any way you slice it people are going to die and make grave errors. but open transactions between researchers and free human beings would have drugs evolving much faster than unaccountable and corruptible overlords. reputation systems could replace much of their most important functionality.
willfully stupid is a perfect description - of your government. had you opened the process to any kind of competitive process you would find your coffers filled. i did this work ages ago and paid several hundred dollars just for the right to pass each home.
the cable companies laugh at local governments, all the way to the bank.
exercising choice is exercising freedom. pleading for rights from entities that have seized them without your consent is truly depressing because it is hopeless.
its a very bad thing that bitcoin is subject to government control. very quickly it will be used to tax and arm in order to .. tax and arm and its potential to break that loop will be lost.
arrington needs friends in silicon valley a lot more than he needs your clicks. whatever you think of the man this is an honest and indignant post and it's an example of the courage he speaks of.
it is fascinating that this concept is so difficult for an otherwise intelligent community to grasp and a reminder of why we still need journalists.
because participating in a hopelessly corrupted system is demoralizing. "activism" brings at the very best a delay followed by a shady deal as soon as your back is turned.
if a politician can be described in such terms at the end of a career (in no less a house of "compromise" than the us congress) his accomplishments are not over.
by fighting the war on drugs these traitors are advancing terrorism! by countering terrorsim these scoundrels divert precious resources from the the nation's war on drugs!
whats needed is another agency to resolve this conflict.
perhaps paul's intuition is right - there is something wrong here. certainly real world business success is not so binary as this.
if there is a 500 pound supposition in the room it's liquidity. if the only way an investor can achieve it is through a massive "event" such as an ipo or sell out then any otherwise successful company is a non-entity for investors.
if y combinator were holding securities with some liquidity it needn't devolve into a 20th century vc. there are many ways to achieve this, all disruptive yet also quite well suited for this institution and its community.
i must wonder how many here realize what the aspirations of an ipo or even a corporate investment mean in this age. so many of us are working for what we disdain - without even realizing it. yet we are the same people that can make the most difference - if we see our responsibilities in a future determined by technological opportunity.
naturally cuban thinks baiting suckers is a winning tactic, it describes his own success at taking yahoo's billion dollars for a company that didn't really exist. but note it also describes his string of tech failures ever since.
0 marginal cost goods and organized, free labor test the foundations of capitalism and necessitate the development of new institutions. this project adresses both of these - and the economic possibilities of patronage/tipping. why the hell not?
millions of honest people around the world that have lost their savings when a fiat currency changed its valuation for political reasons. you do not need to be a zealot to appreciate any attempt to create a free currency; you simply need to have a small sense of history and the world around you.