Russia want completely ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Sun, Aug 03, 2014 at 10:02:44AM -0700, Reed Black wrote:
> I may be responding to a troll posting, but it's a fun one, so...
>

I should probably not read Thomas Piketty's Capital and then post on the 
internet in the same week timespan. But it's been quite an amusing digression.

> 
> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Troy Benjegerdes <hozer at hozed.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Aug 02, 2014 at 07:47:39PM +0200, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
> > > 2014-08-02 19:28 GMT+02:00 Fernando Paladini <fnpaladini at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > > It's a joke, keep calm :P
> > > >
> > >
> > > What if they actually did give that respect, but it's all been
> > > propaganda'ed into oblivion?
> >
> 
> 
> > The Soviets had some damned good engineers and scientists, and their
> > designs
> 
> (soyuz) are still flying. The space program of the leader of the free world
> 
> keeps giving more money to defense contractors. Now tell me again who won
> 
> the space race?
> 
> 
> The Soviets also had some damned bad engineers and scientists. Someone in
> an ivory tower decides soaking seeds before planting them will make them
> grow better, the state requires it, seeds mold in the ground. How many die
> because Soviet science didn't come as an option?
> 
> How foreign was the concept of a flush toilet to Soviet troops who ripped
> them off the walls when invading westward? They baffled that the toilets
> ceased working when leaned against a tree or a tent. Basic conveniences
> were utterly foreign to any but the heads of state and their chosen pets.
> Even where they had advances that compared to what was available in the
> west, it hardly mattered to most of the population.
> 
> As to the space program, at their pinnacle they end up copying the Space
> Shuttle and other US projects, right down to the placement of left-handed
> screws. What lesson were we meant to draw here?

Don't copy that floppy?

I'd argue the Soyuz was and is the pinnacle of human manned flight, because
it (as far as I know) was not a copy, and it's still flying.
 
> 
> 
> > War is peace, freedom is slavery, and Carl Marx was right about from each
> > according to his ability, to each according to his need. This is proven
> > by the market penetration of the GPLv2 linux kernel. Capitalists need high
> > quality softare, and they cannot afford the capital to own something that
> > actually works.
> >
> 
> GPL has little to nothing to do with Marx.
> 
> GPL relies entirely on private ownership of intellectual property for its
> enforcement. Private property is GPL's very foundation. And nobody is
> compelled to use GPL licensed software, or to agree to a GPL license. Those
> who do enter into an agreement aren't even required to redistribute their
> changes unless they redistribute the derivative product. There's no
> compulsory communal property here, no Marx.
> 
> Observe that generally, one can set up GPL and various other forms of
> voluntary communal contracts under capitalism. But that doesn't make
> capitalism communist/Marxist. It does make capitalism the more flexible
> system. One in which the GPL linux kernel is indeed doing well, along with
> countless privately owned projects.

Marx was worried about endless accumulation of capital by industrialists. I
find it rather hilariously amusing that for Marx's commons to work, it has to
be in the capitalist framework of intellectual property ownership.

The brilliance of the GPL(v2) is the 'compulsory communal' aspect only kicks
in when you sell something. No sale, no compulsion to share with your customers.
It will be interesting to see how the AGPLv3 plays out long-term. I see a lot 
of code getting released under that license, and I expect at some point it 
will start eating the market share of closed-source cloud 'service' providers,
because no capital owner can afford to pay engineers when the competition is
doing the work for free.

I guess Marx got trolled by Richard Stallman.