Rick Falkvinge

The whole price of Bitcoin is an illusion that they use to get people to keep buying. It's the result of a bidding war.

There is an article here about that basically explains (this is my interpretation not his words) how the price of BTC is kindof like the sticker price on an item in the store. It doesn't represent the real value, it's simply the value as perceived by consumers and is, in a way, fixed -- http://falkvinge.net/2013/09/13/bitcoins-vast-overvaluation-seems-to-be-caused-by-usually-illegal-price-fixing/

But the fact that early adopters are psychotically rich for doing nothing is... one of the many signs of a flawed system. Basically if everyone started selling the market would destabilize because supply/demand curve would change & I'm pretty sure the value of what they're selling would plummet before they can unload most of their stack.

EDIT: Since I was immediately downvoted, please note that this happens regularly any time you speak ill of Bitcoin's pyramid scheme aspects and is completely expected/anticipated when I post these responses. It's a public service that I will drop eventually, but think about this -- even people who own a ton of BTC (article I linked to) criticize it as being insanely flawed. They only stay with it because as they point out, they believe the price will continue to rise. Speculators love it because they KNOW it's flawed, but still feel confident in a bet that the price will rise. I think it's why ultimately it will take gov…

Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no ad hominem please). According to Rick Falkvinge [1] legislation must:

* Be targeted at a problem
* Solve the problem
* Not create other problems in best case, worse problems in worst case
* Be evidence based

Carbon emission is considered a problem because it contributes to climate change. For carbon tax to be considered targeting a problem we must accept that climate change is a problem.

Does it solve a problem? At least not directly. Taxes on tobacco and alcohol do not eliminate consumption, prohibition in US created a Mafia, jail-time for drug possession does not eliminate consumption, we have hard evidence confirming that.

Such tax hinders accessibility, though. Since at least transportation is fossil fuel dependant, more or less everything (commodities including: food, public transportation) will get more expensive, thus less accessible.

Do we have hard evidence (numbers, not general economic speculation) that x level carbon tax will lower carbon emissions by y?

[1]: http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality-legislation/

I find Falkvinge's libertarianism[1, 2] much more compatible with the idea of a pirate party than direct democracy; democracy can outvote individual freedom and create a majority rule over an individual[3]. Other pirate parties are a good example of how the core principles can get outvoted and diluted with off-topic issues.

In 2015 Pirate Party of Iceland overthrew the blasphemy laws[41, which is a great success. I honestly hope they do not take the way of the modern left and introduce the concept of "hate speech" which limits free speech to only ideas the ruling group likes. It has happened over and over.

Still, I see this victory as a positive move. I hope the party will succeed in passing a meaningful copyright and patent reform.

[1] https://falkvinge.net/

[2] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/

[3] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian

[4] https://www.rt.com/news/271645-iceland-pirates-blasphemy-law/

The two women have not accused Assange of sexual assault. Ever.

They merely went to the police and asked if it was possible to pressurize him to submit to STD testing.

The accusations of rape are done by an overzealous prosecution office that has hijacked the case later; it seems they have the right to do that. That the office chose to make the accusations augmented by descriptive statements from the two women gives the impression that the two are the accusers. Both (or at least one, supported by the other) have since requested that the issue be dropped.

To see the entire arguments of the prosecution and the defense in today's session, read the liveblog[1] by Falkvinge (now ended, of course).

[1] http://falkvinge.net/2014/07/16/live-detention-lift-hearings-for-assange-stockholm-district-court/

EDIT: Minor nits.

Great article, just one major inaccuracy concerning the Pirate Party:

> they have a silly name and their focus seems to be solely on ‘sharing culture’ at the expense of everything else.

Then you go on to say:

> What we need in this country is a protest party that campaigns on the issues of Internet privacy, censorship, copyright/patent reform and computer misuse laws.

The Pirate Party campaigns precisely on these issues. For those that think the Pirate Party is just focused on protesting against unfair monopolies, please look up their actual ideas.

A good illustration is given on Rick Falkvinge's blog:

http://falkvinge.net/files/2012/manual/PirateWheel-2012-11-10.pdf

What would make you think that foreign governments would be any better? Supposedly privacy friendly European governments engage in plenty of wiretapping[1][2][3]. What I find different about what happens in the US is that these events are highly publicized, scrutinized, and court battles over wiretapping are extremely expensive for the US government, compared to other countries. I don't see that happening elsewhere.

1: http://ccc.de/en/updates/2011/analysiert-aktueller-staatstrojaner

2: http://falkvinge.net/2012/04/02/sweden-paradise-lost-part-1-general-wiretapping/

3: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/09/fran-s09.html