small part of a nuclear power plant's O&S costs.

If we subsidized nuclear energy, aggregate supply will increase. No one can disagree that halving or decimating utility bills is desirable. Cogeneration would allow nuclear plants to double as desalination plants, the waste heat is used to distill water.

The great issue I suppose is, is it worth diverting resources from other economic activities to support nuclear power plant construction? Building a nuclear power plant, means a diversion of investment or of consumption. A few less refrigerators and iPhones in short. The French made their decision, 75% (some websites say 80%) of their electricity is from nuclear plants, and they export electricity to Germany, which has closed all their nuclear plants and are moving to solar power.

As much as many would lead you to believe, solar power isn't sustainable. Ask any supporter of renewable energy and ask them, can a factory that produces solar panels or wind mills, be powered only by solar panels or wind turbines? The answer is no. Even with elaborate storage schemes, the factory isn't self-sustaining. A complex that builds nuclear reactors, and mines, processes the uranium from them, can be powered solely through nuclear energy.

The final question you may have is why is a Libertarian supporting the interference of the government into our free market? Because the free market cannot make perfect decisions based on imperfect information (what direction will nuclear regulations go? Will fossil fuel prices go up or down?). The utilities market is inherently monopolistic or oligopolistic as well. There won't be a free exchange of prices and goods, even if we aimed for total privatization.

Nuclear energy is guaranteed to meet our needs, today, tomorrow, and the day after. We can extract uranium from seawater, and nuclear energy will still be profitable. As mentioned before fuel makes up little of a nuclear plant's O&S costs, and nuclear O&S costs are smaller then that of fossil fuels.


Remember, the French aren't afraid of nuclear energy, so why should we be?

Abolish Fortress Patents

In the shadows of our capitalist society, mages work their magic, writing tomes in arcane scripts, amassing great hordes of documents and angling for a future war.

Actually the truth is somewhat similar. Patent lawyers are employed by firms to protect their ideas. Many of these ideas aren't novel. Apple has patented the rectangular phone. Wargaming has patented their matchmaking system. Some obscure firm has patented letting you play a video game while you wait for your video game to load. There are numerous examples, actually thousands. Facebook has 1400 patents.

Our nation is in dire need for patent reform. Patent trolls extort thousands of dollars out of honest businessmen, in rent-seeking behavior. Money that could go forward in hiring a new person or improving productivity goes towards unscrupulous businessmen who buy patents on say, printing paper from your computer.

Fortress patents today act to disrupt our free market and our free exchange of ideas. Coca Cola's secret formula probably deserves protection. But thousands of patents on methods of business stifles innovation.

Propaganda Today

Wikipedia is full of contradictions and is incoherent. It's notability rules are ill-applied (25% of Wikipedia must be on communism (mainly minor communist politicians), and another 25% on biology). Who cares about some Armenian politician in the 1930s? No other country enjoys the same detail as the the Soviet Union. Who cares about some plant that lives in a certain square mile in a godforsaken part of the world? There are online games with hundreds of players that aren't notable enough for an article, and yet a plant or some politician that only is known by several dozen people is notable?

And now I've come across these two contradicting articles:
Soviet Plot to discredit Hoover and the U.S.
Hoover's Sexuality

Wikipedia is the symbol of free information, and yet it is undersiege by corporations, communists, propagandists, and radicals. There are many examples.


The Mitrokhin Archive, Wilson Center Website

Unfairness

As we all know, young white people protesting G20 get gassed.

Young black people protesting a verdict by our judicial process get to start rioting while the police look on.


Naturally it's probably because the young white people protest in white neighborhoods with banks. If they protested in black neighborhood, the police wouldn't care as much. Everyone expects blacks to deal with that kind of shit.