I do realize that there is a cost associated with printing and minting money now. But that can be taxed progressively so the poor sot with 2 dollars to his name isn't stuck with the bill. Any susc system would need a public service where the transaction is done for no more than cost, at least as a last resort. Otherwise we are back to annointing private concerns with the right of taxation.

I also know that bills are serialized. However, unlike bitcoin, keeping track of those serial numbers is purely optional for each step in the transaction and in practice, nobody does. When they check those numbers, they're just looking for known bad money. Assuming the bill you hand over isn't on that list, it just goes in the drawer. Tomorrow, they won't be able to say where that bill came from. With bitcoin, a particular value can be back traced all the way back to the miner that first generated it,

But I think you're starting to see the point. Smartphone may be nice for people who have one, but many do not and unless they can carry money around somehow, they never will. Meanwhile, Bitcoin likely isn't the answer, but we don't actually know what the answer is beyond a list of desirable traits some of which Bitcoin has.

[citation needed]

I would start with the excellent site by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism. The writers there are not wild-eyed ideologues, but people who have spent careers in the financial industry, working at pretty high levels. They've been all over this story since the Wikileaks documents broke. Remember, it was Wikileaks that published the secret TPP documents as well, which put the efforts to push that treaty through the tunnel on its heels, at least temporarily. Sunshine can be a great disinfectant.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com...

And in case you need a citation regarding sunlight being a disinfectant, I would give you none other than the great Louis Brandeis:
http://sunlightfoundation.com/...

I would say 30 years, but it is arguable. Though I would say the era from just before Theodore Roosevelt through JFK was a period of trustbusting and Glass-Steagall, which together led to a period of real prosperity and greater, more equal, freedom for working people and along with that, minorities and women.

But there's no question that starting in 1980 with the executive orders gutting financial regulation, the fascism has been in full bloom.

Smartphone was YOUR suggestion, you don't get to blame me for it's shortcomings :-)

The current solution (cash) has the advantage that you don't have to spend money just to be able to have money. If absolutely all else fails, you can carry it in your hand. True enough, credit cards weren't ubiquitous at one time, but they didn't need to be since we had cash which was legal tender for all debts.

To actually replace cash, whatever carries the replacement will have to be available at no cost. It will need to not have transaction fees. Note that currently Bitcoin doesn't typically carry a transaction fee, but it is expected that it will once it is 'mined out' in order to maintain an incentive to compute block chains.

The other downside to Bitcoin is that it actually is traceable. That problem may prove harder to solve than the wallet problem.

The part that's dangerous to us is that it is another brick in the wall of corporate sovereignty.

The TISA is classified so investment groups wouldn't take advantage of it before it went into effect, thus screwing you and I over.

For five years after it becomes law?

Also, it's been in negotiation for 2 fucking decade, so not really 'Obama'.

Exactly right. This treaty, which creates corporate sovereignty, is being negotiated in secret...from us. Do you really believe for a moment that it's also secret from the companies that will benefit, like Goldman Sachs?

Every president for the past 30 years has been playing for the same team. And the team does not include us.

If corporations must do what is "legal" and people must do what is "moral", then how can anyone make the argument that corporations are people, my friend?

But, we are constantly being told that our nation is founded on "Judeo-Christian principles", which they say are the foundation for "man's law".

So how can corporations be people if they do not adhere to "man's law"?

Correct

But the person you called a hater rattled off a fair sized list of what was wrong.

You talk as if there was some difference between the corporations and the US government.

http://www.defenseone.com/tech...

It's interesting that right at this moment, the Obama Adminstration is pushing an international treaty that will make it so that corporations do not have to comply with a country's laws. It's called "TISA" and it's so bad that it was supposed to be secret for five years after it's ratified and put into action. We only know about it because Wikileaks released a leaked portion of it.

Secret laws being adjudicated in secret courts. All at the behest of corporations who then want (like Microsoft) to not have to comply. It's a pretty ugly type of fascism.

The best the US administration can hope for here is to shatter the US software industry into a thousand small associated companies with strict data sharing agreements to handle overseas data.

That might not be so bad. The notion that the internet is some wild frontier where no laws apply, because technology is a pretty weak one.

Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, which is what these companies are practicing, is not.

I've heard this argument from neoliberals on CNBC. It reminds me of a teenager whose parents catch him high as a kite: "You said I shouldn't smoke pot. You didn't say anything about cooking it in brownies and eating it."

It's a reminder about why corporations are regulated. They will do their best to circumvent laws using lawyers, unless they can be sufficiently frightened into behaving. Human beings are capable of discerning right and wrong and society holds them accountable. Corporations' charters specifically require that they not discern between right and wrong and then avoid accountability by saying, "But I didn't pinky swear!".