Saturday, June 28, 2014

More Ex Im

So Larry Kudlow is anti-ExIm Bank.
For those who may not be following this story, Ex-Im is a government-run bank that finances foreign competition with the use of loans and loan guarantees to buy American goods. For example, in fiscal year 2013, Ex-Im backed a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai. (Hat tip Charles Lane of the Washington Post.) Dubai is a wealthy country. This is a state-run airline. Why does the United States have to subsidize it? Plus, Dubai has a history of financing jihadist terrorists. So why do we want to help them?
Good news is Eric Cantor was ExIm's biggest supporter in the congress and he was defeated in a recent election.  The bad news is the "tea party" candidate who defeated him hired Cantor's political director.

This won't change.

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Mish On Money Definitions

You know Mish is often quoted here with approval, but he has bollixed definitions in his post on bitcoin in California:
Three cheers to Dickinson. At the federal level, we need a more commonsense ruling that bitcoin is a currency, not an ordinary commodity like copper.
Ooops. No!  Bitcoins is a mere tally, not a currency (and as he says, certainly, not a commodity).
By the way, money is a commodity as well as a currency.
No, again, money is money, a medium of exchange.  A currency is a derivative, such as warehouse receipts (for say money), which USA paper currency was once.
In Man, Economy, and State, Murray Rothbard explains "Money is a commodity that serves as a general medium of exchange."
Right, note Mish has conflated currency and medium of exchange.
In contrast to oil, bitcoin has no commodity use other than to facilitate trade. Similarly, gold has very little industrial use. But unlike bitcoin, gold cannot be manufactured out of nothing.
No.  Gold has overwhelming industrial use, no computers or cell phones without it.. the connections would have to be huge and cooling systems built in if not for gold, to name just one industrial use.  The price of gold is tied to its use as a commodity.  If there is any stability in the price of gold it is related to its use as a commodity.
Gold's overwhelming role is still as a currency even though it is not in general use as money. After all, central banks still cling to it. They don't cling to copper, oil or even silver.
Ungh! Error of the narrow basis of comparison.  We all tend to think the universe began the day we were born, because we were born.  if we don't know we fill in the blanks with what we assume. Gold is money, silver is money, traditionally, because it acted as such.  Gold is rich man's money, which is why banks store it.  Silver and copper are poor mens money. Which is why they don't.  Most business on earth in history is done on credit among members of a community (see bitcoin).  The gold and silver come out as money instead of currency in times of chaos.  Since the people you are dealing with may not be alive in ten minutes, you are not inclined to extend credit, you want to be paid in money (gold or silver.)

This is why you see people using gold and silver as payment in wild west and frontier and war situations.  This is why archeologists find no gold buried around places wiped out by natural disaster but plenty around human disasters.

So after getting it very wrong, Mish gets back on track...
Many think gold cannot be money again "because there isn't enough of it". Others believe  "the production of gold does not expand fast enough for the economy".
Both statements are easily proven false.
Yes, and Mish goes on getting things right, and recommending Rothbard on the topic.  So do I.  But Mish needs to re-read it and more carefully.

A friend remonstrated with me for being strict on the definition of money when so few people use the term in the way Rothbard and I do.  Here is his error:  the people who use the term money incorrectly do some in one of perhaps 50 different definitions.  The people who use the term correctly out number the any group using a given wrong definition.  Yes, more people fail to use the term correctly that use it correctly, but any or each "wrong group" is smaller than the group that uses it right.

It matters because if one has ones terms wrong, it is likely, and is the case in the discussion of money, that there will be no apprehension of comprehension as to the questions posed.

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Friday, June 27, 2014

Tombtone Epitaph Being Written For Capitalism

Yang Jisheng's book Tombsonte has been a tough read, but essential for anyone interested in China.  I'll do a systemic review later, but after reading the account of how a very few people in 1958-1962 caused the starvation of 36 million (give or take) of the very people who produced the food (peasants were starved to keep the cities and industrialization programs going) with the central committee largely unaware of the problem.  How did the communists fix the problem when the crisis was revealed to them?  They instituted reforms that did nothing but make for a hands off policy...
These reforms revived rural markets (referred to in some localities as "free markets"), and by 1962 it was possible again to buy fresh gingerroot, lily buds, lotus root, water chestnuts, and arrowheads not seen for years. When the village markets started operating, their prices were at least double the state prices.  High prices stimulated production, which in turn brought prices down, and by June of 1962, privately raised produce cost only a fraction more than state produce.  These free markets were still considered capitalistic, and party members were not allowed to buy produce from them.  (Page 440)
When economic policies go bad?  Revert to free markets.  When Berlin was faced with starvation in 1946, they reverted to free markets.  How to get goods flowing again?  Allow "gouging."  What happens when you allow gouging?  Money moves from those hoarding it to producers who use it to expand production, which in turn lowers cost.  Survivors from this era returned to this lesson in 1979 in China.  In adapting free markets, the communists buried the West in any claims as to the benefits of Capitalism.  By going "hands off" never in the history of mankind have so many people been lifted from poverty so quickly and has the world so benefitted.

One thing the communist party seems to have that is lacking in the West is people who are willing to stand by their convictions and suffer the consequences.  Liu Shaoqi opposed Mao along with Deng, and did not survive, and Deng did.  Bo Yibo went down three times, like Deng.  Bo Xilai, Bo's son, is currently in prison for his troubles.  In the west, no matter how criminal the leader, there are never consequences.  See Cheney/Rumsfled, etc.

The point free market food "cost only a fraction more than state produce" is unfortunate because more accurate description would be state produce actually cost far more than free market food, it was priced a fraction below.  The free market folk took a profit on what they sold at the prices they sold, the State took a loss, when counting in all the costs of State involvement.  Think USA autos and the cost vs the price, USA "affordable care" and the cost vs the price, etc.

We like to think of China from a racial or cultural perspective, that is "O, well, that is the Chinese" and as if their lessons do not apply to us.  Their lessons certainly do apply across all race and culture, and as I finish reading Tombstone, there is not a single action or attitude that I cannot find its mirror in USA headlines today.  And this is under "capitalism."  Repeat after me: capitalism and free markets are not the same thing.

You cannot read Tombstone about 1960 China without seeing USA Today. Check it out...



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False Economy Demonstrated In the Govt Data

It's like this...


Purchases of motor vehicles and parts
accounted for more than half of the increase in May, and more than accounted for the decrease in April. 


But those auto businesses are not profitable, certainly not GM, and even if it was, the $300 profit per car they want would be wiped out by the $300 it costs to recall and fix shoddy made cars.

What cannot go on eventually stops.  Guaranteed.

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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Competing On Price V Design

You will fail if you try to compete on price as a start-up.  I can guarantee that with 100% certainty. Listen carefully to yourself, do you EVER mention price as a factor in your offer?  If so, you are competing on price.

 If one cannot compete on price, what other basis is there?  The “secret” is to compete on design.  Your role and value at the small business level is to be a innovator, which means premium prices and unique designs. You make more money doing less.  You may be selling hats like anyone else, but they are upscale, specialty hats.  You may have a hole in the wall restaurant, but your Chow Mein is $22.50 a plate, because it is a better design (recipe).

If you plan to be a big business billionaire like Steve Jobs, you start here on design anyway.  If you plan to be a small business billionaire like Ty Warner you start here.  If you plan to have your dream lifestyle, and don’t care about the money, you start here.

But how you make the money you need is to compete on design, bringing your passion and the joy in working on solutions to your passion, others’ design talent, with the world’s best producer to demanding retailers, for their stores.

That’s it.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

If Gold Doesn't Matter...

How come it is such a sticky point in USA-German relations?
Ending talk of repatriating the world’s second-biggest gold reserves removes a potential irritant in U.S.-German relations. It’s also a rebuff to critics including the anti-euro Alternative for Germany party, which says all the gold should return toFrankfurt so it can’t be impounded to blackmail Germany into keeping the currency union together.
Read the comment sections of the article....

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Brick & Mortar?

Can you operate as B2B and B2C and online?  Well,   it's a matter of measuring the performance of each.  Time and money and ROI.  My answer is division of labor, pick a task and do it, age quod agis.  this from one with the gift of ADD, but our rules reveal our weaknesses.

But it is a trick question... it assumes a business should be online at all for purposes of selling.  We still have tremendous resources and efforts directed at selling online, especially by start-ups.  The days where people believed online is the entire market, instant riches with no effort are over, but to state the fact that online sales is less than 6% invites instant challenge and resentment.  It seems anyone with a sense of entitlement has pinned their expectations on the internet, and to state the facts is to pose an existential threat equal to the sense of entitlement.  Anyone who employs the internet for sales is to some measure dealing in fantasy, and most people far more than they realize.  As to business, the internet is the catalog, snail mail, yellow pages and telephone rolled into one.  A huge savings in time spent on communication, yes, but a zero improvement in output quality or quantity. 

Far from "online is the entire market, instant riches with no effort," online B2C is a tiny market, little return and most likely loss with massive effort.  Why not direct the same resources to brick and mortar B2B where the work is needed and rewarded and appreciated?

If I had to name the biggest challenge to a renaissance in small business development, I'd say it is commercial property values, and rents derived therein.  Since we do not have assets marked to market, and the huge corps have unlimited credit to borrow, which in turn they use to build unnecessary towers to  handle businesses losing money, crowding out otherwise viable people scaled businesses.

History says commercial real estate falls harder farther than residential.  Watch for it...  the bottom of the market is not low price, it is no buyers.

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Ex Im Bank: What Do Welfare Queens Say?

The ExIm Bank has ordered the government-controlled media to fill its pages with sheer nonsense about its program:
INACTION by Congress on a little-known piece of legislation could put more than 100,000 Washington jobs at risk. That policy, the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, is key to the success of Washington businesses large and small that are part of our state’s robust international trade economy.
No it couldn't because the assertion that there are that many jobs tied to the ExIm bank finance is nonsense.
According to the U.S. International Trade Administration’s calculation, at least 137,000 Washington jobs were supported by the Ex-Im Bank last year alone. Of the 165 Washington employers that have used the bank to finance their exports in the last five years, more than 70 percent were small- and medium-sized businesses like the L’Ecole 41 winery in Walla Walla, Pacific Valley Foods in Bellevue and Wagstaff in Spokane.
Let's see...

137,000 divided by 165 = 830 employees on average.  This is nonsense, especially when that number 165 is over five years.  165 divided by five years is 33 per year.  There are only two figures that matter is when it comes to Washington state and ExIm bank, and that is Boeing's share of finance and Boeing's number of employees.  Of the other 164 over five years, how many did one deal?  How many are repeat?  Of the repeats, how many of their backed loans have been moved from the active column to the "asset" column where ExIM Bank parks its failures and taxpayer losses to be paid later, when all this can be blamed on Obama by the next administration.
The Ex-Im Bank plays a unique role in financing exports of U.S. goods to foreign customers by filling in the gaps offered by traditional financing and by partnering with private sector lenders. 
Right, when private sector lenders judge the participants a credit risk, they can pass the profits on to business and the losses on to taxpayers.  Where have we heard this before?
Many exporting businesses, especially small businesses, rely on the bank for export loans, loan guarantees and insurance.
We've already demonstrated above no more than 33 a year max.  Why say "many?"  The fact is most exporters do not.  And those who do not are punished when they have to compete with people who should not be in business for business overseas.
In reality, the Ex-Im Bank regularly generates a surplus of revenues, and earned U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion in interest payments last year that helped pay down other federal government obligations.
Nonsense, by moving nonperforming loans over to the asset column, they can look as good as Enron, the way Enron did it.  For a private bank to do this would mean jail time for directors. The reason we have the ExIm bank is for crony capitalism (tautology).
Our nation and our state needs the Ex-Im Bank to ensure that Washington employers remain internationally competitive.
Since almost none of USA trade is based on this, how is letting it expire an existential threat to the country?
The Ex-Im Bank is a model federal program: boosting exports, creating jobs and spurring the economy, all with no cost to U.S. taxpayers.
A model indeed: bails out failed companies, grows false economy, lies about the result, and harms another industry, USA airlines.  A model indeed. If it is such a success, why are we not expanding it?  Why not extend in essence vendor financing ability to casinos, candlemakers, bakeries, and shoemakers?
Of the 165 Washington employers that have used the bank to finance their exports in the last five years, more than 70 percent were small- and medium-sized businesses like the L’Ecole 41 winery in Walla Walla, Pacific Valley Foods in Bellevue and Wagstaff in Spokane.
Hmmm... other food and wine and material exporters can find market without taxpayer subsidies, so why do these?  Would it not benefit those who actually know how to turn a profit to let those who do not know how just fail?  Why should those who are profitable be obliged to transfer their profits to those who are not?  Perhaps Washington does not need 700 wineries, and the economy would improve if we eliminated the misallocation and malinvestment precipitated by the exim bank.

