Toward Voluntary Justice

I have been mulling over the possibility of building a voluntaryist justice system of sorts.  It is already in place in some form, but it is neither recognized nor coherent.  I can see the end result pretty clearly in my head: non-governmental folks flood an area with information about a specific person.  That specific person would be a "normal" state agent on whose authority an atrocity was perpetrated, as well as those agents who obeyed the authority and participated in the atrocity.

The easiest way to make this (already existing) "system" more coherent is simply by getting more people to recognize it. Beyond that, information about the locations of atrocious authorities will give those with awareness and information the motivation to saturate the atrocious authority's locale with the information about their atrocious behavior.

A few examples of atrocious behavior are: Judge Nancy Edmunds' attempt to suborn perjury from Doreen Hendrickson, and Judge Victoria Roberts' handling of Doreen's trial for refusing ("contempt of court") in Eastern Michigan, the imprisonment of Ross Ulbricht, or choose any prisoner who is in jail for trafficking in marijuana.

I wanted to be a teacher when I was young, and I have grown up to be one.  I write software, and then I have to teach people how to use it.  Or I figure out how already-written software works, and teach that.  But mostly what I teach is that there are horrible people doing horrible things.  Very few people like to learn that, and so I don't find a lot of success except among those who are already aware.

Perhaps you can help me spread the ideas behind my voluntaryist justice system by helping me find a better analogy than the very disturbing one I started using today:  No one likes to see a person killing infants.  It's disturbing and we don't like to think about it.  But when there is a person doing that, everyone should know, and that person should be kept away from infants.  I'm the guy who points out this murderer and says "Look!  That guy is killing infants!"  That's what I teach: There are people doing horrible things.  The more of us who know about it, the less it will happen.

In a room full of horrible and ugly things, one may wish to keep the lights off. Not I, for I prefer to see and avoid or rectify such ugliness in the world where I live. Let's turn on the bright lights in the ugly places. How do I inspire others to join me?

Proposed Talks in San Diego

I have proposed to give two talks to Mensa in San Diego this Summer.  Following are the details.  Feel free to contact me if any of this stuff interests you.  I think that interest in these things is growing because 1) they are important, and 2) interest in them is not yet high enough.

1. Anonymity: The Dangers and Benefits of Keeping Secrets

Modern technology makes it possible to have relationships with people through thin media like texting, emailing, telephone calls, and interactions through the Internet. These media allow individuals to misrepresent themselves. This, however, is not a modern problem. Trust has been getting violated since human beings learned to communicate, and this presentation explores the growing awareness of it.

The "Delphi Technique" will be described, as well as common political illusions and demagoguery as well as the problems that can be created by these things. We will discuss the solutions available to those participating in the growing awareness of them and invite questions for further pondering in an open dialog.

The Mensa AG Proposal process will be used as an example of a system that relies on some trust, but takes great risk in breaking that trust if it chooses to do so. As a microcosm of the larger society in which it exists, we will explore how the increasing density of peer-to-peer communications helpfully magnifies that risk, not just for Mensa, but for all systems exploiting the human tendency to trust.

2. Why is Bitcoin Still Around?

In 2009, something called a "bitcoin" appeared and someone got ten thousand of them for buying a pizza. At that point, the market capitalization of bitcoin was about the value of a large pizza. It has since died and risen again about 100 times and now has a market capitalization around six billion dollars.

Following are more questions than there will be time to answer, but audience participation always helps with that problem: What is bitcoin? How does one use bitcoin? How does a bitcoin get created? Who invented bitcoin? Are bitcoins anonymous? Who controls how bitcoin works? Isn't bitcoin a work in progress? What is a block? Does the block size matter? How is cryptography used in bitcoin? What is an elliptic curve? What's a "vanity address"? What backs bitcoin? How can I buy or sell bitcoin? What happened with MtGOX? Does bitcoin make it harder to rule people? Does it make it harder to maintain order? Isn't bitcoin mostly used by people doing bad things? How does it threaten the existing financial system? Will inflation eventually destroy all the value in bitcoin?

After a short introduction, this presentation will be open for questions, and everything is on the table at that point. The questions presented above may not be addressed, so be prepared to ask any in which you are interested.

Notes on the Anti-Gov Movement GuideBook

Here is a magnet link (for the file-sharing software BitTorrent) for the "Anti-Gov Movement Guidebook," a pdf created in 1999 through a grant from the State Justice Institute which awards grants to "foster innovative, efficient solutions to common issues faced by all courts." The rule of man over man has some bad effects. I believe one of the worst effects it has is retarding the development of conscience in every individual.  Since common law courts enable individuals to speak truth to power, I feel it is important to publish my notes on this document.

The document suggests that the roots of "[t]he 'common law court movement,' as it has somewhat clumsily come to be called, [which] now exists in some form in every state in the country" can be traced to people who were both violent and racist.  I myself trace it (in myself) to the Magna Carta and Lysander Spooner as presented at Bill Thornton's site and The Voluntatryist.  So I think the authors of this document poisoned the well a little bit there.

The authors present "Posse ideology" as the basis of the movement toward common law courts and provide three tenets for it (apparently ignoring modern refinements). They suggest that the most important one is comprised of "justifications derived from the revelation of 'hidden history.'"  I can attest to that, although the authors' examples of "hidden history," don't match mine.

My interest in common law courts stems from Richard Grove's Project Constellation and, indeed, all the episodes of the Peace Revolution Podcast to which I have listened.  On a deeper philosophical level, Peter E. Hendrickson's work on the legitimacy of the Internal Revenue Code shows respect for the right of any group to demand compensation for giving others the privilege of using its own resources.  The U.S. Federal Government itself is an institution that provides privileges and exercises its right to collect some kind of payback. Hendrickson's work shows that this debt is improperly imposed even on those who receive no such privileges, and that the implementation of Title 26 therefore amounts to constructive fraud.  The behavior of the courts, for example the attempt by Victoria Roberts, Robert Metcalfe, Nancy G. Edmunds, and other federal employees to suborn perjury from Hendrickson's wife to cover it up, demonstrates the insidious nature of this constructive fraud, as well as its purity as a fraud.

Contrast that with the authors' examples of "hidden history": the "missing 13th amendment" or William P. Gale's recognition of the abandonment (rather than lawful repeal) of the Articles of Confederation.  Of course, this guidebook was written before Richard Grove's team of technologists was murdered in the attacks on the Word Trade Center, but apparently the Posse Comitatus group was onto something.

After introducing and bashing Posse Comitatus for a while, the document moves on to implicate the idea of "common law" in the violent racism attributed to the roots of the movement toward common law courts.  The Posse Comitatus group is still used by the authors for more bashing in case the reader sees value in the common law.  Aside from this, however, the document seems to explain the justification and value of common law quite well, even admitting that "The subversion of the legitimate common law was a long process, with many steps."

The authors rely heavily on the word "theorist," most likely to suggest that what is offered, provided, supposed, believed, or even proven or demonstrated by a "theorist" is false.  This assumption was brainwashed into the masses by the CIA through the media after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in order to dim the growing amount of light on a project that was to remain dark. In this guidebook about the movement toward common law courts, the word is leveraged using the term "common law theorist."

I am on page 14 of the 180 page document.  Like the project I started on the Bitcoin Javascript code from pointbiz, this one may or may not be continued.  I think both will have future posts, but I'm going to bed for now.  You have several links to follow if this post interests you :-).

Privatization: The Scotese Process

This can be done without the blessing or involvement of the federal government.  All land "owned" by the BLM belongs to the American people.  ANY ONE of those people is perfectly within his rights to choose a parcel and publish that its ownership can be re-designated through a "Scotese Process."

A "Scotese Process" is a commons privatization process through which all interested parties are compensated for their interest proportional to whatever amount of money they are willing to give up to keep that interest.  Here's how it works:

One or more escrow companies defines the commons (parcel of land in this case) to be privatized, and advertises its willingness to manage the process for a fee.  Interested parties are then invited to secure their interest by offering a price for the commons and pre-paying a percentage of that price to the escrow company.  Once the invitation period ends, a synchronizing process must be undertaken.

The synchronizing process requires that all escrow companies who may have defined a Scotese Process that interferes with another escrow compnay's Scotese Process work out the differences.  This can and should be an ongoing effort to eliminate all possible conflicts.  The "staking of a claim" has similar properties, whereby a claimant must define the boundaries in a way that doesn't interfere with already-defined boundaries.  The outcome of a synchronization process is one of two possibilities.  Either there is general recognition that all escrow companies have accepted the same definition of a particular commons, or there is not.  The process can (and usually will) continue until the first outcome is achieved.  On the other hand, difficult-to-define commons may cause (all) interested escrow companies to abandon their Scotese Process.

Once there is general recognition of the definition of the commons, there still may be multiple escrow companies interested in administering the privatization.  In this case, they simply compare their highest-bidders to see who wins, and each escrow company submits the required pre-payment to the others on behalf of their own winner.  In this way, a single owner emerges.

When this single owner is found, the escrow company (or companies) compute(s) the total of the bids to determine what portion of the final price each interested party will receive as compensation for their interest in the commons, by dividing that total by the interested party's bid.  The winning bidder then submits payment in full to his escrow company, and the escrow company divides the proceeds among the other bidders, and refunds their prepayments to them as well.  The entire Scotese Process goes into a public court of record so that everyone will know who the new owner of the commons is, and also see who "sold" their interest to that new owner.

Escrow companies in the synchronization process may find it worth their while to combine their efforts and normalize their processes and act as a single escrow company in this context.  There are several variables that escrow companies will need to specify in their public announcement of the Scotese Process, including the percentage of a price that must be prepaid to secure an interest, the deadline for bids, the definition of the commons to be privatized, and the fee they require for providing the escrow service (to be deducted from the final sale price before it is divided up among losing bidders).

The Scotese Process is something I invented but I have never seen it tried (beyond trivial examples in my own house).  I'm sure there are possibilities for failure, and if anyone can point them out so that I might revise the process to avoid them, that would be greatly appreciated.

Notes on the JavaScript Bitcoin wallet by pointbiz

Software is based on language.  The languages have definite meaning which can (normally) be constrained to produce predictable results when interpreted by a machine.  Conscious awareness is not required to use the language of software to turn input into output.  Hats off to Viktor Frankl for identifying conscious awareness (in human beings) as the place where we find freedom.

As anyone who has employed their conscious awareness to understand things knows, you can always go deeper into the meaning of language.  Software engineers necessarily do this in order to ply their trade.  How deep one has gone into the language they are using to program a machine varies greatly.  The notes I present below are intended for someone like me who has the same goal I had when I wrote them, and who had the same understanding I had when I wrote them.

Brett Veinotte of the School Sucks Project inspired me to realize that we are all creating content that has the potential to be everlasting.  The effects of our lives are everlasting and there's nothing we can do about that.  Some of us (me, for example) don't want to do anything about it.  We live honorably and wish our effects on the universe to last.  My future plans for this post are very vague.  I may update it from time to time, or I may leave it as is forever.

I read through this top hit for the Google search javascript array"primary types" to write this blog. In Javascript, there are three primary types from which everything else is built.  Object is not a primary type, but it is a fundamental concept in Javascript.  It is a collection of properties, each having a name (of primitive type String), and a value (of any primitive type, so String, Number, or Boolean, or a non-primitive type, like Object).  Several useful things in Javascript are Objects, and they are all duplicates of the basic Javascript Object, which provides them with some useful properties, like Prototype.

The first thing bitaddress.org's code does is add a property to the Prototype property of the Array Object (the Prototype property is, itself, an Object too).  The Array Object necessarily exists in all implementations of Javascript because that is one of the things that makes it Javascript.  However, some implementers (Microsoft) don't provide that Array Object with all the properties that the Javascript community likes to use.  They have to provide the Prototype property in order to call their language Javascript, but they don't have to give that Prototype a method called map.  And we like map.  It lets us do something to all the elements of an array.

The Prototype property is what gets duplicated into a new Object whenever a new instance is created, as in x = new Array(); or x = []; bitaddress.org's first task is to give all of the Array objects created that way a new function called map if if they won't already get one.  The implementation of map() is published at http://es5.github.com/#x15.4.4.19

The next task accomplished by the code is to ensure that there is a variable named Crypto which has a property named util.  If not, it creates an object named Crypto and assigns it as a property of an object named window which is assumed to exist (reasonable, since this Javascript is expected to run in a browser).

The implementation of SHA256 comes next and is assigned as a property to the Crypto object.  The property is named SHA256 and the function is short and sweet (calling another function which does the dirty work, _sha256).  The return value of that function uses the condition ? ifTrue : ifFalse operator twice in succession without parentheses.  The "Associativity" of this "Conditional operator" is right-to-left which means the last (right-most) one is evaluated before the one preceding it.  If that were not the case, there would be a point in this code at which the programmer was choosing between a byte array and a boolean, which is silly.

The longest line in the file I analyzed is image data at 181,786 characters.  A cursory review of this file will not identify the presence of '; [malicious code]; image +=' in the long lines contained by the templateArtisticHtml function definition.  For this reason I did some regex searches on the file.

I verified that the file contains only one line on which a single-quote follows a semicolon and it is good code.  I also verified that the 9 nine lines containing a double-quoted string of at least 100 characters and which have a semicolon somewhere after that all contain good code.

Knocking on the Mind

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis once suggested that his fellow doctors might be contributing to the death of newborn babies and their mothers.  This notion was denigrated and unpopular, as you can imagine, among the doctors with whom he brought it up.  Lest this letter get too long, I'll leave you to consider and/or research the rest of that story.  The story itself is in no way denigrated, but it isn't nearly as popular as I'd like it to be.  It is the story of a hero.

Florence Nightingale wrote a lot.  Some of her notions were denigrated and unpopular, but her father had encouraged her to study mathematics and writing.  In fact, her 1852 essay "Cassandra" and the Greek character from whom she took the title both touch on the denigration of women in general.  She asks, "Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these 3 - and a place in society where no one of the 3 can be exercised?"  Seven years later, after tending to wounded British soldiers in the Crimean war, she published Notes on Nursing, still highly respected today in the profession that she founded.

I hope this essay has helped make you feel that you're ready to entertain a notion which might save babies or found a whole new profession or do some other fantastic thing.  If someone asked you to read it, and you have found value in it, let that person know.  Give them a sign that you won't write them off for suggesting something as outlandish as "Doctors' hands can carry disease" or "Women can be valuable medical professionals."

Cassandra, by Florence Nightingale

[Full disclosure: My wife is a nurse.]

WHY HAVE WOMEN PASSION, intellect, moral activity—these 3—and a place in society where no one of the 3 can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy….

"Suffering, sad" female "humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say? …

When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind—with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them? …

Women often strive to live by intellect. The clear, brilliant, sharp radiance of intellect's moonlight rising upon such an expanse of snow is dreary, it is true, but some love its solemn desolation, its silence, its solitude — if they are but allowed to live in it; if they are not perpetually baulked and disappointed. But a woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her "duties," forbid it. Her "domestic duties," high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through) forbid it. What are these duties (or bad habits)?—Answering a multitude of letters which lead to nothing, from her so-called friends—keeping herself up to the level of the world that she may furnish her quota of amusement at the breakfast-table; driving out her company in the carriage. And all these things are exacted from her by her family which, if she is good and affectionate, will have more influence with her than the world.

What wonder if, wearied out, sick at heart with hope deferred, the springs of will broken, not seeing clearly where her duties lies, she abandons intellect as a vocation and takes it only, as we use the moon, by glimpses through her tight-closed window-shutters?

The family? It is too narrow a field for the development of an immortal spirit, be that spirit male or female. The chances are a thousand to one that, in that small sphere, the task for which that immortal spirit is destined by the qualities and the gifts which its Creator has placed within it, will not be found….

At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this? We go somewhere where we are not wanted and where we don't want to go. What else is conventional life? Passivity when we want to be active. So many hours spent every day in passively doing what conventional life tells us, when we would so gladly be at work.

And it is a wonder that all individual life is extinguished?

Women dream of a great sphere of steady, not sketchy benevolence, of moral activity, for which they would fain to be trained and fitted, instead of working in the dark, neither knowing nor registering whither their steps lead, whether farther from or nearer to the aim….

How different would be the heart for the work, and how different would be the success, if we learnt our work as a serious study, and followed it out steadily as a profession! …

In every dream of the life of intelligence or that of activity, women are accompanied by a phantom—the phantom of sympathy, guiding, lighting the way—even if they do not marry. Some few sacrifice marriage, because they must sacrifice all other life if they accept that. That man and woman have an equality of duties and rights is accepted by woman even less than by man. Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband; she fills up and performs the subordinate parts in it. But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in 9 cases out of ten. Some few, like Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Chisholm, Mrs. Fry, have not done so; but these are exceptions. The fact is that woman has so seldom any vocation of her own, that it does not much signify; she has none to renounce. A man gains everything by marriage: he gains a "helpmate," but a woman does not.

The intercourse of a man and woman—how frivolous, how unworthy it is! Can we call that the true vocation of woman—her high career? Look round at the marriages which you know. The true marriage—the noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect union—probably does not exist at present upon earth….

And then it is thought pretty to say that "Women have no passion." If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event in their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a women's life as it is now….

Women dream until they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone and they cannot recall them. And they are left without the food either of reality or of hope….

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of man, raised them by this sympathy, to be ministers of God. He gave them moral authority. But the Age, the World, Humanity must give them the means to exercise this moral activity, must give them intellectual cultivation, spheres of action….

The ideal life is passed in noble schemes of good consecutively followed up, of devotion to a great object, of sympathy given and received for high ideas and generous feelings. The actual life is passed in sympathy given and received for a dinner, a party, a piece of furniture, a house built or a garden laid out well, in devotion to your guests—a too real devotion, for it implies that all of your time—in schemes of schooling for the poor, which you follow up perhaps in an odd quarter of an hour, between luncheon and driving out in the carriage—broth and dripping are included in the plan—and the rest of your time goes in ordering the dinner, hunting for a governess for your children, and sending pheasants and apples to your poorer relations. Is there anything in this life which can be called an Incarnation of the ideal life within? …

Was Christ a complainer against the world? … Christ, if He had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer.