Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
Delthalaz
Mar 5, 2003






Slippery Tilde

homeless snail posted:

And if you want an incentive to be unproductive, cheap opiates! I could get used to libertopia.

I'm down with cheap opiates, I just don't want to be afraid of dying every time I get sick because it might be drug-resistant mega-bronchitis.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

text editor
Jan 8, 2007

Cream_Filling posted:

It's like saying that if the Santa in the mall was just fatter and jollier and had a bigger beard, then he eventually if he was Santa enough he would become magic and everyone would get free toys.

This is a wonderfully apt comparison

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted

Boner Slam posted:

So it's not that it's a circlejerk, it's that it is universally accepted that those people are a joke.
Because their whole premise is literally based on not knowing their poo poo beyond community college level.

I would rephrase it as not knowing poo poo beyond the McCarthy era, but I understand what you're saying.

The smartest thing I ever read by Ayn Rand is that she wouldn't bother talking about the after-life because how could she definitively talk about something that she couldn't experience. While the logic is kind of hypocritical, it is a reasonable thing to assert.

Cream_Filling posted:

Whenever anyone talks about "free markets," I mentally substitute the word "good" or "well regulated" for "free" and all of a sudden it all makes sense.

A thousand times yes to this, I think most people assume that the US economic system is a pure capitalist state.


Saw this and don't know what to make of it, is that the linux penguin?

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Hungry Gerbil
Jun 6, 2009

by angerbot

JDanielS posted:

Saw this and don't know what to make of it, is that the linux penguin?



Yes, I think this is Tux. Those bitcoin fanatics are defiling Tux! :argh:

homeless snail
Mar 14, 2007

No that's Bux, the Bitcoin penguin. Completely different.

Dre2Dee2
Dec 6, 2006

Just a striding through Kamen Rider...
Why don't the bitcoin loyalists buy an island and then run the Ideal Society or whatever the gently caress it is, and see how it works out.

Lolie
Jun 4, 2010

AUSGBS Thread Mum

Dre2Dee2 posted:

Why don't the bitcoin loyalists buy an island and then run the Ideal Society or whatever the gently caress it is, and see how it works out.

I wonder who'd get the conch.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

Hungry Gerbil posted:

Yes, I think this is Tux. Those bitcoin fanatics are defiling Tux! :argh:

Man, classic tux is so much better than crystal tux in every way.

text editor
Jan 8, 2007

Dre2Dee2 posted:

Why don't the bitcoin loyalists buy an island and then run the Ideal Society or whatever the gently caress it is, and see how it works out.

I don't think that even if all of them were able to get their hands on TWO of mom and dad's credit cards each they would have enough money to buy an island.


If they did, however, it would be interesting to which one is the survivor after the first week.



e: basically this

Lolie posted:

I wonder who'd get the conch.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted

homeless snail posted:

No that's Bux, the Bitcoin penguin. Completely different.

Do you guys want the link to my Bux-RSS-update wagon forum? I know it might seem like I'm just pushing a useless web 2.0 garbage-site but I swear this is going to make money by making money!

If any of you steals my idea, however, the Libertarian gods on high will smite you and give me all the glory of your death.

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
I always thought Lord of the Flies was just libertarians on an island.

AuMaestro
May 27, 2007

Dre2Dee2 posted:

Why don't the bitcoin loyalists buy an island and then run the Ideal Society or whatever the gently caress it is, and see how it works out.

I think every stupid utopian ideal should get an island on which to test it out and show how unworkable it is. The wonderful thing about libertarianism is that it can be tested out on the internet with phenomena like bitcoin, so nobody has to die (except from heat exhaustion) to demonstrate how bad it is.

Ivor Biggun
Apr 30, 2003

A big "Fuck You!" from the Keyhole nebula

Lipstick Apathy

The-Mole posted:

I always thought Lord of the Flies was just libertarians on an island.

Lord of the Bitcoins.

ANIME IS BLOOD
Sep 4, 2008

by zen death robot

Amaritudo posted:

Did I just trip and fall into the NationStates forums?
Never, ever compare GBS to NS General. I would sooner descend into the murky depths of Laissez's Faire than there.

And the only thing more insufferable than a libertarian with absolute faith in the compassion of corporations is a non-libertarian with absolute faith in the compassion of government. The point of the former is to create profit, the point of the latter is to keep the former in line and make sure that everyone toes the bottom line. Compassion is irrelevant to them both.