Here is a simple hard fact: in almost all export transactions, like 98%, they buyer overseas has arranged prepayment of the goods exported from the USA.   ExIm Bank specializes in subsidizing transactions that fail the smell test.

Failing companies crowd out the successful and marginally successful with their subsidized offers.  Most people have no idea about the Eximbank, and may have no idea why they lost the sale.  Overseas people seek ExImBank participants on the USA side up to scam the usa taxpayers.  Keeping secret what deals ExIMBank is financing denies honest business people the opportunity to see their government is undercutting them by financing political hacks.

Getting rid of ExIMBank will improve the economy.

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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

3 D Pen

Indigogo is making interesting things happen...

1. Cracking that "angel investment" delusion and fraud that has been inculcated for two generations.  The delusion is "all you need is money", the fraud is the scam where the "entrepreneurs" just want a two year free ride on other peoples money.  It would not hurt the USA economy if angel investors disappeared, indeed, since they are tied into subsidies and crony capitalism (tautology) it would help if they withered away due to crowdfunding.

2. Customers first.  In business, the most important thing is customers, the hardest thing is getting the product right.

So with this 3 D pen we see...
We did not take CreoPopTM to Indiegogo to just raise funds. We want to engage with and learn from our early adopters and community so that we can make CreoPopTM even better. We want to introduce new features and new types of inks after we finish the campaign, and we want to understand what you as a customer and a CreoPopTM owner would want. During and after the campaign we will send surveys to those who pledge to help guide our development. Joining us now makes you more than a simple contributor – you’re a partner in helping us making the world’s greatest 3D pen.
Splendid.  This is another step up back to where product development once was.  And then this is new:
We know you are an influencer! And with our Special Influencer Program, we want to give you more great inks or the CreoPop 3D Pen for free. You will get a $10 refund or 5 Inks free for each person you refer who pledges towards a CreoPop pen.
Affiliate fees...  this too has been around before, and a new application.  This is all very encouraging!

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Half Of Hong Kong Wine Shops Closed

This is a very important lesson.  While China was going gangbusters on a false economy of lending credit, gifts of expensive wine and over-the-top banquets were all the rage.  The new president of China brought down the whip in 2012, and 1/2 of the wine shops in Hong Kong go under.
Half of Hong Kong's wine merchants have shut up shop since a ban on luxury gifts was instituted by President Xi Jinping in 2012 as an anti-graft measure.
In USA, who are your customers?  Are they living off a false economy?  To the degree they are, so are you, and when they go down, you go down.  Know the difference between money and credit, and design your products to the needs of those who make money.  They will survive the downturn and so will you.

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Fraud? At ExIm Bank!? Say It Ain't So...

Nothing will ever happen to ExIm Bank because Boeing could not stay in business without the running taxpayer's bailouts provided by ExIm Bank any more than General Motors could.

But politics are in play, so theatre is demanded.

No sooner than comes this comment,
“I think Ex-Im Bank is … something government does not have to be involved in,” he said. “The private sector can do it.” 
do we get this breathless story...
The Journal, citing unidentified sources familiar with the matter, reported that Johnny Gutierrez, an official in the Ex-Im Bank's short-term trade finance division, allegedly took cash payments in exchange for attempting to assist a Florida company in getting federal financing to export construction equipment to Latin America.
Shocked, shocked!  Who would ever imagine that anyone at the ExIm Bank would engage in fraud?

