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Comment by dualogy | Hacker News Reader

All these incidents give more weight to the conspiracy theory that Bitcoin is a govt. or central-bank project. "See? This is what happens without central authority. Now go back to trusting our currency. While we don't guarantee decades of stable purchasing-power preservation, we're not as volatile and our banks don't just appropriate your deposits outright.." ;)

They wouldn't even have to be behind every exchange and instead could let stuff like this (and off-shoots like LiteCoin etc.) happen quite organically and still prove their point, as clearly visible..

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Oh please. Every anti-government ideologue I've ever met seems to think that absent government humanity is made up of angels or Rousseau-style noble primitives. There are plenty of scumbags to go round, always have been.

The anti-government ideologues I talk to recognize this perfectly well; in fact, it's a core part of their philosophy. They argue that any center of power will actually serve as a magnet for sociopaths and eventually become infested by them, thereby empowering scumbags more than it controls them in the long term.

A specious argument if I ever heard one. For starters, what's with conflating sociopaths with scumbags? Sociopathy doesn't make you a criminal.

Sociopathy very often results in criminal activity or otherwise simply the manipulation of other people. It is confused regularly with psychopathy, which positions of power are far more likely to attract. However psychopaths are generally not criminals and can be very useful to have around in many cases. This discussion is one of baseless scare mongering and it's not really worth it to dwell on.

Every anti-government ideologue I've ever met seems to think that absent government humanity is made up of angels or Rousseau-style noble primitives.

The 'noble savage' [edit:absent government humanity is made up of angels meme] is more a favored construct of the left wing. See, for example the art of Gaugain, Picasso and early modernism. Unless your liberterian ideaolagues acquantences were closest cubists or something.

This is like something out of a Markov generator. 'anigbrowl mentions "Rousseau" and here come "noble savages", Gaugain, Picasso, modernism, cubism, and "the left wing". Huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitivism also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir

And most pro-government ideologes seem to think that absent government humanity is made up of liars, cheats, and scoundrels. There are plenty of good people to go around, and always have been.

In other words, there are a small number of corrupt people in private as well as government roles, and that's just the way it is. Problem is, in government, they get to dictate the rules that the rest of us have to live under.

Yes. And? I wasn't mentioning or implying angels or noble primitives or scumbags or anything.

In what way do the incidents substantiate a conspiracy? This is exactly what I would expect to happen; electronic scams are older than the internet.

Unless I misunderstand, your "evidence" is like saying "the moon landing is bulletproof, impossible to disprove- which is proof they faked it, because if they faked it they would make it as real as possible"

They'll need to choose a government to blame, before just generically blaming "some government" before I start listening.

Last week it was Britain, the week before that it was the US Government. Today, its the Chinese Government???

If a government produced Bitcoin, they probably would have made it work before they announced it. The original Bitcoin was awful. You could spend /anybodies/ coins! The fact that it gained a community is pure luck.

What are you talking about?

No they don't. People who are predisposed to conspiracy theories will view this as some sort of data point. But given their mind is already made up they don't need more weight.

Wow! Well I didn't say I subscribe to that conspiracy theory and didn't mean to peddle it either. Just that these incidents work in its favour.. funny how emotional everyone is getting here immediately! :D

Ah, and here's the post where the poor, afflicted fellow disavows his stated opinions, because he now believes that the rest of us are government agents, and the conspiracy is even larger than he first imagined.

I guess..

Can bitcoin guarantee weeks of "stable purchasing-power preservation"?

And how does that question in any way relate to my little digression?

You brought up the failure to guarantee "decades of stable purchasing-power" as a failure of g.v.rnm.nt and actual money, which is a claim that you think this is a problem solved by bitcoin.

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