Economic Devastation

[vokain]

"A Letter from Albert Einstein to His Daughter"

[TPTB_need_war]

...but rather just postulating how long a cat might be entertained with an acorn versus a grasshopper, I retort that the elite have no time to play with any of us who are not leaders of thousands, and they will expend no time to classify us differently than Zarathustra. The only people worth their attention are those who command significant following, wealth, or some uber technology such as Armstrong's supercomputer model. Also my model of the culling is a long and slow burn into totalitarianism. These collapses take decades to morph into genocide. The timing for the next Great Depression to start is Oct 2015 (that will correspond to 1929). Remember how many years from that until the killings fields began at the hands of the Nazis.

Long years of leisure and boredom await those at the top of the pyramid if they pulled it off.  All I can say, and all I said, is that if 'I' were an elite I would anticipate this and tune my selection criteria accordingly.

They are going to be plenty preoccupied trying to hold their top-down system together because I believe there will be an alternative system take hold that is competing with them entirely outside their sphere of control capabilities. They competed for control against geographical frontiers in the past, and now they will compete against technological frontiers, namely decentralization, open-source Inverse Commons, and anonymity.

Realize these frontiers are particularly threatening to them because their own top-ranking members parasite and divert flows to the frontiers secretly. In short, I think I will get a lot of private support from the TPTB for my new ecosystem, but in public they will fight me ("you don't shit where you eat").

Also the circumstances are different in that Asia and not the USA is the safe haven for this coming transition, but Asia is already highly top-down structured in many respects.

America probably needs to get much closer to a Chinese style totalitarian regime before things can go without a hitch, and I sense many of our leaders drooling at the thought of such a panacea.  You might take the time to look up some of James Corbett's  work on the relationship between the U.S. and China (and the FSU) if you've not done so.  The hypotheses he proposes are intriguing.

In America the totalitarianism is political correctness (ideology and inflexibility) and in China it is political connections (pragmatism).

I expect the collapse from 2017 to 2020 to be a chaotic period of massive disruption (bank failures, technological unemployment accelerated by bankruptcy of old paradigms that were held up by debt, massive new job opportunities in virtual online work that most people are not qualified to do), where the young asians will excel because they are already accustomed to massive sacrifices and far away travel to obtain employment. Everybody in asia will be on the move (new training centers, moving to where internet connectivity is best, etc). Whereas, the boomers will hunker down and take drugs to escape from change. The West is stagnant and will collapse into a zombie State.

The Asian governments won't need to institute much totalitarianism because their debts are small and their populations are young and flexible. The main threats are coming from the NE Asians, i.e. the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. But Japan is ready to have its final whirlwind default then bottom and leverage the rest of Asia going back up. S.Korea will take a hit, but they too can leverage the rest of Asia. China will exert totalitarianism externally with expansionism over the coming Asia Union. The main problem in Asia now is China's appetite for power. We will see Japan+USA attempting to hold China in check, but behind the scenes this is power sharing agreement to foist increased control over the subject Asians by this new Troika.

So all-in-all I see Asia adopting electronic currency and other NWO edicts, but being otherwise the most dynamic area. The financial capital of the world will shift from West to East.

Putin is starting to get it:

Putin’s Speech – Tax Free Corporates for 4 Years




The likely reason Asia was higher than Europe before the Black Death is because Europe collapsed having too a high a population for the available agricultural work, thus there was no incentive to innovate and wages were in deflation. Whereas Asia was growing rice which is very labor intensive thus wages were not in deflation. After the Black Death wiped out 60% of Europe's population, then labor was scarce and innovation increased and the Industrial Revolution overtook Asia. I learned this from Nick Szabo's blog.

I suspect most of the widespread death (if it comes) will be due to perhaps a pandemic, which Armstrong's model has targeted for 2019.

Westerners  will have relied on the government and environmentalism and feminism to save them, and won't have the tools to save themselves. We saw that during Katrina in 2006 and that was not a pandemic.

Why own a generator because that pollutes with carbon! Why learn how to make ethanol, because that does not power an electric motor, etc..

Another source of great culling can be letting boomers rot in Obamacare rationed hospice. I offer the VA scandal as a test run example.

I've long felt that a pandemic is a no-brainer for culling.  Effective, selective, and relatively humane...I don't see any reason why most of the elites would be excessively cruel for no good reason.  I mean they are not God!

If the 'elite' don't get us with a biological agents one of their crackpot minions who's been brainwashed into an anti-humanic frenzy probably will eventually.  A single post-doc with some lab equipment could probably pull it off at this point.

The pandemic serves the purpose of creating a need for government to organize quarantines, etc.. It encourages world government level cooperation.

Silver is headed below $12 and gold below $1050.

The reason for that is the strong Dollar.

No. You will see the private assets rise with the dollar after October.

The reason is because there is a mad rush into the short end of the bond curve in Europe as the contagion there develops into the BIG BANG in October (which btw has been predicting by Armstrong since 1985 when he first published his model's prediction!).

Understand that capital chases capital, because it heads where the prices are rising the fastest.

So this is sucking capital out of other assets.

Also during a contagion, the most liquid (not leveraged assets) are sold first.

This coming low in private assets is to set up their massive rise after the BIG BANG in October.

[stallion]

I agree with the 'can't buy knowledge' part. Internet has made the cost of most knowledge almost free or next to nothing, something that people in the pre-internet era couldn't dream of. Hopefully these large amounts of knowledge available can bring some quality changes.

knowledge is priceless and thanks to internet it truly is very easy to become "rich" easier if you know what i mean. but i think people trust the internet too much though thinking that everything it says is true

[TPTB_need_war]

I agree with the 'can't buy knowledge' part. Internet has made the cost of most knowledge almost free or next to nothing, something that people in the pre-internet era couldn't dream of. Hopefully these large amounts of knowledge available can bring some quality changes.

You are conflating past knowledge with knowledge creation. Go re-read the seminal essay in the opening post and make sure you make that distinction.

[TPTB_need_war]

Nope, it is confirmed there is no global elite.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33771

Whether the society and its elite is national or international or both is irrelevant. Relevant is: Do you promote the society (collectivism/paternalism) or the community (anarchy, self-sufficiency).

I promote the local and global community with my cryptocoin (and other technology) work and my concept of the coming Knowledge Age. But for you this must be absolute and preclude knowledge sharing in a "global community of exchange / sharing". The latter part is where we differ and you are all tied up into your Mathusianism which clouds your vision.

[CoinCube]

I believe the death of the Industrial Age and the birth of the Knowledge Age will kill usury without causing a Middle Ages (Dark Age). I have covered the reasoning extensively in the One-world reserve currency and the Economic Devastation threads (as AnonyMint and various other pseudonyms).

...We want a meritocracy where to earn one must “Show me the code, talk is cheap” (Linus Torvalds).

In other words, we want 100% transparency on the merits of value and exchange (this is orthogonal to anonymity, which is more about escaping politics, slavery, and the refusal to forgive and forget irrelevant factors[1]). We are tired of that Old World morass, power vacuum, slavery bullshit.

Responding to a bit of an older post here but this caught my eye for it raises an important question.

If the goal is truly 100% transparency on the merits of value and exchange anonymity strikes me not as orthogonal but to some degree in opposition to this goal. It is impossible to achieve complete transparency in an anonymous system.

In this context anonymity could be justified only in a relative sense. A potential incremental improvement over a corrupt fiat system with even less transparency.

[TPTB_need_war]

I believe the death of the Industrial Age and the birth of the Knowledge Age will kill usury without causing a Middle Ages (Dark Age). I have covered the reasoning extensively in the One-world reserve currency and the Economic Devastation threads (as AnonyMint and various other pseudonyms).

...We want a meritocracy where to earn one must “Show me the code, talk is cheap” (Linus Torvalds).

In other words, we want 100% transparency on the merits of value and exchange (this is orthogonal to anonymity, which is more about escaping politics, slavery, and the refusal to forgive and forget irrelevant factors[1]). We are tired of that Old World morass, power vacuum, slavery bullshit.

Responding to a bit of an older post here but this caught my eye for it raises an important question.

If the goal is truly 100% transparency on the merits of value and exchange anonymity strikes me not as orthogonal but to some degree in opposition to this goal. It is impossible to achieve complete transparency in an anonymous system.

In this context anonymity could be justified only in a relative sense. A potential incremental improvement over a corrupt fiat system with even less transparency.

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is not only not always required to maximize production, it is sometimes a detriment to doing so when politics can attack or slow production. That is not to say personal reputation isn't valuable in come contexts, e.g. local, tribal community.

For example, if I wanted to become a prolific leader of open source projects, I could create an anonymous persistent identity that was not correlated with my personal identity. That anonymous persistent identity would have a reputation that is orthogonal to my personal identity.

The argument against this is that society couldn't hold me personally accountable should I violate the reputation. However this is a good thing because it forces society to not place too much trust in any one identity and encourages a decentralized, fine grain approach to production versus a top-down one. Let me explain by example.

Recently there were discussions about how to organize the management of the proceeds from the launch of an altcoin ICO. The problem is that if you put all the private keys in one person's hands, not only could they run away with all the money, but that person also risks the rubber hose. If you made that person non-anonymous, the pressure to corrupt him would increase (e.g. the IRS threatens audit and the CIA says, "we can make your problems go away").

If you put these funds in a board whether anonymous or not, the potential problems magnify and/or you end up with political morass that wastes the funds. Ethereum is a prime example of having too many mouths to feed (too many managers and paralysis).

So anonymity is telling you that concentrating funds is not a desirable activity. Whereas, sending all the capital to the utility, hardware, and usury entities and wasting the opportunity to focus some of that capital to key investments in the ecosystem is also flawed. And so any solution to that altcoin ICO problem would need to reduce the concentration, in order to be more robust.

But if you compared with what Monero did, where the PoW distribution was heavily front loaded to reward the early adopters, but shared like a Communism, then there is less focused investment in the ecosystem and it probably flounders.

[CoinCube]

Bitcoin (the Gavincoin fork) will die with the death of the NWO paradigm. That paradigm will enslave the people who can't make the shift the Knowledge Age, and those in that system will parasite on themselves until they have destroyed themselves. The NWO paradigm is a slow burn of eugenics. I am proposing an anonymous, decentralized crypto-currency to service the fledgling Knowledge Age and leave Bitcoin for the NWO which is was designed for. In the Economic Devastation and One-world reserve currency threads I have detailed my expectation for a bifurcation of the economy into NWO masses (stuck in the Old World Industrial Age, high fixed capital, socialism paradigm) and Knowledge Age future.

This would not be the first time humanity went through a slow burn of eugenics.
The last major one was 8,000 years ago with the onset of agriculture.

With the onset of agriculture and presumably the first emergence of social units larger then a small tribe
the environment changed dramatically.

Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same

http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/17-to-1-reproductive-success
 

[TPTB_need_war]

Bitcoin (the Gavincoin fork) will die with the death of the NWO paradigm. That paradigm will enslave the people who can't make the shift the Knowledge Age, and those in that system will parasite on themselves until they have destroyed themselves. The NWO paradigm is a slow burn of eugenics. I am proposing an anonymous, decentralized crypto-currency to service the fledgling Knowledge Age and leave Bitcoin for the NWO which is was designed for. In the Economic Devastation and One-world reserve currency threads I have detailed my expectation for a bifurcation of the economy into NWO masses (stuck in the Old World Industrial Age, high fixed capital, socialism paradigm) and Knowledge Age future.

This would not be the first time humanity went through a slow burn of eugenics.
The last major one was 8,000 years ago with the onset of agriculture.

With the onset of agriculture and presumably the first emergence of social units larger then a small tribe
the environment changed dramatically.

Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same

http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/17-to-1-reproductive-success

Indeed, the fixed capital age meant aggregating was the key to success. Agriculture required also armies to protect stationary crops.

As we've advanced into the knowledge producing activities, men have been fighting back.

[CoinCube]

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is not only not always required to maximize production, it is sometimes a detriment to doing so when politics can attack or slow production. That is not to say personal reputation isn't valuable in come contexts.

I would argue that the following rephrasing of your argument is more accurate.

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is usually required to maximize production, however, identity can become a detriment when politics will attack or slow production. In this special case obfuscation of personal reputation may maximize production.

As we've advanced into the knowledge producing activities, men have been fighting back.

Perhaps, or perhaps those who advance into knowledge producing activities while sustaining healthy habits and lifestyles will simply be those who emerge on the other side of this bottleneck not so much a fight but a gradual replacement.

[TPTB_need_war]

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is not only not always required to maximize production, it is sometimes a detriment to doing so when politics can attack or slow production. That is not to say personal reputation isn't valuable in come contexts.

I would argue that the following rephrasing of your argument is more accurate.

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is usually required to maximize production, however, identity can become a detriment when politics will attack or slow production. In this special case obfuscation of personal reputation may maximize production.

Now you have to prove that is a special case, and not the omnipresent one.

I think you will find the Theory of the Firm is at the generative essence entirely predicated on political gridlock.

Thus mankind is being held by politics every where. And this is precisely why local community based on personal reputation (i.e. our Dunbar limit) can't scale.

As we've advanced into the knowledge producing activities, men have been fighting back.

Perhaps, or perhaps those who advance into knowledge producing activities while sustaining healthy habits and lifestyles will simply be those who emerge on the other side of this bottleneck not so much a fight but a gradual replacement.

Your cited resource showed that men have fought back from 17-to-1 to 5-to-1 since the dawn of agriculture.

Of course I didn't mean fist fight; I mean in the economic competition dimension.

It won't be possible to advance the knowledge age if the sovereign debt-fiat backstop capture mechanism isn't thwarted. Because that totalitarianism requires snuffing out the decentralization the knowledge age is.

So I don't think you have a choice on anonymity. Eugenics or knowledge age. Each person can make their choice because it will be a bifurcation. And I think think even the Bible makes it quite clear we will choose the 666 or be raptured away from that world.

[CoinCube]

I would argue that the following rephrasing of your argument is more accurate.

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is usually required to maximize production, however, identity can become a detriment when politics will attack or slow production. In this special case obfuscation of personal reputation may maximize production.

Now you have to prove that is a special case, and not the omnipresent one.

Haha touché

No arguing that the near term trend is towards omnipresence. Longer term I am more optimistic.  
I agree that mankind is being held by politics everywhere.

The challenge is how to scale up a system based on personal reputation from a local community to the global level without introducing politics? Or said more simply how does one solve the technological challenge of raising ones Dunbar limit to effectively and with with reasonable accuracy include all of humanity.

Perhaps this challenge can never be solved. However, if it can it will represent a solution that is superior to anonymity.

It won't be possible to advance the knowledge age if there sovereign debt-fiat backstop capture mechanism isn't thwarted. Because that totalitarianism requires snuffing out the decentralization the knowledge age is.

I am unconvinced that the sovereign debt-fiat backstop capture mechanism will not be self limited. It seems to be designed/effective at pushing the world towards global world governance. However, once that is accomplished is it really in anyone's best interests including TPTB to quash innovation and a future knowledge age. That would be a lot like medieval barons trying to quash the renaissance out of fear. Could it happen, perhaps, but I doubt it and it may not even be possible. The wealthy today are better off then the feudal barons living in cold damp castles and they know it. Similarly TPTB will benefit far more than most from a knowledge age even if their relative status gradually declines.

[TPTB_need_war]

I would argue that the following rephrasing of your argument is more accurate.

Transparency and merit is on the substantive production. Personal identity is usually required to maximize production, however, identity can become a detriment when politics will attack or slow production. In this special case obfuscation of personal reputation may maximize production.

Now you have to prove that is a special case, and not the omnipresent one.

Haha touché

No arguing that the near term trend is towards omnipresence. Longer term I am more optimistic.  
I agree that mankind is being held by politics everywhere.

The challenge is how to scale up a system based on personal reputation from a local community to the global level without introducing politics? Or said more simply how does one solve the technological challenge of raising ones Dunbar limit to effectively and with with reasonable accuracy include all of humanity.

Perhaps this challenge can never be solved. However, if it can it would represent a solution that was superior to anonymity.

Simple. Don't expect people to interact in technological communities larger than their Dunbar limit, i.e. allow the maximum division-of-labor to proceed. And the knowledge age allows people to directly access experts, rather than proxied by the Theory of the Firm.

The full employment comes from needing liason experts between tribes of experts of different specializations.

The reason anonymity remains forever necessary every where is because the threat of autonomous reset of reputation will ameliorate trolling.

It won't be possible to advance the knowledge age if there sovereign debt-fiat backstop capture mechanism isn't thwarted. Because that totalitarianism requires snuffing out the decentralization the knowledge age is.

I am unconvinced that the sovereign debt-fiat backstop capture mechanism will not be self limited. It seems to be designed/effective at pushing the world towards global world governance. However, once that is accomplished is it really in anyone's best interests including TPTB to quash innovation and a future knowledge age.

The knowledge age and the NWO are fundamentally incongruent, because the former produces at such a high rate, the latter's fixed capital is diluted towards 0. TPTB have no power in a knowledge age.

That would be a lot like medieval barons trying to quash the renaissance out of fear.

They were forced to get into central banking instead. This time, there is no where for them to transition so they go for total control as last desperate option.

Checkmate.

[CoinCube]

That would be a lot like medieval barons trying to quash the renaissance out of fear.

They were forced to get into central banking instead. This time, there is no where for them to transition so they go for total control as last desperate option.

Checkmate.

Perhaps you are underestimating our vested financial interests? I suspect they will find another suitable transition from themselves. One theoretical possibility springs immediately to mind although it is a bit in the realm of science fiction.

Even if a transition is not possible the decline in power of the wealthy is likely to be gradual. A relative decline only not an absolute one. Its not really in anyone's interest including the powers that be to try and quash progress.

[TPTB_need_war]

That would be a lot like medieval barons trying to quash the renaissance out of fear.

They were forced to get into central banking instead. This time, there is no where for them to transition so they go for total control as last desperate option.

Checkmate.

Perhaps you are underestimating our vested financial interests? I suspect they will find another suitable transition from themselves. One theoretical possibility springs immediately to mind although it is a bit in the realm of science fiction.

Even if a transition is not possible the decline in power of the wealthy is likely to be gradual. A relative decline only not an absolute one. Its not really in anyone's interest including the powers that be to try and quash progress.

Right, not a checkmate. More of a transition and this is why Armstrong is wrong about a Dark Age.

(Edit: but this depends on the Knowledge Age succeeding, otherwise TPTB+NWO physical morass will have nothing economically prosperous to parasite on. And this is why anonymity is critically needed)

Remember we agreed long ago that they will own the physical economy for a long time, except for items that can be 3D printed locally and aren't auspicious. Thus they can parasite on the knowledge economy for any derivative effects that move into the physical economy, they can tax.

So yes after they get the NWO, they can reset the financial system and anything that moves in their world will be in their financial system.

That is also why gold as a hedge for the individual investor is a dying paradigm.

Eventually the knowledge age might virtualize existence, so then TPTB could lose even the physical realm but as you say that is more in the realm of science fiction at this point (the sci-fi you allude to is technology to tap the thoughts of a person).

[TPTB_need_war]

https://bitcoinism.liberty.me/what-is-mining-why-do-we-need-it-and-how-much-is-enough/

Read the above long-winded, contentless, screed of cold leftovers if you like.  Or skim.  I'll be a good guy and break down the real issue right here:

Today's implementation of mining is like having a tin can tied to a horse's tail.  The fast the horse runs, the faster the can follows.  We've currently got about 6 miners (or horses so-to-speak) that make any real difference.

The main trouble with this is that each of the horses is going to hit the profitability break-even cliff at roughly the same time due to similar economics (though geo-politics could intercede.)  At that point there will be large chunks of sha256 power available since it's pointless to mine Bitcoin with it...at least for economic reasons.

The alternative is to try to match endless inflation against profitability not unlike how debt-based fiat systems work.  Bitcoin has so many sources of volatility that this would be a tough row to hoe even if it were (stupidly) chosen as a strategy.

Note that the economics of mining under our current paradigm are not even effected by block-size/fee-structure arguments.  That's a separate issue.

I believe you are referring to the usury model that likely funds the large ASIC farms. Interest compounding is an exponential function and thus can't go on forever unless the money supply expands at the same or greater exponential rate also.

The article does not address the fact that the State has the motive to censor transactions to enforce KYC up to the level of cost it can extract from society, because this is the only way the Industrial Age society can continue to parasite on the Knowledge Age with the NWO.

Thus if you want to defend against the takeover of Bitcoin to effectively a fiat currency, you need essentially the hashrate that extracts more value from society than the State can. This is why I decided that the security of Bitcoin (and all derivative altcoins including Monero) was a eugenics paradigm and doomed to fail.

Thus I set myself about finding the solution to the problem. And I did! Coming soon to a cinema near you...

[OROBTC]

...

I'm looking forward to the movie, TPTB.

Above comment on 3-D printing was of interest.  I presume that is fairly easy to figure out...    

Partial solutions are better than no solution.

It's beginning to look like ONLY a Knowledge Age will free us.  But, a Knowledge Age does not by any means seem inevitable, even after growing pains.


EDIT: HB, TPTB!

[TPTB_need_war]

I am looking forward to Armstrong's comments re Greece tomorrow and the near-future.

I think I understand this better than Armstrong does.

Perhaps the Troika will use the big stick of capital controls to induce the Greeks to vote for the Troika's bailout terms which contains a few carrots with more austerity.

The referendum is some sham to convince the Europeans they are not under a dictatorship, as was the case for Scotland.

Remember my prediction in 2010 in the "Understanding Everything Fundamentally" essay.

You will probably need a week or two of studying the thread slowly.

I will be the first to admit I needed a week to fully absorb the following works of AnonyMint.

The Rise of Knowledge
Understand Everything Fundamentally

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Understand%20Everything%20Fundamentally.html#europe

"Coase’s theorem says that an inefficient internal order will continue for as long as there remains an unavoidable frictional barrier insulating it from the more efficient external possibilities. The fundamental reason the EU crisis will not result in a disintegration of the union, at least not until its people significantly abandon collectivism, is that organisms which are unable to comprehend the mechanism by which they are consuming resources faster than their ecosystem can replenish, thus are unable to stop the mechanism before they perish. So the implosion of the friction and thus the order only occurs when they perish, because they will continue to repeat the mechanism which they do not understand to be a cause of their suffering. This can be verified in a petri dish, as an organism will reproduce until it consumes all of its food or oxygen."

[thaaanos]

I'll vote No

PS. whats up? been distracted in the latest greek drama need to catchup on this thread

[darlidada]

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Understand%20Everything%20Fundamentally.html#europe

"Coase’s theorem says that an inefficient internal order will continue for as long as there remains an unavoidable frictional barrier insulating it from the more efficient external possibilities. The fundamental reason the EU crisis will not result in a disintegration of the union, at least not until its people significantly abandon collectivism, is that organisms which are unable to comprehend the mechanism by which they are consuming resources faster than their ecosystem can replenish, thus are unable to stop the mechanism before they perish. So the implosion of the friction and thus the order only occurs when they perish, because they will continue to repeat the mechanism which they do not understand to be a cause of their suffering. This can be verified in a petri dish, as an organism will reproduce until it consumes all of its food or oxygen."

I'm living like this as a human being. ive so many bad habits that prevent me to achieve my maximum potential but i only learn about them when i crash and burn. Though, ive to admit, there are a ton of them that i KNOW are bad but i keep doing them as i FEEL im gaining something valuable out of them. the former is being an ignorant, the latter is being an addict.


how do i shut down the friction force that is screaming "I DONT WANT TO CHANGE. LET ME KEEP DOING WHAT IM DOING. ITS WORKING I CAN FEEL IT !!!!****" within me ?


*****its working less and less every time though