Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Elvis » Thu Jan 21, 2021 7:19 pm

Now's the time to tell your elected policy makers what you want and don't want. I know it's an old-fashioned idea, but they do make the policies.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby dada » Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:10 pm

I want a pony.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Agent Orange Cooper » Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:59 pm

Elvis » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:39 am wrote:Important to the polity, to The People, to us—whose lives should never be forced to depend on profit-seeking money lenders—i.e. money creators.


Hence, Bitcoin.
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Elvis » Sat Jan 23, 2021 9:43 pm

Developments:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-cent ... t-platform
The ‘central bank of central banks’ is building a CBDC settlement platform

The Bank of International Settlements has outlined plans to embark on a variety of CBDC trials worldwide this year.

CBDC research has been announced as a top priority for the Bank for International Settlements’ Innovation Hub, or BISIH, in 2021.

According to its annual work program, BISIH, plans to “explore the feasibility of faster and cheaper cross-border payments” using central bank digital currencies. BISIH also stated it will explore prototypes of “tiered retail CBDC distribution architectures” and distributed ledgers to issue “tokenized green bonds to retail investors.”

The BIS initiatives will be driven by the Innovation Hub Centres in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Switzerland — which have been established in conjunction with local central banks.

The BISIH center in Singapore has been tasked with building an “international settlement platform” on which regulated banks and payment firms can settle transactions using different CBDCs.

The Hong Kong center will work on the green bond tokenization project, in addition to building a bridge to facilitate foreign exchange transactions using CBDCs, and exploring different models for stablecoin issuance.

BISIH’s Swiss center has already completed two proofs-of-concept linking existing payment systems to trial settling tokenized assets using wholesale CBDC through its “Project Helvetia” initiative.

BISIH head, Benoît Cœuré, said:

“This work programme shows our commitment to exploring in the most practical ways how best to harness technological change for the benefit of central banks and create public goods to support the global financial system.”


In November, BIS recommended “embedded” reporting requirements for prospective stablecoin issuers, advocating for automated data sharing processes between issuers and regulators.



BIS site:

https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d193.htm

Enhancing cross-border payments: building blocks of a global roadmap
Stage 2 report to the G20


CPMI Papers | No 193 | 13 July 2020
PDF full text (787kb) | 11 pages

The G20 has made enhancing cross-border payments a priority during the 2020 Saudi Arabian Presidency. Faster, cheaper, more transparent and more inclusive cross-border payment services would deliver widespread benefits for citizens and economies worldwide, supporting economic growth, international trade, global development and financial inclusion.

This CPMI report, and its accompanying technical background report, represent the output of Stage 2 of the three-stage process coordinated by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to develop a global roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. It identifies 19 "building blocks" where further joint public and private sector work could enhance cross-border payments, and supports a global approach to addressing the underlying frictions identified in the Stage 1 report published by the FSB.

The 19 building blocks are arranged into five focus areas, four of which (focus areas A to D) seek to enhance the existing payments ecosystem, while focus area E is more exploratory and covers emerging payment infrastructures and arrangements. The report concludes with a set of considerations around these building blocks that support the Stage 3 work to develop the roadmap.



Enhancing cross-border payments: building blocks of a global roadmap (00:03:56)
Sir Jon Cunliffe, Chair of the CPMI and Deputy Governor, Bank of England

Embedded video seems to display an error; URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_sgDUs7TNQ





Related Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Arturo_P_A/status/1 ... 4329568260


Don't ask me to explain any of this! :starz: Hopefully others can illuminate.
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Elvis » Sat Jan 23, 2021 9:48 pm

Agent Orange Cooper » Sat Jan 23, 2021 5:59 pm wrote:
Elvis » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:39 am wrote:Important to the polity, to The People, to us—whose lives should never be forced to depend on profit-seeking money lenders—i.e. money creators.


Hence, Bitcoin.


