Censored by 2600: A Holistic Approach is Better

The following is the UNCENSORED version of an article written for 2600 magazine. When the article was first submitted to 2600, trust was given to split the content over multiple issues of the magazine, or to post it directly to the site. The intent was not to monopolize the printed pages of the magazine.

What actually happened was the article was censored by the editorial staff of the magazine. The following paragraph is directly from the pages of Volume 40, Number One:

[Note from the editorial staff: In the interests of fairness we're running this opinion piece that raises many questions about our publication. We had to cut it down quite a bit for size and direct relevance to the hacker community. We also eliminated those parts that were aimed at specific individuals, as we don't feel injecting personalities helps to further the conversation. We welcome any and all responses.]

It is ironic that a long standing hacker magazine, a leader in the space, would get so offended at commentary, that it would censor my writing. The readers in agreement emailed me after the article was published, asking for the uncensored version. Here it is below.

A Holistic Approach is Better

    I’ve been a reader of 2600 for almost 30 years and the purpose of this writing is to demonstrate how this hacker community, like most of the world, has lost it’s way the last few years, and is in a constant state of activity, vigilance, and action...all pointed in the wrong directions. In other words, we’re missing the whole forest because we’re focusing on just a few trees. It is out of a tremendous respect for this fine publication that I write this.

    This magazine has always valued freedom of speech, even when being criticized in its own pages. It is with the utmost reverence for that freedom that I write this. I really didn’t want to write a political article, but I know the magazine will always publish political content, unless it decides to get back to it’s roots, so I may as well contribute to the political discussion with my own spin on it. Basically, if you want to get political and inspire change, take a holistic approach. Focus on the source of the problem, not the problem.

Fix the Cause, Not the Symptom

    Before I present several big picture topics, I should lay some groundwork. I’ve been a hacker for about 25 years, have several businesses, traveled to dozens of countries around the world, and have boots on the ground combat experience. I am a former financial advisor. I have studied economics for almost 15 years, make real investments (not speculations), and believe in real free markets (not what we have now). I have no political affiliation, and am sadly and utterly disgusted with the direction of the country and the world. The only way I vote is with my money, and my feet. I consider myself a patriot in the spirit of our founding fathers, not the false definition of patriotism today, which seems to mean continuing to support bigger and bigger government. By definition, you can probably label me a domestic terrorist.
This writing will be quite long and I don’t want to monopolize the pages of the magazine, so if the 2600 staff wants to split this over multiple issues, or publish it right to the site, I trust your judgement.

    I’ll be expressing my own opinions in this writing, but do not care to debate with anyone in these pages, especially in any response letters we’ll see 6 months later. If you want to debate, spare the other readers and reach out to me directly. It could be constructive and fun. But unless you’ve put the 10,000 hours of work in and have some life experience, like owning and running a business, escaping a dictatorship, losing a million dollars, you’re only ranting. Besides, if I change your mind with one article, your convictions weren’t that strong to begin with. That said, I know there will probably be a few ignorant comments thrown my way if this gets published.

    It’s been said that one mark of intelligence is to hold two opposing views in your mind at the same time. Said another way, don’t take a strong stance on something until you can argue against it. That’s right...against it. This means if you feel strongly about say...a vegan diet, you should be able to argue against a vegan diet as effectively as you argue against a carnivore diet. This ensures you objectively viewed the information and made the most informed choice you can make. If you still can’t decide, then don’t hold strong convictions. The most dangerous people in this world are those who hold the strongest convictions, with no desire to hear another view. So proceed with an open mind, and temporarily suspend your convictions.

    What I do want is to encourage you to challenge yourself, debate with your closest friends and family, and take action to research the following topics as extensively as I have. I’ve spent thousands of hours over years forming my own strong opinions, and will do my best to present things in a way I wish they were presented to me. I’ll also be leaving plenty of references for actionable advice to learn the concepts I’m writing about...things I wish were taught in school, or were taught to me by people I thought I looked up to. I’m not trying to change the world...but I might change the person who changes the world.
    

