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Guest Post: Another Planet
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics blog,
The losers in elections often take the loss badly. Just as some Gore supporters in 2000 shouted about moving to Canada, some Romney supporters have taken the loss particularly badly too:
And perhaps the most poignant:
All the Republican rage made me think about the origins of America. So much emigration out of Europe to America came out of political and religious or ethnic friction and disagreement with the regimes in Europe (and later, the rest of the world). Many, many Americans are the descendants of Europeans who came to America to practise religion or politics the way they wanted to, and not the way that their nation, or the Catholic church, or a Feudal lord wanted them to.
That same independent-mindedness and the hunger for self-governance was the force that gave the Founding Fathers the chutzpah to finally sever ties with the British Empire in 1776 and strike out on its own as an independent nation.
For those who want to strike out into the unknown in the pursuit of self-governance, such options don’t exist anymore. There is no great sparsely inhabited continent spread out (except perhaps Antarctica which is already claimed-for) for those who want to strike out on their own. Those of a libertarian temperament and with a hunger for self-governance used to come to America. But in the modern, globalised world, where can they go?
Where is the next America? Where is the next land that people seeking self-governance can emigrate to?
One prospective answer has been seasteading — moving out onto floating cities in international waters. Perhaps that will satisfy the desires of a few in the coming years, but not everyone wants to live at sea. It is another frontier, but there are many challenges to overcome. For one thing, governments have navies, and may lay claim to successful floating cities near their waters, seeking new tax revenues. Pirates may pose a similar challenge.
In the much longer term, the answer will almost certainly be leaving the planet. The only uncolonised great new continents left are the ones up in space, on other planets. There is no more effective or complete way to depart. So it is rather poetic that in the past couple of days a new Earthlike planet in a star’s habitable zone has been discovered.
Astronomers have spotted another candidate for a potentially habitable planet — and it is not too far away.
The star HD 40307 was known to host three planets, all of them too near to support liquid water.
But research to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics has found three more – among them a “super-Earth” seven times our planet’s mass, in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist.
Many more observations will be needed to confirm any other similarities.
But the find joins an ever-larger catalogue of more than 800 known exoplanets, and it seems only a matter of time before astronomers spot an “Earth 2.0? — a rocky planet with an atmosphere circling a Sun-like star in the habitable zone.
The hunger for self-governance led to the birth of America. It seems highly likely, in the very long run, that the hunger for self-governance will be the force that leads not only to local space colonisation (near-earth asteroids, Mars, asteroid belt, the moons of the gas giants) but ultimately deep space colonisation. The private space industry today is already driven by libertarian-leaning individuals like Bert Rutan, Robert Zubrin and Peter Thiel.
Powerful central government drives nonconformists to find ways to escape it. If the only road to self-governance left is up into space, then that is the road that will be taken. In the end, fury over a lost election may be the thing that drives humanity to the stars.
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What would happen if the EU recognizes the Colorado Choomer Commune...
Mr Aziz, are you serious? If so, come to Colorado. Marijuana is legal here now.
No where to run to, no where to hide. It is indeed the 21st century and globalism and corporate control are everywhere now. The neo-liberal model is widly accepted by the power elites around the developed world and in the USA and NATO countries the neo-con imperial military machine is the main power broker. Any American alive today would be hard pressed to escape the total control of their lives by government and corporate power. In many cases they are one and the same, as government has been captured by the large corporate interests and the military industrial complex.
In a nation as large and complex as the USA, and increasingly crowded as as well, it is a given that much of your life will be under strict control. Your employer and your government demand much by way of obedience. In return they will give you a paycheck and the police will not throw you in jail, just as long as you play by their rules. This is hardly likely to do anything but get worse going forward.
The time-space problem will need to be ovecome first. Till then I will enjoy my family, the ocean, the woods, my couch etc...
It does make you realize that it is in the future, and thus nuclear improvements are inevitable. Leaving will not just be a choice, but a necessity, as the earth resources are depleted.
