Economic Totalitarianism

[TPTB_need_war]

Erdogan, they can't take away the internet entirely as you point out. Because there is too much entropy (a.k.a. life) enabled by the network effects. In short, a million people will be brainstorming how to route around the cancer and reestablish their networked contacts. The network is inherently distributed. Unlike the political morass and central banking which is inherently centralizing.

THX 1138, the Knowledge Age is not just about coding logic. It is about any creative activity that can't be automated. The Knowledge Age is about eliminating the repetitive drudgery so humans can focus on what they do best, which is creativity.

The pathway forward is obvious. The decentralized network can't be stopped by the centralized morass. No the Knowledge Age mavericks will not join the centralized morass! Why the hell would we join their failure. The one-world NWO morass will end up annihilating itself and anyone who depends on it.

As for "running out of time", I agree in some aspects (e.g. Bitcoin gaining a lot of mindshare, difficult to replace or overcome), but I also think the worst of what is coming won't kick in until after 2016. We have some time yet, if someone created something that was sufficiently innovative and generated significant market excitement.

[THX 1138]

TPTB, I didn't mean to give the impression that I simply believe Knowledge Age = coding logic; I should have expanded. I get your point about “...eliminating the repetitive drudgery so humans can focus on what they do best, which is creativity...”. Of course, it seems increasingly (to me at least) that very few “creatives” can earn enough (or often anything) to live on, except the most talented ones. For instance, over decades I have had to move from practicing photography with chemicals to digital; from recording music in analogue to digital; I accept that. Even if successful, I understand that no-one can rest on the laurels of their career skills and feel an entitlement to earn from them for a working lifetime. As with nature as a whole, there is a need to constantly adapt. However, it seems like the city walls are getting smaller and smaller with more and more people locked out. You – and the other mavericks - are clearly gifted in what you do and stand a much better chance of economic survival in the years to come than many others, even though they are doing their damnedest to accommodate to the new normal. True, you might say, “too bad, you're not good enough”. Nature is frequently cruel, if you'll forgive the pathetic fallacy. On the macro level there is nothing to be gained in being sentimental, but on the micro, personal level this coming disruption will cause great distress for possibly billions. We will either rise up against totalitarianism in time, or we won't.

As for “...the worst of what is coming won't kick in until after 2016...” do you think this is still the case with the UK and Europe? I kind of got the impression that America would be going through what we will around 18 months afterwards.

It is reassuring that you assert, “...The decentralized network can't be stopped by the centralized morass...”. The skills to circumvent the grip of the “one-world NWO” will need to become available to more than just the technically savvy few – people like me in other words. I'm pursuing practical solutions for those of us who aren't likely to be in the Knowledge Age elite.

In saying ,“...if someone created something that was sufficiently innovative and generated significant market excitement...” are you suggesting that you are not necessarily still involved in developing an anonymous crypto? Hope not ;-)

Erdogan, thanks for your interesting points over short-lived internet cut-off and satellite phones.

[BillyBobZorton]

Satellite phones have proved to be reliable even when a government cuts off everything. That was seen in the First Kuwait war, and the arab spring countries. An internet cutoff has always been rather short lived.

We have billionaires invested in bitcoin. If the government tries anything stupid, as stupid as trying to put a worldwide internet firewall to allow acces to certain services like BTC, the billionaires would launch their on satelites, so it would be pointless trying to stop it.

[Erdogan]

Satellite phones have proved to be reliable even when a government cuts off everything. That was seen in the First Kuwait war, and the arab spring countries. An internet cutoff has always been rather short lived.

We have billionaires invested in bitcoin. If the government tries anything stupid, as stupid as trying to put a worldwide internet firewall to allow acces to certain services like BTC, the billionaires would launch their on satelites, so it would be pointless trying to stop it.

Buy up the fookers!

[OROBTC]

...

TPTB, Erdogan, BBZ,

Very interesting that the satellite phones never went down, I did not know that.  That is a good option to keep in mind of needing communication.  And billionaires typically want MOAR billions, so would likely WANT people using their satellites...

Is the bandwidth of those sat phones good enough for BTC transactions and similar?

[Ah!  Quick note re crony billionaires!: Obama crony WARREN BUFFETT just had another oil train crash spilling some huge amount of oil, much of it on fire, in ND I think, probably ZH and Drudge are covering it]

*  *  *

BBZ also pointed out BIG investments recently in BTC (and possibly other technologies like the mysterious "21").

Billionaires almost by definition are part of TPTB!  Maybe communications will stay OK even in a SHTF.

*  *  *

THX1138 brings up a "James Howard Kunstler scenario".  We could devolve back to 1800s technology (eg. barter, fixing wagon wheels, non-GMO food, etc.).  TPTB (I think, so has Kunstler) has also mentioned that JAPAN may wind up going back to medieval status...

You never know.  And that is why I LIKE diversification very much.  You never know what these powerful TPTB-types are going to try to pull, or maybe Mother Nature will have a laugh or two at our expense (a badass solar flare), or a take-down of the USA by dirty tricks from China/Russia.  You never know.

Best be prepared for a variety of scenarios.

*  *  *

"Our" TPTB is to commended for re-awakening interest in the very bright (but flawed, but hey who isn´t) Martin Armstrong.  I still have not made up my mind on him (he does seem a tad statist in a funny way), but he clearly knows history and has brought the study of economic cycles forward...  Each day he seems to put up something on his blog, it is now part of my ever-growing daily reading list:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/armstrong_economics_blog

He has LARGE computational power looking at practically all tradeable things, so he isn´t just looking at the price of gold, oil, BTC, and the S&P 500 that I do.  He looks at ALL of it.  AND through time.

Whether that will make his predictions better, I don´t know.  But Armstrong is worth a look.

Alas, Martin does not give out PRACTICAL ideas for individuals, maybe he saves those for his big-$$$ conferences, LOL!

[Erdogan]

Iridium Go! (Iridium Wifi hotspot) 2.5 kbps, should do it for spv wallets.

[THX 1138]

Erdogan, just been looking at the Iriduim Go! TPTB_need_war recently pointed out in the Economic Devastation thread that, “..the youth would ingeniously figure out how to turn the internet back on. They could probably do it with an adhoc mesh network with Wifi on smartphones. Ham operators would chime in with relay repeaters for long-range backbones, etc..” I freely admit this goes over my head. I can see that if effective they could have the potential to allow, say, a small community to maintain some sort of financial independence in continuing access to crypto. It would be useful if someone could produce a kind of “Idiot's Guide” in the use of these technologies for the relatively un-savvy. A growing knowledge base.

OROBTC, I hadn't come across James Howard Kunstler before. Like you, I prefer the diversification strategy, to hedge my bets against known and unknown possibilities. Who knows the way things could go. For instance, FerFAL seems unconvinced with bartering:

“...I dont believe much in barter items, mainly for two reasons. 1) I haven’t seen it work well myself. Almost everyone that ended dealing in a barter club after the economic collapse in Argentina did so out of pure necessity and they would tell you that cash would have been better. In many cases, people in barter clubs ended up hitting different fairs and markets, both dealing with cash and barter clubs. Most barter clubs would in fact end up using barter coupons, which are little else than an improvised fiat currency of their own 2)Other than some occasional bartering among friends, when studying different disasters around the world, I saw that bartering out of necessity was limited to certain types of worst case disasters, where even basic economic tools such as currency aren’t an option. Examples would be extensive economic collapse, or events in which occupation forces disrupt commerce, a country or town is sieged, or in a smaller scale a person is in jail. All these are rather unique, unnatural situations and when looking at the bigger picture they are very unlikely events and even if they do, a nice egg nest in an offshore account helps more than 100 pounds of nails, hammer and saws...”
www.themodernsurvivalist.com/archives/3744

I'm with you in that I have a certain ambivalence towards Armstrong. The ECM is clearly a brilliant resource and could possibly have attracted a Nobel prize if he hadn't been excommunicated by the financial establishment. His grasp and take on history is also very compelling. But I'm much less convinced by his solutions. He too seems closer to the establishment than the rest of us. There again, I read him just about every day!

[TPTB_need_war]

TPTB, I didn't mean to give the impression that I simply believe Knowledge Age = coding logic; I should have expanded. I get your point about “...eliminating the repetitive drudgery so humans can focus on what they do best, which is creativity...”. Of course, it seems increasingly (to me at least) that very few “creatives” can earn enough (or often anything) to live on, except the most talented ones. For instance, over decades I have had to move from practicing photography with chemicals to digital; from recording music in analogue to digital; I accept that. Even if successful, I understand that no-one can rest on the laurels of their career skills and feel an entitlement to earn from them for a working lifetime. As with nature as a whole, there is a need to constantly adapt. However, it seems like the city walls are getting smaller and smaller with more and more people locked out. You – and the other mavericks - are clearly gifted in what you do and stand a much better chance of economic survival in the years to come than many others, even though they are doing their damnedest to accommodate to the new normal. True, you might say, “too bad, you're not good enough”. Nature is frequently cruel, if you'll forgive the pathetic fallacy. On the macro level there is nothing to be gained in being sentimental, but on the micro, personal level this coming disruption will cause great distress for possibly billions. We will either rise up against totalitarianism in time, or we won't.

To some extent this can be a symptom of the peak in collectivism, because for example we have (highly unprofitable!) behemoths such as Facebook which are subsidized by the banksters (the bankster seed funding, controlled media, IPO, etc which of course the bankster cashed out profitably while leaving their clients holding the bag) so they can give away everything for free and thus a large swath of humanity is addicted and uninterested in exploring diversity. This swath of humanity is not motivated because they too are subsidized by the system and thus have no need to prioritize being realistic about how they use their time profitably. I am seeing this up close with my new social media site. It is very difficult to find a feature set that entices users away from "just give me your Skype, I don't want to be hassled with a new site".

More generally and abstractly what is happening is that we are becoming more specialized and thus the trend to maximum division-of-labor is intact. The problem with the maximum division-of-labor is that in the Theory of the Firm, this gives the corporation all the control and profits because the various specialists can't sell their skills independently into the final market and have to be bundled by the corporation into a final product.

What I am trying to do with my social network is share the revenue with the users and creators of the content and perhaps apps in the future. In other words, create an ecosystem instead of just a dumped down clientèle of zombies.

We need to radically upend the structure of the internet and the way we are interacting with it. This is an incredibly ambitious wall to climb and I was sick with Multiple Sclerosis for the past several years and had fallen away from my former high productivity.

Just now I am starting to get my mojo back and getting back up to my level of high productivity.

But I am only one person. Collaboration is nice but also can be a timesink to get coordinated. Breaking through with an ecosystem is the high economy-of-scale paradigm for synergistic collaborations, i.e. someone has to burn the path and lead.

As for “...the worst of what is coming won't kick in until after 2016...” do you think this is still the case with the UK and Europe? I kind of got the impression that America would be going through what we will around 18 months afterwards.

Yeah but for as long as the safe haven of USA is still standing then won't that provide a some buffer against total collapse? The wealthy Europeans can move their capital out to the USA. It is when the USA turns down hard, that the world will really be chaotic.

It is reassuring that you assert, “...The decentralized network can't be stopped by the centralized morass...”. The skills to circumvent the grip of the “one-world NWO” will need to become available to more than just the technically savvy few – people like me in other words. I'm pursuing practical solutions for those of us who aren't likely to be in the Knowledge Age elite.

In saying ,“...if someone created something that was sufficiently innovative and generated significant market excitement...” are you suggesting that you are not necessarily still involved in developing an anonymous crypto? Hope not ;-)

I still have a lot of ideas for crypto-currency I'd like to implement. Again I am only 1 person and at the moment I am in need of fixing my finances which were destroyed by the illness. So I had to timeout from crypto-currency to go launch a social network (put the Android app on the backburner because I have less experience on Android and trying to choose the more sure project, but now I am wondering if I made a mistake  ).

If I could raise enough money to work full-time on crypto-currency, that would be ideal, but I sort of detest the idea of making promises and raising money for promises.

Also because of the politics of altcoins and investments, I had said I would never announce affiliate with an altcoin publicly. Also I was thinking any anonymous coin should most ideally have an anonymous developer because you want that developer to still be around long-term (not targeted for abuse by the powers-that-be). But that may or may not be realistic.

Any thoughts?

[username18333]

Also I was thinking any anonymous coin should most ideally have an anonymous developer because you want that developer to still be around long-term (not targeted for abuse by the powers-that-be).

Great Empire Coin™ (GEC) is the official currency of Great Empire of Earth, is divisible into cents and mills, and has denominations of mega-, terra-, and exacoins.

To what do you refer when you write, “the powers-that-be” (TPTB_need_war)?

[TPTB_need_war]

Folks the following is an example of how to not succeed...

Great Empire of Earth

Broken link. Doesn't work.

Ditto your broken non-explanation.

[BobK71]

TPTB, I didn't mean to give the impression that I simply believe Knowledge Age = coding logic; I should have expanded. I get your point about “...eliminating the repetitive drudgery so humans can focus on what they do best, which is creativity...”. Of course, it seems increasingly (to me at least) that very few “creatives” can earn enough (or often anything) to live on, except the most talented ones. For instance, over decades I have had to move from practicing photography with chemicals to digital; from recording music in analogue to digital; I accept that. Even if successful, I understand that no-one can rest on the laurels of their career skills and feel an entitlement to earn from them for a working lifetime. As with nature as a whole, there is a need to constantly adapt. However, it seems like the city walls are getting smaller and smaller with more and more people locked out. You – and the other mavericks - are clearly gifted in what you do and stand a much better chance of economic survival in the years to come than many others, even though they are doing their damnedest to accommodate to the new normal. True, you might say, “too bad, you're not good enough”. Nature is frequently cruel, if you'll forgive the pathetic fallacy. On the macro level there is nothing to be gained in being sentimental, but on the micro, personal level this coming disruption will cause great distress for possibly billions. We will either rise up against totalitarianism in time, or we won't.

As for “...the worst of what is coming won't kick in until after 2016...” do you think this is still the case with the UK and Europe? I kind of got the impression that America would be going through what we will around 18 months afterwards.

It is reassuring that you assert, “...The decentralized network can't be stopped by the centralized morass...”. The skills to circumvent the grip of the “one-world NWO” will need to become available to more than just the technically savvy few – people like me in other words. I'm pursuing practical solutions for those of us who aren't likely to be in the Knowledge Age elite.

In saying ,“...if someone created something that was sufficiently innovative and generated significant market excitement...” are you suggesting that you are not necessarily still involved in developing an anonymous crypto? Hope not ;-)

Erdogan, thanks for your interesting points over short-lived internet cut-off and satellite phones.

It's in the nature of a state-controlled monetary system to have hyper-fast economic growth.  IMO this is unnatural and makes people unhappy and literally unhealthy.  And this includes the programming whiz kids who are in such demand in this economy.  You have to wonder how much of life they give up to "achieve" what they have.  But I noticed such people tend to come out of the woodwork in the performance-enhancement-drugged modern economy.

Essentially, when the state and its banking allies create so much money and debt (to benefit the elites, mainly), these have to be invested in something that eventually produces goods and services that people will buy, or the system would collapse.  All the nooks and crannies of the system tend to develop ways to incentivize people to be productive and innovative above all other goals of life.  That's why you see so much quick-buck mentality, fast-food culture, time poverty, mental stress, environmental pollution, etc.

[minor-transgression]

RE advice on political candidates ... I hate being negative ... so I will post a link to a politician who tells it like it is ...
even if it means no chance of being elected ...
Amercians and TTP and TTIP proponents - you probably will not like this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDCbf4O-0s

"The Death of Democracy"

It's long, so get some popcorn, settle back, enjoy the show ...

[TPTB_need_war]

And this includes the programming whiz kids who are in such demand in this economy.  You have to wonder how much of life they give up to "achieve" what they have.

Perhaps you'd prefer horse carriage delivered snail mail forums instead of the instant collaboration forum we are typing on?

Perhaps you'd prefer to adopt the lifestyle of the Amish Paradise.

So you cook with firewood and wash your butthole with dirt after taking a shit?

One of the signs of being too old is when you think everything was just about perfectly balanced in your generation but now everything has gone to hell.

Do you think it was similarly fair to criticize the engineers who created the first refrigerator.

