Essays

Bitcoin Mining’s Inevitable Cloud Future

"In early 2013 bitcoin mining saw the start of the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) revolution. As design efficiency approaches Moore’s Law production capacity and operating efficiency will drive profit margins. The natural evolution of this will be large data centers that can take advantage of economies of scale. There are three potential options for optimizing the location of the cloud mining data center: establish a facility near the production site, near cheap power, or near talented personnel. The best decision depends on the businesses’ unique advantages over the competition and all models could provide a competitive edge." Continue reading →

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A Colonial Gatekeeper That Hillary Would’ve Approved Of

"The year was 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke on The Drudge Report. Hillary Clinton famously lamented that the Internet lacked a 'gatekeeping function'. This mentality is nothing new. Here's a quote from way back in 1671, from Colonial Virginia. The Governor at the time was Sir William Berkeley, and he reported back to the British Crown: 'Thank God, there are no free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects in the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!'" Continue reading →

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The Real State Secret: Spies Aren’t Very Good At Their Jobs

"It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do. But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different. I want to tell some stories about MI5 - and the very strange people who worked there. They are often funny, sometimes rather sad - but always very odd. The stories also show how elites in Britain have used the aura of secret knowledge as a way of maintaining their power." Continue reading →

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Who Can Best Advise You?

"It is safe to suggest that your reading of this publication has a great deal to do with the possibility that the country in which you live is approaching that critical stage. Therefore, it may be in your interest to seek the counsel of those who, for whatever reason, have made a long-term study of historical patterns. It would also be beneficial to keep a close eye on those countries in the world that (as stated above) are on the same path of self-destruction as our own but happen to be further along in the pattern. For this reason, the woman pictured above, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, may be quite useful to you as an advisor." Continue reading →

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Free Staters Tell Concord Police: Tanks, But No Tanks

"To his credit, Concord police chief John Duval apologized for calling these groups domestic terrorists, but the point was and is clear. The biggest concern and fear of any political system are those that seek to undermine state authority and its institutionalized plunder masked in law, badges, and costumes. If terrorism is defined as the threat or use of violence against the innocent to achieve political ends, then who really are the domestic terrorists? The groups of people with the radical notion that other people are not their property, or the institution that claims the right, duty and moral imperative to initiate aggressive violence?" Continue reading →

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Casey’s Louis James Warns: ‘Don’t Try to Time the Market’

"The wisdom of not trying to time the market is tried and true. Benjamin Graham said the same thing 60 years ago. I shouldn't have to defend this premise. Even though investors all know it, they fervently wish it weren't so; they just can't help themselves. You can't time the market. A bureaucrat in Washington can open his mouth and send the price of gold up or down 5% in an afternoon. Fortunately, we can look for value. However, there are things that we can look for. We can compare companies to their peers. We can look at the ounces in the ground and see if something is out of whack. We can look at cash in the bank." Continue reading →

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Aye, Me Hearties—Why There’s Still Old-Fashioned Treasure Out There

"There are literally thousands of mineral exploration companies, and MOST of them will never discover anything. The money these companies raise in the market will be poured into the ground, and chances are that it won't ever do any good. This is what makes identifying companies likely to make a significant discovery so difficult—and therefore so enormously profitable when you do. When an exploration company goes from having nothing to having proven and probable mining reserves of calculable value, share prices can go through the roof... pennies turn into dollars… and dollars into fortunes." Continue reading →

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How to Fight the Modern State

"An inventory of all public buildings, and on the local level that is not that much — schools, fire, police station, courthouses, roads, and so forth — and then property shares or stock should be distributed to the local private property owners in accordance with the total lifetime amount of taxes — property taxes —that these people have paid. After all, it is theirs, they paid for these things … Without local enforcement, by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air. Yet this local support and cooperation is precisely what needs to be missing." Continue reading →

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With the Central Subway Project, the Only Way Out is Through

"At times, it's difficult to remember that voters approved the Central Subway. That's because the project, a 1.7-mile extension of the T-line running from SoMa to Chinatown, as described in Proposition K of 2003, hardly resembles its current iteration. A $647 million budget has swelled to some $1.6 billion. An estimated daily ridership exceeding 100,000 is now pegged at 35,100. But if misery loves company, we've got both. A recent U.S. Department of Transportation study of 10 major rail projects revealed an average cost-per-passenger 500 percent higher than the initial figures used to sell the idea." Continue reading →

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It’s Up to You, Entrepreneurs: Brad Feld on the Rise of Global Startup Communities

"It’s a practically a social movement, and a movement needs a theorist. That’s Brad Feld. In his by-the-bootstraps guide, the 2012 book Startup Communities, Feld laid out a guru-ish, four-point plan for how to create a growing mass of startup companies. But his rules boil down to just one: entrepreneurs must be the 'leaders.' Everyone else—universities, governments, investors—are 'feeders' that, though important, can’t kick-start a startup community on their own. Feld says if even fewer than a dozen established entrepreneurs team up and get serious that nearly any city from Detroit to Cape Town can create a meaningful startup sector." Continue reading →

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