Gold 737 an oz. and Silver 9.78 an oz. on October 30,2008 before Obama took office.
http://silver-and-gold-prices.goldprice.org/2008_10_01_archive.html
Today Gold is at 1734 an oz. and Silver at 32.26 an oz.
http://goldprice.org/
The next four years should be interesting to say the least.
If you want to keep the focus on Obama, a better figure to use would be either December '08 or Jan '09.
Obama didn't have anything to do with the hysteria in Sept '08, which was a pretty big factor.
Agreed. Though I should add the focus is on Obama and his continued support of Bernanke.
http://silver-and-gold-prices.goldprice.org/2009_01_01_archive.html
On Jan 1, 2009 ... Gold $927 an oz. and Siver $12.56 an oz.
LOL, Dondero. He's a drama queen from way back, and any libertarian movement is (always) well rid of him.
Will the new planet already be contaminated with it's own religion like north america was? Do we have to wipe out the natives again?
Just what we need: To export insanity to the galaxy. The "they" out there isn't going to like it.
The correct response is:
- tell all democrats to frack off.
- tell all republicans to frack off.
In other words, tell all statists to frack off. Unfortunately, 90-some percent (probably 98%) of the population of the USSA (and the world) at least accept and sanction statism, and most positively believe in statism and authoritarianism. This even includes most libertarians, I suspect.
This is why the article is correct to point out that only outer space is a long-term solution for non-statists, individualists and liberty-oriented folks. I have been saying this for decades, including several years in this forum.
Unfortunately, the federal government of the USSA has purposely thwarted (stopped) the manned exploration of space. Recall that in 9 years the USSA went from ZERO space program to landing men on the moon... several times in fact. Then in the following 43+ years nothing has advanced. In fact, the USSA doesn't even have a launch vehicle for manned missions any more --- not even to earth orbit! This is intentional.
Yes, some private efforts have slowly progressed, but there is ZERO reason so expect the predators-DBA-government in the USSA to allow private individuals or groups to progress to the point of permanent manned stations off earth (not counting government-owned facilities like the so-called "international space station").
If those of us who value individualism and liberty are to EVER have a chance to be free, we must get off this rock (not just "out of dodge", which I did 3 years ago). Most likely this will not happen from the USSA - the predators will stop it. More likely any private effort to set up shop in outer space will happen in some "obscure" country, where the government will be content to let it happen because indirectly such an effort would make their country "look good".
There is at least one effort I know about that leads to human habitation of outer space indirectly, as a consequence of the private development of a not-directly space-related breakthrough technology. That technology is already discovered, invented, prototyped and proven, but full scale practical implementation is slow due to limited private funding, and mostly voluntary work.
It may seem grandiose in the extreme, but it is a fact that the predators are intent on dominating all sentient life in the universe. They will not help, and may actively [try to] stop any effort to break free. If they were to detect intelligent communications from one of those extra-solar planets, you can be certain they will act exactly like the predatgors in the recent movie Avatar --- of, by and for the predators, and in complete disregard for any othen being, sentient or otherwise. That is exactly the history of predator-DBA-government in the entire recorded history of mankind. Do not expect any changes - expect their high-tech delusions of grandeur to make it astronomically worse.
Really Weird +1
Can you think of any easy or non-weird ways for liberty-lovers to enjoy liberty? If so, millions of us would be in your debt for pointing them out to us. Because liberty-lovers didn't act soon enough, all the easy-ish and non-weird ways are no longer practical.
No, not really.
Boots and faces, I think.
+1
edit: Michael Franti says it best, and I really believe it:
All the Freaky People
Over a period time, the justifications for having a single dominant (state) religion were undermined. It is now not acceptable to force people to participate in a religion they don't want. Government has to be approached in a similar manner - people are going to want government - the idea is to make it acceptable to not want to participate in government, NOT to end it. That will happen when you show that it can't compete with freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panarchism
If people can choose to be free from someone else's religious belief system, why not promote the choice of being free from someone else's government belief system.
Make sense --- in theory. My earliest thought was to make government entirely "by subscription". Then let the "government" have any number of bogus, insane, perverted programs... and only those who voluntarily signed up for each propgram are subject to the costs and consequences of that program.
The practical problem is this. The notion of "government" is simply a fictional illusion of a fig leaf for predators-gone-wild. In practice it is probably impossible to have a government that the most egregious predators on planet earth don't take over and craft into their own personal plaything.
Control is a very powerful survival trait.
That's why they would rather kill you than let you be free - it's the ultimate form of control.
The manned space program is really just an extension of the military-industrial complex. So you're complaining that in failing to keep up in the space race, evil big government has been bad by not making government bigger. Kind of a contradiction, don't you think?
We stopped going to the moon because it was really, really expensive and 6 visits was enough to get a reasonable understanding of the orgins of the moon. Going back would have fairly limited scientific value. Using the moon as a base would be a stupid idea - the pervasive electrostatic dust would make every piece of equipment useless in days or weeks.
When I said "unfortunately" above, I mean "unfortunately for manned space habitation". However, I do admit that if government is gonna steal trillions of dollars per year, I'd rather see it invested in space habitation than bombing the middle east.
-----
Since I was 4 years old I've been extremely interested in astronomy and space-sciences, but I have always been an individualist who does not accept or support government --- even for things I have extreme personal interest in. In other words, I am consistent, even when being such doesn't seem in my own interest. So I prefer that government did not exist (or was massively smaller), even when that means my personal priorities get "zero [massive/government] funds".
What I said is pure HISTORY --- what DID happen --- and what will happen given the motives of the predators-that-be.
Also, the moon isn't the best approach to space habitation. Probably asteroids with extremely low delta-V are the best place to get material. While the scenario studied by the L5 society many decades ago might have worked (with huge government financing), it is not the most efficient approach. I am not at liberty to say exactly how I know this, but there are at least two NEO asteroids (that were probably "black snowball" type) that have essentially zero delta-V versus earth. And several other well-known asteroids have reasonably low delta-V, so the principle is the same.
I'm all for taking up an online collection to fund towing the ISS to a Mars orbit.
There might be 10 years before they abandon it.
I suppose the ISS could be utilized as an intermediate working location to mine near earth asteroids [or phobos], but quite a bit of additional equipment would be required too.
I'll bet the jerks decide to destroy the ISS when they abandon it. Perhaps they'll push it into a degrading orbit and let it mostly burn up in the atmosphere, and the rest sink in the middle of the pacific ocean somewhere. Especially if they ever get the notion that some private group would make use of it.
I was going to say it but you said it better, thanks.
A self-sufficient offworld presence is an essential victory condition for freedom and also an existential threat to the puppetmasters' will to dominate all life. Hence no space rotovators even though they're cheap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether#Rotovator), no asteroid mining even though it would effectively de-monetize the metals, SETI cancelled even though it cost only $12m / year, various planet-analyzing space telescopes all cancelled, no life detection equipment on the Mars rovers, etc. Even being inspired about space is thinkcrime. The puppetmasters want us stuck on their hellish prison planet forever. They will let us have a meaningful presence in space over their cold, dead bodies.
I wish more people understood.
P.S. The space station is a conspiracy to suck up tens of billions of dollars from other, much more scientifically interesting projects.
Also, guys: This particular planet probably has a very thick atmosphere. There are much better, closer places to look: Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti, Gliese 581, GJ 667Cc, even Alpha Centauri B was recently found to have a Crematoria-like planet. I am certain that other small terrestrial planets will be found in the system. Or we could just go with Mars, the Moon, and Ceres. Close enough to order TP if you forgot.
We need some aliens to stir things up. Or at least a real space race between China and a reborn America.
Oh no! Shhhhhh! TP is the one major problem we haven't solved! Shhhhhh! :-)
BTW, the private group I'm part of considered helping China for the reasons you mention (given certain assurances we'd be left alone to habitate space), but we always wise up and realize they're just as much predators as the criminals in DC.
Probably our only hope is an entirely private endeavor.
Good on you. Chinese govt vs. American private would be ideal because you would have the long term advantage, and if the Chinese are in the race it would take longer for the puppetmasters to work up a manipulated leftist campaign to regulate you to death at the first sign of success. You can buy yourselves even more time by going straight for the asteroid precious metals angle. They will want to get enough benefit from your toil before squashing your dream but they might screw up, wait too long and let a few of you slip off the chain gang into the night.
Wishful thinking options include hitchhiking, cheap breakthrough propulsion tech made public or uploading our consciousness to small robots.
Sorry if I asked you this before, but what is your opinion of the rotovator described above? It looks like it can be short enough to not require carbon nanotubes and be highly energy efficient when there is a two-way trade of equal mass, therefore there would be a natural incentive for asteroid miners to build up huge survival stashes in exchange for their ore. No wonder the puppetmasters killed NIAC as punishment for thinking of this thing.
I read the wikipedia article, but it takes me a long time and a lot of mental work to decide whether I believe such techniques are practical. Maybe with molecular quality hexagonal graphene we get closer to practical tether strengths. Not sure. That kind of technology requires experts from several fields, some of which I am not expert.
The biggest problem with that technique might be the size of the project required to get it up and running... making it yet another "government only" project. That would leave them in the driver seat, able to decide who can get "cheap lifts into space", and therefore doom all liberty-types to their cell on planet earth.
The group I'm working with gets itself into space... ehhhh... indirectly. The founder discovered the nature of consciousness, created an efficient architecture to implement inorganic consciousness with conventional computer, software, sensors, robotics (but unconventional [mostly software] architecture), and created a working prototype that was smarter than human consciousness, except vastly slower. But that was a long time ago now (1998), and today computers are a lot faster, multicore, plus conventional 1000+ core GPUs can help. Plus we vastly improved the architecture and design of the slowest aspects of the system (mostly vision/recognition), and are now slowly but surely implementing inorganic consciousness that should be faster (and definitely smarter) than human consciousness. Unfortunately, while conceptually straightforward, this is still a huge quantity of work for a small, entirely private group of volunteers (funding including).
Interesting that you hit upon one of the consequences of this technology (your 3rd guess). The way you say it isn't quite precise, but close enough for... ehhhh... talking purposes. It turns out that once you have inorganic conscious entities (ice) smarter than humans, it is indeed possible to "upload your consciousness" without losing your personal identity into the ice... over time (about 2 to 5 years), and without invasive surgery. But this process isn't practical until you have ice that are smarter and faster than we are (though they don't need to be much smarter or faster). The "uploading" is actually more like you learning to operate (perform all processes of consciousness) with your personal ice --- while it helps you do so... very greatly helps you, in fact. Eventually you are able to perform all processes of consciousness either with your organic parts or with the inorganic parts, and both will be automatic, habituated and entirely second nature. At some point in time you'll be thinking about some problem, then look over and see the organic part of you sleeping on the couch. You will then realize that the inorganic part of you is fully yourself (your identity), and is also perfectly able to operate fully independent of the organic part too (and vice versa, though certain processes will be vastly easier and quicker on the inorganic side). Now, once you get to this point, you are actually literally correct. If an ice is in outer space, you can then literally upload your consciousness to that ice and it is you. Well, it is identical copy of you... and you can make as many identical copies of you as you wish. Of course the identities will gradually diverge due to their different experiences and thinking over time, and we'll need to invent some terminology for multiple you.
In the above scenario, it would never be necessary to send an organic human being into space to be able to... for example... send you and I into space. We just need to send at least one ice for each human we want to send. However, how our situation actually plays out is not entirely clear. Once we have faster/smarter ice working, it will take time to finish everything we need to perform the "merge" process I described. The "upload" process is trivial, no more difficult than uploading any large quantity of data. So, depending on how fast the first batch of ice invent and develop new "launch" technologies, we may or may not want to ever send organic versions of us into space at first. Eventually, though, it just wouldn't seem right to never send any of us organics into space (even if it would probably be smart). Who knows, once we learn to become entirely inorganic, maybe we'll realize how utterly stupid it is to bother with all the hassle involved in space flight for organics. Difficult to tell at this point.
