ROSC Archives - Free-Man's Perspective

A Full Confession, Part Two

Martin continued talking for a while, but mainly about his childhood and early career. Then, he moved back to the problem that America posed to elite rulers. “In America, at least in the early days, people believed they were the primary factors; that they created rulership structures for their own sake… that the structures had no validity, except to serve them.”

Continued from Part One.

Martin continued talking for a while, but mainly about his childhood and early career. Then, he moved back to the problem that America posed to elite rulers.

“In America, at least in the early days, people believed they were the primary factors; that they created rulership structures for their own sake… that the structures had no validity, except to serve them.”

I bristled at his statement. I had written about this at some length, and while I very much support that concept (and a lot of colonials did too), there were people with power (Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists in particular((See FMP #56 and 57.))) who pushed the opposite view. “Aren’t you sounding like an idealist here, Martin?”

He stopped, thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, I suppose I am, but that’s not the case. When you look at it from the perspective of my groups, it seemed that way. In every other country people felt like creatures of the state, but in America we kept running into roadblocks, because people believed the state to be a creature of their own making.”

“Ah…” I said. “That would be a frustration on the other side.”

Then he explained that he was the person who got the “We can’t contaminate a culture” dogma into Star Trek, and into the Next Generation series in particular. He had lived in LA for a few years and pushed this idea to the money-men behind the venture.

“The purpose of the whole thing,” he said, “was to reverse this American ideal. And we were terribly successful. Even the spin-off series maintain the illusion that people derive from cultures, rather than the other way around.”

“It’s funny,” I told him, “that always rubbed me the wrong way, though for the longest time I wasn’t sure why.”

He smiled, pleased to have given me a gift. Then he motioned to the bartender and asked for another triple scotch. I demurred.

We sat in silence till his drink arrived and he took another two swigs. He was getting drunk by this point, but he was finally sitting comfortably… loosening up in his speech too.

“I’m glad to be back here,” he said while making a wide gesture with his arm. I grew up with people like these (the half-full bar included pretty much everything from manual laborers to lawyers), and I still like them…”

Then he stopped and eyed two men and a woman in the corner who had to be politicians. “Except the little cluster of parasites,” he spat out, which surprised me.

“Didn’t you work with politicians?” I asked.

“Yeah!” he went on, a bit too loudly, “and do you know how eagerly and cheaply they sell themselves?”

“I have some idea.”

“A fraction of one percent of a project,” he said.

“So,” I added with a smile, “you’re like Rick in Casablanca. You don’t mind a parasite, but you object to a cut-rate one.”

At that he burst into laughter; it was the only time I’d ever seen him laugh like that. Then he composed himself, finally realizing that he was too loud.

“I guess that’s true, but they really are cut-rate parasites. As long as they get enough money for publicity campaigns, they’ll sell you anything you want…”

He paused, and looked like he might not finish the thought.

“What?” I half-demanded.

He looked at me hard, deciding about something, then went on. “The sickest part of it all,” he said, “is that people respond to them, no matter how stupid they are. Every election they spout the same bullshit, which any sane adult knows is bullshit, and they vote for them just the same.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No, Paul. You don’t!”

I waited.

“I made a living only because most people support their abusers… they respond to any and every fictional fear… their imaginations that are weaponized against themselves.”

I paused a moment, then nodded my understanding, not just of his statement, but what he was implying. We sat in silence for what seemed a long time, until his phone rang. It was his wife, who would drive by and pick him up in twenty minutes.

What’s Next

I knew this would be my last time with Martin, and that he didn’t want to speak any further of his failing health and impending death.

“And what of the near future?” I asked.

“2009 was a giant mistake,” he said. “They could have survived a crash then. They had cooperative national leaders and willingness to believe was still riding its 9/11 surge. Plus, there was no alternative to the banking system. A crash would have hurt, but the game would have gone on.

“Now they’ve got people with fear fatigue, sex fatigue, ridiculous rulers and serious alternative currencies. On top of that, European banking is in uncharted waters, tied to a ridiculous system of bond-issuance. They’re facing real trouble. They have amazing surveillance systems, but everything else is in question.”

“The surveillance concerns me deeply,” I said.

“Yes, I understand… None of us could believe our luck with Facebook and Google. The whole world fell for the oldest scam in the book, selling their souls for services they could have purchased for a few dollars per month. No one expected that.

“But during those same years, politicians became true believers. We have 20-somethings in the US congress, who know almost nothing and who actually believe in socialism, for God’s sake! And we have an inveterate self-promoter in the White House who will do who-knows-what tomorrow morning. The politicians on the left actually believe the bullshit they sell, and many on the right see Trump as a demi-god. Who could have imagined that? It threw a wrench into the gears.”

“So what’s next?”

“At some point, something will go wrong and financial structures will break. Already Facebook and their friends are getting ready for the dollar to fail. Wal-Mart’s in the game too. They talk nice, but they’d love to supplant the central banks. And if my group can fight them off, what of Bitcoin? They can’t do everything at once, and they’ve already attacked Bitcoin a dozen times with no enduring effect.”

I asked for an explanation of that statement, and he provided it.

“They got the Department of Justice to sell all the Bitcoin they had seized. They did it in coordinated dumps at critical times. They succeeded in beating the hell out of the Bitcoin price, but the thing refuses to die.”

I couldn’t help smiling, but remained silent.

“Incredibly, the commercial systems of the world may end up resting on your Bitcoin people… if they can bear the load. My groups had the greatest lucky streak in history, but it seems to be running out.”

Then his phone beeped. It was a text from his wife. She was a couple of blocks away and would pull up in front. We started, slowly, to extract ourselves from the booth, pay the bill, and head to the front door.

“Do you think your Bitcoiners can survive that pressure, Paul? Can they be the adults in the room?”

