Greek referendum

[JoeyD]

ZeroHedge keeps posting interesting stuff on the whole Greek euro mess.

While he does accurately describe the history of the creation of Europe and it's nice that somebody is speaking up inside the EU-madhouse, but I'm not sure Greece will get out of Europe unscathed as easily as that. I'm not aware of massive Greek export products, so they will take a hit either way.

i enjoy reading ZH as much as the next guy, but i do find them to be rather overzealous in posting predictions and viewing events in a very negative lens. There are a variety of scenarios that could unfold here: Greeks agree to some haircut and payment reschedule despite the referendum, the country defaults and possibly restructures on its debt, it abandons the euro, and/or it gets kicked out of the EU completely. there are probably other scenarios too, but in general i don't see why debt default has to mean currency abandonment (sovereign default ought to be independent of currency), nor do i see why Greece would have to leave the trade and open border treaties, even if they completely abandoned the euro?

The single currency thing is a flawed concept no matter who says it. It's an attempted coup and trying to force all these completely different and incompatible cultures in the exact same format is a ludicrous concept. Plus wasn't the whole central planning thing supposed to be a flawed concept?

I agree about zerohedge and I don't share all of their views, however not many media-agencies seem to be all that interested in showing both sides of the stories in my country. It's also to bad that it's not only zerohedge that's overzealous and too extreme apparently. I completely agree with your points and would have wished the discussion was about how to fix things or make a clean start. But alas that's not the way things seem to be going, both sides are to blame for that in my humble opinion.

And if they wanted to blame and haircut somebody they should have done that at the shoulderlevel with all the banks and gamblers who consciously and willingly created this mess. They damn well knew that their loans were toxic and they are trying to make a buck out of the institutions bailing them out of it. That sounds like high-treason to me and people like that deserve a whole lot more terrorist-treament than they are getting. But instead they have their hands way up the euro-politicians asses so they are now moving their mouths.

[cylonmaker2053]

ZeroHedge keeps posting interesting stuff on the whole Greek euro mess.

While he does accurately describe the history of the creation of Europe and it's nice that somebody is speaking up inside the EU-madhouse, but I'm not sure Greece will get out of Europe unscathed as easily as that. I'm not aware of massive Greek export products, so they will take a hit either way.

i enjoy reading ZH as much as the next guy, but i do find them to be rather overzealous in posting predictions and viewing events in a very negative lens. There are a variety of scenarios that could unfold here: Greeks agree to some haircut and payment reschedule despite the referendum, the country defaults and possibly restructures on its debt, it abandons the euro, and/or it gets kicked out of the EU completely. there are probably other scenarios too, but in general i don't see why debt default has to mean currency abandonment (sovereign default ought to be independent of currency), nor do i see why Greece would have to leave the trade and open border treaties, even if they completely abandoned the euro?

[JoeyD]

ZeroHedge keeps posting interesting stuff on the whole Greek euro mess.

While he does accurately describe the history of the creation of Europe and it's nice that somebody is speaking up inside the EU-madhouse, but I'm not sure Greece will get out of Europe unscathed as easily as that. I'm not aware of massive Greek export products, so they will take a hit either way.

[cylonmaker2053]

I think this a must read...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-07/greferendum-shocker-tsipras-intended-lose-and-now-trapped-his-success

Yeah, interesting to see how this will play out.

It could all be part of a genius plan however.

On a serious note, what really is messed up is that just about every Joe Schmoe (and even little teeny JoeyD as well) knew this was going to happen right from the start, so the elite did everything in their power to prevent democratic recourse throughout Europe. What really bugs me is that key actors in the formation of the Euro-zone like the Dutch prime minister Kok (and he deserves all the connotation his name receives in English) and Kohl from Germany also knew that the whole concept was broken. They deliberately went through anyway, so that "they" (as in other people) would be forced to come up with a solution.

yeah it's messed up that < 1% of the population at the top gets to milk everyone else with either taxes or the purchasing power theft of the printing press to fund stupidity.

[JoeyD]

I think this a must read...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-07/greferendum-shocker-tsipras-intended-lose-and-now-trapped-his-success

Yeah, interesting to see how this will play out.

It could all be part of a genius plan however.

On a serious note, what really is messed up is that just about every Joe Schmoe (and even little teeny JoeyD as well) knew this was going to happen right from the start, so the elite did everything in their power to prevent democratic recourse throughout Europe. What really bugs me is that key actors in the formation of the Euro-zone like the Dutch prime minister Kok (and he deserves all the connotation his name receives in English) and Kohl from Germany also knew that the whole concept was broken. They deliberately went through anyway, so that "they" (as in other people) would be forced to come up with a solution.

[chryspano]

I think this a must read...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-07/greferendum-shocker-tsipras-intended-lose-and-now-trapped-his-success

[cylonmaker2053]

Interesting discussion! This is only my view today, which could change tomorrow!

Allow an ideal free system to evolve from any initial power or wealth distribution, and over time it will naturally approach a power law distribution, where most is in the hands of a minority. But as long as all agents are free and non-violent, this is a reasonable outcome, including the existence of monopolies, that still only survive in the private market as long as they satisfy the needs of other people. In principle, those at the top of the power/wealth distribution are those that have and continue to serve society's demands the best. The resulting spread comes down to differences in skill, effort and unavoidably, luck.

That's all in principle. The problem is that an element of those with the most power will always seek to cement that power through depriving the choices of those without it, and will bend and reform the system to meet this purpose. Thus even a theoretically sound system ends up being corrupted by human nature. You can alternatively set up a system where power is maintained more equally, but such a non-equilibrium can only then be sustained by the force of an authority (e.g. socialism), which is then a contradiction that will ultimately be exploited.

So power struggles are not a problem of which system, as all systems converge eventually toward abuse of power, which in the end is only corrected by a revolution, with a new optimism, beginning a cycle anew. The technology (e.g. block-chains) only allows different kinds of systems to be tried, but it does not offer any panacea to these basic problems. Different systems will come and go, and the debates over which labels are best will continue. Some systems are less corruptible for longer than others, which is about the best we can aim for.

As I see it, the only lasting solution left is not a system at all, but a very human characteristic -  learned wisdom.

the key problem as i see it that you mentioned is when those with early economic or other social successes use their newfound power to cement their positions--extracting wealth from others through coercive mechanisms and preventing future competition or challenges to their roles. this is typically the domain of governments and their crony business cartels. there's nothing inherently wrong with large wealth asymmetries, so long as they are derived by providing value in a nonviolent manner without forcefully restricting new competition.

one way i view orders of magnitude wealth asymmetries is that they provide lottery-type incentives to fuel dreams and induce somewhat irrational entrepreneurial activity (given that most startups fail, it's somewhat irrational to risk capital and time)...the asymmetric payoffs make this tradeoff interesting to people with the right risk-seeking profiles.  humanity benefits from irrational risk-seekers dreaming of massive payoffs, most of them failing, and some of them creating awesome new things that are wildly successful.

[Permie]

I agree with you so much, that I have been preemptively depressed about this for decades. But now that I can retroactively agree with you and know I'm not alone, I feel it was worth it.

(Sorry, just saying I agree gets a bit boring so I gave it a little swing.)

I do that too, +5 can get tedious!

How do you mean? Could you rephrase?

The possibilities of crypto, shared ledger consensus and maybe most importantly the use of incentives I discovered together with bitcoin and bitshares, have rekindled my hope for a solution.

Same here!
Innovation, innovation, innovation! How much sooner would a solution arise if nobody could dictate what is or isn't allowed?

including the existence of monopolies, that still only survive in the private market as long as they satisfy the needs of other people.

Many will complain of the possibility of monopolies in a deregulated system but fail to see how competition will not allow unfavourable businesses to retain their power. They also don't seem to care about the monopolies that have already bought their governments.

All this stuff is very complicated to the uninitiated and I think real-world examples are going to be needed before most will see what is possible. Humans fear the unknown and that which others declare 'scary', there has to be some way to leverage to this fact for the benefit of bts/freedom.

As I see it, the only lasting solution left is not a system at all, but a very human characteristic -  learned wisdom.

