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Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 118. (Read 345738 times)

sr. member
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May 31, 2015, 05:02:41 AM
Gold Becoming Illegal?

End Game, Gold Investors Will be Destroyed

Note the "hyper-inflation" I referred to in 2010, is what Armstrong refers to as the stampede out of sovereign bonds, national currencies, and into private assets. This will be occur while the world is simultaneously collapsing in deflation due to debt defaults and the stampede of CONFIDENCE away from the economy into holes in the ground.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 31, 2015, 01:02:17 AM
This was an expected outcome: Ross got life because when it comes to money creation and drug dealing, the US government hates competition so it's bad news for him. But unfortunately for him Bitcoin just sees him this way   Lips sealed Sorry Ross

And you expect that such a thankless and personally risky paradigm will embolden the free market against legal tender laws and regulation Huh

How many of you are now willing to make another Silk Road? You think a Tor hidden service[1] will protect you.  Roll Eyes

[1]https://blog.torproject.org/blog/thoughts-and-concerns-about-operation-onymous
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/hidden-services-need-some-love
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
May 30, 2015, 09:29:11 PM
An observation: I went to a renovated mall today, the new section has no ATM's (they still remain in the much smaller old section) there is an obvious hidden agenda here to make cash an inconvenience.

Check for yourselves, it would be interesting to see what is found world wide.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
May 30, 2015, 06:40:01 AM
trollercoaster,

I will need to go silent now because I am moving too slowly by interacting here on the forum. I have to make a life decision.

I've tried my best over the past week or two, to  interact with and become cognizant of the various modes of thinking of core Bitcoin supporters. Hopefully I have explained my stance clearly?

Edit: someone has started a thread on Bitcointalk.org members who have been targeted by law enforcement:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-of-members-of-bitcointalk-sentenced-in-a-court-of-law-concerning-bitcoin-1074520

Thank you for your work here in this forum, my offer to assist with funding towards your alt coin project still stands, I am not a programmer (so I can be of no assistance there)
a decentralized, incorruptible, anonymous coin IS the solution/frontier to the totalitarian abyss we are being cornered into.
But, all the best with whatever you decide to do  Smiley
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 30, 2015, 02:59:15 AM
trollercoaster,

I will need to go silent now because I am moving too slowly by interacting here on the forum. I have to make a life decision.

I've tried my best over the past week or two, to  interact with and become cognizant of the various modes of thinking of core Bitcoin supporters. Hopefully I have explained my stance clearly?

Edit: someone has started a thread on Bitcointalk.org members who have been targeted by law enforcement:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-of-members-of-bitcointalk-sentenced-in-a-court-of-law-concerning-bitcoin-1074520
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
May 30, 2015, 02:35:05 AM
The following snipped from armstrongs blog, it's INSANE how fast this is all moving going into 2015.75:


Austria is where the Sovereign Debt Crisis began with a bank failure in 1931. Today, Austria continues to have a raging controversy over the abolition of bank secrecy. Just look at how far they are going against the citizens because of bank mismanagement, once again, and it is scaring the hell out of a lot of people behind the curtain. The government is monitoring taxpayers in a manner that will lead to the elimination of all private rights in the future. They are now introducing new laws, which forces all taxpayers to submit their fingerprints, as well as their IP e-mail addresses, to the tax office so that the government can track every piece of loose change.

Austria is obviously moving to the extreme by extending their powers of intervention to financial authorities, demonstrating that the world these people are creating is totally authoritarian. Taxes are a barbaric relic of the past and are no longer necessary since money is not some tangible commodity – money is the total productive capacity of the people. These people in government spend recklessly and never reform, while corruption engulfs all governments around the world. We no longer need taxes at the federal level when money is intangible to begin with. The days of commodity-based money are gone. Government needed taxes in the past to retrieve some portion of the commodity to spend again. Today, money is electronic; there is no need to impose taxes and track everyone when they are capable of creating money at will anyway. The key is to cap the amount of money that can be created annually to pay for government, and leave the people free to expand their own economy. This is insane and we are losing all our rights because these people do not even understand what money is anymore.

sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 29, 2015, 10:34:06 PM
Pretty bold claims from Middleton, but I have tried it and it works, at least in a beta phase, not vapor phase or proof of concept phase, but beta phase.  You can trade all tickers that Cypherdoc mentions on here.  

I still don't understand how the tickers are fed into veritaseum to settle the bets. Can you explain that?

Saying "it works" without understanding how it works is short-sighted.