[BobK71]

And this includes the programming whiz kids who are in such demand in this economy.  You have to wonder how much of life they give up to "achieve" what they have.

Perhaps you'd prefer horse carriage delivered snail mail forums instead of the instant collaboration forum we are typing on?

Perhaps you'd prefer to adopt the lifestyle of the Amish Paradise.

So you cook with firewood and wash your butthole with dirt after taking a shit?

One of the signs of being too old is when you think everything was just about perfectly balanced in your generation but now everything has gone to hell.

Do you think it was similarly fair to criticize the engineers who created the first refrigerator.

There's no need to "sacrifice" economic growth.  The Italian Renaissance showed that it was possible to have great progress with totally free money and credit.  We would probably still get where we are, but not as quickly as we have.

If we keep arguing whether it's desirable to have better technology vs. better mental health and environment, we'll probably never finish, as we'd be comparing apples and oranges.  More clarity would probably be provided by a moral perspective in this case.  The modern system basically allows theft by the elites --it's only a side effect of this theft, ie the need to stabilize the system given this theft, that we have such fast economic growth.  A system that is built from moral dissonance at its core can IMO be viewed as something that will come back to haunt us, sooner or later.

[username18333]

Broken link. Doesn't work.

Did you check your Tor connection? 

[OROBTC]

...

OK, one practical problem I am having is ZIRP and even worse: NIRP (negative interest rates).

I can´t find income that does not come along with very high risk...  PASSIVE income being what I like best.  Our Peruvian company is on the verge of finishing all its debt payments to me.  So what do I do with the money?

ALL bonds seem way overpriced.  I don´t want to manage "Section 8 Housing", though I do know a guy who is doing very well with that.

Some time ago at my now-defunct blog (two years ago?), I asked my readers and anyone else where INCOME could be found.  The OIL ETFs looked pretty good then, now of course, not so.

Any ideas on how to get income?  Stodgy stocks that pay out decent dividends perhaps...?

[username18333]

Any ideas on how to get income?  Stodgy stocks that pay out decent dividends perhaps...?

Sorry, mate: "income" (OROBTC) is reserved for a global elite and their henchpeople.

[OROBTC]

...

Alas, username18333, I used to get sort-of decent income in the past.  Call it 5% from the banks or bonds or stocks, and for a while better than inflation.

Perhaps that is part of the plan of the "Other TPTB" (the 0.1%, the ones with LOTS of blood dripping from their filthy hands...), cut us off from making any money.  Losing our independence...

Bastids.

Gold is still OK, but no income.  BTC is good too, but no income.

The bastids..., but I repeat myself...

Where is the "Gun Emoticon" up there anyway?

[username18333]

Perhaps that is part of the plan of the "Other TPTB" (the 0.1%, the ones with LOTS of blood dripping from their filthy hands...), cut us off from making any money.  Losing our independence...

People become a hassle when you want their stuff.

[THX 1138]

TPTB, I didn't mean to give the impression that I simply believe Knowledge Age = coding logic; I should have expanded. I get your point about “...eliminating the repetitive drudgery so humans can focus on what they do best, which is creativity...”. Of course, it seems increasingly (to me at least) that very few “creatives” can earn enough (or often anything) to live on, except the most talented ones. For instance, over decades I have had to move from practicing photography with chemicals to digital; from recording music in analogue to digital; I accept that. Even if successful, I understand that no-one can rest on the laurels of their career skills and feel an entitlement to earn from them for a working lifetime. As with nature as a whole, there is a need to constantly adapt. However, it seems like the city walls are getting smaller and smaller with more and more people locked out. You – and the other mavericks - are clearly gifted in what you do and stand a much better chance of economic survival in the years to come than many others, even though they are doing their damnedest to accommodate to the new normal. True, you might say, “too bad, you're not good enough”. Nature is frequently cruel, if you'll forgive the pathetic fallacy. On the macro level there is nothing to be gained in being sentimental, but on the micro, personal level this coming disruption will cause great distress for possibly billions. We will either rise up against totalitarianism in time, or we won't.

To some extent this can be a symptom of the peak in collectivism, because for example we have (highly unprofitable!) behemoths such as Facebook which are subsidized by the banksters (the bankster seed funding, controlled media, IPO, etc which of course the bankster cashed out profitably while leaving their clients holding the bag) so they can give away everything for free and thus a large swath of humanity is addicted and uninterested in exploring diversity. This swath of humanity is not motivated because they too are subsidized by the system and thus have no need to prioritize being realistic about how they use their time profitably. I am seeing this up close with my new social media site. It is very difficult to find a feature set that entices users away from "just give me your Skype, I don't want to be hassled with a new site".

More generally and abstractly what is happening is that we are becoming more specialized and thus the trend to maximum division-of-labor is intact. The problem with the maximum division-of-labor is that in the Theory of the Firm, this gives the corporation all the control and profits because the various specialists can't sell their skills independently into the final market and have to be bundled by the corporation into a final product.

What I am trying to do with my social network is share the revenue with the users and creators of the content and perhaps apps in the future. In other words, create an ecosystem instead of just a dumped down clientèle of zombies.

We need to radically upend the structure of the internet and the way we are interacting with it. This is an incredibly ambitious wall to climb and I was sick with Multiple Sclerosis for the past several years and had fallen away from my former high productivity.

Just now I am starting to get my mojo back and getting back up to my level of high productivity.

But I am only one person. Collaboration is nice but also can be a timesink to get coordinated. Breaking through with an ecosystem is the high economy-of-scale paradigm for synergistic collaborations, i.e. someone has to burn the path and lead.

As for “...the worst of what is coming won't kick in until after 2016...” do you think this is still the case with the UK and Europe? I kind of got the impression that America would be going through what we will around 18 months afterwards.

Yeah but for as long as the safe haven of USA is still standing then won't that provide a some buffer against total collapse? The wealthy Europeans can move their capital out to the USA. It is when the USA turns down hard, that the world will really be chaotic.

It is reassuring that you assert, “...The decentralized network can't be stopped by the centralized morass...”. The skills to circumvent the grip of the “one-world NWO” will need to become available to more than just the technically savvy few – people like me in other words. I'm pursuing practical solutions for those of us who aren't likely to be in the Knowledge Age elite.

In saying ,“...if someone created something that was sufficiently innovative and generated significant market excitement...” are you suggesting that you are not necessarily still involved in developing an anonymous crypto? Hope not ;-)

I still have a lot of ideas for crypto-currency I'd like to implement. Again I am only 1 person and at the moment I am in need of fixing my finances which were destroyed by the illness. So I had to timeout from crypto-currency to go launch a social network (put the Android app on the backburner because I have less experience on Android and trying to choose the more sure project, but now I am wondering if I made a mistake  ).

If I could raise enough money to work full-time on crypto-currency, that would be ideal, but I sort of detest the idea of making promises and raising money for promises.

Also because of the politics of altcoins and investments, I had said I would never announce affiliate with an altcoin publicly. Also I was thinking any anonymous coin should most ideally have an anonymous developer because you want that developer to still be around long-term (not targeted for abuse by the powers-that-be). But that may or may not be realistic.

Any thoughts?

Many of us seem to be increasingly content with being spoon-fed and unwittingly institutionalized - a comforting cotton-wool return to infancy in effect. It's ironic that what was once promised to be an infinite choice of options in the marketplace has actually been directed into a seemingly amiable authoritarian guiding hand towards consumer “decisions”; an illusion of choice.

So, with your new social media site you are striving to encourage users to be less passive and more creatively interactive, and I guess enjoy an ultimately more rewarding experience – bottom up rather than top down, yes?

I appreciate the financial imperative of fixing finances before resuming the crypto project. I'd like to think that enough people understand that an effective anonymous crypto so much needs to happen that they (a proportion at least of the, was it 60k followers on here?) would crowd-fund you even without any promises. I can see that even if you developed one anonymously, and if such a crypto were to appear and disrupt the best laid plans of the-powers-that-be, you would be high on the list of “suspects”. A tricky one. But who will achieve the “right” altcoin in time for the late 2017(?) USA down turn if you don't? A collaboration appeared tantalizingly close for a while; is that still remotely achievable, or out of the question? I can understand the urgency of non-compromise. It would be kind of elegant if Kim Dotcom could embrace a project like this, and keep hands-off?