Also the gilding system is a segregation of users.

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Whenever this line of thought crosses my mind it always ends up consuming hours of my day. I find it so bizarre that when I drive down the highway I'm passing thousands of people with their own individual perceptions and experiences in life. Each person passing me in their car in wrapped up in their own thoughts, problems, and experience completely different from my own. I always try to wrap my head around the idea of 7 billion individuals each seeing the world in a different way, and I almost always need up with a bit of a headache. I feel like one of the only regrets I'll have in life is that I'll only be able to live it from one point of view. It's tragic and beautiful in a way.

In Europe, they have laws protecting internet privacy, and over here they're being taken away.

I feel like American's level of trust is the reason we won't see a significant level of change in the NSA's data mining protocols for a long time. Most people don't understand how damaging some of the information the government is collecting on them can be if used for the wrong reasons. They assume they don't have anything to hide from the government because they haven't done anything wrong.

My current dream job is either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I'm still trying to figure which is best for me. The one of the main motivations behind my career choice being that I had a pretty botched experience with Psychological care. It took me a great deal more time and energy to work through my issues by myself than it would have if I could have found a competent psychologist who wasn't interested in drawing out sessions to milk my insurance.

I think this is the first time I've heard someone else describe this feeling aside from myself. This is probably the best way for me to relax.

As the books go on, things get pretty weird, to be quite honest

I really wish I would have stopped reading the series around book two or three. You could tell that when Herbert wrote Dune he had a coherent plan in mind. One of the most beautiful things about it was he had this pre-constructed, complex world and you were just thrust into it without any real introduction. The story was excellent and it kept you interested the entire time. The second book was a decent continuation of the second, but it lacked that feeling of complexity (maybe because by now you have a firm understanding of the world). The third was just okay. I feel like it would have liked it more if I didn't have to compare it to the first two. After that everything just goes to shit. I remember reading the fifth book and having a pain in my chest wondering why the publisher thought this was a good idea. I think the issue was his fan base kept demanding more and more, but he had ran out of ideas. Really sad to see such an amazing book be followed by so much disappointment.

I believe the cap was put in place to assure that bitcoin maintains value throughout time. If there was no cap, there would be a pseudo-unlimited supply of Bitcoin, which would lead to massive inflation and devaluation. The technical issues with the current blockchain system lasting that long aside, I can't see devaluation becoming an issue. One of the most powerful aspects of bitcoin is that they are made to be divided into incredibly small amounts ( i.e. 1BTC = 1,000,000 Satoshi). Assuming that Bitcoin does survive to each the 21 million cap, that would mean that while there are only 21 million bitcoins, they can be divided into 2.1e+13 Satoshi (which is about 15 times more than the 1.37 trillion US dollars that are currently in circulation). With that many potential units of currency, it's very difficult to imagine deflation becoming an issue.

Hopefully I've somewhat answered your question.

I know exactly what you mean. That feeling of intimidation is what kept me from contributing to Reddit for a long time after I discovered it. I imagine another benefit of this site is that it won't encourage users to make one line puns or joke answers that have nothing to contribute to the discussion. If you take out the basic incentive of posting, you'll only get content and comments from people who actually want to take the time to post for the sake of posting.

I've bounced around a lot of different forums and online communities in my time and have seen a lot of different ways those sites have monetized themselves. The best method that I've seen so far is giving out a cosmetic badge for donations. It's like users are paying to help support the site and to have a few pixels to feel ever so slightly superior to the other users. The most effective way I've seen this implemented is by offering different badges for different donations amount (e.g. $5, $20, $50). A lot of users will donate simply to get the $5 badge, benefits to the site aside. Once they make a smaller donation and have a badge next to their username to remind them of that, they are far more likely to make a larger donation, if only to get another badge. I'm willing to admit that I've bumped up my donation to a site solely to get a badge, and I'm sure many other users would too.