BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: CLains on January 21, 2015, 12:14:38 pm
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Post your blog post suggestions here. :)
List of Suggestions so far
State of the Union 2015
Vision and Roadmap
Predictions for 2016 or a review of what surprises came from 2014.
BitShares value proposition (overview)
Productivity Tools,
Productivity Techniques,
How to Stay Productive,
How to be Organized,
How to Write Awesome Articles Fast,
Tips for trading on BitShares exchange,
Tips for trading world's financial markets,
How bitshares solves all the problems that Bill Gates perceives digital currencies to have
Can a DAC do better than the FDA? (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14258.0;topicseen)
Bytemaster's vision for health care
Bytemaster on basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index) <--- Done! Read it here (http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/)
Bytemaster on MaidSafe <--- Done! Read it here. (http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/30/Can-MaidSafe-Decentralize-the-Internet/)
Teaser for entrepreneurs on the benefits of establishing their business as a decentralized semi-autonomous network
add Stans "Origins of BitShares" post to the blog.
How Talented Experienced Developers can get Involved and Contribute
Overview of the core devs.. what skill set BitShares has (allude to what is missing.)
The limits of BitShares.. what can it not do.
Video Ideas
BitShares value proposition (overview)
BitAssets properties and rough mechanics
Blockchain is hiring / BitShares core dev team introduction, see suggestion (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12693.0).
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How about a State of the Union 2015?
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Productivity tools and techniques. How to be organized, how to write awesome big articles fast, how to stay productive, which tools and software to use and etc.
Some tips for trading on BitShares exchange and world's financial markets.
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I would like to know Bytemaster's vision for health care.
Please excuse my ignorance on the matter but the US's health care system makes me think of it as a third world country. Barbaric.
I don't know of any Canadian who would prefer us style health care to the system we have. I'm pretty sure Canada spends a lot less on health care, for much better service. Cuba spends way less per capita and still is right up there for quality of service.
Taxes may be violence to a libertarian but isn't letting somebody die, or even just get more sick, because of money, kind of like violence?
I can't figure out how to do health care better than a government, though I do feel like governments could do a much better job of it with a little transparency and common sense. The wasteful spending I see locally makes me sick.
I assume the fix would be blockchain based insurance providers and hospitals. But what happens to the poor? Is the libertarian thing to do just let them die off?
Does the free market work with health care? Isn't there an incentive to keep you sick or even make you sick?
It is a complicated topic that has kept me from considering myself a libertarian for years.
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Productivity stuff is very interesting! I'd like to hear BM talk about how he manages to stay motivated and be so productive, especially now when 99% of everything funneled to his attention is problems.
Bytemaster's vision for health care would be interesting as well. Haven't heard him mention that yet, though he has spoken about his insurance idea, and the idea of buying stocks in people.
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How about: How Talented Experienced Developers (who don't have time to read the Library of Congress that is bitsharestalk.org to figure out a direction/roadmap) can get Involved and Contribute to the Project in a Meaningful, Organized and Productive Way.
or maybe just a post about the direction/vision/roadmap/milestones.
I think an entire site could be devoted to just the organization of development and the vision of what we're going for.
List of developers, what they're working on, important obstacles that need tackling, where help is needed,Milestones, roadmap, vison, dev conferences?
Problem is anyone who actually knows these things is probably too busy to do them.
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I would like to know Bytemaster's vision for health care.
Please excuse my ignorance on the matter but the US's health care system makes me think of it as a third world country. Barbaric.
I don't know of any Canadian who would prefer us style health care to the system we have. I'm pretty sure Canada spends a lot less on health care, for much better service. Cuba spends way less per capita and still is right up there for quality of service.
Taxes may be violence to a libertarian but isn't letting somebody die, or even just get more sick, because of money, kind of like violence?
I can't figure out how to do health care better than a government, though I do feel like governments could do a much better job of it with a little transparency and common sense. The wasteful spending I see locally makes me sick.
I assume the fix would be blockchain based insurance providers and hospitals. But what happens to the poor? Is the libertarian thing to do just let them die off?
Does the free market work with health care? Isn't there an incentive to keep you sick or even make you sick?
It is a complicated topic that has kept me from considering myself a libertarian for years.
Lack of action can never be considered violence. It comes down to "positive rights" and "negative rights".
Positive rights can only be granted by violating negative rights.
Example: you have a right not to be killed (negative right), but you do not have a right to live (as bad as that sounds).
The only way to grant someone the "right to live" is to deny someone else the "right not to be killed".
In other words, to give someone "free health care" requires you to kill anyone who resists paying for that free health care.
Healthcare is like food, shelter, clothing, and every other good on the market. It seems kind of crazy to give everyone free healthcare but not give them free organic food and free housing with free utilities.
The ultimate logical conclusion of all "positive rights" arguments is absolute communism which lacks the ability to do economic calculation which ultimately destroys the economy leaving everyone without healthcare, food, or shelter. Not to mention the extreme concentration of power required to grant positive rights.
