We all hear daily about how Bitcoin and hundreds of other varieties of crypo-currencies leverage blockchain technology but the emotional aspect of wealth volatility associated with Bitcoin means that Bitcoin grabs all the headlines while the underlying blockchain technology is still relegated to geekdom. The goal of this post is to present my views on why blockchain is much bigger than Bitcoin and why blockchain is likely to have a far greater future impact on our society that Bitcoin has or will.
Before I go into this I want to say that I am not a crypto or blockchain expert and that my views have been formed but not dictated by other online content including YouTube vids, articles and the like. One of the skills that I think I have is the ability to understand a thing past the technology itself. At least I like to think that is the case (and I have also proven that to be at least somewhat true over my career in high tech). Additionally, with true, broad understanding comes insight which can then be used to form informed opinions that lead to actionable predictive powers. At some point everyone can explain the tech but it is still left to only a few to understand the broad implications of it as well as ways to profit from it.
The vision of blockchain is to add simple verification to many things that require trust today. It puts the "verify" into "trust but verify". It removes third parties from that duty thus removing their cost from the process while also eliminating these key holders as a target for corruption. Why is this vision important to me? Simply because I have a long stated view that the past 50 years of rising liberalism, which has now peaked an is in rapid decline, created above all else what I have referred to as a Trust Ponzi. Driven by the need and desire to consume more products from more people in more places, consumers have have blindly bought into the notion that centralized trust management, AKA big brother is not only a good thing but unavoidable. This has led to short sighted people gladly abandoning their freedoms in order to attain prosperity. Of course history teaches that there is no lasting prosperity without freedom and so if the USA/global west has any hopes of leading into the future, it needs mechanisms that will unwind this need for centralized trust (which leads to centralized corruption) without giving up the potential prosperity associated with dealing with a more diverse set of people.
The power of blockchain is that it creates a public domain ledger consisting of chained sequences of events through time. Each subsequent event is cryptographically inserted into the ledger's timeline such that is is impossible to retrospectively change either the ledger entry contents or the order that it occurred in the chain.
The genius of block chain is that it is decentralized cryptographically secure ledger with copies existing all over the Internet. Detection of a corrupted copy of the ledger is trivial using common crypto tools and techniques and can thus be built into ledger-reading software easily. When a corrupted copy is detected it can be easily overwritten by a verifiable trusted copy. With blockchain technology there is no central authority with the keys to the kingdom and that eliminates yet another opportunity for corruption. Much of big government exists because of the need for a shared ledger that tracks many things including ownership of property, compliance certifications for industry, vehicle registration and tracking, etc. But the government itself has become a massive single point of failure due to its centralized nature and the fact that information is power and power corrupts. The genius of blockchain is that it is the beginning of the end of big centralized government. It is the path toward smaller, more effective and lower cost government which is honest not by voluntary action but rather by nature of the fact that everything is written down and that political victors cannot change history.
The leverage of blockchain is huge. The ledger is readable anywhere by anyone over the Internet and the contents of the ledger are secured by virtually un-hackable 256 bit encryption. Both the Internet and encryption are super mature and ubiquitous. They are commodities. Blockchain leverages these commodities.
The applicability of blockchain is massive. Blockchain is a way to document a series of events in such a way that people will be careful what they put into the indelible public record. Those who lie in a blockchain will be writing their own arrest warrants and their own ledger entries will be proof of their guilt in a court of law. Blockchain ledger entries remove ambiguity from the public record. They remove the "he said-she said" of nefarious political actors as well as the Orwellian concept of "facts" (i.e. officially sanctioned lies) and the omnipresent "memory hole". It will become ubiquitous because the ease of inputting and subsequently reading records is so high and the overhead and cost associated with doing these things is so low that honest businesses will gladly participate actively in them. Those with nothing to hide will tout that fact and use it as a sales tool. The dishonest will no longer be on par with the honest simply by lying to say that they are. The honest will have a chain of documented and verified events which they will know they cannot go back and change later if someone calls bullshit on them. The record of what they said was true will be open to all to review.
The usability of blockchain is Obvious. Put a QR code on anything and you can, with a simple app, immediately see a timeline of verifiable, in order events associated with that item. Its like having a package shipment tracking id on everything we interact with. The visible progression toward the goal will build trust:
For example, is that Chinese made anchor chain really 316 stainless and does it have the stated working load strength? Today you have to TRUST the advertising on Alibaba. But tomorrow with blockchain you will see the provenance of the chain in terms of its manufacturing materials and process.
- raw materials ordering
- record of processing including where and signed off by which individual
- record of testing with countersignature by those with verified equipment (all verified by a branched blockchain which is included with the testing record of the anchor chain.
- record of paying taxes
- complaints or praise for the product
- EVERYTHING you want to know and more, all in one place, all in a format that cannot be changed or altered after the fact to cover up lies, etc.
The many honest corporations out there will love this because right now they have to market and sell against many who cut corners or outright lie about their cheaper products capabilities. They take advantage of the notion that talk is cheap and end consumers don't really know what to believe about product claims.
At some point a well defined blockchain based ledger becomes commonplace for every industry and it becomes expected that your customers and competitors can review your product ledger easily. Yes people can lie about what they did or did not do. But what they cannot do is un-tell that lie or make up some story about it being a misprint, etc. later on. The blockchain never forgets and the blockchain cannot be altered retrospectively. Those who write down lies in this kind of environment are doomed to failure.
People will lie to other people when face to face but what they are much less likely to do is to not care about their electronic reputation. That's because when you lie to a person you know the limit of the scope of that lie. If there is ever a debate about it you can always claim that the whistle blower on the lie is crazy or themselves a liar. It becomes he said she said, your word against mine. Blockchain removes all of that wiggle room for scammers leaving entities to either prosper by the veracity of their own truths or to wither and die at the hand of their own lies.
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Thursday, September 28, 2017
The sheeple are waking up.
Today we see that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has been made to apologize for abusing public resources by chartering expensive jets for for his junkets around the world. He's also being made to repay $52 k which is his portion of the airfare associated with what was likely a flying party.
This is what big government does. It sees all these supposedly limitless resources and they represent a temptation to live the good life as if the supposedly public servant position is some kind of royal appointment. The fact that he is being made to repay $52k only tells me that the actual cost was far higher. The fact that he can afford to pay $52k like it was nothing makes me wonder how someone who is supposedly a public servant can afford that kind of thing. It would not surprise me to find that his trips were used to make money for himself personally and he sees the $52k of getting caught money as part of the cost of doing business.
We the people are supposed to be impressed at his willingness to pay this reimbursement for his party habit. The establishment is used to dealing with people who are impressed by those kinds of numbers. But I'm here to tell you that while these numbers are not impressive and they are not nearly indicative of the waste, fraud and abuse that goes on daily in big government, being called out like this sends a signal to the thousands of other corrupt pieces of shit that "work" useless government jobs, get massively overpaid for racking up huge expenses, and then demand a lifetime government pension that NO working man will ever see.
I think the whole notion of government pension is corrupt. Nobody else gets it and government jobs are supposed to be a special form of service, not a way to get a leg up on everyone else. I hereby boldly predict based on my socionomic models associated with the swing back toward conservatism that within 5 years - far quicker than anyone currently can imagine - new government employees will not get a pension. Instead they will get a 401k like the rest of working class America.
The days where being a government employee meant you had it better than anyone else have peaked and within 10 years people will look at government jobs like they were asking them to pick cotton or mine coal. In other words, the cushy government job will be replaced with the old fashioned shit job which is what government was always supposed to be. Only losers will work for government in the future because the money will return to employees in the private sector.
Let me be the first to say this, and I know many people will not believe it until it hits them in the face, but big brother just got diagnosed with terminal cancer and won't be around much longer. Yeah, yeah, I know, very unlikely to happen. Impossible even. And nobody could ever predict it in advance. I know, I know, been told it a million times before not the least of which was when I said Hillary would lose...
The mood of the herd is turning conservative and big changes will result. Peak liberalism has come and gone. All the fighting and loud noise from the declining liberal sector should be considered as a bulb burning brightest just before it blinks out.
This is what big government does. It sees all these supposedly limitless resources and they represent a temptation to live the good life as if the supposedly public servant position is some kind of royal appointment. The fact that he is being made to repay $52k only tells me that the actual cost was far higher. The fact that he can afford to pay $52k like it was nothing makes me wonder how someone who is supposedly a public servant can afford that kind of thing. It would not surprise me to find that his trips were used to make money for himself personally and he sees the $52k of getting caught money as part of the cost of doing business.
