Rad Geek People's Daily

I don’t have any utopian expectations about Bitcoin. The protocol design is thoughtful, and the underlying technology is kind of cool, especially if you’re interested in peer protocols or in cryptography. It’s an alternative form of money, which allows for near-instant transfers and substantial anonymity in transactions across long distances. Like other alt-currencies and like other craftily designed peer protocols, it may become a useful component in developing counter-economic institutions and helping to build social and economic infrastructure beyond the control of the state-capitalist status quo. I hope it will. But if so, it will be because it is one useful hack among many that we can employ. Bitcoin is not magic; it’s not the only thing that’s important; it’s not a revolution by itself. It is a tool; and one that I’ve found it a useful one from time to time. Evidently other people do, too.^[1]

As people have become more interested in Bitcoin, a lot more articles have been published about it. It’s common for gold bugs to publish increasingly shrill apriori denunciations of Bitcoin because it is (they claim) not backed by a scarce commodity of independent economic value; and (they are convinced) only money that’s backed by a scarce commodity of independent economic value can be sustainable in the long run. I think that idea is probably wrong from the get. But even if it’s correct, it’s irrelevant: Bitcoin is backed by a valuable commodity. Or more precisely, Bitcoin blocks are a valuable commodity; they are constituted by scarce, computationally-expensive, cryptographically useful calculations performed by participants in the network (especially by Bitcoin miners). Those are scarce resources (it takes computing equipment and network communications and electricity to generate them). And they are valuable goods. They are valuable in virtue of the computational work they make possible. Almost none of the blanket attacks on Bitcoin take the value of cryptographic computation, or of the communication protocols that it establishes, into account; see, for example, this silly article from Gizmodo, which starts out by pointing out some really pretty awesome facts about the power of distributed computing, and how much dispersed computational work is being harnessed to keep the Bitcoin network and blockchain in working order:

According to Bitcoin Watch, the whole Bitcoin network hit a record-breaking high of 1 exaFLOPS this weekend. When you’re talking about FLOPS, you’re really talking about the number of Floating-point Operations a computer can do Per Second, or more simply, how fast it can tear through math problems. It’s a pretty common standard for measuring computer power. An exaFLOPS is 1018, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 math problems per second. The most powerful supercomputer in the world, Sequoia, can manage a mere 16 petaFLOPS, or just 1.6 percent of the power geeks around the world have brought to bear on mining Bitcoin. The world’s top 10 supercomputers can muster 5 percent of that total, and even the top 500 can only muster a mere 12.8 percent.

–Eric Limer, The World’s Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin
In Gizmodo (May 13, 2013)

… and then bizarrely concludes that, therefore, this awesome computational power is being wasted, when it could have been devoted to an awesome real problem, like processing SETI@Home data:

. . . because the new ASIC miners—machines that are built from scratch to do nothing but mine Bitcoins—can’t even do other kinds of operations, they’re left out of the total entirely. So what we’ve got here is a representation of the total power spent on Bitcoin mining that could theoretically be spent on something else, like real problems that exist naturally.

Because of the way Bitcoin self-regulates, the math problems Bitcoin mining rigs have to do to get more ‘coin get harder and harder as time goes on. Not to any particular end, but just to make sure the world doesn’t get flooded with Bitcoins. So all these computers aren’t really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It’s kind of like rounding up the world’s greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.

Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there’s going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins.

It’s incredible to think about the amount of power being directed at this one, singular purpose; power that’s essentially being “donated” by thousands of people across the globe just because they have skin in the game. It’s by far the most computational effort that has ever been devoted to a single purpose. And sure, Bitcoins are fine and all, but can you imagine what we could do if this energy was put behind other tough problems? We’ll you’re going to have to imagine, because so long as mining Bitcoins can earn you money and folding proteins can’t, it’s pretty clear which one is gonna get done.

–Eric Limer, The World’s Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin
In Gizmodo (May 13, 2013)

I guess that would be a pretty big waste, if the Bitcoin network did not provide a useful service with the results of that work.

But it does.

The implicit claim that maintaining the blockchain in working order, — a computationally-expensive task which provides an anonymous, cryptographically-verified international account ledger and a free peer-to-peer global money transfer service to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, — somehow provides less of value to the world than SETI@Home is of course completely unsubstantiated by anything in the article, and is really pretty laughable.

