Essays

The Magic of Monetary Figures

"Hitting our magic number was a fantastic milestone for us. All the 60-80 hour work weeks, tosses and turns in the middle of the night, and struggles to keep our financial house in order had finally paid off. We would never have to worry about money again. We were home free… or so we thought. Now, twenty years later, our account balance is many times higher than our original magic number. We have come to grips with the fact that our magic number was aptly named. We had forgotten what magic really is: an illusion. In reality, our magic number was nothing more than ink on a sheet of paper that made us believe something that was not true." Continue reading →

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Why Are Your Children Buying Houses for Ben Bernanke?

"The Fed sells all those bonds to investors – who will, of course, want their money back, with interest. So, where will the money for paying off those bonds come from? From taxes, of course. When a government sells a bond, they are selling a right to their tax receipts. And that means your kids will be taxed to pay it all off. The Fed will keep the houses, of course, but hidden behind paragraphs of confusing financial and accounting terminology. Home ownership in America is falling off a cliff, as you can see in this graph. So, Mr. and Ms. America, get ready to meet your new landlords: Benny and the Banks." Continue reading →

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Credit Outbids Cash = Resource Wars

"Trader 1 only has cash that has been earned and saved; Trader 2 has access to leveraged credit (i.e. borrowing $100 based on $10 of cash collateral) and Trader 3 has a printing press that creates cash currency. As a result, Traders 2 and 3 could buy a lot more real-world goods at the fair than Trader 1, enabling the two traders with essentially unlimited credit/cash to reap enormous profits on carry-trades and other speculative trading. Not only can trader 2 and 3 purchase more goods than trader 1. Trader 2 and 3 have no limit on what they can bid and therefore can price trader 1 out of the market completely." Continue reading →

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The Security State’s Reaction to Snowden Shows Why It’s Doomed

"Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed itself from reliance on infrastructure that can be shut down by central authority, than its predecessors. Hierarchies, on the other hand, respond to attack by becoming even more ossified, brittle and closed. Hierarchies respond to leaks by becoming internally opaque and closed even to themselves, so that their information is compartmentalized and they are less able to make effective use of the knowledge dispersed among their members." Continue reading →

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20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get

"I started Docstoc in my 20’s, made the cover of one of those cliché '20 Under 20' lists, and today I employ an amazing group of 20-somethings. Call me a curmudgeon, but at 34, how I came up seems so different from what this millennial generation expects. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own. In response, here are my 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get." Continue reading →

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The impulse to ban

"You don’t have to be a libertarian, or otherwise opposed to large government, to desire proper analysis of a problem and its potential solutions before rushing into a ban. Yet the impulse in the general population is to ban, whether they are on the left or the right. Those of us involved in drug policy reform have seen so clearly first-hand the unmitigated disasters that can come from the rush to ban, and so are less susceptible, perhaps, to that impulse. But we need to help others see that banning is not equal to stopping the problem." Continue reading →

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How to Use Public Health to Control Everything

"The early focus on a holistic public led to the movement of 'racial hygiene' which appeared in 19th century Germany. A historian of public health, Dorothy Porter, explains that the movement considered 'the health, not only of individuals, but of the race as a whole.' The trend was also called 'social hygiene,' and spread to other countries. It reached its zenith under the Nazis. In his fascinating book, The Nazi War on Cancer, Robert Proctor mentions some Nazi slogans: 'You have the duty to be healthy,' 'Food is not a private matter,' 'Your body belongs to the nation.'" Continue reading →

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Rulership’s Last Stand: Is the Government Out to Eat You?

"It used to be that the ruler claimed a special relationship with God or that he was a superior type of being. In modern times, a larger number of people were brought into rulership, making the broad population feel that they were also part of it. Through it all, however, humans could easily be broken down into those who are skimmed from, and those who are skimmed to. So, if you live on the skim, your goal is for people to go along with your orders willingly. At the same time, if you are the prey, the entire system is set to make you believe 'It is right for other people to order me around.'" Continue reading →

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Digital Diversification: How to Do It

"It is no secret that the US has a total lack of privacy, outrageous prison sentences for relatively minor and frivolous so-called 'crimes' (see the tragic case of Aaron Swartz), and seizures at the drop of a hat under the flimsiest of pretexts, among other contemptible practices. Would you really want to keep your digital presence solely under US jurisdiction if you didn’t have to? Fortunately, if you answered 'no,' it is relatively easy to move your digital presence across borders to a friendly jurisdiction. Paul Rosenberg has the details and he fills us in on the article below." Continue reading →

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