Quote from: Raralith on September 11, 2012, 09:21:49 PM

Quote from: jbreher on September 11, 2012, 09:11:58 PM

At some level, the only practical difference between a 100% regulated society and a 100% deregulated society, is that in the regulated case the big dogs can use the coercive power of the state to justify eating the little dogs.

Oh, I completely agree, it's two sides of the same coin; one ends with us killing each other, the other ends with a bigger entity killing us but either way, it's not a happy ending. What I saying though is that we shouldn't be allergic to any regulation, that rules put in place sometimes can be beneficial. A good example is the simple traffic light where a red light means we stop and a green light means we go. We give up the power to drive however we want, maniacally or safely, for the greater of society. Finding a good balance of regulation is important, but BitCoin lacks this safety net so the only choice we have is to hope to whatever deity we pray to that we stay on track and never fall in the first place. My post was simply for those cheerleaders waving their 100% deregulation pom poms that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Even if we don't have regulations, we can still have agreements everyone follows. And maybe after a while of some members causing too much havoc, without government regulations we'll simply, as a society, agree on being much more strict about that sort of thing. Maybe eventually it will be considered normal for many people to have some small bounties on them in the black market, and for people to keep track of how much they are pissing someone else off, lest it reaches high enough for someone to offer to work for said bounty. Who knows.
I'm not saying that whatever Bitcoin will have at the next stage will be good, or bad. We don't really have a clear answer to that, since it won't be anything like the typical Stage 8. I am saying that, to me, anyway, the next stage should be very interesting to watch.