The perp?  Johnny Guiterrez? Down the memory hole...  google him and get taken to the page at ExIm where he once resided:

http://www.exim.gov/about/contact/trade-finance.cfm

Where's Johnnnnny?  He was just there....

 "The Bank takes thorough and immediate action when any hint of misconduct or fraud is detected by the safeguards we have in place, including working closely with our Inspector General," Bevens said.
Prove it.  Give the times and dates of offenses and how long it took you to find out.  With EXIM protestations in place, a conflict of interest is set up in which they no more want to know about fraud than the Justice Dept wants to know what happened in Fast and Furious.  Here are some details:
The IG is investigating whether Mr. Gutierrez accepted improper gifts from Gerardo "Jerry" Diaz, who runs a Florida company called Impex Associates, a person familiar with the matter said.
Gerardo Diaz has quite a history, as do his associates.
Impex ramped up its operations a decade ago, selling U.S. construction equipment and supplies to developers, mainly in Latin America, according to Ex-Im Bank records and the 2006 lawsuit filed against Mr. Diaz by a former business associate, Rama Vyasulu.
And to this crew, while in and out of Federal Courts, the ExIm bank is busy...
The agency has guaranteed numerous Impex deals, stretching back to at least 2002, according to agency records. For example, at one meeting in June 2007, the agency's credit committee agreed to guarantee financing for an Impex project worth between $1 million and $5 million in Mexico, and a similarly sized equipment sale to the Dominican Republic.The agency has also backed Impex deals in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos, but not all projects were in Latin America. The agency in 2005 talked up its decision to guaranteea $30 million Impex construction project to build a housing community for oil and gas workers in Doha, Qatar.
Gee whiz....   2002...  and on...  and the people involved...
The Ex-Im Bank hasn't disclosed information about the investigations, and declined to comment on Mr. Gutierrez's status, citing privacy laws.
So this was leaked.  Otherwise it would be secret.  How many other deals go this way?
The Export-Import Bank changed how it disclosed financing deals in 2010 and no longer discloses all the small business loans it originates. An agency spokesman wouldn't comment on the agency's recent involvement with Impex, though it has backed Impex deals through at least 2011.
Whew... just in time.  ExIm Bank keeps fraud secret and does not report its activities.  But you can be assured, if anyone leaks proof of criminality, they have highly paid spokespeople to assure us they have "zero tolerance" for fraud.  Zero!  Like the SEC, tens years of Madoff antics before a news reporter finally exposed what everyone saw.

Just as with all government economic policies, it has winners and losers.  Boeing loves the ExIm bank, USA Airlines hate it (which is why it is controversial).  Boeing "sells"jets to countries that cannot afford them or prefer Boeing subsidies to Airbus subsidies, taxpayer takes the bite, foreigners compete at lower costs than USA carriers, so more subsidies by taxpayers, bottom line taxpayers are always screwed.  Big business is subsidized by big government, the USA middle class dies by 1000 cuts.

The "small businesses" "helped" by ExIm Bank seem to be, upon inspection, companies that should go out of business, and instead kept on support-scam, harm viable businesses.

Nothing will come of this.  It does not happen that a government agency is eliminated.  Johnny Guiterrez lost his job, will take his pension, move over to HUD and pick up where he left off.

Even if they eliminated ExIM Bank, they would simple move the function over to Goldman Sachs or somewhere else, and the exact same nonsense would continue. This stuff will not end until the United States ends.  The United States will end because this stuff will not end.  See: Soviet Union.

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Monday, June 23, 2014

More Panama Trade

This week I heard from three people coincidentally all involved in Panama trade.

1. coffee

2. mangoes

3. hemp

Here in USA we think of trade in terms of big business.  But it is also viable as a small business...  we have a country of 350 million, and there are places of 8 million where people thrive in trade.  MOQ FOB to the rescue.

