Oddbean

I've watched it and it's obvious that you intended to be provocative and I think you managed, without going over the top. Content-wise, the Marxist analysis is completely wrong, as it's been proven time and time again through history, that much is true. That said, I would never censor your talk for being provocative and wrong. Let me add though that I would also be OK with a talk titled "Satoshi was a true Aryan National-socialist warrior" that tried to sell to the audience how Bitcoin is about bringing down the Global Jew, or some other such complete nonsense. Yeah, that's where my bar is as far as free speech is concerned. Well, my point is that I don't think I have one, I'm a free speech absolutist. Going back to your specific case, it's likely that being in a Baltic country, the organizers have a much lower tolerance threshold towards (perceived?) pro-communist speech. Again, if I put myself in their Baltic victim of communism shoes, I would still not censor your talk, but I would probably have had a counter-talk immediately after, even if I had to improvise it, or I would have asked you to not give the talk and invited you to a debate instead. Silly and wrong views should not be suppressed but exposed and countered in public with arguments.

Censorship guarantees that the only form of speech allowed is the form that is beneficial to the censor. Since power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then we are guaranteed that the power of censorship will lead to only corrupt speech. On the other hand if a free exchange of ideas is tolerated -- even ideas that are terrible and hateful, then we can evaluate them all together and select those we wish to adopt. The bad idea will fall to the wayside as the better ideas gain success. From: (supdave98) at 08/27 12:49 > It has been said that the solution to hate speech or bad speech isn’t censorship but more speech. Analyze and engage. CC: hh

Ok, from the talk, she lost me at the idea that you can have value without scarcity. Built-in scarcity, proof of work, and halving the block reward over time prevents the inflationary pressures we see in state fiat currency. Abundance results from free market efficiency that rewards the best product at the cheapest price showing that deflation from efficiency is a sign of a healthy economy. See televisions. But this presupposes a hard money. The decentralized price system from a web of interconnected individual choices using hard money produces abundance and efficiency instead of the Communist ideal of a command and centralized economy, which had produced shortages, corruption and rampant inflation in every case and in every culture it has been tried. Analysis and engagement.