We the people are supposed to be impressed at his willingness to pay this reimbursement for his party habit. The establishment is used to dealing with people who are impressed by those kinds of numbers. But I'm here to tell you that while these numbers are not impressive and they are not nearly indicative of the waste, fraud and abuse that goes on daily in big government, being called out like this sends a signal to the thousands of other corrupt pieces of shit that "work" useless government jobs, get massively overpaid for racking up huge expenses, and then demand a lifetime government pension that NO working man will ever see.
I think the whole notion of government pension is corrupt. Nobody else gets it and government jobs are supposed to be a special form of service, not a way to get a leg up on everyone else. I hereby boldly predict based on my socionomic models associated with the swing back toward conservatism that within 5 years - far quicker than anyone currently can imagine - new government employees will not get a pension. Instead they will get a 401k like the rest of working class America.
The days where being a government employee meant you had it better than anyone else have peaked and within 10 years people will look at government jobs like they were asking them to pick cotton or mine coal. In other words, the cushy government job will be replaced with the old fashioned shit job which is what government was always supposed to be. Only losers will work for government in the future because the money will return to employees in the private sector.
Let me be the first to say this, and I know many people will not believe it until it hits them in the face, but big brother just got diagnosed with terminal cancer and won't be around much longer. Yeah, yeah, I know, very unlikely to happen. Impossible even. And nobody could ever predict it in advance. I know, I know, been told it a million times before not the least of which was when I said Hillary would lose...
The mood of the herd is turning conservative and big changes will result. Peak liberalism has come and gone. All the fighting and loud noise from the declining liberal sector should be considered as a bulb burning brightest just before it blinks out.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
At the end of the day the right to choose comes down to how big your gun is.
I'm on record explaining clearly in these pages many times just how big government really works. Behind the fancy words and fake smiles of politicians are tyrants and killers. As long as they are generally getting their way it is in their best interest to be tolerant of a few transgressions by the slaves that they own. But any altercation with government is always a potential path to being shot dead by said government, and oftentimes outside of any physical threat to the government. Simply not doing what they say to do when they say to do it is enough reason. I've described the phases of personal grievance of an average private citizen of limited financial means with government:
- gov't sets forth a generalized edict.
- individual fails to comply.
- government makes note of noncompliance and notifies individual of it in a firm but polite way.
- individual either ignores notice or responds directly of no intention to comply.
- government notes noncompliance and sends second notice which includes the direct threat of legal action.
- individual still fails to comply.
- government sends in whatever physical force it takes to force compliance. It could be 1 sheriff knocking at your door at 1PM in the afternoon or it could be 6 SWAT commandos that kick in your door at 3am and light the place up with flash bangs and round everyone up on the couch tied up in zip ties. Heck, it could even be military action if your organization is big enough to pose a threat to the status quo.
In other words, there is no real democracy. There are no real human rights. These are just marketing terms sold to weak minded people who, for some reason, allow these things to happen over and over again without calling them what they are: a form of soft slavery. Any time you don't do what massa says it ALWAYS devolves to force. And of course the individual citizen is always the bad guy. No matter that he didn't vote for any of what he is being told to do. No matter if it is against his principles. Nope, when your owner says to do something you better damned well do it else there will be real physical consequences, potentially even your death. The ONLY thing that stops this kind of bully is physical force. If you have enough firepower to stop someone from abusing you, they will stop. Until then, you are their slave.
We are seeing this unfold like a chess match in Catalonia vs. Spain right now. The Catalonian people are tired of Spanish bureaucrats pissing away all their earnings on crap that Catalonians don't want. When government is winning, they bandy about "the will of the people" as if they give a shit about that. They use it to convince everyone that the system is fair and just. The implication is that if the will of the people wants to change direction then of course, the slave may just walk off the plantation unchallenged.
Of course when running this kind of con game the risk is always that someone will take you up on it. I'm not talking about individuals here. They can be quietly jailed, killed or otherwise silenced very easily. But when a whole section of your territory self-organizes against the big government, that is when we see any care for "will of the people" go flying out the window. It is at that point that the big government tips its hand. Instead of saying "sure you are free to leave at any time" the message changes to that of the abusive partner: "I fucking own you. What do you mean you want to leave? If you try to leave I will stop you. If you try to stop me from stopping you then you will end up hurt".
Spain sent in several cruise ships to be used as quarters for an invasion force into Catalonia whose stated mission was to stop a popular, democratic vote from taking place. Of course nobody wants to just jump straight to the fighting so the first push back was for dock workers to choose not to support any troop ships that might show up. With logistics thus becoming more difficult, the leaders of Spain sent orders to the Catalonia police to put themselves under direct control of Spain, thus giving them instant forces on the ground to invoke their corrupt will upon the people. But in a move that shows that things are likely to get a lot worse soon, the Catalonia police would not be placed under remote control like that. This means that they can no longer be counted upon as a tool of repression from central government. But worse yet, they now have to be viewed as a potential threat to any invading force from Spain.
A civil war is brewing there. Without the Catalonians paying monthly tribute to the a-holes in Spanish government, many of the wealth transfer promises made by Spain to its other people will not happen. If those promises fail then the leaders of Spain will be thrown out on their useless asses. So those leaders now have a choice: go invade Catalonia with overwhelming force or back down and have their political careers completely ruined. If they back down then they have no chance to win. If they send force then they at least have a chance to regain control even if it tramples the so called will of the people and results in many deaths.
My guess is that Spain's corrupt central leaders don't give a shit about people's will or deaths and so they will send force. Normally I would say that would be the end of it. Spain would use troops to take out all of the 700+ Catalonian mayors who are siding with the will of their people and to replace them with puppets that can be remote controlled by the Spanish government. But in this case I'm not so sure. The Basque ETA officially disarmed itself because its members were getting old. But their actions have shown those in the north of Spain how effective guerilla tactics can be at pushing "the man" back. This is important because conservatives do not like to be ruled as if they are livestock. They want to live lives of self determination. If central Spain had any brains it would figure out how to give the Catalonians that while keeping at least some of their tax revenue flowing. In other words, they would make a deal. But if people begin to die then a deal becomes much harder to negotiate so the next few weeks in Catalonia will be the foundation of the next few years or even decades there.
- gov't sets forth a generalized edict.
- individual fails to comply.
- government makes note of noncompliance and notifies individual of it in a firm but polite way.
- individual either ignores notice or responds directly of no intention to comply.
- government notes noncompliance and sends second notice which includes the direct threat of legal action.
- individual still fails to comply.
- government sends in whatever physical force it takes to force compliance. It could be 1 sheriff knocking at your door at 1PM in the afternoon or it could be 6 SWAT commandos that kick in your door at 3am and light the place up with flash bangs and round everyone up on the couch tied up in zip ties. Heck, it could even be military action if your organization is big enough to pose a threat to the status quo.
In other words, there is no real democracy. There are no real human rights. These are just marketing terms sold to weak minded people who, for some reason, allow these things to happen over and over again without calling them what they are: a form of soft slavery. Any time you don't do what massa says it ALWAYS devolves to force. And of course the individual citizen is always the bad guy. No matter that he didn't vote for any of what he is being told to do. No matter if it is against his principles. Nope, when your owner says to do something you better damned well do it else there will be real physical consequences, potentially even your death. The ONLY thing that stops this kind of bully is physical force. If you have enough firepower to stop someone from abusing you, they will stop. Until then, you are their slave.
We are seeing this unfold like a chess match in Catalonia vs. Spain right now. The Catalonian people are tired of Spanish bureaucrats pissing away all their earnings on crap that Catalonians don't want. When government is winning, they bandy about "the will of the people" as if they give a shit about that. They use it to convince everyone that the system is fair and just. The implication is that if the will of the people wants to change direction then of course, the slave may just walk off the plantation unchallenged.
Of course when running this kind of con game the risk is always that someone will take you up on it. I'm not talking about individuals here. They can be quietly jailed, killed or otherwise silenced very easily. But when a whole section of your territory self-organizes against the big government, that is when we see any care for "will of the people" go flying out the window. It is at that point that the big government tips its hand. Instead of saying "sure you are free to leave at any time" the message changes to that of the abusive partner: "I fucking own you. What do you mean you want to leave? If you try to leave I will stop you. If you try to stop me from stopping you then you will end up hurt".
Spain sent in several cruise ships to be used as quarters for an invasion force into Catalonia whose stated mission was to stop a popular, democratic vote from taking place. Of course nobody wants to just jump straight to the fighting so the first push back was for dock workers to choose not to support any troop ships that might show up. With logistics thus becoming more difficult, the leaders of Spain sent orders to the Catalonia police to put themselves under direct control of Spain, thus giving them instant forces on the ground to invoke their corrupt will upon the people. But in a move that shows that things are likely to get a lot worse soon, the Catalonia police would not be placed under remote control like that. This means that they can no longer be counted upon as a tool of repression from central government. But worse yet, they now have to be viewed as a potential threat to any invading force from Spain.
A civil war is brewing there. Without the Catalonians paying monthly tribute to the a-holes in Spanish government, many of the wealth transfer promises made by Spain to its other people will not happen. If those promises fail then the leaders of Spain will be thrown out on their useless asses. So those leaders now have a choice: go invade Catalonia with overwhelming force or back down and have their political careers completely ruined. If they back down then they have no chance to win. If they send force then they at least have a chance to regain control even if it tramples the so called will of the people and results in many deaths.
My guess is that Spain's corrupt central leaders don't give a shit about people's will or deaths and so they will send force. Normally I would say that would be the end of it. Spain would use troops to take out all of the 700+ Catalonian mayors who are siding with the will of their people and to replace them with puppets that can be remote controlled by the Spanish government. But in this case I'm not so sure. The Basque ETA officially disarmed itself because its members were getting old. But their actions have shown those in the north of Spain how effective guerilla tactics can be at pushing "the man" back. This is important because conservatives do not like to be ruled as if they are livestock. They want to live lives of self determination. If central Spain had any brains it would figure out how to give the Catalonians that while keeping at least some of their tax revenue flowing. In other words, they would make a deal. But if people begin to die then a deal becomes much harder to negotiate so the next few weeks in Catalonia will be the foundation of the next few years or even decades there.
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Planning a road trip? Wait until early to mid 2018 [/RB]
How can Elliott waves help you other than by allowing you to speculate in the markets? Clearly, the value of having advance insight as to what prices of various things could likely be in the future extends to many markets beyond stocks, bonds and other assets. For example, I am on record in these pages as timing the purchase of my first and second sets of solar panels based on nothing more than the wave count of the solar industry. Low valuations for solar companies mean hard times due to no pricing power. That's swooping time for consumers who have the money at the right time.
So as another teaser for my paid service, I want to provide my model based view of gas prices going into 2018. Because we are likely finishing a 4th wave horizontal triangle right now I expect gas prices to re-test their 2016 low at least. Mid channel is now $1 for /RB (RBOB Oct 2017 Gasoline Futures). Mid channel is the first likely support. However, we could also see a rapid collapse down to 0.5 per the blue before this chart catches a bid mid next year.
I will be using this information to help me plan the move of my boat from Virginia down to the Bahamas. The boat is a gas hog and just the fuel bill is expected to be in the $6000 range at today's prices. We are working like crazy to complete the refit and we hope to be done by 1Q 2018, 2Q at the latest. We could let this drag out another few months into late 2018 but I will be pushing for completion in order to intercept the dip in gas prices that my models indicate is coming. Time will tell if the model plays out but if we see a gap down below the lower rail as the model suspect will happen then the odds will look good for an early to mid 2018 low in gas prices.
So as another teaser for my paid service, I want to provide my model based view of gas prices going into 2018. Because we are likely finishing a 4th wave horizontal triangle right now I expect gas prices to re-test their 2016 low at least. Mid channel is now $1 for /RB (RBOB Oct 2017 Gasoline Futures). Mid channel is the first likely support. However, we could also see a rapid collapse down to 0.5 per the blue before this chart catches a bid mid next year.
I will be using this information to help me plan the move of my boat from Virginia down to the Bahamas. The boat is a gas hog and just the fuel bill is expected to be in the $6000 range at today's prices. We are working like crazy to complete the refit and we hope to be done by 1Q 2018, 2Q at the latest. We could let this drag out another few months into late 2018 but I will be pushing for completion in order to intercept the dip in gas prices that my models indicate is coming. Time will tell if the model plays out but if we see a gap down below the lower rail as the model suspect will happen then the odds will look good for an early to mid 2018 low in gas prices.
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