Sex workers have a special place in society that is never rewarded or recognised. – Derek Freedman
My Cliterati article for last Sunday was “Skin To Skin”, a strong criticism of the cruelty of denying commercial sex to men who can’t experience physical intimacy in any other way; the very next day an English council provided a perfect example of that cruelty by announcing an “investigation” of a nursing home which allowed residents to hire sex workers, and I explained what was wrong with that in this week’s essay, “Caring Professionals”. Then there was this item from Bosnia:
Members of a…wheelchair basketball club are launching a campaign to legalize prostitution…to help disabled people “achieve their right to love.” Marinko Umicevic, president of the club Vrbas, said Wednesday that Bosnia had to catch up with 21st century Europe, where…some people with disabilities “even get state subsidies to pay for sex.” Umicevic said some of his players had never had sex and legalizing the sex trade would help people like them achieve their basic rights…
Prostitution stings are disgusting no matter how they’re justified, but there’s something particularly vile about using “sex trafficking” as an excuse and then arresting hookers as well:
A multi-agency prostitution sting conducted earlier this month on behalf of National Human Trafficking Awareness Month has netted the arrests of…46 [people]…most for misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution…[but] five [for] women alleged to have posted sex ads…Sen. Leticia Van de Putte…[says] she intends to propose…a bill that would pave the way for victims of human trafficking to sue websites that make money off prostitution ads…
Senator Van de Putte could save the state of Texas a lot of money by simply researching the fate of similar ideas.
Bitcoin has become so popular, and its value has risen so much against that of national currencies, that Bloomberg is concerned that “virtual money could undermine the role of central banks”, which as Reason explains is exactly the point. The end of governments’ ability to directly meddle with the world economy can’t possibly come soon enough to suit me.
Dr Derek Freedman told the Irish Sun: “People from all strands of society use prostitutes from time to time. It ranges from [politicians], the clergy, the judiciary to people who are socially deprived, physically disabled and people who may be regarded as unattractive and may not be able to meet people”…while people often feel anxious about contracting infections after visiting a prostitute, he believes that “you’re probably safer with a professional than with a gifted amateur”…he added: “What we forget is that often sex workers give great comfort to people who are lonely”…
When even Christians are starting to see this, “trafficking” hysteria’s days are numbered:
…In her new book Other Dreams of Freedom, Yvonne Zimmerman, a professor of Christian Ethics, argues that the theoretical basis of US government anti-trafficking efforts derives directly from Protestant theology and traditional ideas of what she calls “sexually pure and pious womanhood”. Zimmerman challenges this basis for anti-trafficking efforts, saying that it ends up limiting the freedom of trafficked people, especially women, by conceiving of their “rescue” as them ending up in traditional, heterosexual marriages – or at least refraining from sexual relations outside of marriage…
What the Hell Were You Thinking? (We’re Not Done Yet)
A big improvement on the phone “app” described previously:
…a team [of students]…has invented a mobile panic button for street…sex…workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A voice or text message is first recorded onto a SIM card, which is inserted into a GPS-enabled device such as a pager…Pressing a button…activates the GPS and sends an emergency message and GPS location to a contact who can get help. Because the GPS is not activated until the device is activated, the anonymity of the user is preserved…Once prototype devices are ordered, the three students will hold focus groups to determine which type of device is more useful…[then] will launch a six-month pilot project by giving devices to 100 women…The group is currently holding a fundraising initiative online…$8,140 [will] cover…the entire pilot project…
Arch-prohibitionist Paul Chabot helpfully explains not only that prohibitionism really works, but that all prohibitions are equally valid: “When asked…why we keep marijuana illegal, Chabot responded: “Why do we keep heroin, LSD, prostitution, child pornography illegal?’” As Matthew Feeney points out, “Comparing marijuana to child pornography is a great way to insult millions of people by comparing them to pedophiles. Chabot is a free gift to those of us who would like to see drugs legalized.” And of course, the same goes for prostitution.
On Monday I received a press release from Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada, a brothel resort on 20 acres (8 hectares) with a swimming pool, spa and tennis court which actively markets itself to couples as well as single men. It’s now added “Sheri’s Playland”, a group of bungalows fitted out like movie sets so clients can enact any of six different sexual fantasies with working girls. As I’ve said before, this is a very positive trend; “it was after Vegas casinos started ‘gentrifying’ in the ‘80s that people from other states dropped their prejudices against gambling, and now casinos are everywhere in the US.”
Sex workers fight an attempt to impose the Swedish model on Indonesia:
Prostitutes and activists…are calling on the government not to prosecute men who pay for sex…The chairwoman of Yogyakarta Women’s Sex Workers Association (P3SY)…said…that [client] criminalization…would decrease the bargaining power and income of sex workers…[and] drive prostitution further underground…[hindering] HIV/AIDS education and mitigation programs…arresting customers would lead to the closure of brothels…and force sex workers to seek customers on the streets…Ignatius Praptoharjono of the Atma Jaya Catholic University’s HIV/AIDS Research Center in Jakarta…cited the cases of Sweden, Canada and other Asia-Pacific nations, where a crackdown on [clients] led to the decline of red-light districts and reduced fees…forcing sex workers to charge less and work more. “Such a regulation will not protect women, but instead expose them to even higher risk,” [he] said…
Heroic cops display their courage and fortitude by saving the helpless citizens of Connecticut from the menace of a 71-year-old whore: “an undercover cop…met her inside a room…[after] Sygun Liebhart placed a backpage.com ad…”
Forcing massage parlors to close at 10 PM is the latest anti-whore fad:
…a new [Florida] bill…would ban massage establishments from operating between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m…to crack down on human trafficking and sexual exploitation…[it] also would make it illegal for massage establishments to allow anybody to live on the premises…the Florida State Massage Therapy Association questioned the hours restriction…[because] there are legitimate late-night clients including airline pilots and theatrical performers…[bill sponsor Dave] Kerner, a former…police officer, said…late-night massage establishments are a “hotbed” of illicit sexual activity…
Anyone who actually uses the phrase “illicit sexual activity” with a straight face should be barred from public office as a delusional busybody.
Here’s another article on the PEPFAR “anti-prostitution pledge”, the efforts to overturn it and the importance of doing so from a health perspective, a human rights perspective and a free speech perspective. It really is beginning to seem like now that the gay rights culture war has essentially been won, many activists are starting to at last turn their attention toward the persecution of sex workers.
Here’s a cute little promo video made at the Sex Worker Freedom Festival, the parallel AIDS conference held in Kolkata last summer by sex workers who were excluded from the US:
My fellow hot smart chick Amy Alkon wrote this week about that Jezebel favorite, social constructionist and penis apologist Hugo Schwyzer; his latest absurd claim (one which I called him to task about on Twitter a few months ago) is that older men are only attracted to young women because of “social construction”, and that before the advent of television guys were lining up to date old hags (presumably when they weren’t burning them as witches). In the process Amy discusses the evolutionary basis of lust, debunks the “rape is asexual” myth and quotes good sense from Dr. Gad Saad.
The story of New York City’s “cabaret card”, an artificial bottleneck imposed on nightclub performers from 1926-1966, is an excellent example of why prostitution licensing doesn’t work; the corruption such a system engenders and the destructive consequences to individuals are virtually the same.
“A divorced couple involved in running a brothel in north Dublin have avoided jail with fines and suspended sentences…Judge Mary Ellen Ring…ordered [Istvan Zeffer] to pay €1,000 to prostitute-support group Ruhama…Bernadette Kiss…is to pay €3,000…” Ruhama is the new front for the orders of nuns who ran the Magdalene laundries which enslaved whores and many other women; calling them a “prostitute support group” is equivalent to referring to the Nazis as a “Jewish support group”.
Most of this story is the typical credulous stenography of an evangelical “rescue” organization’s claims, but this passage stood out: “The United States is the No. 1 destination for human sexual trafficking, with Oklahoma near the top of the most-active state list, the State Department reports…” As you probably know, the State Department “reports” nothing of the kind.
Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills…threw out 46 of the 59 counts against the alleged co-conspirator in the high-profile Kennebunk prostitution case, setting the stage for another appeal to the state’s highest court. Mills’ decision…dealt prosecutors a…blow hours before opening arguments…were expected to begin…jury selection…[has already taken four days though] Mills said…it has never taken her longer than one day to seat a jury in her 19 years on the Superior Court…[charges were dropped after defense attorney Daniel] Lilley [argued]…that the notion that Maine privacy laws protect individuals engaged in criminal activity is “ludicrous.” The invasion of privacy charges are tied to the fact that the alleged sexual interactions…were videotaped without the [clients] knowing…the defense…is [also] free to pursue its…argument that Strong was the subject of police retaliation…
Slowly but surely, the press is waking up:
The sad tale of a prostitute being held captive in Chattanooga highlights a problem that appears overstated…it is the only one ever reported, according to area police. Meanwhile, a 2011 report co-produced by Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation estimated there were more than 100 cases of human sex trafficking in Hamilton County. The study is, apparently, based on erroneous surveys and severely lacking in verifiable facts…
First They Came for the Hookers… (TW3 #132)
More “stripper licensing” idiocy, complete with “sex trafficking” nonsense:
…officials in Moorhead, Minn., are expected to pass an anti-prostitution measure requiring erotic dancers, nude models and adult escorts to obtain licenses and submit to background checks…North Dakota counterparts across the Red River in Fargo and West Fargo are pushing similar ordinances and the regional approach will attempt to stem “a fairly prominent problem here” with prostitution trafficking between their cities and the oil fields…[police hope] the regulations will reduce “a huge problem of runaways and minors trafficked into the sex trade”…adult entertainers would likely have to pay $150 to $250, carry a photo ID and divulge their real names, aliases and criminal histories. Background checks revealing prostitution or drug convictions would disqualify applicants from receiving permits…
Pompous “authorities” just love creating bottlenecks that turn businesswomen into criminals, don’t they?
It never takes control freaks very long to prove my points:
A…lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill…that would…require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term…as evidence for a sexual assault trial. House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown…would charge…[violators]…with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence”…
The bill is unlikely to pass, but only due to partisanism rather than because it’s a total abomination.
“police officer said late-night massage establishments are a ‘hotbed’ of illicit sexual activity”
… oh boy … ya’ know, I usually quite like puns…
Wow. 70. I’m impressed. Good on you!
Maybe, if my arthritis wasn’t so bad, I could return to the job I really liked.
Susan Reed … she has a wiki article …
She’s a governmental parasite – just read the rest of her wiki.
BITCOIN … I was wrong on this, I didn’t think much would come of BITCOIN. However, I recently installed TOR on my laptop and I was immediately exposed to the plethora of online activities that are accepting BITCOIN. “Silk Road” – a virtual fleamarket for drug dealers thrives there. Though I don’t advocate drug use – this same method could be used for firearm sales should the government decide to ban them. And not just firearms … but anything else the nanny state deems inappropriate. It may be that hookers accept BITCOIN soon.
O/T but very depressing news … Chris Kyle was killed when he was shot in the back by a former Marine at a gun range. Chris had 150 or so confirmed kills as a sniper. Sad news.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-seal-chris-kyle-killed-shooting-range-suspect/story?id=18389238
the biggest problem with theese licenses is that it could prevent the women doing another job in the future,in case an employer does a background check.its not like they can keep stripping forever and i doubt they can make enouph money to retire at 30 and not have to work again.as for the basketball team im glad about their openness.one of the most annoying attitutudes towards sex work is to me the ”those pathetic sad weak men”(meaning passing judgement to people who cant get physical intimacy any other way),it is even more annoying to me than ”those evil objectifiers”for the reason that while the women who say the latter just dont have a basic idea about sexual nature,those who say the former think they can pass judgement to people who are down on their luck on their relationships with the opposite sex.newsflash to them,every one of us could be at their place.and honestly if i was a man id rather pay sex workers than approach women in nightclubs.sleeping with a sex worker is an honest deal and you pay a certain bill upfront.if you try to approach a woman you have met in a club,you first need to buy her a drink,then try to charm her(and of course the best way to charm a ”civilian” woman is borrow your rich friends car and lie about your income.do you honestly think that single men who are unemployed have a chance to get laid?i live in a country where the unemployment rate is 30 % ,one of the most depressing things in the mens state is how women dont cast a second glance at them,once they hear about their state.you see most women hate on working girls but have the same attitude themselves),of course you can fail at the end.then in the relationship gifts(the most expensive the better),paying the whole bill whenever you go to,plus all the drama dating has.
