My Bitcoin Nightmare

The Central Banks of planet Earth can print as much fiat as they need.  They can hire people to hire people to hire people to... who will run trading bots against all the largest exchanges, to buy bitcoins incessantly, but slowly in order to stay just below the kind of volume that would be noticed by anyone.  In this way, a Central Bank of Planet Earth can slowly collect bitcoin without anyone taking notice.

Consider this:  If you pay enough attention to the market, there's a good chance you'll be able to identify points at which various opportunities arise, such as: when making a large trade will move the price a lot, when a movement in price will take a long time to be reversed, if it ever gets reversed, and when creating trading patterns can precipitate such opportunities.  Who has the money to do all that?  Why, Central Banks of Planet Earth of course!

Clearly then, it seems that if you have infinite financial resources (like Central Banks do), you can mess with the price of bitcoin.  I suppose that as a market matures, the frequency and size of these opportunities will decrease, though I suppose they never disappear entirely.

However, if you have a counterfeiting machine, which is the essential definition of a Central Bank of Planet Earth, then you don't care if you will lose money.  Instead, you care that some other currency is going to replace the fiat that you produce and then you won't be able to control the people in your country.  So you spend whatever you need to spend to make the value of that new threat fall.

Whenever they've accumulated enough to have a strong effect, they can dump their bitcoins, pushing the price into a nosedive.  I know of people who do this and they aren't Central Banks of Planet Earth or even hired by them under some kind of Black Ops meant to stave off the impending demise of the world's reserve currency.  They're just currency manipulators who will get mad at me if I publish their names.  I don't mind them because at least they are honest.

So regardless of who might be doing it, when does this strategy stop working?  Or do you think it can continue forever?  I don't think it can.  In the worst case scenario, my "Nightmare Scenario," the Central Banks of Planet Earth keep doing this until they and I are the only ones left who have any bitcoin.  No one else will want it, because it will be worthless.

They would hold all of the bitcoins except for the few (thousand?  million?) I still have because I like to keep my savings equally split between gold, silver, and bitcoin.  That leaves me as the only non-coercive being that has any bitcoin, and I don't think that would be such a nightmare after all.  It apparently worked out pretty well for the early miners of bitcoin, whoever they are, and I don't think I'd mind going through that.  Bitcoin would be my own personal pre-mined cryptocurrency.

Of course, any reader who catches my drift here would join me in the group of the only non-coercive people who hold bitcoin.  The combined bitcoin savings of all the people who hold bitcoin right now is worth just under 5 billion dollars (minus whatever coins have been lost).  That's a lot to split up between us and the CBEs, but it's less than 1% of the value of the centralized corporation called Apple.  That's something to chew on.

Odd Mouse Behavior

I did several Internet searches to try to find someone else experiencing the problem described below:

"two mousepointers"

"circle square mousepointer"

"odd mouse behavior"

"trapped mousepointer"

I tried some others that I can't remember now, but I never got a description like the one I'm about to provide.  Hopefully I've described it well enough that someone who has the same trouble and does a Google search will find my post.

Sometimes, while I'm using my laptop, the mouse pointer turns kind of invisible.  It's still in the same place, and as I move it, it shows up, and I can click on things and use the mouse just like always, but if I stop moving it, it disappears.

Actually, it doesn't really disappear.  It moves to the middle of a geometric shape about one inch to the right of the left edge of my screen, and about four inches below the top edge.  The shape is sometimes a circle, sometimes, a square, and sometimes a circle that pulses with circular shading, as if it is a pond into which a pebble was dropped (but the "waves" are much faster).  So if I don't move the mouse, it sits there in the middle of that shape.

Once I start moving the mouse, its position goes back to where it was last time I was moving it, and it appears in the old position and the new places into which I move it.

This mousepointer behavior is very annoying, but only because I can't see where the mouse is unless I'm moving it.  That is the only symptom I've found.

The shape that "holds" the mousepointer while I'm not using it is generally a solid white outline with a translucent white background, sitting on top of everything else.  If I move a window in such a way as to cover the shape, the window goes "under" the shape.  I found a few hits on the Internet about a mousepointer getting stuck in a box during some kind of remote access, so I just changed my password.

I did a scan with Malware Antibytes a few days ago, which found and quarantined something, but the mouse problem still occurred after that.

If you found this post by doing a google search, please let me know what you searched for.  I'd like to add to the list of search terms that people can use to find information about this peculiar behavior.

Illegal U-Turn

I would like to make (or see made) a video with the following as a basic script.  I want the interaction to be realistic.  Ideally, people who watch the video will not realize that it was created from a script.  Hopefully, this kind of thing will start happening in real life.

--------

In a car, looking out the windshield heading toward a red left-turn arrow.  There is a cop car in the background.
There is no traffic.  The car makes a U-Turn ignoring the stoplight.  There is a siren in the background.  The car pulls to the side of the road.  The cop exits his vehicle and approaches the car, knocking on the window.  The view changes to look out the driver's window from the passenger's seat.  The Driver rolls down his window.
"Hi, How're you doing?" says the driver.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?" asks the cop.
"Uhh... Because you wanted to talk to me?"
"License and Registration, please."
"Oh, right.  Your job requires you to write me a ticket, right?"
"Yes sir.  License and Registration please."
"Right, you need my license and registration, I get it.  Like how long do I have to give it to you?"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean, are you in a rush?"
"No sir, you take as much time as you want."
"Ok, great.  You know, when I saw you behind me, I thought you wanted to get by.  Do you mind if I keep asking you questions?"
"Sir, I have a job to do.  I just need your license and registration to do it.  The law requires you to comply."
"Right, and if I don't comply, then you have to like arrest me or something, right?"
"Look sir, this doesn't have to be so complicated.  You just show me your license, and your registration, and then you'll be on your way."
"Ok, but do you mind if I ask you some more questions?"
"It's pretty simple sir.  What's the problem?"
"Well I don't want to make you worry about having to chase me or arrest me or whatever.  What's it called, 'escalation', right?"
"We don't want that now, do we?"
"Well of course not, but your job demands it, if I don't comply.  Ok, I see that I'm making you uncomfortable.   I just wanted to understand the possibilities better."
"Sir, I'm not uncomfortable at all.  If you want to sit here and talk about it for a while, that's fine with me.  I just need your license and registration."
"I understand.  But you have information I want.  Can you describe how the escalation might go if I am utterly non-compliant?"
"Trust me, sir, it's an area you don't want to know about, but you're awfully close to finding out.  Are you refusing?"
"I haven't refused and I don't intend to refuse.  I just wanted-"
"Then what's the problem?"
"I just wanted to understand what happens.  Can you walk me through it?"
"No sir, you'd have to refuse my request.  Are you refusing?"
"You said I can take all the time I want, didn't you?  So I'm using that time to understand you better."
"Sir, this isn't about me, it's about your failure to comply with the traffic laws.  If you are refusing to provide me with your license and registration, then I'll have to move on to the next stage, and neither of us wants that."
"Yeah, I think that stage dehumanizes both of us, doesn't it?"
"Is that what you want?"
"Like you said, we'd both like to avoid that.  Your method is to proceed with writing me a ticket, and my method is to have a conversation.  Maybe we'll end up doing both.  Your job requires that second stage, but only after I choose not to comply, which I probably won't- I mean, I will probably comply because I'm scared of you.  It sucks.  But I guess you have a quota or whatever, huh?"
"Sir, we don't have quotas here.  They are illegal."
"So what motivates you to stop people?"
"They break the traffic laws.  It's my job to enforce them."
"Well sure, but if they don't comply, then you have to dominate them.  Why not just avoid the whole problem... I mean, you could stop them, tell them 'Hey, you ran that light - be more careful.'  Or whatever, you know?  And then let them go.  No second stage, no domination, no feeling dehumanized for you or the other guy."
The driver continues after the cop says nothing for a few seconds.
"Doesn't it change you?  I mean, they hire you guys to dominate people, and doesn't it change how you view us?  Like we aren't equals any more, but more like enemies.  I mean, after you started giving people tickets, did you start to feel more isolated from them?"
"This isn't about me.  I'm going to need your license and registration."
"Dude, it's totally about you.  When you knocked on my window, I was like 'Whoa, this guy really hates having to dominate people.'  You didn't even wanna describe stage two.  I think you're doing it right now - trying to stop thinking of me as a fellow human being and looking at me as a ticket you need to write, some kind of pressure from your boss or whatever.  It's horrible, and I don't think it's right.  I wanna help.  I'm part of this group that's trying to improve working conditions for cops."  The driver hands the cop a business card.
The video shows a close-up of the card on which the following is written:
    POLICE OFFICER REHABILITATION PROGRAM (PORP)
    Most cops start out as great guys.
    "We have to hurt innocent people."
    "Becoming a bully makes being a cop easier."
    Both the dominator and his victim become less human.
    There's no such thing as "humane enforcement."
    The PORP video: http://...
    Please don't chase me.  I'm trying to help.

We Allow Evil

I would like to illustrate a thesis.  My thesis is that most of us are allowing bad people to succeed in doing bad things.  Most of us agree on a few basic principles:  It's bad to strike someone without provocation.  It's bad to take something that belongs to someone else.  It's bad to step on someone else's sandwich, juice box, puppy, child, or foot.  It's bad to push someone into a cage, and then lock it so that they can't get out.  It's bad to break a promise.

Most of the things I've described as bad don't seem so bad when certain people such as authority figures do them.  For example, a parent spanking his or her child doesn't seem as bad as anyone else spanking the child.  A police officer pushing someone into a cage and then locking it doesn't seem as bad as someone who isn't a police officer doing it.

It angers me a little bit to see parent's strike their children because it teaches violence and control, rather than reason and self-control.  However, I view this problem as a side-effect of something much worse.  After all, parents love their victims most of the time, not because they can extract resources from the children, but because they enjoy the happiness that those children can feel, and they are fun to be around, and they're family.

It angers me a lot to see police officers taking advantage of this acquiescence to authority because it teaches violence and control rather than reason and self-control.  The love a police officer feels for his victim is laughable when compared to that of a parent for his or her child.  Yes, I hear your "butts".

"But it's their job to enforce the law," you think.  Let's start there.  If I hire you as an assassin, then it's your job to murder someone.  Does that make it right?  Is murder transformed into a morally sound activity by virtue of being a service rendered for payment?  Of course not.  So from where does this objection come?  I think I've got it: The enforcement of laws is what keeps society from becoming disordered.

If it were true that the order in society comes from the enforcement of laws, then I would agree with you.  I don't think it does, however.  As a personal example, I have broken many laws and not had any enforcement action taken against me and my life seems to be a bit more ordered than most.  I have had enforcement actions taken against me, and they are nearly always quite disruptive and disorderly.  I will assume that this is true for most of my readers simply because they were smart and curious enough to read this far.  However, I bet that my assumption about "other people" is different from yours.  I think it's true for most people.  If they are left to break laws willy-nilly, they find a way to have a pretty ordered life, but as soon as law enforcement starts acting against them, it becomes disorderly.

One of the best examples I can think of is the black market.  Black markets exist all over the planet, and they do so only because laws are not enforced.  They may be dangerous and even lethal, but they are orderly for the most part.  Markets that are not orderly, whether in full compliance with laws or not at all compliant, soon disappear.  There are some fundamental reasons for this, I think.  These reasons apply not only to markets, which are simply the aggregate of individual participants, but to the individuals themselves.  In fact, the operations of these reasons in individuals is what causes them to operate on the market as a whole.

When an individual either isn't aware or doesn't care that others will make him suffer for particular behaviors, it is very easy for that individual to undertake those behaviors.  If there's a law against something, a lot of people who would do it otherwise will not do it.  Their true nature is hidden by the law.  Controlling people hides them from us.  The true nature of other people is hidden from us when they are afraid to show themselves.

Additionally, if a law is enforced, then the natural consequences of the prohibited behavior are often submerged in the effects of the enforcement.  The enforcement of laws warps reality so that it is harder for people to understand it.  The learning cycle is broken.  Human beings have a natural learning cycle, constantly at work in infants.  Seemingly random behaviors are willed into existence, and they produce various effects.  The brain of an infant correlates the willed action with the effects in a constant effort to learn how willing can alter reality in a desirable direction.

Enforcement of law is generally based on pain, either financial, physical, social, or some combination of those three kinds of pain.  Pain causes fear and embeds itself in the memory as a warning against repeating whatever actions may have contributed to the pain.  Fear retards the learning cycle.  Pain causes this fear, and law enforcement causes the pain.  This is true for both manmade law and natural law.

Vertigo is an unpleasant feeling that many people feel when they perceive a great distance in a downward direction.  This mental effect is an evolved trait that protects us from the natural law of gravity.  However, there is no punishment for looking down.  The punishment comes from actually falling, and we learn to be more careful, or we become acrophobic, or both.

We also have an instinct to distinguish between pain that comes from another human and pain that comes from the natural world.  As children, we learn the word "blame" and tend to overuse it.  Hell, we keep overusing it as adults too, unless we figure some stuff out, like how blame tends to prevent us from improving ourselves to avoid pain in the future.  But when a punishment does bring us pain because another, an enforcer, whether a parent or a cop or a justice system, has decided that we ought to be punished, we know there is nothing there to learn except fear.  So we learn to fear and be controlled, and our own tendency to reason and strengthen our self-control atrophies.

I am comfortable calling that evil.  We allow it.  Well, YOU allow it, I suspect.  I tolerate it and write essays like this one to try to minimize it.  I'd like to see blame and punishment go away.  They are harmful over the long term.  They weaken people and encourage individual self discipline to atrophy.  They are demoralizing.  They introduce suffering into existence that could have been avoided.  They may prevent some suffering, but there is more joy prevented by them so that the net effect is negative.  They are evil.  Stop allowing them.  Stop engaging in them.

Sometimes You Don't Need Context.

I would like to demonstrate a few things that might be called universally helpful statements.  I suppose the demonstration is best provided by challenging the reader to find contexts in which the following points are not helpful.

Sometimes a point is made that has applicability in nearly every context.  If someone requests the context, they are accidentally providing evidence that they would like to avoid acknowledging the point being made.

A specific peculiar element of the human psyche, often called "the ego," tends to make it difficult for a person to accept a correction (no matter how obvious it is) to their understanding.

When a person senses an unease with new information, it is often because it is convincing evidence that they harbor and identify with some kind of misunderstanding that the new information can correct.

A strong awareness and preparedness to present a second reason to do something often indicates that the first reason is problematic and that, since the second reason wasn't chosen as the first, it must be even more problematic and therefore it may be advisable not to do the thing that was being considered.

Sometimes we lie by remaining silent.

Nearly all useful statements are "universally applicable" when you modify them with the adverb "sometimes."

Coercive authority is a result of the fear of being violated and does more harm than good.

Non-coercive authority is a result of recognizing helpful knowledge in another and does more good than harm.

Taking responsibility for yourself is difficult but very rewarding.

If you imagine someone in any situation saying one of these things to you, you might enjoy what your imagination does with the scenario.

Warning for the Fed and Other Large Buyers of US Government Debt

The US taxpayer who doesn't have to be a US taxpayer is waking up.  Peter Hendrickson's website, losthorizons.com, provides ample evidence that the IRS has been respecting the constitutional limits written into the law (Title 26) for those patient and aware enough to proceed through the interactions with that haggled agency that are required to avoid paying taxes for which they aren't liable, or have refunded any monies erroneously collected.

A scant portion of Americans today understand that the US Income Tax applies only to those who exercise some kind of privilege granted by the federal government in their efforts to earn money.  This small vanguard of public financial discipline has been spreading its knowledge, however, and that means a shrinking base of revenue producers for the US government.  What does this mean for you?

Propaganda over the last several decades has led you to believe that the majority of American citizens are on the hook for the money due you through your investments in US treasuries and bonds.  Contrast that with the evidence provided on Hendrickson's website both of legal research demonstrating the nature of the situation and scans of checks written by the IRS to Americans who do not exercise any federal privilege.  The recipients of these checks were charged the tax as if they had exercised such privilege, showed that they had not, and demanded that the agency return the erroneously collected money.  The agency complies with the law.  Extrapolate that across the larger portion of Americans suffering from the economic crisis and the drain it continues to have.  As more and more people realize they are not on the hook for this debt, the pool of earners will shrink well below what can sustain payments owed to you.

You may find that the greater portion of what is owed you will be paid in freshly printed currency which will hyperinflate, or that the US government will simply repudiate the debt it owes you.

Your expectations cannot be met.  You have been warned.

The Missing "Frivolous" Argument

USC 26 6702(c) States:

(c) Listing of frivolous positions

The Secretary shall prescribe (and periodically revise) a list of positions which the Secretary has identified as being frivolous for purposes of this subsection. The Secretary shall not include in such list any position that the Secretary determines meets the requirement of section 6662 (d)(2)(B)(ii)(II).

This appears to be (Actually, Pete found the correct link for me, so...) Here is the "list of positions which the Secretary has identified as being frivolous," but there is one position that is missing.  It's my position, and if they would like to add it to the list, then I will have to admit that I no longer have a legal basis for refusing to support their criminal operations.  Here is my position, which I think would go under section B ("The Meaning of Income:  Taxable Income and Gross Income"):

"Taxable Income" can only mean what a person gets by exercising some kind of federal privilege, so those who exercise no such privilege are not liable for the tax.

[The following was added to this post after Mr. Hendrickson directed me to the information the IRS has provided regarding the word "privilege" in the actual list of frivolous positions.]

The closest position to mine that does appear says this:

(1) Compliance with the internal revenue laws is voluntary or optional and not required by law, including arguments that:
...(g) Only persons who have contracted with the government by applying for a governmental privilege or benefit, such as holding a Social Security number, are subject to tax, and those who have contracted with the government may choose to revoke the contract at will.

What the IRS is saying is that this is an incorrect position, and so it must be.  Let's go so far as to assume that you really do have to apply in order to gain a federal privilege, but notice the "and" that I italicized.  Why is that chunk of text compounded into this frivolous position?  Would it not cover more cases without the addition of that conjunction and the text following it?  Perhaps those who have contracted with the government may not choose to revoke the contract at will.  Perhaps the position that holds that such one-sided abdication of contractual obligation is a legal option for those exercising federal privilege (whether applied for or not) is actually frivolous.  I would assume that it's immoral, at least, to unilaterally revoke a contract, so it's no small stretch to see that arguing in favor of such revocation would be frivolous.

[End of added material.]

Thanks to Pete Hendrickson's legal research on this subject, available at his website, http://losthorizons.com, for those interested in ending their financial support for the criminal endeavors of the US federal government.