Essays

Why College Football Will Be Dead Within 20 Years

"An acronym that has higher education administrators very worried is MOOC - Massive Open Online Course. In short, a MOOC is a tuition-free online course that can be taught to a massive number of students simultaneously. Pundits often talk about 'disruptive technology'; technology that brings about massive changes in life, business, or the economy. The phrase can be overused, but if anything qualifies, MOOCs are it. It's one thing to offer a course for free online, but the idea is crazy, right, that a college or university could replace traditional classroom education with online coursework for credit or even offer an entire degree online for free?" Continue reading →

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Nazi gold and currency wars – A full guide

"Nazi gold is a phrase that refers to the bullion looted by the Nazis in the run up to and during the Second World War. Gold clearly plays a strong role in history and features as both a political and economic weapon during the Wars of the 20th Century. Upon invasion Nazis would loot a country’s gold reserves, along with other valuable assets, and promptly work to devalue the sovereign currency. This pillage of the financial system is not well known but it served effectively as a weapon in their campaign to take-down whole nations. The Nazis consolidated their power by holding gold whilst their victims were consigned to weak paper currencies." Continue reading →

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Why U.S. Policy in East Asia is Dangerous

"The United States contained the Soviets until the government collapsed because of economic stagnation and a plummeting price of oil—the only thing anyone ever wanted to buy from the USSR. Now, the United States’ latest pivot to East Asia is intended to reinforce the already existing containment policy towards China by building up U.S. military forces and augmenting Cold War alliances in the region. This is unlikely to stem China’s rise. While Russia was supposedly on the rise, their economy was sinking. In China’s case, their economy is largely the reason behind their new status as an international power broker." Continue reading →

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Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force?

"Today, the SWAT team is largely sold to the American public by way of the media, through reality TV shows such as Cops, Armed and Famous, and Police Women of Broward County, and by politicians well-versed in promising greater security in exchange for the government being given greater freedom to operate as it sees fit outside the framework of the Constitution. Having watered down the Fourth Amendment’s strong prohibitions intended to keep police in check and functioning as peacekeepers, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of having militarized standing armies enforcing the law." Continue reading →

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“Race” – The Divide-And-Conquer Tool Of Tyrants

"Everything from employment applications to telephone surveys to the Census—all contain the following question: 'Check which of the following best describes your hair color: 1) Blonde, 2) Brown, 3) Black, 4) Gray/Silver/White, 5) Red, 6) Of mixed hues, 7) Bald or Decline to answer'. Imagine it had always been this way. Would it surprise anyone that in such a society, there might crop up animosity among the different groups in certain situations? That a gray-on-bald crime might raise hostilities? That entire organizations would crop up, like the National Association For The Advancement Of Redheads?" Continue reading →

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A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto (March 9th, 1993)

"People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do. We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it." Continue reading →

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Everyone Is Now A Terrorist According to The US Government

"It’s official, every single American can now be classified as a terrorist by the US government. The label of ‘terrorist’ no longer applies to members of al-Qaeda of ‘extremists’, but the average citizen of this nation. And I can show you how literally 100% of the population can be classified as a terrorist under the truly outrageous Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI characteristics that define a terrorist or terrorist activity. These broad qualifications of ‘terrorism’ that have spawned a new wave of absolute paranoia within the population regarding their fellow citizens, who the nightly news says may be sleeper cell terrorists." Continue reading →

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Which Cities will Survive/Thrive?

"I doubt that anyone in 1968 predicted Detroit would lose most of its industrial base and half its population over the next 40 years (1970 - 2010). Such a forecast was beyond even the most prescient futurist. Four decades is not that long a time period, and our inability to predict large-scale trends over that time frame reveals intrinsic limitations in forecasting. Nonetheless, the dramatic decline of Detroit and other industrial cities makes me wonder if there are dynamics that we can identify that could enable us to predict which cities will thrive and which will decay." Continue reading →

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San Francisco still has a seedy heart

"The Tenderloin is a large turd – often a literal one – floating in the crystal punchbowl that is San Francisco. So why is it still here? Because the city wants it to be here. For decades, the Tenderloin has been carefully protected by the city and various non-profit organizations. It’s not that these officials, social workers, homeless advocates and low-cost housing activists want to maintain a zone of misrule, crime and filth in the heart of the city: it’s simply an inescapable consequence of their laudable commitment to defend society’s most vulnerable members. The result is, in effect, a protected urban wildlife zone, a Bottle City of Squalor." Continue reading →

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Bernanke: A Tenure of Failure

"Can Fed policy get worse under the leadership of either Dr. Yellen or Dr. Summers? Most definitely YES. Unfortunately leadership of the Fed is not the only problem. An institution that relies on good leadership to avoid harm to the economy and the nation is not a good institution. If banks and other financial institutions should not be too big to fail, neither should the Fed. While in the perception of too many, the Fed is both too big and too important to fail, it is an institution that not only could be, but has been, a complete failure." Continue reading →

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