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

AuMaestro posted:

I think every stupid utopian ideal should get an island on which to test it out and show how unworkable it is. The wonderful thing about libertarianism is that it can be tested out on the internet with phenomena like bitcoin, so nobody has to die (except from heat exhaustion) to demonstrate how bad it is.
Wouldn't really do much. The problem with most utopians is that they think everyone will consistently treat everyone in society the way they treat the ~100 people their primitive monkey brain can accept as "real". If you actually got them to run a commune on an isolated island there's a good chance even the dumbest dogma would work out. It has created a pretty stable society for the Sentinelese, after all.

makomk
Jul 16, 2011

Gerblyn posted:

The sad thing is, that there IS a way for libertarian society to deal with this situation. At some point, the damage done by your theoretical company will reach a level where it will begin to have a marked impact on the lifestyle of consumers, or will cause a disaster of such magnitude that the consumers can no longer ignore it. At this point, the market will go through a correction as other companies begin to capitalize on the situation by pointing out why company A is bad, and that people should by their own more expensive products instead, which do not have such bad environmental consequences.
Now think about what happens if company A owns a significant chunk of the press and gets them to publish stories about how the damage is in fact caused by something else and any claims to the contrary are just lies by competitor B to distract from the fact they make their product by massacreing little fluffy bunnies. Getting enough reliable information to consumers for them to make a rational choice is hard; the Bitcoin forums are actually a good demonstration of that. So are various other things that would inevitably drive this thread waaay off topic.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

The fun thing about libertarians is how the proof that the current system is terrible is that "bad things happen," and they like to believe that the system that they would set up would of course be better, on the grounds that "people inherently wouldn't want to gently caress each other over," and that their system can't be proved wrong because nobody's ever really tried it.

And these are all the exact same arguments that socialists make.

Orange Sunshine
May 10, 2011

by FactsAreUseless

Cream_Filling posted:

Seriously, how do libertarians solve the tragedy of the commons? It's an incredibly basic problem that really can't be solved without some sort of central arbiter with enforcement powers i.e. a government.

The same goes for things like property rights or contracts. In other words, all the poo poo that libertarians love and obsess about.

Libertarians solve the tragedy of the commons by having no commons. Everything is owned. Someone will own the roads, and the lakes, and the rivers, and the oceans, and these people will see to it that nothing is overly polluted.

Of course, this wouldn't actually work. First of all, nobody could own the air, which means there's nobody to stop factories from belching smoke into the air. The only way the oceans could be owned would be if the entire world was libertarian. And there's nothing to stop people from taking actions which will damage someone's else's property, but the damage won't be clear for quite some time.

In a Libertarian world, I could create a company called "Crazy Bob's Nuclear Waste Disposal", wherein I bought vacant lots at the edges of cities, dug pits, and dumped all the nuclear waste into the pit, in barrels that would last only a few decades. So 20 to 30 years later, the nuclear waste would start leaking out of the barrels, make its way into the groundwater and poison any wells or rivers or any other water nearby.

Nobody could stop me, but they could sue me for damaging their rivers... 30 years later. By which time I don't care, because I've long since died from my heroin addiction.

Yaos
Feb 22, 2003

She is a cat of significant gravy.

SlothfulCobra posted:

The fun thing about libertarians is how the proof that the current system is terrible is that "bad things happen," and they like to believe that the system that they would set up would of course be better, on the grounds that "people inherently wouldn't want to gently caress each other over," and that their system can't be proved wrong because nobody's ever really tried it.

And these are all the exact same arguments that socialists make.
Making a working system is difficult because it will not matter how many pages are written on how everything works if everybody ignores it or changes the meaning of it whenever they want.

chaosbreather
Dec 9, 2001

Wry and wise,
but also very sexual.

Orange Sunshine posted:

Libertarians solve the tragedy of the commons by having no commons. Everything is owned. Someone will own the roads, and the lakes, and the rivers, and the oceans, and these people will see to it that nothing is overly polluted.

Of course, this wouldn't actually work. First of all, nobody could own the air, which means there's nobody to stop factories from belching smoke into the air. The only way the oceans could be owned would be if the entire world was libertarian. And there's nothing to stop people from taking actions which will damage someone's else's property, but the damage won't be clear for quite some time.

In a Libertarian world, I could create a company called "Crazy Bob's Nuclear Waste Disposal", wherein I bought vacant lots at the edges of cities, dug pits, and dumped all the nuclear waste into the pit, in barrels that would last only a few decades. So 20 to 30 years later, the nuclear waste would start leaking out of the barrels, make its way into the groundwater and poison any wells or rivers or any other water nearby.

