What If Your Posse Showed Up Just Then?

I've made no secret on this blog, as an anarchist, my views that we need no police, they being a recent development in the experiment of government, one that demands reform, as one police chief noted, every twenty years or so. People cannot imagine no police, only because they have no knowledge of the better alternatives that have been in place in the last 5000 years.

A while back a lad was desperately negotiating with me, offering to quit his job if I did not call the police.  I stopped his negotiating by telling him since I was not his employer, I was in no position to negotiate his employment status.  But, I assured him, "I never call the police."

He was so relieved, until it dawned on him what I meant. Indeed, the police called me to advance their investigation.  Sorry, not interested. He was fired by his employer anyway, and he left town.

Now comes an idea that should have come a long time ago...

“I’m curious,” one of our friends, Hannah McCoy, said in response, “as to why people call the cops when they feel unsafe. The average response time is 10-20 minutes. And in that amount of time, if someone really wanted to break into your place, rape you, harm you, steal from you… they would be done and gone.”
“Why not,” McCoy says, “purchase a gun and train yourself how to use it so you are self-sufficient and can protect yourself?”
Indeed. Self-defense is the first step to keeping you and your family safe from home intruders.
But as you’ll see today, there’s another — even more powerful — action you can take to help keep you and your loved one’s safe.

I myself have no use for smartphones and apps, but this one looks good.  I still use a flip phone, for UBER and Siri and directions, etc are no draw for me.  If people keep coming up with apps like this, well...  I might have to rethink my 2001 time capsule.

I can think of plenty of young ladies, being hassled, would delight in seeing her dad, a cousin, her next door neighbor and a couple of his drinking buddies show up.

The auto industry knows that no "safety feature" since the seat belt has ever improved auto safety.  The problem is with each "advance" (air bags, abs brakes, etc) drivers "spend" the safety margin with ever more reckless driving.  Would such an app encourage the defenseless to run more risks?

As usual, another problem is the police might monitor this channel and show up too, escalating the danger.  This is another reason why we need super encryption the hegemon cannot crack (if there ever was such a thing).

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LendingClub Gains Class-Action Suit

I recall leaving high school hearing of a friend who had taken a loan at 20% from the mob.  That was a head-shaker, poor guy, his life was over before it started.  The only thing that has changed is how many people who take 20% loans.

Here comes a lawsuit:

 These statements were allegedly misleading because the company failed to disclose that: i) it had an unsustainable business model dependent on its ability to issue loans with usurious rates; ii) its loan investors would not be able to enforce the high rates because they were illegal; iii) without the usurious rates, the loans generated through LendingClub's marketplace would not be attractive to investors because they had a high credit risk; and iv) a substantial portion of LendingClub's loans were issued with rates in excess of those allowed by applicable state usury laws.

The problem is not that some usury rackets are unsustainable, the problem is all loans of any amount at any interest at any rate for any duration cause damage, more or less.  But they all always cause damage.

Ask any financial watcher, and they all lay today's problems at the FED and interest rates.  Just so.  They argue there is a "just right" interest rate, which cannot be known, but can be "discovered" by the market.

Problem is, in a free market, only the delusional get involved in loans at interest, and there is little credit available to promote delusion among the masses. Further, in a free market, there is no enforcing interest, just as gambling debts are not enforceable in our society.  Credit at usury is enforceable in our capitalist society, and it is an existential problem, for both the 99% and the 1%.  Gambling debts are a negligible problem in our society.  There is the difference.

Just eliminate enforcement of interest on loans, and watch the problem go away.

There is always a desire for EZ Credit loans at interest, but never a need.  The free market can and does provide finance options for the necessary and the sufficient.

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UBER alles Freedom

As a kid I hitchhiked all over the place.  Everyone did.  To get from one part of town to another, especially problem transits like from Queen Anne Hill to Capitol Hill in Seattle, hitchhiking did the trick.  I did it from probably ten years old until maybe the last time I hitchhiked was 20 years old (then I had cars.)  While most trips were just a couple of miles, I did some several hundred mile trips when circumstances required, again as young as ten years old.  This was in the late sixties, early seventies.

It was illegal, for no particular reason.  One time I was hitch-hiking and I saw probably 24 motorcycle cops a long way off.  They were training or something and heading back to wherever. I ceased until the passed, but the very last motorcycle cop peeled off and gave me a ticket for hitchhiking.  They'd seen me.

Now we are socially conditioned to fear fellow citizens, so hitchhiking is over.  Now you are only allowed to think of the "danger stranger" you are not allowed to think of helping and getting help, without state mediation.

Some people are trying to replicated older times, with some concessions to delusional social conditioning to fear others, but alas...

He's decided to use Ethereum (Jim Epstein hipped you to that fascinating use of blockchain tech last year) to create a genuinely peer-to-peer means for drivers and passengers to find each other without a top-down company making rules and skimming huge percentages, which he's calling "Arcade City."

such great ideas are subject ot cops posing as participants and arresting free people like they do johns and the prostitutes.

We once had mediating institutions which now have been replaced by the hegemons' minions.  Life is no more risky or dangerous, we just think so, since we are told to think so, and our bodies follow our minds, and we feel so, in time.

The internet would be an excellent means to match up peer to peer drivers heading your way, willing to make a few bucks you are willing to pay.

But no, UBER is a bad idea, and therefore the state prefers UBER.  And will eliminate any competition.

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What Happened to Mag Lev?

I love Google.  If Google was a wife, it would be perfect.  It lies to you by telling you exactly what you want to hear, it anticipates your every desire because it actually listens to you, and if you are busy doing something else, Google will never bother you.  And in my case, Google is working 24/7 selling my books for me.  Maybe someday there will be Google Sex, but for right now Google is working on something men care more about than sex, and that is driving around.

Now, as I have pointed out here before, the hegemon only adopts bad ideas, because good ideas make the hegemon less powerful.  Think democracy, protestantism, capitalism, Rawls, Chicago school, the FED, common core... goodness, one could be all day at this. And anyway, most people would rather be oppressed than free, so the hegemon adopts bad ideas to give people what they want, oppression, good and hard.

Libertarian bristle at Romans 13, which says you must obey the hegemon.  Libertarians try to impeach Paul by noting the hegemon executed both Paul and Jesus, and countless other people of good will.  But God, with whom libertarians often disagree, would disagree.  As to who killed Paul, if the witness of God is to be relied upon, God killed Paul.  Finally in Chronicles the mystery of who killed Saul, the ganymede, the archers, the Amelikite, or even suicide, God stops the speculation by stating "I did it."

This is scandalous, offensive to the mind of a freedom-lover.  But the fact is, whether you believe it or not, God decides who lives or dies, within the greater framework of eternity.

So the hegemon knows most people want to be oppressed, and the hegemon is doing what God allows in oppressing people.    The first job is to advance the worst ideas.  The people love that.  Heil Hitler!

Admiral Poindexter promoted something called Total Information Awareness, which was presented as an appalling idea and was widely rejected.  Shortly thereafter the CIA set up shop in Silicon Valley and then came its first offering the young, hip Google, whose meme was "don't be evil" an example of ever there was one of our rules revealing our weaknesses.

Google founders were out of the same crop of Johns Hopkins summer camp that produced Lady Gaga, Zuckerberg and Brin and many other packaged goods for mass consumption, and O! how the mass has consumed these packaged goods.  People who are utterly insignificant, except for front man value.

This all comes to mind as I see the idea of mag lev transport fading away in lieu of self-driving cars.  Self-driving cars may be the ultimate in bad alternatives to mag lev, we'll see.  But mag lev is going down the memory whole, as the minions clamor for more oppression.

Washington (AFP) - Google, Lyft and auto industry executives urged lawmakers Tuesday to help create a regulatory fast lane to help the deployment of self-driving cars.
In testimony at a Senate hearing, representatives of General Motors and auto-equipment maker Delphi touted numerous safety and environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles.
Chris Urmson, who heads the Google self-driving car project, said a consistent regulatory framework is important to deploying those technologies, and that conflicting rules in US states could limit innovation.

Mag lev vs self-driving cars.  Could there be a worse alternative as an example of hegemonic malice?

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The Amazon Brick and Mortar in Seattle

So the Amazon brick and Mortar store in Seattle sells... books.  Hmmm...  It replaced a Blue C sushi shop, a conveyor belt Sushi joint.

I cannot think of a single small bookstore I frequented ten years ago that has gone out of business because of Amazon.  But I think it was just two years ago, the huge Barnes and Noble that dominated this elite shopping center shut down.  The list of huge businesses Amazon crushed is long: Crown, Brentanos, B. Dalton, Borders and so on.

The Amazon store is rather uninspired as to layout, almost warehouse-ish.  Maybe the point is not so much selling books, is Amazon delivers a lot in that neighborhood, and in distribution it is that last mile that costs so much.  The Amazon lockers have not been a hit, so maybe this is testing how to get folks to come that last mile to Amazon.

http://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2016/amazons-brick-and-mortar-plans-arent-just-about-books/

Word is they plan to open 300-400 of these.  Amazon, always interesting.

By the way, I cannot think of a single small bookstore that stocks my books, yet I get payments from amazon for my books from all over the world.  The Amazon genius of the Long Tail (of the bell curve) plus my books being free on Google search is a formidable marketing combination. And if costs me exactly nothing.  (Happy to send you a .pdf on all this, email me.)

If you can see the internet for what it is, it can be quite valuable.  Otherwise it is a money-pit.

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The Ten Year at Negative 3% Fails Charge?

A comment on a negative interest rate article:

Doug53801 day ago

Anyone out there that could give me a better understanding of what this means? Seriously, it sounds important but I'm lost. - Thanks!

Just so.  He is not alone, nobody really knows what is going on, and the action is is wild and confusing as the counter-offensive at St Vith.

And the shortage has even migrated to the short end! “The 3-year note is also trading special at -20 basis points this morning ahead of its auction this afternoon.”

People are happy to lose money immediately?

Recall this is debt, not equity, and credit, not money, so this is deep uncharted territory.

In one of his shortest missives ever, Sean Corrigan notes:

That being the case, why on earth would any sane company boss make sizeable new expenditures whose IRR is deemed to be negative in cash terms – and which will therefore both deplete his equity and sap his means of paying dividends to the firms’ owners – when he can, as is becoming widely bemoaned, make alternative use of the same financial means to boost the price of his shares by swapping some of them for an obligation which he is effectively being rewarded for taking on, so making his hapless bond-holders pay his wages for him instead?

Well, yes, note his scenario - "company boss"... "dividends" ... "bond-holders" ... "swaps" ...  all developments of a capitalist market, and anathema to the self-employed.

There will be history books explaining what happened, but in the meantime, don't end up a statistic in a history book.  Start a business.

By the way, went into a Goodwill Store in an extremely wealthy neighborhood, in which the merchandise was stellar and mixed in with the used was new goods.  The prices were the same as in the poor neighborhoods (I'd rethink that) but my point is goodwill has figured it out: mix the new and the old.

Anyone starting up retail ought to do the same.



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The Socially Conditioned Investment Mind

Ex scientia pecuniae libertas.  -  From knowledge of money comes liberty.

Latin gives it gravity, no?  This caught my notice as the self-employed must know what money is to survive (and the differences between credit, currency and other financial tools).  And how once upon a time people assumed to be free they must be self-employed.  But not anymore.  Freedom now is seen as having accumulated enough assets to retire, an odious goal in which the rest of us are denied the good of the other due to sloth.

Whereas freedom in self-employment benefits all, this degenerate "freedom by investment" was achieved by social conditioning performed over the last 40 years as a narrative to the inflationary regime.

Banking regulations gave banks credit to lend with no rational limit.  The more irrational the lending criteria, the greater the success, and eventually, too big to fail.  This credit was looking for suckers, and while car and home buyers were simply chewed up, people with student loans are quite broken.  But the impact on business start-up is unique.  The EZ Credit distorted the price signals, making entrepreneurship more difficult, and at the same time skewed the product mix to an EZ Credit customer base that favored consumerism over materialism.  Consumerism now is reduced to pixellated property.

Given the social conditioning to investing for retirement, and the patterns and practices of capitalism in which putative earnings (tallied in credit, not money) are set aside ostensibly for retirement, all eyes are on the market conflagrations. 

Turn around.  See self-employment.  And then push for total deregulation of banking.  that is the way out.

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