For what it’s worth the article’s other direct claim — that Bitcoin mining is somehow taking up scarce spare cycles that might otherwise have been put to use on other distributed computing projects — is also an odd claim, and not one substantiated by anything in the article. What is far more likely is that the opportunity cost of Bitcoin mining is something completely different — if miners weren’t building ASIC rigs, they would almost certainly not be spending the money on equipment and electricity for Folding@Home or other distributed computing projects; they’d be spending it on some other money-making venture, or on leisure.

1. ^[1]I have no idea whether or not the current, massive jump in Bitcoin prices means that it is in the midst of a speculative bubble; or whether it just means that demand is increasing because more people have a genuine use for what Bitcoin provides. I don’t think much turns on this unless you’re trying to make money by timing the market. Which is probably not a great idea in the first place.↩

AlterNet’s recent article, Why Atheist Libertarians are Part of America’s 1 Percent Problem is mostly remarkably only in how utterly, thoughtlessly awful it is. Of course many political libertarians are conservative tools, and this includes those who are anti-religious. But the bulk of this article is a series of undirected polemical jabs and cheap partisan talking-points attacking Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, Penn Jillette and Michael Shermer in the most formulaic and uncharitable possible terms; in general the article might be a candidate for the Ridiculous Strawman Watch, but mostly it is just a demonstration, as Nathan Goodman says, that the author couldn’t pass an ideological Turing test. I do want to mention the following, though — because the pull-quote manages to take just about everything I despise in American liberalism and wrap it up into one tight little package:

. . . Atheists who embrace libertarianism often do so because they believe a governing body represents the same kind of constructed authority they've escaped from in regards to religion. This makes sense if one is talking about a totalitarian regime, but our Jeffersonian democracy, despite its quirky flaws, is government by the people for the people, and it was the federal government that essentially built the great American middle-class, the envy of the world. . . .

–CJ Werleman, Why Atheist Libertarians Are Part of America’s 1 Percent Problem
AlterNet, December 3, 2013.

Yes, indeed. Here is a completely mythical, wildly unrealistic civics-textbook Disney cartoon^[1] of how American government works. It has a few kinks here and there in the real world application, but it’s vouched for by the idealistic fantasies of a prestigious racist, expansionist slave-owning Democratic President. You know that it works great because through a stupendous effort of subsidy and social regimentation it has created the most privileged bourgeoisie the world has ever known. America, fuck yeah!

This is what happens when you take corporate liberalism and expose it to gamma radiation. In all seriousness, it is absolutely true that the construction of the white American middle class was one of the biggest and most effective projects of the United States government over the past 80 years. And in every aspect — the world-empire militarization; the cartelized, permanent warfare economy; the border controls; the internal segregation; the subsidized white flight, car culture and Urban Renewal; the Junior-G-man ethos and the law-and-orderist socioeconomic policing; the stock-market bail-outs and the logic of Too Big To Fail; the institutionalization of everyday life and the full-spectrum pan-institutional promotion of patriarchal family, bourgeois respectability and bureaucratic meritocracy — the political manufacture of the white American middle class has been one of the most reactionary, destructive, dysfunctional, patriarchal and racist campaigns that American government has ever waged against human liberty, and the basic justification of every one of its most grievous assaults on the oppressed, exploited and socially marginalized.

Of course the federal government created the great [white] American middle class. To the eternal shame of both.

1. ^[1]Actually, John Sutherland Productions. Sutherland spent three years as a director for Disney before he went on to produce propaganda films for the D.O.D. and then for Harding College (on a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation).↩

Tauriq Moosa, in The Guardian, writes about Elan Gale’s recent twittering public ridicule and sexual harassment of a middle-aged woman sharing an airplane with him. (He claims he did it because he thought she was being a rude customer. Also because her talking and breathing was intruding on his consciousness and he found her annoying.) Moosa replies:

The story of a man live tweeting his “feud” with a fellow irritable airline passenger did the so-called rounds on the internet. It happened during the peak US holiday travel at Thanksgiving. It was dubbed “hilarious” by various outlets, like Jezebel, the Mirror, and Yahoo!. Elan Gale, the man behind the tweets,^[1] appears to have gained a significant number of new Twitter followers and managed to trend a hashtag #TeamElan, to obtain – I suppose – support.

. . . As someone who worked years in the service industry, I would not want such a person defending me — such an attitude only makes the irritable person worse, only gives cause to take it out further on service people. If he wishes to engage in a larger goal of publicly shaming horrible customers, there are more effective and less antagonistic ways to do so (assuming public shaming is a good method, which I’m doubtful of).

