So in the ideal world everyone around you is doing the same thing as the card. If that is true, then when something goes wrong there will be plenty of safeguards already in place.
It takes a special kind of hubris to social welfare benefits believing you will never need them.
> So in the ideal world everyone around you is doing the same thing as the card.
That still doesn't constitute financial advice, unless your choice to follow the card somehow influences others to follow the same card, which is unlikely at any measurable level.
I think it is representative of the political volatility of many commenters here that they have chosen to interpret the last line as referring strictly to government programs. The world used is social, which could easily apply to, say, Masonic lodges, labor unions, or even (quite liberally) employer-funded disability insurance.
Not true. Those who are wealthy and happy give to charity, and not for greedy reasons or boastful vanity. Many charities provide a very valuable social safety net, and by carefully choosing what charity you give to, you can pick the ones that are the most efficient, the most effective, and the least wasteful. And no, paying taxes don't count ... you don't have a choice, there, and you can't personally ensure the money is spent to maximum effect.
That's not true. We are social creatures. If the people start behaving a certain way that exerts a very powerful influence on those around them to adopt that behavior. (Unfortunately, this phenomenon holds for negative behaviors as well as positive ones.)
Sounds like political advice more than financial advice.
In a similar vein, I would advise people to support charities that help the less fortunate like food banks, but I wouldn't consider that financial advice.
You are right it does seem more political then financial. Advising people to support charities would be financial advice, wouldn't it? I think its pretty good advice something like "Attempt to give 1% of your income to a good cause for when things go wrong"
Social insurance is a misnomer in this context. I was referring to short- and long-term disability insurance, which will cover you for many disaster scenarios.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. The alternative is to have people panhandling on the streets. That's not pleasant -- on either side of the transaction. I'd rather live in a country where it wasn't necessary.
It's not a no-brainer to me. My brain desires more data on the economic efficacy of specific social programs, because even the broad implication that social programs reduce the number of people panhandling on the streets is not obvious to me.
The card said "support social programs." It didn't say to support any particular kind of social program. Of course you want to go find one that is more effective than doing nothing. But that people should support some sort of (effective) social program so that individuals (and their families) don't have to bear the full burden of bad fortune, or even bad decision making, seems like a clear win for everyone.
> the broad implication that social programs reduce the number of people panhandling on the streets is not obvious to me
I spent two years hanging out with pandhandlers, so I can tell you form first hand experience: there are a few people who choose that lifetyle, but the vast majority of them would give it up in an instant if they had a better alternative.
I think it's too broad, because the economic efficacy of social programs probably varies wildly, especially when we're talking about government social programs.
> economic efficacy of social programs probably varies wildly, especially when we're talking about government social programs.
As opposed to literally everyone having to figure this out on their own? Say what you will about government programs, they're going to be more consistent than what you get pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.
>they're going to be more consistent than what you get pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.
There are data that suggest otherwise: Walmart, not FEMA was the best at doling out aid during Katrina; on the other side of the political spectrum, the same could be arguably be said for OWS during Sandy. On the other hand, if you're going to argue that the government is consistently bad at doling out aid, you may be right, but I don't know how good the government is at providing welfare or social services. I presume it's not exceptionally good, or else private food banks, homeless shelters, and charities wouldn't have to exist.
> There are data that suggest otherwise: Walmart, not FEMA was the best at doling out aid during Katrina
This isn't what I was saying at all: I was merely saying that consistency is the wrong angle to complain about. Efficiency is a separate discussion but the one thing a large government program will be is consistent – for better or worse.
> Say what you will about government programs, they're going to be more consistent than what you get pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.
What I'll say is that I think this is a ludicrous assumption to make, for the same reason that it would be ludicrous to assume that government food distribution or automobile production would be more consistent than pushing the problem out to millions of individual actors.
Dangerous? The only danger is that you might pay 1% fee when sending/converting your earnings back to USD. Also possible that the value of bitcoin tanks overnight, but there are historical charts that show this has not really happened but just once.
What kind of danger are you thinking?
The exchange could also go under and/or rob you. You should be careful about to whom you give your bank account numbers.
It's actually somewhat riskier than cash through the mail (which is shockingly reliable), and you have no recourse, unlike the US postal service which is more than happy to insure cash mailings (up to $25k through Registered Mail) and investigate and prosecute fraud.
That was the first danger. How much is the insurance? We were talking about 1% at CoinBase, I think that MtGox was 0.65%, and that's only for buying and selling. Withdrawals are free. Bitcoin-to-bitcoin transfers are (still) free.
If it's $20,000 cash in the mail, it weighs about 200g (100 $100's) and to mail it about an hour from here (1 hour 30 minutes by car) Rochester to Buffalo, registered mail with $25,000 insurance, flat rate priority mail envelope is $53. I guess that price is the same across country.
OK, so it's actually cheaper to mail cash than to trade bank dollars for bitcoins. I'll get off my pulpit now.
(PS: I'm pretty sure you actually have to pay taxes on that cash you received by mail, especially if it's registered and insured, now that it's yours, it's income. Bitcoins on the other hand are not cash. I am a newbie to taxes, but I don't think you would have to pay tax on bitcoin income unless you were actually cashing them out. Maybe capital gains. Any experts?)
You owe tax on income regardless of the form. If your employer gives you stock, you owe tax based on the stock's value the day you get it. Capital gains (or losses) mostly only applies when you sell the stock, and only to the difference in value. Same deal for bitcoins. Hell, if you're caller #9 and you just won the two week cruise, you're getting a fat tax bill and cruises aren't cash either.
