Economic Totalitarianism

[TPTB_need_war]

I am inviting rpietila (a major silver dealer, or at least his was) to rebutt this post if can or wants to. Or perhaps his stance on being a former goldbug has morphed as did mine? I first met rpietila back in 2007 on the Jason Hommel forum.

OROBTC, let me oblige your diversion of introducing FOFOA's nonsense into this discussion, by explaining what his nonsense is. Here follows a comment that attempts to summarize FOFOA's concept named "freegold".

http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2012/12/arguments-against-freegold.html

victorthecleaner said...

... If I wanted to refute freegold, I should first state what I think is the definition of "freegold". So what is it?

1) Separation of store of value from the medium of exchange?

Where? In a single country or globally? In individual countries (e.g. those that M called 'banana republics' in the discussion on the previous thread), they are already separate. For example, wages, taxes and groceries are denominated in local currency, but people save in dollar or Euro cash (procured in the black market if there is no legal market) for the long run, i.e. for large purchases or for the next generation. Good. So what we are talking about is separation of store of value from medium of exchange globally. Perhaps more specifically in the relationship between the U.S. and their trade partners.

2) The major savings vehicle is no longer debt, but rather physical gold?

This is saying something similar. And it adds the hypothesis that the store of value will be gold (if you reside in the U.S. it might turn out that it is you that ends up a 'banana republic', but others don't, and that you can simply use a foreign paper currency).

3) The U.S. dollar is replaced by physical gold as the primary international reserve, i.e. in particular for settling trade and capital imbalances, and that a new mechanism is established (spontaneously) that counteracts such imbalances in the future.

Since the discussion with Blondie a few threads ago, I'd vote for (3), and so this is the one I am trying to challenge. Well, I don't know how to refute it, but I have some comments.

...
December 10, 2012 at 11:27 PM

FOFOA is claiming that we will move to an international reserve currency that is gold and the national currencies will float against gold instead of the US Dollar as they do now.

This is incredibly delusional for numerous reasons.

One could start by reading my thread on the coming one-world reserve currency, which will indeed have the attributes of an international reserve that national currencies float against, but it won't be 100% gold (some gold might be in the basket weighting of major national currencies that define this new "SDR" unit) because it will be a political result of the power-brokers in the various nations.

The world is not going to move back to gold as the primary unit of reserve because it doesn't serve anyone's interests. It doesn't serve the powers-that-be who will be in control of the NWO reserve, nor does it serve the rest of us who will be favoring crypto-currency because gold is impractical for us to use as a savings vehicle because it is physical and can be too easily expropriated by the NWO morass we will be competing against.

The most critical error of FOFOA is that even though gold may rise in value (may even have a small weighting in the coming one-world reserve currency), this won't help the individual investor use gold as a personal savings vehicle. Gold is being institutionalized for billionaires. The millionaires will not be able to trade gold. We are moving to a digital economy and the masses will only accept digital money. They will not accept physical money and they will have no incentive to do so. Anyone who accepts your tangible gold in trade is likely just preparing to rob you.

For as long as your physical stack of gold sits in your bunker then you feel so proud, but you will never be able to do anything with this. It either sits there for eternity and is of no use whatsoever (except to your deluded ego), or you actually try to cash out and find out the hard way that you've destroyed yourself.

I might have a few physical gold coins for the desperation move where I need to travel clandestinely and would hope I could find some owner of a ship or plane who will take the gold in trade. So I would want to buy the most recognizeable form of gold coins.

But much more likely they will take crypto-currency than gold. So why even buy gold? I can't really think of a good reason to buy gold other than to enjoy stroking my gold and my delusion.

Crypto-currency will see 10 - 1000X appreciation far outstripping gold's rise to $3000 (or at most $5000).

costata said...

But please feel free to enumerate those arguments that were worthy of debate in the past.

Thanks I'll kick this excercise off with a few and try to complete the list over the next few days. Everyone is welcome to jump in with their own suggestions.

I'm also thinking of trying to put together a list of the weak/pathetic/silly arguments that are frequently advanced.

1. SDRs as an alternative reserve currency to replace the US dollar instead of Freegold-RPG.

2. Variations on the "control" argument i.e. those in control of the present system or benefitting from the status quo can/will block the transition. This is also a candidate for The Anything R... (sorry Wendy) THE silly list depending on whether it's expressed reasonably or as a dark global conspiracy.

...
You have since extended his argument to envisage foreign CBs hoarding euros as the international reserve for settlement purposes and that the ECB could simply buy gold on their behalf (essentially).

Again, I don't think this is an argument against Freegold, but merely an argument against the "necessity" of what you perceive to be one of my "necessary conclusions". But I actually favor the organic savings aspect of Freegold, as described in Macrofreegold'nomics, in which trade imbalances are settled by billions of individual net-producers and the CBs use gold, not so much for settling international trade and capital imbalances as for managing their product, their currency, by buying and selling gold in a way that ends up being countercyclical to their organic savers, thereby dampening disruptive but natural cycles.

"Gold is not money, not currency, not an investment, it is wealth."

Haha. FOFOA thinks "billions of individual net-producers" will "use gold".

Seriously that is most delusional statement I have read in a loooong time.    

Billions of people are going to be using digital money on their smartphone.

Those who want to a store-of-value will choose the most liquid reserve, which will be depending on their circumstances either their national currency or the one-world reserve fiat currency.

That is why I stated that we needed a futures market in crypto-currency to enable units that track the value of the user's unit-of-account.

[TPTB_need_war]

Our daughter is kind-of pushy

I wouldn't choose that quality in a female because I have abundant other options (not Western women). If I felt a woman was able to lead me better than I can lead her, then I would value that trait. But I observe factually that women are not hormonally meant to be leaders. They are nurturers of the children and family. Unfortunately Western socialism has spoiled the women (and turned the men into pathetic feminist sympathizers losing their ability to lead effectively) and made it more difficult for them to be happy (studies say they are happiest doing their traditional role, c.f. the link in False Life Plan essay).

Economic Decline Returning Marriage to Historical Norms

P.S. that doesn't mean I don't listen to the input of a female. It means I try understand in which areas she is more astute than me, e.g. in social circumstances her wisdom will often best mine.

He is more or less a country boy who is strong (works out, ran a Spartan Race once) and has traditional values.  Yes, he can shoot guns, smile,,,  If he can handle our daughter´s moodiness (probably can), things should work out.  We like him.

Unless she is an exceptionally rare analytical type of female (e.g. my 40-something neuro-biologist female friend in Colorado, USA), the sooner she gets pregnant, the better. I bet her moodiness can be attributed to not being in harmony yet with her happiest role in life (probably because you or the USA culture spoiled her). Rearing her offspring can soften her attitude, because realities will set in that she had been able to delude herself on up to this point. For example, she will naturally learn that she is not the most important person in her life, and her kids are.

Sounds like he is the right (stoic? listens more, then acts?) man to help her mature.

[TPTB_need_war]

Yet my thinking is different from yours in a couple of ways.

Without different thinking, there is no market. We need buyers and sellers, not just one of those two. EveryMany trades need a loser and a winner. So I have to be thankful that some want to be the loser.

First, I believe in long-term thinking,

Buying BTC now (or soon) and investing in altcoin startups is long-term thinking.

What you are trying to say is that you want to stack gold because you feel totally safe with something you can store in your bunker forever for generations and generations and it can sit there like a useless heirloom. You feel safer because it is tangible and you think that somehow insures that is more safe.

and I am not certain that the Knowledge Age will unfold exactly as you presume (although I think there is a good chance that it will).  I do not know what is going to happen, nor even do you!  (Ex: your MS, perhaps a bolt from the blue, uh, I know ZIP about MS).

It is a category error to equate a random life event (e.g. myself contracting the HPV std in 2006 which I think is what caused me to develop Multiple Sclerosis) with an analysis of a trend underway.

Why deny that the Knowledge Age is already underway and taking over. There are so many examples discussed already in the Economic Devastation thread.

How could you deny to yourself that the internet has radically changed the world? Did we even have cellphones 2 decades ago? Did we even have a computer in our hand always online 1 decade ago?

Everything is changing so rapidly and the changes are accelerating. Just open your eyes.

Is it likely that technology will reverse and we will go back to the slower tangible methods of commerce? hell no!

I am highly diversified, more so than perhaps anyone else I personally know.  I have assets "here and there" in lots of places.

Imagine a guy that said he was "highly diversified" with real estate in many different countries, then a global contagion caused real estate to decline every where and caused the governments to radically raise real estate taxes, thus further driving real estate values down.

Was he highly diversified? No. He deluded himself into thinking that location mattered, when what he was facing was global.

In math we call this distinguishing the independent from the dependent variables.

But, if you are a Tax Donkey like me with no really special skills, then a sensible diversification, which includes preparation for an UGLY DOWNSIDE that may come, I will take my own path...  

But if you haven't even really diversified and haven't invested in anything that could prosper and be a game changer, then why do you deserve to retain any wealth across the chasm coming?

Being an investor is a responsibility. Society has entrusted the future in your hands by allowing you to store calls on future human productivity (a.k.a. monetary capital), and if you don't invest wisely in those ventures that will prosper and help man be more productive, then the future of humanity suffers. So of course the free market will take wealth away from those who can't invest it properly to advance the prosperity of mankind.

You invested your time and effort in your business. And your business advanced the prosperity of mankind. You must do the same with your investments of the excess monetary capital that your businesses have produced.

Investing like a lazy miser who wants to avoid all risk and avoid all analysis, is akin to admitting you don't deserve to store wealth.

You have stated in the other thread that you are just barely in the top 10% of net worth, thus you have at least a $1 million of net worth.

Just as an example (not trying to push you), if you took a seed capital investment in my crypto project at $10,000, that would be only 1% of your net worth. If you lose that, it is almost nothing to you. But if it rises 100X in value, then you double your life's net worth. If it does a 1000X gain as Bitcoin did from $1 to $1000, then you would increase your net worth by 10X!

All for risking 1% of your net worth only.

Somethings are a no brainer, but I guess people are not predisposed to thinking clearly.

It is also a category error to equate risking in timing the options market (which is akin to casino gambling) with risking on some venture that you believe could be a game changer and which you personally would like to see happen for the betterment of yourself and society too. There is significant difference in risk profiles. The latter is a speculative investment based on fundamental analysis (e.g. if you think I am highly talented and motivated). The former has no additional fundamental information that makes it different from rolling dice.

[Gyfts]

The idea of stiff economic control, in my opinion, is strictly to keep inflation down and prevent another economic crash. I would never call it "totalitarianism" because the fact is, we are pretty much free to do what we want with our money, invest it as we please, spend it as we please (for the most part) wherever we'd like. It's not something I am against as well. For the "greater good", if you will.

[TPTB_need_war]

The idea of stiff economic control, in my opinion, is strictly to keep inflation down and prevent another economic crash. I would never call it "totalitarianism" because the fact is, we are pretty much free to do what we want with our money, invest it as we please, spend it as we please (for the most part) wherever we'd like. It's not something I am against as well. For the "greater good", if you will.

The Gyfts business (you launched?) is great example of the Knowledge Age.

Why are you convinced that a slide into financial repression totalitarianism isn't lurking?

I actually agree with some of your statements, but from a different Big Picture conceptualization. Yes we are free to avoid ZIRP (and NIRP) by avoiding passive investing and seek out the Knowledge Age investments such as your innovative Gyfts concept (did it prosper or fail?).

That has been precisely my point that the NWO morass is destroying itself, and we are free to sidestep it.

But my argument is that eventually we will need anonymity to continue to sidestep, because NWO paradigm is failure directed[1] and thus needs to parasite on the productive sector to the degree it will destroy the productive sector.

Edit: Perhaps I was mistaken about Gyfts. I thought I had seen a business that was offering to let people buy things on Amazon with Bitcoin.


[1] Sorry it won't prevent economic collapse. Inflation is not the threat. Rather it is massive deflation that threatens due to the $200+ trillion in global debt much of which is insolvent.

[TPTB_need_war]

While the smart investor secretly converts cash and bitcoin into Monero and no one notices.

As I've said, what I am intending to work on aids Monero. There is something lacking in the market that all the altcoins need help with and which can create a lot of value, which is actually wider in scope than just crypto-currency.

[TPTB_need_war]

I am going to take the time to explain in more detail, because I am going to go ahead and test the waters for Private Placement (unofficially qualified investors) seed capital for crypto-currency below...

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?

The idea of what I want to work on would actually synergize with and help Bitcoin, Monero, and all coins and internet activity be more anonymous. There will actually be an altcoin tied in with this, but it will be a competitive ecosystem where other coins can participate.

In short, a win-win, synergistic plan. I like those.

I am going to now test the waters to see if we have enough seed capital that is interested.

What should happen is that first there are a few guys who provide seed capital (so I have operating capital and focus more on the crypto-currency and less on the social networking project) and then I put in the effort the thresh out all the finer details and specification, then can go to an anonymous crowdsourcing stage where all the details have been professionally explained. The crowdsourcing could be used to return some of the seed capital invested, if we decided that is the agreement.

The social networking site needs to be completed and already be on autopilot before the crowdfunding stage, then after that it is 95% time focused on competing and launching the crypto-currency project.

So I will now offer a request for those who are capable of investing $10,000 in seed capital, to please contact me now on Bitmessage. My Bitmessage public key is below. You can download and run Bitmessage on any Windows computer (but not Windows 8 as it is spyware, Windows 7, Vista, or best is XP). Please try to use a computer that you are reasonably sure isn't littered with viruses (that would ruin the anonymity Bitmessage offers).

BM-2cVBYC5ABoBmG7Rx5QZWZbw2z395RqLNMN (this is not a Bitcoin address)

If I decide to go forward after private discussions (on the specifics of the investment and plans), then those seed capitalists will be told the name of my social network (so they can evaluate my recent work performance) and many other details that I am not revealing in public here.

I would evaluate carefully whether I think i can trust the seed capitalists to protect my anonymity w.r.t. to the proposed crypto project (obviously my identity is not hidden from anyone on this forum who really wants to know it).

I am not promising to proceed this way. I am testing the waters and trying to evaluate what is the most efficient way to achieve our goals.

The problem with direct collaboration with for example Monero or Skycoin, is that they have some different ideas and priorities. Much better if I create something which helps all the coins and then after they can start to see the vision I have in action and then the synergies would become more apparent and realizable.

It is best not to argue and instead go make accomplishments that turn your skeptics into your allies.

I didn't receive any messages in my BitMessage. Appears my BitMessage may be not connected now after being connected last night (GMT+7 time). So I can't be 100% sure someone hasn't sent me message, but it appears likely that no one has.

The reason rpietila and I couldn't collaborate in 2014, is because he refused to download and run BitMessage so we could discuss my plans. Also he offered me to come live at his castle and I didn't want the disruption. He apparently doesn't think the developers of an altcoin should be anonymous, but frankly I have no idea who smooth and the other significant Monero developers are in real life. Yet everyone knows (or can easily find) my real name.

It seems to me that there won't be anyone interested in investing in something I would work on until I create some salesmenship pitches and create a thread for that.

Yet then I essentially give away my ideas to the public-at-large before they are implemented, which thus doesn't really protect the investors' best interests, because copycats could emerge before launch.

Also I think it would be more difficult to garnish interest in a project where I was anonymous and the project was vaporware. If I was willing to stake my reputation on promises and vaporware, then I could go create a thread and try to raise funding.

My preferred mode was making some private explanations to a small group of seed investors and wait to do the public-at-large communication once the project is implemented and ready for launch.

But it appears there are no astute seed capitalists interested amongst those who have read this thread since yesterday.

I emailed those who in past seemed to be interested in investing or working with me, and no responses. So perhaps the Bitcoin price drop has changed attitudes, perhaps they've seen me as too combative or perhaps they were intending to use me in their ploys and realize now that won't work. There are many possibilities and I can't be sure at this. All I can say is "nobody contacted me".

So for the moment, it looks like there isn't anyone interested in me helping to fix the problem.

Monero as it stands today is not sufficient although it does provide one aspect of what is needed.

We are lacking anonymity in general on the internet. The economy for crypto-coins won't blast off until we fix Tor's .onion hidden services (the NSA unmasked 100s of .onion sites and prosecuted them).

BitMessage is a crippled way of anonymous communication. If Tor was reliable, we wouldn't even need to relegate to such low quality messaging as BitMessage, but unfortunately Tor's design is insufficient and compromised.

My desire and plan is to solve the more holistic issue at-large. To go direct to the point of an anonymous internet. And fortunately it drives an altcoin by necessity. And that is all I am going to say for now. Those who were truly interested in the details would have contacted in Bitmessage if they are qualified to invest $10,000.

[TPTB_need_war]

I will wait now for replies. And perhaps go silent, because seems I am just wasting my time here.

And everything I have to do myself for myself. I can't seem to get any collaborative nor synergistic traction here.

And I may be under significant financial pressure (actually am so busy programming that I didn't even have time to follow up on the actual state of my finances).

I really don't have time for all these long discussions.

OROBTC, I have given you many hours of my scarce time. It is up to you now to slap yourself upside the head.

Maybe the reason is that Bitcoin only grows to the point where its network state provides adequate confidence and security. So you are looking at causality in the wrong direction. Maybe it would be much, much bigger if it were actually decentralized and it were in fact not possible for "the big three" to attack it and users/investors didn't have to rely on "why aren't they doing it".

is "not possible" achievable?  as JR asked, what distribution would make you happy?  of course, what makes you happy maybe won't satisfy marcus.

Maybe in a metaphysical sense it isn't but if it requires a non-trivial number of actors (e.g >3), who don't know each other, to collude, that becomes practically impossible.

What has the largest number of pools needed to achieve a majority ever been since pool mining got entrenched? 4 or 5?

This of course ignores selfish-mining type attacks where a strict majority might not even be needed.

here's what Ed Felten of Princeton thinks of selfish mining:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/bitcoin-isnt-so-broken-after-all/

Yes that's why I wrote a majority might not be needed. I'm aware it is controversial.You can ignore that point though and it is still the case that security is much weaker with a small number of large pools. Are people going to be doing billion dollar-value transactions when a few sketchy pool operators (or their employees, or a hacker exploiting their pool) could steal it? No. Value can only grow as far as confidence permits and concentration undermines (or at least limits) confidence.

And so what is your proposed solution to the inherent concentration of pools due to variance cost of smaller pools?

And that doesn't apply only to billion txs but also to for example trusting to hold significant crypto-currency over gold.

Remember I had pointed out that in theory P2Pool is vulnerable to share withholding attack even with a fix (as all pools are in Bitcoin because the fix has not been made to Bitcoin, but a centralized pool could more viably using profiling to defeat share withholding) because those submitting shares can see the solution and withhold if they have the winning block hash. The only economic reason to do this is to discourage P2Pools, because the withheld share is lost profit for the holder of the withheld share. However this is asymmetric cost, because the holder has profited most of the time on all the others who don't withhold. Thus P2Pool can be defeated by those with vested interested in large pools.

[TPTB_need_war]

When you all are ready to get serious then ping me.

2.  i think that the majority of ppl in this world want to be honest and wish to live in a society that has order.  no one wants to live in chaos.  everybody loses.  in order for society to continue to progress and evolve, order, dependability, and a semblance of honesty is needed.  thus, in a system with so much potential to do good, like Bitcoin, the overwhelming desire is for participants to want to do what makes the system thrive.  to the extent that cheating, dishonesty, and colluding erodes confidence and threatens that goal, most participants will avoid those activities.

That is the same faith we put into a top-down democracy. Fact is a power vacuum sucks in those who can maximize the exploitation of the power vacuum.

You are violating the fundamental tenet of Satoshi's white paper which is decentralized trust, meaning we don't have to trust that people are honest.

You are blacksliding because there doesn't appear to be any solution the fact that pools become concentrated due to the variance cost to them not. It is pure economics.

Now what are the proposed solutions?

If there are none, we are just lying to ourselves and the decentralization is a mirage. And smooth's valuation statement follows accordingly.

As for the scaling of Bitcoin, they will never get there because there are these fundamental problems, such as the design decision to charge a transaction fee and the need to propagate all the transaction data before a new block can be started.

There are fundamental design errors here. Very very fundamental.

Who is going to fix this? And pronto!

Looks like this is not so simple after all....

http://gavinandresen.ninja/utxo-uhoh

The can-kick might only be to 2 or 3MB while efficiencies in UTXO storage are worked on.

There is a fundamental design error. They are just farting around the edges without going to the heart-of-the-matter, which is that transactions need to be orthogonal to blocks.

Bitcoin is headed towards centralization at a few servers. It was designed that way!

[username18333]

Unless you raise your level of cryptic communication to a plane in which we can have a practical dialogue on practical actions we can do to protect ourselves in the coming global economic upheaval, then this will be my last attempt to coax you into communicating with me (and us) in a way that is not ignored.

As best as I can surmise from your most recent posts (e.g. this from a new thread you created and our debate in the other thread), you are thinking about some sort of fantasy wherein people will in a "groupthink" change how  they interact with money (i.e. forsake their inherent, natural individual motives in exchange for the "benefit"[1] of the group) and this will invalidate governments, and we will be in some kind of new nirvana paradigm. And you apparently think my efforts for building the anonymity we need to hide from the government (and the ignorant masses who embellish themselves in the selfishly-motivated, yet groupthink sustained collectivism) is simply annoying the government and not addressing the root challenge of changing how people interact with money. Or something like that, but I am just guessing because you never write specifically and in detail what you mean. Instead you enjoy puzzles and teasing your readers (with what appears to me to be nonsense that should be ignored).

I am writing about practical individually-motivated (i.e. naturally selfish) actions we can do or develop. I am about communicating clearly and implementing my communications effectively. I am a person who has several times in my life achieved what I said I would do in terms of large million user projects.

I am getting annoyed by your fantasy obfuscations. Please elucidate your stance with a long post, else be prepared to be ignored (by me and probably others).

[1] Groupwise is never a benefit. Because it creates a power-vacuum. But that is another high IQ philosophical debate that I don't want to waste my precious time on again!

0. Enki (in Greek mythology, Zeus) and Enlil (in Greek mythology, Poseidon) of the Anunnaki exited the hull of a ship (in Greek mythology, were cut out of Chronos' stomach) and modified the genetic code (in Christian mythology, the Tree of Life) of existing humans to "create man in our own image" (Genesis). Enki had humans mine gold for the Anunnaki in southern Africa.

2. Earth humans act to secure resources for themselves by, like chimpanzees, denying them to others. However, anyone that can set the "sendfreetransactions" option in "bitcoin.conf" and enter "sendtoaddress [one's GEC address] [an amount exceeding one's GEC balance]" into the debugging window of Bitcoin Core for Writcoin™ could mint quintillions of coins to themselves (and/or others) if they so wished. Accordingly, since exclusion is no longer possible, the instinct should "malfunction" and, largely, fail to manifest itself.

3. Great Empire of Earth (like a person's proper name, the proper name of an imperial body is not preceded by an article) is an imperial anarchist despotism: (1) subordinate governments are not branches of it - the imperial government is entirely separate from them; (2) it does not, itself, enforce its governance - that's up to its subordinate states and, more broadly, the populace within its imperium; (3) all the powers of government are held by one person. As could readily be surmised, it could hardly become tyrannical: it could only recommend tyranny to willing subordinate states. Likewise, it could not - save for an appeal to a superior administrative body (which might give it cause to preemptively annihilate earth?) - revolutionize its subordinate states: it could only recommend revolution to a willing populace.

4. If you didn't build the computer equipment yourself, you can be sure that the companies that you (and/or your users) bought the equipment from aren't helping you undermine the efforts of their taskmasters.

5-6a. I answer questions as they come to me. If you want a more detailed response, break your question into the specifics you want covered.

6b. "Truth is stranger than fiction."

1. You could prepare an antenna for communication with α Centauri so that strategic asteroid strikes may be readily requested by our emperor should they become advisable. (Note: you will have to use this technology to accelerate the signal to superluminal speeds via an interaction with negative matter.)

[OROBTC]

...

TBTP, unfortunately the plane (back to the USA) I will be on tomorrow night does not have wifi, pity, I could have put in a few hours of thought into various of your comments.

I think that you misinterpret what I mean by diversification.  I´ll be clearer on that point soon.  REAL diversification...  Including a decent amount of Bitcoin, mixed out the wazoo.

Now that our daughter is married, we are looking at forming trusts for any grandchildren we may get.  You never know, but destitution is likely not my future.

Nor are bunkers our thing.  My wife and I would make lousy farmers, even worse hunter/gatherers.

*  *  *

It will take me longer to give a better answer re FOFOA.  I like the fact that you went up against some of his major supporters.  But, that will take time to digest, and some of their own views have diverged (AFAIK).

Re Knowledge Age, yes, you are right that it is accelerating.  Did you see the exact changes coming?  I did not.

I contend that NO ONE sees what is really coming, it will almost surely be a series of Black, White and Gray Swans.

MS was a Black Swan in your case, for example (unless you already knew about it beforehand).

*  *  *

It is not necessary to give up hours more of your time on my behalf.  Simple suggestions as to what we can do as individuals vs. Econimc Totalitarianism is what I seek on this thread.

The esoterica better belongs on CoinCube´s Economic Devastation thread.

Buy this.  Sell that.  Watch what happens here for opportunity.  Stay away from there to avoid risk.  Learn about this.  Consider this place, but not that one.  Simple things.

[TPTB_need_war]

How Bitcoin becomes the bankster coin by design...

from gmax:

"So far the mining ecosystem has become incredibly centralized over time."

i totally disagree.  the trend has been back towards decentralization since ghash and ghash has been punished accordingly by the market down to a measly 3.6%.  what i see in this graph is a normal, expected distribution gradient from large to small share.  btw, gmax has been complaining about mining centralization since at least 2012 but yet here we are.  why do we accept his arguments on this when there hasn't been one major incident of a 51% attack?:

How do you know the owners of the former double-digit pools don't control several of the single digit percentage pools, i.e. a Sybil attack is present?

How do you know that the owners are not purposefully attempting to distribute their miners across several different pools (all under the same management), i.e. a Sybil attack is present?

The fact that there isn't a visible attack (Sybil attacks are often invisible) doesn't impart any information on whether Bitcoin pools are becoming owned by a few. You can attempt to make the argument (below) that control over the pools isn't a problem, but that is a sometimes orthogonal argument to whether Bitcoin pools are centralized.

What people seem to keep missing in this "mining is centralized" claim, is that pools are not miners. They are services with ZERO barriers to entry and exit from the mining community.

ZERO barriers means a Sybil attack is plausible.

ZERO barriers often implies there is no way to defend market-share and profits. Thus it is a power vacuum to be exploited by those who don't want profits, but rather willing to lose money because they want control (and external profits from that control).

As long as there is ONE honest P2P node who would publicly flag that a pool was behaving badly (an assumption I believe will always be true), then the pools can not abuse their position.

If the pools have 50% of the hashrate, then any flag from a minority is ignored. Do you mean make a political statement to the miners imploring them to stop using the offending pools?

So what if the pool owners distribute their miners across 100s of pools they own (which appears to me to be what they have done). You going to play political Whack-A-Mole? Sybil attacks are very difficult to deal with.



And more so implausible game of Whack-A-Mole when they aren't do any falsification, rather just refusing to include certain ("unapproved") transactions. As their hashrate approaches 100%, the have a Digital Kill Switch on humanity.

And what do you do when the government has dictated that only registered and licensed entities can be pools? Then the ZERO cost shifts to INFINITE cost for those who don't sell out to those in control of the power vacuum of the democracy-lie.

If any corrupt pool, or collection of corrupt pools, tried to falsify the record, it would immediately become public and that pool would lose most of it's miners in a matter of hours. Miners could simply switch to another honest pool, and there will always be an honest pool to switch to.

This would completely destroy the future profit stream for an established pool. Why the heck would anyone try this, especially given that it would be a futile effort?

+100 Mining is decentralized QED.

If they are wise they do the falsifications from 100s of smaller pools with a Sybil attack. This forces you to the bigger pools with reputations, then they can do it from the bigger pools too.

How can you win? If a pool establishes a good reputation and is not part of the cartel, they will use the same methods they used to capture monopolies else where such as murdering the owners if necessary or more simply just offering pools free-of-charge or even pay miners extra to mine at their pools driving the honest pools bankrupt.

Sorry you can not win.

Bitcoin is fatally flawed and will end up a centralized bankster coin. I warned that in 2013. See my linked essay above.

[TPTB_need_war]

Buy this.  Sell that.  Watch what happens here for opportunity.  Stay away from there to avoid risk.  Learn about this.  Consider this place, but not that one.  Simple things.

Buy a lot more crypto-currency than gold, in the range of a 10-to-1 ratio.

Watch for someone who can solve the SEVERE (see my prior two posts) fundamental problems that haven't been solved by any of the existing crypto-coins, including Bitcoin and Monero.

If that someone succeeds, buy with both fists like there is no tomorrow. Sit back and smoke a cigar.

Other areas of diversification I will not comment on other than what I replied to CoinCube that all those assets will probably not be anonymous. I am only speaking about anonymous assets gold vs. crypto.

[aminorex]

Every trade needs a loser and a winner. So I have to be thankful that some want to be the loser.

Every trade needs two winners.  Otherwise its not a trade - a rape perhaps.

[OROBTC]

...

TPTB, now you´re talking.  Stuff we all can understand.

OK, I hear you re the (quiet) assets you and CC have talked about, as well as those that could become known.  That topic is one some of my amigos and I are talking about.

To raise real money, you are going to have to lay out some version or other of a Business Plan that would be credible to many.  Else, you limit your "Investor Universe" to very few...  Unless you find an angel investor who understands what you are doing and can pony up the amount you need to do it.

Which maybe you can!  Good luck!

[Ugh cigars, they make me nauseous unless I spit a lot...]

*   *   *

aminorex, that is generally true.  I could not have gotten to where I am without win-win along the way.

[TPTB_need_war]

EveryMany trades need a loser and a winner. So I have to be thankful that some want to be the loser.

EveryMany trades needsbenefit from two winners.  Otherwise its not a trade - a rape perhaps.

Kudos, I did edit my statement to fix the error. (I tend to think of win-win more in the realm of joining a positive investment together not as trade). But you made the same error again, so I corrected your statement also.

When someone buys gold and someone sells gold, then gold either appreciates or depreciates, there is only one winner and one loser in terms of the ROI.

However it is more complex than that of course because the entities may have other constraints to maximize, such as timing, liquidity, etc.. And in general a trade can also be for something both parties need, e.g. you give me cash and I give you good or service, then I use that cash to replenish inventory.

I do understand your point that the best trades are win-win, unfortunately if you always defined a market trade that way, you would be married to Marxism (the ability to guarantee and control outcomes) and thus you would be in lose-lose trajectory holistically.

I understand that you are promoting win-win scenarios (and I don't disagree with trying to be involved in positive scenarios), but even if two parties think it is win-win, they aren't in entire control of that. Only later can they determine whether it was.

A trade shouldn't bind me to promises of what I can't promise.

Sorry I have to disagree with you for the most part. You are leaning communist if you really meant every trade must be win-win.

[TPTB_need_war]

There is a fundamental design error. They are just farting around the edges without going to the heart-of-the-matter, which is that transactions need to be orthogonal to blocks.

Bitcoin is headed towards centralization at a few servers. It was designed that way!

Is that you MofG anyway I'm Breaking the rule to not post under the influence.

So on that point and in the words of the creator

The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime

Yes, (we will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography), but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years

I am the former AnonyMint.

I agree with Satoshi. Even though Bitcoin is destined by design to become the centralized bankster coin that they (the DEEP STATE or NSA) commissioned, it can for the time being be used anonymously if careful and it is the reserve currency of the altcoins and thus is building an altcoin ecosystem wherein the superior design can be realized.

Perhaps "Satoshi" outsmarted his handlers. That would be historically the wise way an engineer would fool those he works for (knowing that they would continue without him anyway).

[TPTB_need_war]

Looks like this is not so simple after all....

http://gavinandresen.ninja/utxo-uhoh

The can-kick might only be to 2 or 3MB while efficiencies in UTXO storage are worked on.

There is a fundamental design error. They are just farting around the edges without going to the heart-of-the-matter, which is that transactions need to be orthogonal to blocks.

Bitcoin is headed towards centralization at a few servers. It was designed that way!

What do you mean by the bolded part?

So what do I get for revealing the details now (versus working in private to implement and earn money on an altcoin)?

I have solved the design problem. I now know the Holy Grail design we need for crypto-currency.

I will give you one hint. Adjustments to difficulty are no longer critical.

Edit: I will give you one more hint. Bitcoin's design conflated what is centralized with what can be decentralized, thus causing the entire design to have a centralized final destiny. The solution is to unconflate.

[TPTB_need_war]

To raise real money, you are going to have to lay out some version or other of a Business Plan that would be credible to many.  Else, you limit your "Investor Universe" to very few...  Unless you find an angel investor who understands what you are doing and can pony up the amount you need to do it.

Which maybe you can!  Good luck!

I thought I had a $millionaire angel investor (who understands crypto because he is a computer science guy) until he got sick with Multiple Sclerosis too and got most of his coins stolen. But who knows, maybe he was just a scammer.

I think if I revealed everything in public to try to teach people like you at this juncture, then I might as well just hand my ideas to others to steal from me. Then what is the point?

And the time I would expend doing all that, would be better be spent implementing the damn thing.

I only put out a feeler to see if anyone could part with a measly $10,000 because you all keep asking me if I am going to implement something and I told you I would like to work on it if I had sufficient finances.

Heck I paid $30,000 for a week's programming work in 2001, when the dollar was worth 1/2 or 1/3 of what it is today.

We have the chance to totally change the world and become $billionaires and no one has $10,000 to spare. Fucking amazing.

So please don't ask me again why I am not talking about what I am working on or whatever. Why should I bother?

[username18333]

I have solved the design problem. I now know the Holy Grail design we need for crypto-currency.

Whoever therefore hears these my words and does them, I will liken him to a prudent man, who built his house upon the rock; and the rain came down, and the streams came, and the winds blew and fell upon that house, and it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And every one who hears these my words and does not do them, he shall be likened to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain came down, and the streams came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell, and its fall was great.

Establishment computer hardware is now a sound outcrop whereupon “the” house of socio-economic rethought ought be built‽