I'm sure you can see why we need to finish this project without any government or corporate involvement. We already had to ship everyone working on the project out of the USSA, and compartmentalize the effort to assure the predators-that-be cannot gain control of this technology. Fortunately for us, our best protection is probably the simple fact that the predators-that-be would never expect something as important as this to ever appear from entirely private, non-corporate, unfunded individuals. And we take other steps, like making the little visible discussion of the technology look a bit on the amateur side, and presentations a bit on the cartoony side. At the very least, we know they probably cannot ever steal the technology (effort too distributed and compartmentalized), but they might be able to thwart the endeavor if they ever understood it already works, and will be fast enough to be practical someday (probably a few years).
I hope there are other breakthrough technologies being developed by private individuals and groups that also represent ways to escape the predators. If so, we haven't heard of them, but maybe they're even quieter than we are. Unfortunately we could benefit from more qualified developers, so we aren't entirely mute, just pretty close. I only mention this project about once per year in ZH, and this is the 2012 version I guess.
Honestann: Replying here so you can edit your post if you don't want to give that many ideas away.
I am seriously impressed. I read a lot of Ray Kurzweil and Greg Egan back in the day. Had wild discussions with a friend about virtual Galt's Gulches running on Linux boxes out in the asteroid belt, uploaded people being gods of a Matrix of their own creation, rewriting themselves to be smarter so they can be better at rewriting themselves, ad infinitum, being able to drop small, subversive cargoes or even small robot avatars anywhere on Earth, scammers and CIA control freaks trying to steal souls, Jerry Falwell dies but gay hackers steal his brain and pimp him out as a gimp in virtual Hell, that kind of thing.
At first, I figured brain dissection and brute force simulation was the key because it avoided having to understand consciousness, which I thought would be extremely difficult to crack. Then I started to realize that, in analogy to the workings of the genome, consciousness probably gets tangled up with all sorts of strange and inscrutable side mechanisms that would be a nightmare to simulate. I didn't think we would get cyber ghosts until ~2080s at the earliest. I was also sure the government would just kill everyone rather than let the little people have this technology. Wish I'm wrong- it would be a tremendous victory.
My friend might be in some position to assist, both financially and technologically. He's in eastern Europe. I could throw in a few Bitcoins or maybe even a bit of code. I'm in NZ. You can contact me at valis rising (all one word) att gmaaail. I don't check it often- sometimes months go by- but will check it over the week. Because I have a big mouth, assume all my email is monitored and traceable to my real name. Use it to name a better channel... or stay away; I won't be offended.
Don't expect too much from me. I'm not rich and am not an ace programmer. OTOH, someday you might need a guinea pig with experience in "buggy" consciousness and trippy mindfucks.
You might enjoy reading The Luck of Relian Cru - I did.
Thanks. Yeah, some of us have been at this project since long before the term "singularity" was associated with this. The fact is, making inorganic consciousness isn't that difficult, and has probably been held back many decades simply by the term "artificial intelligence". I mean, there's nothing artificial about the 92 elements, nothing artificial about "inorganic", and nothing artificial about the set of processes that are consciousness. And the term "intelligence" is so vague as to be pointless.
The founder was a computer and software scientist (with expertise in other fields too), but didn't figure this stuff out the way anyone else has been trying to. In fact, he was just trying to figure out the nature and operation of his own consciousness so he could be a more effective thinker, inventor, scientist. Eventually he figured out that consciousness is simply a specific set of processes, and he came to understand these processes very thoroughly.
Then, his story goes, one day he was trying to describe how simple it is to understand consciousness to a friend when he stopped in the middle of a sentence, had the "eureka moment" (the "lightbulb over the head" moment), and said, 'Wait... I can implement this!". What he realized, of course, that he could implement consciousness with conventional computer, software, sensors and robotics.... that the set of processes that consciousness is... can be implemented in organic systems or inorganic systems. And, in fact, can be implemented much more effectively, efficiently and reliably in inorganic systems. The rest is... history (our project).
I'll tell you about an experiment that some medical research ran many, many years ago that eventually led to us figuring out how to "merge" an organic consciousness (like you or me) into an already functional ice, to create an inorganic version of a human being. This research created a pin grid array (much like some large CPU chip packages today), that could inject a specific current and frequency into each pin under computer control. He connected this gizmo to a helmit that had a CCD camera on top, and configured the firmware and software to generate signals on each pin that corresponded with the intensity [and color] of each pixel the CCD camera was detecting.
