If everyone's currency is backed by gold, then their is no volatility between gold and the currencies.
People who say Gold is volatile, should say what is it volatile towards. If you look at real world value such as power of purchase, gold has historically been a lot more stable than the dollar. So the question is, Is Gold volatile to the Dollar or is it the Dollar that's volatile towards Gold.
The amount held in reserve as well as the amount in circulation can be viewed realtime on their Account Examiner
Their most recent audit of the gold storage by Ernst & Young is also publically available.
The reason the gold is owned by an offshore trust, is to keep it secure for the owners in case of a court case.
All of these documents are freely available at their site and they are verifiable offline as well.
I am not affiliated with E-Gold, but have been using them for a couple of years now as a convenient means of transfering and storing money. They have come to be known as the most popular payment scheme for Multi-Level marketing scammers, but that is only because it is easy and cheap to interface with. Most people use it for legitimate payment means as well as a recession proof storage of value.
PayPal is successfull, but it's a payment system not a currency. PayPal uses USD for the time being as its currencies and uses the existing US banking system for transfers, making it useless for people outside the US.
Check out E-Gold. They are as these things go a pretty succesful electronic currency backed by Precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and Paladium.
The currency is growing like crazy, besides not having been funded by VC's and largely ignored by the press. I think I just read on the mailing list that there is now over 1 ton of e-gold in circulation today.
While this is still small fish, it's the most succcessfull attempt yet of any online currency, thats backed by real value. Beenz may have more users, but it's essentially backed by air. You wouldn't accept a pay check in beenz, but I know many people that are getting paid in E-Gold.
Some group in the Isle of Man also just announced they were going to create a similar system.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been called a think tank, monitoring agency, rich man's club, an unacademic university. It has elements of all, but none of these characterisations captures the essence of the OECD.
The OECD groups 29 member countries in an organisation that, most importantly, provides governments a setting in which to discuss, develop and perfect economic and social policy. They compare experiences, seek answers to common problems and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies that increasingly in today's globalised world must form a web of even practice across nations. Their exchanges may lead to agreements to act in a formal way - for example, by establishing legally-binding codes for free flow of capital and services, agreements to crack down on bribery or to end subsidies for shipbuilding. But more often, their discussion makes for better informed work within their own governments on the spectrum of public policy and clarifies the impact of national policies on the international community. And it offers a chance to reflect and exchange perspectives with other countries similar to their own.
The OECD is a club of like-minded countries. It is rich, in that OECD countries produce two thirds of the world's goods and services, but it is not an exclusive club. Essentially, membership is limited only by a country's commitment to a market economy and a pluralistic democracy. The core of original members has expanded from Europe and North America to include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Korea. And there are many more contacts with the rest of the world through programmes with countries in the former Soviet bloc, Asia, Latin America - contacts which, in some cases, may lead to membership.
Exchanges between OECD governments flow from information and analysis provided by a Secretariat in Paris. Parts of the OECD Secretariat collect data, monitor trends, analyse and forecast economic developments, while others research social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more. This work, in areas that mirror the policy-making structures in ministries of governments, is done in close consultation with policy-makers who will use the analysis, and it underpins discussion by member countries when they meet in specialised committees of the OECD. Much of the research and analysis is published.
My take on it is that it is sort of like an economic equivalent of NATO. It's pretty much involved with monitoring and creating global rules that it's member countries should or must (depending on how influential they are) obide by. They also try to bully smaller and poorer countries with programs such as the "harmful tax competition" programme I mentioned in my previous post. It's pretty interesting that this group of powerful countries should fear the unfair competition of small poor countries such as Belize, Dominica etc. May be these countries should create a black list of countries with to big economies, because thats unfair size competition?
As long as we have governments, there will be some kind of taxation. However it's not everyone that will be taxable. The book talks alot about the inevitable split between the haves and the have nots. Local sales tax on physical goods, individual income tax and property taxes will probably be with us for a while yet. Income tax is taxable only if you can monitor the payment, with new technologies more and more people will be avoiding this. Sales tax will only really be possible to chargeable to places with physical shops.
The alternatives that they will probably introduce are delivery taxes (payable through FedEx???), Internet Taxes payable by ISP's or tacked on to our ISP bills.
If only part of the population is taxable, you will probably start seeing that taxable low income part of the population get more and more angry, which we are already seing in the rise of hate groups through out the world. Eg. Anti Chinese riots in Indonesia, Neo Nazi Groups, Pat Buchanan etc.
The authors conclusion is that there will be much greater equality between countries, but much greater inequality within countries. Just look at India, China, Mexico etc. They all now have large growing educated middle classes, but as they grow the inequality within the countries increase.
However the traditional large semi-well paid working class of North American and Western Europe has had it's foundations torn apart over the last 30 years.
They may attempt to tax you. Most tax regimes and the OECD are already starting to do this. The IRS is obscene for example in trying to track it's citizens abroad.
No matter how nasty they will attempt to be, I seriously doubt that they will come out ahead. It will be very uncomfortable for us for a few years, while they get more and more desperate, however they really wont be able to tax truely anonymously owned online entities, just like they wouldn't be able to censure FreeNet or read my PGP mail.
Technology is where it's at I'm afraid. The problem with these so-called rogue states, is that they are Nation States as well and are run by individuals or groups of individuals. While you might get protection from them for a short while, if it's all of a sudden in the interest of your protective state to hand you over, they will.
Look at OECD's black list of Tax Havens Since the list was announced you have had Cayman Islands, Dominica, Antigua, Mauritius and several others bending over backwards.
Having lived and worked in several of these places, I have experienced first hand that the government officials here are not idealistic about anything, don't generally understand the new economy and are scared as hell right now of loosing their income.
There is a lot of work being done by various mainly opensource groups already on technology for Sovereign Individuals.
Check out my own project Neudist.org for example, where we are trying to create an online replacement for Legal Entities. Others such as WebFunds and E-Gold are creating Gold backed digital currencies a'la Cryptonomicon (They were actually doing it before Cryptonomicon). FreeNet is creating an uncensurable infrastructure and HavenCo are doing Offshore web hosting.
I'm sure I've forgotten quite a few, but these are the technologies that will enable or inspire the Sovereign Individuals. I loved the book, but the writers are very much involved with the really high end of the market, and when it comes down to it would probably feel a bit left behind by all this free software creating real Sovereign Individuals.
-Pelle
This already exists try out E-Gold at: http://www.e-gold.com. They have had 4 different independent currencies available on the internet for about 5 years. They are all backed 100% by various precious metals and are quite popular in the Cyberpunk community. Quite a few new cool apps and Open Source stuff is happening surrounding them. Ryan Lackey was quite into E-Gold last I talked to him. He's a good guy and since he's involved, I'm certain that the security aspects are good. -Pelle
This practice is used by virtually all large corporations in the US. It's called Captive Insurance. You setup a subsidiary Insurance company in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and handle all your own Insurance through it. These Captive Insurance companies actually normally do buy insurance from other companies. Bermuda actually has the worlds second largest reinsurance market after Lloyds of London and it's perfectly legitimate. As a matter of fact if I was a shareholder in a large company that didn't do it, I would consider a shareholder suit, because it saves a lot of money for the companies that do it. I didn't see any details in the article about how the insurance was structured, but even if they didn't use third party underwriters in Bermuda. Setting up your own Insurance company is perfectly legitimate as long as you have the necessary capital requirements. I'm a geek and therefore I buy a lot of Gadgets. If I chose to get the service plan on every gadget I buy I would be a poor (and stupid) man. I therefore have my own service plan called my bank account. If something goes terribly wrong with my gear, I either have it fixed or buy a replacement at the expense of my bank account. For me this works out cheaper than involving a third party and that's basically what UPS are doing. It's cheaper because companies can save money by keeping some of the insurance premiums that they would other wise have paid as commisions to a US insurer. Most US Insurers handle most of their reinsurance needs in Bermuda or London anyway. By setting up a captive company you just save the middleman. Should UPS give the savings back to their customers? Thats another case. But is that worth a lawsuit? The relationship between UPS and the insurer should be in their SEC repots somewhere. If not then that might be fraud? I don't know, I'm no lawyer.
I found their website: http://www.el2000.ru It's all in Russian. I attempted to figure it out using my very basic school russian. They seem to be a Sun distributor for Russia. I think the new chip is described here. At least I think it is. I can understand individual words but not much more than that. So if some one knows Russian. Please translate. -Pelle
Slashdot Mirror
People who say Gold is volatile, should say what is it volatile towards. If you look at real world value such as power of purchase, gold has historically been a lot more stable than the dollar. So the question is, Is Gold volatile to the Dollar or is it the Dollar that's volatile towards Gold.
E-Gold says that they are backed by gold and they are. The gold is controlled by a trust with the E-Gold account holders as benificiaries. The gold is handled physically by an escrow agent under the following terms.
The amount held in reserve as well as the amount in circulation can be viewed realtime on their Account Examiner
Their most recent audit of the gold storage by Ernst & Young is also publically available.
The reason the gold is owned by an offshore trust, is to keep it secure for the owners in case of a court case.
All of these documents are freely available at their site and they are verifiable offline as well.
I am not affiliated with E-Gold, but have been using them for a couple of years now as a convenient means of transfering and storing money. They have come to be known as the most popular payment scheme for Multi-Level marketing scammers, but that is only because it is easy and cheap to interface with. Most people use it for legitimate payment means as well as a recession proof storage of value.
-Pelle
PayPal is successfull, but it's a payment system not a currency. PayPal uses USD for the time being as its currencies and uses the existing US banking system for transfers, making it useless for people outside the US.
The currency is growing like crazy, besides not having been funded by VC's and largely ignored by the press. I think I just read on the mailing list that there is now over 1 ton of e-gold in circulation today.
While this is still small fish, it's the most succcessfull attempt yet of any online currency, thats backed by real value. Beenz may have more users, but it's essentially backed by air. You wouldn't accept a pay check in beenz, but I know many people that are getting paid in E-Gold.
Some group in the Isle of Man also just announced they were going to create a similar system.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been called a think tank, monitoring agency, rich man's club, an unacademic university. It has elements of all, but none of these characterisations captures the essence of the OECD.
The OECD groups 29 member countries in an organisation that, most importantly, provides governments a setting in which to discuss, develop and perfect economic and social policy. They compare experiences, seek answers to common problems and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies that increasingly in today's globalised world must form a web of even practice across nations. Their exchanges may lead to agreements to act in a formal way - for example, by establishing legally-binding codes for free flow of capital and services, agreements to crack down on bribery or to end subsidies for shipbuilding. But more often, their discussion makes for better informed work within their own governments on the spectrum of public policy and clarifies the impact of national policies on the international community. And it offers a chance to reflect and exchange perspectives with other countries similar to their own.
The OECD is a club of like-minded countries. It is rich, in that OECD countries produce two thirds of the world's goods and services, but it is not an exclusive club. Essentially, membership is limited only by a country's commitment to a market economy and a pluralistic democracy. The core of original members has expanded from Europe and North America to include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Korea. And there are many more contacts with the rest of the world through programmes with countries in the former Soviet bloc, Asia, Latin America - contacts which, in some cases, may lead to membership.
Exchanges between OECD governments flow from information and analysis provided by a Secretariat in Paris. Parts of the OECD Secretariat collect data, monitor trends, analyse and forecast economic developments, while others research social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more. This work, in areas that mirror the policy-making structures in ministries of governments, is done in close consultation with policy-makers who will use the analysis, and it underpins discussion by member countries when they meet in specialised committees of the OECD. Much of the research and analysis is published.
My take on it is that it is sort of like an economic equivalent of NATO. It's pretty much involved with monitoring and creating global rules that it's member countries should or must (depending on how influential they are) obide by. They also try to bully smaller and poorer countries with programs such as the "harmful tax competition" programme I mentioned in my previous post. It's pretty interesting that this group of powerful countries should fear the unfair competition of small poor countries such as Belize, Dominica etc. May be these countries should create a black list of countries with to big economies, because thats unfair size competition?
The alternatives that they will probably introduce are delivery taxes (payable through FedEx???), Internet Taxes payable by ISP's or tacked on to our ISP bills.
If only part of the population is taxable, you will probably start seeing that taxable low income part of the population get more and more angry, which we are already seing in the rise of hate groups through out the world. Eg. Anti Chinese riots in Indonesia, Neo Nazi Groups, Pat Buchanan etc.
