Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The State Is Dead, Roll On the Global Free Republic

After my last article 'a time to die' people kept asking me 'so what's next'. So here is my go at an answer.

To me the financial system of our world seems to be bankrupt. The governments that prop it up seem to be bankrupt too. I don't believe we need either of them and the sooner they finish collapsing the sooner we can get on with living a better life on this planet.

I think the present conception of the State is dead* as a viable future entity, in fact the body has become bloated and is beginning to rot from the inside out. It will take years for the general public to realize it, but the smell is growing by the months and its coming out of multiple orifices.

*(the part of the State that will go first is the financial system of bank debt issued money by government FIAT)

The closest thing to states in the future are social networks, examples are 'World of Warcraft', 'eBay' and 'Facebook'. They don't need government  but they do need a form of exchange or money.

The rotting bodies of the States we live in are going to continue to produce gas for a while. We will see this gas continue in the form of more money being printed. I think its a good idea to slowly get out of fiat currencies, or at least start to seriously consider the alternatives.

The great thing is we don't actually need states and governments as they are constructed today, we only think we do. We are conditioned to depend on it as a strange sort of parent figure, its a weird relationship. We think ‘they’ will look after us when its really the last thing on any politician's mind.

What we need is the ability to trade and travel, and we certainly don't need a massively inefficient financial system that leaches off everyone's trade. The collapse of both our present financial system and the governments that are hooked up to it is a great thing. It is going to allow some far more efficient and exciting alternatives to take their place.

As the system collapses, trade will continue but its going to move to using what works. There will be a big financial move back into precious metals, the historical fall back position of real value. You only need to look at gold prices over the fifteen years to see that most people in the know jumped this way long ago. But gold is hard to trade with except as coin, even then, you cant send it long distance without a chariot.

The second exciting option opening up is the move to digital currencies. You may think you have this already in the form of digital bank transfers, but that is only a digital version of current fiat currency.

Anyone can start a digital currency if they a) know how to build the secure compute infrastructure b) know how to build trust in the service. e-gold is a good example of one that started taking off but was blown out by the US courts, i believe it was becoming too big a threat to the status quo at the time.

Three things you need to understand about digital currencies (dc's) these are all about 'responsibility' when you understand that a true dc is really just like coin. You need to be responsible for your coins and what you do with them. The coins or the coin manufacturer are not responsible and should not be held accountable for your screw-up as is the case with real money (but its not the case with our present 'financial system').

1. you can't blame the dc (or coins) if people do fraud with it. There is tonnes of fraud daily on the net, especially with credit card and internet banking, you just don't hear about it because its so common its not very news worthy. The dc is simply the form of exchange. Just because bank robbers like stealing gold from a bank you don't blame the gold for being a compact and easy to move store of wealth. Dc's are much easier to move about than gold, they will likely be blamed for it.

2. you have to be responsible for your dc (coins), nobody is going to look after it for you if you send it to the wrong place. A dc must be non refundable as it has to behave like real coins. It would be no good if you went to a shop to buy something and then at a later date you could just cancel and pull back your coins. If a shop has a refund policy, that is a completely different issue, its between you and the vendor.

3. Security is up to you. Modern online banking is a joke security wise, the security questions commonly used are an example of this joke. Your account is much less secure the moment you have any security questions. The reason for the questions is to reduce support problems, when you lose your password. In the real world of true security, if you loose your password its the same as forgetting where you left your wallet. Or another example is if you make simple two letter password, the analogy would be then of keeping your wallet on the table outside the house. Its up to you.

I don't expect dc's to become widely used while our present financial system still has a semblance of 'working' and dc’s pose too big a threat to the status quo. But as the system collapses we will have a rapid move toward them. (Its going to be very hard to establish a global 'regulated' alternative. But I'am sure we will see centrally controlled global fiat options presented as the 'solution' to the crisis. Actually I think its here already in the from of the IMFs SDR)

I reckon its a good idea to be prepared and figure out the lay of the land with dc's.

I think that we will see is a future of many competing digital currencies each with their own specific cool features. There will be many digital exchanges where you can convert between these dc's and fiat currencies or other local currencies. Each currency system will embody a set of values that are encoded into the algorithms it uses. These values will be transparent rather than covert, as it is the values that will keep the users using that currency as opposed to another.

Where we are going next ?

One exciting development or what i believe will be the 'killer app' for dc's is when social networks such as World of Warcraft (WoW) or Facebook use either an existing dc or create their own for trading within their network. For example WoW could completely replace their monthly fees with a basic tax on the dc's traded in the world. Facebook has been experimenting with its own credits, but so far has backed away from running a real independent dc from the state Fiat system. When will social networks 'come out' and challenge the present State system ? when they do, this is when the the State as we know it is truly dead, Why ?

Current states are tax farms. Ie they farm the people within the borders for taxes. The reason states work so badly is that they do this against the will of the people. This is a redundant non-evolutionary (ie closes down opportunity for evolution within the state) way to operate.

This redundant approach requires government, the two party dialectic operates as a system of ‘disinformation management’ for citizens so the tax farm can continue to operate.

You see there are many things the citizens would not do if they were not ‘coerced into it’ through disinformation management, the best example is paying taxes. (Government often does disinformation management by pitting social groups against each other, the two party 'democratic' system is the primary example of this, simply the classic 'divide and rule' paradigm. If government was not about ‘disinformation’, sites like wiki leaks would be a non issue)

Imagine what a state could do if it simply worked 'with' the citizens not against them, and provided them the information they wanted and needed. All the redundant lobbying and disinformation management infrastructure would just be blown away leaving an efficient machine that could serve a clear and simple goal, 'like a company with a vision statement'. Everyone in a society could start to point in a unified direction. Its very radical.

You may say 'this will never happen' but consider a world where people exchange skills and info over the internet in exchange for a crypto untraceable dc. This is a non taxable situation and its very doable today, there are many open source projects building forms of what I am talking about.

Tax will have to become voluntary in our future. And to be voluntary the organisation that is running the dc will have to do exactly what its users desire.


I think the future is very simple.

The borders of the future state will simply be the membership of a social network. The difference to our states today simply being of user consent. Citizens become voluntary ‘users’

I think a real global republic is based on the freedom to choose whatever social networks you want to be a user of, along with the allowance of competitive dc exchange without interference or 'regulation'.

(competitive dc exchange will be strongly discouraged by the status quo, noone wants to loose their money monopoly, but there is nothing that can be done about it other than shutting down the internet, so I doubt it will happen)

The freedom to travel and freedom to exchange.

You won't need to vote for government, but you will decide what networks you are a user of and you will decide which dc's you like. All of this will in turn have a large effect on the world you are living in.

This future holds a complete 100% turnaround. Right now states as we know them try to keep people or 'users' out because the states are so incredibly inefficient, they cant handle more users. That's dumb, and it makes no sense, because if a state is a tax farm, surely it wants more people to tax.

A well operated Social Network is just the opposite, more users mean more revenue for the network, period.

Ok, if this is too big leap for you, here is one example. Facebook makes money by the fact it has users. The actual code to build a site like Facebook is trivial, a company like Microsoft could have a functional competitor up in under six months. The trick is how to get the 'network-effect' to build a critical mass of users. Facebook got there first, picked the 'social kudos' high ground of the academic institutions and built a massive user base from there. You would think it is unassailable. But imagine if a competitor social network started offering a large portion of revenue, back to the users via its dc. This for example could serve as a 'Minimum Basic Income' for being a user. Getting paid just to be a member, now that's an incentive to move to a new network.

And what if that network owned some real farms, or managed forest, The possibilities for the world are just massive.

(a. yes, i am saying that that unless face book starts to pay people a minimum basic income in some dc they are at risk of loosing out to the first decent alternative that does. I use the term 'minimum basic income' mbi. The general point is a default pay to all members. It avoids all the issues you get with both minimum wages and citizens getting stuck on social benefits scared to get a job again.

b. workers unions can have so much more power, they simply need to understood the value of their workforce and reflect this into a social network. Ie social networks can start to represent groups of skilled workers that could then grow value in a dc because of their recognition and articulation of what they are. Then the union (as represented by the social network) can agree any pay agreement through say exchange of their dc value for man hours at a given team quality level.)

Remember, its all a game, it always was and it always will be. The games we play create our world. Good 'network game design' is the future evolution. A healthy competitive market network model is the way to evolve the best most useful games for us as a global society to create our world with. Keep the dc's free and keep allowing truly open internet access.

I believe the inevitable result of those two freedoms (or even just the one of true open access) is the continuing decline of the state and the emergence of a truly free global republic based on an opt in next generation social network model.

Luckily I think the states are managing to kill themselves as their own financial model and redundant system chokes them to death. Be ready to jump to a nice dc and you can be business as usual. (social networks will jump to this function as soon as the threat of government  is diminished)

I am looking forward to joining a cool social network that encourages the growth and learning of its users and gives everyone a minimum basic income if they join.


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Where it can all go: Next Gen DC's

For the more technically Minded

- Bitcoin looks great as a P2P crypto currency.
- Metacurrency Defining currency as simply a set of game rules


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The Defunct State Model



Doug Says it very well in this short interview


Summary of the redundant State Model from Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio:




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The Defunct Fiat Money Model Explained



This is a good summary about how existing fiat money works. (The new model I am describing is completely the opposite of this. Because dc's 'can be' based on a non debt based 'Real Money' model. Enable free non regulated dc competition and the dc users will naturally move to the most 'efficient' dc for exchange)




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Components of a New Model: Eve Online



Eve online is a space fantasy on line world with about 300,000 users. Users navigate space and can both trade and take part in space battles. To succeed you have to be a) organised b) become part of an organisation of other players that is highly organised. Its about the best example of a social network that shows the way to what is possible. Ie An enabling infrastructure for organisation of very complex tasks by diverse social groups. Eve has highly organised corporations and even stock markets within the world. Real companies hire CEO's from eve because they know anyone who can organise and focus a corporation in eve can do the same in the real world. Its not hard to imagine how everything in this game could be transplanted to driving real corporations and teams in the real world and connecting it all with a digital currency to pay everyone with.

This video is about the online portal that lets corporation members (within eve) get at all the info they need. Its an example of the social net provider supporting information access for the tools the 'users' need and education about it. Why don't traditional workers unions do this ? And supply workforces via their 'nets' to corps. It would support de-construction a traditional corporation into an entirely new model decentralised model that is far more competitive and streamlined.



This next video is an example of just one interaction in eve. Planetary resource gathering. It almost looks too complex and tedious, dare i say, 'like work'. But that's exactly the point, and thousands of kids are learning more about management and trading in 'games' than at school.



Saturday, December 11, 2010

A hidden case of Stockholm Syndrome

For most of known history women have been a slave cast in our society. I believe the psychological effects of this historical slavery are still in our world today. Understanding them and acknowledging how they still effect all of us, is I believe, the route to leave the paradigm it helps support behind us and move on to a more balanced relational world. As the story mirrors in the yin yang balance of everything we relate to, male or female.

A Slave is someones property, a slave is owned by its master and does the masters bidding.

Some examples:
- In law, for example in marriage, women are called a 'chattel' which means 'movable property' a girls father hands over his movable property or 'daughter' to the new movable property owner, the husband.
- Women have only had the right to vote for around a century and much less in most places. Many countries still treat women as second class citizens.
- In religion, for example in christianity a faith based on the doctrine of 'original sin' the Woman Eve is credited with being the first sinner, then being the 'temptress' who brought adam into the crime. Both Islam and Judaisim prescribe to the same story. Its a big deal to blame one sex for all the world's problems ie original sin.
- Women or 'movable property' are 'cast out' when they don't have an 'owner' or husband/father. In many countries they still are. The only other traditional owners a woman could go to were a 'pimp', by becoming a whore, or staying officaily still a daughter ie 'a daughter of christ' to be 'managed' by a new mother the 'mother superior' in a convent.

The only exceptions where women could actually 'own themselves', were by becoming either a 'widow' or a 'witch'. Historically society had quite a bit of trouble distinguishing these two. Witch trials were a sham, but basically the real difference is simply the widow does not have sex again and the witch did have sex again. The trial and the issue is really about the sexual freedom of women.

A free sexual woman was a dangerous woman and should be threatened in the most horrible way possible ie to be burned alive. Just like slaves are when they away from their owners. They are burned alive in a lynching. Fear is the psychological tool for cheap slavery maintenance. You dont need an army when you have Guilt and Fear at your disposal, already programmed in to the slaves.

I believe women are afraid to fully explore their sexual freedom for these reasons buried in the unconscious. I have not met a woman who does not seem to be a slave-in-recovery on some level, there is a very particular flavour to this fear. I also think this has an equivalent counter effect on men, where men feel unconsciously guilty of being the 'slave owner' even though on the conscious side they feel good about the power women 'naturally' give away to them as 'superior' men. So in a way, men are slaves to women being slaves to men. I just think of it as a victim of a victim, who starts the a merry dance.

In this context, taking a view of common women's magazines can look like seeing manuals on how to be a good slave, with material on tips and tricks on 'how to please your man' that to me reads like a manual on 'how do I keep my slave master happy so I get more treats' and stuff all about 'other peoples lives' that can read like 'don't think about your own life, you're a slave, so that would be painful, here is a better alternative to believe in' But so a lot of this applies to men too but that story is more about 'who you are by what you do out there'

Women still seem to buy into a slavery story on many levels and it seems to help support a conflicted love/hate relationship with men in general. And then I think the men get even more confused, or maybe just I do.

This morning I realised that what we had was a hidden case of Stockholm Syndrome in the unconscious dance. Stockholm Syndrome is the term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors, that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.

The most well-known (if infrequently acknowledged) victim of this syndrome is the female protagonist in the story of Beauty and the Beast. In the original version of the tale, the girl is captured by the beast and asked daily at dinner-time whether or not she loves him.

Its like this story is told in preparation for the slavery to come for a young girl.

"Stockholm syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, and even defended them after they were freed from their six-day ordeal."

"Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, widely credited with Stockholm Syndrome's psychiatric definition, describes it as 'a primitive gratitude for the gift of life,' not unlike that felt by an infant"

In a world where its not OK to not have an owner, I can understand how it could feel scary to become free of one. And at the same time be desperate for the security an owner could provide. The double whammy for women is that the 'owner' is then mixed with the psychological feelings of a father figure that adds a powerful emotional drive into the mix.

"According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, this tendency might be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable—at the very least—the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure."

"An inverse of Stockholm syndrome called "Lima syndrome" has been proposed, in which abductors develop sympathy for their hostages." I wonder if this happens for men in some unconscious way.

Is your relationship a Lima-Stockholm thing ?

What I'm talking about how this is sitting there in the unconscious mind playing out all the time but through the cultural patterns that have been established around making it OK to be that way. Could do with a good clean out I think.

Yin a slave of Yang. There are two ways out for Yin.
1. Be more Yang than Yang and over power. But then your not Yin any more.
2. Be more Yin and let it all flow through.

Which is true and what does it look like ?

Saturday, December 04, 2010

A Time to Die

I have not written for a while as my energies have been focussed around moving the Earthsim project forward. As things there come more and more into line I can raise my head and look around again to see the funny old world I stand in.

As winter closes in and the last few leaves dangle spinning in the wind, its a time to let go and prepare for a shut-down into and through the darkness.

I see metaphor of dangling leaves all around me in the mayastic world. I get excited watching the financial system, such an icon of yang imbalance, now left hobbling along as a bloated puss filled beast eating faster and faster, trying to survive the natural chaos of nature as it tickles and dances around ready to consume the debris of the inevitable.

It's fun to speculate how things will actually transpire. Here is my best guess from a brief look at the scene over the last day or so.

