Hacker Tracker

Transactions out of the "Bitstamp Hack" address into addresses that had never been used before:
1PhbKjG9gYeYVXfvi4AjW9pJ1s9MrqMuH4
1EtH88P5feywPJE1nyrjggd41JeCuEeKNi and 1Fze2Qx6Covm7jnC4ffCD9Lsst2sD7CaqE
16FEx2PYFwo9i38vyXktwYEfPiyQN6JpMW and 1K4wcA9fB9e3f68kuWFLm4uPq1VqBYxTpg
...

I did those three by hand.  This could be automated so that anyone can see (and blockchain.info could tag) those addresses for which the very first coins they get are from a known tagged address.  I did them so that I could use this page to tag them as "Bitcoin Hack Mixer" addresses.  Seemed like fun at the time.  It would be neat to see this automated.

Another Crack At Explaining Bitcoin II

You might do something for me because I agree to return the favor some day, right?  Suppose that there are a bunch of people doing things for others and expecting the favor to be returned in the future.  You might end up doing a lot of stuff for other people and so you will be owed lots of favors.  Not likely though, right, because it would be too hard to keep track of all those people who owe you a favor?

Suppose a group calling themselves "the miners" keeps track of all these earned-but-not-used favors.  Their tracking system allows you to collect a favor from someone who doesn't owe you one because they owe person A, who owes person B, who owes person C, who owes... who owes person Z, who owes you.  So when you collect a favor from that person, it cancels all the favors between person A and person Z.  That would be a pretty cool tracking system, right?

The miners compete with each other to protect the data they are tracking.  Every now and then, one of them finds a way to improve the protection of the data.  Basically, he or she makes it more difficult for anyone to mess with the database of who owes who a favor.  So perhaps it would make sense for everyone doing favors (and relying on the miners' work to keep track of them) to consider what the miner did to be a favor for which we all owe him.  This scheme enables anyone who wants to play to do favors for others without worrying that they'll never get paid back, because they can get paid back by anyone who owes a favor.

If you're smart, you're thinking this will never work because you might ask someone who owes a favor to do it for you, and they might refuse.  Quite right!  And you worry that everyone you ask might refuse.  These are good points and need to be addressed.  We address them by requiring that people do favors FIRST, before they are owed favors, and they will get credits for doing those favors.  But where do the credits come from?

Remember the miners who protect all the data about who owes whom a favor?  Well, now they can instead keep track of who has earned a credit.  Remember we agreed that they get credit each time they make it more difficult for anyone to mess with the data they're tracking?  The miners are the first people to get these credits - they do the first favors for everyone who will eventually benefit from this system.

As long as those miners do a good job of protecting this credit data and tracking who transfers credits to whom, we can continue paying them in credits.  As a matter of fact, this is exactly what bitcoin is.  We've implicitly agreed that after 210,000 successful attempts to make messing with the data more difficult, the credit for a miner who does it will be cut in half.  A bitcoin is one fiftieth of the initial credit, and today, miners only earn half a credit, or 25 bitcoins.

We All Know He's Naked

The little boy's father finished laughing and spoke to his son:
"Son, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, dad."
"In school they teach you to always obey the law, right?"
"I don't know."
"Ok.  Did you know that there is a law against walking on the Emperor's grass?"
"Yes, papa."
"Have you seen anyone walk on it?"
"No."
"That's because the grass belongs to the Emperor and we respect his property."
"Yeah, I know.  But it's illegal besides."
"Right, but what about buying the gypsies' wine?  Did you know that's illegal too?"
"But dad, you buy the gypsies' wine."
"Exactly.  There's nothing immoral about buying their wine.  It's dangerous, because if the emperor's men catch you, you might get punished.  More likely, though, you'll be able to appease them by giving them a bottle or two."
"Dad, you're confusing me.  I thought you said it's illegal."
"Oh, I did.  It is illegal, but it's not immoral.  Some things that are illegal are not immoral.  Does that seem odd?"
"But my teacher says that we have to obey the law."
The boy's father beamed at him.
The little boy giggled a little, remembering his father's first question.  "I see what you mean, dad."
"The thing is, the Emperor gets a lot of money, and he uses it to hurt people when they do things he doesn't like.  He makes up the laws to control us and he really wants people to follow them.  He forgot to make up a law forbidding people to laugh at him, so when you pointed out that he's naked, everybody was comfortable laughing."
"But why was everyone pretending that he had clothes on?"
"That's a good question.  Let's see... I was pretending just because everyone else was.  I think it's because we all know the Emperor can be mean.  If you were a bit older, his guards might have taken you away for saying what you said."

What's a Cop to Do?

I think there are a lot of good people who have chosen to be LEOs.  I suspect that many of them turn into unfortunate people they wouldn't have wanted to become if they knew beforehand.  Some of the unfortunate realize they have changed and they work to figure out what to do about it.  Others are left unaware of the damage and they suffer without knowing why.  I'd like to see everyone who cared enough to read this post work on helping these unfortunate and unaware LEOs figure out that they've changed so that they can start working on what to do about it.

I imagine that some LEOs can honestly say that the job hasn't changed them into someone they didn't want to be, though I worry that this is a relatively small group.  I also worry that some of them always wanted to be bullies with a license to kill - what many call "bad cops."

What troubles me most is that the job does seem to damage the good in those who take it.  This is, of course, a natural side-effect of being paid to enforce stupid laws.  The job is also generally accepted by the public as necessary.  The tiny portion of human beings who view others as animals to be used (instead of fellow humans) rely quite heavily on the brutality sometimes necessary to make other humans behave however they want them to behave.  Is there any way we can help LEOs watch out for such psychopaths and avoid helping them achieve their goals?

For example, how do we get police officers to respect the natural rights of growers of marijuana, prostitutes, people not wearing seat-belts, speeding, selling loosies, driving without a license plate (or a license), selling cocaine, jay-walking, or feeding the homeless, and instead concentrate their efforts against thieves, rapists, and murderers?  At least until tax revenue dries up so much that many government managers will be relieved to reduce the size of their enforcement troops, this is the only way we can find peace.

A friend of mine quit his LEO job, and his department had a policy of trying to get compliance without violating natural rights.  That is a step in the right direction.  However, his department still required the violence if compliance was impossible without it, and so it was too few steps in the right direction, and my friend quit.  I worry that his position was taken by a lower quality individual, and that is my dilemma when seeking to help LEOs deal with the contention between being a good person and being a good cop.  As far as I know, many government employees of the former USSR simply dragged their feet at work and eventually stopped bothering to show up, melting into the private sector to find honest work.  Does that seem like a viable path for current LEOs?

What Exactly Is Reported on W2s?

W2 Forms provide the IRS with presumptive evidence that a person has earned wages as defined in title 26.  Title 26 defines "wages" in two places, section 3121 and section 3401.
26 UCS 3121 defines 26 terms:

• (a) Wages
• (b) Employment = by someone in US (see (e)), on a ship or plane, or for the US or someone in the US, a partnership, trust, or corp.
• (c) Included and excluded service
• (d) Employee
• (e) State, United States, and citizen = DC, PR, Virg.Is.,Guam, & Am.Samoa
• (f) American vessel and aircraft
• (g) Agricultural labor
• (h) American employer = The US or an instrumentality of it, a resident of the US (see (e)), a partnership 2/3 of whose partners are residents of the US (see (e)), a trust if all trustees are residents of the US (see(e)), or a corporation organized under the laws of the US, DC, PR, the Virgin Islands, Guam, or American Smoa.
• (i) Computation of wages in certain cases
• (j) Covered transportation service
• (l) Agreements entered into by American employers with respect to foreign affiliates
• (m) Service in the uniformed services
• (n) Member of a uniformed service
• (o) Crew leader
• (p) Peace Corps volunteer service
• (q) Tips included for both employee and employer taxes
• (r) Election of coverage by religious orders
• (s) Concurrent employment by two or more employers
• (u) Application of hospital insurance tax to Federal, State, and local employment
• (v) Treatment of certain deferred compensation and salary reduction arrangements
• (w) Exemption of churches and qualified church-controlled organizations
• (x) Applicable dollar threshold
• (y) Service in the employ of international organizations by certain transferred Federal employees
• (z) Treatment of certain foreign persons as American employers

26 USC 3401 also defines "wages" along with seven other terms:

• (a) Wages
• (b) Payroll period
• (c) Employee
• (d) Employer
• (e) Number of withholding exemptions claimed
• (f) Tips
• (g) Crew leader rules to apply
• (h) Differential wage payments to active duty members of the uniformed services

You are probably a natural person, and you probably think you owe income taxes because you earn money.  You think that the money you earn qualifies as income.  If you're wrong about that, then you don't owe income taxes, do you?  If you visit the links above, you can read through the definitions to make sure the following two statements are correct.

A natural person earns "3121 wages" (see 3121(a)) only if that natural person was remunerated for (see 3121(b)):

1.  working in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, or American Samoa, or
2. working on or in connection with certain ships or planes, or
3. working for someone or something in District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, or American Samoa

A natural person earns "3401 wages" (see 3401(a)) only if that natural person belongs to the general class (see the end of the 6th sentence of the footnote in HELVERING v. MORGAN'S INC., 293 U.S. 121 (1934)) illustrated by the following list (see 3401(c)):
an officer, employee, or elected official of the United States, DC (see 26 USC 7701(a)(10)), or any political subdivision thereof, or any agency or instrumentality of any one or more of the foregoing, or an officer of a corporation.

Please let me know of any other definitions of "wages" to which a W2 form might refer, or any legal scholar who can find an error in this analysis.

Finally, if you are aware of W2 forms that might be incorrect under this analysis, bug someone about it who can fix it until they explain it better, and please let me know!  If they can't, then stop letting the government rob you.

Tolerance and Privacy Squeezing Out Coercion

Tolerance - the thing that makes us feel it's ok to leave other people alone even when they are doing things we don't like, such as smoking, selling porn or pot or heroin, driving against a red light, carrying firearms around a mall to protect our fellow citizens, or camping in a park - is a wonderful tool for helping rid the world of coercion.
Privacy - the thing that prevents INTOLERANT people from knowing that we are doing things they don't like (see above) - is another wonderful tool for helping rid the world of coercion.

Together, these two character traits will slowly squeeze coercion out of human interactions. I'd like to field any disagreements, so air 'em if you got 'em. I also thrive on encouragement, so hit the LIKE if you want to help that way.
I heard a discussion about a new book by Carlos Morales, "Legally Kidnapped: The Case Against CPS" on "The School Sucks Podcast." I think children in abusive relationships are best helped by increasing the number of adults that interact with the abuser. The host (Brett Veinotte) and I came up with the same solution: "Would you like some help?" Let abusers know you're there. Deep down, nearly always, they know they're taking advantage of a child, and they will be better behaved knowing you're observing them. And, best of all, if the two of you do find a way that you can help, maybe the abuse will taper off and end. Human relationships, especially where one of the people involved is a voluntaryist, tend to make people into better people.

Dear NSA Spies

An open letter to the guys monitoring my Internet transmissions:

Hi guys,

I heard in episode 085 of the Peace Revolution Podcast that one of your goals is to slow things down so you have more time to analyze (and maybe control) the data flow.

I understand that my efforts to educate people about the true nature of the income tax could lead to a decrease in what you earn by doing your jobs, since the federal government will have less revenue.  I've been thinking about this.  I think you are probably good guys with an interest in helping to make the world a better place.  This is laudable, and I am glad you're out there working on this effort.

If you have time, listen to some of the podcasts put out by Peace Revolution in the past, like the Whistleblower one, or even the current episode 085.  You will probably be kind of pissed off at the system that employs you because of some of the things it does.  For example, if I remember correctly, both the CIA and the FBI have hired agents to seek out potential terrorists and encourage them to get involved in terrorist plots.  The success of these efforts is measured by increased authorization for FBI and CIA power and increases in their budgets.  Pretty sick, right?  Unbelievable, you might think.  So go research it.  See what you can find on Bill Binney, Tom Drake, Richard Grove, and others.  Sibel Edmonds is another good name - she has a website, boilingfrogspost.com.

If you haven't had the stomach for Hendrickson's site, give it another try.  He recognizes the long term damage that the US government's increased financial power is doing to the human race.  Isn't that the kind of stuff you'd rather prevent than encourage?

If none of this interests you, at least put a little more effort into analyzing what I write.  It should be pretty clear that my success will lead to the kind of world most people want.  While it's true that I am trying to starve your employer of funds, a lot of my writing and appeals are about replacing suffering with joy.  If you haven't seen it yet, I just made this my Skype status: "Tolerance and Privacy are slowly squeezing coercion out of human interaction. Think about it, encourage it, and promote it."

The idea behind that new Skype status is that coercive authorities, when they do things people don't like, are nearly always trying to alleviate a problem that their friends or employers do not wish to tolerate.  Big Pharma, for example, knows that many of its products can easily be replaced with pot.  Look into Dr. Burzynski, and see that the FDA is actually causing a lot of cancer to remain ineffectively treated with chemo while a much better treatment is available, apparently because the chemo manufacturers do not wish to tolerate competition from this individual researcher.

But it's not just pot.  Every company connected up to Washington with lobbyists enjoys the benefit of using coercion against those who would compete with it.  That is the raison d'etre of those lobbyists.  Government is coercion, essentially, and it survives as the monopoly on publicly accepted coercion, useful to those who don't see clearly enough that coercion always increases suffering, generally more than it helps.

If you would start respecting my privacy, then I could work faster.  If you join the private sector with your skills and knowledge, the liberty movement could work faster.  Leave a trail of breadcrumbs for the newbies who replace you when you leave so that they, too, can convert to the side of peace and freedom.

Thanks!