A report on the Magdalene Laundries is due out next Tuesday. It was forced upon the Irish government by the United Nations Committee against Torture.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2013/0202/1224329551985.html?via=mr
There’s an illustrated blog article at:
http://bocktherobber.com/2010/07/the-magdalene-laundries/
Tuesday the 5th? If you see a news article with a summary of it and/or links to a PDF, please forward them to me so I can fit in into TW3 #136. My cutoff for this week is Wednesday night, so even if the article doesn’t appear until the 6th it will still make deadline.
Will do. Slight confusion about timings; most papers say presented to Cabinet on Tuesday morning, published in the afternoon, others say published on Wednesday.
BINGO! I wish more women were as enlightened as you are.
When I was single, I DID occasionally dabble in that game of “pick up a woman” in local bars … and, I did my “hunting” in the bars of Waikiki where there were always plenty of tourist women.
I fuckin’ hated it. I was pretty successful at it but, even then I was aware that there was something different about women and they weren’t necessarily in it for the sex. I never lied outright … but if the girl I was “working” got the notion that she could have something with me beyond a one-night-stand … I would never say anything to the contrary.
There was a girl I met from Michigan, and I met her when she was a senior in on a high school trip. She went to a Catholic high school and I had to sneak past her Catholic nun chaperones to get to her hotel room every night. When she returned home I never wrote and I never called her. She figured out my mailing address though – and, until I moved she would send me a Christmas Card every year with a RAT on the front of it. I didn’t mistreat her, but she was young and I did take advantage of her.
It’s because I love women that I hate doing that to them. I’m not like normal men, I see women as actually being superior to men … possessing a temperance and inner strength that we never could. Everything good about the human race I can see when I look into a woman’s eyes.
The pay-sex thing was a GODSEND to me. I didn’t have to lie or lead a girl on anymore. I got what I wanted and she got what she wanted – no one walked away feeling cheated from that.
Ah, bitcoins, perhaps the greatest evidence that the role of central banks is vital and necessary to the running of an economy.
Without the security and convenience of having one central authority, it’s too difficult and risky to carry out normal transactions. It takes upwards of ten minutes to complete one, and there’s no consumer protection or way to prevent and track fraud or scams.
Pretty much everything associated with bitcoins is a scam or incompetently run to the point of it’s almost one anyway. Except for Silk Road, though like everyone else, they only care about converting it into regular dollars which can actually be used for non drug related things.
It’s an excellent source of top quality entertainment, for instance, bitcoins are created by solving cryptographic puzzles called blocks, whoever is first to solve a puzzle earns a set number of bitcoins. The system is set up so that the rate of new bitcoins are created is fixed, however by devoting more processing power to mining bitcoins, as it’s called one can increase the odds of being first to solve a block.
This touched off a massive arms race where people went from using their own computers’ CPU to mine, to building custom computers to going to china and ordering advanced ASICs designed to nothing other than mine bitcoins.
Again, all to ‘stay in the same place’ doing a form of work that’s completely useless.
1. It does not take 10 minutes to complete a transaction, it takes 10 minutes to confirm one; there is a difference. To illustrate, consider payment by check. You can write a check at a store and hand it over, and get your goods immediately. From your point of view, the transaction is complete. From the store’s point of view, the transaction is not complete until the store deposits the check and gets paid, a process which takes several days. The depositing of the check is analogous to the confirmation of a transaction. In that sense, Bitcoin is far ahead of banking; it only takes ~10 minutes (on average), rather than days to “confirm” a transaction. If you write a bad check, it takes days for the store to find out about it. If you somehow manage to double-spend a transaction, they’ll know in minutes. I guarantee you that store will prefer the latter. (And all of this is only relevant to in-person checkout-type exchanges. If anything’s being shipped anywhere, then the 10 minutes isn’t really an issue anyway.)
2. Since the Bitcoin network won’t accept a transaction that spends the same outputs as another transaction waiting to be added to the blockchain, thus preventing double-spending, for small-to-medium purchases, even 0 confirmations is acceptably low risk as long as you ensure that the large pools have your transaction in their queue. Unless you’re dealing with a large purchase (say, a car), the odds that someone would even try to double-spend a transaction are pretty low. And in all likelihood, any transaction large enough to warrant extra confirmations is going to take longer than 10 minutes to complete anyway.
3. It’s a new industry; it has its growing pains like anything else. And more people are accepting them for payment every month; in December WordPress started accepting them. BitPay (a payment handler) reports over 2400 clients and growing.
4. The first ASICs are coming online, and they are not doing “useless” work; they are performing auditing services, by ensuring that only valid transactions are included into blocks and by ensuring that it is very difficult for any single entity to interfere with a well-ordered blockchain, and they are paid for their services. The arms race is nearing an end; after ASICs become the norm, it’s all Moore’s law from here on out.
5. Your comment does not really say why you think central banks are necessary; I’d love to hear you elaborate…
6. It is true that the irreversibility of Bitcoin transactions does leave you open to loss if the person you are dealing with turns out to be untrustworthy. It’s the same in the traditional financial world, too. The difference is, if you go and tell Visa you got ripped off, they’ll give your money back. Unless you make a habit of it, they’ll probably not even investigate it all that hard. And the merchant that sold you the goods? He loses the money (and maybe even his account). Even if he didn’t do anything wrong; even if he held up his end of the bargain. It’s called chargeback fraud, and it costs businesses tens of billions of dollars a year.
With all the focus on consumer protection, few ever think of merchant protection. The merchant, if he wants to stay in business, has an incentive to be an honest dealer. If he rips you off, word will get out and he’ll lose business. Even if you lose in the short term, they lose in the long term because their reputation is ruined. But the customer? It’s much easier for the customer to rip off the merchant; so what if he can’t go to that store again? There are a dozen more just like it. Or if it’s a website, a hundred more.
As I mentioned above, WordPress started accepting Bitcoin in December. In their statement explaining why they did so, they said that there are 60 countries in the world where, before, they could not do business because PayPal won’t process payments from those countries. Why not? Because credit card fraud and chargeback fraud are rampant in them. Bitcoin provides a way for a person to transfer value over the Internet in a manner which is secure and verifiable; once a transfer is done, it’s done. This opens up whole new markets where once the fear of fraud made it more prudent to avoid doing any business at all.
Small Notch thinks central banks are necessary because he’s a collectivist, and feels driven to debunk anything decentralized even if his arguments make no sense whatsoever.
I’ve been following bitcoins for quite some time actually. My opinion is not that bitcoin is bad because it is decentralized but that decentralization is very probably a terrible idea because bitcoin tried it, and bitcoin is terrible.
Translation: “I’m right because I’m right.”
It’s a currency, that 10 minute delay is competing with just handing over cash, a much more anonymous currency. And it’s only going to take longer to as it expands.
Wordpress doesn’t accept bitcoins, it accepts USD from bitpay. Just like everybody else.
The auditing services could have been done by with regular computers and without even using all their computational power. The bitcoin protocol keeps making it harder because it’s designed to keep the rate the same. People kept adding more and more power so bitcoin kept making it harder to carry out these “vital auditing services”.
And Moore’s Law just means that people will have to buy even larger, faster and more expensive ASICs, so they can keep having that slightly better chance of getting bitcoins.
And favoring merchant protection over consumer is interesting, but in the end it’s just trading one problem for another. Merchants can contest chargeback frauds, but not irreversible transactions, plus there’s a host of other problems, like how hard it is to prove theft.