The authors conclusion is that there will be much greater equality between countries, but much greater inequality within countries. Just look at India, China, Mexico etc. They all now have large growing educated middle classes, but as they grow the inequality within the countries increase.
However the traditional large semi-well paid working class of North American and Western Europe has had it's foundations torn apart over the last 30 years.
They may attempt to tax you. Most tax regimes and the OECD are already starting to do this. The IRS is obscene for example in trying to track it's citizens abroad.
No matter how nasty they will attempt to be, I seriously doubt that they will come out ahead. It will be very uncomfortable for us for a few years, while they get more and more desperate, however they really wont be able to tax truely anonymously owned online entities, just like they wouldn't be able to censure FreeNet or read my PGP mail.
Technology is where it's at I'm afraid. The problem with these so-called rogue states, is that they are Nation States as well and are run by individuals or groups of individuals. While you might get protection from them for a short while, if it's all of a sudden in the interest of your protective state to hand you over, they will.
Look at OECD's black list of Tax Havens Since the list was announced you have had Cayman Islands, Dominica, Antigua, Mauritius and several others bending over backwards.
Having lived and worked in several of these places, I have experienced first hand that the government officials here are not idealistic about anything, don't generally understand the new economy and are scared as hell right now of loosing their income.
There is a lot of work being done by various mainly opensource groups already on technology for Sovereign Individuals.
Check out my own project Neudist.org for example, where we are trying to create an online replacement for Legal Entities. Others such as WebFunds and E-Gold are creating Gold backed digital currencies a'la Cryptonomicon (They were actually doing it before Cryptonomicon). FreeNet is creating an uncensurable infrastructure and HavenCo are doing Offshore web hosting.
I'm sure I've forgotten quite a few, but these are the technologies that will enable or inspire the Sovereign Individuals. I loved the book, but the writers are very much involved with the really high end of the market, and when it comes down to it would probably feel a bit left behind by all this free software creating real Sovereign Individuals.
-Pelle
This already exists try out E-Gold at: http://www.e-gold.com.
They have had 4 different independent currencies available on the internet for about 5 years. They are all backed 100% by various precious metals and are quite popular in the Cyberpunk community.
Quite a few new cool apps and Open Source stuff is happening surrounding them. Ryan Lackey was quite into E-Gold last I talked to him. He's a good guy and since he's involved, I'm certain that the security aspects are good.
-Pelle
This practice is used by virtually all large corporations in the US. It's called Captive Insurance. You setup a subsidiary Insurance company in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and handle all your own Insurance through it.
These Captive Insurance companies actually normally do buy insurance from other companies. Bermuda actually has the worlds second largest reinsurance market after Lloyds of London and it's perfectly legitimate.
As a matter of fact if I was a shareholder in a large company that didn't do it, I would consider a shareholder suit, because it saves a lot of money for the companies that do it.
I didn't see any details in the article about how the insurance was structured, but even if they didn't use third party underwriters in Bermuda. Setting up your own Insurance company is perfectly legitimate as long as you have the necessary capital requirements.
I'm a geek and therefore I buy a lot of Gadgets. If I chose to get the service plan on every gadget I buy I would be a poor (and stupid) man. I therefore have my own service plan called my bank account. If something goes terribly wrong with my gear, I either have it fixed or buy a replacement at the expense of my bank account. For me this works out cheaper than involving a third party and that's basically what UPS are doing.
It's cheaper because companies can save money by keeping some of the insurance premiums that they would other wise have paid as commisions to a US insurer.
Most US Insurers handle most of their reinsurance needs in Bermuda or London anyway.
By setting up a captive company you just save the middleman.
Should UPS give the savings back to their customers? Thats another case. But is that worth a lawsuit?
The relationship between UPS and the insurer should be in their SEC repots somewhere. If not then that might be fraud? I don't know, I'm no lawyer.
-Pelle
I found their website: http://www.el2000.ru
It's all in Russian. I attempted to figure it out using my very basic school russian. They seem to be a Sun distributor for Russia.
I think the new chip is described here. At least I think it is.
I can understand individual words but not much more than that. So if some one knows Russian. Please translate.
-Pelle