    I don’t expect hackers to become economists or financial experts. What I hope for is highly intelligent, thinking hackers to restrain strong convictions until they’ve really explored something down to the nitty gritty. You wouldn’t run software until you’ve verified the checksum. Use the same thought process on the OS of your mind, and don’t allow any software to run without verifying the motive of the person or entity who created the software they’re trying to install in your mind.

    I will reference big picture items I’m surprised have not been explored more thoroughly in past issues of the magazine. I believe the energy of the brilliant hacker community is pointed in the wrong directions, starting from Emmanuel Goldstein to some of the readers. I find that hackers are highly intelligent, but also highly emotional, especially when it comes to trending topics like social injustice. I think this focuses on individual problems and not the causes of those problems. I think the biggest problems we have in America, and the world, are big government, dishonest money, a movement towards total control, and erosion of individual freedom in favor of collectivism. These problems come from brainwashing tactics the mainstream media practices, and an ignorance of American history and economics. Americans have gotten dumber and more impressionable with a shorter attention span.

    My basis is that social issues, politics and war are intimately connected to economics. I feel that unless you have a foundation on basic economics (not what is taught today), you are developing strong convictions without all the information.
So if anyone wants to jump from topic to topic every few years about the latest trendy, hash tagged “injustice,” you should ask yourself what is causing it. Like posting about social injustice in America on a phone that was created from materials mined by slaves in one country and assembled by slaves in another country.
    I believe that if people were left alone by government, and engaged in commerce with honest money, it wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be much better than it is now. My ideals are personal freedom, liberty, valuing the individual mind and body and not infringing on anyone else. Watching interviews with Milton Friedman will elaborate on these details.

Emmanuel Goldstein Forgot What Orwell Tried to Teach Us

    I’d first like to address volume 39 number 3, where Emmanuel mentions Rule of Law. Firstly, The political writings of 2600 in the last few years are just out of control, and many readers have sent letters about it. I’ve always felt a hacker magazine should present information about technology and hacking and leave the politics out of it. This magazine has recently leaned towards the politically correct, woke, mainstream narrative type of musings written by Emmanuel Goldstein. I know hacking and politics overlap. But, if I want to mix politics and hacking, I’d go on YouTube and watch an Anonymous video.

    The printed pages of this magazine used to be really good for us for us g33ks to explore technology without all the political nonsense. You’ve taken the Internet trolls and given them printed pages. I don’t need a hacker magazine telling me not to come to a meeting unless I’m vaccinated. How about leaving that conversation between doctors and patients? With all the COVID-19 drama, this magazine lined right up with the mainstream narrative. If you wanted to stay out of all that, and keep with the hacker spirit of independent thinking and decision making. You could have printed “Hey everyone, the 2600 meeting page moved online only. Decide and think among yourselves. We’ll resume printing that page when we’re ready.” Instead, it was, “OK, everyone, the government and media say THIS, so we will print that in our magazine too and promote it too.” Without going on a tangent, I’m not anti vaccination. I’m anti government mandate because the government is not my doctor. I’ll leave it at that.
    Emmanuel writes, “every time we’ve spoken out on some issue, raised awareness of an injustice, or questioned assumptions, we’ve never given up on the system itself, even when that system was proving to be corrupt or broken.” It’s broken. The federal government is too big, which is what the founding fathers warned us about. The individual states and individual people are losing sovereignty with every crisis they create and put on TV. I know you have to keep selling magazines, so you have to keep up on the “latest” trending topics, but why not address the causes of these issues like the psychopaths in the WEF, the enslavement of the world through the fiat dollar, or the brainwashing of children.

    I’ve met Emmanuel and been to HOPE conferences. What’s personally confusing to me is how Goldstein appears to take a left wing, progressive, woke, Democratic Socialist view of the US when the Rule of Law is more of a Libertarian concept. Remember, our country was founded as a Constitutional Republic. It’s changed for the worse, and we got this way through the flaws of human nature. Most people I’ve spoken to do not understand the definition of Republic, Democracy and other forms of government. People also cannot articulate what left, right, liberal, progressive, etc. really mean. Goldstein is a smart man, and has clear political convictions, but is promoting his own political views to a wide range of readers, many of whom are just ignorant of politics by choice, lack of education, or maybe they’re just a kid with no experience.
    Of course, Goldstein is free to have his own opinions, but what I’m confused about is why are you spreading your personal political views on the readers of your magazine? We don’t pay for political opinions, we pay for great hacking content. The last few years, I can’t read 10-20% of the magazine because of the editorials and political ranting letters, when I used to read every word. Remember, 2600 is based in NY. Manhattan, and a lot of Long Island, have become more and more in support of bigger government. Mind you, NY is fairly big and the rest of the state hates how one very populated city controls policy for an entire state, and in many ways, an entire country. Decentralization anyone? It’s a safe assumption that the political views of 2600 and Emmanuel Goldstein (mostly) align with the political views of NYC, otherwise the magazine would have moved operations to some other part of the world long ago, financial considerations aside.
Why have Ukraine flags on your website? I’ve been to war. I think most people who have been to war can agree there is a better way to solve things than violence. War is hell, but posting emoji and flying flags to “support” a country many Americans can’t find on a map isn’t the best use of our energy when we have a ton of problems of our own. I oppose war because I learned very clearly, and immediately, what war is really about. The only result for Americans is going to be the same as previous wars: less individual freedom, higher taxes, inflation, devalued currency. The federal government will have a new source of income at the expense of the prosperity of the citizens of every country involved. And what will that new source of income do? Fund more wars of course. If you want a great resource on how empires decline, read Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio.
    If we’re intelligent thinkers, we’ll study to understand the reasons for Russia doing what they did, even if we personally don’t agree with it. We’ll have come to this opinion not by viewing (censored) Google searches, but by exploring history through the independent media, not the mainstream narrative. I’ve known Russian and Ukrainian people, and don’t want anyone to die. But, just like you learned in grade school, why is America the world’s police?
    Why doesn’t Goldstein protest the military industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower warned us about? Why not protest the fact that we have about 700 military bases? That’s not national defense, that’s offense. I can go on, but you have two radio shows where you can discuss politics. Why put it in the magazine too? Maybe start a political podcast and keep the magazine for unbiased hacker information that hackers of all countries can read.
    Why keep writing editorials about fighting something you’ll never change or win? You wrote yourself, the system is broken, I can agree with that. Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in 1984. In that book, George Orwell teaches us about an evil, all controlling government. By writing so adamantly about a few government topics, and taking a side on this or that trendy cause...you’re missing the bigger picture. You’re missing the forest for a few trees. Economically, if the federal government dismantled itself to the bare essentials (national defense, not offense), those people and resources will move to the private sector, allowing more innovation without the burden of the cost of big government. Studies and history have proven that increased surveillance and loss of freedom have not stopped terrorists, as shown in Boston, Paris and all the beheading videos on the Dark Web.
    Americans should fix things at home before we go running around the world spreading our agenda. Instead of fixing a broken system, we have to start over. We should read history and remember the values the country was founded on, which is individual freedom and liberty, not satisfying groups of people at the expense of that individual freedom and liberty.
I respect Goldstein as a true pioneer in hacker culture, but has lost the hacker spirit of these printed pages. Please keep it relevant to technology, and please leave the politics out of it.

Why the “Fight” Will Never Be Won in Our Current System

    I believe technology to be the meeting place of science and humans. It’s an incredible way to measure progress. Another invention I feel is relevant is money. However, what we have today is currency, not money. Specifically, fiat currency. I feel one of the biggest downfalls of our country, and the world, through the US dollar, is our dishonest monetary system. Fiat currency has a 100% failure rate and there is no reason to think the dollar will not fail, as thousands of currencies have done.

    In Hidden Secrets of Money, Mike Maloney defines money as having 6 characteristics. The main one being a store of value over very long periods of time. Our fiat currency has lost over 97% of it’s purchasing power over the last 100 years or so. So why all the money talk?
Money is one of those things, like technology, that is a measurement of the progress of society. If you study monetary history, you’ll understand clearly the direction the country is going, and the causes for all the ridiculous social issues that are created to distract us from the real truth. Money is not evil, money is a tool. Enslavement is evil. Money is a tool for progress and prosperity while fiat currency is a tool for enslavement and evil. The worst enslavement is when the person thinks they’re free. Our money used to be honest, giving us freedom. Very few social crybabies study money.
    Furthermore, we enslave the rest of the world through the USD. Our government borrows from the Fed(a privately owned bank), which prints dollars (digital and paper) and we buy real goods and services from other countries that produce them. We also have to pay higher taxes through direct tax and inflation. So what’s the bigger injustice: gender identity for kids, or how our government has enslaved the world through military force and fiat currency? The Fed recently launched a new form of surveillance called the Central Bank Digital Currency so it can micromanage the economy even further and possibly implement a social credit score and carbon credit score like China and the World Economic Forum promote. See George Gammon for simple explanations.

Social Causes are Exploited to Further Government Control

    From 9/11 to COVID-19 to climate change to gender identity, each crisis is designed to divide people, then have government step in, control your thought, language, and actions. “Never let a crisis go to waste!” is the expression of politicians. The purpose of this is to exploit your human nature, and have you give up more of your personal decision making power to the government. The government promises to make things right, by borrowing more currency from the Fed, to give you “free” stuff that you pay for with higher taxes and inflation, all to get voted into office again, so the cycle can continue.
    If you actually study history, you’ll see every war and conflict is intimately tied to economic history. You’ll also discover the tactics government has used to influence the American people to go along with perpetual war, and compare that to the tactics used today. The best reference of this is The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.
    This is why I personally have no political affiliation, and don’t complain about government, I simply opt out. Every president in my lifetime, and yours, has devalued the currency by increasing taxes or inflating the currency, started wars, taken away freedoms by force or surveillance, or a combination of all these. Now that I think about it...if there is one politician I have respect for, it’s Ron Paul.
Social causes are started by exploiting human nature, then creating different language to change the pattern of thought. Government has always wanted to control thought by controlling language as George Carlin spoke about many times. If you read the WEF, they are changing the language of Socialism and Fascism to the “public/private partnership.” The people let government change the definitions of things whenever they want, giving the government more control of our mind. Two recent examples of this are inflation and the Consumer Price Index, or CPI.
Inflation is literally an expansion of the currency supply. But we let the government and media change this definition to mean rising prices, which are a result of inflation, not inflation itself. This is so government can blame inflation (rising prices) on everyone and everything else. Inflation is caused when the government borrows currency from the Federal Reserve, which then creates new currency and injects it into the economy by lending it to the Treasury, banks and eventually citizens. This expansion of the currency supply devalues every dollar in existence, which makes consumer prices go up. For a visual, see Hidden Secrets of Money Episode 4 by Mike Maloney. So the government and the Fed created inflation, but the high prices are necessary because it costs more dollars to buy the same stuff, as you’ve seen in the grocery stores. But government will have you believe businesses raise prices because of greed, rather than the government borrowing more money to “stimulate” the economy.
Speaking of grocery stores, the government also manipulates the CPI by removing things from the “basket” of consumer goods. So when the CPI is reported by government and media, it is always lower than reality because the more expensive goods are removed from the average. Many independent economists will report on the true CPI as was measured in the past as opposed to the government sanctioned CPI we see on the news today. Independent economists will also measure real inflation (rising prices) anywhere from 15 to 20%, as opposed to the government sanctioned 8%. To verify this, you can see shadowstats.com

    Currently the World Economic Forum uses these tactics to promote a collective culture, controlled by the few at the top of course. You can also see this in the way Bill Gates tests vaccines out in poor countries and how he is currently buying lots of land to manufacture “food.” Bill Gates, under the guise of various socially beneficial programs, has gotten into everyone’s home with Microsoft Windows, into everyone’s bloodstream with vaccines, and will soon get into everyone’s stomach with the “food” he’ll manufacture on the many acres of farmland he recently purchased.

Teenagers are Idealists, Adults are Realists

    Younger hackers want to use their bright minds to fight for social justice. When they grow up, and take the typical route expected of them from American culture, they lose that passion to take action towards something they believe in. The reason is because American culture is designed to keep people from thinking. The government wants obedient working taxpayers because it owes the Federal Reserve (a privately owned bank) trillions of dollars.
    But if you take the time as an adult to question everything you’ve ever known, you’ll understand how corrupt the system is and simply opt out. I believe opting out is a much more productive and peaceful way to protest against a corrupt system. For those that have read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, you’ll remember that all the intelligent men in the country opted out of working for the corrupt government, and the government fell apart. Protest all you want, you still have to go to work and have 20-40% of your dollars taken out right off the top. Those dollars never go to paying anything except interest on top of interest, not schools, roads, bridges, etc. I don’t advocate tax fraud, but am opposed to direct taxes per the Constitution. In fact, direct taxes were illegal, and we had to amend the Constitution to tax the citizens and create the Federal Reserve. This is why Woodrow Wilson is hated by so many people.

    You can opt out of this system by legally reducing or eliminating taxes by making investments the government promotes, like technology, energy and real estate. Not everyone in the government is evil, and some politicians actually want the federal government to shrink in size, and encourage citizens to be more entrepreneurial. You can also opt out by storing wealth in BTC, or precious metals, instead of a decreasing dollar “invested” in the manipulated stock market. An extreme version of this is dual citizenship, or relocation. Sovereign Man Simon Black is an American born patriot and veteran, but protects himself against government corruption and teaches people how to do the same. You can also read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a Vietnam veteran, and highly successful entrepreneur.
    Teenagers are raised in government run schools, taught to go into debt to pay for a mostly obsolete college education, to find a politically correct corporate job just to get taxed so much they’ll never be able to retire. By the time those young people become adults, they’ve accumulated debt they’ll likely never pay off. Whatever free time they have left is spent being brainwashed by the TV and social media. That enthusiastic teenage hacker has changed into an overweight, impotent workaholic with low testosterone and high anxiety who works in corporate America for a 410k that won’t buy him anything in retirement, if he can actually afford to retire.

Power and Human Nature

    Above, I wrote how technology is the meeting place of science and humans. Science is great because it has no ego. It’s pure information and truth, waiting to be discovered. Humans, unfortunately have emotions and are not perfect. I equate the fall of the American empire with the fall of Rome, as explained in Hidden Secrets of Money Episode 9 and 10. Both empires were created to escape a tyrant, and both empires fell when they debased the currency and increased the size of government.
    If hindsight is 20/20, you can predict the future by studying the past, as Ray Dalio also does in his latest book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. You’ll see the exact point humans gave into evil. If you need more examples of this, see 48 Laws of Power and Laws of Human Nature, both by Robert Greene. You’ll see how the government and monetary system enslaves us, the media brainwashes us to vote and think a certain way, technology taps our dopamine with notifications, and we’ve lost our ability to think rationally and respect other opinions.
Before you take a hard stance on what you think are important social issues, try some real research on the independent media. Use a VPN, Tor and DuckDuckGo because Google will censor your results. Try sites like zerohedge.com, examine.com, and Odysee. Study independent thinkers like George Gammon, who comments on macro economics, but makes it easy to understand.

America Can Make Itself Great Again

    Financial advisor Peter Schiff lays out his financial plan for America in his book The Real Crash. The main idea he shares is that America’s government and financial system are broken. They’re broken because the government is too big and costs too much. Instead of spending our time worrying about issues overseas, I feel Americans can spend more time getting reacquainted with the reasons that made our country what it was up until about 1914.
    When we study and really understand those ideas, and learn the real history of how things went, we can choose not to participate in this toxic society. We’ve let this happen. We’ve consented to this. We let ourselves be taken advantage of. The cure for government regulation has always been more government regulation. That has not worked. If America opts out of meddling in the rest of the world’s affairs, and remove it’s monopoly on the world via the US dollar, theoretically, there wouldn’t be a need for war because we’d all be doing business with each other.
The Constitution says we need to provide for the national defense. With ~700 military bases, we don’t have that anymore. That’s offense, not defense. It’s also expensive. Schiff suggests reeling in all our overseas military, consolidating the economy with the influx of new assets and labor, and going back to a gold standard so we can peacefully trade with other nations instead of going to war because the money will become honest again. Again, not a perfect plan, but better than what we have now once you really discover the true reasons for all the fighting.
If you really believe in government, temporarily suspend your current beliefs for a bit. Imagine if literally every American voted to bring all the troops home, and work on our own internal issues here. Imagine if the federal government dismantled itself and gave each state back its own sovereignty and our money was honest, like we had with the gold standard. Really think it through. I think we’d have the kind of prosperity we had in the 1800s after we won our independence, but before we created the Federal Reserve. It wasn’t perfect, but by many accounts, that time was what made America the superpower. We let minds, business and industry flourish with less government intervention. If you doubt this, ask anyone over the age of 60 what things used to cost when they were a kid.
    I know the Civil War was during this time. Again, I reference The Creature from Jekyll Island. There, you’ll discover the real reasons for the causes of the war, and every other war. You’ll read Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts from his biography. This is definitely not what was taught to you in school.
    I also understand the irony that our country was founded by slave owners when all men are created equal. Again, our founding fathers were not perfect. Years later, when the Constitution was amended to tax every income earner, no matter the gender or skin color, it created a system that enslaved everyone, not just black people. Today, if we had honest money, it would keep the government honest, and people of all colors would be able to work and live.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

    Remember, government does not create money, the people and free markets chose gold and silver because they were, and arguably still are, the best money. Government makes laws, and central banks create fiat currency. If you watch Hidden Secrets of Money, you’ll see that the gold standard system restricted what government could do. A government can’t go to war on a fixed money supply like gold. So, it has to convince the citizens to want war, and it uses the media for this. Then, the government borrows from the Fed, increases our taxes, removes our freedom, and more people die. On a fixed currency supply, government is restrained. On a fiat currency supply, endless currency can be printed to finance wars forever, which is what Dwight Eisenhower warned about. This manifested itself in Richard Nixon decoupling gold from the dollar, essentially defaulting on our debts as a country.
    This is one of the prominent arguments for Bitcoin, because it is a fixed supply. If you disagree with what the government does, don’t participate in the fiat system, and use alternative money like BTC. Yes, it’s volatile, but that volatility shows you how ineffective a fiat system is. It’s not that the “price goes up,” it’s that the purchasing power of the USD goes down, as it’s done for 100 years. Every single fiat currency in history has gone to zero. Every one of them. This is a 100% failure rate. If you only think of Bitcoin in terms of dollar price, you are only seeing, pun intended, one side of the coin.
    Bitcoin is still really early, but one of the best things it has done is expose the fiat system, and our government for what it really is: a system of slavery. Bitcoin has forced people to really study things like economics, technology and government. Forget the BTC speculators, and all the alt-coins, Bitcoin is really the only decentralized cryptocurrency there is.
If you only study money and economics, you’ll be able to cut through all the fake news out there designed to steal your attention. You can then point your energy towards productive behavior like creating goods and services, going into business for yourself and investing. You can opt out of all the woke culture drama and the political scandals and we can make peace with each other by providing value, not supporting government sponsored handouts like “stimulus” checks and the “inflation reduction act.”

    One can argue that money is the root of all evil. I think you can look at that two ways. First, we don’t have money, we have currency, specifically fiat currency. Second, fiat currency is evil. So if the fiat currency is evil, then it makes men do evil things.

Surveillance and Privacy

    We all love technology. One interesting thing about technology is that it’s become weaponized. When Edward Snowden revealed the surveillance programs the US used against everyone, it really got people thinking. What’s frustrating to me is years later, the average person knows they are being surveilled, and simply doesn’t care. “That’s the world we live in.”
    I believe privacy is a right we are born with, not a privilege granted to us by a government or some other entity. But not only are governments the ones who are tracking us through our devices, big companies are as well...and are sharing all that data with other companies and governments. My point is, with every advancement in technology, people are adopting it in a dopamine fueled reaction to convenience and better quality of life. As technology gets better, it collects more and more personal and physical data about you. That data gets compiled and profiles are created and sold to data companies like Cambridge Analytica. This is the ammunition governments use to influence your decisions, thoughts and behavior. This agenda is pushed through the mainstream media and social media networks who cooperate with government. This makes people vote, get emotional, buy products, etc.

    Unless you properly secure your phone with something like GrapheneOS, and use Linux at home instead of Mac or Windows, you are literally a lab rat being watched and experimented on. I think the EFF article every issue is phenomenal and I wish more hackers would get behind privacy rights, personal freedom and liberty rather than gender identity, pronoun clarification, race relations and expensive social programs. The reason I say that is because personal freedom and liberty value the individual, rather than groups of people. Comedian George Carlin values the individual above all else, and despises groups of people because groups want to control your language and that’s how you control thought.
People celebrate the rate at which space travel is improving and how fast AI is learning. My question to the hacker community is where do you think all this is going? Are we creating the tools of our own destruction like in Terminator 2? I love the thought of AI and the idea of having robots as slaves in my home doing my dirty work is great...as long as that software is open source and not proprietary. It’s why I don’t have an Alexa. Soon, your electric car will gather as much data about you as your Fitbit so your auto insurance company can know more about your lifestyle. The Fed can do the same by watching all your purchases through their CBDC, and negate purchases or erase your currency at their discretion.
Although you occasionally have a company in front of Congress explaining their evil behavior, the result of this charade is a monetary slap on the wrist. Just like Apple uses slave labor in China to make those awesome computers and Amazon uses slave labor in America to pack their boxes, it doesn’t mean anything and justice was not served. My suggestion is opt out. Simply vote with your wallet and don’t purchase anything that tracks your data and sells it. Use open source, build your own computers and educate people on the injustice of data collection to influence thought and behavior.

Value the Individual Above All Else

    If you stuck with me this far, you’ll hopefully get a clear understanding that the most effective way we can inspire action and change is to direct our energy in the right places. Point your attention to the causes of problems, not the individual problems themselves. The biggest problems being the behemoth of American federal government, the monopoly of the dollar and the erosion of individual freedom and liberty. Don’t point your attention towards groups of people. The sovereign individual is the ideal that should be most cherished. Government works because of the consent of the governed, not the coercion of the governed.
    If you value the individual, and hold to the principle of never infringing on anyone else’s natural rights, you are not an evil person. Ayn Rand valued the mind, reason and reaching your full potential as an individual. The hacker community is brilliant and passionate, but focuses on trendy issues that get fed to them by the mainstream media. Stop doing this! It is only distracting you from what is really going on, which is the erosion of the individual as a sovereign entity. Groups of people gain political power at the expense of other groups of people, which is unjust. All the while the ever expanding American government continues to tax us, devalue the currency and our labor, control more of the Earth and allow you to do less and less each year in the name of “fairness” and “equality” and “inclusion.”
    If you educate yourself on economics, real money, read the independent media and the Constitution, you will clearly see the trend the world is going and be able to protect yourself and your mind. I feel the big picture topics I’ve presented here outweigh most of the trending topics discussed today both on importance and scale. These issues affect everyone in a negative way no matter your gender, skin color or residence. If we point our energy towards the real causes of these problems, power can be transferred back to the people where it belongs, and taken away from the rulers where it currently is.
    Finally, I’d like to address the term conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is an agreement to conspire. To conspire is to plot or act in harmony. A theory is a hypothetical set of facts or principles that explain things. So when one person calls another person a conspiracy theorist, they are saying there is a hypothetical secret plot going on by a group of people acting in harmony. The “theory” part of this goes away when you can prove things to be true with concrete evidence, such as collected data, dead bodies, devalued dollars and censorship. Conspiracy theory then becomes conspiracy fact.

Recommended Learning
Fundamentals
Hidden Secrets of Money 1-10 – Mike Maloney
Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki

Books/Audiobooks
Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell
The Road to Serfdom – F. A. Hayek
The Creature from Jekyll Island – G. Edward Griffin
The Sovereign Individual - William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order – Ray Dalio

YouTube Alternative Financial News
Kitco News
Stansberry Research
George Gammon
Peter Schiff
Robert Breedlove

Alternative Financial News Sites
zerohedge.com
goldsilver.com
shadowstats.com
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