> Ultimately, the concept of "actual value" can be defined as one of two things: money
Even when "money" refers to hyperinflated Zimbabwean dollars? No, it's clear those had no value.
Value is subjective, by the way. You may value 50cent's music enough to buy it, and someone else may not.
> laws (for things that have value for the society, e.g. externalities).
Oh? Like all those countless laws that make running a legitimate business more difficult? Do those have value? -Well, in fact they do. They have value to the insiders of whatever cartel/skimming operations the laws support, by reducing or eliminating competition.
But that's not what you imagined. The guy you responded to had the right idea, but he was talking about "wealth" - things of value that support the production of new value.
> Economists have long accepted that individuals and society have vary different short term costs and bennifits for the same activity.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Individuals are human beings, societies consist of individuals.
A society is just a concept, it does not act in any capacity. All action by humans is carried out by individuals, regardless of what organization they represent. No activity whatsoever is carried out by societies, because they can't. They're just concepts, after all.
> Abstractly it's the basis for having governments in the first place.
Considering the above, I guess it's now clear that we shouldn't have governments at all?
I'm not trying to be snide or sarcastic. That is actually my position, but for other reasons. For starters, governments are based on coercion, and coercion is immoral. Hence, governments are immoral, and should not exist.
Everything is connected, everything goes online. Spotlight, HomeKit, HealthKit etc will all send information on you to Google, Apple, advertisers, insurance companies and governments.
It's never been more convenient to let governments track absolutely everything about you - your location, the temperature inside your apartment, your heart rate, your interests & worries, your communications.. everything.
Combine this with driverless cars. You write a chat message on your iPhone that offends your government's sensibilities, and after a few seconds, your car will lock its doors and promptly drive you to the nearest gulag.
there are two, and only two, ways to settle what the prices of goods will be. One is the way of the free market, where prices are set voluntarily by each of the participating individuals. In this situation, exchanges are made on terms benefiting all the exchangers. The other way is by violent intervention in the market, the way of hegemony as against contract. Such hegemonic establishment of prices means the outlawing of free exchanges and the institution of exploitation of man by man—for exploitation occurs whenever a coerced exchange is made. If the free-market route—the route of mutual benefit—is adopted, then there can be no other criterion of justice than the free-market price, and this includes alleged “competitive” and “monopoly” prices, as well as the actions of cartels. In the free market, consumers and producers adjust their actions in voluntary cooperation.
So Credit Suisse has enabled some people to avoid paying protection money to the US government, which is now extracting protection money from Credit Suisse.
> But none of its coverage AFAIK has made a compelling argument for why ordinary consumers would generally choose it over cards
People will gladly choose the most painless viable option available. For example, any business would be happy to not give away 2.9% + $0.30 out of every single payment they receive (and that's even comparatively "cheap").
With Bitcoins, it would be possible to give away only a small fraction of that. The problem is that governments can't stop controlling our monetary systems, lest they just dwindle away altogether, and so, they won't allow using Bitcoins to be as painless as it could.
> I've found little correlation between how harshly someone rates themselves and their true ability
Are you sure you're actually measuring their true ability by asking them about specific, increasingly obscure gotchas? People can even forget some of the gotchas, even if they've encountered them.
You've already cleared the biggest hurdles by far. You've got a viable idea, you've implemented it, and you've caused customers to start rolling in at an increasing pace. I can't see what you could possibly need from YC.
> It's a sad fact he with the biggest cheque book wins, especially when it comes to reform.
That's how political power works. Its primary use is to benefit at other people's expense, after all.
Corporations don't like honest competition, and someone with political power can help alleviate that problem. Both parties benefit: the one with power gets a bribe, and the corporation gets shielded from having to compete. It's a win-win, except, of course, for the rest of us.
Without power, there is no one to bribe. As long as there is political power, it will be bribed.
Matt Cutts has always been Google's little PR-whore.
Back in the days, you'd always see him spring into action whenever Google was talked about in a negative light. Any doubts about "Don't Be Evil", or the sincerity of their "openness" or whatever, Matt would always be there, filling HN threads with his pro-Google propaganda.
You should just ignore his bullshit here. It's obvious that the leak is true - not because I say so, but take a look at "adsenseclient"'s posts and dig up some material and you'll see.
"Welcome to France, entrepreneurs! It's a wonderful place to do business in, what with the lax regulation and light bureaucracy and all. Oh, and far be it from our economy to be drowning in taxes. Very far.
But don't you fucking DARE to become 'rich', you bastard! -If you earn more than our socialist overlords deem appropriate, we'll just confiscate 75% of the 'excess'. Fuck you, slave. But, you know.. welcome."
Even when "money" refers to hyperinflated Zimbabwean dollars? No, it's clear those had no value.
Value is subjective, by the way. You may value 50cent's music enough to buy it, and someone else may not.
> laws (for things that have value for the society, e.g. externalities).
Oh? Like all those countless laws that make running a legitimate business more difficult? Do those have value? -Well, in fact they do. They have value to the insiders of whatever cartel/skimming operations the laws support, by reducing or eliminating competition.
But that's not what you imagined. The guy you responded to had the right idea, but he was talking about "wealth" - things of value that support the production of new value.