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How about: How Talented Experienced Developers (who don't have time to read the Library of Congress that is bitsharestalk.org to figure out a direction/roadmap) can get Involved and Contribute to the Project in a Meaningful, Organized and Productive Way.
or maybe just a post about the direction/vision/roadmap/milestones.
+5%
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Lack of action can never be considered violence. It comes down to "positive rights" and "negative rights".
Positive rights can only be granted by violating negative rights.
Example: you have a right not to be killed (negative right), but you do not have a right to live (as bad as that sounds).
The only way to grant someone the "right to live" is to deny someone else the "right not to be killed".
In other words, to give someone "free health care" requires you to kill anyone who resists paying for that free health care.
Healthcare is like food, shelter, clothing, and every other good on the market. It seems kind of crazy to give everyone free healthcare but not give them free organic food and free housing with free utilities.
The ultimate logical conclusion of all "positive rights" arguments is absolute communism which lacks the ability to do economic calculation which ultimately destroys the economy leaving everyone without healthcare, food, or shelter. Not to mention the extreme concentration of power required to grant positive rights.
This leaves me with more questions than before. But my biggest question is: is healthcare really like every other good on the market? Don't drug companies have more incentive to treat cancer then to cure it? Maybe even throw in a few extra side effects so that you need other drugs to treat the side effects? Hospitals are incentivised to keep you there longer. Doctors incentivised to prescribe drugs you don't need for kickbacks, or unnecessary surgeries.
So you think the best answer is to just let the poor die, but then won't they just kill us and take our money?
My first thought when I heard about DACs was a drug company. But I didn't really understand it so well at the time and don't really know if it would work. Open source drugs seems like it would be a huge benefit to all, except the shareholders of the drug companies.
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Tips for trading on BitShares exchange,
Tips for trading world's financial markets,
These are the two topics I'd like to see most.
How about a post that describes how bitshares investors can keep their current stake in bitshares while increasing the bitasset marketcaps and volume by going short and long simultaneously?
As a result of issues with ease of access/use most if not all the demand for bitassets comes from bitshares investors that want to hedge against downturns and given the depressed market cap of BTS, investors have little incentive to buy bitassets. Right now we have $30m of value and we are using less 10% it to create bitassets. I think if we had more investors creating their own bitassets trading them with other investors we could see the bitasset/bitasset markets mature even before the website for the exchange is up.
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I can't figure out how to do health care better than a government.
Thats right! and you are only human.
Governments also, are only made of humans and have the same problem.
Being a government doesn't grant special 'figure it out' powers, only the ability to take more resources.
Governments can't do health care better than free markets.
Lucky for governments they can make competition illegal or extremely expensive.
The Government then does not need to worry about 'how to do healthcare better'.
Nowhere in the universe can you do anything without cost. It cost me 3 calories to eat this sandwich.
Government anything, has a greater cost than the free market solution, simply because they have no incentive to 'do better'.
I assume the fix would be blockchain based insurance providers and hospitals. But what happens to the poor? Is the libertarian thing to do just let them die off?
blockchains can potentially save money anywhere they are employed. In the case of insurance, nearly the entire industry could be replaced. Hospitals still need doctors and facilities.
Libertarians also, are just humans, they have no greater or lesser feeling for the poor and missfortunate. In a libertarian state, everyone, not just libertarians, would keep more of their earned money and waste less on government. So everyone, not just libertarians, could spend that money in care of the poor, or whatever their hearts desire, at the greatest efficiency.
Does the free market work with health care? Isn't there an incentive to keep you sick or even make you sick?
No matter the type of government. People will always have these incentives for their own short sited gains.
The best solution can only be found by removing all barriers, freeing the market to offer all number of options.
Then it is your choice to listen to the doctor who only wants to make you sick.
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Lack of action can never be considered violence. It comes down to "positive rights" and "negative rights".
Positive rights can only be granted by violating negative rights.
Example: you have a right not to be killed (negative right), but you do not have a right to live (as bad as that sounds).
The only way to grant someone the "right to live" is to deny someone else the "right not to be killed".
In other words, to give someone "free health care" requires you to kill anyone who resists paying for that free health care.
Healthcare is like food, shelter, clothing, and every other good on the market. It seems kind of crazy to give everyone free healthcare but not give them free organic food and free housing with free utilities.
The ultimate logical conclusion of all "positive rights" arguments is absolute communism which lacks the ability to do economic calculation which ultimately destroys the economy leaving everyone without healthcare, food, or shelter. Not to mention the extreme concentration of power required to grant positive rights.
This leaves me with more questions than before. But my biggest question is: is healthcare really like every other good on the market? Don't drug companies have more incentive to treat cancer then to cure it? Maybe even throw in a few extra side effects so that you need other drugs to treat the side effects? Hospitals are incentivised to keep you there longer. Doctors incentivised to prescribe drugs you don't need for kickbacks, or unnecessary surgeries.
So you think the best answer is to just let the poor die, but then won't they just kill us and take our money?
My first thought when I heard about DACs was a drug company. But I didn't really understand it so well at the time and don't really know if it would work. Open source drugs seems like it would be a huge benefit to all, except the shareholders of the drug companies.
I actually appreciate your post because it gives me misconceptions that need to be addressed. I am sure there are many people who think like you and are looking for solutions.
Blockchains can be used to solve some problems, such as bonding doctors. They can also create prediction markets for the effectiveness of various deceases and the likelihood that certain approaches will lead to a cure.
Most barriers in the medical industry that raise costs are regulations and limits to competition that could drive prices down.
Right now we have the perverse situation where vitimins and natural remedies are outlawed and regulated out of existence while provably harmful subsances such as floride get a pass. If you let the government do your thinking for you (and everyone else) then the result is less critical thinking and more political BS which ultimately leads to more people dyeing.
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BM, if you're interested in US healthcare system, please PM me. I have personal connections to the really really core people and may introduce Bitshares to them. :)
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Lack of action can never be considered violence. It comes down to "positive rights" and "negative rights".
Positive rights can only be granted by violating negative rights.
Example: you have a right not to be killed (negative right), but you do not have a right to live (as bad as that sounds).
The only way to grant someone the "right to live" is to deny someone else the "right not to be killed".
In other words, to give someone "free health care" requires you to kill anyone who resists paying for that free health care.
Healthcare is like food, shelter, clothing, and every other good on the market. It seems kind of crazy to give everyone free healthcare but not give them free organic food and free housing with free utilities.
The ultimate logical conclusion of all "positive rights" arguments is absolute communism which lacks the ability to do economic calculation which ultimately destroys the economy leaving everyone without healthcare, food, or shelter. Not to mention the extreme concentration of power required to grant positive rights.
This leaves me with more questions than before. But my biggest question is: is healthcare really like every other good on the market? Don't drug companies have more incentive to treat cancer then to cure it? Maybe even throw in a few extra side effects so that you need other drugs to treat the side effects? Hospitals are incentivised to keep you there longer. Doctors incentivised to prescribe drugs you don't need for kickbacks, or unnecessary surgeries.
So you think the best answer is to just let the poor die, but then won't they just kill us and take our money?
My first thought when I heard about DACs was a drug company. But I didn't really understand it so well at the time and don't really know if it would work. Open source drugs seems like it would be a huge benefit to all, except the shareholders of the drug companies.
I actually appreciate your post because it gives me misconceptions that need to be addressed. I am sure there are many people who think like you and are looking for solutions.
Blockchains can be used to solve some problems, such as bonding doctors. They can also create prediction markets for the effectiveness of various deceases and the likelihood that certain approaches will lead to a cure.
Most barriers in the medical industry that raise costs are regulations and limits to competition that could drive prices down.
Right now we have the perverse situation where vitimins and natural remedies are outlawed and regulated out of existence while provably harmful subsances such as floride get a pass. If you let the government do your thinking for you (and everyone else) then the result is less critical thinking and more political BS which ultimately leads to more people dyeing.
Hopefully you feel healthcare is worthy of a blog post. I appreciate the answers, even if I am not yet quite convinced.
Another topic that ties in slightly is copyrights and patents. Libertarians seem to have differing views on this.
Personally I feel like open source drug research would be hugely beneficial for mankind, being able to build on the achievements of others instead of always having to build from scratch till the patent runs out.
But what about other intellectual property? What are your views?
Not really bitshares related, I know. But I suppose a blockchain would make a great patent office.
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But what about other intellectual property? What are your views?
Not really bitshares related, I know. But I suppose a blockchain would make a great patent office.
This is a Dac proposition back in the time by bytemaster :
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1053.msg10995#msg10995
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The limits of BitShares.. what can it not do.
Overview of the core devs.. what skill set BitShares has and perhaps allude to what is missing. (I wonder one of those is ability to put out a trusted PPA for Ubuntu and Linux to save users compiling.)
Perhaps do a prediction for 2016 or a review of what surprises came from 2014.
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But what about other intellectual property? What are your views?
Not really bitshares related, I know. But I suppose a blockchain would make a great patent office.
This is a Dac proposition back in the time by bytemaster :
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1053.msg10995#msg10995
Wow thanks great post. I never would have found that. Great idea.
On the topic of healthcare, I have come to realize that most of my objections of the US system comes from my impression of the insurance companies. It seems like it I easy to qualify to make payments, but once you get sick it turns out you were never actually covered due to whatever reason the insurance company can get away with. But that's bitcoin 101 right there isn't it? The central banker can't just change rules in the middle of the game, a DAC insurance company couldn't reinterpret the fine print after somebody gets sick.
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What will healthcare industry look like? If I can convince my bosses...
Health care records will be moved onto the blockchain. Record owners will have a read only key to their records, but can sign off on 'contributors' ie physicians who can modify these records. This will also open up the door for other third party's to provide healthcare services to your cell phone, such as rule based clinical notifications and reminders, that are targeted by demographic. You're a 50 year old male? Its time for your first colonoscopy
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How about: How Talented Experienced Developers (who don't have time to read the Library of Congress that is bitsharestalk.org to figure out a direction/roadmap) can get Involved and Contribute to the Project in a Meaningful, Organized and Productive Way.
or maybe just a post about the direction/vision/roadmap/milestones.