Bitcoin is private actors. The public US govt is not profit-seeking; it pays interest to the private sector.

I was wondering: Hypothetically, can I borrow Bitcoin from someone? At what interest rate? Curious how people would acquire bitcoin to, say, finance a business.
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Pony Utopia NOW!

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jan 25, 2021 5:58 am

Belligerent Savant » Sun Jan 24, 2021 8:59 pm wrote:.

Elvis » Thu Jan 21, 2021 6:19 pm wrote:Now's the time to tell your elected policy makers what you want and don't want. I know it's an old-fashioned idea, but they do make the policies.



I don't know why people think saying "ponies" is a killer argument for invalidating supposedly naive or utopian ideas.

Let's pretend that almost everyone actually wanted a pony (they don't) and that a sufficient social and political consensus existed to organize the political economy so as to achieve this goal. If so, providing universal ponies would be easier to do than maintaining the current level of U.S. beef production.

Currently a population of 94 million beef cattle are being maintained in the territory of the U.S. (This does not include dairy cattle, which total about one-third the number of beef cattle.) This stock is sufficient to provide for a per-capita beef consumption of 57 pounds per year,* even while maintaining the cattle population year-on-year. That is what enough people want that it is our actual reality.

A full-grown cow, on average, requires six times more feed, and drinks at least three times more water, than a full-grown horse. That means a population of 300 million horses would consume the same amount of water and 1/2 the feed required by the current beef-cattle population -- presumably a lot less if they were not thoroughbreds but smaller breeds. The resources going into providing the other half of the feed currently required for beef cattle (the land, the water, the energy inputs for grain where that is used instead of grass) could be used instead to produce plant food for humans sufficient to replace the calories and nutritients humans get from the beef, probably several times over.**

So the supposedly impossible utopia of quasi-universal ponies is actually less radical a demand than that of every single person, child and adult, eating 228 quarter-pounders a year, which approximates the current existing reality. And since most people eat less beef than the average, and since beef is relatively affordable, I'm going to presume at least 90 percent of the people living in the United States are eating as much beef as they please.

Now I do not support raising the equine population necessary for quasi-universal ponies as a worthy and pressing aim for society. I also do not believe it is something that can be sustained forever. I am merely establishing that it would be no more ridiculous or less sustainable -- clearly, it would be more sustainable -- than what we already have with quasi-universal beef, if we were willing to trade one for the other.

Imagine a religious awakening fully captured the hearts and minds of 80-90% of the U.S. population in the same way that consumerism and love of beef have done. The dogma of this new church abjures beef as the worst sin, while demanding that every individual achieve enlightenment and karmic balance through the maintenance and personal worship of one horse each. The horses would be kept in their own semi-free herds, overseen by a few million cowboys paid well and trained at cowboy universities. Every person would be expected to perform an annual hajj to see their horse, and would also be allowed to ride an unlimited amount if they paid an affordable fee for it.

This sounds totally ridiculous, yet technically it could be achieved within less than a decade (during which there would be an incredible surplus of beef as the cattle population was replaced by equines, for which the Almighty Horse God Edward would make a dispensation) and then maintained (including the hajj part) for less of a cost in land, resources, energy and eco-impacts than demanded by the present-day beefeaters-industrial complex.

So really the far more utopian idea than ponies for all would be for enough people to imagine and desire and and agree on and work for a different society than the one we have.

Notes

* For a population of est. 340 million that is 9.7 million tons, compared to net imports in 2016 of 200,000 tons of beef on 700,000 in exports and 900,000 in imports. Point being: 98% of consumption is domestically produced -- though the correct word is slaughtered -- so all numbers above stand as good approximations toward making the point that universal ponies are easier to achieve (if this was desired by a societal consensus) than the real-existing beefeaters-industrial complex.

** Each calorie of beef requires 10-25 calories of feed to produce, depending on whether one estimates live weight or edible weight. And that's not getting into the the overall caloric equivalent of fuel energy used in these processes, or even the fuel-energy cost in calories of the feed, since much of the feeding nowadays is no longer done on grassland but in factory farms using grain.

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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Belligerent Savant » Mon Jan 25, 2021 2:19 pm

.

That reads like biting satire. Is it?

...invalidating supposedly utopian ideas.


Wait: "utopian ideas" are still a thing, in this climate?

As I see it, the options available for the near/mid-term (assuming The People remain largely subservient), based on the limited information at our disposal at this point, appear to be:

1. Continued incremental uptick of 'soft fascism' and/or related hyper-capitalist exploits; or
2. Variations of dystopian 'Great Reset'/4th Industrial Revolution adjustments.

'Utopia' may be achievable among certain communities or at the individual level, either as a state of mind, or perhaps via a gathering of like-minded individuals working together on behalf of a community (an 'agrihood' of sorts, is the way I usually visialize it), decoupled from electronic means of surveillance. I don't see this happening large-scale.

But this is all merely my opinion...
Image

Corralling this back (see what I did there? 'corral', as an homage to cows and ponies) to the topic of the would-be 'Great Reset', below is an excerpt from a previously-shared article that touches on the dystopian options that may be* in store for us.

*depending on a number of factors, including collective refusal to subscribe.

[embedded links available at source]

...

The entire global economy is teetering on collapse. And this was intentional. This is because of governmental actions, not because of a virus.

Of course, western economies have been teetering since 2008, if not before.

I’m not an economist, but this is the point where one must look at “The Great Reset”.

Most of you have heard of it, its been on the cover of TIME magazine, and that photo of Klaus Schwab and his Vulcan unitard suit has cropped up across all social media platforms. The short version (for a long and exhaustive and insightful version see Cory Morningstar here) is that Schwab and his friends at the World Economic Forum have this idea, clothed in perfect green attire, to “reset” the economies of the West (or of the world).

Image

The word ‘reset’ is interesting. Who came up with that I wonder? It feels very computer-ish and futuristic, and optimistic! And while much is made of certain aspects (natural capital, social capital, a new deal for nature, social impact bonds, etc) the reality is that the capitalist system, in the hands of the richest at any given moment (or we can say the ruling class), drive corrections to the market. This helps consolidate wealth at the top, or transfer more to the top.


And that is what this is, with the difference being that the plan is more about the destruction of markets, the destruction of competition, and the hyper monopolization of nearly everything. It entails a good deal of AI fantasy, but it also means a digitalization of currency (so no grey economy, no borrowing from friends, no under the table work) and a massive increase in surveillance and tracking. All of this is helped by the lockdown policies, the so-called ‘Reset’ would likely be stillborn if not for the reaction to Covid.


...

...I will only say here that all of the faces fronting for the Green New Deal, and the Reset, are wealthy, from lineages of extreme wealth and position. Today’s theme is ‘class’.

I can tell you only what I think Schwab and his colleagues want from this project. Let’s look at what is not going to return to normal after the lockdown.

Commercial airlines are going bust, and those that are still alive have drastically cut routes and have limited their service. The days of cheap flights to warm beaches is gone, I suspect, for good. Vacations will be limited and travel limited (well, unless you are very rich like Gates and Schwab and Ms von der Leyen and Prince Charles and Jeff Bezos et al).

There are now sixty million people out of work in the U.S. The inevitability of the Universal Basic Income is pretty clear. The question is how much does one mean by basic?

Here I think one might do a quick history overview of apartheid South Africa, of the sugar plantations of the 18th century in the Caribbean or, well, the Nazi work camp system. The new capitalism that is imagined (and look, feel free to call it post-capitalism , or woke feudalism or whateverthefuckever you want) has more in common with the aforementioned systems of servitude and slavery than it does with anything else. It is class struggle, as Marx emphasized. Jobs won’t be coming back. There will be a gigantic surplus population.

