Economic Totalitarianism

[TPTB_need_war]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place.  

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

Sometimes we need to be reminded what top-down control does:

China’s Deserts Expanding

According to statistics released by the State Forestry Administration, China has 2.6 million square km of desert that accounts for 27 percent of the country’s total land area. The desert areas are scattered among 12 provincial-level regions in north China. There is a serious problem on the horizon for China. Following the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Communist State attempted to alter nature. China’s forests were cut down and used for fuel, lumber, and paper production for the billions of little red books that became rather notorious. This process increased during the 1960s and had the tendency to eliminate both forests and grasslands. This led to a sharp rise in the rate of desertification.

Realizing its mistake, the government saw the desert areas expanding and embarked on an effort to reverse the damage by trying to the create a reforestation effort in 1978. They actually planted 66 billion trees. This became known as the “Green Wall of China,” which was to be completed by 2050.

However, while the intentions were good, the bottom-line result has been devastating. The government introduced fast-growing pine and poplar trees that were not native to the region. These trees needed more water and sucked the region dry. The water table in the soil dropped nearly 10 fold and most of the trees died. Only about 15% of the trees planted since 1949 have survived. Their attempt to reverse the trend had the exact opposite impact. Instead of creating a forest, it expanded the desert. China now has the second largest desert in the world – the Taklimakan desert.

This presents a political risk for the future as China is squeezed by the expanding desert.

Other threads are noticing this effect:

What caused Bitshares to lose it's shine?

I've not heard much about that project lately?

Was very popular not long ago?

To everyone converting BTC to ETH

Read a little about history of NXT, while jumping ship to ETH as a store of value. Compare the following two graphs...

a. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/#charts

b. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/nxt/#charts

Compare the following facts...

i. NXT was backed by a centralized organization, just like ETH.

ii. NXT was PoS, just like ETH will ultimately be.

iii. NXT offered asset exchange, while ETH offers smart contract. Both of these functionality, which they claim to make them unique, are actually possible on bitcoin blockchain, which is far more secure.

iv. With price rise, NXT backers sold their holding to increase liquidity in the market. With price rise, ETH backers are increasing ETH supply in the market to increase liquidity in the market.

p.s. Alt coin trading is a gambling. If u wanna test your luck on some coin under pump, its fine. But, make sure to come back to BTC, when u have made enough, otherwise u'll lose all and have to be a mute spectator while the next alt wave hits. GooD Luck

Re: Proof that Proof of Stake is either extremely vulnerable or totally centralised

max reorg depth in NXT is 720 blocks

[Proof-of-stake] Checkpoints are centralization.

For a centralized coin, then anything works, you don't even need PoS nor PoW (except to fool people with).

If we don't have decentralization, then the entire plot has been lost.

Do you need an example? Here you go (remember the Chinese mining cartel allegedly controls 65% of the Bitcoin hashrate):

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/48nnaw/the_truth_comes_out_core_devs_have_convinced/

[Yakamoto]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place. 

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

I don't mean to be rude but what would be a better political structure than the one we currently have? I know there are multiple forms that are better, but which ones specifically would be actually viable in a real-world scenario?

You could argue that anarchy, in the without rulers sense, would be good, but at the same time it would hold back technological progress.

[TPTB_need_war]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place.  

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

I don't mean to be rude but what would be a better political structure than the one we currently have? I know there are multiple forms that are better, but which ones specifically would be actually viable in a real-world scenario?

You could argue that anarchy, in the without rulers sense, would be good, but at the same time it would hold back technological progress.

The solution is to minimize the size of government, no matter what form politics takes.

I believe the key to doing that lies in a technological solution that will empower the Knowledge Age. The government can't muck with taxing microtransactions, for then they would tax everyone, not just the middle class. The current political structure is sustained by stealing from the middle class to subsidize the unproductive class, and pile on debt since real estate is the primary driver of the economy (and incomes). We need to make high tech work the primary driver of the economy and end the fixed capital investment Industrial Age. The person who invents this technology will be a $100 billionaire and eclipse Bill Gates et al.

Read my latest posts in the Economic Devastation thread.

[Yakamoto]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place.  

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

I don't mean to be rude but what would be a better political structure than the one we currently have? I know there are multiple forms that are better, but which ones specifically would be actually viable in a real-world scenario?

You could argue that anarchy, in the without rulers sense, would be good, but at the same time it would hold back technological progress.

The solution is to minimize the size of government, no matter what form politics takes.

I believe the key to doing that lies in a technological solution that will empower the Knowledge Age. The government can't muck with taxing microtransactions, for then they would tax everyone, not just the middle class. The current political structure is sustained by stealing from the middle class to subsidize the unproductive class, and pile on debt since real estate is the primary driver of the economy (and incomes). We need to make high tech work the primary driver of the economy and end the fixed capital investment Industrial Age. The person who invents this technology will be a $100 billionaire and eclipse Bill Gates et al.

Read my latest posts in the Economic Devastation thread.

This is a very interesting theory.

My question to you is, what do you propose that this new technology would be? Would it revolve around creating more autonomous systems for the average jobs, which would force people into higher education jobs in order to make more money than the status quo?

And since this new technology would have to be developed in the Knowledge Age, how would the inventor be respected and how would he be allowed to make money off of it? I believe you're implying a way to share knowledge that respects the creators of that information, but would a lot of it not be ripped off?

[TPTB_need_war]

Click the link and read my posts, all my replies were already written for you.

You'll find last my month my posts criticizing the designs of decentralized file storage systems such as MaidSafe, Storj, Sia, etc.. and my proposal of how to fix them so they respect intellectual property rights.

Stealing from each other is what Socialism taught us.

[Yakamoto]

Click the link and read my posts, all my replies were already written for you.

You'll find last my month my posts criticizing the designs of decentralized file storage systems such as MaidSafe, Storj, Sia, etc.. and my proposal of how to fix them so they respect intellectual property rights.

Stealing from each other is what Socialism taught us.

I'll start reading your posts, it seems like this can replace my novel reading for a little while.

You make very informative posts, and I thank you for the effort you've put into them. It's always more fun to learn and read opinions of others than it is to wait and hope for something to happen.

[OROBTC]

...

Yakamoto

You will find that TPTB writes very interesting and cutting-edge stuff, although much of it is hard for non-techs to fully understand.

Not many individuals can make a difference (even in the technical (software) world), but TPTB maybe can.  I only know one guy who is in his league.

Now that I've given you (TPTB) an endorsement, it's time to get back to work!   

[TPTB_need_war]

I am sick, don't expect much from me.

[Barnabe]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place.  

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

I don't mean to be rude but what would be a better political structure than the one we currently have? I know there are multiple forms that are better, but which ones specifically would be actually viable in a real-world scenario?

You could argue that anarchy, in the without rulers sense, would be good, but at the same time it would hold back technological progress.

The solution is to minimize the size of government, no matter what form politics takes.

I believe the key to doing that lies in a technological solution that will empower the Knowledge Age. The government can't muck with taxing microtransactions, for then they would tax everyone, not just the middle class. The current political structure is sustained by stealing from the middle class to subsidize the unproductive class, and pile on debt since real estate is the primary driver of the economy (and incomes). We need to make high tech work the primary driver of the economy and end the fixed capital investment Industrial Age. The person who invents this technology will be a $100 billionaire and eclipse Bill Gates et al.

Read my latest posts in the Economic Devastation thread.

Don't you think it would be possible to tax only the companies (easier since they need accounting anyway) ?
This would solve some the microtransactions taxing issues and would maybe allow a much simpler tax system.

[TPTB_need_war]

An ongoing court case centering on encryption has thrown light upon the total incompetence
of those in power. And this is not just about the USA and its legal system, it calls into
question the fitness for purpose of every government currently in place.  

First, understand that without privacy, there can be no private property...

Now you understand why MA says we may descend into a 600 year Dark Age, if we don't find some way to overthrow the current political structure.

I don't mean to be rude but what would be a better political structure than the one we currently have? I know there are multiple forms that are better, but which ones specifically would be actually viable in a real-world scenario?

You could argue that anarchy, in the without rulers sense, would be good, but at the same time it would hold back technological progress.

The solution is to minimize the size of government, no matter what form politics takes.

I believe the key to doing that lies in a technological solution that will empower the Knowledge Age. The government can't muck with taxing microtransactions, for then they would tax everyone, not just the middle class. The current political structure is sustained by stealing from the middle class to subsidize the unproductive class, and pile on debt since real estate is the primary driver of the economy (and incomes). We need to make high tech work the primary driver of the economy and end the fixed capital investment Industrial Age. The person who invents this technology will be a $100 billionaire and eclipse Bill Gates et al.

Read my latest posts in the Economic Devastation thread.

Don't you think it would be possible to tax only the companies (easier since they need accounting anyway) ?
This would solve some the microtransactions taxing issues and would maybe allow a much simpler tax system.

Yeah but can't tax a company for the decentralized microtransactions between individuals which is the point of a Knowledge Age economy wherein individuals sell their wares directly, such as the music they created, etc..

The government will have a very hard time taxing what requires them to go into everyone's home to enforce (especially during a global economic collapse where people need that income to eat and thus will fight the government). They rely on the fact that companies withhold our taxes.

See my strategy.

[TPTB_need_war]

Hell yeah!

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/2016-u-s-presidential-election/the-coming-insurrection-inside-the-republican-party/

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6965

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6895

The USA will fracture along liberal and true (not fake) God & guns conservative lines.

[TPTB_need_war]

The litmus test for decentralization of a cryptocurrency is the government "asking" to add transaction filtering policies to the protocol. Then we shall see who is true, and who's been swimming naked.

I think we will see centralization effects much earlier in terms of monopolization of profits. Well we already have with the Chinese mining cartel preventing even an increase to 2MB blocks, ostensibly so they can increase transaction fees. We have already seen it over at Bitshares with the bidding out a Cryptonote clone implementation financed by a private investor who can then set and earn transaction fees for the (optional) anonymity feature.

What this all seems to indicate is that there is no such thing as decentralization and commerce is always a winner-take-all paradigm of the natural power-law distribution of wealth and the Iron Law of Political Economics.

Fuck our idealism right? As long as we can earn a buck while Rome burns, that is just natural?

Personally I am not a believer that we can't change the fundamental forces of nature.

Look around and notice the phenomena in nature which remain decentralized, such as reproduction. Why? Because such phenomenon only require local partial orders. Global consensus is a global partial order (meaning an arbitrary choice of a combinatorial expansion of potential global orderings).

However we have one model of global agreement which has a stable equilibrium in terms of game theory strategies. That is the Nash equilibrium, which basically says that the optimum strategy is known and thus we can then compute from that stable strategy the economics and relevant outcomes of the system. With Bitcoin, the Nash equilibrium doesn't fail due to selfish-mining because none of the miners have more optimum strategy to pursue than normal mining for those with < 25% of the hashrate and selfish-mining for those with > 25% of the hashrate. So the Nash equilibrium doesn't prevent devolution into centralization, rather it only guarantees that the optimum strategy is known.

In terms of avoiding centralization of global consensus it is really about destroying economies-of-scale. We have an example for this on the internet. It is the End-to-End Principle, which basically says that the network where the economies-of-scale are applied should be fungible and substitutable and thus all the smarts and control lies at the ends of the network. Thus the ends can be diverse and leverage economies-of-scale without being captured by the economies-of-scale.[1]

That is my design to fix crypto currency. Someone has named it "savoircoin".

Note Iota is an attempt at a similar goal, but the Nash equilibrium doesn't exist for the ends (or at least it hasn't been proven that their optimal strategy is known) and thus I allege it devolves to non-consensus without centralization.

[1]

Cryptonote and Z(ero)cash are end-to-end principle anonymity systems, because the anonymous constructions are created by the ends autonomously without involving a network of masternodes. This is why Dash and Vcash's Chainblender suck. Note however that none of these coins have made mining and validation stable end-to-end principled.

In order to beat Bitcoin, you much provide something that Bitcoin can't do which is more popular and has greater network effects.

Bitcoin for the moment owns the store-of-value and slow-large medium-of-exchange functions of crypto currency, and that is unlikely to change unless Bitcoin so screws up the block size issue that the market is forced to choose a new block chain for these properties of money.

However, the instant-micro medium-of-exchange function of crypto currency is still wide open. Ditto on chain privacy and anonymity, which appears to be a two horse race between Monero and Z(ero)cash, but I have my doubts as to how popular/practical overt privacy and anonymity will be. Bitcoin is hoping for Lightning Networks (<-- click the Reddit link at the linked post) but LN requires large block sizes for garbage collections spikes and it realistically can't allow anyone to pay anyone, plus it is a centralization paradigm to be owned by large corporate servers. V(anilla)Cash is pitching some insecure Zero Time shit that can't scale. Bitshares and Dash are pitching some more flawed shit, and even I discovered that InstantX's white paper had a high school level math error in its security calculation which made it seem much more secure than it is.

Ethereum has no users, no chance of scaling decentralized, and no one has even shown that any Dapps are important and/or can't be done in another way. I pointed out the prior day that Augur is insecure.

Market cap is irrelevant if it is not sustained, because P&Ds are easy for whales to conduct by buying from themselves, including constructing fake buy walls.

So yes I think Bitcoin can be beat. But it won't be easy. And the chances are slim. You actually have to have a plan for stimulating instant microtransactions medium-of-exchange adoption. It won't just happen by magic and you won't be able to just employ the mass media to dazzle the gullible tinfoil speculator junkies for the userbase since Bitcoin already captured them.

[minor-transgression]

"The solution is to minimize the size of government, no matter what form politics takes."

Exactly. If Skynet ever takes over, its first task will be the printing of arrest warrants for
TPTB and the executive branches of governments.

Have fun speculating on what comes next :-)

[trollercoaster]

https://www.rt.com/usa/334846-romanian-hacker-guccifer-extradition/

[TPTB_need_war]

http://www.nestmann.com/it-all-started-2300-years-ago

[OROBTC]

http://www.nestmann.com/it-all-started-2300-years-ago

Excellent article!

What I really liked about the article was the variety of ways bot .govs try to prevent capital flight and how people move their capital away when it comes under threat.

Venezuela has tried many .gov tactics, and their country has suffered.  Yet people are trying all kinds of ways to get their money out.  Venezuela may be coming here (USA, but to Europe too), this article is a nice primer to start thinking about Bitcoin's highest and best use.

[minor-transgression]

good overview - I'm left to wonder whether any of this is an act of war ...

https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/capital-behaviors-the-subtle-art-of-tyranny/
"For an empire, the flip side of propaganda is popular ignorance. Second, there is the stick to go with the
propaganda carrot - a heavy reliance on covert intervention in the periphery and domestic surveillance
and oppression."
"Aside from collecting national security information, the NSA has been involved in commercial
espionage on behalf of corporations, including stealing technology. In 1994 the NSA and the CIA
turned over data that caused the European Airbus Industries to lose lucrative international contracts
to their U.S. counterparts."
"In fact it has become so pervasive that the largest data broker in the United States today,
the marketing giant Acxiom has 23,000 computer servers processing in excess of 50 trillion data
transactions annually. It keeps on average some 1,500 data points on more than 200 million Americans,
in the form of "digital dossiers" on each individual, attaching to each person a thirteen-digit code
that allows them to be followed wherever they go, combining online and offline data on individuals.
(Foster and McChesney)

[RealBitcoin]

Ok folks, what is your opinion about banking system ponzi scheme?

How much do you think it can be stretched before it collapses?  2-3-5 more years?

If they ban cash and force everyone to use checking account, maybe 10 years?

Let me know your estimates?

[Denker]

Ok folks, what is your opinion about banking system ponzi scheme?

How much do you think it can be stretched before it collapses?  2-3-5 more years?

If they ban cash and force everyone to use checking account, maybe 10 years?

Let me know your estimates?

I don't know to be honest.
But the fact that Draghi is already thinking about the option of helicopter money is giving me shivers!

[trollercoaster]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-32495924  ok let me off this ride, I've fucking seen it all now.