+5%
+5%
A recruitment message we can promote.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
Yup, that's a cool topic. Especially with the second machine revolution (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-the-second-machine-age-by-erik-brynjolfsson-and-andrew-mcafee/2014/01/17/ace0611a-718c-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html) and the rise of bullshit jobs (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0).
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I was just reading this infographic (https://medium.com/the-nib/in-your-wildest-schemes-the-market-vs-climate-change-1b76763bd3d4) about global warming, and it talks about how global warming is the result of market failure. I was going to ask what kind of coordination problem needs to be solved here, and what blockchain technology could help to solve this, but I then remembered a vague memory that bytemaster thinks global warming is a scam:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1397.msg14948#msg14948
It is also possible I'm misinterpreting his statement here.
What is also interesting is that Stan references mining rigs as 'global warming hardware' (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12676.msg171256#msg171249). Is this a topic you disagree on with your father? If so, I'd like to hear you both talk about what your differences are in in interpreting the facts.
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I am fairly certain we agree about global warming and that is statement was a figure of speech.
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Bytemaster, you did not illuminate your position at all with that post.
What do you agree on? Which statement was a figure of speech?
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
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Would be fantastic to see a review of MaidSafe and how the technology can be/is complimentary to BitShares.
MaidSafe is going to start popping up in the media over the next year or so (testnet 3) and it would be beneficial to be properly positioned.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13731.msg178889#msg178889 (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13731.msg178889#msg178889)
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
Awesome +5%
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Would be fantastic to see a review of MaidSafe and how the technology can be/is complimentary to BitShares.
MaidSafe is going to start popping up in the media over the next year or so (testnet 3) and it would be beneficial to be properly positioned.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13731.msg178889#msg178889 (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13731.msg178889#msg178889)
Great idea.
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http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
Typo:
"Unfortunatley Unfortunately those who are currently benefiting from welfare, excessive child support, "
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
If you assume the Basic Income budget is set at a level that would replace existing spending on safety net programs then we could probably get everyone a $400 Basic Income.
Not sure how you calculated that. Looking at the US spending budget for 2014 (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2014USbn_16bs2n_4000021001_652#usgs302), I calculate approximately $700 billion for OASI Benefits (old age social security), $140 billion for DI Benefits (disability insurance component of social security), $455 billion for Medicaid (healthcare subsidies for the poor which I assume basic income should make irrelevant; I will leave Medicare for seniors alone for now), and another $500 billion in other welfare (food stamps, earned income tax credits, child tax credits, unemployment insurance, housing subsidies, etc.). So that is approximately $1.8 trillion dollars in government spending on welfare that could instead be used for a basic income (I am assuming you keep taxes the same, meaning don't cut the payroll taxes even though social security and Medicaid would be gone).
If we decide to distribute this money equally to all adult US residents (let's not count children for now), then that means $1.8 trillion dollars needs to be divided equally to approximately 235 million people (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=adults+in+US). This gives $7660 per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%241.8+trillion+%2F+235+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29), or approximately $636 per month (more than 50% higher than what you claimed). Still, it's not that great. It is only a little bit higher than half of minimum wage. And paying for it requires getting rid of the focused assistance that could potentially provide more bang for the buck. On the other hand, it does simplify things beautifully and it solves the welfare trap issue that you mentioned in the blog post.
What if we want to include children in the calculation as well? Well let's assume $280/month (the median child support payment that you claimed in the blog post) is allocated for each child (paid to the parents/legal guardians of course). There are 74 million children (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=children+in+US) in the US, so the costs of the basic income for the children would be $250 billion per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=74+million+*+%24280%2Fmonth+*+12+months). This leaves $1.55 trillion dollars for the basic income for adults, or $550/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%241.55+trillion+%2F+235+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29). The typical family of four would receive 2x $280/month for the two kids, and 2x $550/month for the two parents, summing to a total of $1660/month for the household, or $19,920/year.
By the way, I don't think it is fair to say $1000/month basic income for each adult would provide a "middle class" lifestyle in the first world. The median household income is $53,000 per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+household+income+in+US) (median is what I would consider "middle class"). If you have two adults living together (typical household) their collective basic income would be $24,000 per year which is less than half of the median household income. Even if we only focus on states with lower costs of living, for example Mississippi with a median household income of approximately $39,000 per year, $1000/month would still not cut it. This isn't to say that I think the basic income should cover what is today a median household income in the US, just that I wouldn't call it a "middle class" lifestyle.
Edit: I think I see how you can get the $400/month figure. If you keep social security as it is (old age and disability) as well as Medicare, and only get rid of Medicaid ($455 billion) and other welfare ($500 billion), then you have $955 billion per year to distribute to 195 million adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 64 (seniors aged 65 and above can rely on social security and Medicare as they do today). This gives a monthly basic income to the non-senior adults of $407/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%240.955+trillion+%2F+195+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29). If you want to include the $280/month basic income per child, then that leaves only $300/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%240.705+trillion+%2F+195+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29) for each non-senior adults.