To delay a full systemic collapse I think the euro will become a scapegoat, a focus point if you like, to keep people's eye off the core issue (the dollar) for just that bit longer. It's an easy target and just as Latin America found, you can't have a half/half of pegged currencies + separate countries with their own markets. Its easy picking for speculators to milk that system. It will die with the weakest links being taken to the cleaners first, as Iceland, Greece, Ireland etc are discovering.

Excitingly over the last two years, all the world's major markets have come into synch, all joining the last waltz as the grand finale plays out. They all rise and fall together to the beat of the dollar's rhythm, as it goes down, they do too.

We have had paper or 'fiat' money systems many times on this planet, the experiment is tried, tested and super clear to anyone who would care to look. 'fiat' is a good word for fake money as it always collapses, the average time to collapse is 42 years. The dollar was moved fiat in 71, we have 2 years left to hit that historical midpoint.

Is it a good thing for our financial system to collapse ?

I would rather it did not, but only if there were people who cared to fix it. There are not, nor will there be. You see fiat money systems benefit only two groups of people. 1. Governments and 2. Banks. The employees of each rotate between each other in another sickly dance, there will be no fix except through collapse.

So I am for accelerating the collapse and getting on with the fix. Its a time for things to die.

Earlier this year another key scam in the system was exposed:

"Andrew Maguire & Adrian Douglas Discuss What Could Be the Largest Fraud in History - Andrew is an independent metals trader turned whistle blower at the center of a storm for exposing what could be the largest fraud in history involving countries, banks and government leaders."

The major precious metals markets are rigged (as are many other supposedly free markets) the prices of gold and silver are artificially kept down.

Why is this relevant ?

This is a way of keeping the fiat system alive.. it's actually the secret to how this fiat zombie has kept walking so long. why? If you can keep precious metals prices down, fiat money will live on for just that bit longer. The zombie is now eating countries through bogus 'austerity measures'.

The story is now getting out and what's even better is that there is a way to hit the system to help it collapse quicker, the zombie needs to go down before it eats you.

"Eric Cantona has taken it upon himself to promote a revolution against the banking oligarchy calling for everyone to take their money out of the banks"

Well the famous philosopher is half onto something.. Sure get your money out of banks but you need to do better than stash it under your mattress as monopoly notes, that may hurt a bank but it does you no good at all.

Buy silver and gold now and move your money into something physical and real.

Get Physical !

Here is the best thing I have come across yet..

"Buy Silver and Help Crash JP Morgan" is the google bomb search term if you want to investigate.

It is well explained here:



Watch this space 2011 is going to be a very exciting year !

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Note on Fiat Money.

Fiat or paper money is a way of stealing physical assets from society. Its a simple scam..

1. Get everyone to use paper money, ie get them to value and trade their 'physical assets' with this monopoly money.

2. Keep printing more monopoly money and lending it to people fulling the 'boom bust' cycle we all know and love.. (you hear this regularly on the news.. every 'bail out' is one of these.. ie the fed or bank of england 'injects' cash into the system.. they just made up more monopoly dollars) Constantly printing more money progressively makes everything that is actually valued in those notes less and less valuable or the prices have to keep inflating (you end-up with a half/half of each).

3. On every 'bust' of the cycle the banks take more possession of the physical assets as companies and mortgage payers are unable to repay the loans (which were of fake money 'created' money anyways).

4. Keep the cycle going as long as you can to regularly 'milk' the assets away from the people for as long as you can until the fiat system inevitably collapses.


Everyone in power (banks+govt) wants to keep this great system going for as long as possible, it pays great. The problem for them is how to delay the inevitable collapse.

As more and more money is printed, value drops, this is best seen in the prices of precious metals like gold and silver. The prices start rising as the paper money gets worth less and less. People with their ear to the ground start moving their savings to these 'fixed tangibles'

So a good way of delaying fiat collapse is to keep metals prices down. This has been discovered to be happening all over the place. One example is how people have been sold gold and silver (as contracts) but the don't have the physical stuff.. It is stored in bank vaults. When journalists go to the bank vaults they find it has been sold up to 100 times to 1. When everyone demands the real physical stuff it will blow up.