Nobody could stop me, but they could sue me for damaging their rivers... 30 years later. By which time I don't care, because I've long since died from my heroin addiction.

Oh it gets better than that. Because of that action people then won't use nuclear power stations that aren't certified by another company who investigates how power stations dispose of waste. People could pay that company money to shut down waste disposal companies, so they outsource mercenaries to help enforce public safety. But if some people refuse to pay for safe waste disposal, that means everyone suffers, so the majority who want safety and not tumours pay mercenaries to shake down the minority to force them to pay for the good of the public.

So they've created an EPA, taxes and police, ex nullus. Government self-assembles, or rather, is one of the lowest energy states for society to be in. That's why it is how it is now. The only way for any system to be more viable is if it is an actually lower energy state. The benevolent and omniscient Minds of the Culture series is the only system that comes to mind: everything is planned out so thoroughly and influenced so subtlety with technology so in abundance that anyone can really do basically anything and piss no-one off and lack nothing.

Of course, back on Earth, the only way for societies and economies to get better - to develop the Ice-9 to the current systems' water, if you will - is the same way anything else does: the scientific method. Hypothesises must be formed and tested through experimentation. It's a bit difficult at the moment because governments like continuing, in fact that is their sole purpose: to provide continuity and stability, and worse, that there are ethical questions to experimenting on large populaces.

My answer is orbital habitats: away from all pre-existing laws true experimental political science could take place for the first time. I doubt it would be difficult to find volunteers. Controlled tests on macro-sized populaces is what we really need to find a system that has the properties one would want: allows the maximum number of people to pursue happiness, allows the maximum possible living standards, to be powered by cultural and intellectual maxima rather than to suppress them, support exponential population growth, have the largest production, has the least scarcity, and self-modifies to be the best as per current research. A lot of current and proposed systems have or aspire to have some of these, but none do all.

AuMaestro
May 27, 2007

SlothfulCobra posted:

The fun thing about libertarians is how the proof that the current system is terrible is that "bad things happen," and they like to believe that the system that they would set up would of course be better, on the grounds that "people inherently wouldn't want to gently caress each other over," and that their system can't be proved wrong because nobody's ever really tried it.

And these are all the exact same arguments that socialists make.

This is pseudo-history, but Jared Diamond has suggested that the failure of the Norwegian Greenland colony was essentially the result of libertarianism. The owners of the land instructed their employees to concentrate on the wool industry instead of gathering food, and as soon as the weather turned from marginal to genuinely bad they all died.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

chaosbreather posted:

Of course, back on Earth, the only way for societies and economies to get better - to develop the Ice-9 to the current systems' water, if you will - is the same way anything else does: the scientific method. Hypothesises must be formed and tested through experimentation. It's a bit difficult at the moment because governments like continuing, in fact that is their sole purpose: to provide continuity and stability, and worse, that there are ethical questions to experimenting on large populaces.

My answer is orbital habitats: away from all pre-existing laws true experimental political science could take place for the first time. I doubt it would be difficult to find volunteers. Controlled tests on macro-sized populaces is what we really need to find a system that has the properties one would want: allows the maximum number of people to pursue happiness, allows the maximum possible living standards, to be powered by cultural and intellectual maxima rather than to suppress them, support exponential population growth, have the largest production, has the least scarcity, and self-modifies to be the best as per current research. A lot of current and proposed systems have or aspire to have some of these, but none do all.

I fully support firing all libertarians into space. No need to wait for the habitats.

Cardiovorax
Jun 5, 2011

I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Cream_Filling posted:

I fully support firing all libertarians into space. No need to wait for the habitats.
Looks like we have the plot of Bioshock 4 down pat.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

AuMaestro posted:

This is pseudo-history, but Jared Diamond has suggested that the failure of the Norwegian Greenland colony was essentially the result of libertarianism. The owners of the land instructed their employees to concentrate on the wool industry instead of gathering food, and as soon as the weather turned from marginal to genuinely bad they all died.

Dunno, that just sounds like they were being foolishly selfish and short-sighted. Oh waiiiit

chaosbreather
Dec 9, 2001

Wry and wise,
but also very sexual.

Cream_Filling posted:

I fully support firing all libertarians into space. No need to wait for the habitats.

Anyone can murder people who they disagree with, without the expense of rocket propulsion. If you really want to end libertarianism you give them a habitat far from where they can hurt innocents and let them do it, and show the world as they disprove their own political hypothesis. Just like how Bitcoins disprove and continue to disprove their own economic hypothesis.

kazmeyer
Jul 26, 2001

'Cause we're the good guys.

chaosbreather posted:

Anyone can murder people who they disagree with, without the expense of rocket propulsion. If you really want to end libertarianism you give them a habitat far from where they can hurt innocents and let them do it, and show the world as they disprove their own political hypothesis. Just like how Bitcoins disprove and continue to disprove their own economic hypothesis.

This is kind of why I wish the Free State Project hadn't failed. I really wanted to watch an entire state devolve into Thunderdome live on CNN.

Good Citizen
Aug 12, 2008

trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump
Why do people even argue with US Libertarians any more? Just keep letting them siphon Republican votes over to Ron Paul. Everybody wins.

Armacham
Mar 3, 2007

Then brothers in war, to the skirmish must we hence! Shall we hence?

chaosbreather posted:


My answer is orbital habitats: away from all pre-existing laws true experimental political science could take place for the first time. I doubt it would be difficult to find volunteers. Controlled tests on macro-sized populaces is what we really need to find a system that has the properties one would want: allows the maximum number of people to pursue happiness, allows the maximum possible living standards, to be powered by cultural and intellectual maxima rather than to suppress them, support exponential population growth, have the largest production, has the least scarcity, and self-modifies to be the best as per current research. A lot of current and proposed systems have or aspire to have some of these, but none do all.

already been done


http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_Experiment

bosschair
Jun 22, 2011
Well, you fuckers finally made me do it. I signed up at bitcoin forums.

text editor
Jan 8, 2007

bosschair posted:

Well, you fuckers finally made me do it. I signed up at bitcoin forums.

We're probably gonna drive Vegetta of the edge

Joe 30330
Dec 20, 2007

"We have this notion that if you're poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids."

As the audience reluctantly began to applaud during the silence, Biden tried to fix his remarks.

"Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids -- no, I really mean it." Biden said.
Can anybody give a synopsis of OnlyOneTV for the past few days? does it still exist?

FuriousxGeorge
Aug 8, 2007

We've been the best team all year.

They're just finding out.

bosschair posted:

Well, you fuckers finally made me do it. I signed up at bitcoin forums.

Enjoy being logged into the forums for four hours before you can post. (via auto refresh)

text editor
Jan 8, 2007

FuriousxGeorge posted:

Enjoy being logged into the forums for four hours before you can post. (via auto refresh)

Or ask for whitelisting. Atlas whitelisted me, and then I went straight to his threads to post.

Good Citizen
Aug 12, 2008

trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump

ClosedBSD posted:

Or ask for whitelisting. Atlas whitelisted me, and then I went straight to his threads to post.

Atlas banished me back to the newbie area. Of course, I was posting as FAtlas, had a fat version of his avatar, and was quoting each of his posts and adding a lisp. Still, it was kind of a dick move.

carticket
Jun 28, 2005

white and gold.

Lots of downward market pressure at the moment. $200k of bitcoins for sale at $14 or under. A big buy order at $13.5 just fell, but it looks like it may have been filled rather than vanished (basing this off volume).

text editor
Jan 8, 2007

Good Citizen posted:

Atlas banished me back to the newbie area. Of course, I was posting as FAtlas, had a fat version of his avatar, and was quoting each of his posts and adding a lisp. Still, it was kind of a dick move.

hahaha, when was that? I thought they took away his admin rights because even the other people who moderate the Bitcoin forum thought he was crazy.

JohnnyRnR
May 16, 2004
Beer Ninja
At what prices are the OTC traders selling?

waffle
May 12, 2001
HEH
It's interesting how a single huge trade can send the market into a freefall. By interesting, I mean completely as expected, but still, it's interesting how predictable it is

Megillah Gorilla
Sep 22, 2003

If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.



Bread Liar

Delthalaz posted:

The reason you can't go and buy penicillin whenever you feel that you need it is because if everyone did this it would gently caress up the world for everyone by creating super-bacteria.

Conversely - with MORE government regulation, he might have access to actual healthcare and not had to pay a cent rather than $3000 for a basic drug treatment.

When I had a tooth infection last year and bought penicillin and painkillers, I paid less than $15 dollars for them.

But hey, a free market will regulate itself I'm sure.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Rabid Koala
Aug 18, 2003


It's really not that hard to get past their newbie filter. Just make five low content posts in the Newbie forum, and you're cleared to go once you've been online for the allotted number of hours.