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I liked your post, however I'm a little disappointed that you did not suggest other possible solutions to the problems that basic income is designed to fix, specifically as CLains implied,
Yup, that's a cool topic. Especially with the second machine revolution (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-the-second-machine-age-by-erik-brynjolfsson-and-andrew-mcafee/2014/01/17/ace0611a-718c-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html) and the rise of bullshit jobs (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0).
With technology replacing more and more jobs, only the owners of this technology will be reaping most of the profits, and only the highly intelligent will be able to find work. As a human race, we have achieved the creation of virtually laborless wealth-machines. As a human race, don't you think we ought to share this freedom and liberation together?
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I liked your post, however I'm a little disappointed that you did not suggest other possible solutions to the problems that basic income is designed to fix, specifically as CLains implied,
Yup, that's a cool topic. Especially with the second machine revolution (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-the-second-machine-age-by-erik-brynjolfsson-and-andrew-mcafee/2014/01/17/ace0611a-718c-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html) and the rise of bullshit jobs (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0).
With technology replacing more and more jobs, only the owners of this technology will be reaping most of the profits, and only the highly intelligent will be able to find work. As a human race, we have achieved the creation of virtually laborless wealth-machines. As a human race, don't you think we ought to share this freedom and liberation together?
Define "share".
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I liked your post, however I'm a little disappointed that you did not suggest other possible solutions to the problems that basic income is designed to fix, specifically as CLains implied,
Yup, that's a cool topic. Especially with the second machine revolution (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-the-second-machine-age-by-erik-brynjolfsson-and-andrew-mcafee/2014/01/17/ace0611a-718c-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html) and the rise of bullshit jobs (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0).
With technology replacing more and more jobs, only the owners of this technology will be reaping most of the profits, and only the highly intelligent will be able to find work. As a human race, we have achieved the creation of virtually laborless wealth-machines. As a human race, don't you think we ought to share this freedom and liberation together?
Define "share".
as I understand it, he means that a minority of people right now has freedom=free-time=money(?)....
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I liked your post, however I'm a little disappointed that you did not suggest other possible solutions to the problems that basic income is designed to fix, specifically as CLains implied,
Yup, that's a cool topic. Especially with the second machine revolution (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-the-second-machine-age-by-erik-brynjolfsson-and-andrew-mcafee/2014/01/17/ace0611a-718c-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html) and the rise of bullshit jobs (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0).
With technology replacing more and more jobs, only the owners of this technology will be reaping most of the profits, and only the highly intelligent will be able to find work. As a human race, we have achieved the creation of virtually laborless wealth-machines. As a human race, don't you think we ought to share this freedom and liberation together?
Define "share".
as I understand it, he means that a minority of people right now has freedom=free-time=money(?)....
The bar for education and the meaning of life has to take a paradigm shift from where it is now as the understanding of 'make a living' changes to 'make a life'. Think of something like Star Trek Next Generation where exploration, learning, and advancement were in an of themselves what was valued over monetary wealth.. at least for most. I said LIKE btw.. just trying to illustrate a potentially different outlook for society in the future.
Redistribution of the ones with many to the ones with little will only ultimately serve to further enhance the underlying issues that existed to create that reality. Six months to a few years later the money would end up right back where it began.
Just my 2.9 cents. :)
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
Interesting read.
Thing is, over half of all money is thought to evade the tax system with corporate giants and the 1% barely paying any tax using offshore accounts etc, so if that could be captured it would double tax right away.
Add to that approximately half of US federal tax is spent on the military budget, most of which is not needed at all and has served to decrease national security by making the world more dangerous (making enemies).
Add to that subsidies to fossil fuel companies and other industries. Cut those and focus on environmental sustainability and energy independence through clean means, which doesn't poison the population and saves medial costs.
There are lots of ways to increase the government budget by making society genuinely richer. Preserve the environmental wealth, make good relations with other countries, increase tourism, cut the budget of the spy agencies, instead of sending people to war have them do something useful that brings a net positive result. These are just a few off the top of my head.
Basic income can be done using BitShares. Steps to do it:
- Use future VOTE features to identify unique individuals as BitShares citizens.
- Issue UIA token, registered citizens sign up to collect their token.
- BTS holders vote in at least 1 100% delegate who's pay goes to basic income for the citizens (or citizens could even vote on what they want to do with it in a direct democracy, but lets say here that it's evenly distributed as basic income to all BitShares citizens).
- BTS holders want more bitasset users, so they vote in dilution to pay for basic income to attract new users
- Citizens want more basic income (gov budget), so to increase their gov budget they use bitassets.
So new BTS would be created to pay for the basic income while at the same time BTS is locked up as bitasset collateral. As long as the citizens convert more money into bitassets than the inflation, which they would do to increase their basic income then it would keep working. The citizens wouldn't ever want to sell their basic income into something outside of BitShares as that would decrease their basic income by reducing their governments budget. So everyone is incentivised to stay entirely within BitShares. They have no taxes to pay yet receive basic income/direct democracy voting rights.
