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Re:“People simply empty out” by pessimizer on Friday August 16, 2013 @08:42PM (#6227686)
Governments always have all of the money. They issue it, and they define it by only accepting their type of money in order to pay their taxes. They hold that value by being strong enough and/or well-connected enough to defend themselves from physical threats from inside and out, and enough to extract taxes and fees from individuals in order to pull that money back out of circulation. In order to do this, they have all the guns.

Government has all of the money and all of the guns. We're already screwed. What we need to focus on is making the government help us structure a better society - a kinder, safer, braver, smarter society. The further we get from that ideal, the closer we get to a world where we will again remember that money can't save you from the people with all the guns. Khodorkovsky thought money was worth something.

Re:“People simply empty out” by zanny on Friday August 16, 2013 @09:29PM (#6227823)
> Governments always have all of the money.

Unless you use bitcoin!

In the past, the best solution to a government you didn't agree with was to leave. Head into the unknown and try new things. That, in practice, rarely ever happened on a macroscale (the new world was firmly cut out and brought under the European model of ownership in centuries as its colonies with no real room to experiment, while simultaneously slaughtering entire civilizations of actual divergent societies) but I'd like to think space presents us with a real opportunity to pick up a few thousand people, find a rock in a habitable zone with water, and try things differently.

Re:“People simply empty out” by ksrm on Saturday August 17, 2013 @12:47AM (#6228192)
Why go all the way to space? Just head to the oceans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading