The Galt and the Lamers 4

4 comments

1. George Smith

   November 15, 2013 at 3:41 am

   Bitcoins fit into the world view of people who believe in hoarding precious metals which is why they will never accomplish quite what the fabricators wanted, outside of making the initial hoarders wealthy. I think it’s great they can use it to buy land in an out of the way place where nobody else can live. I’d say they’d be great for homesteading in the Republic of CyberBunker or SeeLand but those places seem to have blown up. I believe there’s also a couple deserted old gold rush towns in either California or Oregon that have been put up for auction. They would seem ripe to be Bitcoin colonies for libertarian hermits you never want to meet. Did you ever buy a Bitcoin? Do you have a Bitcoin wallet? I installed one. Do you know anyone who has Bitcoins? I don’t but by nature Bitcoin owners would never tell you they had any. They probably wouldn’t even tell you their name. There was a story a couple months back about a Bitcoin philanthropist giving away lumps of Bitcoinage to people on Reddit. I never believed a word of it. But then I don’t believe anything when it comes with the word “Reddit” either. Maybe Reddit will make you rich some day, like Bitcoins.

    
2. Frank

   November 15, 2013 at 9:58 am

   One of the members to TLLTS is a bitcoin “miner” (he’s also a gun nut).  A while back, he went into a long discussion of how bitcoins work.  LO has also done a story about them (LO was somewhere between skeptical and derisive).

    

   It seems to share something with every other currency:  it’s worth what people who believe in it  think it’s worth.  I think what fascinates a certain type of liber-geek is that it exists only on harddrives (which, of course, never crash), so ergo it must be better, just as an ebook is inherent better than a book, because it’s “e.”

    

   I also know someone, not a geek, who is collecting dinars. Just sayin’.

    
3. George Smith

   November 15, 2013 at 12:40 pm

   Another description comes to mind: High-button Doomsday Preppers with a zealous love for grass, only they do not view the total end to electricity as the start point of American collapse, rather, the popular Zim-note-ization of dollars. “Sounds like a Ponzi scheme,” my old friend said to me one Saturday. He died a year later. You can’t have or use Bitcoins if you’re poor as they’re not utilitarian (laundromats that use Bitcoins, please…)  or even remotely people friendly, which are probably features/attractions for Bitcoin minds.

    
4. Frank

   November 15, 2013 at 1:09 pm

   “You can’t have or use Bitcoins if you’re poor as they’re not utilitarian.”

    

   Very true.  Bit coin mining rigs that can “mine” significant numbers of bitcoines are incredibly expensive, whether you buy or DIY.  Of course, you could build one with a PI, but that would be a model airplane compared to a 747.

    

   I’m with your friend.  It’s dinars for the libergeeks.