Can we get incentivized critical thinking baked into the blockchain?
A prediction market of some kind perhaps, although I'm not even sure how you'd teach it with a face-to-face lesson so I've no idea if it's possible. How could the 'correct' answer be determined in order to reward those 'doing it right'?
If something like that was somehow in the US Constitution then maybe the republic would have remained free'er. I think methods to encourage wisdom should be explored, and fallible entities removed from the equation

[starspirit]

Interesting discussion! This is only my view today, which could change tomorrow!

Allow an ideal free system to evolve from any initial power or wealth distribution, and over time it will naturally approach a power law distribution, where most is in the hands of a minority. But as long as all agents are free and non-violent, this is a reasonable outcome, including the existence of monopolies, that still only survive in the private market as long as they satisfy the needs of other people. In principle, those at the top of the power/wealth distribution are those that have and continue to serve society's demands the best. The resulting spread comes down to differences in skill, effort and unavoidably, luck.

That's all in principle. The problem is that an element of those with the most power will always seek to cement that power through depriving the choices of those without it, and will bend and reform the system to meet this purpose. Thus even a theoretically sound system ends up being corrupted by human nature. You can alternatively set up a system where power is maintained more equally, but such a non-equilibrium can only then be sustained by the force of an authority (e.g. socialism), which is then a contradiction that will ultimately be exploited.

So power struggles are not a problem of which system, as all systems converge eventually toward abuse of power, which in the end is only corrected by a revolution, with a new optimism, beginning a cycle anew. The technology (e.g. block-chains) only allows different kinds of systems to be tried, but it does not offer any panacea to these basic problems. Different systems will come and go, and the debates over which labels are best will continue. Some systems are less corruptible for longer than others, which is about the best we can aim for.

As I see it, the only lasting solution left is not a system at all, but a very human characteristic -  learned wisdom.

[JoeyD]

I agree with you so much, that I have been preemptively depressed about this for decades. But now that I can retroactively agree with you and know I'm not alone, I feel it was worth it.

(Sorry, just saying I agree gets a bit boring so I gave it a little swing.)

I do that too, +5 can get tedious!

How do you mean? Could you rephrase?

I meant that I was feeling down for a long time, realizing the same things you described, but not being able to work out a solution for all that time.

Seeing people unwilling to even attempt critical thinking, also having maybe childish and naive hopes for all the things computers, internet and gaming could help achieve and then watching it all turn into passive consumer hell, was making me feel down for quite a while now. I had high hopes when I ran into GNU/linux and the bazaar community model and wanted to see the same thing applied to fields outside of the realm of software. However hearing the seemingly endless complaining from people being confronted with [gasp] choice I admit I lost a lot of faith in humanity. Seeing how the majority of people can't be arsed to reach out and grab the stuff that's handed to them on a silver platter, but instead start complaining, made me lose quite a bit of confidence in humankind and a peaceful solution. I thought humans had become institutionalized and only a crisis like war or disease might be able to wake them up.

The possibilities of crypto, shared ledger consensus and maybe most importantly the use of incentives I discovered together with bitcoin and bitshares, have rekindled my hope for a solution.

[Permie]

I agree with you so much, that I have been preemptively depressed about this for decades. But now that I can retroactively agree with you and know I'm not alone, I feel it was worth it.

(Sorry, just saying I agree gets a bit boring so I gave it a little swing.)

I do that too, +5 can get tedious!

How do you mean? Could you rephrase?

[JoeyD]

Auftragstaktik - Mission-type tactics where goals, resources and time constraints are dictated, but lower down command are allowed to independently achieve the aims without micromanagement (correct me if this isn't what you meant).

That's as good of a description I've seen anywhere else, I think you got it down.

I would agree with you that democracy could work if power was far more decentralized, except that some brave guys in America tried that and it didn't even last 100 years before their republic got fucked up.
Sustaining freedom under such a republic requires the teaching and continued investment on critical thinking. Good luck with that! I reiterate that humans care about themselves, and I believe that a peaceful society will emerge as the summation/aggregate of happy individuals who have the choice to govern their own lives as they see fit.