As I said before, in the vast majority of cases, either the overall transaction itself is going to take longer than 10 minutes in any case (ordering something online that needs to be shipped) or the value is likely to be so low that you don’t need to wait for full confirmation, just the fact that it was accepted by major mining pools is enough. And I’d like to hear how you hand cash to Amazon over your internet connection without going through an intermediary…
A person can buy WordPress’s services in exchange for Bitcoin. Why should it matter if the coins go directly to WordPress or through a third party intermediary who provides a service to WordPress? Also, we cannot say for sure that WordPress isn’t receiving Bitcoins; BitPay does allow the client to specify that a certain percentage remain in Bitcoin.
The purpose of making auditing (mining) take a large amount of computation is to ensure that no one entity is able to control the process to a large enough degree to start causing problems.
You don’t have to do any mining to use Bitcoin. There is no need to buy ASICs unless you’re doing mining. It’s true that various miners will buy ASICs, and that their development will continue, and there will be a technology curve, but no one is forcing anyone to mine. It’s a calculated decision; do I invest in capital to try and make a return? If the Bitcoin value is high, and the difficulty is low, and the costs (list electricity) are low, then miners will invest more. If the value is low, or the difficulty is high, or the costs are high, miners will hold off on investment, or turn off their current hardware, and the network will not grow (or may even shrink). The processing power of the network is thus maintained in a level proportional to the value that is being processed. Does that mean that someone out there will buy hardware and never make back their money mining? Sure it does. That’s business. You take risks, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t.
Sure, merchants could contest the chargebacks.. I’m sure Maggie could enlighten us on that process. But what if it was for a $5 item bought online? How many merchants will pour potentially hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in fighting a fraudulent $5 chargeback? Not many. Their response is to either deal with it as a cost of doing business, or not deal with it by not doing business at all. This is what lead to many of the aforementioned 60 countries being essentially locked out of PayPal. Bitcoin provides a secure and low cost way of avoiding such fraud, and thus opening new markets. And as I said, a bad merchant has much more to fear than a bad customer; the customer might very well never use that merchant again, but if a merchant mistreats a customer, he runs the risk of losing future customers.
It’s also not just a matter of bad customers or bad merchants; there’s also credit card theft, which is rampant. Credit cards were never meant to be used on the Internet. In order to try and prevent fraud, the CC companies make merchants collect quite a lot of data from their customers. This data is generally easy for an identity thief to obtain, especially since it is required in order to make the transactions. How many times each year do we hear about hundreds of thousands of identities stolen from some database somewhere? Bitcoin does not require you to hand over lots of identifying information in order to use. Nor does my paying you with Bitcoin expose me to the risk that you or someone else who happens to obtain my payment information will steal my money (as can and does happen with credit card and check transactions).
How is Bitcoin terrible? I get that you don’t like the size of the network; and the transaction times. I would hope that I’ve addressed that sufficiently, but is there anything else? I would like to thank you for the opportunity to respond to a critic and get more information out there.
Bitcoin is an alternative currency, it is supposed to usable for face to face transactions using cash, not just amazon.
And banks can confirm credit card transactions just as quickly as bitcoin can, so there’s no real advantage.
Yes, the auditing was indeed to be use a large amount of processing power. However ASICs are now required to maintain profitability because people kept trying to game the system by increasing the power of their own mining rigs. It’s not useful labor or capital.
But chargeback fraud is not sufficient to support transferring over to bitcoins. A large part of the difficulty in stopping chargeback fraud is that it happens so rarely.
And bitcoin fraud happens too, bitcoins can be stolen too. And there has been a huge number of incidents involving thefts and hacks of bitcoin exchanges and businesses.
A decentralized crytocurrency has some promise, indeed bitcoin itself has some elegant solution to the problems of decentralized currency.
However, it still has flaws and those drawsbacks outweigh any real advantage. Buyer be warned is not better than Seller be warned. Deflation has as many, if not more problems than Inflation.