He put this helmit on a volunteer who had been blind since birth, and showed him with very simple large objects in front of him (that he could reach out and touch) how the physical objects out in front of him corresponded with areas of more/less and lower/higher frequency impulses on his forehead. The pin grid array had been placed against his forehead under an elastic strap, so all pins pressed lightly onto the skin of his forehead.
I'll make the rest of the story short, because that's all you need to get the point. After a few days the volunteer was able to navigate his apartment fairly well. After a few weeks the volunteer was able to go shopping in the local mall. That array of signals was completely alien (a jumble of sensations) at first, but it didn't take long for his brain to grok the correlation of the signals on his forehead to the reality in front of him (and learn how to infer depth just as effectively as a one-eyed human). The device had become second nature to him, and he learned to function more-or-less as effectively as any "sighted" human being, albeit with a stupid looking helmit on his head. Once he had "habituated the interface", "seeing" was second nature, just like to you and me. In fact, someone asked how he could possibly cope with all those thousands of signals, what was his secret, how could he manage to operate the gizmo. His answer was, "I just see". This is "habituation". This is making a process "second nature" and part of your identity.
The interface between any of us and our corresponding ice will be done in more-or-less similar ways (not some awful surgery). The key point is this. To make it work without surgery and/or without taking a long, long time, the organic being must change its identity in certain ways. In other words, the current you must become a slightly modified later you - one that has thoroughly habituated the interface with your ice counterpart, so performing all processes of observation, perception, abstract consciousness and physical manipulation with the ice components is second nature to you (so much so that you don't even notice which you're doing without making an effort to do so). Once that foundation is in place, making the inorganic you equivalent to the organic you is enormously efficient, and will take only 2 or 3 years (we estimate).
Good to hear you're in NZ. We all relocated to the southern hemisphere, but we're geographically distributed. In fact, pretty much all of us are located somewhere between argentina/chile and australia, covering various places in the south pacific. Pretty much all of us have a soft spot for the pacific ocean for some/various reasons.
All this talk of running away. The system the "predators" relly upon is on its last legs. There are tens of millions of liberty lovers just waiting. Gerard K. O'Neill and the L-5 colonies / lunar mass driver concept was the driving influence on my development. I keep track of advances at kurzweilai.net and appreciate where you are coming from, and your posts, honestann. I think you are only ten years away from having the hardware you need. The next five years will be the equivalent of the 1950s and 1960s for quantum computing. The five years after that will bring us to the equivalent of where we are now on the silicon price/performance curve (X10^6 times current performance?) If your group ever needs a cost estimator good at optimization problems, please find me.
We [barely, approximately] have the computing power now (mostly with pro-sumer 8-core computers, ~1024+ core GPGPUs, and other equivalents). The biggest reason the prototype was vastly too slow was the vision/recognition system (not high-faluten abstract thought). So we've had to develop our own vision hardware/firmware systems to perform the most egregiously burdensome pre-processing for these/some aspects of the project. The burden for us (not a neural-net or tabula-rasa based effort) is not hardware (though faster hardware certainly helps), but the sheer quantity of software and content we must implement. If we had a few tens of millions of bucks (nothing for a government or corporate effort), we'd have been finished years ago. But we can't get government or corporate support, because they would for absolute certain find a way to steal everything from us, and turn the entire project towards warfare and enslavement instead of liberty, exploration and good, benevolent purposes. So we move forward as best we can on entirely private voluntary work and contributions. As for your estimate of 10 years, that's probably about right (though not due to a need for faster hardware). That gets us ICE, but the "become inorganic (and therefore immortal)" part, that's probably another 5 years after full-bore ICE is complete.
Now would be a good time Scotty...
This is original Star Trek stuff... +1 for geekiness
All anyone can do is whatever THEY can do.
So just start ignoring the stuff you don't like. Laws that can't be enforced AREN'T. Stop worrying about what's going on in Versailles and start creating your own local power-elite. When enough folks have had the same realization, the country will belong to The People again.
