This is what we have. And exactly what gato has been talking about. We have been establishing a reputation economy, right here. A True North digital university of ideas and thinking. People who have passed the ethics litmus test. These are the people I am trusting, going forward. The gatos and eugyppii and myriad of people who have done the number crunching and the thinking, and are able to impart it to those who are receptive to it, and who are prepared to think along with them (even though, for the likes of me, I need some colour-by-numbers help!). As we were being put through the covid grinder, this is where we have managed to coalesce and connect. I am actually fairly hopeful. We have our Clever Ones, too. Put that in the pot with uncompromising ethics, a healthy scepticism, a smattering of bloody-minded contrariness, and the will to stay true to our humanness - and we will have the edge, ultimately. We have to will it into being and push it out into the world every which way we can think of. The Zeitgeist will, and must, shift.
On the NSA spying thing I think it would be interesting for companies that have gotten such an NSA gag order to have some unwritten indicator to tip customers off like an open sign on the business with magenta lettering or something similar. Good luck in court proving the business violated the gag order on this basis. Honestly I just bought an open sign. I didn’t know it had a second meaning. It’s kind of like the Dutch wearing paper clips to symbolize nazi resistance.
In fact perhaps while under NSA gag order paper clips should become part of the uniform for your baristas. It somehow seems historically consistent and appropriate.
Probably 2015ish when NatSec letters for user content were first hitting public radars there was a campaign to post a canary image as canary in the coal mine to show the corp had been compelled to make confidential releases without breaking the gag orders.. gotta wonder what happened to that strategy.
I like it! although I think the paper clip is a better double entendres. In either case there isn’t jack they could do about it reasonable doubt and all.
Really. How many seconds do you guess it would take the Feds to glom on to that ingenious 'code'? And how many slicksters working for the company (not to mention company officers) would have to go to the DC clink to forget the whole idea? You need to read up on the FBI's operation to round up everybody within a mile of the capitol on J6 to update your idea of Federal investigators today.
Yeah, I love watching those old film clips of the Hollanders running the Wehrmacht out of the country with paperclips. Talk about virtue-signalling . . . . If the underground had been any kind of real problem, forget paperclips, you'd have been headed to a concentration camp for smelling like an illegal combatant to a German.
Geez, what a ride. I started out annoyed and then it got a lot better and then I ended up at "seriously no."
Putting one's faith in one actual man who is the only one of his kind--unless he can clone himself successfully and guarantee from beyond the wherever that none of the clones will turn traitor--
--there are no saviors. And anyway he's the EV monster whose obsession is pretty dangerous for we the gas-driving (and their passengers). And really, you know they can get to him too. He's not on Mars yet.
Funny, I was a censored for simply stating I hope they hang Zelensky for treason. I was asked to remove the tweet. I told them I’d rather remove my account, and did.
I, too, am scared at how much responsibility Musk is carrying that he almost certainly does not want. But his recent actions in Brazil that may have single handedly stopped a complete government takeover of politics and information (but they would have caught the non-government pedophiles!) are, frankly, amazing.
Isaac Asimov, in his epochal "Foundation" series devoted all of the second book, "Foundation and Empire" and some of the final book, "Second Foundation" to the disruptive effect across the galaxy of A SINGLE out-of-the-ordinary individual: The Mule. He was an anomaly not like anyone who came before or after and, because he was incalculable and did not conform to expectations in unexpected ways was able to effectively change the whole world, upsetting all of the malign workings of the bad galaxy-wide government as well as the "here's how society should work" calculations of Hari Seldon, someone who was (for the good guys) trying to manage how the world should work.
This is an intriguing concept -- I have always been dubious that any such person could ever exist. In the end The Mule was "defeated" but had wrought changes that mattered. For the first time, and as EGM intimates, Musk may represent someone novel enough and removed enough from the ordinary interaction with the "system" to put something truly different into place. As with The Mule, even if someone eventually "extraordinarily renders" Musk, he may have been able to put something in place that will persist beyond his personhood as EGM suggests. And when he took over X/Twitter he noted that he had major ideas about being a central point for finance...fingers crossed.
Seems to me that many many of those 60's sci-fi novels (Jerry Sohl's Point Ultimate being prophetic of what we dissenters have experienced since 2019) should be on our re-reading lists.
Angie, you are certainly correct. But as EGM points out, that fact may not be inimical to Musk getting a project of this size started so that it cannot be later corralled. I know it's a stretch, but it seems to me that stretches are where we are at. (Otherwise, science fiction masterpieces would not be the correlates...)
Wrote my comment for me. To conclude an article by putting full faith in one man, while it may be practical, defeats gato's whole premise he laid at the outset.
Elon is as corruptible as any other mam (or woman).
as apparently it did not come across as intended, that's not my goal at all. it's very much the opposite.
i added a para at the end to clarify.
the issue with elon is not that he should run the system. no one should. it should be an open source protocol run by no one.
but to get from here to there takes a huge shift. no new system is going to get adopted without critical mass and the value of a network is the square of it's nodes.
we need to start someplace and someplace big or we're not going anywhere. it's just going to be a bunch of idealists playing edge lord with one another about how great mastadon is and how sad that it has zero content.
I can't believe anyone on this thread believes Elon Musk isn't an actor in the show??! IMO. It's very naive to think otherwise.
Bitcoin / crypto isn't worth shit in big brother world. They'll just create a law that jails you for having crypto and vendors for accepting crypto. But their pedo sicko fees and money laundering network goes unchecked. I cannot believe you've said crypto is the greatest anything, the greatest piece of shit, like Elon. Meh, SMH. The central banking families are the fucking ones who created shit coins in the first place. They have controlled and monitored the world for longer and in a greater sense than 99% of the population could even imagine. And it's clear right here. Praise your starlink father, I guess no one saw terminator, lol, oh don't forget to praise him for being the number 1 carbon credit salesman on earth.
Repeat after me.
I am G U L L I B L E.
I BELIEVE WHAT I AM TOLD FROM BILLIONAIRES MADE BY THE GOVT I DON'T KNOW.
Yeah, it's a 2nd generation Bioweapon. There is no doubt this is their aim/goal. My questions will it succeed everywhere before it's all over or in some places. Will it exist for 100's of years before challenged, is this the end? I know all this, I just don't know the time horizon or how to prepare for it any better than I have.
The guys with the monopoly on violence will always win. Even in the scenario you envision, you will still need to buy things to survive. Physical things, that exist is a certain place and time,
… that have to travel over roads and rails or air. All that is controlled by the guys with the guns, including the IRS.
No, there is no way out of this completely. The best we can do is control and minimize it, by building a society of strong morals and a culture of mutual respect.
Yes people can and will always be corrupted, but if we have a critical mass of moral people and a culture of mutual respect we can minimize the damage.
That’s the best we can ever hope for the future. But we are not heading that way at all. We are heading in precisely the opposite direction.
2. a starved beast can afford a lot less violence and enforcement and the actual rubber meeting road on "applied violence" is very small for the feds (barring turning the military on the people and i doubt the soldiers will go for it). it's mostly local. this is why devolution of power matters so much.
I don’t know. I think that if I didn’t pay my taxes, I’m pretty sure some guys with guns will eventually show up, and the second amendment isn’t going to help me in that situation.
Hide your income or money and they will just find something else to tax. We do live in the “meatverse” and not on an end to end encryption mesh network. You can’t hide in the real world.
Now “the soldiers not going for it” depends entirely on their morals and respect for others, which is my point entirely. We do not have that today. They would go for it today, without question. Two years ago restaurant owners in my town would not let me into their businesses because some county health official told them to check the vaccination status of everyone entering, and to bar entry to any person unvaccinated. All happily complied with this immoral order.
We must fix the moral crisis in this country (and the world) first before we can fix anything else.
Moral people. I am afraid we have passed that milestone. Go back years in a civilized country or area and see that social mores existed and were adhered to by most society. There were penalties and ostracization for bad behavior. A justice system that would deal harsh penalties for crimes. Capitalism relies on a trust society, a requirement for litigation to enforce contracts, commercial and social destroys that. Playing by rules has become a suckers game as the politicians, oligarchs, victim culture and DEI subvert merit and worth. Community needs to be built on trust and that starts small scale and grows as its value becomes perceived and those that attempt to game it are penalized. I can build trust with neighbors and community. Flood my area with illegal invaders and it cannot work. As el gato pointed out recently, unless there become penalties for malfeasance as a public employee they remain immune with the capacity to terrorize and impoverish citizens.
I see no reason why these two initiatives cannot run in parallel.
1. The development of a state-free, surveillance-resistant currency
2. A society of strong morals and a culture of mutual respect
Each reinforces the other. Mathematics and humanities can peacefully coexist.
A culture of mutual respect needs to confront the ever present tradeoffs between respect for the individual and serving the common-good. With respect for the individual more often than not trumping serving the common-good. This hierarchy of values must recognize that serving the common-good is often a weapon of totalitarians''.
What did you *do* in opposition to those restaurant owners? Nothing, I suspect, and that was undoubtedly the right and moral course at that time. But let the evil powers up the ante a bit, to "you've got nothing to lose" levels, and how easy would it have been for you to put them out of business with a bit of unauthorized, illegal non-monopoly violence?
*This* is what I actually do fear--that the left will keep pushing and pushing until the finally do reignite the Warre of All Against All.
I politely voiced my opinion directly and in local media. For what it’s worth, I have not eaten in a restaurant in this county since then.
As to “up ing the ante” to “you’ve got nothing to lose” levels… I hope that the morals and culture in our country will turn around before that happens.
At some point though, as our country’s founders realized, violent opposition to immorality is the moral choice. I hope it never comes to that.
The linked interview touches on many of the considerations of "Will the police/soldiers turn on the citizens". It is a bit long (watch at 1.25 speed) and has no transcript but basically it requires us the people to awaken and take steps to become more resistant to coercion to allow the 51% to simply say NO.
While I love the idea/dream of a rebellious network of systems to run the world it will not happen. In the end someone has to pay for those services and they will not be free or equally available or utilises so the cost has to be socialised and this requires threat of force or a very clear social contract that is beneficial for both parties, the state and the citizen. Right now we have a situation that favours the state greatly and we sit in this mess.
You are describing the “ant computer.” And some maintain that this is exactly what the globalists are building.
However, there is a fly in the ointment….even as you describe the pros and cons. That fly is human nature….and the presumption by the few that we all want what that few thinks is admirable or desirable.
The fact remains SOMEBODY must build the “machinery” and “maintain it”…..for this system. And the reality is that even as you describe it….it is a “system” which ends up in its own way being the keys to the kingdom. Or are we supposed to believe, given eons of history and documented evidence of human nature, that the likes of Musk (Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Theil) will set up this system out of the goodness of their heart and abandon it to its own authority once established?!?!
Additionally, what you are describing still puts humanity’s foot on the threshold of virtual reality….
So yeah, kind of think there is more hope of saving humanity were we to return to bartering and actually knowing in real time and space those you do business with….don’t buy the lies that progress and innovation is the remedy to all that ails us, especially when all the answers provided are through technology increasingly held by the few and used to harness or exploit the masses (treating them and their data, energy and essence as a commodity).
Of course not ... referring to your (probably) rhetorical question of benevolence. But not out of an "a priori" (conscious) malevolence but because THE ORIGINAL SIN being hidden from sight by HUBRIS. Catching up later with REALITY, when the rubber meets the road. The dick swinging clown being the latest example coming to mind.
Best example "do no harm" in all its expressions throughout man's history ... going right back to ADAM and EVE in THE GARDEN OF EDEN being beguiled by THE SERPENT convincing EVE - giving birth to new life on earth and therefore being mainly concerned about her offspring material wellbeing - to overcome GOD ALMIGHTY'S WISDOM MIGHT GRACE AND PURPOSE no matter what. And ADAM realising the "easy" way out abandoning GOD ALMIGHTY by serving EVE/THE FLESH instead of THE TRUTH/THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Probably the most dystopian and cynical anti-Bitcoin take yet. Sure the rogue shadow govt exists—everybody and Snowden knows this. But these people often swear to uphold the Constitution, so there’s a risk in going full Gestapo iron fist sans velvet glove. Bitcoin is international, is seasonably decentralized, and is chock full of positive incentives for people & systems. The open ledger will be *useful* once organizations & governments are using it. Do we want *those people* using super private money? Pseudo anonymity for me and full transparency for the tax man seems just and proper.
I for one am not ready to toss out the good for the slim hope of the perfect.
Except we now have to claim on our income tax returns if we have any cryptocurrency. What are the penalties for lying again? Still on the fence about buying any.
You only have to check the box if you sold or transferred any bitcoin, and only if you did that personally, rather than through a corporation or partnership. The first year that the added the sentence to the 1040, the IRS worded the question to try to get people who bought bitcoin to check the box but that isn’t any of their business and they’ve since modified the language.
On a philosophical note…most of humanity is hard-wired for group behavior. Weather we call it a troop, clan, tribe, nation, or team, humans are collectivist by biology, and they also have a built in “obey the leader” psychology. The tendency to subservience, hierarchy, and group identity is hugely powerful. Most people are not like feral house cats, (who self-domesticated and come and go as they please) but they are more like chimps in a troop, or sheep in a pen. To a certain degree we all trade away freedom for belonging, and want to be on the winning team. I believe this is relevant because here we all dream of a system for the masses, but optimized for the libertarian few. To me, this is a structural mis/alignment.
Your comment summarises it perfectly and even screams the "solution" into our face .... anyone wondering why "the system" is so obsessed with destroying the ... exactly, because THE SYNAGOGUE OF DISOBEDIENCE is aware of the crucial link that LIFE is based upon, which is why THE SYNAGOGUE OF DISOBEDIENCE is trying to break this link ... since THE GARDEN OF EDEN with ever changing EMPTY promises to keep the participants in line - funny enough the latter -unintentionally - ties very much into the underlying condition of the mind that ensures ever increasing incentives work for a long time (dopamine er al) .... but EVENTUALLY nothing can save the spiral of its own DEATH!
"you could hide anything in that." Yup, you could. Including some very unsavory things. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of surveillance, but as my mother used to say, "be careful what you ask for, you might get it." I have no doubt that some of these hidden systems are already in place, now, I ask, who might be using them and why? How about human traffickers, child pornographers, people who have something to hide for very (not so) good reasons; things you and I would be absolutely appalled to find out are happening under our noses and to people we care about? What you are talking about is a double-edged sword here. I certainly would not want to be part of or even encourage the development of a system that makes it impossible to find out who may be trafficking real or AI-generated images of children online. And before you jump on me, yes, I do have somewhat of a personal interest or involvement in this matter: some years ago, my workplace was raided by the FBI because one of the higher ups, a man who used to be my direct supervisor, had PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF HIS OWN CHILDREN, not on his own laptop, which would have been bad enough, but on a company supplied and owned laptop. The FBI came in without warning and seized several computers, which caused a panic among our clients as we dealt with confidential trade secrets and now who knows who had access to them. So yes, the scumbag was caught, and let's just say he doesn't have to worry about any future career plans or retirement for the rest of his life (which may not be all that long considering that his new "colleagues" take a very dim view of that kind of recreational activity). As I said, two-edged sword. I'm pretty sure we can all agree here we don't want to make it even easier for people like that to hide.
You haven’t learned the one crucial lesson yet: none of that, awful as it is, compares to the horrors of government controlling it. Law and Justice must be approached from the conservative side of “some bad guys may escape, but we’ll do our best to catch them”, and NOT from the liberal side of “let’s give big brother enough power to catch all the bad guys, it’ll only hurt the innocent a little bit, don’t worry”. Slippery slope and we all end up slaves (and don’t kid yourself, the government has plenty of people involved in pedophilia, the government will just protect the ones in their side).
If Epstein tells us anything it is about the naivete (as well meaning as it may be) of those who say "but the child pornography"...just like those who cry "but the children". We all care about both, but sacrificing virtually everything (the government is NEVER your friend) to catch the occasional non-governmental pedophile (want to take bets on whether you ever see the government-sponsored Epstein lists?) is an argument that always ends poorly for everyone. And the government pedophiles just continue. You said it well in how law and justice need to be pursued. The "safety first" worldview, common in the left and the "for the children" groups always means that EVERYONE loses.
There is already a shocking amount of abuse and child pornography etc. The government keeps saying they need new powers of surveillance to stop it, but actually they have absolutely no interest in doing so. If they did, the people in Epsteins black book would be investigated, and the second line in Epsteins network would be used to give evidence against the more powerful. It is just being used to leverage mass surveillance. The best defense against abuse is NOT having the most evil people in power, and people looking out for each other as peers.
Sophia's husband here. It's sad to see how close you come to the solution, and then, because of some weird blinkers on your eyes, you dismiss the only viable solution to keep our wealth out of the government's power to debase and steal: bitcoin.
You say you have "been around" bitcoin for a long time, but somehow one of the biggest core disputes about its nature escaped your notice. Since the very beginning, there has been a tremendous disagreement between core developers and supporters of bitcoin as to whether it was a currency or a store of value. Since 2009, I have taken the "store of value" side. The blocksize wars from 2015 to 2017 have answered this question definitively. Bitcoin is a store of value. A digital gold. Those who keep pushing the idea of bitcoin as a currency are wilfully missing the point. The project has grown and adapted, and the ideals of the white paper are nothing but a historical footnote at this point.
All your objections as to traceability and gatekeeping are stupid. They only apply in a situation where people try to marry bitcoin with the legacy financial system. What we need, and what is already developing in places like Africa with no decent infrastructure, is a circular economy where bitcoin is exchanged for goods and services, not for fiat. In that circumstance, the government is powerless to obstruct. They can track the bitcoin you buy on Coinbase, but not the bitcoin I pay you from my wallet to yours for the new well you drilled on my property or the engine repair I did on your van,
Surely you are aware that every currency passes through three steps to wide acceptance: First, it is a collectible, then a store of value, then a unit of account. We are somewhere at the beginning of price discovery. At present, bitcoin is too volatile to be a unit of account, but it is rapidly growing as a store of value. Have you not noticed it has become one of the top 10 stores of value on earth? So yes, we are moving from step 1 to step 2. Bitcoin is not, and never will be, a daily currency to use for your morning coffee run. It is here to replace precious metals, real estate, and bonds as a store of value. You dismiss layer 2 and layer 3 solutions because you don't actually understand layer 1. You apparently think you do, but you do not.
The future world economy will revolve around CBDC's, run on the XRP ledger, and bitcoin, which is freedom money. You need to wake up and stop looking at bitcoin through the lens of whatever you think it is, and learn what it really is. The billionaires of the world are quietly moving their wealth into bitcoin because they will never, ever leave their wealth in a system where CBDC's can shut them down at will.
"The future world economy will revolve around CBDC's"
Well, then. It's all downhill from here.
Please, whoever's the last one out be sure to turn off the lights. You must be a lot of fun at.parties.
Oh - and you know you can create your own Substack account and not be "Sophia's husband?" That's what serious people who want to be taken seriously do. There's a narrative about top-down control sorta squeezed in here that Sophia's husbands wife should find more than a little overbearing.
"Epstein's Mom is ill. Signed, Mrs. Epstein's Doctor."
"...you wouldn't need your husband to step in and get all macho condescending." You have no evidence that he's stepping in to speak for me. In fact, the comment started with "Sophia's husband here" precisely to show these aren't my thoughts. Stop taking cues from corporate media to fling claims around without evidence.
I hadn't refuted them or otherwise yet because I hadn't even gotten around to reading the post or my husband's comment.
Also, I'm not your secretary. If you find those statements to be rude, then say, "Sophia's husband, those comments are condescending." Don't ask me to relay that.
Interesting thoughts but with this solutions we are still brainwashed and dependent on the number of likes you got in facebook and twitter, we are still spied on by Alexa, nest… to be expected to be in front of a screen the whole day. Maybe we will be invisible but still with the sheep mentality. I am much more pessimist and I think the only way to retain our freedom and our money is to kiss goodbye to all these new inventions and to directly ignore the government and its agencies. I deleted all my accounts in Facebook, twitter, youtube, amazon, etc when the scandemia started. I don’t watch tv, I try to pay with cash instead of credit card to allow people to evade if they can, I’ve forbidden Alexa or similar things in my home. I seriously think to move to a farm…. I like my easy modern life but not as much as my freedom. My gut tells me the solution is less technology… it has been an awfully good ally for the government until now….
"this literally turns the essentially infinite resource of idiots arguing with idiots on social media into the basis to protect the privacy of the internet."
Careful there! Some of these idiots might be your subscribers.
In all seriousness, I think that the US and other governments will do to Iceland with data that they did to Switzerland with banking. They can bring enormous pressure to bare on any country that does not play ball. The only insurance is that agents of government use these services as well. It was said that the Germans didn't invade Switzerland in WWII because the top Nazi officials were hiding their ill-gotten gains there.
Wow. This actually made sense (mostly) to my tech-averse brain. Thanks for putting it in terms I could (sorta) grasp.
Step 1 is to find honest, knowlegeable peopleyou can trust to explain and advise.
This is what we have. And exactly what gato has been talking about. We have been establishing a reputation economy, right here. A True North digital university of ideas and thinking. People who have passed the ethics litmus test. These are the people I am trusting, going forward. The gatos and eugyppii and myriad of people who have done the number crunching and the thinking, and are able to impart it to those who are receptive to it, and who are prepared to think along with them (even though, for the likes of me, I need some colour-by-numbers help!). As we were being put through the covid grinder, this is where we have managed to coalesce and connect. I am actually fairly hopeful. We have our Clever Ones, too. Put that in the pot with uncompromising ethics, a healthy scepticism, a smattering of bloody-minded contrariness, and the will to stay true to our humanness - and we will have the edge, ultimately. We have to will it into being and push it out into the world every which way we can think of. The Zeitgeist will, and must, shift.
The hidden benefit Covid gave us is both new awareness and resentment as to how evil a captured government is.
My thoughts exactly!
Yeah this is Gato at his best -- completely in his element.
On the NSA spying thing I think it would be interesting for companies that have gotten such an NSA gag order to have some unwritten indicator to tip customers off like an open sign on the business with magenta lettering or something similar. Good luck in court proving the business violated the gag order on this basis. Honestly I just bought an open sign. I didn’t know it had a second meaning. It’s kind of like the Dutch wearing paper clips to symbolize nazi resistance.
In fact perhaps while under NSA gag order paper clips should become part of the uniform for your baristas. It somehow seems historically consistent and appropriate.
Probably 2015ish when NatSec letters for user content were first hitting public radars there was a campaign to post a canary image as canary in the coal mine to show the corp had been compelled to make confidential releases without breaking the gag orders.. gotta wonder what happened to that strategy.
I like it! although I think the paper clip is a better double entendres. In either case there isn’t jack they could do about it reasonable doubt and all.
Really. How many seconds do you guess it would take the Feds to glom on to that ingenious 'code'? And how many slicksters working for the company (not to mention company officers) would have to go to the DC clink to forget the whole idea? You need to read up on the FBI's operation to round up everybody within a mile of the capitol on J6 to update your idea of Federal investigators today.
Yeah, I love watching those old film clips of the Hollanders running the Wehrmacht out of the country with paperclips. Talk about virtue-signalling . . . . If the underground had been any kind of real problem, forget paperclips, you'd have been headed to a concentration camp for smelling like an illegal combatant to a German.
Geez, what a ride. I started out annoyed and then it got a lot better and then I ended up at "seriously no."
Putting one's faith in one actual man who is the only one of his kind--unless he can clone himself successfully and guarantee from beyond the wherever that none of the clones will turn traitor--
--there are no saviors. And anyway he's the EV monster whose obsession is pretty dangerous for we the gas-driving (and their passengers). And really, you know they can get to him too. He's not on Mars yet.
it's not putting ones faith in one man.
it's finding a place to start and launch an open source protocol.
the initial critical mass has to come from someplace.
He's too big to not be evil. He is embedded in the state. If he was bigger than the state then he would be the state.
But yes, it's great what he does for free speech.
The solution is not starting there.
Funny, I was a censored for simply stating I hope they hang Zelensky for treason. I was asked to remove the tweet. I told them I’d rather remove my account, and did.
https://microbialcellfactories.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12934-020-01387-0
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359691796_The_Internet_of_Bodies_The_Human_Body_as_an_Efficient_and_Secure_Wireless_Channel
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349881372_Effect_of_Coronavirus_Worldwide_through_Misusing_of_Wireless_Sensor_Networks
I think he's highly vulnerable to government pressure.
i think he could turn something losoe that could not be turned off once it launched.
I, too, am scared at how much responsibility Musk is carrying that he almost certainly does not want. But his recent actions in Brazil that may have single handedly stopped a complete government takeover of politics and information (but they would have caught the non-government pedophiles!) are, frankly, amazing.
Isaac Asimov, in his epochal "Foundation" series devoted all of the second book, "Foundation and Empire" and some of the final book, "Second Foundation" to the disruptive effect across the galaxy of A SINGLE out-of-the-ordinary individual: The Mule. He was an anomaly not like anyone who came before or after and, because he was incalculable and did not conform to expectations in unexpected ways was able to effectively change the whole world, upsetting all of the malign workings of the bad galaxy-wide government as well as the "here's how society should work" calculations of Hari Seldon, someone who was (for the good guys) trying to manage how the world should work.
This is an intriguing concept -- I have always been dubious that any such person could ever exist. In the end The Mule was "defeated" but had wrought changes that mattered. For the first time, and as EGM intimates, Musk may represent someone novel enough and removed enough from the ordinary interaction with the "system" to put something truly different into place. As with The Mule, even if someone eventually "extraordinarily renders" Musk, he may have been able to put something in place that will persist beyond his personhood as EGM suggests. And when he took over X/Twitter he noted that he had major ideas about being a central point for finance...fingers crossed.
Seems to me that many many of those 60's sci-fi novels (Jerry Sohl's Point Ultimate being prophetic of what we dissenters have experienced since 2019) should be on our re-reading lists.
Elon Musk is a military contractor who cannot be trusted.
Angie, you are certainly correct. But as EGM points out, that fact may not be inimical to Musk getting a project of this size started so that it cannot be later corralled. I know it's a stretch, but it seems to me that stretches are where we are at. (Otherwise, science fiction masterpieces would not be the correlates...)
This kind of discussion is why I'm here! Thanks, Gato, for giving us such great food for thought, and the community for developing it.
Could just one substack post change the world?
probably not, but no reason not to try.
It is a start and I am reading every comment and looking to see what this start produces in the discussion.
Wrote my comment for me. To conclude an article by putting full faith in one man, while it may be practical, defeats gato's whole premise he laid at the outset.
Elon is as corruptible as any other mam (or woman).
as apparently it did not come across as intended, that's not my goal at all. it's very much the opposite.
i added a para at the end to clarify.
the issue with elon is not that he should run the system. no one should. it should be an open source protocol run by no one.
but to get from here to there takes a huge shift. no new system is going to get adopted without critical mass and the value of a network is the square of it's nodes.
we need to start someplace and someplace big or we're not going anywhere. it's just going to be a bunch of idealists playing edge lord with one another about how great mastadon is and how sad that it has zero content.
In my opinion the essay's well written and your intended conclusions were supported and clear. No harm in adding the clarifying paragraph though.
None the less many need Musk to be either a savior or a villain and perhaps themselves as villeins no matter what's said or done, oh well...
I can't believe anyone on this thread believes Elon Musk isn't an actor in the show??! IMO. It's very naive to think otherwise.
Bitcoin / crypto isn't worth shit in big brother world. They'll just create a law that jails you for having crypto and vendors for accepting crypto. But their pedo sicko fees and money laundering network goes unchecked. I cannot believe you've said crypto is the greatest anything, the greatest piece of shit, like Elon. Meh, SMH. The central banking families are the fucking ones who created shit coins in the first place. They have controlled and monitored the world for longer and in a greater sense than 99% of the population could even imagine. And it's clear right here. Praise your starlink father, I guess no one saw terminator, lol, oh don't forget to praise him for being the number 1 carbon credit salesman on earth.
Repeat after me.
I am G U L L I B L E.
I BELIEVE WHAT I AM TOLD FROM BILLIONAIRES MADE BY THE GOVT I DON'T KNOW.
🖕THAT STUPIDITY.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349881372_Effect_of_Coronavirus_Worldwide_through_Misusing_of_Wireless_Sensor_Networks
https://read.nxtbook.com/ieee/spectrum/spectrum_na_december_2020/the_body_is_the_network.html?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWldNNFlUUTVNemd4WVRFeiIsInQiOiJidlZLeGtURWdLajF4bFwvelNpK1psQ1dYazVTVXVJcnVQYWZmd3FcLzJWRWdtMlhzTDNUNjVmOVZ6KzlqcEZ6OUhvVllFaWlYV3RsU3VwWkFLTjFFNzk3a2VzWFdVMGlmeERpdWZmeHkwbVBsVVZ1Z2d2RjhOYWk2NytLa1daUk9jIn0%3D
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359691796_The_Internet_of_Bodies_The_Human_Body_as_an_Efficient_and_Secure_Wireless_Channel
Yeah, it's a 2nd generation Bioweapon. There is no doubt this is their aim/goal. My questions will it succeed everywhere before it's all over or in some places. Will it exist for 100's of years before challenged, is this the end? I know all this, I just don't know the time horizon or how to prepare for it any better than I have.
https://outraged.substack.com/p/tesla?utm_medium=reader2
The guys with the monopoly on violence will always win. Even in the scenario you envision, you will still need to buy things to survive. Physical things, that exist is a certain place and time,
… that have to travel over roads and rails or air. All that is controlled by the guys with the guns, including the IRS.
No, there is no way out of this completely. The best we can do is control and minimize it, by building a society of strong morals and a culture of mutual respect.
Yes people can and will always be corrupted, but if we have a critical mass of moral people and a culture of mutual respect we can minimize the damage.
That’s the best we can ever hope for the future. But we are not heading that way at all. We are heading in precisely the opposite direction.
two thoughts:
1. strong case for the 2nd amendment.
2. a starved beast can afford a lot less violence and enforcement and the actual rubber meeting road on "applied violence" is very small for the feds (barring turning the military on the people and i doubt the soldiers will go for it). it's mostly local. this is why devolution of power matters so much.
I don’t know. I think that if I didn’t pay my taxes, I’m pretty sure some guys with guns will eventually show up, and the second amendment isn’t going to help me in that situation.
Hide your income or money and they will just find something else to tax. We do live in the “meatverse” and not on an end to end encryption mesh network. You can’t hide in the real world.
Now “the soldiers not going for it” depends entirely on their morals and respect for others, which is my point entirely. We do not have that today. They would go for it today, without question. Two years ago restaurant owners in my town would not let me into their businesses because some county health official told them to check the vaccination status of everyone entering, and to bar entry to any person unvaccinated. All happily complied with this immoral order.
We must fix the moral crisis in this country (and the world) first before we can fix anything else.
Moral people. I am afraid we have passed that milestone. Go back years in a civilized country or area and see that social mores existed and were adhered to by most society. There were penalties and ostracization for bad behavior. A justice system that would deal harsh penalties for crimes. Capitalism relies on a trust society, a requirement for litigation to enforce contracts, commercial and social destroys that. Playing by rules has become a suckers game as the politicians, oligarchs, victim culture and DEI subvert merit and worth. Community needs to be built on trust and that starts small scale and grows as its value becomes perceived and those that attempt to game it are penalized. I can build trust with neighbors and community. Flood my area with illegal invaders and it cannot work. As el gato pointed out recently, unless there become penalties for malfeasance as a public employee they remain immune with the capacity to terrorize and impoverish citizens.
I see no reason why these two initiatives cannot run in parallel.
1. The development of a state-free, surveillance-resistant currency
2. A society of strong morals and a culture of mutual respect
Each reinforces the other. Mathematics and humanities can peacefully coexist.
A culture of mutual respect needs to confront the ever present tradeoffs between respect for the individual and serving the common-good. With respect for the individual more often than not trumping serving the common-good. This hierarchy of values must recognize that serving the common-good is often a weapon of totalitarians''.
“Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.”
Edmund Burke
But John,
What did you *do* in opposition to those restaurant owners? Nothing, I suspect, and that was undoubtedly the right and moral course at that time. But let the evil powers up the ante a bit, to "you've got nothing to lose" levels, and how easy would it have been for you to put them out of business with a bit of unauthorized, illegal non-monopoly violence?
*This* is what I actually do fear--that the left will keep pushing and pushing until the finally do reignite the Warre of All Against All.
I politely voiced my opinion directly and in local media. For what it’s worth, I have not eaten in a restaurant in this county since then.
As to “up ing the ante” to “you’ve got nothing to lose” levels… I hope that the morals and culture in our country will turn around before that happens.
At some point though, as our country’s founders realized, violent opposition to immorality is the moral choice. I hope it never comes to that.
If the Covid years were any indication, the solders will do what they’re told. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I doubt I am.
The linked interview touches on many of the considerations of "Will the police/soldiers turn on the citizens". It is a bit long (watch at 1.25 speed) and has no transcript but basically it requires us the people to awaken and take steps to become more resistant to coercion to allow the 51% to simply say NO.
While I love the idea/dream of a rebellious network of systems to run the world it will not happen. In the end someone has to pay for those services and they will not be free or equally available or utilises so the cost has to be socialised and this requires threat of force or a very clear social contract that is beneficial for both parties, the state and the citizen. Right now we have a situation that favours the state greatly and we sit in this mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2QgqavEN-g
which is where a particular look-the-other-way-and-accomodate is wheeled into position
what if there were a large corps of able-bodied men with no intellectual grounding in American systemic rights & governance
and therefore no loyalty nor devotion to its preservation nor the citizens protected by it
were to be enabled 'surreptiously' by 'extra-governmental' actors
with the means to leverage violence and chaos (Houston parking lot) that would achieve the desired outcome
with plausible deniability
and without all the messy conflicted allegiance of oath-swearing and order-breaking?
certainly THAT isn't in the Subverter's Playbook of Operational Tactics
is it?
Who says the guys with the monopoly will keep it?
Did you listen to tuckers interview with pavel? Telegram fits your definition better than twitter.
currently maybe, but telegram does not have the critical mass to drive a movement.
there's just not enough attention and conversation there.
the hardest part of this transition will be producing something that can, day one, compete with the value of what we already have.
it's a chicken and egg problem. no one will move if "the discussion" is not there but "the discussion" cannot be there unless people move.
Could be that adding Tucker to the line up will increase visibility. Twitter just has so much DOD DNA.
Yes I did. Yesterday. And appreciated it greatly. Subscribing to TCN for $70 is one of the better investments I have made.
Dubai vs Iceland - interesting considerations. Discerning who to trust (and verify)
You are describing the “ant computer.” And some maintain that this is exactly what the globalists are building.
However, there is a fly in the ointment….even as you describe the pros and cons. That fly is human nature….and the presumption by the few that we all want what that few thinks is admirable or desirable.
The fact remains SOMEBODY must build the “machinery” and “maintain it”…..for this system. And the reality is that even as you describe it….it is a “system” which ends up in its own way being the keys to the kingdom. Or are we supposed to believe, given eons of history and documented evidence of human nature, that the likes of Musk (Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Theil) will set up this system out of the goodness of their heart and abandon it to its own authority once established?!?!
Additionally, what you are describing still puts humanity’s foot on the threshold of virtual reality….
So yeah, kind of think there is more hope of saving humanity were we to return to bartering and actually knowing in real time and space those you do business with….don’t buy the lies that progress and innovation is the remedy to all that ails us, especially when all the answers provided are through technology increasingly held by the few and used to harness or exploit the masses (treating them and their data, energy and essence as a commodity).
Of course not ... referring to your (probably) rhetorical question of benevolence. But not out of an "a priori" (conscious) malevolence but because THE ORIGINAL SIN being hidden from sight by HUBRIS. Catching up later with REALITY, when the rubber meets the road. The dick swinging clown being the latest example coming to mind.
Best example "do no harm" in all its expressions throughout man's history ... going right back to ADAM and EVE in THE GARDEN OF EDEN being beguiled by THE SERPENT convincing EVE - giving birth to new life on earth and therefore being mainly concerned about her offspring material wellbeing - to overcome GOD ALMIGHTY'S WISDOM MIGHT GRACE AND PURPOSE no matter what. And ADAM realising the "easy" way out abandoning GOD ALMIGHTY by serving EVE/THE FLESH instead of THE TRUTH/THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Probably the most dystopian and cynical anti-Bitcoin take yet. Sure the rogue shadow govt exists—everybody and Snowden knows this. But these people often swear to uphold the Constitution, so there’s a risk in going full Gestapo iron fist sans velvet glove. Bitcoin is international, is seasonably decentralized, and is chock full of positive incentives for people & systems. The open ledger will be *useful* once organizations & governments are using it. Do we want *those people* using super private money? Pseudo anonymity for me and full transparency for the tax man seems just and proper.
I for one am not ready to toss out the good for the slim hope of the perfect.
Except we now have to claim on our income tax returns if we have any cryptocurrency. What are the penalties for lying again? Still on the fence about buying any.
You only have to check the box if you sold or transferred any bitcoin, and only if you did that personally, rather than through a corporation or partnership. The first year that the added the sentence to the 1040, the IRS worded the question to try to get people who bought bitcoin to check the box but that isn’t any of their business and they’ve since modified the language.
‘reasonably’ not ‘seasonably’ this cat is a bad proofreader
On a philosophical note…most of humanity is hard-wired for group behavior. Weather we call it a troop, clan, tribe, nation, or team, humans are collectivist by biology, and they also have a built in “obey the leader” psychology. The tendency to subservience, hierarchy, and group identity is hugely powerful. Most people are not like feral house cats, (who self-domesticated and come and go as they please) but they are more like chimps in a troop, or sheep in a pen. To a certain degree we all trade away freedom for belonging, and want to be on the winning team. I believe this is relevant because here we all dream of a system for the masses, but optimized for the libertarian few. To me, this is a structural mis/alignment.
Whether?
Astute observation….tend to agree.
Your comment summarises it perfectly and even screams the "solution" into our face .... anyone wondering why "the system" is so obsessed with destroying the ... exactly, because THE SYNAGOGUE OF DISOBEDIENCE is aware of the crucial link that LIFE is based upon, which is why THE SYNAGOGUE OF DISOBEDIENCE is trying to break this link ... since THE GARDEN OF EDEN with ever changing EMPTY promises to keep the participants in line - funny enough the latter -unintentionally - ties very much into the underlying condition of the mind that ensures ever increasing incentives work for a long time (dopamine er al) .... but EVENTUALLY nothing can save the spiral of its own DEATH!
LIBERTARIAN only being half of the way....
Ross Ulbricht - that’s a name worth remembering - must learn more about him. Thanks!
Ross is a political prisoner who has committed no crime. His case alone exposes how utterly illegitimate the US government is.
"you could hide anything in that." Yup, you could. Including some very unsavory things. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of surveillance, but as my mother used to say, "be careful what you ask for, you might get it." I have no doubt that some of these hidden systems are already in place, now, I ask, who might be using them and why? How about human traffickers, child pornographers, people who have something to hide for very (not so) good reasons; things you and I would be absolutely appalled to find out are happening under our noses and to people we care about? What you are talking about is a double-edged sword here. I certainly would not want to be part of or even encourage the development of a system that makes it impossible to find out who may be trafficking real or AI-generated images of children online. And before you jump on me, yes, I do have somewhat of a personal interest or involvement in this matter: some years ago, my workplace was raided by the FBI because one of the higher ups, a man who used to be my direct supervisor, had PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF HIS OWN CHILDREN, not on his own laptop, which would have been bad enough, but on a company supplied and owned laptop. The FBI came in without warning and seized several computers, which caused a panic among our clients as we dealt with confidential trade secrets and now who knows who had access to them. So yes, the scumbag was caught, and let's just say he doesn't have to worry about any future career plans or retirement for the rest of his life (which may not be all that long considering that his new "colleagues" take a very dim view of that kind of recreational activity). As I said, two-edged sword. I'm pretty sure we can all agree here we don't want to make it even easier for people like that to hide.
You haven’t learned the one crucial lesson yet: none of that, awful as it is, compares to the horrors of government controlling it. Law and Justice must be approached from the conservative side of “some bad guys may escape, but we’ll do our best to catch them”, and NOT from the liberal side of “let’s give big brother enough power to catch all the bad guys, it’ll only hurt the innocent a little bit, don’t worry”. Slippery slope and we all end up slaves (and don’t kid yourself, the government has plenty of people involved in pedophilia, the government will just protect the ones in their side).
If Epstein tells us anything it is about the naivete (as well meaning as it may be) of those who say "but the child pornography"...just like those who cry "but the children". We all care about both, but sacrificing virtually everything (the government is NEVER your friend) to catch the occasional non-governmental pedophile (want to take bets on whether you ever see the government-sponsored Epstein lists?) is an argument that always ends poorly for everyone. And the government pedophiles just continue. You said it well in how law and justice need to be pursued. The "safety first" worldview, common in the left and the "for the children" groups always means that EVERYONE loses.
There is already a shocking amount of abuse and child pornography etc. The government keeps saying they need new powers of surveillance to stop it, but actually they have absolutely no interest in doing so. If they did, the people in Epsteins black book would be investigated, and the second line in Epsteins network would be used to give evidence against the more powerful. It is just being used to leverage mass surveillance. The best defense against abuse is NOT having the most evil people in power, and people looking out for each other as peers.
Wait a minute-- does the state control the banks? I thought the biggest bankers owned the companies that own the politicians...
Sophia's husband here. It's sad to see how close you come to the solution, and then, because of some weird blinkers on your eyes, you dismiss the only viable solution to keep our wealth out of the government's power to debase and steal: bitcoin.
You say you have "been around" bitcoin for a long time, but somehow one of the biggest core disputes about its nature escaped your notice. Since the very beginning, there has been a tremendous disagreement between core developers and supporters of bitcoin as to whether it was a currency or a store of value. Since 2009, I have taken the "store of value" side. The blocksize wars from 2015 to 2017 have answered this question definitively. Bitcoin is a store of value. A digital gold. Those who keep pushing the idea of bitcoin as a currency are wilfully missing the point. The project has grown and adapted, and the ideals of the white paper are nothing but a historical footnote at this point.
All your objections as to traceability and gatekeeping are stupid. They only apply in a situation where people try to marry bitcoin with the legacy financial system. What we need, and what is already developing in places like Africa with no decent infrastructure, is a circular economy where bitcoin is exchanged for goods and services, not for fiat. In that circumstance, the government is powerless to obstruct. They can track the bitcoin you buy on Coinbase, but not the bitcoin I pay you from my wallet to yours for the new well you drilled on my property or the engine repair I did on your van,
Surely you are aware that every currency passes through three steps to wide acceptance: First, it is a collectible, then a store of value, then a unit of account. We are somewhere at the beginning of price discovery. At present, bitcoin is too volatile to be a unit of account, but it is rapidly growing as a store of value. Have you not noticed it has become one of the top 10 stores of value on earth? So yes, we are moving from step 1 to step 2. Bitcoin is not, and never will be, a daily currency to use for your morning coffee run. It is here to replace precious metals, real estate, and bonds as a store of value. You dismiss layer 2 and layer 3 solutions because you don't actually understand layer 1. You apparently think you do, but you do not.
The future world economy will revolve around CBDC's, run on the XRP ledger, and bitcoin, which is freedom money. You need to wake up and stop looking at bitcoin through the lens of whatever you think it is, and learn what it really is. The billionaires of the world are quietly moving their wealth into bitcoin because they will never, ever leave their wealth in a system where CBDC's can shut them down at will.
"The future world economy will revolve around CBDC's"
Well, then. It's all downhill from here.
Please, whoever's the last one out be sure to turn off the lights. You must be a lot of fun at.parties.
Oh - and you know you can create your own Substack account and not be "Sophia's husband?" That's what serious people who want to be taken seriously do. There's a narrative about top-down control sorta squeezed in here that Sophia's husbands wife should find more than a little overbearing.
"Epstein's Mom is ill. Signed, Mrs. Epstein's Doctor."
We share computers, so sometimes we accidentally use each other's account. It's no biggie.
Nah. It's kind of a biggie.
If those aren't your thoughts, you should refute them.
If those are your thoughts, you wouldn't need your husband to step in and get all macho condescending.
"All your objections as to traceability and gatekeeping are stupid."
Maybe it would seem more like 'helpful' or 'instructive' without the pejoratives. Maybe you can relay that message.
"...you wouldn't need your husband to step in and get all macho condescending." You have no evidence that he's stepping in to speak for me. In fact, the comment started with "Sophia's husband here" precisely to show these aren't my thoughts. Stop taking cues from corporate media to fling claims around without evidence.
I hadn't refuted them or otherwise yet because I hadn't even gotten around to reading the post or my husband's comment.
Also, I'm not your secretary. If you find those statements to be rude, then say, "Sophia's husband, those comments are condescending." Don't ask me to relay that.
Also, take two chill pills.
You're right.
I overreacted to the "stupid" sentence. I frankly don't understand why that needed to be there.
Good Galt!
Interesting thoughts but with this solutions we are still brainwashed and dependent on the number of likes you got in facebook and twitter, we are still spied on by Alexa, nest… to be expected to be in front of a screen the whole day. Maybe we will be invisible but still with the sheep mentality. I am much more pessimist and I think the only way to retain our freedom and our money is to kiss goodbye to all these new inventions and to directly ignore the government and its agencies. I deleted all my accounts in Facebook, twitter, youtube, amazon, etc when the scandemia started. I don’t watch tv, I try to pay with cash instead of credit card to allow people to evade if they can, I’ve forbidden Alexa or similar things in my home. I seriously think to move to a farm…. I like my easy modern life but not as much as my freedom. My gut tells me the solution is less technology… it has been an awfully good ally for the government until now….
Just eliminate KYC laws. Problem mostly solved.
"this literally turns the essentially infinite resource of idiots arguing with idiots on social media into the basis to protect the privacy of the internet."
Careful there! Some of these idiots might be your subscribers.
In all seriousness, I think that the US and other governments will do to Iceland with data that they did to Switzerland with banking. They can bring enormous pressure to bare on any country that does not play ball. The only insurance is that agents of government use these services as well. It was said that the Germans didn't invade Switzerland in WWII because the top Nazi officials were hiding their ill-gotten gains there.