If power is there to be grabbed, then sooner or later a group of people are going to conspire to take it. If there was some way to make the media honest and ensure they tell people the 'truth' then maybe it could work.
BM posted an idea for a prediction market based journalism platform (can't find it, all the links are moved :/), that would function like Peertracks but for articles and such.
Maybe that is one way to make it work, but such systems of control (republics) aren't essential so why risk it all over again? What would the Founding Fathers do if they could try again? I'm not sure, but I bet they didn't predict just how HUGE an influence the media would gain over us, everyone has a bug in their pocket and a screen telling them what's "cool". That would need to be changed first

I agree with you so much, that I have been preemptively depressed about this for decades. But now that I can retroactively agree with you and know I'm not alone, I feel it was worth it.

(Sorry, just saying I agree gets a bit boring so I gave it a little swing.)

[Permie]

During my time in the military I was struck by the concept of Auftragstaktik and I think decentralization like that would be the key to creating a better society on many levels, including business. Unfortunately the Cold-War utterly destroyed that line of thinking and seeing the same fear-mongering from that era being reintroduced I'm not too optimistic about the chances of the concept of decentralization of power catching hold anyti

Auftragstaktik - Mission-type tactics where goals, resources and time constraints are dictated, but lower down command are allowed to independently achieve the aims without micromanagement (correct me if this isn't what you meant).

I would agree with you that democracy could work if power was far more decentralized, except that some brave guys in America tried that and it didn't even last 100 years before their republic got fucked up.
Sustaining freedom under such a republic requires the teaching and continued investment on critical thinking. Good luck with that! I reiterate that humans care about themselves, and I believe that a peaceful society will emerge as the summation/aggregate of happy individuals who have the choice to govern their own lives as they see fit.

If power is there to be grabbed, then sooner or later a group of people are going to conspire to take it. If there was some way to make the media honest and ensure they tell people the 'truth' then maybe it could work.
BM posted an idea for a prediction market based journalism platform (can't find it, all the links are moved :/), that would function like Peertracks but for articles and such.
Maybe that is one way to make it work, but such systems of control (republics) aren't essential so why risk it all over again? What would the Founding Fathers do if they could try again? I'm not sure, but I bet they didn't predict just how HUGE an influence the media would gain over us, everyone has a bug in their pocket and a screen telling them what's "cool". That would need to be changed first

[JoeyD]

One problem I can't seem to solve with capitalism in general is that I rarely see the people who are actually providing or creating the value being the ones to profit. I haven't managed to figure out a capitalistic system that ultimately doesn't end up being in favor of parasites and malignant tumors.

Regulation encourages the rent-seeking behaviour, what we have now is Crony Capitalism or Crapitalism which is more akin to fascism than true capitalism.

In today's system, gains are privatised and losses are socialised.
Capitalism does not work if businesses are not allowed to fail and pay the consequences of not providing a valuable product or service to the market.

The problem of force can be solved with arbitration and reputation based conflict resolution.
If your reputation and respect in the market can net you $$$$ in profits for providing a service, then stealing $$ by being dishonest is nowhere near profitable. Crypto and real-time audits with smart contracts go a very long way to ensuring that arbitration is honest.

Nearly everyone has a problem with anarchy, as it's been sold by the media as chaos.

All markets and people have "problems". The crux of the debate is this: Who can solve problems more efficiently; a small group of "elected" officials (elections are media popularity contests) contained by "regulation" (competition stifling)
OR collections of motivated individuals with stake in the game (their savings), bound only by the risk of failure that they are willing to bear.

People are STUPID and individuals are SMART. It all comes down to mob psychology. Statism results in an apathetic attitude and dependence on other people.
I'll never believe in democracy unless someone can convince me that humans can be motivated to thoroughly research the political parties (hooray, we'll throw a BIGGER party if you vote for us! Don't sweat the debt!) when they are not directly impacted. Political change happens slowly and ain't nobody got time for that.
People care what affects them NOW. When you vote in a democratic election there is no way that you can consider society at large, predict the future, evaluate the profit-potetial (or missed opportunities) of each option, conduct interviews to ascertain foreign policy or perform background checks on your potential rulers. You vote for who you (are told) will improve your life the most.
"Newspaper says he'll give builders $$$, so I'll vote for him and lobby against anyone offering equal treatment, coz im a builder"
Would you want the popular kids at highschool running your life???