Herbie read a newsletter post I sent out on the Panama trade in mangoes, and checked in to note he is working on having hemp grown there for industrial harvesting.  For whatever reason, Georgia Tech has a logistics research center in Panama City and maintains an excellent database on Panama import export.  Check it out here.

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The Pope on Dope

This is big news, but as usual, you have to go to the source to get the story right, and even then you have to read it with discipline:
Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: the problem of drug use is not solved with drugs! Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise. To think that harm can be reduced by permitting drug addicts to use narcotics in no way resolves the problem. 
So far do good.  Addiction is evil (evil means "lack of good" in theology) and feeding addictions won't solve the problem.  Fair enough.
Attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called “recreational drugs”, are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects.
 This is tricky.  Legalizing drugs is not to end drug use, but end state incarceration of nonviolent criminals.  So to people wanting to end addiction, legalization is no help, to be sure.  But that is not the point of legalization.  Imprisoning people does not end addiction either.
Substitute drugs are not an adequate therapy but rather a veiled means of surrendering to the phenomenon.
Right again, methadone is a scam.
Here I would reaffirm what I have stated on another occasion: No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that. No to any kind of drug use (cf. General Audience, 7 May 2014). But to say this “no”, one has to say “yes” to life, “yes” to love, “yes” to others, “yes” to education, “yes” to greater job opportunities. If we say “yes” to all these things, there will be no room for illicit drugs, for alcohol abuse, for other forms of addiction.
Now he does not mean "no to any kind of drug use, since this is in the context of addiction.  Surely he is ok with morphine in the operating room.  It is the coda where he makes the point: just say yes.  The pope is not saying criminalize dope, he is saying free things up so fewer want dope.

A good friend of mine was a deep undercover narc, about 12 years.  His observations:

1. Addicts were in pain, and used dope as self-medication.

2. There are wide swathes of pain not recognized in medicine. So people in pain look elsewhere when they cannot get relief from formal medicine, or do not otherwise have access to it.

3. Perfectly good drugs for political reasons are forbidden, or made so onerous to prescribe that they are abandoned.  Some peoples problems need these drugs.  Here again, people must go underground to get the pain addressed.

4. As people are denied the pain-management they need, they have to turn to criminals, and there is the downward spiral. The criminality from prohibition invites the official corruption we all see.

It seems to me there is not much there for the anti-legalization crowd, especially since the laws are more decriminalization than legalization.

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Sunday, June 22, 2014

Next Saturday Live in SLO

If you are anywhere from San Francisco to Los Angeles, you can take an all-in-one-day live seminar in beautiful San Luis Obisbo.  From either city is may be a four hour drive tops, but the 9am to 5pm time frame allows you to swing it in one day.  (So get up early!)  or of course, stay in a motel and make a weekend of it.  Forecast is all sun.  Enroll here.




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NSA-Proof Email

One thing I love about Indiegogo is the Caveat Emptor implication.  None of these crowdfunding things warrants the claims of the seeker.

So it is no reflection on indigogo when I say I seriously doubt this offer of NSA-proof email.  Just as Wall Street front runs all stock market activity in USA, so I believe the intel "services" are the ones offering the solutions to the problems they create.

We all love CERN for creating the WWW, and Switzerland for being relentlessly independent.  Except Al Gore invented the internet, and the Swiss roll over on depositors like, well, who knows?  And the co-developer is MIT, which is probably the one USA University which gets the most military contracts from USGovernment.  A more credible university partner would be Beijing DaXue of Moscow PolyTech.

So this well over-subscribed offer may be nice, but I doubt its efficacy.

But let's say it is efficacious.  The second the Man cannot read your emails he will then begin to watch everything else you do to see who is hiding what they say?  As has been demonstrated elsewhere, they can profile you by so many other means now, that hiding what you actually say and think is pointless.  (Also, outbound email may be encrypted, but how about the inbound, where your correspondent includes your original email in the reply?)

We have to pay taxes to be spied on.  Then we have to pay more to avoid being spied on.  How about we just don't do the first, so we don't have to do the second, and then all those resources can be put into better uses.

No point in spending time fighting the man.  Make the most revolutionary act possible: start a business.

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