Twice or thrice I tried to find technical documentation (wading through all the promotional crap) and was stifled, so I assumed it is centralized bullshit.

That's not a fair presumption. Most tech dudes (and most people in general) use the financial system and have absolutely no idea how it works. Does that mean that your money doesn't spend? Veritaseum, from a capital perspective, is fully decentralized. It is the only automated system that I know of that is fully autonomous in that you keep your private keys private and on your client under your control. All transactions are peer to peer through the blockchain, and our server doesn't touch, house, hold, custody or control a single satoshi of your coin. Read http://veritaseum.com/index.php/homes/1-blog/128-will-new-vc-investment-trump-the-returns-of-the-early-movers-in-the-digital-currency-space-quite-possibly-let-me-show-you-how and http://veritaseum.com/index.php/homes/1-blog/94-bitcoin-1-0-vs-2-0-or-a-comparison-of-legacy-exchanges-veritaseum-s-ultracoin for the difference between centralized and decentralized systems.
As an aside, the vast majority of bitcoin traders don't seem to have a problem with centralized systems as they freely send their decentralized assets to fully centralized entities to house, trade and exchange. Just a little food for thought.

If it is really just a protocol, then by definition there is nothing to stop someone from bypassing your client and writing directly to the protocol, cutting out the Middleton-man.

I am assuming there is some proprietary lockin somewhere in there, but without code and technical documentation, why should I (or other hackers/geeks/tech dudes) consume my (our) time trying to understand the system using inefficient means of trying to deobfuscate what you ostensibly (at least last time I looked) want to obfuscate. I will take a quick glance at the links above, but if they don't get direct to the technical points (as what I saw on your website before) then I will not expend more time.

P.S. some of us do understand both economics and programming. That is not to say I have any insider or real-world WallStreet experience (thank the almighty for that blessing).

Edit: I glanced at the links. Reggie we know already all about the virtues and design of decentralized exchanges. We understand the use of a mutually trusted "Facilitator" (Escrow agent). We understand the need for decentralized, consensus data feeds (which you apparently don't yet have in your system). We do not need to read all that shit over and over again. When we ask for technical documentation, we mean precisely that and none of this marketing overhead. Some of us are much more aware than you may think. We are also thinking about these sorts of designs and markets too (believe me you were not any where close to being the first).

I do not understand how to expect to gain traction. You can leverage your reputation and connections in the financial sphere, but afaics you do not know how to interface with the tech dudes who are the core of the Bitcoin sphere. IMO, if you want us on board, this has to be a collaborative effort and open source system. And so then how do you make your ROI on this? Does this project have its own coin (I think not). The world is not going to adopt Reggie-wallet. Sorry. You will need an open protocol and another way to make your ROI.

Perhaps there is some way to leverage your strengths and the open source community, but afaics you haven't partnered with the right CTO to get it done. I see more of a closed-source, proprietary, marketing spin philosophy thus far.

Also you appear to be building a specific protocol for trading options. Ethereum (and CounterParty?) is in the space of creating a programmable block chain wherein there can be a free market competition amongst protocols. I suggested last year that Ethereum can never scale and the only solution is merge-minded chains for programmable chains.

Some of us are thinking much bigger and more open than you. You should not assume you are the next Google. I highly doubt it.

P.S. your calls on Apple and Google were obvious to me also (before I found out about you on Zerohedge). I had written similar predictions on http://esr.ibiblio.org perhaps before you did. My point is your very boastful marketing spins are out of proportion to the technical acumen display openly thus far. Perhaps your team are technical wizards, but I don't know.

You are awfully confrontational. Why is that? What boasting are you speaking of. I believe I have over 80 vindicated contrarian calls covering many industries and sovereign nations, going back to 2006. Is that what you consider boasting? If so, it's not - it's marketing, designed to inform those who don't know who I am (likely many in this forum) of what I've accomplished in the past. Now, on to your points.

Anyone can, with enough effort, reproduce anything that's done on Wall Street, yet somehow Wall Street thrives. The reasons are a) its often difficult without both capital resources and specialized knowledge b) its really just not worth it much of the time c) many don't know how.

We are a financial software company, thus our core audience are financial types, not "technical dudes" as you describe them. Goldman, Bitfinex, itBit, JP Morgan and Citi don't have technical documents on their site describing what they do and how they do it. They offer you a service and/or solution and you decide if you want to use it. For some reason, you are not comparing us to our competitors, you are comparing us to a technical concern. I don't believe that is fair.

As for understanding economics, that has little to do with what we have built. Financial engineering, valuation and markets knowledge are much, much more useful in understanding what we're doing than economics will ever be.

As for proprietary lock-in, we let you keep your keys, and the code is on your client. We provide a service, just like a financial institutions does. It's simply that since our service and code is based on autonomy, you are in control. The institutions that you are used to dealing with are heteronomous, hence they must usurp control to reap margin - two very, very different business models. You can guess which one I think is superior. Time will tell if enough of the world agrees with me.

Your assertions about who was the first to do this and that are totally unnecessary. For one, you have no idea when I started doing anything that I did. In addition, its a useless debate anyway. Who really cares who was first, second or third? Really. What actually matters is who has a usable product now, and will that product be able to blossom and grow into the future. Isn't this correct? Now, enough of the unwarranted challenges. I'm here to work with you guys.

If you want to work with me to improve the code, then by all means let's do it. The code is not open sourced for legal, business and logistical reasons, but I as founder am willing to have the community work on it, we just need the resources to manage such. Keep in mind that this is going significantly above what ALL of our competition is willing to, or has done thus far. As for our CTO, he is quite qualified. Very, very few CTOs can right competent legal contracts. Very few IP lawyers can architect and design competent legal code. Our CTO is ivy league trained in both fields and has 15 years experience in payments with some of the biggest names in the industry. I'm proud to have him on board as part of the project. We are more open than any derivatives concern that I know of. If I'm mistaken, then please point that out.

We don't trade options. You are mistaken. We deal in smart contracted, OTC, P2P swaps. I believe our system is more advanced than anything available on Counterparty and Ethereum, and more importantly it is up and running and working right now.

You said, "Some of us are thinking much bigger and more open than you. You should not assume you are the next Google. I highly doubt it.". Well, I love you too! :-)  Grin May I suggest a more friendly, less insulting approach? I don't recall assuming anything of the sort.

In the marketing blog posts which you linked to in your prior post in this thread, I've read the comparison to the next Google et al; and afaics there is not a clear delineation whether you are referring to the trend of Bitcoin 2.0 or your effort specifically. It comes across (at least to me) as wanting to sell yours as the big breakthrough vastly superior (in terms of being first to innovate, patents, and insight) over efforts before and ongoing in crypto. I found that to be paradigmatically (not personally) offensive because you are creating a for-profit company approach and as I understand the entire point of decentralized crypto-currency is to remove the profit from the center of the network and push the profit out to the ends of the network.

Thus finally fulfilling the essential End-to-end Principal of the internet's network design onto the monetary attributes of the internet.

I am so fanatical about that attribute of crypto-currency not even for ideological preferences, rather pragmatic because I believe we are headed into a totalitarian abyss of epic proportions[1] and only systems which are monetarily End-to-end structured will prosper medium-term (2018+) and beyond.

Note I am not a Communist and I am not against profit. I am speaking about the paradigm of where profit originates (at the ends, where the Knowledge Age producers are[1]) and about Anti-fragility and resilience of networks and societies.

So let me respond to all your posts by saying I don't dislike you and I don't have any personal animosity towards you. I am actually a very friendly, smiling, and amicable person. At the moment, I feel an intense tiger fight inside of me because of what we are facing here. I think perhaps you are oblivious. And thus you are proceeding in mainstream financial circles as if no paradigmatic cliff is awaiting you and the mainstream.

Someone important asked me in private about your effort, and my pragmatic advice was essentially, "it is too non-standard for the WallStreet types he wants to target, and too closed-source, top-down business model for the rest of us in the Bitcoin sphere to adopt". I don't think you have a market. Thus you can offend (or cause us to ignore) the techie crowd that want an end-to-end monetary world and fail to gain the trust of the mainstream as well (btw if I was a mainstream investor and I saw all that bling-bling imagery and "blahblahblah" verbiage all over your website, I would leave and not come back. Get to the point and make it look more conservative like a financial services company). Perhaps I am wrong if you can target the Europeans who will be fleeing their October 2015 economic cliff into US dollars and US dollar assets. Afaik there is no coin attached to your effort, thus there is no wealth effect reason for the speculators to stampede into your effort. Afaics, you are trying to sell services with a proprietary model that violates the End-to-end principle.

Perhaps we can find some way to work with your system by attaching some open-source interoperable interface on it. For example, if we can figure out some way that individuals can trade mainstream assets anonymously with minimal counter party risk, that is big plus. Note that any such interoption is going to (via decentralized innovation) over time subsume your business model into the superior economics of the End-to-end principle, except for any server services that can't be subsumed due to social or technical limitations.