And it doesn’t change the fact that it is too easy to scam and defraud people using it.
Actually, Bitcoin isn’t “supposed” to be anything. The fact that it is useable as a currency comes down to the particular properties that it has.
Banks do not confirm credit card transactions as quickly as Bitcoin; the equivalent state of a Bitcoin confirmation, in credit card terms, does not come for 2-6 months. Until then, the transaction can be reversed at any time by the bank.
No one is trying to “game the system;” that would imply that people are somehow cheating by getting faster hardware. The process of mining is known by everyone, and it’s been known since the beginning that this kind of hardware escalation was likely to occur. Anyone getting into the mining business knew (or should have known) that. And the usefulness (value) of labor is not for you to decide; it is for the market to decide. And in this case, the market has decided that the usefulness (value) of generating a block, is (currently) ~$500. Miners must calculate whether it is worth it to them to try and get that block.
Do you run a business? I do; while I’ve been fortunate to never encounter chargeback fraud (I don’t do business with the general public), I can certainly imagine what it would be like if I did. And even if I don’t, I still feel the effects in the form of higher fees. Accepting Bitcoin would be much cheaper for me; payment through BitPay would be ~2.7% from anywhere in the world, vs. PayPal at ~7% (I do most of my business with an international customer). Unfortunately I haven’t quite convinced my customers to use Bitcoin yet, but I’m working on it.
Fraud can happen in any currency; currency of any kind can be stolen. Are dollars flawed because banks can be robbed? No. (They’re flawed for entirely different reasons.) There have been incidents where Bitcoins have been stolen from websites, but they are getting rarer as people are beginning to understand how to securely store Bitcoins; when all is said and done, Bitcoins have the potential to be far more secure than any physical currency, since they exist entirely as information.
Deflation is not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be; made out to be by people, I’d like to point out, who benefit directly from continued popular support of inflation. The much ballyhooed “deflationary spiral” is by its nature self-limiting: no matter how valuable your money gets, eventually you’re going to trade it for food or shelter or *something* (you can’t eat it). The value of a currency is also directly related to how and when it’s used, and its usefulness in trade; if no one uses a currency for fear of missing out on future gains, then its value won’t rise because it’s no longer useful.
As for it being “too easy to scam and defraud people using it,” like any new thing, there is a learning process while we figure out exactly what we have and how to handle it; as we do, the particular scams unique to Bitcoin will diminish. The scams that are not limited to Bitcoin, were always there, although Bitcoin’s nature may make them more or less viable.
It’s called bitcoin, it’s a digital currency. It’s supposed to be a currency.
The transaction has completed but it can be reversed, which is part of their design.
Markets aren’t perfect, but nothing I can do will convince you of that.
Markets may not be perfect, but they’re miles better than centralized government planning of the economy and control of the currency… But nothing I can say will convince you of that, either. Again, thank you for being the foil and allowing me to expound on the virtues of non-centralized value transfer systems. You might not be able to see the value of such a thing, but I’m sure others will.
And that’s the beauty of Bitcoin: unlike Dollars, no one’s forcing you to use it!
I never actually said that central planning was the best.
I said and literally meant that bitcoin was evidence for central banks, because bitcoin ran into exactly the same kind of problems that central banks were supposed to solve.
Bitcoin translates electricity into money. Given the external costs of electricity, I’m not sure that’s a great system.
And I’m tired of trying to keep it off the server farm at work.
No Other Option – I recently went to see The Sessions, and the mostly female audience received the movie very well. The opposition is in a no-win situation here. Either they have to mock the disabled for their social and sexual limitations, or they have to portray them as abusive psychopaths. Neither is likely to be effective.
Doesn’t stop them from trying, though; take a look at this, but not if you’ve eaten recently. Sheila Jeffreys has made similar statements.
RE: What the Hell Were You Thinking? (We’re Not Done Yet)
I know Stepping Stone (local sex worker outreach) is thinking of doing something similar, but given their current finances I have no idea how they would pull it off. Maybe something to consider another research grant for.
An eventful week. I’m glad to see good news.