Perhaps. But as things are, farmers' and ranchers' families are small, but their pastures are huge (which is necessary to feed many cows.) They cannot be everywhere. The attackers have higher numbers, and they don't have to be everywhere. They need to be just anywhere where property is available for taking. This is a huge military advantage. I'm regularly visiting ranches, and I can guarantee that most of the property there can be taken by a child. No weapons needed. It's all based on trust. Fences are only used to contain the cattle.
or bandits operating in between
Then what stops *those* bandits from robbing the rancher? Some other gangs who are still in between? Achilles will never catch up with a tortouse?
But it's not like money has no value and only food/guns matter.
The last years of USSR, which I lived through, were very educational. Money did not get abandoned overnight; it would be foolish to think so. It simply started losing value, fast. Things were that bad that people tried to unload their paper in every way possible, by buying any valuables they could think of - jewelry, electronics, foreign currency (illegal at that time.) Inflation is very common in troubled countries; and the US government runs the printing press more than ever. Only the huge volume of USD in the world, and remaining demand for it, keeps the USD more or less stable. Though it did dive below the CDN at some point. At this very moment 1 US Dollar = 0.992388 Canadian Dollars. Ten years ago 1 USD was $1.20 CDN or something like that.
The U.S. also grows quite a lot of food so collapse here means some regions will stay stable because they will, if nothing else, have food...
I wonder what the hungry masses in other regions will do when they still have their cars and their weapons and enough fuel to reach the food-producing regions... Hmm, I think they will just curl up and die in their apartments in cities. Going 100 miles to a ranch, killing the rancher and slaughtering all his cows would never occur to a bunch of city thugs, especially when the law enforcement ceased to exist.
There will be no trust in that currency if we treat it as a fiat currency with zero inherent value. You would be better off using FOREIGN fiat currency that is sufficiently stable (like the Canadian dollar, for example.) But there is very little physical foreign currency in the USA.
Brass screws have small inherent value, but to extract that you would need to build a complex metallurgical plant. Much simpler to shortcut the screws and stockpile new brass of popular calibers. Reloaders will be buying that because cartridges can only take about five reloadings - and some fail at random time because the metal develops cracks.
I'd say ammo's a damn fine investment, although moseying into town to after the apocalypse to trade it for food is likely to end with you facing a bigger gun.
That's true regardless of whether you have a gun or not. It would be expected that trade posts are safe zones, otherwise who would be trading there? Trading in public places is one possibility. Using a single armed mediator is another. Each side having armed support is yet another method (then the inflicted damage to both sides becomes higher than the value of goods.)
The nice thing about using non-ammunition for currency is that it can't be turned around and used on you almost immediately.
I wouldn't bet the farm on the theory that your vis-a-vis haven't kept a single round of ammo on him and sorely needs your ammo to kill you. As matter of fact, if he wants to kill you he will do so as soon as you declare that you have something worth taking. Even if all you have to trade is soft bread, the attacker can stick a knife into you and take all you have. To prevent that undesirable scenario, see above.
The way you prepare for your country sinking into civil war is to have your spare money overseas
Of course the best way of dealing with a civil war is to be a 10,000 miles away from it. That's not even a question.
The question is what does one do when he has nowhere to run. Even a trip from Texas to the Canadian border, to become a refugee, may kill you one hundred times over if you are not prepared. Most people are not prepared; I would guess only recent soldiers are kind of OK. Survivalists are focusing on surviving a few bad days, weeks or months, hunkered down in their lairs. This may be not a bad plan as long as the bad times are expected to pass (like the hurricane, for example, or an earthquake.) However if the government collapses, hunger is widespread and local gangs are in control their survivalist methods will not work. As you say, their safe houses will be raided by overwhelming numbers of better armed gangsters. One theory, that you can find in some fiction books, is that people will band together to protect resources and their families. But endless war is not survivable; you must plan to exterminate the gangs to the last man. This is a very difficult goal to achieve.
Still, one can trade his guns for a passage to the last ship that departs toward China, Argentina or Europe. Guns may be also useful if you plan to reach the border (if you can do it physically and mentally.) Guns are something that will be in great demand because majority of the population did not bother to get them when getting was good (like right now.) I do not want to advocate stockpiling of guns and ammo because it will hurt your life in the short term, and the SHTF may never happen (or not like you were thinking it would.) However there is nothing wrong with buying over time a few firearms that you like - they are fun to shoot, useful to protect your home every night, and you can always sell them. Guns are a high-tech product, even more so than the ammo. A good rifled barrel cannot be made in an abandoned warehouse; in fact, only few factories are equipped with very special tools to make them - and there are trade secrets too. Maybe not secrets, but you need to know how to use those machines if you come across them - what is the cutting rate, what is the temperature, what is the coolant, and so on. And don't even ask about sharpening those tools - in some technologies it's high science that only few workers know. So a finished, working firearm will be a great treasure, since firearms tend to get damaged and worn and need replacement.
And yet I have more than a few friends who actively replace their surplus currency with gold, whenever they can
Those are two big differences, as they say in Odessa. Purchasing physical gold from a reputable dealer (and taking delivery) is entirely unlike accepting a bar of unknown yellow metal from a stranger who just walked into your business and left with an expensive product just minutes later, never to be seen again.
But I understand what you (and your friends) want to say. Unfortunately, preparing for TEOTWAWKI is counter to preparing for normal life. Your purchases are basically reversed. Most people cannot afford the bunker mentality, just because they need income from investments, they need to buy luxury items for their family, toys for their children, non-MRE food for everyday eating. There must be a balance, an exact instant in time when you understand that the life as you know it is not in the cards - and then you flip the bit and start working for the cellar.
I personally don't believe gold will be valuable after the SHTF. You cannot eat gold - and food will be the top priority, competing for the first place with means of protection (weapons and ammo.) Gold cannot be sold after SHTF because there will be no market. You can always exchange a.223 round for a few cigarettes, and that barter does not require a market because both goods are directly usable. Gold is not usable, unless you need sinkers for fishing. Gold has to be exchanged on a market for something else that you need.
My personal theory is that after SHTF there will be only two universal currencies: food and ammo. Nothing else will be even close. Perhaps ammo will be even more valuable because you cannot eat if you are dead; but if you have ammo you can get food (in the forest or elsewhere.) Additionally, food can be produced - cows don't read newspapers and they will continue their lifecycle. But ammo is a high-tech product, it cannot be easily put together even if you are into reloading. Once you run out of good cartridges and primers you are done for, even if you can cast your own [low quality] bullets.
I have had no more success trying to convince them that conducting an economy based on precious metals after the collapse of American society will be difficult
As you see, I'm not disagreeing with you here.
the collapse of society -- for which they have also been stockpiling assault rifles, BTW -- is unlikely to occur in their lifetimes.
That is not under our control. Do you think Syrians or Libyans or even Egyptians expected the Spanish Inquisition just a few years ago? But here they are now, in the midst of a civil war, or on ruins of a wealthy oil state, or preparing for said ruins to be made. Do not forget that the fall of USSR was news to places like CIA - which should have known; but they missed that and more. After USSR disintegrated several civil wars have broken out; some are still simmering. And if you look back into 1990-2000 you will see rich, happy Yugoslavia going up in smoke.
The USA has a very fragile economy. First, it's an oil-based economy. No food can be grown or delivered without oil. Significant amounts of that oil come from abroad. There are needs that cannot be cut, so even a 20% cut in supplies will send the prices of gas to the sky - and the prices of food will follow. Oil is bought for dollars, and dollars are borrowed. Same happens with much of everything else that we currently receive on ships from China. This means that the country lives on credits - and the creditors may not be willing to finance this economy forever. In essence, not only I and you are not in control of the exact date of TEOTWAWKI, but even the government is not in control. The USA has too few native industries with exportable products to finance purchase of foreign energy; and domestic energy production is limited. I do not know for how long this economy will last, but it cannot last
If I don't sell it for less than it could make me, then who the hell would buy it?
Since money is a universal good, one specific reason would be time. A manufacturer can order 10,000 miners built in China and quickly sold for $2M (for example) right away. Those miners will require power and time to produce bitcoins - and at that time in the future nobody knows what the exchange rate of BC will be. Do not forget that the $2M is still an investment. To summarize, the seller of mining hardware is willing to take less profit for getting his money right now. He may also not believe in the bright future of BC but not be above helping some fools to part with their money. He may also know that BC mining is not profitable anymore (fighting for scraps is not a good career.) Or he may believe that the governments will put a stop to this game as soon as it starts threatening their own currencies.
In other words, your observation remains valid. If someone tries to sell you a money-making machine, approach with caution.
My friends declined. It seems that, to them at least, the so-called fiat currency actually has more value than gold.
In a way the fiat currency does have more value. First of all, the currency is easy to accept and transfer and count change. Did the buyer have real gold or just some "yellow metal" of unknown chemistry? Electroplating is part of high school chemistry; "soft gold plating" can be done entirely in a solution. Dealing with precious metals requires expensive infrastructure, such as equipment that can validate your coin. Often even banks cannot validate their stocks of metals without drilling. This is not going to work in retail. I bet your friends' cash register is not configured to receive payments in arbitrary valuables.
Secondly, the rate of exchange varies, and if the bike was purchased from the OEM for dollars it better be sold for dollars if you want to have a fixed, known margin. Selling for gold is equivalent to selling for dollars, and then the seller immediately buys gold for the whole amount. If he needs dollars to buy more products he then needs to sell this metal on the market and incur loss as the broker's fee. If the price of the metal goes down for a day then the seller will also lose money on the difference. (He of course would gain also if the price goes up; but very few bike shop owners moonlight as bullion traders.)
If I were in place of your friends, I would [also] suspect an attempt at fraud. What people say is totally irrelevant; con artists specialize in being very convincing.
let them come here? in THIS atmosphere, where its in-vogue to be a modern jew hater?
Most of the hate is coming from the fact of the permanent war with Palestinians. Remove that, and the hate disappears. There will be a few of those who hate Jews on religious grounds or just because, but not much you can do about that.
If "here" == "the USA" then the country can accomodate additional 7 million people without any trouble. It's less than one major city. On the other hand this will strike a death blow against those in the Arab world who use Palestinian cause to instigate jihad against the West.
There are some religious monuments in Israel, I guess, but IMO they are not worth dying for. Let the UN protect them. Otherwise sooner or later Arabs will get the bomb, and then you won't be able to visit those monuments without a radiation-blocking suit anyway.
Except for the ones who figure that a single guy is either gay or a pedophile.
In the modern, politically correct society those are highly respectable lifestyle choices - and don't you dare crossing those groups!
But if you are lucky to work in a traditional environment, your coworkers will know pretty soon what orientation you favor. There are tons of hints, and one has to be totally blind to not figure it out. Besides, if someone is really unsure they will ask you directly, and then you can then answer as you see fit. If you work in a small group you will talk about everything eventually, from the weather to high politics and the fate of Earth when the Sun explodes. If you work in a large group (say, on a conveyor of a car assembly plant) then you probably don't care who thinks what about you. Your few friends will know after the first visit to the local watering hole.
It depends on how valuable the phone calls are too you.
They can't be *that* valuable. In this scenario I want a receptionist who works from home, takes at most one phone call per day, and writes down the details. Then s|he can email me the particulars of the call, so that I can call back. This is at most five minutes per day; but this cannot be treated as a part time job because the worker has to be at work from 9 to 5. It is not reasonable to force the employer to pay the worker at the rate of $1200 / (5min * 20 days/mo) = $720/hr. Even a top notch lawyer does not charge that much.
The point is, the minimum wage law ensures that simple, easy jobs will not be filled with employees. In this scenario I would be forced to spend $5K on a PBX that can route calls and take messages. As result, one disabled person who would like to work from home will not get a job. I would pay $100/mo for that work (and proportionally more if the volume of calls is higher.) A person on social security should not refuse to boost her income by 10% by just answering a phone. Hell, many in that position, who are confined to their homes and their wheelchairs, would *pay* just to talk to people and feel needed. But the law says that Aunt Jane cannot take this job, for her own good. (Yes, those magic words.)
But, as I understand, for that to work you also need to combat the SS fraud by allowing SS recipients to openly work to augment their income, in some way and in some scope. Right now the SS fraud is driven by the fact that once you become employed you lose the benefits instantly, and if later on you lose the job (or the job ends, being temporary to start with) then it will take you a lot of time and pain to reacquire the SS benefits. I do not receive SS and do not know firsthand, but from what I was told once one gets the benefits he'd better not work and not own any traceable wealth. Cash only, under the mattress.
Then why aren't the communication stream providers also deemed to be just as liable and guilty for this infrinement/infringing activity?
They have a government-issued license. In exchange for the license they promise to give the government everything that the government asks for. Remember Bush's warrantless wiretapping? When the government tells a common carrier to jump, the carrier only asks "how high?"
I can see it happening already, someone will donate to the judge a cheap and crap computer (Raspberry Pi fits the bill perfectly) and run up a Tor exit node on it. Much hilarity ensues.:-)
This will only illustrate that the same situation (illegal actions done by a computer that runs an exit node) can result in two very different charges:
The owner of the computer is clearly a criminal. Crucify him!1!
The hacker who broke into Judge's computer is a criminal - crucify him!1!
You will not get an indictment against the judge. Well, such things happen sometimes - but not for computer crimes. Bribes are the most common cause.
The person who pays for the Internet will get an offer that he cannot refuse. It's like speed cameras - nobody can be sure what specific member of the household drove that car, but the ticket is sent to the title holder.
If a crime had been committed and all N possible suspects are equally likely to be guilty, an enlightened idealist would say that the police will let them all walk. However a police professional will tell you that the police/prosecutor will select a prosecutable individual and railroad him regardless of his actions. If they picked a wrong man, chances are good that he will start talking and "the real killer" can be then arrested.
Besides, in most cases it's not rocket science to find out who did what. If the list of suspects includes your mother, who is an accountant, your grandfather who retired 30 years ago, and you (of the tender age of 18, studying computer science) many detectives will point their finger straight at you. A few hours in detention, a few colorful scenarios of whatever remains of your life, all masterfully explained to you by a seasoned professional, and you will break. They will question you for days asking the same questions, you will mix something up or lie in small details, they prove it, and that lie seals your fate. But why do I explain all that - the whole story is exactly about that, how they get "their men." Only Assange is still safe, but he can't hide forever. And if he does, it's nothing but a self-imposed prison sentence.
No, encryption is not a crime, and nobody cares what ports you receive encrypted data on. The crime is in doing an illegal thing from your computer. The law does not care what prompted your computer to access someone else's server and hack it. It could be the keyboard and your own hands; or it could be a remote computer and a hacker behind it. Normally you shouldn't be responsible for the latter scenario - but as matter of fact you are. The bottom line is simple: if you run an exit node then you accept responsibility for everything that all other nodes do through you. This is simply because you are the most convenient scapegoat - and, as matter of fact, the only one that the police can lay their hands on.
It has nothing to do with the encryption. It simply redefines who the criminal is. According to this ruling, if several people form a chain that, in the end, is involved in something unlawful, then the real criminal, the one who does the time, is not the person at the end of the chain but the last person in the chain that the police was able to track.
This is not new, though. Plenty of US crime fiction is built on the plot where the police grabs the first guy who has no alibi and declares him a criminal. This happens IRL from time to time too.
Well, I know it's more of an outdated ideal than an operational standard these days, but, supposedly, the defendant is not tasked with proving his/her innocence.
It's not outdated; simply the strategy has its own drawbacks. Like the taking of 5th, you can sit still and not say a word... while the prosecutor piles up one accusation on top of another. If you do not participate in the process the prosecutor will be unopposed, and you will be convicted. If the subject is so highly technical you will need a good lawyer, lots of expert witnesses, and lots of investigation done on the contents of your HDD. Probably $100K would be enough to get started, but I don't think it will be nearly enough. Those peanuts will only pay for 200-300 hours of your lawyer's time - and lawyers know how to do billing.
The problem is not whether it is "legally" "legal." You cannot afford a lawyer that can argue that part. If the traffic came from your computer you are guilty, and that's it - this is how most judges will interpret the act. There is no way to prove otherwise - your incoming traffic is encrypted. Even if the judge understands the technology he may slap you with being an accessory to the crime.
Some mention public telecommunications services. I'm sure those services have an entirely different legal environment - starting with their corporate charter that is signed by the Secretary of their State. A peasant in his hovel does not have even a shred of paper to point at; he is not a corporation, nobody with the government had a chance to audit his intentions... not that it should be required, but as things are it is required.
stratfor is a den of well-connected douchebags engaging in questionable activities and charging way too much for their "services"
Services of all well-connected douchebags are not cheap. You pay for their connections. Sometimes the information is well worth the money. If you don't like the price you can always deploy your own network of spies, or you can resort to tasseography.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps. But as things are, farmers' and ranchers' families are small, but their pastures are huge (which is necessary to feed many cows.) They cannot be everywhere. The attackers have higher numbers, and they don't have to be everywhere. They need to be just anywhere where property is available for taking. This is a huge military advantage. I'm regularly visiting ranches, and I can guarantee that most of the property there can be taken by a child. No weapons needed. It's all based on trust. Fences are only used to contain the cattle.
or bandits operating in between
Then what stops *those* bandits from robbing the rancher? Some other gangs who are still in between? Achilles will never catch up with a tortouse?
But it's not like money has no value and only food/guns matter.
The last years of USSR, which I lived through, were very educational. Money did not get abandoned overnight; it would be foolish to think so. It simply started losing value, fast. Things were that bad that people tried to unload their paper in every way possible, by buying any valuables they could think of - jewelry, electronics, foreign currency (illegal at that time.) Inflation is very common in troubled countries; and the US government runs the printing press more than ever. Only the huge volume of USD in the world, and remaining demand for it, keeps the USD more or less stable. Though it did dive below the CDN at some point. At this very moment 1 US Dollar = 0.992388 Canadian Dollars. Ten years ago 1 USD was $1.20 CDN or something like that.
The U.S. also grows quite a lot of food so collapse here means some regions will stay stable because they will, if nothing else, have food...
I wonder what the hungry masses in other regions will do when they still have their cars and their weapons and enough fuel to reach the food-producing regions... Hmm, I think they will just curl up and die in their apartments in cities. Going 100 miles to a ranch, killing the rancher and slaughtering all his cows would never occur to a bunch of city thugs, especially when the law enforcement ceased to exist.
There will be no trust in that currency if we treat it as a fiat currency with zero inherent value. You would be better off using FOREIGN fiat currency that is sufficiently stable (like the Canadian dollar, for example.) But there is very little physical foreign currency in the USA.
Brass screws have small inherent value, but to extract that you would need to build a complex metallurgical plant. Much simpler to shortcut the screws and stockpile new brass of popular calibers. Reloaders will be buying that because cartridges can only take about five reloadings - and some fail at random time because the metal develops cracks.
I'd say ammo's a damn fine investment, although moseying into town to after the apocalypse to trade it for food is likely to end with you facing a bigger gun.
That's true regardless of whether you have a gun or not. It would be expected that trade posts are safe zones, otherwise who would be trading there? Trading in public places is one possibility. Using a single armed mediator is another. Each side having armed support is yet another method (then the inflicted damage to both sides becomes higher than the value of goods.)
The nice thing about using non-ammunition for currency is that it can't be turned around and used on you almost immediately.
I wouldn't bet the farm on the theory that your vis-a-vis haven't kept a single round of ammo on him and sorely needs your ammo to kill you. As matter of fact, if he wants to kill you he will do so as soon as you declare that you have something worth taking. Even if all you have to trade is soft bread, the attacker can stick a knife into you and take all you have. To prevent that undesirable scenario, see above.
The way you prepare for your country sinking into civil war is to have your spare money overseas
Of course the best way of dealing with a civil war is to be a 10,000 miles away from it. That's not even a question.
The question is what does one do when he has nowhere to run. Even a trip from Texas to the Canadian border, to become a refugee, may kill you one hundred times over if you are not prepared. Most people are not prepared; I would guess only recent soldiers are kind of OK. Survivalists are focusing on surviving a few bad days, weeks or months, hunkered down in their lairs. This may be not a bad plan as long as the bad times are expected to pass (like the hurricane, for example, or an earthquake.) However if the government collapses, hunger is widespread and local gangs are in control their survivalist methods will not work. As you say, their safe houses will be raided by overwhelming numbers of better armed gangsters. One theory, that you can find in some fiction books, is that people will band together to protect resources and their families. But endless war is not survivable; you must plan to exterminate the gangs to the last man. This is a very difficult goal to achieve.
Still, one can trade his guns for a passage to the last ship that departs toward China, Argentina or Europe. Guns may be also useful if you plan to reach the border (if you can do it physically and mentally.) Guns are something that will be in great demand because majority of the population did not bother to get them when getting was good (like right now.) I do not want to advocate stockpiling of guns and ammo because it will hurt your life in the short term, and the SHTF may never happen (or not like you were thinking it would.) However there is nothing wrong with buying over time a few firearms that you like - they are fun to shoot, useful to protect your home every night, and you can always sell them. Guns are a high-tech product, even more so than the ammo. A good rifled barrel cannot be made in an abandoned warehouse; in fact, only few factories are equipped with very special tools to make them - and there are trade secrets too. Maybe not secrets, but you need to know how to use those machines if you come across them - what is the cutting rate, what is the temperature, what is the coolant, and so on. And don't even ask about sharpening those tools - in some technologies it's high science that only few workers know. So a finished, working firearm will be a great treasure, since firearms tend to get damaged and worn and need replacement.
I know. I opted out of GhostRank (never opted in, actually) and I clicked the proper checkbox in Adblock to block everything.
The war is ongoing, and you can expect further moves by both sides.
And yet I have more than a few friends who actively replace their surplus currency with gold, whenever they can
Those are two big differences, as they say in Odessa. Purchasing physical gold from a reputable dealer (and taking delivery) is entirely unlike accepting a bar of unknown yellow metal from a stranger who just walked into your business and left with an expensive product just minutes later, never to be seen again.
But I understand what you (and your friends) want to say. Unfortunately, preparing for TEOTWAWKI is counter to preparing for normal life. Your purchases are basically reversed. Most people cannot afford the bunker mentality, just because they need income from investments, they need to buy luxury items for their family, toys for their children, non-MRE food for everyday eating. There must be a balance, an exact instant in time when you understand that the life as you know it is not in the cards - and then you flip the bit and start working for the cellar.
I personally don't believe gold will be valuable after the SHTF. You cannot eat gold - and food will be the top priority, competing for the first place with means of protection (weapons and ammo.) Gold cannot be sold after SHTF because there will be no market. You can always exchange a .223 round for a few cigarettes, and that barter does not require a market because both goods are directly usable. Gold is not usable, unless you need sinkers for fishing. Gold has to be exchanged on a market for something else that you need.
My personal theory is that after SHTF there will be only two universal currencies: food and ammo. Nothing else will be even close. Perhaps ammo will be even more valuable because you cannot eat if you are dead; but if you have ammo you can get food (in the forest or elsewhere.) Additionally, food can be produced - cows don't read newspapers and they will continue their lifecycle. But ammo is a high-tech product, it cannot be easily put together even if you are into reloading. Once you run out of good cartridges and primers you are done for, even if you can cast your own [low quality] bullets.
I have had no more success trying to convince them that conducting an economy based on precious metals after the collapse of American society will be difficult
As you see, I'm not disagreeing with you here.
the collapse of society -- for which they have also been stockpiling assault rifles, BTW -- is unlikely to occur in their lifetimes.
That is not under our control. Do you think Syrians or Libyans or even Egyptians expected the Spanish Inquisition just a few years ago? But here they are now, in the midst of a civil war, or on ruins of a wealthy oil state, or preparing for said ruins to be made. Do not forget that the fall of USSR was news to places like CIA - which should have known; but they missed that and more. After USSR disintegrated several civil wars have broken out; some are still simmering. And if you look back into 1990-2000 you will see rich, happy Yugoslavia going up in smoke.
The USA has a very fragile economy. First, it's an oil-based economy. No food can be grown or delivered without oil. Significant amounts of that oil come from abroad. There are needs that cannot be cut, so even a 20% cut in supplies will send the prices of gas to the sky - and the prices of food will follow. Oil is bought for dollars, and dollars are borrowed. Same happens with much of everything else that we currently receive on ships from China. This means that the country lives on credits - and the creditors may not be willing to finance this economy forever. In essence, not only I and you are not in control of the exact date of TEOTWAWKI, but even the government is not in control. The USA has too few native industries with exportable products to finance purchase of foreign energy; and domestic energy production is limited. I do not know for how long this economy will last, but it cannot last
If I don't sell it for less than it could make me, then who the hell would buy it?
Since money is a universal good, one specific reason would be time. A manufacturer can order 10,000 miners built in China and quickly sold for $2M (for example) right away. Those miners will require power and time to produce bitcoins - and at that time in the future nobody knows what the exchange rate of BC will be. Do not forget that the $2M is still an investment. To summarize, the seller of mining hardware is willing to take less profit for getting his money right now. He may also not believe in the bright future of BC but not be above helping some fools to part with their money. He may also know that BC mining is not profitable anymore (fighting for scraps is not a good career.) Or he may believe that the governments will put a stop to this game as soon as it starts threatening their own currencies.
In other words, your observation remains valid. If someone tries to sell you a money-making machine, approach with caution.
My friends declined. It seems that, to them at least, the so-called fiat currency actually has more value than gold.
In a way the fiat currency does have more value. First of all, the currency is easy to accept and transfer and count change. Did the buyer have real gold or just some "yellow metal" of unknown chemistry? Electroplating is part of high school chemistry; "soft gold plating" can be done entirely in a solution. Dealing with precious metals requires expensive infrastructure, such as equipment that can validate your coin. Often even banks cannot validate their stocks of metals without drilling. This is not going to work in retail. I bet your friends' cash register is not configured to receive payments in arbitrary valuables.
Secondly, the rate of exchange varies, and if the bike was purchased from the OEM for dollars it better be sold for dollars if you want to have a fixed, known margin. Selling for gold is equivalent to selling for dollars, and then the seller immediately buys gold for the whole amount. If he needs dollars to buy more products he then needs to sell this metal on the market and incur loss as the broker's fee. If the price of the metal goes down for a day then the seller will also lose money on the difference. (He of course would gain also if the price goes up; but very few bike shop owners moonlight as bullion traders.)
If I were in place of your friends, I would [also] suspect an attempt at fraud. What people say is totally irrelevant; con artists specialize in being very convincing.
let them come here? in THIS atmosphere, where its in-vogue to be a modern jew hater?
Most of the hate is coming from the fact of the permanent war with Palestinians. Remove that, and the hate disappears. There will be a few of those who hate Jews on religious grounds or just because, but not much you can do about that.
If "here" == "the USA" then the country can accomodate additional 7 million people without any trouble. It's less than one major city. On the other hand this will strike a death blow against those in the Arab world who use Palestinian cause to instigate jihad against the West.
There are some religious monuments in Israel, I guess, but IMO they are not worth dying for. Let the UN protect them. Otherwise sooner or later Arabs will get the bomb, and then you won't be able to visit those monuments without a radiation-blocking suit anyway.
Except for the ones who figure that a single guy is either gay or a pedophile.
In the modern, politically correct society those are highly respectable lifestyle choices - and don't you dare crossing those groups!
But if you are lucky to work in a traditional environment, your coworkers will know pretty soon what orientation you favor. There are tons of hints, and one has to be totally blind to not figure it out. Besides, if someone is really unsure they will ask you directly, and then you can then answer as you see fit. If you work in a small group you will talk about everything eventually, from the weather to high politics and the fate of Earth when the Sun explodes. If you work in a large group (say, on a conveyor of a car assembly plant) then you probably don't care who thinks what about you. Your few friends will know after the first visit to the local watering hole.
If everyone did this, the game would change.
Here is the formula for an average, per-citizen, rate of consumption of entertainment, in movies per year, as a function of geek rage:
cons(rage) := 0.999*10 + 0.001*(1/rage)
What is the limit of this function with rage going to infinity?
Or you can skip the marriage part and live happily ever after. Nobody today will have an issue with an unmarried person.
I have to say that I disagree [...] thanks to my improbable success in finding such a great mate.
If your success is so improbable then a good advice to everyone would be to not marry. Too few would be lucky to meet their ideal match.
It depends on how valuable the phone calls are too you.
They can't be *that* valuable. In this scenario I want a receptionist who works from home, takes at most one phone call per day, and writes down the details. Then s|he can email me the particulars of the call, so that I can call back. This is at most five minutes per day; but this cannot be treated as a part time job because the worker has to be at work from 9 to 5. It is not reasonable to force the employer to pay the worker at the rate of $1200 / (5min * 20 days/mo) = $720/hr. Even a top notch lawyer does not charge that much.
The point is, the minimum wage law ensures that simple, easy jobs will not be filled with employees. In this scenario I would be forced to spend $5K on a PBX that can route calls and take messages. As result, one disabled person who would like to work from home will not get a job. I would pay $100/mo for that work (and proportionally more if the volume of calls is higher.) A person on social security should not refuse to boost her income by 10% by just answering a phone. Hell, many in that position, who are confined to their homes and their wheelchairs, would *pay* just to talk to people and feel needed. But the law says that Aunt Jane cannot take this job, for her own good. (Yes, those magic words.)
But, as I understand, for that to work you also need to combat the SS fraud by allowing SS recipients to openly work to augment their income, in some way and in some scope. Right now the SS fraud is driven by the fact that once you become employed you lose the benefits instantly, and if later on you lose the job (or the job ends, being temporary to start with) then it will take you a lot of time and pain to reacquire the SS benefits. I do not receive SS and do not know firsthand, but from what I was told once one gets the benefits he'd better not work and not own any traceable wealth. Cash only, under the mattress.
Then why aren't the communication stream providers also deemed to be just as liable and guilty for this infrinement/infringing activity?
They have a government-issued license. In exchange for the license they promise to give the government everything that the government asks for. Remember Bush's warrantless wiretapping? When the government tells a common carrier to jump, the carrier only asks "how high?"
The only reason we have law is to protect those with less resources from those with more.
That was never the case. The laws were - and still are - made by those people who have more. Do you think they will make laws against themselves?
I can see it happening already, someone will donate to the judge a cheap and crap computer (Raspberry Pi fits the bill perfectly) and run up a Tor exit node on it. Much hilarity ensues. :-)
This will only illustrate that the same situation (illegal actions done by a computer that runs an exit node) can result in two very different charges:
You will not get an indictment against the judge. Well, such things happen sometimes - but not for computer crimes. Bribes are the most common cause.
The person who pays for the Internet will get an offer that he cannot refuse. It's like speed cameras - nobody can be sure what specific member of the household drove that car, but the ticket is sent to the title holder.
If a crime had been committed and all N possible suspects are equally likely to be guilty, an enlightened idealist would say that the police will let them all walk. However a police professional will tell you that the police/prosecutor will select a prosecutable individual and railroad him regardless of his actions. If they picked a wrong man, chances are good that he will start talking and "the real killer" can be then arrested.
Besides, in most cases it's not rocket science to find out who did what. If the list of suspects includes your mother, who is an accountant, your grandfather who retired 30 years ago, and you (of the tender age of 18, studying computer science) many detectives will point their finger straight at you. A few hours in detention, a few colorful scenarios of whatever remains of your life, all masterfully explained to you by a seasoned professional, and you will break. They will question you for days asking the same questions, you will mix something up or lie in small details, they prove it, and that lie seals your fate. But why do I explain all that - the whole story is exactly about that, how they get "their men." Only Assange is still safe, but he can't hide forever. And if he does, it's nothing but a self-imposed prison sentence.
No, encryption is not a crime, and nobody cares what ports you receive encrypted data on. The crime is in doing an illegal thing from your computer. The law does not care what prompted your computer to access someone else's server and hack it. It could be the keyboard and your own hands; or it could be a remote computer and a hacker behind it. Normally you shouldn't be responsible for the latter scenario - but as matter of fact you are. The bottom line is simple: if you run an exit node then you accept responsibility for everything that all other nodes do through you. This is simply because you are the most convenient scapegoat - and, as matter of fact, the only one that the police can lay their hands on.
It has nothing to do with the encryption. It simply redefines who the criminal is. According to this ruling, if several people form a chain that, in the end, is involved in something unlawful, then the real criminal, the one who does the time, is not the person at the end of the chain but the last person in the chain that the police was able to track.
This is not new, though. Plenty of US crime fiction is built on the plot where the police grabs the first guy who has no alibi and declares him a criminal. This happens IRL from time to time too.
Well, I know it's more of an outdated ideal than an operational standard these days, but, supposedly, the defendant is not tasked with proving his/her innocence.
It's not outdated; simply the strategy has its own drawbacks. Like the taking of 5th, you can sit still and not say a word ... while the prosecutor piles up one accusation on top of another. If you do not participate in the process the prosecutor will be unopposed, and you will be convicted. If the subject is so highly technical you will need a good lawyer, lots of expert witnesses, and lots of investigation done on the contents of your HDD. Probably $100K would be enough to get started, but I don't think it will be nearly enough. Those peanuts will only pay for 200-300 hours of your lawyer's time - and lawyers know how to do billing.
The problem is not whether it is "legally" "legal." You cannot afford a lawyer that can argue that part. If the traffic came from your computer you are guilty, and that's it - this is how most judges will interpret the act. There is no way to prove otherwise - your incoming traffic is encrypted. Even if the judge understands the technology he may slap you with being an accessory to the crime.
Some mention public telecommunications services. I'm sure those services have an entirely different legal environment - starting with their corporate charter that is signed by the Secretary of their State. A peasant in his hovel does not have even a shred of paper to point at; he is not a corporation, nobody with the government had a chance to audit his intentions... not that it should be required, but as things are it is required.
stratfor is a den of well-connected douchebags engaging in questionable activities and charging way too much for their "services"
Services of all well-connected douchebags are not cheap. You pay for their connections. Sometimes the information is well worth the money. If you don't like the price you can always deploy your own network of spies, or you can resort to tasseography.
Rule #0 of all law-making: Do not make laws that you cannot enforce.