The problem is, who would by the inflationary backing asset (BTS)? Well, if the backing asset had other uses and income sources like BTS does along with stakeholder voting power to influence the direction company people would (and do already) buy it. Maybe BTS could be the voting token, instead of a UIA, to participate in the direct democracy as a citizen where you only need a fraction of a single BTS to vote.
It would be like a Google distributing a portion of their profits to their users, it builds a positive brand image, its marketing while serving humanity. Would shareholders ever vote for such a thing? I guess we'll find out. Once one company starts doing it others may compete to be the most friendly company.
This is just a rough idea... I'm not convinced (by my own ideas) that inflating the backing asset solves the problem long term, it could just be moving/hiding it. Even so it would be great marketing and a fascinating experiment.
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Add to that approximately half of US federal tax is spent on the military budget, most of which is not needed at all and has served to decrease national security by making the world more dangerous (making enemies).
While I think the US military budget is way overinflated, your claim is just not true. In 2014, the US federal government spent a total of 3.5 trillion dollars and $800 billion dollars (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2014USbn_16bs2n_30#usgs302) of that was in defense (which include foreign economic/military aid and veterans expenses). So that is 800/3500 = 23% of the federal budget.
So new BTS would be created to pay for the basic income while at the same time BTS is locked up as bitasset collateral. As long as the citizens convert more money into bitassets than the inflation, which they would do to increase their basic income then it would keep working.
There is a limit to how many BitAssets there will be in circulation in the saturation stage. If the BitAsset is supposed to be price stable, forcing an increase of the supply beyond that limit to pay for the basic income will just cause inflation of the BitAsset. At that point it shouldn't be much different than holding the inflationary BTS. Also, why would someone short against a price stable BitAsset with an inflationary BTS in the saturation stage. They are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
So that reduces the problem to people holding an inflationary currency (either BTS directly or an inflationary BitAsset backed by BTS). The amount of the inflation needs to be large enough to support the basic income. And as bytemaster already mentioned in the blog post, in a true free market, no one would bother holding the inflationary asset when there are other competing assets with no inflation or little inflation. More specifically, the rich asset holders would flee because they are at a disadvantage and then without them to subsidize the rest, the basic income system would collapse for the poor as well. Therefore, to implement a basic income, you cannot have a true free market.
The only way the basic income works is through a forceful redistribution of wealth (a tax). This can be an inflationary tax (within reason) if people could be forced to use the inflationary currency. As cryptocurrency is demonstrating, we have the freedom to create our own currencies that cannot realistically be stopped (actually this ability has existed for a long time, e.g. gold, it is just that the cryptocurrency alternative is finally becoming more convenient to securely store and transact with than digital dollars), which kills the idea of the inflationary tax to fund the basic income.
What remains is a more typical tax. What is required is an entity (or even a decentralized mechanism) given the authority by a society to value how much each person can afford to contribute to the collective pot that is then redistributed equally to each unique human being in the society. Those that can afford to pay more would need to pay more than the ones who cannot afford to pay as much, or else the basic income will not work. You can think of various ways of implementing the taxes, but at the end of the day it requires demanding people to pay (with price discrimination) for a service (the service being that they continue to live in the society and aren't banished). Identity is very important here because you ultimately need to identify the human beings who did not pay their full amount in order to appropriately punish them (first fines, then banishment if necessary) so that they have the motivation to pay honestly in the first place. But what is also very important is accurate information that cannot be easily falsified in order for the price discrimination to work appropriately. This unfortunately requires some breach of privacy to properly determine the amount that needs to be paid by each person and to check that it is accurate.
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
If you assume the Basic Income budget is set at a level that would replace existing spending on safety net programs then we could probably get everyone a $400 Basic Income.
Not sure how you calculated that. Looking at the US spending budget for 2014 (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2014USbn_16bs2n_4000021001_652#usgs302), I calculate approximately $700 billion for OASI Benefits (old age social security), $140 billion for DI Benefits (disability insurance component of social security), $455 billion for Medicaid (healthcare subsidies for the poor which I assume basic income should make irrelevant; I will leave Medicare for seniors alone for now), and another $500 billion in other welfare (food stamps, earned income tax credits, child tax credits, unemployment insurance, housing subsidies, etc.). So that is approximately $1.8 trillion dollars in government spending on welfare that could instead be used for a basic income (I am assuming you keep taxes the same, meaning don't cut the payroll taxes even though social security and Medicaid would be gone).
If we decide to distribute this money equally to all adult US residents (let's not count children for now), then that means $1.8 trillion dollars needs to be divided equally to approximately 235 million people (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=adults+in+US). This gives $7660 per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%241.8+trillion+%2F+235+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29), or approximately $636 per month (more than 50% higher than what you claimed). Still, it's not that great. It is only a little bit higher than half of minimum wage. And paying for it requires getting rid of the focused assistance that could potentially provide more bang for the buck. On the other hand, it does simplify things beautifully and it solves the welfare trap issue that you mentioned in the blog post.
