Miners don't have the ability to 'print' more Bitcoin. They can release blocks with whatever transactions they like in but they will simply be rejected by the network.
The fact that there is 10,000 public bitcoin nodes (and probably x10 private ones) keeps the system honest.
This especially does not work when you need a large network effect like Bittorrent does. People know how it works and how to use it and that is why it will be very difficult to overthrow, even if better technology comes along.
They can borrow against the property at the stated rent instead of what the market would actually pay. As soon as they accept lower rents they can no longer claim it's worth as much in collateral.
> Which country came to the aid of Britain, and all those Western European nations when they were faced with the existential threat of Nazism?
Russia mainly, from where an estimated 24 million people died. American also didn't wade into a war through purely selfless means either, if Germany managed to invade Britain and western Europe, America would have been at significant threat.
> BTW, Cisco and a few others have been forced to develop 'lawful intercept' technologies on their routers for the three-letter agencies for years, I think. There was a big controversy about this a few years ago.
And you seem to be arguing that this is a good thing? Surely any company (filled with people) should be free to work on whatever technologies that those people feel is ethically right.
Whilst creepy, I love the idea of a proof of work system like this, something that anyone can participate in. I just don't see how it could be achieved in a way that couldn't be gamed.
To be in the position of being able to do a bitcoin 51% attack however you would have had to sunk enormous costs into buying ASIC miners. The minute everyone finds out that a 51% attack occurs you will have pressure to change the mining algorithm and suddenly all your miners are worthless.
Classifying produce only helps the consumer. You'd be a little annoyed if every week you went to the supermarket and they had a varying quality/size of produce but the price remained the same.
It's your network of course but it would be the first thing I'd turn off.