DGrutt

It would take less than 5 minutes of research to learn that it was not just about low taxes. Also cherry picking one country on there does nothing to disprove the notion that in general countries with higher economic freedom have higher economic growth. I don't think they are trying to say it is the one and only factor as that would be ridiculous. If it were purely ideological the list would look nothing like that anyway so I don't see why people are getting bent out of shape.

The index is by a conservative think tank but its certainly not just about taxes. I understand its been impacted in the past by things like the Kelo decision. Anyway it says its these four things equally weighted:

Rule of Law (property rights, freedom from corruption); Limited Government (fiscal freedom, government spending); Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom); and Open Markets (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom).

You can see a big difference when you look at Africa. Countries like Botswana and Mauritius really have seen great gains in economic growth through economic freedom, yet we think the whole continent is struggling. Compare that with Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbambwe at the bottom. For a while Botswana was outpacing Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea in economic growth rate.

If Satoshi sent coins to the Silk Road as the authors suggest maybe that was to take advantage of the mixing service. It seems like he or they would want to cash at least some of these out.

I think a lot of them are the same people.

"Meanwhile, Intel's push towards ubiquitous computing--gesture controls, speech recognition, and so on--not only advances traditional interface models, but the technologies involved also require strong computing heft. Sneaky, sneaky."

Lol ya this must be the reason. I bet that they have a hand in the self-driving cars too. Its all an excuse to require more computing power.

Lets get one thing straight: you don't play poker against the house but against other players... Maybe this is a game can be beat... but you have to play sitting down.

Waiter, another beer please.