What if we want to include children in the calculation as well? Well let's assume $280/month (the median child support payment that you claimed in the blog post) is allocated for each child (paid to the parents/legal guardians of course). There are 74 million children (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=children+in+US) in the US, so the costs of the basic income for the children would be $250 billion per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=74+million+*+%24280%2Fmonth+*+12+months). This leaves $1.55 trillion dollars for the basic income for adults, or $550/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%241.55+trillion+%2F+235+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29). The typical family of four would receive 2x $280/month for the two kids, and 2x $550/month for the two parents, summing to a total of $1660/month for the household, or $19,920/year.
By the way, I don't think it is fair to say $1000/month basic income for each adult would provide a "middle class" lifestyle in the first world. The median household income is $53,000 per year (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+household+income+in+US) (median is what I would consider "middle class"). If you have two adults living together (typical household) their collective basic income would be $24,000 per year which is less than half of the median household income. Even if we only focus on states with lower costs of living, for example Mississippi with a median household income of approximately $39,000 per year, $1000/month would still not cut it. This isn't to say that I think the basic income should cover what is today a median household income in the US, just that I wouldn't call it a "middle class" lifestyle.
Edit: I think I see how you can get the $400/month figure. If you keep social security as it is (old age and disability) as well as Medicare, and only get rid of Medicaid ($455 billion) and other welfare ($500 billion), then you have $955 billion per year to distribute to 195 million adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 64 (seniors aged 65 and above can rely on social security and Medicare as they do today). This gives a monthly basic income to the non-senior adults of $407/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%240.955+trillion+%2F+195+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29). If you want to include the $280/month basic income per child, then that leaves only $300/month (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%240.705+trillion+%2F+195+million%29+%2F+%281+year%29) for each non-senior adults.
I just used total population of 320M people (adults and children counted equally).
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I'd love to see your thoughts about basic income (http://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index).
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/26/The-basics-of-Basic-Income/
Interesting read.
Thing is, over half of all money is thought to evade the tax system with corporate giants and the 1% barely paying any tax using offshore accounts etc, so if that could be captured it would double tax right away.
Add to that approximately half of US federal tax is spent on the military budget, most of which is not needed at all and has served to decrease national security by making the world more dangerous (making enemies).
Add to that subsidies to fossil fuel companies and other industries. Cut those and focus on environmental sustainability and energy independence through clean means, which doesn't poison the population and saves medial costs.
There are lots of ways to increase the government budget by making society genuinely richer. Preserve the environmental wealth, make good relations with other countries, increase tourism, cut the budget of the spy agencies, instead of sending people to war have them do something useful that brings a net positive result. These are just a few off the top of my head.
Basic income can be done using BitShares. Steps to do it:
- Use future VOTE features to identify unique individuals as BitShares citizens.
- Issue UIA token, registered citizens sign up to collect their token.
- BTS holders vote in at least 1 100% delegate who's pay goes to basic income for the citizens (or citizens could even vote on what they want to do with it in a direct democracy, but lets say here that it's evenly distributed as basic income to all BitShares citizens).
- BTS holders want more bitasset users, so they vote in dilution to pay for basic income to attract new users
- Citizens want more basic income (gov budget), so to increase their gov budget they use bitassets.
So new BTS would be created to pay for the basic income while at the same time BTS is locked up as bitasset collateral. As long as the citizens convert more money into bitassets than the inflation, which they would do to increase their basic income then it would keep working. The citizens wouldn't ever want to sell their basic income into something outside of BitShares as that would decrease their basic income by reducing their governments budget. So everyone is incentivised to stay entirely within BitShares. They have no taxes to pay yet receive basic income/direct democracy voting rights.
The problem is, who would by the inflationary backing asset (BTS)? Well, if the backing asset had other uses and income sources like BTS does along with stakeholder voting power to influence the direction company people would (and do already) buy it. Maybe BTS could be the voting token, instead of a UIA, to participate in the direct democracy as a citizen where you only need a fraction of a single BTS to vote.
It would be like a Google distributing a portion of their profits to their users, it builds a positive brand image, its marketing while serving humanity. Would shareholders ever vote for such a thing? I guess we'll find out. Once one company starts doing it others may compete to be the most friendly company.
This is just a rough idea... I'm not convinced (by my own ideas) that inflating the backing asset solves the problem long term, it could just be moving/hiding it. Even so it would be great marketing and a fascinating experiment.
One does not simply "collect" taxes by trying to capture black market activity. Black market activity would slow significantly if they found a way to tax it because many transactions would no longer be profitable. Thus the only thing you could gain by successfully extracting taxes from black market (untaxed activity) is to reduce the overall size of the economy.
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Recently the Winklevoss twins said that Bitcoin could easily skyrocket to a 400 billion market cap.
And that a 1 trillion market cap, was also a possibility.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/27/investing/bitcoin-winklevoss-twins-gold/
I'm not taking it to serious but it got me wondering:
What would such a market cap mean, in terms of hash power, and electricity consumption?
Not even sure what the electricity consumption of BTC equals to today.