We know nothing about "Diane". We don’t know what state of mind she was in, beyond his analysis and judgement — and public humiliation. We know what she allegedly said — and even what she said did not warrant the response Gale proceeded to mete out, premising it strangely on defending being polite . . . But Gale’s bullying and childish tactics are not the worst parts: it’s the audience, the followers, the media, cheering on, welcoming the suffering and distress of another innocent person . . . . Gale’s actions directly affected another person and they appear fuelled by the sick love people have with digital nastiness . . .

–Tauriq Moosa, Don’t cheer online nastiness — even when directed at an annoying person.
The Guardian (December 2, 2013)

The one thing I would add here is, not only was this dude’s public ridicule of Diane immensely and needlessly mean-spirited and antagonistic; it was also immensely and gratuitously misogynistic, and expressed through some really ugly and aggressive sexualized hostility.

I am not on Team Eat My Dick.

1. ^[1][He is @theyearofelan on Twitter. –CJ.]↩

At a recent grandstanding speech on immigration reform, in which Barack Obama attempted to pass himself off as a supporter of immigrants while presiding over the unprecedented, relentless deportation of two million, immigrant families and activists confronted him over his record. He responded by passing the buck, and insisting that he was powerless.

Our families are separated, a young man yelled during remarks in San Francisco at the Betty Ann Ong Chinese Recreation Center. Mr. President, please use your executive authority to halt [deportations]. We agree that we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, but at the same time, you have the power to stop deportations.

Actually, I don’t,^[1] the president replied, and that’s why we’re here.

Other people in the crowd began to yell as well: Stop deportations. Yes, we can.

. . . What you need to know, when I’m speaking as president of the United States and I come to this community, is that if in fact I could solve all of these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so,^[2] he said. But we’re [sic] also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition.

So the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our [sic] laws, he continued.

— Elise Foley, Obama Confronts Hecklers At Immigration Speech, in the Huffington Post (25 November 2013)

If laws command injustice, then those laws ought to be violated. A nation of laws is nothing more than a rigid structure of power; and when that power is turned against innocent families, it deserves no respect, and no loyalty. Those who administer that power inflict real evil on helpless victims, and when they excuse themselves for responsibility by pointing to the laws, by pointing to political etiquette, by pointing to the demands of their office, they are doing nothing less, and nothing more, than saying that their political ambitions and political interests are more important to them than the rights of innocent people.

A law that commands injustice should be treated as no law at all. There is no office that can nullify a man’s conscience, no order that erases moral responsibility. There is no higher law than human rights or common decency. We have here the most privileged man on the face of the earth lecturing disenfranchised immigrant families about how powerless he supposedly is to stop — the most privileged man on the face of the earth begging that he is supposedly powerless over detention and deportation quotas that he set; begging that he is supposedly powerless to restrain the force of agencies directly responsible to him and his appointees; defending his own political cowardice, and tossing around contemptuous lines about easy ways out, delivered to the victims of his own detestable politically-driven assaults on immigrants.

Barack Obama’s record on immigration has been shameful. And his endless political excuse-making for record mass deportations, is despicable.

Also.

• GT 2006-04-09: Freedom Movement Celebrity Deathmatch.
• GT 2009-08-28: Border politics.
• GT 2011-10-22: Change You Can Believe In (Vol. III, No. 10)
• GT 2012-10-24: Change You Can Believe In: Mass Deportation Edition
• GT 2013-03-07: Immigration police state.
• GT 2013-07-27: Immigration freedom is personal liberty. Borders are statism.

1. ^[1]This is, of course, a lie. Obama has repeatedly used executive power to unilaterally halt enforcement and to halt legal proceedings when he found it in his political interest to do so.↩
2. ^[2]This is, of course, a lie.↩

Here is an image that was recently being passed around on a conservative, Tea Party group on Facebook.

So, just to re-cap:

Conservatarian: Here’s all I want: a REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT, the harshest possible BORDER FASCISM. GOVERNMENT ENFORCED LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS. A culture of CONSTITUTION FETISHISM, PUBLIC REVERENCE FOR STATE FOUNDERS and LEGALISTIC NATIONALISM. DRUG PROHIBITION and RIGHT-WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE WELFARE SYSTEM. Also, SAVING THE WELFARE STATE FOR U.S. CITIZENS WHO CONFORM TO MY FAVORED LIFESTYLE CHOICES. And 100% CONFORMITY ON QUESTIONS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPORT. I’m for small government!

So, seriously conservatarians, if this is what you want, what you want hasn’t got anything even remotely to do with liberty. If you thought that this did have something to do with liberty, then you need to re-think some of your life choices.

Nationalism is the death of liberty.