 |
|
|
 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE 584, August 22, 2010 "The United States of America are in trouble"
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise The height of their society peaked in 1969. They used militarism and socialism to put two guys on the Moon, they trotted out their public-private partnership (Concorde) to build exclusive supersonic transport for the rich. Max Faget and some other brilliant engineers designed a space shuttle fleet of ten vehicles capable of hundreds of flights a year to make access to low Earth orbit cheap and routine. And the Advanced Research Projects Agency had some geeks create an inter-networking protocol that could survive a nuclear war. Obviously, they shot their wad, as it were, and no longer put guys on the Moon. They no longer fly supersonic transports. Their space shuttle is going to stop flying soon, if it hasn't already. Those geeky guys went on to develop open source cryptography, open source software, and totally private economic transactions. The future we're creating is going to be very, dramatically different. It is going to be decentralised to a fare thee well. Right now, today, two people anywhere in the world *can* have a totally private economic exchange that cannot be detected by anyone else. And since it cannot be detected, it cannot be regulated, it cannot be prohibited, and it cannot be taxed. Even inflation cannot tax it, if the exchange is denominated in some money like silver or gold. Which means that those who dream of ruling the world sowed the seeds of their own damnation.? What is it going to be like to have a world where coercion cannot fund a war machine, a police state, an espionage machinery, centralisation of authority, and endless payouts for the cronies of those who control the wealth? I don't think it is necessarily going to be paradise right away. I suspect that those with the power are not going to give up their power without a fight. But it is a worthwhile goal. And as T.E. Lawrence once said, after he had agreed to take fifty men across the Empty Quarter to attack the four thousand man Turkish garrison at Aqaba, "It's going to be fun." It is, you know. It's going to be fun. "Yes, Lawrence," responded his commanding officer, "But it is widely known that you have a very strange idea of the term 'fun.'" He did. TE Lawrence was widely known for putting out matches and candle flames with his bare fingers. "Doesn't it hurt? What's the trick to it?" asked a brother officer. "The trick is not to mind so much that it hurts." And that is the trick, isn't it? Because the system we have already hurts. Ask the Afghans slaughtered over the last nine years. Consult the mangled bodies in the veterans administration hospitals. Talk to the people fighting and bleeding and dying in Iraq. Ponder the military occupation of Okinawa, of Germany, of Korea. Consider the wars in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, or this incipient invasion of Costa Rica. Consider the 25 million persons convicted of "felonies" for non-violent non-crimes such as possession of an herb bearing seed (as they are described in Genesis 1:29). You can see that forty years after the peak, a whole lot of people hurt a whole lot thanks to those in power. And their economy? Not really working out. They broke the last tie to gold in 1971, they started inflating like crazy in 1982, and guess what? The gravy train ended in 2008. It all came unglued. Now Shadowstats.com reveals that using the 1980 algorithm and the government's own data, 22% of the country is unemployed. Each month of the last 18 months has set a new record for food stamp usage, with fully 40.8 million Americans now on food stamps. Does learning how to use e-mail encryption intimidate you? Never fear, we've taken the trouble out. See Vertoro dot com for tutorials and FAQ about encryption. Get Thunderbird, the Enigmail plug-in, and Gnu Privacy Guard, all free, all open source. It's easy to learn, easy to use. Are you ready for cryptographically secure private economic transactions? You should be.
TLE AFFILIATE
|
|
|
|
Previous
Contents
Next