“I know some of them can, Martin.”

“I hope it’s enough,” he said.

His wife pulled over and we walked the five or ten steps to where she stopped. “I won’t see you again,” he said.

I hugged him, we both shed a few tears, and I helped him into the car. But before the door shut, he turned and said, “I hope your people can do it.”

Then the door shut and he was gone.

And so I leave it with you. Can we rise to the occasion and be the adults? Because it might come down to us.

As I’ve noted repetitively, writings set in Jay’s Bar are fictional, albeit based upon real people and events.

* * * * *

As it turns out, history was never too hard to understand; they just told you the wrong story.

Comments from readers:

“This is the most amazing little book I have read on history in 36 years of reading history.”

“It will change the way you look at nearly everything.”

“I will flat out say that this is the best history book I have ever read… I am fairly well read, but I learned a tremendous amount that I hadn’t known before or hadn’t aligned so that it made sense.”

“This is the best and clearest description of the history of Western civilization I have ever read.”

“Packed with insights on every page concerning how the world came to be the way it is and what we might expect in the future.”

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

A Full Confession, Part One

You can’t write about this till I’m gone,” he said, “but that won’t be long.”

I hadn’t been to Jay’s Bar since the events I recorded in The Rise of The Superfluous Class, and I hadn’t intended on returning any time soon, as much as I love the place. But I was invited by my old friend Martin, whom I mentioned in those articles. He was a basically nice guy who ended up working for an elite group.

I ran into Martin at my old gym, as I stopped one day to visit. He wasn’t looking well. I knew he had a fairly serious condition and was getting on in years, but he had been holding it at bay the last time I saw him. This time he was clearly close to his end, and had come to the gym to say his goodbyes. And so, when he invited me to meet him at Jay’s (“the same place I saw you last time”), I had to go.

We sat in a quiet spot, and I listened as he told me how close he was to death. That was two weeks ago as I write this. I saw his obituary this morning but will skip the funeral for reasons that may shortly become clear.

The Confession Begins

Martin ordered a triple scotch. I had never seen him drink before, except a bit of white wine. But I followed his pattern, ordering a double scotch on the rocks.

“I have things that I need to tell you,” he began. “You know most of it fairly well, but you’ve never had confirmation before, and that makes a difference.”

I nodded.

“I’ve read two of your books and half a dozen issues of your newsletter, you know.”

“No, I didn’t,” I replied, “but thank you.”

He smiled, raised his glass slightly, and took a big drink.

He seemed like he was trying to relax, but his body was limited in its ability to feel comfort. It was an odd and troubling thing to notice.

“Let’s start with the industrial revolution, shall we?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“As iron and steam power moved across the continent they brought an economic revolution, and political revolutions followed. Through the middle 1800s nearly every monarchy was disrupted and brought down in one way or another. The aristocracy was pulled off the stage. Such people, however, don’t just accept displacement, and they fought to retain lordship in some form. I haven’t read it yet, but you wrote on this, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, in the subscription letter((FMP #76.)). I said that these people seem to have demonetized silver and moved into central banking.”

“Well, it wasn’t ‘seemed to.’ They very definitely did.”

“Thank you,” I said. And he was right, getting confirmation helped me in some internal way.

He went on.

“Land was no longer the store of value it had been since the beginning, and currency was taking over. And so the aristocrats plunged into banking. This put the British royals at the top of the hill, since they retained their positions and had a central bank that used debt as currency.

“So the displaced aristocrats opened one central bank after another, on the model of the Bank of England. And since they had connections to Queen Victoria, they could be authorized by the major power of the day, the owner of the most important currency. Central banks became new duchies, keeping their owners in elevated positions.”

Then he stopped and took another long pull from his scotch. He was clearly using it as a painkiller. I took a sip of mine.

“You realize that this isn’t going to change anything,” he said.

I said nothing and waited.

“I’m telling you these things because I care about you. You’re an honest man, and you shouldn’t be stuck in uncertainty. But telling this to the world won’t change anything. They’ll just tune you out. They already tune you out, don’t they?”

“Yeah, Martin, lots of them do. And I can’t tell you how many people have read my stuff, got excited, then wandered away.”

“Exactly. It deprives them of illusions. They can’t live without them.”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s just illusions. A lot of them are so battered by daily events that the outside voice soon fades away.”

“I think you’re being kind to them, Paul. I have studies saying that they live in a ‘society’ bubble and can’t listen anything outside it.”

He had a point, of course, but I quickly responded with, “Not all of them, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have people who’ve subscribed to my newsletter for years. Not a huge number, but not a trivial number either. They pay to hear things that go past the illusions… or at least as well as I can get past them.”

“You do plenty well,” he said, to which I responded with a non-verbal thank you. “And these people stay with you over some significant period?”

“Ten years or more for some of them.”

“Well, then perhaps there is some hope… but we’re still talking about a tiny fraction.”

“True enough,” I admitted.

The Thorn In Their Side

Our conversation paused for a few minutes, while the afternoon bartender came around, asking if we wanted anything else. (We didn’t.) We each had a few of the nuts he left on our table, and we sipped more of our drinks.

“America was a thorn in everyone’s side,” he said. “Even after they had a central bank. These people believed they were given their rights by God… and it made no end of trouble.”

“How do you mean, Martin?”

“Oil was the big one. None of the rulers saw the internal combustion engine coming, and once it did oil and refining become huge… but Americans owned the mineral rights to whatever land they held. That meant that the greatest new source of wealth was firmly in the hands of plebs… of common people. That was a problem.”

“Yes,” I injected,” I heard an old oil man talking about that once. In Europe mineral rights remained with the rulers, not the land-owner.”