A small/medium/large sized city?
Would such a market cap lead to equal power consumption of a small country?
What would the computing power needed for such a market cap, equal to?
The last thing we need now is a bitcoin bashing, but it would be an interesting blogpost.
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Recently the Winklevoss twins said that Bitcoin could easily skyrocket to a 400 billion market cap.
And that a 1 trillion market cap, was also a possibility.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/27/investing/bitcoin-winklevoss-twins-gold/
I'm not taking it to serious but it got me wondering:
What would such a market cap mean, in terms of hash power, and electricity consumption?
Not even sure what the electricity consumption of BTC equals to today.
A small/medium/large sized city?
Would such a market cap lead to equal power consumption of a small country?
What would the computing power needed for such a market cap, equal to?
The last thing we need now is a bitcoin bashing, but it would be an interesting blogpost.
He may be right about the market while missing the mark on the implementation it takes to tap it.
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Recently the Winklevoss twins said that Bitcoin could easily skyrocket to a 400 billion market cap.
And that a 1 trillion market cap, was also a possibility.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/27/investing/bitcoin-winklevoss-twins-gold/
I'm not taking it to serious but it got me wondering:
What would such a market cap mean, in terms of hash power, and electricity consumption?
Not even sure what the electricity consumption of BTC equals to today.
A small/medium/large sized city?
Would such a market cap lead to equal power consumption of a small country?
What would the computing power needed for such a market cap, equal to?
The last thing we need now is a bitcoin bashing, but it would be an interesting blogpost.
Satoshi once said:
“When Bitcoins start having real exchange value, the competition for coin creation will drive the price of electricity needed for generating a coin close to the value of the coin.”
After the next block halving:
12.5 btc/block X 6 blocks per hour X 24 hours per day X 365 days = 656,000 btc a year
Let's say there are 15 million btc by then, so a $1 trillion market cap means about $65k/btc
$65,000 X 656,000 = $42.6 billion a year worth of electricity.
My electricity costs about $0.15/kWh but let's say bitcoins are mined in a places with cheaper power, $0.10/kWh. That's 426 billion kWh or 426,000 gWh.
So, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production, that would fall between the electricity production of the United Kingdom and South Korea.
As a side note, with a limit of 3 transactions per second, or 1800 per block, 12.5btc ÷ 1800 = 0.007 btc and at $65k/btc that is $451 per transaction to keep the network secure.
Now imagine a few million coloured coins representing cars or stocks are added on top of that. You need more hashrate to protect that as well or somebody will double spend your car. But you can't reward miners with colored coins...
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1. BitShares value proposition (overview)
2. BitAssets properties and rough mechanics
3. Blockchain is hiring / BitShares core dev team introduction, see: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12693.0
I'd like to see blog posts and/or videos for 1. and a video for 2. and 3.
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How about a blog post on how bitshares solves all the problems that Bill Gates perceives digital currencies to have?
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How about a blog post on how bitshares solves all the problems that Bill Gates perceives digital currencies to have?
+5% +5% +5%
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What about a teaser for entrepreneurs on the benefits of establishing their businesses as decentralised semi-autonomous networks, with some examples, and how they might be able to use the BitShares platform to do it. (I'm coming to a personal view that this is the biggest capability that BitShares can potentially sell, not bitUSD, nor even the decentralised exchange, which are merely components of the entrepreneur's toolkit and ecosystem.)
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What about a teaser for entrepreneurs on the benefits of establishing their businesses as decentralised semi-autonomous networks, with some examples, and how they might be able to use the BitShares platform to do it. (I'm coming to a personal view that this is the biggest capability that BitShares can potentially sell, not bitUSD, nor even the decentralised exchange, which are merely components of the entrepreneur's toolkit and ecosystem.)
Good idea. An easy read striking at the right level of generality on this topic would be awesome. +5%
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I think you should add Stans "Origins of BitShares" post to the blog.
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I would like to know Bytemaster's vision for health care.
Please excuse my ignorance on the matter but the US's health care system makes me think of it as a third world country. Barbaric.
I don't know of any Canadian who would prefer us style health care to the system we have. I'm pretty sure Canada spends a lot less on health care, for much better service. Cuba spends way less per capita and still is right up there for quality of service.
Taxes may be violence to a libertarian but isn't letting somebody die, or even just get more sick, because of money, kind of like violence?
I can't figure out how to do health care better than a government, though I do feel like governments could do a much better job of it with a little transparency and common sense. The wasteful spending I see locally makes me sick.
I assume the fix would be blockchain based insurance providers and hospitals. But what happens to the poor? Is the libertarian thing to do just let them die off?
Does the free market work with health care? Isn't there an incentive to keep you sick or even make you sick?
It is a complicated topic that has kept me from considering myself a libertarian for years.
I personally kind of like Obamacare (queue the boos) but not because of what it is, but what I think it can become if we smartly deregulate it. Personally my dream healthcare system looks like a combination of Singapore, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
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I think you should add Stans "Origins of BitShares" post to the blog.
+5% +5%