Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 129. (Read 345738 times)

Pointless. They will cancel the cash and reissue.

The venture I am launching now (just starting to see some usership uptake traction and user satisfaction) is all about integrating the Asians with their smartphones and cell phones. Bitcoin startup Circle (seed capital from the bankster Goldman) is all about enabling consumers to convert BTC transfers to fiat and integration with the smartphone.

Sorry cash is going to disappear incredibly fast when they governments start canceling and reissuing. People are going to say "hell with going to the bank to and filling up forms to exchange my old cash for the new cash, I will use the electronic version in my Android or Apple smartphone which auto-updates".

About that time, the demand for privacy oriented crypto-currency will explode too. ETA 2017 or so.

The powers-that-be have planned this out well. But they lose-win with the masses joining the one-world reserve currency NWO morass. The mavericks will break off into a win-win golden Knowledge Age of freedom. We will absolutely need anonymous internet and money.

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(Excuse any typing errors with these forein keyboards)

Thanks for the ideas!  I had heard that Singapore was a possibly good "Plan B" place, I don´t mind a little strictness...  "Saludos" to you CC!  But BobK71 has raised a good point, a small controlling group running a place HAS been a problem in the past.  What if there chaos in the future..., and they "run amok"...?

Peru, where I am now, is a very imperfect place, but we do have our auto parts import business here, and my in-laws are fantastic people. Next year is our company´s 25th anniversary.

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TPTB seems awfully correct that we NEED a better crypto, one that is harder to crack and offers better privacy AND anonymity.  What I like about BTC is that I can carry (potentially) LARGE amounts of "money" across borders easily.  Too bad Peru has virtually NO places to spend BTC...

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Peru is the world´s 6th largest producer of gold, yet it is very hard to get "real gold" (chains with HEAVY links, for example) without paying OVER 150% of the gold value.  I have checked at three jewelers on Av La Paz (the recommended place to get such work done).  Ahh, no.  NO cheap gold here, EXPENSIVE!  I am now curious to see if gold jewelry might be cheaper in the USA (factoring in the 14 kt US vs 18 kt in Peru).

I did buy a pretty little Peruvian "One Libra" coin in nice condition minted in 1916, but I had to pay some 40% over spot.  





EDIT:

Erdogan, I like that idea of paying with case as much as possible.  I used to think of just paying cash for "bad habits" like booze, so "Hillary and Obama" could not keep tabs on me.   Your point takes this to a new level.

The safe haven is crypto-currency, and yes we need to improve the consistency of the anonymity.

And we probably need to improve the robustness of the network against regulation and network fragmentation.

Cash they can cancel and render it illegal to hold and use (which they've always done in the past) and they are doing again. Ditto gold and anything physical. The future is the digital bits they can't see nor touch.

For all you dinosaurs out there that are still stuck on ideas about real estate, gold, cash, etc... it is time to have this epiphany.


Bingo.


Both.

First thoughts are of a Mandelbrot graph, but I'll begin with 1) and 2)
Doing away with cash transactions. Gotta love this quote:
"In monetary affairs, ineffectual regulations were decreed to Combat Gresham's Law [bad money drives out good] and domestic speculation in the different kinds of money. It was forbidden to buy or sell coins: they had to be used for payment only. It was even forbidden to hoard them! It was forbidden to melt them down (to extract the small amount of silver alloyed with the bronze). The punishment for all these offenses was death. Controls were set up along roads and at ports, where the police searched traders and travelers. Of course, all these efforts were to no purpose."

Sooooo, eventually you get stopped by an Officer: found guilty of being in posession of legal tender, sentenced to death ...
(every law kills somebody sooner or later)

Or taking up the Australian proposal ... what are they going to do? Tax the deposits of small businesses ... one percent might be half their profits ... how long before they go out of business ... a few years at most. And if small businesses are exempt, who are they going to tax ... the MegaWeathy .... ROFL

Nearly forgot .. the link ... https://mises.org/library/price-fixing-ancient-rome

Been there done that, got the scars ...

At this point, the monetary and financial systems are a poker player, holding a weak hand in a huge pot (which implies other players probably have very good cards, and that the stakes are high, no matter what happens.)

The authorities can't win with cards, so their only choices are: 1. fold and cut their losses; 2. make a huge bet to scare other players into folding.

The evidence for this is that seven years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they still can't take away the zero-interest artificial support for the asset markets.

So we should be prepared for both scenarios.  I will cover each in more detail when I have more time.

Be careful with Singapore.  It's basically a one-party (one family?) authoritarian state masquerading as a modern and economically liberal financial haven.

Being economically liberal (in the 'classically liberal' sense) has just been necessary for a small state with no natural resources that wants to attract foreign capital.  This is a good thing but not guaranteed to last, given the backward political state of the country.

Authoritarianism is fundamentally lethal to financial haven status.

Thanks for that CC. Very interesting.

don't forget that cash can be counterfeited too, bitcoin not so much, yeah there is double spend(which can be seen as a false copy of bitcoin) but they are far more difficult to create

An uptick in “foreign investment” would galvanize that country’s resistance to it.

If you are from the USA, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, or Iceland one interesting option is parking money in Singapore real estate. Singapore has taken great pains to keep foreigners out of its property market. They have been trying to keep speculators from driving up the costs of property.

To cool investment Singapore has imposed a flat 15% tax on all foreigners who buy property in Singapore. Individuals not native to Singapore essentially have to pay an extra 15% to buy property. However, if you are from USA, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway, or Iceland you are immune to this 15% tax due to old free trade agreements that these countries signed with Singapore.

Essentially individuals from those countries can buy for the same price as a native. My understanding is that the banks in Singapore will let you take out a mortgage in US dollars if you earn income in USD but you have to have 30% down. Note that I have not actually done this so I can not guarantee this last point.

Advantages of Singapore Property:
1) Singapore has no capital gains tax
2) Singapore has low property taxes (home unlikely to become giant leaching device)
3) Singapore tax on rental income is only 20%
4) A mortgage in dollars on a home in Singapore is a nice hedge against dollar decline
5) Its one of the most desirable areas to own property in the world and likely to become more so in the future
6) Plan B property if that becomes needed

Disadvantages of Singapore Properly:
1) US dollar is currently on a short term upward trajectory (so now might be early)
2) Singapore property is in an artificial downward trajectory triggered by the 15% tax (so now might be early)
3) Singapore has subsidized public housing for natives which will suppress rental income

In my eyes cash is easier to hide than BTC and crypto. One is undeclared and not really traceable when used for buying goods. Crypto on the other hand can leave all sorts of trails of you happen to drop an address of yours somewhere. That being said, should you manage to buy it anonymously and keep it in cold storage then you may have a chance of using it without having to declare.

OROBTC I am honored.

I certainly agree that the Economic Devastation thread often wanders into difficult philosophical terrain. A thread focused on practical suggestions is welcome.

The war on cash: Demand to pay cash everywhere. If they have to report it, let them, at least if you have to report it anyway, like car, condo, gun.

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This thread is actually in honor of CoinCube (who started the very popular "Economic Devastation" thread).



But, that thread wanders into difficult philosophical terrain, and I am interested in hearing opinions (practical!) re what we can do about "Economic Totalitarianism":

1) The new War on CA$H (Zero Hedge is covering this tpoic pretty well)

2) ZIRP/NIRP

3) Whether any of our apparently worthless Prez candidates have any decent ideas to save our financial butts.  And who is worse (the worst).

4a) Ideas that EACH of us might be able to do to defend ourselves from abusive .gov trying to take ever-more of our hard-earned money...

4b) Where assets like BTC, "alts", physical gold, foreign real estate, "Plan B", etc. may fit in...



Ideas anyone?

I´m too old to learn to program, nor interested (in this thread) in obscure discussions of Marxism, "idiots", personal attacks, etc.

I want practical ideaz and resultz, fishez!