Capitalism acknowledges this fact and aligns the incentives for an overall outcome of progress and success, as determined by the choices made by individuals within society.

This may be a little off-topic but in a forum of a freedom-centric platform I would like others to understand that anarchy and freedom is possible.

To continue the tangent, I know what anarchy is and I agree it's not chaos. Honestly I personally have no problem at all with chaos and people having to be completely self-sufficient and always adapting and ever changing, but I realize that my point of view (of an ideal world) will never gain traction with the majority.

I'm all for breaking up the central planning monstrosities (in all areas not just in the form of nation states) we have now into many small ones. Democracy can work given enough transparency and information plus no micromanagement and no centralization of power. Or to use the modern term bottom-up instead of top-down-society.

During my time in the military I was struck by the concept of Auftragstaktik and I think decentralization like that would be the key to creating a better society on many levels, including business. Unfortunately the Cold-War utterly destroyed that line of thinking and seeing the same fear-mongering from that era being reintroduced I'm not too optimistic about the chances of the concept of decentralization of power catching hold anytime soon.

Time and time again I'm shocked at how people as a whole move towards cult-like OCD(control freak) behavior, be it forming political parties which I agree completely fucks up a democracy, but also cults like for example the Apple I-Phone users. Just about every party I go to, I am harassed by Apple users trying to convince me that it's okay that I don't actually control or own anything on that particular device and that I should just accept that as being superior and who needs options like fore example being able to just copy MY files/photographs to any device I want via USB. Sorry went a bit to far off topic there in a personal rant, but it does illustrate my point about people in general seemingly being unappreciative of independence and opposed or at the very least not supporters of the loss of their freedom.

Funny now that I mention this, one of the mental experiments I use to see if a political system or any other form of organization would work, is if it would be able to resist the coming of the Apple I-phone cult and their erosion of personal freedom  .

[Permie]

One problem I can't seem to solve with capitalism in general is that I rarely see the people who are actually providing or creating the value being the ones to profit. I haven't managed to figure out a capitalistic system that ultimately doesn't end up being in favor of parasites and malignant tumors.

Regulation encourages the rent-seeking behaviour, what we have now is Crony Capitalism or Crapitalism which is more akin to fascism than true capitalism.

In today's system, gains are privatised and losses are socialised.
Capitalism does not work if businesses are not allowed to fail and pay the consequences of not providing a valuable product or service to the market.

The problem of force can be solved with arbitration and reputation based conflict resolution.
If your reputation and respect in the market can net you $$$$ in profits for providing a service, then stealing $$ by being dishonest is nowhere near profitable. Crypto and real-time audits with smart contracts go a very long way to ensuring that arbitration is honest.

Nearly everyone has a problem with anarchy, as it's been sold by the media as chaos.

All markets and people have "problems". The crux of the debate is this: Who can solve problems more efficiently; a small group of "elected" officials (elections are media popularity contests) contained by "regulation" (competition stifling)
OR collections of motivated individuals with stake in the game (their savings), bound only by the risk of failure that they are willing to bear.

People are STUPID and individuals are SMART. It all comes down to mob psychology. Statism results in an apathetic attitude and dependence on other people.
I'll never believe in democracy unless someone can convince me that humans can be motivated to thoroughly research the political parties (hooray, we'll throw a BIGGER party if you vote for us! Don't sweat the debt!) when they are not directly impacted. Political change happens slowly and ain't nobody got time for that.
People care what affects them NOW. When you vote in a democratic election there is no way that you can consider society at large, predict the future, evaluate the profit-potetial (or missed opportunities) of each option, conduct interviews to ascertain foreign policy or perform background checks on your potential rulers. You vote for who you (are told) will improve your life the most.
"Newspaper says he'll give builders $$$, so I'll vote for him and lobby against anyone offering equal treatment, coz im a builder"
Would you want the popular kids at highschool running your life???

Capitalism acknowledges this fact and aligns the incentives for an overall outcome of progress and success, as determined by the choices made by individuals within society.

This may be a little off-topic but in a forum of a freedom-centric platform I would like others to understand that anarchy and freedom is possible.