Ahm... but if you paid cash for the bitcoins, you don't owe any tax on it, right... until they appreciate in value, then it's capital gains?
And then, only if you actually cashed out, right? If you leave them as bitcoins and the value drops below what you paid, now you've got a loss and maybe deduction instead...
It would make sense that you should pay taxes on mining income (if they can find you).
If you paid cash for the cash you received in the mail, it wouldn't be income either, would it? (though it makes little sense.)
Most people earning income in bitcoin probably aren't doing it by mining, especially after ASIC arrives. Just to point out that mining is only one of many ways to earn bitcoin income.
Right, there's also arbitrage trading on markets which have fluctuating market rates, plus regular buying and selling over longer periods of times, transaction fees (both from mining and from trading), and simply accepting Bitcoin as payment for services.
I am not so sure that ASIC will kill the small-time mining scene, the low-end ASIC miners are cheaper and less power hungry than video cards (though you can't play games on them), it will just mean that if you want to mine bitcoins, you'll have to get one (or more), and you can't rely on your video card anymore. So a lot of people will be pushed out.
What do you do with them, then? I thought the point of Coinbase was to have a hosted wallet. I'm not sure I trust my security better than theirs. If the reply to that is that I should not be using Bitcoin, that's probably a sign of an issue that may limit widespread adoption.
Treat your local bitcoin wallet like your bank account, and treat your hosted bitcoin wallet like your leather wallet in your pocket. Only keep what you need in the leather wallet / hosted wallet.
Local wallets are easy to keep secure. Just keep it on a flashdrive, don't let it touch your harddrive, and don't use it on a pwnd computer. If you want, you can even keep that flashdrive in a real bank.
Evidence shows that the track record of hosted bitcoin accounts is a bit disappointing.
But the evidence seems to show that the track record of bitcoin accounts kept by individuals is significantly worse. For instance, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/78-percent-of-bit... and I think I am safe in concluding that a significant portion of those "non-circulating" bitcoins are actually lost.
So my financial advice would be that you are better off trusting an exchange than trusting your own storage and backup procedures.
7 million bitcoins are "lost" because they haven't circulated in the last 3 months?
Maybe you have found evidence of an elaborate ponzi scheme that we are all played by, but I don't buy your conclusion, and it's not the conclusion of the linked article.
If only 90,000 bitcoins held by/moved through a small group is driving most of a total of 423,000,000 bitcoins transacted, then I'd say the rest of the owners of the 9mil bitcoins in existence owe those guys a debt for stress-testing the grid.
You can use a cloud bitcoin wallet, like BitcoinSpinner, which is implemented on top of the BCCAPI. While I have not read the actual API, and I'm not sure this program is open source, I can tell you that it promises your bitcoins cannot be stolen from the cloud!
If that's not good enough for you, and you don't trust your own safe box in your own house, then I'd suggest you run back to your FDIC insured bank, or better, start reading. It's shameful to hear Hacker News readers saying they don't trust their own data to stay safe.
> It's shameful to hear Hacker News readers saying they don't trust their own data to stay safe.
Look, I am a reasonably skilled programmer, and I work for a bank. I know a great deal about keeping data safe and keeping it backed up well. I have written simple cryptography algorithms for addressing these sorts of issues (like secret sharing). And I know enough to realize that these are HARD problems, and leaving them to professionals works better than thinking you are smarter than the rest of the world.
As an example, it sounds like you store your bitcoins in a safe in your house. Nice system... I'm going to assume that your safe is fireproof, and that you were careful about not storing the data elsewhere. Now here's a question: if you die, will your heirs know how to retrieve the value, or will it be lost forever? Those are the sorts of hard problems that an institution can probably handle better than you can.
I didn't find much of this article very stimulating but the last comment made a very good point about fields in general:
"So why aren’t there more people drawn into the[any] field out of sheer interest? Because when you’re poor, which most of the world is, money is more important than passion. It’s not until you reach a near First-World level of development that pursuing your passions rather than escaping poverty seems like a reasonable and/or admirable thing to do."
Incorrect, a bunch of students with failed/successful experience is better than a bunch of students who go to college, because they were "suppose" to.
I think its best to opt for more freedom, when it comes to picking who they want to spend their adulthood. These new paths aren't for everyone but that's why we should consider this an alternate solution, not a one size fits all one.
>Incorrect, a bunch of students with failed/successful experience is better than a bunch of students who go to college, because they were "suppose" to.
Not all college students attended college because they are "supposed to". Even for those who attend college because they are "supposed to", it is arguable that they will end up being better than choosing not to go to college. If someone has no idea what he wants to do in life, it's arguable that going to college is better than not going to.
The truth is that people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg are rare. Most people need a formal education. It's arrogant to think that you can design better alternative than an educational framework that has existed for years to educate the mass.
The Thiel's model works well for a small number of bright youngsters, who might exceed their potentials through a customized training program, instead of going to college to have an off-the-shelf training program. If more and more people drop out of college, or even skip college to do this, it's going to blow up in his face.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs all attended college. They just didn't finish. Yet, I think they all derived some value from the time they spent in college.
Education is valuable for many reasons, but need is a pretty strong word. Larry Page and Sergey Brin probably wouldn't have become who they are without their education, but they are rare exceptions on the other end of the spectrum.
Does the average person destined to work at an average job at an average company for average pay really need one?
So can we start a discussion on the use of those "no, no" type things. Is there any time they are worth using? (By the way, i really liked the title, I think this idea applies a lot of places outside of just CEOs)
