T-1000
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Posts posted by T-1000
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Mr. non-technical person, what you guess at is impossible because there is no domain name. Read up on how TOR and Onion Routing works, a fully anonymous encrypted data transport protocol including a separate domain name system and the whole is itself a peer to peer protocol which no central control point. The whole thing is already internationally implemented. All the court orders in the world are completely useless.
The Silk road is already banned and they continue to operate in defiance of the law. Piling court orders on top of the laws accomplish nothing, but people are going to try anyway. I do not have an objection to attempting to enforce the existing law. I do have an objection to the Wesley Mouches of law enforcement demanding ever more authority in an attempt to make inherently unworkable laws work anyway.
Then the only solution is to require Tor to log all of its users ie. names and addresses available for law enforcement inspection, and to require Tor to restrict access to illegal websites (such as SilkRoad, child porn sites, terrorist websites, etc).
I do not think this is an unworkable law, or an overstepping of power. This is the police protecting people from terrorism, child porn, contraband, etc.
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What does "ban Silk Road" mean anyway? How can you possibly make it stop without destroying more than you should, initiating force? It is not the case that banning bitcoin would even slow down Silk Road because they can use plain old cash though the mail, WOW gold transfers, or a hundred other things.
I am not a technical person but I guess banning Silk Road would involve the authorities taking control of the domain name, after getting permission first by a court of law.
I don't want to consider Bitcoin for the time being, I am trying to specifically gain your view on the Silk Road. Should I take your answers to mean that you think the Silk Road shouldn't be banned?
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There should not be drug control in the first place. Silk Road already is banned as much as it can be banned without unjust overreaching. Bitcoins is just another tool, the same as all those other things I listed. If your threshold for banning something is that it merely be useful in the commission of a crime then there is no principled limit to banning everything until we are naked. Banning everything still would not stop crime.
Shall I take your answer to mean that you think the Silk Road shouldn't be banned?
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I'm getting logged out of the chatroom every 30 seconds. It says I have an invalid IP address. I'm in the UK, so it can't be a Florida only issue.
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It already is banned, what they sell is illegal. Apparently you want to ban bitcoin, ban Tor, ban the internet, ban computers and then nuke the site from orbit just to be sure. That is an overreaction.
The Silk Road is a platform which has not been banned. 99% of what people sell on it has been banned though. I ask again, do you think the Silk Road should be banned?
PS. I want to ban bitcoin, not any of those other things.
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The Silk Road is not the only thing to give bitcoins value. They can also be used for gambling and buying alpaca wool socks.
OK, but what is your opinion on the Silk Road? You say you don't think about it, but I invite you to think about it. Do you think it should be banned? Or regulated? Or is it fine and should be left alone?
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Erm, as you can see I am enquiring specifically about the Silk Road now. Before it was Bitcoin in isolation. Nice contentful post you made there though, well done.
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I don't think much about the Silk Road because I don't do drugs. I am against the stupid and useless "War on Drugs".
I am also against the "War on Drugs". I also don't do drugs. But it is clear to me that the ONLY and STATED purpose of the Silk Road is to buy contraband. It should be shut down.
I ask you about this because you avoided the Silk Road issue in the above discussion which to me is the main issue here. That is what gives Bitcoins value. So I invite you to think about the Silk Road.... do you think it should be shutdown?
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Grames, what do you think of the Silk Road, and do you think it should be shut down?
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If you are suggesting the Peikoff's stand on immigration is based on the notion that governments ought to be controlling immigration (except where security is threatened) then you are misrepresenting him. Peikoff and many other Objectivists think that this is an area where one infringement of rights (the welfare state) has necessitated another. Though I disagree with this view, it is wrong to describe it as though their political theory calls for government intervention in this area.
I am not suggesting that don't worry.
On a side note, I have found precisely zero people on this forum who agree with Peikoff on this issue. I find this strange to say the least.
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What makes a pre-emptive strike valid is that it is not an initiation of force. Force is not entirely identical to physical force, but also threats of force. Responding to threats of force with actual force is not initiating force but retaliating with force.
You can't think straight about rights and the law if you don't understand what 'force' refers to.
You don't give any justification for this, nor do you specify enough context to decide anything. To the extent such a prohibition can be justified, it is only justified by the rights of other people not to have their lives and property exist under the threat of annihilation or radioactive contamination. That would be an initiation of force by the owner of the nuclear weapon. If no persons or property were in danger then there would be no basis for the government to act, but the only way that hypothetical could come about was through an isolated lab or facility of kind creating an explosion deep underground with an nonportable and immobile weapon. Why anybody would do such a thing besides the government itself in the course of weapon research is a mystery, so the whole point is moot. There may as well be a law against people flapping their arms and flying.
