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Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 117. (Read 345758 times)

legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
June 04, 2015, 03:57:15 PM
it as at the stage now in australia where the media only need to whisper the T word and it instantly justifies household raids and holding the "suspect/s" for eternity without charges.
The T word has been redefined to include everyone the state doesn't like.
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
June 04, 2015, 02:19:45 PM
...

Armstrong has another interesting article at his blog, this one is about someone burning 10 cars of Denmark's taxation authorities:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31307

Denmark?  One of the calmest places in the world.  We have two friends in Denmark, they are OK with very high taxes.  Maybe the whole idea of "Economic Totalitarianism" is spreading...

Ahh, no, I did not discuss Bitcoin nor gold during their recent visit here.  My wife does not like that kind of talk around civilized people...

Smiley
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
June 04, 2015, 02:11:44 PM
...

Here's a quote today from Martin Armstrong's blog re gold and Europe:

"My personal observation in Spain was that retail bullion coins were no longer sold in the banks or stores, which contrasted with what I observed in Italy. We also see problems in selling gold in France. Governments are targeting gold as a means to get money out of the banks, and they are doing their best to make it quasi-illegal by intimidation. Gold can be the underground means of conducting transactions if governments move to eliminate currency by moving electronic. That is when they could make it illegal to conduct such transactions as grounds for confiscation."

http://armstrongeconomics.com/armstrong_economics_blog

Gold and Bitcoin are GREAT short-term ways to protect some wealth in a crashing Europe.

Yes, BTC price is very volatile.  Yes, gold (in quantity) is hard to quietly take out by airplane.  But, for taking assets out of Greece (or Spain), I would certainly look into BTC or gold...

Fuckin' totalitarians... (is profanity prohibited here?)

sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 04, 2015, 11:59:43 AM
I don't agree with your apathy on whether cryptographers who invent anything that truly threatens TPTB will be made into examples.

Smooth I also don't think it is viable to murder dozens of open source programmers because it would be difficult to obscure on that scale and thus the hacker community would likely rise up and retaliate (and win!). But in terms of stopping an immediate threat or making an example out of a serious threat which can be done in an obfuscated manner so as to not wake up the entire community, I think it is a realistic consideration. Perhaps avoiding outcomes below is contingent on carefully accessing the situation the potential victim has placed himself into. For example, attack the Russian oligarchs and you will be overtly assassinated. Attack the CIA or NSA and they will weigh the cost of murdering versus the risk of waking up the sheeople.

If I felt the community wasn't so damn asleep, I wouldn't feel a need to be anonymous as a lead dev (of something that truly threatened TPTB).

Note I am concurring with smooth's stance up to the point of noting how the community abandoned Ross.

What they often do instead of murder you is send the IRS after you.

Strange Deaths Surrounding Wall Street

Teaching Encryption Could Soon to Be Illegal in Australia

Former kingpin Rick Ross talks Gary Webb’s death, C.I.A. complicity

Renowned investigative journalist Michael Hastings was working on story about CIA Chief John Brennan at the time of his mysterious death



WikiLeaks: Journalist Michael Hastings Under FBI Investigation Before Death

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/15929-journalist-probing-nsa-and-cia-abuses-dies-in-mysterious-crash

https://www.google.com/search?q=death+of+Gary+Webb

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya#Murder.2C_investigation_and_trial

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

"...Kondratieff was taken outside and then shot to death at the age of 46..."

Aaron Swartz – A Voice of Freedom Silenced

Who Killed Michael Hastings?

Mystery grows: Journalist died prepping Obama exposé

Ross Ulbricht's life sentence and the following drug syndicate execution of an investigative reporter are intentionally brutal public displays designed to discourage others who might serious threats to monopolies. Ross Ulbricht's Silk Road was a serious threat to the economic monopoly of the global elite.

"...having his hands, arms, and legs severed with a sword while still alive; and then had his body placed within tires, covered in gasoline and set on fire – a practice that traffickers have dubbed micro-ondas (allusion to the microwave oven..."
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 04, 2015, 04:54:27 AM
Gavin's allusion to Greg overextending himself is an example of his pragmatism and balance. Gavin made choices based on being able to deliver, not based on what is ideal. My successes have come from being more like Gavin. My failures have come from being more like Greg.