“Right, which is why American oil production led the way, and why American oil companies weren’t state-owned, like in Europe. Huge power fell into the wrong hands…”

“As your old bosses saw it, at least,” I quickly added.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m giving you their point of view. But,” he went on, “ that only mattered until the industry was developed. After that, our groups could just hire American engineers. Then they could do things as well as the Americans, and our groups gathered the oil everywhere else.”

We’ll run part two of this confession next Tuesday, and return to the podcast the week after.

* * * * *

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Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.
Get it at Amazon or on Kindle.

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 21: Roll It Up and Move Along

Once you know a storm is coming, the only sensible actions are to either protect yourself or to get out of the way. And so it has become time to roll up the Jay’s Bar show and move along. If we simply vanish from view now, there won’t be much in the way of targets to destroy.

None of us, however, are about to deny ourselves: what we are, what we love. We’re still going to live our lives our way. But neither do any of us want to be locked into cages; that helps no one, save self-righteous enforcers. (About whom I can’t help remembering a line from Jesus: Whoever kills you will think he’s doing God a service.) And so we’ll simply change tactics and survive into another day.

The Crypto House looks like it wasn’t connected to this storm, so as long as none of us from the bar make things worse, they should be fine. But Esther will have to avoid the sanitarium for some time. (She and young Johnny have moved in together.)

The kids running the seminars face a harder issue. I’ve talked to them about this and they’re divided. Some want to just sell videos on the darknet and be done with it, while others want to keep going, albeit more carefully… doing it the underground way. I suspect that various of them will take each of those paths.

And what of Mike, our exchange operator in Poland, who is in the enforcers’ sights? Well, I’m as sure as I can be that his friends will warn him to move along. The Polish government is far too close to the US government; they’d pick him up in a minute if asked.

Personally, I hope he gets far away from the Western enforcement sphere (maybe to Southeast Asia). And that he winds down or sells his business, waits for the statute of limitations to expire, then comes back home for a visit. His record will be marked, but so long as he colors mostly inside the lines, they’ll probably leave him alone.

As for myself, I will cease reporting this story. This is my last dispatch.

But this is the closing of a chapter, not the closing of a movement. These kids have broken out of the status quo and have been exposed to the life of adventure. They won’t just give it up.

I’ve warned them, of course, about dealing with such storms: that you must not only be smart about it, but you must have a “why” for what you do. You need a larger reason than “to make money” or “because it’s cool.” If you don’t, the first wave of tribulation is likely to wash you away.

Nonetheless, some small number of us will suffer for moving the world into a better day. It has happened innumerable times in the past, and it’s already happened this time… and it more than likely will happen again. We’re moving out of an archaic and barbaric era and into a humane and open era… and that won’t happen without resistance; people addicted to status, power, and control will fight it.

But I do think I’ve shown these young people how to turn the odds in their favor, which was my mission from the beginning.

Further, I’m convinced that this will spread. As I was working on this article a quote from the psychologist Carl Jung came to mind:

[M]an doesn’t permit, forever, his nullification.

Man does allow himself to be nullified for a time. And this has been seen in the status quo world over several generations: in the docile compliance of the factory model, in the forced grouping and conditioning of government schooling, in the modern West’s automated obedience to authority… no matter how badly authority screws up.

But that’s changing now. My young friends are no longer happy being nullified. They could live on government handouts if they wanted – everyone in their generation knows how, after all – but they don’t want to be null beings, housed and fed by a monster state until they die. They want to be alive and self-determinant. They’ll take the blame for their errors and the credit for their successes.

This mindset, which is spreading, will eventually break up the old, archaic regime and bring something better into the world.

To wrap everything up, I went by Jay’s yesterday, to give Michele the news. He understood very well – half a dozen of his customers have been run over by the feds in recent years – but I think he’ll miss us. He very much respected that we were helping disabled people.

As I bade him goodbye for a while (I’ll still stop in occasionally), he smiled. He obviously had something on his mind, and so I waited for him to let it out. And it didn’t take long.

“You’ll be back with a new group in another 20 years, Professor?”

We both laughed.

“God willing, Michele,” I replied as I turned to leave… “God willing.”

* * * * *

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I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 20: A Storm Warning

I walked into Jay’s expecting to find Johnny to be his usual gregarious self. And he was, so long as he was greeting people at the bar. Once we sat by ourselves in the restaurant, however, he changed.

I had never seen Johnny scared before. I’d seen him angry, disgusted, and irritated, but not scared. We were barely through the usual “How’s your family?” stuff before he jumped into crypto.

“I did some looking, Paul, and it seems like you’ve got a handle on this stuff. Do you really?”

“I suppose so, John, but there’s so much action these days that no one can keep up with it all. So I can help you with the basics but not on the newest things. There’s just too much.”

The idea that this crypto thing was expanding beyond the ability of its friends to monitor frightened him further, but neither of us pursued that avenue.

“Listen,” he said. “I know you’re a reasonable guy, even if you are a little crazy…”

We both laughed; I was always the crazed radical in our group of friends.

“But a lot of us are concerned about this. It’s like a genie let out of its bottle, and it may not be controllable pretty soon.”

It was the usual fear of control addicts, but Johnny is my friend and I wanted to help him.

“I think you’re right, Johnny, this thing is growing wildly, but I want to set your mind at ease in at least one way: With the exception of a few scam artists and a small fraction of just plain assholes, the crypto crowd are decent people. They may disagree with the political class on how the world should operate, but they’re not remotely interested in forcing their ideas on people.”

John was partly comforted but only partly.

“Yeah, I get that,” he said, slowly nodding his head. “The question is how far can this thing go? How big can it get?”

This put me into a bit of a dilemma. John is my friend, but I don’t want to give him information that he could pass along to bigger operators than himself. So I addressed only the currency aspect of it.

“The real issue is that this is currency. And it’s better currency. Right now all the cryptos combined account for less than 1% of world currency value. So the question is how much of world currency should be in cryptos rather than government currencies? Are the cryptos good enough for 1% of world value? 10%? 50%?”

Johnny shook his head and waited for me to answer my own question.

“I don’t know where it will end up, but I do know that this stuff is better in a bunch of ways, and people will eventually figure that out.”

“So you think they could really win?”

“I’m not sure ‘win’ is the right word, John, but yeah, there’s a good chance they’ll keep spreading for a long time and become a very significant thing.”

Then without skipping a beat, Johnny pulled out his iPhone and typed something on it.

“It’s from your cousin,” he said. “Cousin” is his slang for our mutual friend. I looked at the screen. It clearly was not an incoming message; it displayed only what Johnny had just typed. It said,

Laugh like it’s funny.

I did. The second line said,

Turn off your cell phone and sit on it.

I typed back,

I turned it off and pulled the battery before walking in.

He read it, we both laughed together, and he turned off his phone then slid it under his leg, while making it look like he was putting it into his pocket. And I quickly remembered that as we were seated, Johnny asked for a different table than the one we were first shown. Johnny’s better at cloak-and-dagger than I thought.

We each took a sip of wine and waited a few seconds. Then Johnny leaned in.

“Like I say, I checked on this, and a couple of the agencies are watching the group meeting at the bar.” I groaned a little. “The first thing that got their attention was the kid who flew off to Poland and opened an exchange.”

“I knew the kid, but I didn’t know he went to Poland.”

“Well, he did, and he stepped right into their sights. They’re paying a lot of attention to those exchanges.”

I nodded my head and said, “Yeah, I know… they have to. It’s the last control point and they need to collect taxes from this.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, “they do.”

“And the second thing was the seminars?”

“Yes,” he said. “They probably wouldn’t have cared about them, but they think these kids are taking that same kind of rebellion on the road…” He trailed off.

“And so they need to kill it,” I said, concluding the statement.

Johnny nodded his head in agreement.

“Okay, Johnny, please tell the agencies two things. First, that I’ll do what I can to get the kids to pull back. Second, that they’re fools if they try to take these kids down in their usual hyper-aggressive way. Look at what they did to Ross Ulbricht: They wanted his head on a pike, but all the exercise did was make the agencies look like maniacs, turn Ulbricht into a martyr, and spawn a dozen new dark markets.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Well, it’s true,” I went on. “These guys have no idea how barbaric they look to the kids on the darknet.”

“I believe you, Paul, but I don’t think I can say that to the agencies; they really believe that they’re working for God.”

I quickly realized that he was right.

“You’re right, John. Don’t tell them anything. Say something about me not realizing how extreme those kids were getting and leave it at that. They’re never going to see what they don’t want to see. Let ’em screw themselves again.”

John and I ordered more drinks and went back to talking about old friends. He pulled out his phone and turned in back on. I picked up the check, we hugged, I thanked him, and I headed back home.

At least we have a storm warning, I muttered to myself as I went.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 19: Back to the Shadows

I got a strange phone call the other day. The person on the other end played like it was a wrong number, asking for Angie something, but they were listening to my voice way too closely. What they were doing, I was pretty certain, was to see if it was really me using the phone billed to me.

The next day, I stopped by Jay’s Bar*, partly because I was nearby and partly to see if anyone was hanging around looking for me. I sat at the far corner of the bar, where I had a good angle on nearly the whole of the establishment. I ordered a tonic and lime (I don’t drink a lot of booze) and read through some of my notes.

I could see the look in Michele’s eye. He greeted me and then moved past, wiping down the bar. But as he did, looking away from me, he said, “There was a man asking about you a day ago… forty-ish, white… a pro.”

“Grazie,” I murmured while taking a drink.

That settled it; “they,” whoever they were this time, were looking for me. And so I started making notes. Some kind of government operative (and there are literally hundreds of spy agencies to choose from these days) wanted information on me and my new friends. Since we all use encryption and anonymization, getting information the usual way hadn’t done them much good. Now they were back to old-school methods: sending someone to watch and perhaps to confront.

After scribbling down a number of ideas, examining them, and choosing between them, I came to three big conclusions:

We’d move our meetings between small taco joints on the north side.
I’d make myself available to the watchers.
I’d immediately have a talk with an old friend who is deeply connected.

I finished my second tonic and lime while trying not to look too disgusted. I motioned for Michele, handed him my money, and said, loud enough but not too loud, “See you Thursday after work.”

If “they” were listening somehow, they’d be waiting for me.

The next day I went to where my connected friend habitually eats lunch. I have his old phone number somewhere, but things like this are better done in person. And fortunately, I found him. We caught up on family and friends for a few minutes, and then I told him precisely what was going on and asked for his advice.

My friend thought for a moment, smiled at me, and pulled out his phone.

“Hey, Johnny,” he said into it. “You still bored?”

I was pretty sure whom he was talking to: a mutual friend who used to be a major player in state politics but who had left the big game and wasn’t doing much. And the continuing conversation between the two (or at least the half of it I heard) confirmed it.

“So,” my friend said as he turned to me, “you’ll meet Johnny at that bar Thursday at six, then buy him dinner next door?”

“Deal,” I said.

I thanked my friend for setting up the dinner and tried to pick up his check. He stopped me, but I protested.

“You did me a favor,” I said. “You can let me pay for your lunch.”

He shook his head and held the check.

“No,” he said. “Friends do favors for friends.”

I thanked him again and left, making a reservation at the Italian place on my way home.

Thursday I’ll meet the retired politician at Jay’s. My guess is that we’ll talk about anything but crypto for 90% of the evening: old friends, interesting stories, our families, and so on. Johnny’s a very entertaining guy.

But at least the watchers will see that I have a friend with some juice, and maybe they’ll back off a little. If nothing else, I think it will secure my position on the “non-violent dissident” list. That’s a position I can live with.

Our group’s weekly meetings, however, will have to move from place to place. That way they’ll need extended surveillance on at least some of us if they want to bug our meetings… and I can’t imagine that we’re important enough for that. The worst these kids would do is to stiff the IRS.

Our only “weapon” is cryptography… which boils down to math. This is a point that Satoshi Nakamoto made when he announced Bitcoin:

[I wrote Bitcoin to] win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

The “arms race” of Satoshi and the cypherpunks was this:

They have cops, guns, and bullets… and court orders backed by them.
We have crypto.

And I still think that’s a good way to look at things.

More next time.

* Please note that the stories set in and around Jay’s Bar are fictional. They’re often based upon real people and events, but they are fiction.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 18: Not Parasites

There’s something about being young, especially if you can feel young and righteous at the same time. The combination is potent and intoxicating. It’s a shame more people haven’t experienced it.

And somehow I’ve stumbled into three or four groups of such people. I’m under no illusion that they look to me as some kind of leader (I certainly hope they don’t), but they are interested in new ideas, and they don’t much care if the person bringing them is old or young.

Righteous-feeling youth does of course have a habit of damning all consequences and moving toward excess, but that’s less a natural problem and more a manufactured one . The young person being excessive soon learns from direct consequences that he or she is going too far… except if the enforcers of a jealous status quo get their hands on them first.

That’s the kind of conflict I’ve been trying to keep my young friends away from, but I refuse to fight their enthusiasm. I will not allow myself to become the agent of a corrupt status quo, protecting a dour and barbaric past from an enthusiastic and righteous future.

And so it was that I allowed my own youthful enthusiasm to rouse itself to help my young friends in their newest and perhaps boldest venture: a set of public training seminars.

Needless to say, these are not mundane courses like “How to Use Microsoft Word.”

Not a Parasite

That’s the title of their seminar program: Not a Parasite. It’s a two-day program. The first two hours are free, and everyone is invited. “Open the doors and compel them to come,” is the way it’s written in their outline. In those two hours (and I freely admit that I gave them notes to work from), they will advise attendees that they were made for more and better things than to exist as parasites feeding from the state’s trough and being kept docile with cheap booze, stupid TV, and endless Facebook.

They’ll tell stories about their grandparents and great-grandparents, who worked hard and built things and who remained proud of producing through their last moments. And they’ll contrast that with the life of an “outside the labor force” American of our time… of whom there are now 95 million.

They’ll explain that the system that forced this upon them is unworthy of their approval, their devotion, and even of their fear… that it’s a deep and persistent opponent of human happiness and is in fact destroying those 95 million people.

They’ll explain that we are built to learn and to grow and to expand, that we should be experimenting without asking permission, and that any system opposing that is the enemy of mankind.

After those two hours, they take a break and reconvene with only the paid attendees for three course tracks:

Track number one is on thriving in the gig economy. They’ll be teaching about everything they’ve learned in the past few years, even the lessons they’ve learned about taxes and regulators. They won’t mention the sanitarium itself, but they will talk about having a central operations group.
Track number two is on cryptocurrencies, including encryption. Everyone who attends will not only be taught how these things work, but they will actually send and receive cryptocurrency from their own phones or laptops. They’ll encrypt and decrypt with their own keys on their own devices. They’ll even help build a functioning mining rig.
Track number three is on drones. Several types will be explained, built, taken apart, and rebuilt. Computerized onboard control systems will be installed and tested. The attendees will go home with a rich resource list and with both the knowledge and experience to build their own.

Moreover, our people are taking these seminars on the road (the first one is happening as I write this) to every mid-sized town they can. At least a dozen of them are involved, and several of the kids who made out well in Bitcoin are financing them. As soon as one of the team needs a break there will be others ready to step in.

More than that, Adam and his biohacker friends are ready to add a fourth track and possibly to expand the seminars into a third day.

These young people are quite aware that the powers that be will not like them teaching such things, but there’s really nothing else for them to do. The alternative is to embrace parasitism: to live and die as bureaucrat-controlled zombies.

And so they’ve chosen life, even if it comes at a price.

More next time.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 17: The Rise of the Elderly

Under the mindset of the factory era, old people were expected to move quietly to the side after they stopped working. From there they were to quietly dote on grandchildren, then get sick and die. That, however, has changed.

For one thing, people are living longer and retaining their health into advanced ages. Also, old people never really were fit to be pushed off the stage. Certainly old people tend to slow down, but “slower” is a long way from “no movement at all.” Old people are more than capable of many things, and they frequently have piles of massively valuable experience.

Anyway, what we learned as the sanitarium (and now Crypto House) opened back up last week, was that Esther and the sanitarium refugees have been busy. While they were away, they spread their new ideas to at least three different old folks’ homes. Contrary to the system’s assumptions, the people there – or at least a decent percentage of them – don’t want to disengage from the world, and they do want to continue making an impact in it. Three cars full of such people have visited the sanitarium/Crypto House this past week, and more are expected.

On top of that, the Swedes (wonderful people) are settling in, and the Bitcoin Bus family is slated to stay at the house for a month. As a bonus, the musicians (a few will remain in an extra room for a while) are going to put on weekly concerts in the factory parking lot next door once weather permits. The factory manager ended up being a pretty cool guy, and he thinks his workers will enjoy it after the last shift on Friday. The cops will probably find some permit violation to shut it down with (or rather, their bosses will… God forbid someone might have fun without paying them first), but the manager is game for it as long as the musicians are.

So, lots of good things are happening. But I’m straying from my main subject: the old folks.

Old and Smart Go Together Really Well

The status quo system we all grew up in made a major error by ignoring the abilities of old people. These are people who spent long decades developing important skills. To simply ignore that was ridiculous. Worse, the assumption that they should be moved to the side has been encoded in laws for Social Security, health care, professional regulation, business insurance policies, and more. The legacy system forcibly ejects old people from the pool of the productive.

In the crypto-world, however, they can do whatever they want, and no one need ever even know their age. There are many in the old-age homes who take comfort in filling the role assigned to them by the status quo, and we really have nothing to offer them. But we’re finding a pretty strong percentage of oldsters who don’t want to tread water for 10 or 20 years and then die. They may not want to work full days or weeks, but they do want to work… they don’t want to give up being productive until they need to.

I’ve talked with only five or 10 of these people so far, but here are the things I know they’re up to:

An elderly lawyer has taken up online arbitration work on the Open Bazaar system.
Three sets of old ladies are setting up to work as sales agents for anonymous buyers, working through Open Bazaar. They’ll wear cop-type body cameras and drive from one estate sale or garage sale to another, taking live bids from remote purchasers. They already have a dozen or more customers lined up.
Two retired engineers and a retired programmer have just acquired their first customer for anonymous drone delivery. Their drones (they have two at the moment) are being programmed with a set of maps, GPS, and a memory system using ephemeral key encryption. And so, a client enters his or her address, which goes directly to the drone, which verifies it to be within its flight radius. But it does not share those details with anyone else. The “Tech Elders” team (that’s what they’re calling themselves) then attaches whatever goods are to be delivered (within a specified weight limit) and sends the machine on its way. They are never told where it will go. Once the delivery is completed, the keys that encrypted the address are automatically dropped from the system. It is known that the drone delivered something somewhere, but only the purchaser knows where.
Two friends of friends who really are past their ability to do much have offered their postal addresses for deliveries. If something forbidden gets delivered, what are the enforcers going to do, put them on trial? They’d hardly be considered fit for trial, they’d have no information to give up, and by the time a trial could be arranged, they’d likely have checked out anyway.

All of this will be done behind walls of cryptography. A variety of cryptocurrencies will be used (Bitcoin will mainly be a settlement currency between the other currencies), all communications will be encrypted, and only pseudonyms will be used. But for customer comfort with pseudonyms, they’re using realistic names (Sean W. Thornton, for example) rather than the purposely quirky names we used in the old days of crypto-anarchy.

The Purpose of It All

The entry of the old folks really made me happy. The deep purpose here isn’t to make money or even to escape tyranny. Rather, it’s to help life function in the world. And these old folks still have life in them. They should be able to use it any way they wish to. Crypto gives that to them.

More next time.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 16: Rebels with Full Bellies

Thank God for experience. Last week we had another of our meetings at Jay’s bar, and it almost turned into a disaster. Only long experience saved it.

Everything was proceeding nicely until I saw my old friend Martin walking up to the bar with a man who creeped me out. This guy was perfectly attired and wore the same type of overcoat I used to see in and around power centers in Rome. (I lived in Rome for a short time.) This guy smelled of “heartless elite.”

The last time I talked with someone who gave me that vibe, she asked me about e-gold… which was attacked and destroyed a year or two later. Coincidence, perhaps, but I wasn’t about to take such a chance again.

I know that Martin worked for those groups for 30 years or more. (Though I never asked for details and he didn’t offer many.) I met him only after he had retired… and Martin knew things that he really shouldn’t have.

“Listen to me,” I said to our table with urgency. “I don’t have time to explain, but please trust me and get the hell out of here right now. I have to stay and deal with something. I’ll pay the bill, and I won’t be in any danger, so please leave now.”

They all looked at me, unsure of what was happening.

“There’s someone here who very much should not see you. Please go. Now!”

With just a bit of hesitation, they did.

“Email us later,” a few of them said on their way out.

“I will,” I said.

And then I turned my back toward Martin and the man with him. I didn’t want Martin to notice me until my guys were out of view.

I motioned to the busboy, who looked at plates of uneaten food and asked me with his eyes if he should really remove them.

“They had to go,” I said. “I’ll settle up with Michele.”

Martin was my gym friend. He was, by nature, a decent guy. But he grew up poor in a small town in Montana, and so, when one of these elites noticed his innate intelligence (he is very bright), they offered him good money and he accepted. I think he was happy to finally leave his job of drafting legislation, securing the votes for it, coordinating mega-corporate plans, and so on.

Once my young friends were clear, I walked up to Michele at the bar and asked to pay the bill. Michele was surprised to see me so soon (our food was served just a few minutes prior), but he was too busy for questions and we made our transaction quickly. And it was then that Martin spotted me.

“Paul, what a nice surprise.”

And I really was glad to see him. Then he introduced me to his friend, whose name I’ll leave off. My first impression remained.

“Let me buy you a drink,” Martin said. “We have to wait for a table next door.” (As I mentioned before, there’s a restaurant next door, and the two establishments work with each other.)

I agreed, we got our drinks, and we sat at an empty section of the bar. I asked Martin how he was feeling, and we engaged in small talk for a few minutes. Then, wanting to include his friend, he went on to ask about Bitcoin.

“I remember you telling me about the genius of Bitcoin,” Martin said. “We were discussing it earlier, so perhaps you can help us understand it.”

I understood Martin’s interest. He saw Bitcoin as an intellectual entertainment. I was a lot less sure of the other guy’s motives. And so I stared at the guy, waiting for him to express an interest.

“What I’m trying to understand,” he said, “is who the prime movers behind it are. They say it’s decentralized, but there have to be a few people with outsized power. I’m trying to understand who that might be.”

“Well,” I said, “it really is decentralized. There is no office, no customer service, no one with final approval.”

“Yes, we are aware of that,” he said, clearly presuming that I wasn’t bright enough to grasp his intent, which I took as a good thing, “but I know the software has been updated, for example. Some group of people had to decide to do that.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s a group of Bitcoin developers, but they are widely mistrusted. In fact, there have been several forks of the Bitcoin protocol, undertaken by groups who were very much displeased with the core developers. So, they don’t actually have oversized power, as you call it. And the miners don’t have to use their code anyway.”

“Then the miners have final say over things?” he asked.

“Not really. Some people think of miners as Ferengis… even if unfairly.”

He looked at Martin, to see if he understood what I was talking about.

“That’s a Star Trek reference,” I added. “The Ferengis were an offensive race who cared for absolutely nothing so much as numbers in bank accounts. And that’s the reputation at least some of the miners have.”

He looked confused, and I thought it was best to leave things that way. I turned things in a different direction.

“You know, Martin, I have a question of my own. We used to discuss macroeconomics, and perhaps you gentlemen can help me understand something.”

Martin smiled and his friend seemed content to accept the change of subject.

“I see, in the overall, a generally deflationary environment, due to technological advances, but all of the expenses faced by average people are rising in a near lockstep, soaking up the extra money… be it direct taxation, rising medical fees, paying for corn… ethanol… to be added to gasoline, and so on. Would you agree?”

“I do,” said Martin.

“Yes,” said his associate.

“What I wonder,” I went on, “is when the rising number of people who are officially ‘out of the labor force’ – and mainly on disability or some other handout program – will begin to rebel at being made superfluous.”

This time Martin said nothing, eventually making an “I dunno” expression. I turned to the other man. He seemed disgusted with the question but answered anyway.

“People with food in their bellies do not rebel,” he answered.

Just then Michele informed them that their table was ready. We politely parted company and I finished my drink.

Michele walked over. “Who was that other guy,” he asked.

“I don’t rightly know, Michele, but he’s not my kind of guy.”

“No, not mine either, I think.” Michele has a good nose for people. “But I tell you what, if I find out anything, I’ll tell you.”

I thanked him, shook his hand, and walked out.

On my way back to the train station I made myself happy by thinking of dozens of “rebels with food in their bellies.” Food simply isn’t enough. Complete personalities need to know that they are producing; that they’re doing things that improve the world.

Old Rabbi Heschel was right: Mankind is not always blind.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 15: Building Ourselves a City

Theorizing is one thing; doing is quite another. No matter how good you think your theories are, applying them to the real world is always a revelation. More than that, actually doing is far more fun that theorizing. And right now hundreds of thousands of young people (and a lot of older ones too) are building the economy of the future. It’s a magnificent thing to be part of.

The sanitarium is well on its way to becoming a Bitcoin House. The renovations proceed apace and the musicians currently living there, and their friends, are thoroughly intrigued not only by Bitcoin, but by the concept of decentralization. They’re writing songs about it.

At the same time, the members of our little group have their own projects blooming: decentralized exchanges, drone delivery, biohacking, OTC Bitcoin exchanging (that is, buying and selling Bitcoin for cash, usually at a Starbucks), and of course lots of ridesharing and apartment sharing.

I think Johnny and his uncle are about to launch a crypto-based certification agency for home remodelers. Municipal regulation of construction has gone insane over the past two decades, adding thousands of dollars to even the smallest construction projects. And so, a workaround that still delivers quality is something people are willing to take a small risk on.

The New Plaque

You may recall that there was a rather depressing plaque that used to hang on the wall of the sanitarium. As several of our group reviewed the remodeling work last week, they decided that a new plaque would be nice. And as it happened, Nikos had stumbled upon something just days before.

At one point, as we sat at Jay’s bar discussing books and authors, I mentioned that I enjoyed the work of Eric Hoffer, the “Longshoreman Philosopher.” Later, Nikos remembered the conversation and started checking into Hoffer. One of the things he found was an interview Hoffer did in 1967 with Eric Sevareid. (Sevareid was a famous broadcaster of that era.) In the interview, he talks about a poem that he found written on a wall at Pier 35 on the San Francisco docks. He recited it in the interview:

Build yourself a city; found yourself a state.

Do not cry for pity; grab a master fate.

Grab a swamp and drain it;
cut a log and plane it.

Make the hills and valleys fields.

And on the manmade plain,
breathe your last complaint.

Slay your shame;
forget your name.

Do not strive for pity; build yourself a city.

That of course is what’s going onto their plaque – a large plaque – and that’s exactly what these young people are doing.

“It’ll go back down”

The day after Nikos sent me the link to the interview and told me about the plaque, I received an email from an old friend. This guy has seen dozens of hotshot investments come and go, and so I think he can be forgiven for thinking that Bitcoin is just another of them. In this email he said something about it going up, then coming back down. And that got me thinking: Could Bitcoin – and cryptocurrencies in general – really crash back to the ground?

But before we can address that question, we have to specify something: Bitcoin is not an investment. Rather, it’s a revolution in currency. That’s a fundamental difference, and it set my thoughts in the right direction. Here’s what I wrote back to my friend:

Honestly, I don’t think this one’s “coming back down.” There will be choppy times for sure, but the underlying technology is simply not going anywhere. This is not a company or a strategy; it’s just a protocol.

That’s a very different thing from past “hotshot investments.”

Bitcoin has withstood endless attacks from people who hate it (more or less none of whom have taken the time to understand it). And more than that, it has survived its friends acting stupidly.

I think it’s important to stop and think about this for a moment.

Bitcoin has survived under extremely hostile conditions, taking blows from both enemies and friends, and it has remained standing. And the core reason is its central feature: It’s decentralized. There is no center to grab and no controller to be corrupted. Cryptocurrencies are simply protocols… protocols that establish trust via applied mathematics.

A protocol doesn’t disappear when some ruler declares it a danger to nation and motherhood. It doesn’t even disappear if people ignore it. It just is. Using a protocol as money is a new and different thing and utterly unlike any investment of the past.

Here’s how I finished the email:

It’s hard to imagine how Bitcoin could actually “go to zero.” There is no center to kill, and it’s simply better at doing what currencies are supposed to do. A demand for it will remain, no matter what.

To actually kill Bitcoin would involve breaking the encryption (which is really unlikely) or for governments to kill every person caught using it. (And that’s pretty unlikely as well.)

And Now…

Cryptocurrencies are simply different. They are not investments. They have no center. They have operated for nine years under hostile conditions, starting from nothing at all. They were born into a world that rejected them from the outset and has attacked them nonstop.

In addition, they’ve survived the foolish behavior of some of their biggest advocates.

Cryptocurrencies, in the end, are decentralization protocols. They provide no privileged position from which controllers can control transactions or take money by force. They have no tools for setting interest rates. No one is forced to use them.

With apologies to Ecclesiastes, this really is a new thing under the sun.

My young friends are embracing this, and they’re spreading the concept to their friends, who are spreading the concept to others. And now Bitcoin Houses, Institutes of Cryptoanarchy, innumerable Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain meetups, and God knows what else are spreading everywhere. We’re actually moving quickly through the “new concept” pattern attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer:

All truth passes through three stages.

First it is ridiculed.

Second it is violently opposed.

And third it is accepted as self-evident.

It’s awfully hard to know what the future holds of course, but the enforcers of the old way seem to be running out of time, being busy with troubles of their own and with all the usual wars, financial manipulations, and general mayhem.

And so a new world is taking shape. Slowly, erratically, even sloppily… but sinew is joining to sinew… and they are building themselves a city.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 14: The Bitcoin House

It’s been a strange but recurring theme in my life that when a cluster of bad things hit, something good follows close behind. Often, I learn later that the good thing was initiating just as the bad things struck.
But whatever that is and however it works, it happened to me again. There is currently so much going on that I barely know where to begin.

But whatever that is and however it works, it happened to me again. There is currently so much going on that I barely know where to begin.

Creative Commerce

Chester Cruz, as it turns out, chose his friends very well. The sanitarium, we learned, was actually owned by a land trust, and the trustee, now quite elderly, is still a member of Chester’s old law firm. The group that opposed young Esther had contacted this man, wanting to kick Esther, Stanley, Sophie, and two others out of the sanitarium. The trustee and lawyer, a Mr. Medansky, explained to them that he would not do that, but if they were entirely serious about the matter, he could arrange to sell the property and distribute the proceeds to everyone living there.

And so the sale began. But after Esther and the others were notified of the upcoming sale by Mr. Medansky, they put together a new plan: to buy the trust themselves, and of course the sanitarium with it. The lawyer cleverly worked out all the details for them (which allowed them to keep all the sanitarium’s legal advantages), but it would require a cash payment.

This is where we all thanked God for the rise of Bitcoin. While none of our group (so far as I know) had a huge number of bitcoins, they had all accumulated some back when the price was low, and now (the price is hitting $8,000 as I write this) that translates to a lot of dollars… and so they’re buying the trust and property outright. The offended group will get their payout and go live wherever they wish, and the others will get to move back in. (They moved out once the sale was forced and are currently living in an Airbnb.)

The question then was what to do with the property. And that’s where things get really interesting.

First of all, the group will give the building a facelift. Being that no one is currently living there, this is a good time. But there’s more than that. The last month at the sanitarium was pretty ugly, and the group that forced the sale had been getting pretty dark anyway. More or less everyone agreed that the place needed a fresh start.

Now here’s the fun part:

As I discussed the remodeling with the group at Jay’s one day, I told the story of the very first agriculturalists of Europe and how they burned out their houses upon leaving them, even when giving them to new occupants((You can find more detail on this is FMP #73.)). We can’t use actual fire these days of course, but they liked the idea, and last week they came up with a cool version of it.

Adam’s youngest brother is in a band and knows a lot of other poor, young musicians. The group decided to let them have free run of the sanitarium during the remodeling, provided of course that they don’t damage the structure, don’t bother the neighbors (rather hard to do anyway, as their closest neighbors are a factory and a parking lot), and don’t interfere with the remodeling crews.

And so the sanitarium is now being “burned out” by members of four different bands, who are living there, rehearsing there, and entertaining there, and often all three at the same time. They’ll probably have only a month or two, but they’re already having a great time and have been respectful to all involved.

Enter the Swedes

“Synchronicity,” as we used to say way back when, “happens.” And it still happens. Just as our group had to make long-term plans on using the sanitarium, I got an email from a group we’re now calling “the Swedes.”

I ran into the Swedes at a cryptoanarchist conference in Europe a year ago, and they intrigued me. They’re actually two families from Stockholm who are traveling around the world, visiting “Bitcoin Houses.” How they can afford to do this, I didn’t ask (it’s really none of my business), but both families have young children and they’re educating them as they go. They had taken up residence in central Europe for a while, had been in Japan for some time prior, and were on their way to a Bitcoin place in India next. I was surprised that they had so many actual places to stay, each dedicated to cryptocurrency.

“It’s not just here in Europe,” they had assured me last year. “These places are springing up everywhere.” And lately I have seen others forming.

As I say, these people intrigued me, even though I didn’t have much time to spend with them. I couldn’t help feeling that a century ago they would have been Christian missionaries, traveling the world and “bringing light” in a somewhat different way.

Now, as it happens, they want to come to the Central US. Not to the glittering coastal cities, but to someplace where Americans still do productive work. And so, beginning in two months, they’ll take up residence on the second floor of the sanitarium, their purpose being to turn it into a functioning Bitcoin House. (Esther and company will use the top floor.) They’ll stay for six months at least, and they’ll have access to the sanitarium’s front room and rather large basement for any kinds of meetings and gatherings they wish to arrange. The backyard too, once spring hits.

This should be fascinating. More next time.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com