So I can troll my friends by telling Facebook I think they might be suicidal and get the counselors to go 'Please, don't kill yourself' on them.

Its gonna be a blast.

Dr. House looks at you and says: "You idiot."

So was the East India Company. But it had so many GOVERNMENT GRANTED monopolies and special privileges ( that part is important, read it again ), which meant it was de facto government entity.

On the other hand black athletes do overwhelmingly better than white ones. Is it because of discrimination in the granting of NFL contracts to black guys over the whites?

Or it could be that genes that favor physical prowess over raw intellectual aptitude are more present in individuals with dark skin than those who are paler? Maybe the corollary is also possible, that the 'bookworm genes' are about 10% more present in people with white skin.

No, that would be politically incorrect - hell, criminal - to utter, ergo, discrimination on basis of race must be the issue here.

Another example of the 'opressed/opressor ideology' and collectivism that is being the downfall of western civilization on display, nothing to see here folks.

What's really funny is how this process of 'stealing coins from people who keep their wallet in plain text' is carried out by central banks worldwide in a incomensurably larger scale and nobody seems to mind it, at least not /.ers, to whom money derives its value from its magical property of being accepted by the government to pay taxes with. *muffled laughter*

But to the point, this is hardly the end of Bitcoin, much like the crash of 1929 or of 2008 ( by itself, that is ) weren't the end of the US dollar. It's a new technology, hell its a new concept, its gonna stumble a lot until it enjoys even a moderate adoption.

As for Mt.Gox though, they will have to bend over backwards about a gazillion times before anyone will trade there again.

Another one of those insights that you can reach by sitting in a corner and thinking: if a company, which has the monetary incentive to, does not have the perfect information as to which is the best safety protocol, a government who knows absolutely NOTHING about the production of pesticide does not.

The main problem I see with your argument is that it is a religious, not a rational one. You don't see government as a collection of people who direct an apparatus of coercion and compulsion; you see a God cometh down to Earth, doted with perfect knowledge on how to make every human endeavour safe from hurting third parties: from rocket launching to pesticide production.

If you just think of the wide array of human activities and apply your 'like enforcing stricter safety protocols on *insert company name here*' you will hopefully see the utter absurdity of your way of thinking.

Yes hun. And I am disputing that. Even with a lot of state run enterprises, so long as there is a stock market and private property in the means of production we have a market economy guided by the profit motive, otherwise we have a planned socialistic economy. There is no 'third way'. You say 'its not just the one or the other' but you fail to actually demonstrate it. Its not much to ask you to give substance to your fantastic claims.

You have not actually answered ANY of my contentions, just evaded everything. You're not really equipped for this kind of discussion. Read up on Marx and his critics before you accuse others of being 'nutters as the marxists'.

That is not politics, but business. He had a window of opportunity and missed it. What the hell does Microsoft have to do with it anyway? It wasn't even in the OS business at the time. They already had their deal with IBM.

Actually, yes, I can. Lets try a thought experiment: the people in North Korea get all their goods from the government. Suppose that government decides to stop feeding their population tomorrow, and they begin to starve, predictably since all the other restrictions that come with a planned communist economy are still in place.

Would you call THAT the new 'biggest Laissez faire experiment in the world'?

What would India 'impeeded UC' from doing? Leaking the poisonous gas? I think you are confusing a government staffed with flawed, ordinary men with some kind of a god. The USSR was no laissez faire and nobody 'impeeded' Chernobyl from melting down.

It sucks, but accidents do happen.

Well, we have a cutting edge social scientist here then! Which is this new form of social production that is neither guided by the profit motive or central planning? Please do tell.

Well, if he was phased out due to politics then indeed we are talking about state coercion picking winners and losers instead of the competitive outcome of a market. What, did Gates or IBM buy a Congressman or something? I'm not intimately familiar with the story.

And I'm not saying Bill Gates is a superman or anything, just that Microsoft under his direction has suceeded in giving the consumers what they want for a long time and for that they made him filthy rich. And he is unique in the respect that his company really didn't spend any dime on lobbying for special privileges or anything until the DoJ started to eye his company with greedy, greedy eyes.

While he is far from the mythical Randroid ubermensch, for he is a _real person_, there are much much worse cases of crony businessmen that conspired with the state for private gain at the expense of everyone else.

I really don't know what you mean by 'a complete capitalistic economy'. By 'market equilibrium' I assume you mean the mental construct of the state of equilibrium, where supply meets demand, or in Mises' work the 'evenly rotating economy'. It is just a thinking aid that has no counterpart in the real world.

About the potato famine in Ireland, I really think you should read up more on the subject, the historical context, the English domination, the laws that were in effect at the time that protected local English farmers from competition, o on and so forth. On the other hand, just by sitting with coffee and a cigarette you can reach an interesting insight: crop failures do not cause famine in the same way that I don't starve to death because I ( or an entire country even ) don't grow my own food.

Finally, what is social democracy? Or social liberalism? These aren't alternatives to a form of social organization like 'private property, prices and markets' as opposed to 'common ownership of property and a planned economy'. This 'social democracy' is simply this little forum where these ideas clash. Eventually you will end up with either laissez-faire or full blown socialism, that just happens in small baby steps instead of the Marx's revolutionary 'socialism by one fell swoop'.

He's a humble chap. Thing is, Killdal was a great technician, but was a poor entrepreneur.

Technicians are skilled at producing things in their areas of expertise. Entrepreneurs are skilled at guessing the future right.

Killdal guessed wrong. Bill Gates guessed right.

Ya, India circa 1980. The libertarian Eldorado of sacred property rights and individual liberties.

My argument lies shattered. Niggaplease... :-)