Fundamentally, Gavin has assigned himself this problem.  He is diligently canvassing and curating opinions on the problems and methods of resolving them.
It can be frustrating work, but it is fully necessary.

He is getting a lot of help in this effort so it is not merely a contest of wills and personalities.  Also...Both Greg and Gavin are on the same team and not opposed, though their weighting of the priority of tasks may differ, so it is not really so much a matter of winner/loser.

My big picture is morphing. I now see that Bitcoin is approaching fragility due to reaching complexity and scaling constraints and there are no good solutions. Gavin is pushing for the simplest solution to retain scaling of transactions. Gregory is pushing for more time to develop their "solution" of pegged side chains, hoping that will offload some of the pressure on block size increases. Blockstream proponents have an incentive to keep the block size small enough that there is an incentive to try their pegged side chains. Gavin's proposal is more pragmatic and direct, but not if it requires breaking the consensus with a new full node code base (but I suspect he introduced this as an intentional Red Herring to encourage capitulation and compromise).

I don't see any of it working long-term. Bitcoin is eventually falling into the lap of the corporations in the space who will take over as the decentralized morass implodes. TPTB are subsuming Bitcoin from every facet (regulation, capturing the masses in online wallets, Sybil attacking the pools, 21 Inc strategy to monopolize mining economics, etc).

Perhaps Steve Jobs greatest skill was in identifying scaling constraints. Here is an example of what Steve taught my former boss.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 04, 2015, 04:28:32 AM
and this is fun: NSA errwhere! Grin

> http://imgur.com/a/9CAfo <

how about that freedomTM act? US people happy?

Sorry for the noise. I can't resist commenting that is simultaneously hilarious and sobering (or exciting depending...).
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 03, 2015, 07:13:09 PM
[gossip about personalities]

This seems very plausible.

It's also irrelevant.

20MB blocks aren't a Gavinista vs Greg issue.  The XT controversy has set the Gavinistas against all our other core devs.

You still haven't answered my bolded question below.

I have reviewed the pegged side-chains idea at Blockstream. The idea is BTC value can be moved to orthogonal blockchains. Assuming these "pegged coins" remain fungible (which is dubious and probably an incorrect assumption[1]), then in theory the shared-in-common unit-of-account network effects are not hindered, yet the network effects due to interoperability is lost because competing chains are not required to interopt, i.e. spending from one chain to another might require a trip back through the Bitcoin blockchain which defeats the scalability due to constricting the Bitcoin blocksize.

Pegged side-chains are a hack that move the same problems that need to be fixed in the main blockchain to the side-chain, but the fundamental problem remains. Worse they destroy interoperability and probably create a huge mess of fungibility.

Bottom line is that Bitcoin is an overly complex, highly flawed mess that can not be fixed. There is only one outcome which will be accepted by the masses, which is the one where they are insured and protected by the State, i.e. Coinbase, Paypal, Circle (CPC). Whether this is achieved with huge blocks (much greater than 20 MB eventually) and centralized Bitcoin mining, or CPC interoption on their proprietary "side-chains" is irrelevant. It doesn't matter which choice is made now, the effectual outcome on the masses will be the same.

[1] For example someone creates a side-chain with anonymity, so then these coins on the Bitcoin blockchain become tainted and subject to blacklisting.

BTC's "intrinsic value" is the fact is fulfills Aristotle's criteria for good money better than anything else (except Monero).

The BTC price is rising in terms of the last 5/4/3 years.  Zero to $250, by way of $1200.  Excellent performance by any definition.

The price rises when more people act on the optimistic zoomed out view than a cherry-picked local retrace.

You apparently have fooled yourself into believing the market performance of Bitcoin had nothing to do with the promotion of Bitcoin by the mainstream media (and thus implicitly by the banksters who own the mainstream media) or that you believe the MSM can be induced to cover a grassroots, virally growing phenomenon w/o the blessing of the banksters. I assert that if you were to go against their aims and goals (which you won't be able to do any way, Gavincoin has already won), then they would pull the plug on your fork and you would learn about the reverse wealth effect (the fact that the market cap != the amount of capital invested in the coin and this levered effect is a snowball uphill and downhill).

The synergy of believing Bitcoin is an improved money along with the prospect of future scaling of Bitcoin to the world's txns, is what drives wealth effect you love. Take away one, you lose the other. I do hope you try to fork Gavincoin.

