On 7/11/12 11:54 AM, Ted Smith wrote:

On Wed, 2012-11-07 at 00:05 +0100, Changaco wrote:

...

Let me get this straight, someone writes a message asking people not to go into political debates that have been done over and over, but you do it anyway.

This is exactly why I previously said I wasn't going to argue with you, because from your messages here and a quick look at your website I guessed what you were going to say.

I agree with Ted Smith on the uselessness of the "debate" you are trying to fuel, therefore I won't participate.

This debate has only one possible use: it can motivate people to test hypotheses related to economics on p2p networks.

So far, I've seen a great deal of that in this thread, and I hope I can see more. Not only is that constructive and on-topic, it's the best way to have the underlying political debate: through a solid basis of empiricism.

That's the point :) As a slice of experience, this business of creating new monies demands an integrity to economics that is uncompromising. Whatever your views, you will find them challenged. The more you know, the better you'll be. If you don't have a total commitment to the reality of people's financial habits, and a total commitment to being totally wrong from time to time, you'll find this business an unhappy one. You are asking people to choose your form of money over others, and your customers will be incisive and brutal with your chosen set of presumptions. Another thing you will need is a thick skin; the ability to debate the real issues while not getting distracted by the sink into politics and verbal tit-for-tat. Back in the good ol' days, Zooko and I used to run something called the Weber Economics Club. Every week we would collect all the local monetary engineers and discuss one economics topic of interest. I remember Coase's theorem one week, Schelling points another week. For an hour ... and then the beer would steer us to other topics. Which is probably good, as our group was filled with randians and marxists alike, and we wanted to survive the night. We should have produced a poster, something like http://iang.org/images/beer3.jpg "Beer - helping Randoids and Commies debate economics since 1862!" iang _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE