Month: January 2018

Liberty Links 1/13/18

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If you appreciate my work and want to contribute to independent media, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit the Support Page. I wrote an opinion piece about Bitcoin for The Hill in case you missed it: Bitcoin Isn’t the Bubble — The Global Financial System Is Top Links With Support From Nancy Pelosi, House Gives Trump Administration Broad Latitude … Read more

Global Networks Are Necessary to Overcome Abusive Governments and Oligarchy

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The world around us is changing at an incredible pace, and with such change come many pitfalls as well as immeasurable opportunities. At the same time, the more things change the more some things stay the same. For example, the most important issue humans will have to confront in the years ahead is the age old issue of concentrated power.

One of the most destructive side effects of the financial crisis and the corrupt official response to it, has been an even greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of some of the most unsavory characters planet earth has to offer. If we are to evolve and create a better paradigm, we’ll need to address this forcefully and thoughtfully.

I say thoughtfully, because what history has shown is that the typical response to a small group of crooked elites seizing all money and power is to launch a violent revolt that merely empowers another small group who said all the right things during their crusade, but then act as viciously and unethically as those they replaced once in power. This situation can and should be avoided at all costs. The idea isn’t to swap one group of rulers for another. We need to think about building a world defined by networks governed by rules, but with no rulers.

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I Don’t Want Your Leaders

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In 2017, I wrote a lot about how dangerously centralized our political system in the U.S. has become, and how we need to decentralize governance in order to restore power, liberty and policy experimentation to the local level. This notion that a sprawling and culturally diverse nation of 325 million individuals should constantly battle to the death over the ring of political power in Washington D.C. so as to impose their view on the other half of the country which completely disagrees is patently ludicrous. States, and even metro areas themselves, should be making most of the important decisions that impact their citizens’ lives on a day to day basis.

This isn’t complicated. People who live in Boulder, Colorado such as myself have a very distinct worldview on most things from the average resident of let’s say Houston, Texas. This isn’t to say one is superior to the other, we’re just talking generally different mindsets and cultures. The residents of these distinct places should be able to express themselves via policy in a way that most fits the desires and values reflective of these particular regions. While this does happen to some degree, all U.S. citizens are still beholden to the whims of centralized political power in Washington D.C. to a very unhealthy and dysfunctional degree.

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Bitcoin Isn’t the Bubble — The Global Financial System Is

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Last week, I was offered an opportunity to write an opinion piece for The Hill. I took advantage of the offer and put something together addressing the whole “is Bitcoin a bubble” debate, and I’m pleased to say it was published earlier this morning.

It’s important to me that I don’t just preach to the choir when it comes to my unconventional views, and I hope this will help me reach a wider and more mainstream audience.

Below are a couple brief excerpts from the piece, published in full at The Hill:

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Liberty Links 1/7/18

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If you appreciate my work and want to contribute to independent media, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit the Support Page. *Special Note: I was recently on a great panel chatting about Bitcoin and the crypto asset space in general. Link below. This week in Bitcoin- 1-5-2018- Return of the BTC! Ripple, Giacomo Zucco, Michael Krieger, K. Bosak … Read more

Jeff Sessions Just Demonstrated Why We Need to Decentralize Government

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Late last year, I wrote a series of posts where I highlighted three specific areas I thought the U.S. government might overreach and do something really stupid in 2018. Jeff Sessions didn’t waste any time making my first prediction look prescient.

Here’s an excerpt from that post, Expect Desperate and Insane Behavior From Government in 2018 – Part 1 (Cannabis):

Today’s topic is cannabis. This seems the least likely area for government action, specifically because it would be such a monumentally stupid move. That said, just because something’s idiotic doesn’t mean we should simply discount it, particularly with human fossil Jeff Sessions continuing to chirp on the issue every chance he gets.

If the Trump administration actually moves on this issue, we’ll know for sure how completely inept and desperate it is. Part of me almost wants to see them try, because the resulting monumental fail will demonstrate the power of the people and give a gigantic black eye to authoritarians in government.

Stuff like this is all part of the process we’ll be going through over the next few years, and we need to be mentally prepared for it. We the people will increasingly move to take sovereignty back in a variety of ways, and government will respond with panic. The good news is they’ll be reacting from a position of weakness, not strength.

Fast forward one month, and Jeff Sessions couldn’t help himself from doing something monumentally stupid and evil, both politically and ethically.

Here’s a brief summary of the changes from the AP:

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Welcome to 2018 – We Are All Connected

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To see a world in a grain of sand
And to see heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

– William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Over the course of 2017, I spent a lot of time detailing where we stand as a species and where I think we’re going. To summarize, I think the positive impact of the internet and social media on humanity is still very much in its infancy. The more connected we become to one another across the planet, the more we’ll realize we have far more in common with one another than we do with the sociopathic oligarchs and politicians in charge of our respective nation-states.

Much of the 20th century was defined by unimaginable human conflict and terror, unleashed upon the public by crazed elites and rulers who were able to successfully manipulate large populations. The key to preventing a repeat of this sort of thing in the 21st century is billions of human beings across the planet communicating and sharing friendship with one another to the point we can no longer be tricked in killing each other. We need to learn to see “the other” in ourselves and voluntarily collaborate with our fellow humans on the challenges that face us in order to bring our species to the next level. This isn’t just a pipe-dream or insane utopian ramblings, I think it’s entirely possible.

That said, the road could be long and some real disasters may lie ahead before we finally get our footing as a species. As far as I see it, there are several factors still preventing us from getting from point A to B. For one thing, leaders of nation-states throughout the world are almost always some of the worst individuals society has to offer. The types of people who aspire to, and generally attain political power, tend to be the most unconscious, power hungry, sociopathic characters around. That’s just how this stuff works.

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