Gold is, however, immensely more difficult to transmit through the internets...
Ultimately it boils down to transaction costs. Sophisticated gold bugs do not have trouble moving gold large distances, for a modest cost. The very very low transaction costs of cryptocurrency is only true for a very small population of very technically sophisticated persons -- maintaining safe and secure encrypted data backups involves the kind of skillset that companies pay good money for, so doing this as a hobby is not exactly "free" in any practical sense. The rest of us will need to lean on exchanges, and factor in how to pay for insurance against another apparent (IMHO) inside job like MtGox.
In the future, I am sure I will own cryptocurrencies, but not on purpose and only for hundreds of milliseconds. They will just be another kind of exchange medium hidden in the implementation of some credit card. The costs of those exchanges imploding will only be borne indirectly by me, as part of the hidden fees, and I can walk away and let that be the vendors headache, just like a credit card.
Your point about policy management makes a lot of sense. Every software company I have worked at in the Valley has had IT with excellent non-Windows chops, yet they all still end up installing MS Exchange. There are certain solutions areas where MS has plenty of street cred among those who have to make the decisions.
It is still an uphill battle. IT is often desperate to reduce the scope of device support, and they are not allowed to say no to the iPhone, and probably not Android either. If it comes down to a battle some VP will complain and the CEO will lay down the law that the E-teams favorite phones will be supported.
South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan are all right in China's way.
Those cute little people who are so rudely "in China's way" have been there for thousands of years, and they are critical trading partners.
If rather than recognizing these many people co-inhabit the same area and need to get along, if China prefers to think of them as "in the way", China has a world of hurt coming its way. And when the disaster happens, it will be 99.999999% China's fault.
The problem will never by solved by any plan which requires increased taxes because the federal government has never shown any inclination to apply revenue generated by increase taxes to debt reduction. New taxes always go to new spending.
Not only are you moving the goal posts, but you are using provably untrue assertions to make your case.
Whether a country is bankrupt or not depends on its ability to control its deficits. If the deficits are "small" and well managed, then economic growth and modest inflation can take of the long term debt.
The HBush and Clinton tax increases were a big help in bringing the US into the black for a few moments, it just took some years to do their work. You should look at the world as it is, not as you remember it in 1978.
There has been only ONE societal factor that has been found to satisfactorily correlate with the reduction in crime (see the movie Freakonomics, and that has been widely disputed.
Incorrect. The better explanation is reduction of childhood lead exposure. The correlations are extremely powerful, and map nicely down to the timing of lead reductions in individual states/provinces even in different countries.
So your claim that there is no major of model to explain reductions is simply wrong,. The lead theory works even in other countries where the dynamics around guns are very different from America. This apparent effect completely swamps the wiggle the pro- and anti-gun camps like to argue over.
And in this case, that there is a C taking effect is indisputable, even if the exact details of C are less than perfectly clear. The simplistic pro- and anti-gun camps arguments both fail to describe reality.
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro