Monarchist propaganda

I see the oddest things doing microtransactions for bitcoins. CoinTube kicked up this gem of Thai monarchist propaganda overnight

Why did this get put up on CoinTube, which is basically a traffic generation site? This is on the broadest of broad distributions. Is it poor marketing or is there a big bitcoin constituency in Thailand?

In any case it's well done and very sentimental.

Totalitarian Capitalism

I've been pondering Pope Francis' recent writings and have come to certain conclusions about some serious miscommunication regarding what the Pope is doing. Contrary to a lot of the Francis miscommunication corpus, I don't think that this is the Pope's fault.

Capitalism is not, properly speaking, a totalitarian system. It requires a separate moral system, a guide to provide purpose to all the buying and selling. It can fit to a wide variety of moral systems which is a good reason that capitalism ends up being global.

Capitalism's limits to economic acts create a space for morality to survive and thrive and are natural fetters to the system. These are the fetters that would interest a churchman. Unfettered or unregulated capitalism is totalitarian. If you're worshipping mammon. If you find value only in your bank account, if there is no other system that informs your purchases and your production, then you have a serious problem. The fetters of government regulation in the economic sphere are irrelevant to Pope Francis because he's not a politician and not an economist. He has a different scope for his job and vocation.

This is a virtue problem and one that has real world, practical effects. The difference in the education levels in virtue in the American colonies at the start of its revolution and Bourbon France at the start of its revolution are a major factor in why the former succeeded and the latter was ultimately a failure that died in the terror.

Pope Francis' gig is ultimately to inculcate virtue and prepare us for Heaven. Occasionally this means he falls into the jargon of his profession which, like all professional jargon, is sometimes confusing because in different professions, the terms have different meanings.

cross post: Chicago Boyz

America's government system is generally unknown

Government in the US is not a hierarchical endeavor entirely. General purpose governments are closer to that but special purpose governments are not really hierarchical at all. And you can owe a fine or go to jail for violating a special purpose government rule just as easily as for a general purpose government.

The judge sitting on the case will piously intone "ignorance of the law is no excuse" when we're talking about a situation where virtually everybody is ignorant. It's a system that cannot survive forever as a rule of law republic and it's visibly breaking down without the tools necessary to take things back under control.

If you know all the governments, you can ask important followup questions like:
How do I get in touch with them?
What do these people do?
Are they doing it well?
Are they doing things that they shouldn't be doing at all?

My county actually runs an amusement park. I would be fairly surprised if a majority knew that or supported the idea. Government is filled with situations like that where they are doing things that simply don't come to the attention of the majority.

On a larger level, the US has a communist style production system with respect to class I pharmaceuticals. To produce them, you need to get a special license from the Attorney General of the US and production quotas are published yearly just like the Soviets did. I would be shocked if 10% of america knew it or understood it and most would not support it.

Given that we have tens of thousands of governments (at the very least) and for a wide majority of US citizens we generally do not even know the names of all of them that claim jurisdiction over where we live, work, and travel on a daily basis, it's inescapable. We don't understand our own governments and have no practical way to escape a rational ignorance of the law.

Registering for Technorati

I thought I'd get a bit more serious about traffic and register this blog with Technorati. Apparently they have now have a 'claim code' process and here's my code ( BHS828DANBM4 ). Now off to do more paperwork.

 Update: "Dec 03, 2013. We are evaluating your claim. You will receive email when review is complete, usually between 24-72 hours."
 Update II: "Dec 03, 2013. We have successfully crawled your blog and found the claim token, and your claim is now awaiting final review. You may now remove the claim token from your feed."
Update III: Technorati has finally approved the site on 12/13/2013, 10 days wait for final approval.

Enriching the commons

Ubiquity generally happens when there's little to no friction in getting something. Go look up at the moon. All the kids are doing it. Ubiquity as a business goal enhances the commons because taking things out of the commons creates friction

There used to be very few resources that were truly scalable at no cost, resources where we didn't need to use money or queues to limit who would use them. In the digital world, that number keeps skyrocketing. It doesn't cost a cent to allow more people to look at the moon, just as it's free for one more person to read this blog.

Commons resources are a major factor in enabling the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The digital world is where we are creating the most modern resources that are available in the commons because there are sound business reasons to create a frictionless experience. It's almost free to get people in the door and the presence of free riders doesn't generally degrade the experience of the paying customers, so why not just let everybody in. The cost of excluding the poor exceeds the benefit.

Bitcoin libel from the Tea Party Economist

Normally I like Gary North and try to make the time to read his tea party economist piece every time it hits my email box. Not this time though as he has a bit of a bait and switch article about bitcoins. Titled "Bitcoins: The Second Biggest Ponzi Scheme in History", he alleges a number of facts that simply aren't true. And of the facts he uses that are true, none of them make bitcoin a ponzi scheme.

Bitcoin has a known dynamic. There were a few coins at the beginning, mining commenced and as new coins are discovered, whoever registers the discovery to the network first gets the coins. There is a known, maximum number of coins. BTC is divided down to 8 decimal places. There is nothing preventing redenomination to even further levels of divisions so that BTC remains a practical solution for microtransaction payments. It's actually not that hard or expensive to switch over though it is certainly not necessary today.

My opinion is that BTC will form part of a stable of different alternative money forms that each fulfill different roles and that we're going to end up managing our cash as we manage our investments. Eventually BTC will die, but I see a death that is more like the Deutsche Mark than one like the Zimbabwean Dollar.

Despoliation of the poor

Pope Francis' supposed anti-capitalism has been exaggerated but what is he going on about with this poor stuff? Perhaps, in part, it's something like this.

Hawaii's five-term state rep Tom Brower (D) finds carts that the homeless either find or take from stores and removes their belongings and breaks the carts with a sledge hammer. If it's convenient enough, he'll return a store's cart but most of the time he's just breaking stuff. These carts retail between $150-$200 and according to the video, he's destroyed about 30 of them, for a property destruction spree of $4500-$6000. I do not expect a prosecution any time soon.

This isn't compassion, love, or solidarity. Then again, it's not capitalism either. The store owners are the only capitalist players in this story. Apparently they have tolerated "shrinkage" in their cart stock and don't even file police reports when their carts go missing.

Rep. Brower is a funny sort of 21st century Javert but he retains all the charm of the original.