"In light of an overbearing federal government pushing gun control, health care reform, and the NDAA, some local governments have taken actions to increase the freedom in their states. There are, of course, so many ways that states try to exert their constitutional power but these are the top seven." Continue reading →
"We know it is possible to live on the ocean; we know there are ways to make money there, and our mission is to drive down the costs of seasteading to transform the ocean from potential frontier into real frontier and eventually into just another option with some serious advantages. This will lead to experimentation and innovation in governance and force existing States to improve or wither away for a lack of residents. The challenges are large but the potential payoffs are much, much larger. By transforming the political problem of bad governance into a hard but achievable technological problem, which humans have a knack for solving, we make success possible." Continue reading →
"Since launching in December, DEFCAD has become home to nearly 90 components, including bullet casings, pistol suppressors, and even grenade models. More significant, however, are the traffic numbers. Visitors to DEFCAD have to date downloaded over 250,000 files from the site, creator Defense Distributed announced via Twitter today. DEFCAD gets an average of 3,000 visitors per hour, representing roughly 2TB of traffic since launch, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson said by phone today. What all this means should be pretty clear: A whole lot of people are interested in downloading (and perhaps printing) guns." Continue reading →
"Two men – one in Washington State and the other in South Africa – used open source software to design a series of mechanical hands for a boy whose family could not afford a commercial prosthetic. A group called Defense Distributed have already 'printed' a plastic high capacity ammunition magazine. President Obama is noticing. The Department of Defense has shelled out $30 million to promote 3D printing and the sum is being matched by a group that includes crony-capitalist corporations such as Boeing. Nothing could be more disastrous to the technology than being championed by government promoting the technology, especially in league with crony corporations." Continue reading →
"Government prohibition doesn’t even do a good job of keeping drugs out of prisons. The demand for an item, in this case digital cash with user-defined levels of privacy, does not simply evaporate in the face of a jurisdictional ban. One could even make the case that it becomes stronger because an official recognition that Bitcoin is not only a 'renegade' currency but a 'so-effective-it-had-to-be-banned' currency would imbue the cryptographic money with larger than life qualities. Ironically, the ban would create something like theStreisand effect for Bitcoin generating an awareness for entire new demographic groups and new classes of society." Continue reading →
"An estimated quarter of the gold flowing into India is coming through irregular channels given the 'anti-gold' stance adopted by the government of one of the world's leading gold markets‚ Philip Klapwijk‚ global head of metal analytics at GFMS Thompson Reuters. 'You have a government that is clearly anti-gold in India and it is using the duty system to try hold back demand‚' he said. In January the government raised the duty on gold imports to 6% from 4%. 'What this is doing is stimulating the smuggling of gold into the country. It may be that at least a quarter of the gold coming into India is coming through unofficial channels‚' he said." Continue reading →
"Karl Hess was a noted speechwriter (for Barry Goldwater among others) and author, and later in his life became known as a tax resister and market anarchist. In this video from a Libertarian International conference in Stockholm in 1986, Hess speaks about everything from his time as a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater to Euclid, the impending collapse of global communism, children's education in America, the dawn of the personal computer, new management styles in business (he somewhat accurately predicts the way Google treats its employees based on Cray Supercomputers' management style at the time), and several other fascinating topics." Continue reading →
"Outraged at relentless extortion, kidnapping and theft as a wave of drug-related violence washes over Mexico, farmers, shopkeepers and other residents in the mountainous southern state of Guerrero are taking the law into their own hands as 'community police.' 'We have to fight for everyone’s good so we decided to try to clear away all the bad people. We have to get rid of these animals because they are committing extortion in the community, the whole town and the people are fed up.'" Continue reading →
"Inexpensive 3-D printers have grown in popularity in part because they are easy to use. It is not even necessary to know how to create the design files that instruct the device to print bit after bit of plastic to build the object, as there are files for tens of thousands of objects available on the Internet, created by other users and freely shared. A lower receiver is the only part of an AR-15 that, when bought, requires the filing of federal paperwork. But it is legal to make an AR-15 for personal use as long as there is no intent to sell them. And if the lower receiver is homemade, no paperwork is required." Continue reading →
“Italy’s financial police said Thursday they had busted close to 12,000 people last year for evading over 56 billion euros ($74 billion) worth of taxes. Investigators rooted out 8,617 people who had never paid taxes and owed the Italian tax man a total of 22.7 billion euros, the financial police said in a statement. The crack down on tax evaders in Italy intensified when Prime Minister Mario Monti came to power at the end of 2011, as the government attempted to reduce the country’s deficit and debt. The financial police also uncovered over 16,000 people working on the black market, the statement said.” Continue reading →