I think we need to dig into the details before we can make any more definitive statements than those abstractions.

One of the frustrations is your business model and marketing choices, has made it very inefficient to dig into the details. You are probably losing synergy opportunities by not interfacing to the techie crowd in our preferred modes of interaction (e.g. show us the code and technical documents on a github account).

Closed source will die over time except at the ends of the network.

The crypto market is choosing leaders who (and movements which) can fulfill the End-to-end Principle of meritocracy onto the monetary attributes of the world.

P.S. I was aware you had chosen your CTO for his experience with law in addition to his technical acumen. I am not claiming he isn't talented. Rather I am just addressing the market and paradigmatic realities as I see them. He was chosen to lead a business model which I believe is antithetical to the direction crypto and the world is headed.

[1]One-world reserve currency inevitable...
Economic Devastation
Economic Totalitarianism
Is a Madmax outcome coming before 2020? Thus do we need anonymity?

Note I formerly posted under the pseudonym AnonyMint and several others.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 29, 2015, 09:13:00 PM
Quote from: armstrong
If you use U.S. shares, you may want to take possession of the share certificates.
... Is the underlying reason the proposed 10% weath tax?

My guess is defaults of brokerages (third party intermediary) risk.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
May 29, 2015, 02:02:14 PM
concerning practical advice for europeans:
Quote from: armstrong
For European readers, swap to dollars for hoarding and you can open accounts in the U.S., which for now is a safety valve. While gold makes sense for local hoarding, it may have lost its movability.
sounds good but opening an US bank account seems to require an USA trip. what's the best alternative? Hoarding USD cash(conversion fees,making a target out of yourself(see paying with gold))? Open a foreign exchange account at a euro bank? open a swiss franks/foreign exchange bank account in switzerland? buy USA gov bonds?
Quote from: armstrong
If you use U.S. shares, you may want to take possession of the share certificates.
opinions on required portfolio size for that to make size considering fees? Is the underlying reason the proposed 10% weath tax?
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 29, 2015, 03:22:08 AM
Armstrong toys with the idea that Europe might make some drastic move towards eliminating cash on his ECM turn date Oct. 1, 2015:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31028

Quote
The Coming Cashless Society

You are now watching newspapers, TV shows, and other forms of media preparing for the coming cashless society. This is a marketing campaign, and may indeed be what October 1, 2015 is all about – 2015.75. I doubt that the USA will be able to move to a cashless society as easily as Europe. The dollar is used around the world and cancelling that outstanding money supply would bring tremendous international unrest. Additionally, the USA is not in crisis financially, as is the case in Europe.

Europe, on the other hand, has an entirely different problem. The failure to have consolidated the debts of member states meant that the reserves of the banks were constituted from a politically correct mixture of debt. Instead of fixing the problem, politicians who are lawyers always move one-step forward with laws. To them the logical solution is to eliminate cash to protect banks from a panic run that would collapse Europe and take Brussels with it.

This is now a deliberate marketing campaign. I know how these things work and pay attention. They are selling this idea everywhere and that is the preparation for the inevitable action. With the speed at which they are moving, it certainly appears they are gearing up for October 1 on our model. It is also interesting that some German press misquoted our date as October 17. I was not sure why they would do that, but perhaps that was intentional as well. This is very curious, for when they take that final step, it will most likely be sudden and overnight. They would announce it and give everyone some time frame to take their paper currency and deposit it into their bank accounts.

For European readers, swap to dollars for hoarding and you can open accounts in the U.S., which for now is a safety valve. While gold makes sense for local hoarding, it may have lost its movability.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31026

Quote
For the individual, hoard dollars not euros. I seriously doubt the USA will be able to cancel dollars, but the ECB can cancel the euro overnight.
sr. member
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May 28, 2015, 11:37:24 PM

Australia is a member of the Five Eyes nations.

Indeed this shows how desperate they are. As with Napster, they will just drive the movement to anonymity.
legendary
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May 28, 2015, 10:47:22 PM
I find the cryptography news amusing, it's starting to show how desperate they are to cling to power and their true facist intentions.
legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 1852
May 28, 2015, 10:20:37 PM
...

trollercoaster

Both of your links are excellent and very much pertinent to Economic Totalitarianism.

1)  Re ELB and the possibility of banning CA$H, I have seen this covered a lot, perhaps this means TPTB are softening us up before they try to ban cash.  There is some hope for us who like cash: that quiet payments to officials (read: corruption) might only BEST be made with cash or some other anonymous mechanism.  I do not know how much that would stand up (cash-4-corruption) vs. the banks and .gov hating cash...

2)  Re cryptography, what is happening to free speech here?!  Banning it seems to be a hard proposition, even for a .gov.  Even if high-level cryptography is only to be studied at military (and related) institutes, word of new research breakthroughs (etc.) would leak...

*   *   *

The fact that BOTH of these terrible ideas are running near simultaneously is ominous.

Their grip tightens...
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
May 26, 2015, 12:31:55 PM
...

TPTB

I caught the following re Larry Summers just now:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/visas-hock-citibanks-reed-former-treasury-secretary-summers-join-xapos-advisory-board/

Three suspicious types joining Xapo's Board...

(Message)

http://willembuiter.com/ELB.pdf

Citi research on eliminating currency and the benefits to banksters and big gov.
legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 1852
May 26, 2015, 11:50:25 AM
...

TPTB

I caught the following re Larry Summers just now:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/visas-hock-citibanks-reed-former-treasury-secretary-summers-join-xapos-advisory-board/

Three suspicious types joining Xapo's Board...

(Message)
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
May 26, 2015, 04:54:59 AM
i'm surprised armstrong made it out of prison alive, perhaps his release was secured by the powers that be with conditions he promote an "alternative solution" that still falls under their control.
sr. member
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May 26, 2015, 03:48:46 AM
For those who know my Bitmessage address (public key), you can now message me or check for messages from me. I am now running BitMessage again.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 26, 2015, 01:41:20 AM
Poignant blog posts from Armstrong (yet he continues to ignore the information about Larry Summer's "21 Inc"):

Kiss your Pension Fund Good-Bye:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30875

Gold – China – Here We Go Again:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30779

Jean-Claude Juncker is creating a Political EU Commission – Non-Politicians Get Out:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/24215

Dutch TV Discusses Eliminating Cash:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30885

The Secret Meeting in London to End Cash:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30862

Cashless Transactions Exceed Cash Transactions in Britain:
http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/30811
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
May 26, 2015, 12:58:02 AM
I will be making a post later in my day (GMT+7) to make some counter points on this article:

On the Clothing of Emperors: A Rant about 21.co and the Future of Bitcoin Mining

My main points will be:

1. Marginal-cost of electricity and variable seasons of the Bitcoin price market vs. speed of deployment of fixed capital investment (Economics 101 lesson)

2. (Politically obfuscated) goal of >50% control of hashrate to increase profits in side-channels, including but not limited to a near monopoly on setting txn fees.

3. TDP is only limited on cell phones by the mass and/or extent of heat dissipation apparatus?

P.S. I made some comments about the recent downtime of bitcointalk, and I noticed the timing of the takedown was approximately immediately after I wrote my prior jaw-dropping post and my post which solidified some of the essential points of my allegations against 21 Inc.'s business model. I am not totally ruling out the possibility that the the-powers-that-be are scrambling to figure out how to squelch these revelations. A friend of mine has agreed to pass on these revelations to those who can publish them far and wide in the alternative media scene (think Alex Jones and spin offs). It is possible they wanted to view my private messages, if they don't already have them since I turned off email notification and assuming the elite aren't in control of the certificate issuer for the SSL certificate for this site. In any case, they won't learn much from my private messages. They would need to crack Bitmessage instead. OTOH, it is not likely that elite are concerned about the unproven capabilities of some nobody like myself. They have bigger fish to fry and the masses are probably going to fall into the NWO no matter what we all do here.

Also I should add the Larry Summers and Robert Rubin were instrumental in the repeal of Glass-Steagal during the Clinton administration.

Also note I emailed Martin Armstrong about these revelations and he did not print it, even though he is the one who has been harping on Larry Summers and the move to electronic cash. The only reason I can think of for him not writing about this, is because it is blatant evidence of a globalized plan towards a global Technocracy — something which he denies the elite are capable of planning or coordinating on a global scale. Martin claims the elite are fools who can't trade well and need a public backstop so they can gamble with other people's money. He doesn't agree that there is a global coordination amongst the elite with long-range plans for NWO control. Thus this is evidence that either Armstrong is disingenuous (censors to fit his irrational ego) or worse he is in bed with the elite helping to promote globalized "solutions" such as his calls for coordinate political and bond restructuring reforms harmonized with a move to a NWO one-world reserve currency.
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