Just heard a police siren and a megaphone demanding someone step outside with their hands up. Sounded like its a couple of doors down.
In my middle-class suburb...!
Wonder what he posted...?
"I elicited an illicit offer"
- Every sting operation ever.
If we're going all Newspeak, I'd prefer "uncoerced market" to be the term of art..
Tide laundry detergent was a currency in poor urban parts California in the 1990s I believe :)
In colonial Australia it was rum.
Government doing silly things to fiat money is far from new! People adapt, and blockchain technology has reduced the cost of counterparty trust.
Black markets will never die, so long as people have free will separate from the will of their leadership.
Dakota, all the good things you mentioned can be provided by collective action outside the state. And have been, in many different societies. Just not under the (historically unproven and experimental) modern Western nation state.
For a brief overview of what we're talking about, maybe read over: https://archive.org/details/TheEthicsOfLiberty0
Looks good! And kudos for preventing waste. What's the flammability like? Boric acid should help, but idk
True enough, on all points.
But almost everyone in Western countries ought to invest in a little solar anyway, purely to have some electricity during those periods when poor policy choices make the grid unstable and/or unaffordable.
If you also use your surplus solar for mining, some beautiful synergies are to be had.
If the capital cost was already defrayed for another purpose (and mine was), the CAPEX to invest in mining Monero approachs zero.
That is the beauty of CPU-only algorithms.
I do mine #monero at home (using solar).
Returns would be negative if I was paying for grid power, true, but that's mostly about my government's very foolish energy policies.
Exactly.
Without Monero around to monetarise lazy security practises, they'd be ransomware victims instead.
Is that really better?
This way, at least the crooks are using some if the stolen power to do some good (securing a private payment network).
Guernsey bulls overthrow farmers all the time, just saying'.
And livestock attempt to negotiate all the time; cattle just suck at getting their way compared to cats.
They can't vote for their farmer-of-choice, but then, neither can I really. My second-favourite political party was deregistered here in Australia after daring to win a Senate seat.
This. But there's also the path of logging your IP address whenever you connect to the Bitcoin / Lightning network. Your ISP does this as a matter of course.
Tor-ify everything.
^ This.
Or imprisonment in a work camp until you cough up. Sucks to be you if you genuinely don't have it.
Stalin had his "Gold Rush" in the same year as Roosevelt, but Stalin had the machinery ready to go to torture the gold out of everyone, and Roosevelt did not (but Roosevelt had KYC records to go after).
Current Western governments have both sets of capabilities.
Avoid KYC!
Didn't think of & don't know about that one! Maybe!
I was thinking of the Army. :-p
Sending children to a government school IS the second-best way to teach them that most authority figures are arbitrary, insincere and unworthy.
^This.
If anyone thinks Tensor wouldn't come with built in backdoors, they probably don't remember when Qualcomm was caught doing just that in Samsung Galaxies.
https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/SamsungGalaxyBackdoor
That said, mass surveillance is automated, and replacing the phone's operating system will mess with the spooks' workflow big time.
"They told me they were scared of the sound of the bombings", says the bereaved uncle of those kids, who were both killed in an Israeli strike on #Gaza.
He filmed them a few days ago, not knowing that it would be the last video for him to remember them by.
https://video.nostr.build/1b141e3bc15db3a93340822c0bd61894e3a55465ee0b18a3c82b9c3676e9dd4b.mp4
"Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects' or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers.
And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects' you can be a ready giver, as were Cyrus, Caesar, and Alexander; because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ch 16
You think you are a citizen, but you are an "other" to the (Establishment Left) politician hoping to "vote bank" by pulling foreigners with your money (welfare) and pushing them with your money (bombs).
And to the Establishment Right looking to "wage restraint" you into poverty and subservience by competition with the same tools.
That was Tolstoy's conclusion too. Of course, they didn't have bitcoin then.
Here's a translation of his actual book: https://web.archive.org/web/20120205200941/http://www.kingdomnow.org/withinyou.html
I don't agree with all of it, but then, I have always been, in Max Weber's formulation, "religiously unmusical".