I am in favor of preemptive military strikes where justified. That libertarians are against prohibition is not an argument relevant (for or against) to the validity of prohibition. You are resorting to name-calling and ad hominem to paper-over the deficiencies in your own understanding of Objectivism.
When VCRs and the internet first became available, the most of the big users were pornographers. Therefore, what?
In reply to your very last point, pornography is not illegal so therefore nothing. But one of the big uses of the internet is to distribute terrorist recruitment videos. If it got to the point where 99% of the activity on the internet was for illegal purposes such as this then yes I would ban the internet. 99% of the activity on Bitcoin is to purchase contraband. Therefore it should be banned, or regulated such that the illegal activity disappears.
You will not address the meat of this topic - I direct you to the newstory again - http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/
If you goto the poster page of The Silk Road - http://silkroadmarket.org/ - (you need Tor and another URL to access the actual site) you will see they are even linking to the Bitcoin forum and having open discussions there.
This is my last post on this topic. I have noticed that a lot of Objectivists are libertarians/anarchists/gun nuts/. I've just had a discussion in the chat where I've been defending Peikoffs anti-immigration viewpoint. It seems that people here cannot accept that it is RIGHT to promote government intervention in certain contexts.
Out.
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You don't agree with Objectivism because Objectivism denies collectivism and inherently collectivist concepts. To regard national security as an end in itself that can terminate a logical chain of justification is wrong. What exists is individuals and their rights, and the government can have no other rights which do not originally exist among the citizens. No citizen may initiate force and neither may the government.
Computers, guns, cars, clothes, and money are all used by criminals but it would be stupid to outlaw those things for that reason. It is stupid because there is no relation between one man's use of his property and another man's use of his different property. The law is a means to defend individual rights, and only persons can possess or exercise or violate rights. The proper subject and object of the law is persons, not things.
Prohibition laws falsely attribute to objects the power to violate rights. As politics is based on ethics then that false attribution can be identified as being premised upon ethical intrinsicism. Ethical intrinsicism is the idea that something can be known to be good or bad regardless of context, that a value assignment can be discovered apart from any and all valuers.
No. And at ObjectivismOnline.net it is not safe to assume that a disagreement must be caused by the other person's failure to understand Objectivism.
I put it to you that you are a libertarian. You use the non-initiation of force principle (NIOF) without regard for context. In the context of certain military operations the government can pre-emptively strike (ie initiate force before the other side does). In the context of nuclear weapons in the hands of a normal citizen, the government can legitimately prohibit this. Each of the previous sentences was started with "In the context of", so this is not ethical intrinsicism. Libertarians hate premptive military strikes (look at Cato.org), and prohibition just as you seem to hate it. So I hope you see why you are coming across as a libertarian to me.
I put it to you that most of the big users of Bitcoin (in its current form) will be criminals. In this context, how can you justify not either 1)banning it 2)regulating it (eg require Bitcoin exchanges to validate and log postal addresses of users)?
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Serious question: Are you a fascist or a conservative?
I agree with Objectivism, ie within a free society it is permissible for the government to prohibit anything that threatens national security. Now will you answer my serious question? I ask because I have debated people here only to find out later they are libertarians or anarchists.
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"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Prohibition in any form is unworkable and immoral in itself.
"allow bitcoin" : It is not under your power to stop bitcoin, anymore than prohibition stopped alcohol or drugs.
This is false. For example it is completely moral to have prohibition of nuclear weapons. Or anything else that threatens national security. Such as bitcoin.
Serious question: Are you a libertarian or an anarchist?
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You want to out bitcoins, which would compound the error of outlawing various drugs. This is the same process as occurs in all government interventions, one bad regulation or bad law requires more bad legislation to help make the original more enforceable or its unanticipated consequences less intolerable.
Respect for the law is no justification for more bad law, only the enforcement of the actual law as it stands.
So, cash is anonymous but it doesn't matter because it comes from a central source that is not anonymous, and things that are not cash are not anonymous. That makes no sense, and does not establish that anonymity is bad. Anonymity is a means of defending privacy, which is a political right.
Who is Gramlich and why should I care?
If it were just drugs, then you are right. But bitcoins are/will be used to fund terrorism and to launder money from the proceeds of non-drug crime. If you want to help terrorists then allow bitcoin. This is a terrorists wet dream.
I would have no problem with bitcoin if each coin was tagged with the name and address of each of its owners on a central database that was accessible to the police who had a search warrant. This is acceptable in a free society for the same reason that govt can pass a law to require stricter security at airports than the airports themselves would like. This is a matter of national security so privacy can be reasonably lifted.
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This is a very strange position for someone posting here to take as 1) drugs shouldn't be illegal and 2) cash is already anonymous and I bet you don't object to cash or even gold coins.
- I agree that drugs shouldn't be illegal. However the fact that they are illegal means that my respect for the rule of law makes me condemn those who deal them. I am not an anarchist, and to not condemn law breakers would make an ass of the law. The fact that the law IS an ass sometimes and has non-Objective laws, means that we need to campaign to change the law.
- Yes, cash is anonymous but it has to be withdrawn from a traceable bank account, it is much less anonymous than Bitcoins. Besides, cash makes up only a fraction of the money supply, a bigger fraction is made up of non-anonymous electronic funds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Components_of_US_Money_supply.svg).
The fact that you think my opinion is strange Gramlich, goes to show the extent of libertarian/anarchist ideas prevalence within Objectivist thought. To the extent that this is true, it is a shame.
- I agree that drugs shouldn't be illegal. However the fact that they are illegal means that my respect for the rule of law makes me condemn those who deal them. I am not an anarchist, and to not condemn law breakers would make an ass of the law. The fact that the law IS an ass sometimes and has non-Objective laws, means that we need to campaign to change the law.
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I think Bitcoin should be outlawed because of its anonymity. It is already being used to sell illegal drugs online, it is only a matter of time before it gets used to launder money from the proceeds of crime or to fund terrorist activity.
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Bold mine:
I believe the proper answer is 100%. If someone truly understands Obj.ism and can call himself an Obj.ist, there should be no reason - and he certainly would be applying reason - to change. I have never known a true Obj.ist to stop being one.
I completely disagree with you guys on this. What you are saying is essentially the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Obviously people can agree with Objectivism and then change their minds. To say that they never truly agreed with it because they changed their minds is clearly a logical fallacy.
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I don't care about helping the underpriveleged and I don't care about helping the organization. I don't care how much or how little people donate (apart from the fact that the more they give, the more I earn). All I care about is the (surprisingly good) pay.
I think it would be immoral of you to work for the charity if you don't support its goals. If you don't care about helping the "underprivileged" and the charity supports the underprivileged then working for them would be immoral. At the very least you are going to have to lie to get the job (which is immoral) since they are not going to hire you if you don't care about their goals and all you care about is the pay.
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*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier topic - sn ***
A new experiment has been done in which "The trajectories of the photons within the experiment - forbidden in a sense by the laws of physics - have been laid bare." - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13626587
What is a reasonable interpretation of these results? -
How is being dishonest with some people in order to make lots of money better for enhancing values to the greatest degree than being honest and making less money?
In the case of Zuckerberg (or any other lie that involves billions of dollars) is it really better to maintain one's self respect than lose out on the opportunity? Isn't it worth the cognitive dissonance and distaste of lying in order to gain a billion dollars?
You might as well have said "the robber is acknowledging the principle of individual rights to himself, but he occasionally acts otherwise around other people."
I think I'm beginning to see why lying is wrong. I think my problem is something to do with me having an abstract idea of ethics in my head that is separate from how I act in real life, ie not putting into practise my ideas. But I'm still not completely clear on this.
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This is true, but does not tell us very much in the context of this conversation.
"Material objects as such have neither value nor disvalue; they acquire value-significance only in regard to a living being—particularly, in regard to serving or hindering man’s goals." - Ayn Rand
Let's examine this quote, for example. Now, something you want to acquire by cheating does not have a value as such. It is only a value if it is pursued or acquired in a certain way, and in a certain context.
Another question: you said that something is a value if it objectively further's one's life. I assume you mean that the value you chose, then, was chosen by attending to the facts of reality. Would you agree with this?
And then, consider this: what is the relationship between cheating or lying, and facts of reality?
I agree that material values chosen must be accordance with the facts of reality. I'm not sure I agree that cheating to gain such values once chosen is against the facts of reality. The liar is acknowledging all facts of reality himself, but occasionally presents certain facts as otherwise to other people.
An example would be Mark Zuckerberg. The man is clearly a productive genius who has created billions of dollars of value for himself and his customers. However he is also a liar. If it wasn't for a few well chosen and well timed untruths, he would have forgone billions of dollars as other people beat him to setting up Facebook.
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Let's go back to the fundamentals. What makes something an objective value? Is something a value, like the religionist would argue, just because he blindly believes it? Is something a value, like the hedonist would argue, just because he feels it?
Something is a value if it objectively furthers one's life as man qua man.
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I agree. However I am not defending the principle that it is in everyone's self-interest to cheat strangers. I am arguing that it is in MY self interest to cheat strangers.
USA Debt
in Domestic United States Politics
Posted
I am curious as to the position of people here regarding raising the debt limit and whether to default on existing debt.