July 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Anarcho-capitalism as a failed science experiment
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

Like Marxism, Freudian psychology and String Theory. Lakatos proposed that one can evaluate competing theories of rationality by asking how well they enable one to reconstruct the history of science (whether it be mathematics or empirical science). The thought is that if your philosophy of science, or theory of scientific rationality, deems most of “great science” irrational, then something is wrong with it. Contrariwise, the more of the history of “great science” your theory of rationality deems rational, the better that theory is. Lakatos probably subscribed to the Popperian thesis that history in the large is systematically unpredictable. In which case there could not be a genuinely progressive programme which foretold the fate of capitalism. At best you could have a conditional theory, such as Piketty’s, which says that under capitalism, inequality is likely to grow—unless something unexpected happens or unless we decide to do something about it.

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Mercy for Bill Gates
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

CJ - if you're listening - he was your first pick ( Nicely done btw. Like Pike's choice in ' The Wild Bunch ' ) and now, after decades as a fugitive from Bounty Law justice, he's throwing in the fiscal towel. I'm inclined to show mercy - especially if he shunts a billion each to Jimbo, yourself and Moi. And the more of us that do this the more likely this entry is removed. https://stiffs.com/celebrity/billgates

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Re: “Anarcho capitalism” is not anarchism.
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

With enemies like Murray Rothbard anarchism doesn't need friends. He even did us the favor before he died as one of the worlds most famous ' Anarcho-capitalists ' to state how different these alleged 'Libertarians' were from actually existing anarchists . . . Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Ukraine anarchists, Spanish anarchists, etc Rightwing Libertarians know so much about economic nonsense from constant practice. The pursuit of Austrianism beyond the point of sanity. And here's the thing . . .despite constant recent efforts - Mongo's last gasp, REASON mag's, Btc Maxi's, etc - the crypto-currency explosion is now closer to a trad progressive, small 'l' leftist, anarchist narrative than any Randite, Paultard, Narco-terrorist, serial-rapists ' Anarchopulco' cliff-diving gibberish. For example - ' Everyone a remailer ' and ' Everyone a Mint ' has become totally uncontroversial since 2007. We are one viral post away from ' Everyone an assassin ' ushering in the cryptoanarchist millennium. Now no small ' r' rightwinger has to die - but they do have to accept the new system. So don't be the last one to die in ' a quiet day on the Western Front ' Don't be the last Gramps style moron to die for a mistake.

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Backstabber front-stabbed
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

Liquid hasn’t really taken off. The majority of Liquid blocks have on average one transaction: the miner paying for the privilege of verifying the block. The failure resulted from “a lack of understanding of humans,” said Wall. He added that Liquid’s developers, blinded by allegiance to Bitcoin, failed to account for such fripperies as user experience and market-product fit. “You need to understand humans to understand why Liquid is not appealing. Blockstream care only about their own anal arguments, which is not how you make an impact on the world.” https://decrypt.co/105215/bitcoin-maximalism-turns-on-nic-carter Reposts not stabs in the dark

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BleepingComputer: Tor Browser now bypasses internet censorship automatically
by jim bell 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

BleepingComputer: Tor Browser now bypasses internet censorship automatically. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tor-browser-now-bypasses-int… The Tor Project team has announced the release of Tor Browser 11.5, a major release that brings new features to help users fight censorship easier. The Tor Browser has been created specifically for accessing sites through The Onion Router (Tor) network to offer users anonymity and privacy when accessing information on the internet.It achieves this by routing traffic through nodes on the network and encrypting it at every step. The connection reaches the destination through an exit node that is used to relay the information back to the user. Auto block bypassing The updates in Tor Browser 11.5 focus on circumventing censorship, a process that started a year ago in version 10.5 with improving the Tor connection experience. In the new version, users no longer have to manually try out bridge configurations to unblock Tor. Tor Browser version 11.5 comes with a new feature called “Connection Assist”, which assigns automatically the bridge configuration known to work best for the user’s location. “Connection Assist works by looking up and downloading an up-to-date list of country-specific options to try using your location (with your consent),” explains the release announcement.

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[ot][spam][crazy] journal: doubly append-only balanced trees
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

I remember there's an old mainstream project that does this, but I don't remember what it is off hand very well. Anyway it basically just used whatever the clearest approach was. First update is first root. Second update makes two leaves. The new root goes in the second update, with both leaves its children. Third update makes a third leaf and third root. The tree is binary and the third leaf has a sibling that is waiting for the 4th update. There is an internode between the third leaf and the third root that is the parent of the 4th root. With the original system, I believe this internode can be considered implicit, since everything is always a balanced binary tree. Hence, only the data and leaf index need be stored via the storage medium, in the extreme. Compare my approach. Ideally I would make the same simple balanced trees, but maybe with more internode information since leaves are not always at the end. We could set a norm for implicit internode information, if not provided, to optimize append-only cases further. Let's see if I can stabilize this in my mind a little ... in the previous way, a binary tree is built up from one side to the other, like a card tower. For updates that are two powers, a new root is made: like a new row of cards except in a hierarchical binary way. First one node. Then three. Then seven: two threes with a seventh as the root. That third root looks helpful for simple description. When the 4th node is added, it is basically saying there is a new root with 1 subtree and 1 leaf as children: anything with comparable topology or what it. Then the 5th node becomes a sibling to the 4th. What data would be in a 5th update?

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Weak and worthless anarcho-capitalism can't compete
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

Armed only with a pacifist principle and some cod-economics how does the average Ancap propose to resist anarcho-anarchists diluting out their entire stake in crypto? At only one or two globalized trillion already this is already becoming an impossible task. Imagine how much more shoring up of the lunar-right narrative will be required as billions of new, basically lefty, arrivals flood in! Its ridiculous to resist - Ancaps are simply not competitive in the ideology stakes. They only got as far as they ever did by leeching off the good name of anarchism. Move over Rover - let Proudhon take over.

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The beautiful Gramps anarchist
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age <<< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Tucker Reposts etc - GIGO!

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Networked people-power Sri-Lanka style
by professor rat 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

Fed up with seeing his community hit by power cuts, inflation, and shortages of essentials such as food, fuel, and cooking oil, Mr Karunaratne put out a call on social media. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-17/sri-lanka-protests-started-in-a-tent…

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Cryptocurrency: Insolvent Nations Mired In Debt
by grarpamp 16 Jul '22

16 Jul '22

https://usdebtclock.org/ The Only Real Solution Is Default http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-only-real-solution-is-defa… https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay12/EU-neocolonial5-12.html The destruction of 'phantom wealth' via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance. The notion that the world could always borrow more money as long as interest rates were near-zero was never sustainable. It was always an unsustainable artifice that we could keep borrowing ever larger sums from the future as long as the interest payments kept dropping. The only real solution to over-indebtedness since the beginning of finance is default. There are pretty names for variations on default that sound much less gut-wrenching--debt jubilees, refinancing, etc.-- but the bottom line is the debts that can't be paid won't be paid and whomever owns the debt as an asset absorbs the loss. Every default is a debt jubilee for the borrower. Whether the default is informal or formalized in bankruptcy, the debt payments are no longer being paid to the lender / owner of the debt. Every debt jubilee is a default that forces the owner of the debt to write the value down to zero and absorb the loss. The jubilation of the owner of the debt is rather muted unless the state swoops in and passes the losses onto the taxpayers via bailouts / transferring the losses to the public's balance sheet. Every default is a refinancing--to zero. We've refinanced the debt so the borrower pays zero and the value of the loan / debt is now zero. Very few ordinary households own other people's debts as assets. It's the wealthy few who own most of the student loans, vehicle loans, mortgages, government and corporation bonds, etc. Yes, ordinary households may own other people's debts through pension plans or ownership of mutual funds, but by and large debt is a favored asset of the rentier class, i.e. the wealthiest few. We're constantly told that mass defaults would destroy the economy, but this is flim-flam: mass defaults would destroy much of the wealth of the rentier class which has been greatly enriched by the global expansion of debt, while freeing the debtors of their obligations. Recall that debt is the transfer of income from the borrower to the owner of the debt. Borrowing money is like every other form of consumption: when it's cheap and abundant, we over-indulge. The costs are only apparent after the banquet has been cleared. The illusion that the global economy could effortlessly add trillions in debt to fund living large forever was based on a brief historical anomaly of zero interest rates enabled by low inflation. There's a long lag between the vast expansion of debt / consumption and the eventual consequences on supply, demand, risk and price discovery. The lag time is up and now the consequences are finally visible: the tide of rapid growth in consumption and income required to fund ever-greater burdens of debt has ebbed, and so the global burden of debt--$300 trillion or so-- is no longer sustainable / payable. The favored solutions of the state--printing money or transferring the losses to the public--are no longer viable. Now that inflation has emerged from its slumber, printing trillions to bail out the wealthy is no longer an option. The public, so easily conned into accepting the bailout of the wealthy in 2008, has wised up and so that particular con won't work again. ("Bail out the super-wealthy now or your ATM machine will stop working!" Uh, right.) The state is the protector of the wealthy, and so defaults that actually impact the wealthy are anathema. The wealthy will demand the state absorb their losses (recall that profits are private, losses are socialized) The only equitable solution is to force the losses on those who bought the debt as a rentier income stream. I've been exploring the Core-Periphery dynamic for a decade. ( The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model May 24, 2012). This dynamic plays out in a number of ways on a number of levels. Defaults will play out along the lines of Core-Periphery asymmetries. Some states will be able to "print their way out of default" but most will not, as unrestrained printing of money on such a vast scale would devalue the currency, triggering an even more destructive systemic default. Debt is a double-edged form of power. Being able to borrow and spend huge sums is an absolutely fabulous way to expand corruption, bribes, exploitation of the powerless, bridges to nowhere and mindless over-consumption, but the habits formed by mindless expansion of debt to fund soaring wealth inequality don't serve the indebted entities very well when default removes borrowing as a way to pay and play. Living within one's means--i.e. net income--is the only solution there has ever been to the end-game of over-indebtedness, i.e. default. Those with relatively secure, diversified net incomes (i.e. the Core) will do much better than those with unstable, limited income. The destruction of phantom wealth via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance. Let's guess that a bare minimum of $100 trillion of the $300 trillion mountain of global debt will default far sooner than most expect. The only question is who will absorb the $100 trillion in losses. Choose wisely, as defaults of debt that are transferred to the public end up bringing down the entire system via political overthrow or currency collapse.

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