The smart money already knows all about the hard UXTO limit, and is therefor investing in systems built on the core blockchain which offload tx pressure to sidechains and other off-main-chain whatnot.

If one had unlimited number of side-chains, this would fundamentally scale even without changing the fundamental design of the ledger for those side-chains. Those side-chains might even be non-public and/or non-decentralized ledgers (and perhaps even fractional reserves, etc).

I don't consider that option as viable is because currency requires a fungible unit-of-exchange (although there is an argument against this with real-time exchange between side-chains, which is an argument I presented ... but not sure if this is realistic or not). So side-chains won't help scale to the transaction volume of the world. We must fix the fundamental decentralized crypto design, or accept centralized morass (which btw won't scale either so that is yet another reason the NWO coin is going to be a dying paradigm...to be toppled by 2033).

An unlimited number of non-fungible side-chains might be useful for smart contracts but not for money.

As for the Gresham's Law.

Yes, I do want people to HLOD their BTC.  Hoarding helps the price in terms of fiat trash rise, and invigorates the beneficial feedback loops driving adoption which ultimately result in a race condition that breaks petrodollar hegemony.  It's the Cartmanland principle: if people can't have Bitcoin they will want it more than ever.

As much as the people jealously crave platinum, plutonium, and Astatine.  Roll Eyes

I specifically didn't mention gold because it is shiny and dense and thus has other appealing attributes for people besides its rare monetary value.

Quote
This ship is going to hit an iceberg, stop dead in its tracks and start leaking water as soon as the 1MB limit is hit consistently.

Bro, do you even Nassim Taleb?  

If you did, you'd already know antifragile systems require adversity to grow stronger (BTW, BTC is not analogous to The Titanic).

Conceptually I agree. But realize that creative destruction of species is often a result of competition in evolution.


The UXTO set is only the current bottleneck for scaling BTC to Visa++ levels of retail usage.  There are many others waiting in the wings (*cough, 10 min. block time, cough*).

Bitcoin's Mother-of-All-Blockchains is simply not the right tool for real-time retail POS interfaces.  Bitcoin's Mother-of-All-Blockchains is a back-office tool.

Okay so considering the trade-offs we have today to choose between (even VaporCoin was available, it would still be irrelevant to the choice made for Bitcoin), I have refuted side-chains. What is this back-office Bitcoin going to be used for then?
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
June 03, 2015, 10:16:41 AM
...

TPTB and troller

Even Peru has started in the killing of privacy (and Economic Totalitarianism) game.  ALL of our invoices (of our Peruvian bearing wholesaler/importer) have to be sent by email on MS Excel to Peru's taxation authorities.  They are very aggressive (although Peruvians do have a habit of cheating on their taxes).

There seems to no escape for the average José...
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
June 02, 2015, 09:42:36 PM
The situation we face is depressing to say the least &
the bitcoin fan boys suffer from extreme confirmation bias, this forum doesn't seem to help them, for the most part it only re-affirms their bias.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 02, 2015, 08:22:45 PM
Our problem however, is that most humans are not ready to transition to the Knowledge Age work and they will continue to demand debt and Industrial Age jobs (or the government to subsidize failure to obtain such a job).

i foresee a leveling out of resources and wealth due to the transparency of information access facilitated by the Internet.  this can't be stopped despite the state's resistance.

The only way we cross the chasm without falling into an totalitarian abyss along the way, is a newly designed crypto-currency for the fledgling Knowledge Age that can resist attack by the State because the People implicitly (due to their self-interest in debt and subsidies) demand the State to maintain a monopoly on force.

i agree and think Bitcoin is it.


Dont you think there's something off, as in your brain,  in you continually berating me about thousands of years of sheeples being manipulated, no chance that Bitcoin can change anything, yet you coming in here and telling us that for $10000 you will let us in on your altcoin that WILL change everything?

When debate on the merits has been conceded, the loser often resorts to character assassination.

Bitcoin will surely change some things, and I assert not all for the better. I never claimed Bitcoin was a /dev/null event and in fact argued that it is a monumental event.

I doubt anything I or others might attempt would change everything. Experiments are experiments. And I have no delusion about changing everything. I might hope to make some positive contribution if after more thought it is concluded that moving forward is viable and wise.

I support Bitcoin because for every 100 masses we introduce to crypto-currency, maybe 1 will awaken and be an important ally. I have repeatedly said I support spreading Bitcoin because it adds to the capital base (remember capital is not money, but the productive capacity).

I view Bitcoin as the scattershot coin (assuming iCe et al lose[1]). I entertain the hope and ideas about potential anonymity and decentralized focused altcoin(s) that serve vertical (hopefully horizontal growth) markets.

In short, "you can't do just one thing" and this applies to anything TPTB create as well. There is always a reactive force and seepage.

[1] I have entertained the thought that Coinbase, Paypal, etc might prefer a 1MB limit because it would push transactions to offchain. But I doubt that is their overriding calculus.


Edit: the many readers I and others have been able to touch (including our dialogue here) is one of the seepage effects Bitcoin is causing. I do not assert that Bitcoin has no positive effects. I've been derogatory on the overriding effect of Bitcoin on the masses. You are correct to call me out and get me to clarify this point.

what a bunch of dissembling, conflicted, and illogical bullshit.


Apparently the concept is too complex for your mind.

It is quite simple actually.

The internet and Bitcoin are platforms for spreading information, but the masses are not aligned to global monetary optimization because their daily priorities are else where. Thus they easily throw their support to the wrong "solutions", e.g. the massive outpouring of emotions and support for FCC regulation of Net Neutrality (which the mass media propaganda fed to the idealistic masses).

And Bitcoin doesn't have the design which resists on its own. It requires mass diligence.

Very simple. Don't know why you can't wrap your mind around it.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 02, 2015, 06:34:34 PM
Bitmessage Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attack

If you are contemplating communication in Bitmessage, such as to communicate with me anonymously and with encrypted messages[1], please note there are several vulnerabilities you need to address. I will discuss the major two below.

First you need to make sure you are running Bitmessage on a computer that can't possibly be infected with a viruses, because such a virus can read the decrypted messages stored by Bitmessage on your hard disk. So this means you need to be running Bitmesssage on a computer that you do not use for other activities, especially not for surfing the internet and downloading files. Also make sure you are not running Windows 7 or later, because they are spyware! Also do not run Skype or any other spyware on that computer! It would be a good idea to reformat your hard disk and reinstall your operating system periodically to make sure all sectors of the hard disk have been wiped of all decrypted copies of prior communications. Note that deleting a file doesn't remove its contents from the hard disk (a virus or forensic analysis can still recover the sectors from the hard disk) and only overwriting all sectors of the hard disk will permanently remove the data (and actually to be safe against physical forensic analysis the sectors must be overwritten numerous times, because faint magnetic traces remain).

Secondly you need to make sure that the person you are communicating with is not a MITM! The ONLY way a MITM attack would work on Bitmessage is if one party is sending to a Bitmessage address (the public key) which is different than the recipient's address. The MITM would intercept the initial communication (over any means of communication) of the Bitmessage address from the recipient to the sender, and give the sender the MITM's address. When the sender sends a message, the MITM decrypts it, modifies the message as necessary (e.g. to change any Bitmessage addresses communicated in the message to its own addresses), then forwards the message to recipient. Ditto when the recipient replies. Neither the sender nor recipient will realize there is a MITM, as they will think they are communicating directly with each other.

Note the key to avoiding a MITM attack on Bitmessage is to make sure the initial communication of the recipient's public key was not altered before the sender received it. After that exchange is done correctly, there is no future way for the MITM to insert himself in the middle of the ongoing communications, because only the recipient can decrypt his/her copy of the message broadcasted by the sender.

In theory a ubiquitous authority (e.g. the NSA or Five Eyes gestapos) could intercept an email or forum private message (remember HTTPS doesn't stop them usually because they have compromised the certificate authorities) and display a difference result for it when the sender views it.

Thus to communicate the recipient's Bitmessage address with assurance, it would be best to use one of the two methods:

1. Send the Bitmessage address ONCE encrypted and use PGP's Web of Trust to be sure of the PGP public key of the sender is not subject to MITM. Web of Trust is a mechanism for defeating MITM for PGP encrypted communications.

2. Put your Bitmessage address on a publicly viewable web page (e.g. your forum profile) and then view this page from numerous anonymous IP addresses to be sure it appears the same for everyone (not just for your IP address which the MITM might be modifying when you view it). Ditto the sender must view this web page from numerous anonymous IP addresses.

An anonymous IP address can not be assuredly obtained with Tor (nor I2P?[1]). The most assured anonymous IP address would be an unregistered (meaning you don't provide any personal login credentials) WiFi connection, such as at a local library, coffee shop, etc..


[1]As far as I know, there is no other tool for communicating anonymously where the ubiquitous authority (e.g. the NSA or Five Eyes gestapos) can't ascertain whom is talking to whom, because all messages are broadcasted (sent) to everyone (and only the intended recipient decrypts his/her copy). In theory one could use any form of encrypted messaging over Tor (or I2P), but I assert those (Tor and I2P) low-latency, onion routing anonymity networks are probably compromised and have not been designed to be guaranteed (provable levels of) anonymity. Note some people think I2P may be more reliably anonymous but I've not seen sufficient technical justification for this (haven't looked recently).
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
June 02, 2015, 05:59:33 PM

Anyone who digs down the rabbit hole of research will realize that the elite in China are key players in and fully onboard the plan towards a one-world reserve currency and global Technocracy system. This is one of the reasons the elite moved all the manufacturing to China.

Btw, I see our newest subdivision in Davao (Bamboo Estates) has Smart Meters for both electric and water (made in China of course). These meters will eventually report every thing you do in the home back to the authorities. You pay your water and electric bill by swiping a smart card across the magnetic reader on these meters.

The Chinese run the Philippines. The Chinese will turn Asia into a Technocracy.

We are moving towards 666 and total enslavement.

Btw, I had theorized that 666 is the wavelength of red and the number of man is blood. The NWO system will eventually be a eugenics system that will grow and harvest humans for their blood. (that is just a wild ass hypothesis and any way I want my rationalizations not to depend on any religious construct)
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
June 02, 2015, 07:06:54 AM
it seems the NWO goal has been gradually planned as the next step after the industrial age, that being to reduce the population to under 500 000 000, live in harmony with nature etc.
They want this knowledge age for themselves, and they can only achieve that with the boot stomping on the face.
donator
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1036
June 01, 2015, 04:20:25 AM
Does anyone entertain the idea that the sweeping tide of totaliarianism is some kind of a cover-up to make the best minds occupied to fight for their very existence? So that the actual plan is not the 1984ish "boot stomping on the human face forever" but there is something more to it, but the controllers are maybe overloaded with the information that they also need to process, and have therefore embarked on the seeming "war against knowledge, understanding, consciousness, perception etc".

Just found out that the midpoint of the great chamber of the Kheops Pyramid is situated at such a point (29.9792458° N) that it agrees with the speed of light in vacuum in 9 figure precision (299,792,458 m/s), corresponding to 3.3 centimeters resolution in the placement of the chamber. This is the most astounding coincidence that I have found during my longstanding interest in such. Youtube 1 minute.

It handsomely beats even the values of Pi and e found in Genesis 1:1 and Gospel of John 1:1 in precision. (There is also the well-known 5-digit value of Pi in 1. Kings, quoted from the sceptic site for added credibility among Bible non-believers. This establishes the circumference of the vessel in question in the verse, with 0.5 mm precision given that the diameter was an exact value.)
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 31, 2015, 11:40:59 AM
OROBTC, I think perhaps they think they are excluded. But I've also contemplated (and I am impressed you are similarly astute) that the smartest of them would understand they need anonymity. Anonymity requires mixing with many other users, thus it can't be a system exclusively for them.

This has been one ray of hope that they will realize they have to allow seepage. However, don't expect the system to act rationally, as the totalitarianism is pretty much on auto-pilot by now.
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
May 31, 2015, 10:24:08 AM
...

TPTB

I have a question for you, as you have given this whole matter of quiet assets a lot of thought.

Alas, the "real TPTB" (the ones who want to take our wealth away from us and makes us slaves) might have a hard time with their own, that is, with other components of the rich & powerful fighting each other for their own wealth and power.  NO CASH and no "money" that is anonymous would seem to NOT serve their purposes...

So, if there is no way for them (the real TPTB) to steal and hide their assets without cash or gold or anonymity (esp. from others of their class/group), how do they protect themselves from each other?

(real question that I do not know the answer to)


EDIT: Nice links, TPTB.  It is curious that it is getting harder to buy gold in Europe...
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