And already one sees the gradual coalescing of a new caste system. People deemed ‘important’ are allowed to go places and few questions are asked if they violate social distancing or mask wearing. The new social apartheid, which began as a pseudoscientific method for disease control, has now, in the brief span of a year, become a defacto class segregation. The rich are exempt. Here is an article from the New York Post (Aug 15th):

Meanwhile, billionaire David Geffen has been hanging on his yacht, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are cruising Greece in another yacht after receiving “honorary” citizenship, Facebook overlord Mark Zuckerberg has been trolling the waters off Hawaii in a $12,000 surfboard, Jeff Bezos and his lady friend have been (multiple) house-hunting, buying up millions of dollars in property in Los Angeles to build a compound while traveling via private jet to several cities around the country, former Mayor Bloomberg splashed out $45 million on a Colorado compound (joining a host of other billionaires buying in that state as well as Montana and Wyoming); and others are spending millions to buy citizenship in “safe” countries like New Zealand.


That ‘compound’ remark is worth noting. For this is the future for much of America. Gated compounds for the aristos and the dirty, squalid, infected world for the proles. And look, gated communities with private security have been in existence for forty years. Only now the separation has deeper implications.

Of course, football can continue in both the US and UK, though basketball has been more strictly limited (the perception is, of course, that basketball is an urban game and in a league over 70% black).

It is amazing how these strictly-enforced behavioural rules are relaxed for the amusements of the court. The rich can pretty much do whatever they want. Literally none of the rules apply to them. There is a middle tier of affluent, those deemed necessary, for the moment anyway, who get to move around more easily. For the millions now without income the restrictions will be quite acute.

So, back to the Reset for a moment. I keep returning to the slave economies of times past because this is increasingly what capitalism has been trending toward. The sugar plantations of the Caribbean used slave labour. Imported from Africa. They sold that raw product in markets of the metropole, to world markets. But on the plantation only master and slave relations existed. And this is, in one sense, what is being normalized today. Slave relations. And like the gulf Monarchies who use ‘guest’ workers (slaves, literally), Americans are close already to being guest workers in their own country.

And like the Apartheid laws in South Africa, certain castes (replacing race in this case) cannot go to the private beach of Mark Zukerberg. Or these days, often, any beach at all.

It’s worth noting that the old 19th Century industrialist tycoons eventually became huge philanthropists. Carnegie, Mellon, Peabody, Rockefeller even. They endowed education, built libraries and hospitals. Today’s tycoons create deceptive Green projects that are really just more wealth-amassing schemes to displace indigenous people, steal land and property, and help sell and normalize the police state.

Students throughout California are now stuck at home in hot, crowded rooms that occasionally fill with wildfire smoke. 19% of these students are English language learners and almost 13% of them have disabilities. Every day on Zoom they fall more and more behind both academically and socially. In Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district, students are receiving 90-170 minutes of daily live instruction (depending on their age), after which they are expected to do independent work. Compared to the traditional six or seven-hour school day, online education is laughably inadequate. In real time, teachers and families are watching important developmental windows close for vulnerable children. Meanwhile the California Democratic Party and its affiliates tout virtual schooling as a solution for mitigating COVID-19 transmission”
-- Alex Gutentag (The Bellows)


Gutentag also notes that the California governor sends his kids to a private school with in-person learning. Caste.

Not to mention that many children in the U.S. now live in highly-stressed homes. Over forty million people are at risk of eviction because of unpaid back rent. None of these homes can afford adequate food. They certainly cannot afford health care.

What happens when a child gets sick in today’s America? I suspect for hundreds of thousands they will, at best, get inconsistent attention from volunteer medical workers — unless there is a lockdown in effect. Then they get nothing.

As I say, this brutal reorganization of the economy bears no small similarity to a slave economy — but it is being sold to the public by pretending it is this new, technology-driven Reset. (Own nothing and be happy).

What exactly does the government plan to do with those sixty million unemployed Americans? What does the UK plan? or Germany or France? Or anywhere? The stimulus package went mostly to big corporations. And media and state propaganda continue to provide endless distractions (see assault on the Capitol, and anything to do with Trump).

There is a clear belief in and emphasis on technology in all this. On AI and robotics and transhumanism (sic). This belief in AI to solve almost everything is reaching levels of delusion that many people, even critics of the Reset, seem to ignore.

So how is it that people have so passively surrendered their rights? The answer is complex.

First, the idea of cooperation and grass roots organizing have been relentlessly disparaged in the media for decades. When unions were effectively destroyed under Reagan, along with them went the last vestiges of collectivity. Hollywood has always made films about individual triumph, almost never about revolutionary organizing. I think a large number of people today, even those skeptical, suffer from a kind of inertia. And this too has been built into the system. And it may well be an aspect of screen habituation.

But before that, people are afraid. The unseen enemy, the invisible virus, the plague, an enemy that brings fevers and suffering, sickness and death. But that is only a part of the problem. The Reset is presenting a future of total control for the ruling class.

Why would anyone support this madness? Well, first, because they are being sold on the idea that it’s green, and that THEY, themselves, will be in control. Sort of. And second, they have limited options.

In a way the long shadow of the Reagan years are evident here. The destruction of unions, coupled with the loss of real public education, has allowed for the rootless, lonely and isolated ‘individual’ of contemporary America. And the utter absence of a real leftist party.

But it’s true for much of Europe, too. Here in Norway the wearing of masks is prevalent in ‘high risk’ red zones. And one still can’t drive across the border to Sweden. I see enormous stress indicators in children. Even in my children. And they are young. Nobody feels happy. Isolation does not promote happiness.

Still, how likely is it that this Reset works? I think this question is ignored somewhat and therefore we need to ask ‘for whom does it work’? While there has been enormous amounts of great stuff written about Schwab and the WEF I must digress a moment (although its not really a digression, but only appears to be):

There is a basic problem with AI, deep learning, and natural language and, while it is about language, it applies to other fields as well. This is the Frame problem. And the Frame problem is intwined with the problem of time.

NOTE: The Frame problem “is the challenge of representing the effects of action in logic without having to represent explicitly a large number of intuitively obvious non-effects. But to many philosophers, the AI researchers’ frame problem is suggestive of wider epistemological issues.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – ed.


The Frame problem is about relevance, and that the outlier issues, while statistically rare, are actually what distinguish ‘smart’ people from ‘not smart’ people. Machine learning, AI, can do a lot of things, but to over-applaud its achievements without admitting its profound limitations is going to lead to some catastrophic mistakes and, no doubt, human tragedies.

...

The ruling class anywhere is exempted in all such examples. The majority of humans will be treated as rats in a lab test. Not even rats, but toys. In other words, highly, if not totally, expendable.

But the problems with the Reset, and with all of the Green New Deal projects, are that they operate in a computer model-based world that is rather significantly divorced from real life, and certainly, intentionally, disregards class (and caste).

There are also new ideas like ‘human capital bonds’. It sounds complex but this is just a more draconian loan arrangement where, if you default, for example while going to medical school, even if you graduate you wont be allowed to practice. Everything in this new economy gives people less power and less autonomy.

The issues with all AI and with the advanced technology praised by the Reset are philosophical more than scientific. Part of the problem is that the real world is enormously complex. Like weather prediction, anything more than six or seven days out is all but impossible. There are too many unknown factors and variables. This truth can be extrapolated to just about any real world problem. But for all the growing skepticism about AI, the proponents (who know these problems) continue to propagandize the benefits and the infinite possibilities of an AI-dominated future.

The most absurd are the transhumanists. Given how little is actually known about consciousness, and considering that all AI is just math, it seems almost infantile to think we are going to learn better with implants, or work more efficiently. Alongside that is the issue of prediction. Perhaps this was built into the Enlightenment, but what Adorno and Horkheimer came to call ‘instrumental thinking’ is now embraced unquestioningly by the new peddlers of AI.

...

AI is the Alchemy of the 21st century. The new Reset, driven by the high net worth figures from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or the Royal Houses of Europe, is a fantasy. But a fantasy that is part of a long class struggle.

And at a certain point it doesn’t matter, not totally, if AI works.

If errors occur in computation, or in facial recognition, or in food allotments to the projected new slave class, the billionaires on their yachts wont mind. If the implant in my brain crashes during a scheduled update, that’s just one less servant to feed.

And there is also a clear de-population agenda at work in all this. Certainly David Attenborough and Baroness Goodall are big on getting rid of the indigenous people in Africa. Nearly all of the pro-Reset leadership believe in depopulation. Prince Charles, another who prefers he keep his privilege. It is not an accident that an Ursula von der Leyen is running point for the EU now. A descendent of the biggest slave trader in Europe at one time. It speaks to exactly why a Hugo Chavez, for example, so offended these people. Or an Evo Morales. Remember it was not so long ago that the U.S. worked to control and neutralize African independence movements. While Cuba and the U.S.S.R. helped to support those movements. Dick Cheney until the 90s called Mandela a terrorist.

This intentional demolition of capitalism, as we have come to know it, is designed to enclose populations via surveillance, digital tagging, health passports, and no doubt much more. Again, if the digital tag doesn’t work, so what? I happen to think much of this ruling class dream is doomed to fail on the technical level. The problem is that it quite possibly will work on a political and control level.

Depopulation is rebranded eugenics, and nothing else. The royals of Europe have always longed for a return to what, for them, was colonial grandeur. The fantasy future is nostalgia for the ruling class. The dream can be traced back to what the Empire has always done. They destroy anything democratic and/or socialist. They support any dictator at any time because they believe they deserve more and more of what is better. Let them eat cake.

They have crushed independence and autonomy for all of the 20th century and now into the 21st. The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the assassination of Lumumba, Vietnam, Indonesia and Suharto, El Salvador ( U.S. support for Roberto D’Aubuisson, a fervent admirer of Hitler), or Nicaragua, or Chile, the former Yugoslavia. One could go on and on and on. The U.S. support for Papa Doc in Haiti, for Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Nowhere, at any time, has the Imperialist and colonial-loving ruling class EVER supported democracy or equality. Never, nowhere, not once.

The problem is about perception. Take one of the biggest NGOs in the entire New Deal for Nature; Conservation International. These people work with the WWF, with Club of Rome, and We Mean Business. These are very wealthy business ventures. Now, Conservation International also finances the Greta Thunberg films.

HERE is their board of directors, from their web page. https://www.conservation.org/about/boar ... WuXJqoye2E

Perception. But Northrup Grummon… and Riverstone Holdings. The first is a major player in the defense industry, the industry that just got a trillion dollars, give or take, from the U.S. Government. The second is a private equity firm focused on leveraged buyouts. Arnhold LLC is an investment management company. Banco BTG Pactual S/A is an investment management company and consultant to corporate trading. You get the idea.

These are the people who have helped further inequality, aided environmental destruction, and helped plunder the assets of countless countries. The cynicism is jaw dropping, but many people just see Greta, see Green New Deal and assume this NGO is an innocent well-intentioned and ‘woke’ eco-venture.

WHY would anyone think that suddenly these people are out to save the planet?

Well, they might think they ARE saving the planet, but not for you and me. For themselves.


https://off-guardian.org/2021/01/18/ant ... xtinction/
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby stickdog99 » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:21 pm

dada » 21 Jan 2021 15:30 wrote:Why does it suggest more influence to you? Bunch of folks who play the Capitalist game obsessively get together at a conference, listen to lectures and advertising pitches. Look for a well to throw their money down this year. Maybe it's buying into the mystique of Capitalism that makes it seem more romantic and powerfully moving to you than it really is.

What exactly is the tweet satirizing? Liberals?


Here's my problem with your philosophy. Do you actually question the very foundations of conflict theory: that the vast majority of people always want more wealth. power, and prestige and that those who already have a lot of wealth. power, and prestige have inherent advantages in an ongoing competition with those who have very little of it?

I appreciate your constant critique of meta-narrative of the Illuminati, but is it almost as if for you this critique has become an ontological argument against the basic common sense notion that some people are more powerful than other people.

"Father, forgive our billionaires, for they do not know what they are doing."
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:56 pm

Belligerent Savant » Mon Jan 25, 2021 1:19 pm wrote:.

That reads like biting satire. Is it?

...invalidating supposedly utopian ideas.


Wait: "utopian ideas" are still a thing, in this climate?

As I see it, the options available for the near/mid-term (assuming The People remain largely subservient), based on the limited information at our disposal at this point, appear to be:


Call it what you like. I like the game of deconstructing common-sense phrases and their implicit/unconscious ideologies, looking out of frame, etc. I like parables and I like SF scenarios. If it has a message, other than that beef is really bad even if we are absolutely contra Gates' proposed solution, then let it be thus:

This is not over. Nothing is predetermined. Not everything is planned and not every plan is going to go as planned. The struggle has only begun. All the radical breakneck insanity and apparent defeated alienation we've seen is not irreversible and can proceed at an even faster pace toward better outcomes than we may expect as mere logical-empirical oddsmakers. There will be openings and people willing to fight and to work to exploit them for the good. Many other worlds are possible. The world belongs to no one, and never will.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby dada » Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:52 pm

"but is it almost as if for you this critique has become an ontological argument against the basic common sense notion that some people are more powerful than other people."

It has always been an ontological argument against basic common sense notions.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby dada » Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:52 pm

About the beef thing, I think we'll probably have hybrid plants, meat grown on a vine. From rich soil, like a swampy chemical broth.

So people can have ponies and still have McDonalds. Even take a commercial flight with their ponies to McDonalds on the Moon. The future is very pony-friendly.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Thought-provoking basic primer on Accounting

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Jan 26, 2021 6:49 am

We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Belligerent Savant » Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:21 pm

JackRiddler » Mon Jan 25, 2021 5:56 pm wrote:
This is not over. Nothing is predetermined. Not everything is planned and not every plan is going to go as planned. The struggle has only begun. All the radical breakneck insanity and apparent defeated alienation we've seen is not irreversible and can proceed at an even faster pace toward better outcomes than we may expect as mere logical-empirical oddsmakers. There will be openings and people willing to fight and to work to exploit them for the good. Many other worlds are possible. The world belongs to no one, and never will.

.


YES. A reminder for all times.
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby Elvis » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:10 am



Not to get all literal about it, but...

The resources required to give everyone a pony are enormous, and universal ponies would require redirecting resources used and needed for other things. And it would take 25 years to marshal the resources and create the necessary infrastructure to breed, raise, feed, house and care for the ponies. And deal with their shit, etc.

On the other hand, the resources and infrastructure to, for example, provide everyone with healthcare today already exist. They just need to be mobilized.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Blockchain/Digital Currency as part of 'The Great Reset'

Postby JackRiddler » Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:01 am

Elvis » Wed Jan 27, 2021 1:10 am wrote:


Not to get all literal about it, but...

The resources required to give everyone a pony are enormous, and universal ponies would require redirecting resources used and needed for other things. And it would take 25 years to marshal the resources and create the necessary infrastructure to breed, raise, feed, house and care for the ponies. And deal with their shit, etc.

On the other hand, the resources and infrastructure to, for example, provide everyone with healthcare today already exist. They just need to be mobilized.


Damn it Elvis, I already explained it above. The resources are already there, you just have to be ready to give up the annual 57 pounds of beef per capita.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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