You mean how many people lost their wallets or deleted them?

My personal assumption is that less than 2000 coins lost back when people could generate 50 fair easily. After that, they became too precious to waste. So the lost bitcoin can be neglected even now, at approx. 5 million.

A friend of mine bought 2000 coins for about 15 $ back then, later reformatted his hard drive and now regrets it bitterly.

There will also be, over time, people who die and their relatives don't know they had bitcoins or they can't get into the person's pc because it is password-protected. 

Does anyone else think this might be a real problem in the long run? To me this sounds like bitcoins will be on a long, long deflationary slide the minute we hit the 21 million mark. Bitcoins are sure to be lost; if there is no way to reclaim them, that long deflationary slide could bode ill for our fledgling coin.

This is true. The decimal nature of bitcoins would let us do that. However (and I'm not sure if this is likely at all, but it seems a possibility) if the rate of deflation proceeds at too great a clip, couldn't that end up widening the gap between the wealthy and the poor, resulting in oligarchy? My concern is simply that we could end up creating an economy where those who are new to the bitcoin system are at a pronounced disadvantage when compared to those who are not.

At present this can be written off as a "finder's fee": we are the early adopters, the risk is ours, therefore we deserve to profit. However, if bitcoins gain global acceptance, we may have to face the fact that the "newcomers" may be drawn from among the young or freshly impoverished. Perhaps it is beyond the scope of a currency's structure to favor the upwardly mobile, but I am (presently) of the opinion that it would be beneficial to have that "upward mobility" element baked into the currency of a society.

I realize I may not have made my point very clearly, but I should be going now. I was supposed to be somewhere a little while ago and got sucked in by the discussion. I'll return, hopefully soon.

The richer people are the more people they can put in jobs and the more charity they can give money too.

Bitcoin is voluntary wealth distribution.

Meh. Not a fan of trickle down economics. It only facilitates the exploitation of the masses. That said, nothing about Bitcoin requires its pioneers to exploit others. We ought to eschew interest, profit, and rent in favor of cooperative relationships.

I posit that these things are cooperative relationships.

Adam wants $500 per month more than he wants to use his basement. Bob wants to live in his basement more than he wants $500 per month. They cooperatively exchange these things to their mutual benefit.

Adam wants $6 in interest more than he wants to use his $100 this year. Bob wants that $100 now more than he wants $106 a year from now. They cooperatively exchange $100 now for $106 a year from now and they are both happier for it.

I don't see how it can be considered exploitation if both parties enter willingly, no matter how much the cost.

I presume you mean 'no greater cost than the expenses Adam would incur' ?

If this is the case, you don't account for the expense to Adam of not having use of his basement. This is exploitative of Adam. He's losing something valuable and not getting it back from Bob.

Of course, if Adam agrees that providing Bob with a dwelling is incentive enough to allow him to live in the basement for free, than that's fine. If he does not think this is the case, then such an arrangement would be exploitative of Adam.

I'm not sure what you mean. Say Bob wants to borrow that money to pay his heating bill while he's in college, and he wants to pay it off a year later when he's got a high paying job. What would you say is fair interest?