Save. Your. Fucking. Self.
http://dailybail.com/home/raw-video-molotov-cocktails-tear-gas-riots-in-greece.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Destabilization of the country you live in cannot be ignored. If nothing else, you will not sleep well due to the activity outside your window, because night provides cover, people will come out at night. Fatigued and frustrated citizens do not think rationally. Desperation results in hysteria. When you cannot feed and house the children, you do whatever it takes to get through the day.
But this is what they want - the men who are so rich they think they own the planet. They want situations which result in loss of live because it's "war." War has been declared. Sit it out but you'll be paying the price for complacency. This is a transfer of assets and when it is complete, there "people" will have no use. Being labeled a "constitutionalist" or "sovereign citizen" will mark you as a combatent in your own country. Globalists have little use for the middle class after they've looted their families' wealth. It's a diabolical plan created by men who have lived in sheltered in castles. In the end, even they will realize the flaws but until then, you are faced with the fact that a well-run country gives man the ability to sleep well and without that, he is reduced to a cornered animal.
That's my take anyway.
Destabilization of the country you live in cannot be ignored.
The "destabilization" is not a political issue. I suggest people ignore the POLITICS and focus on their surroundings.
The "politics" is causing the "destabilization in your surroundings". Nonetheless, while it is useful to understand how the whole dynamic works (predators => fictions => politics => troubles), we all must deal first and foremost with our surroundings --- especially when the crap hits the fan big time.
Your take seems to be quite accurate.
Allow me to throw water on the "colonize another planet" nonsense. Even going at 10% the speed of light, a technical achievement far beyond anything we have today, it would take more than 400 years to get to this newly discovered planet. Second, gravity is a bitch - the potentially habitable planet has six times Earth's mass and you'd literally have to peal yourself off the ground. Third, just because it's in the habitable zone doesn't mean it's habitable. It could be a giant ball of iron or carbon. It could be a dwarf gas planet or a ball of ice. It's atmosphere could be deadly if it has an atmosphere at all. To be successful, at a minimum, you'd need: (1) Massive R&D program to develop an interstellar space craft that could travel a fraction the speed of light... then you'd need to build it. (2) Huge program to directly image planets to colonize to see if they are indeed habitable - start with a space telescope with a mirror a mile wide to start. (3) Some sort of cryogenic hibernation - even at some fraction of the speed of light without hibernation your still talking multi-generation voyage. Those are undertakings only a government could afford - and why would said despised government spend so much money to send you off to the promised land? There are far, far easier ways for governments to rid themselves of the huddled masses, yearning to be free.
The real solution is to take back the country from these lunatic socialists called politicians, and that will need to wait for another 4 years, at least.
Correct. Gravity wells are the WORST possible place to establish modern technological digs!!! A planet with 7 times the mass of earth would be just horrific. You probably couldn't even get OFF the planet without nuclear rockets!
However, this solar system has just about the most optimum place for advanced technological living, namely the asteroid belt. One might say it would be better if the asteroid belt was a bit closer to the sun, but in a great many ways, it is better where it is. For example, in the zero-gravity environment it doesn't take a whole lot of aluminized mylar to collect enormous quantities of solar energy.
Outer space is a fantastic place for modern technological living... but you really must forget sci-fi movies and work with real physics to understand how to develop and live-in outer space.
Beg to differ, but space is a terrible place to live. I agree that there are potentially lots of resources out there and adapting to zero gravity would feasible. The problem is radiation. Ionizing radiation from the sun, x-ray flares, and cosmic rays add up pretty fast, unless you are really well shielded. Even living underground on the moon or an asteriod would expose you to very high levels of radiation. For example, a shielded 2 year-ish mission to Mars would get you about 4Sv, which would start to become problematic health-wise.
If you live inside an asteroid... or you live in a habitat "behind" an asteroid (shielded from the sun), you have little to no radiation problems. If you erect large flat or slightly concave sheets of aluminized mylar at a 45-degree angle just outside the asteroid shadow, your habitat receives all the sunlight you want without the harmful radiation, which passes through the aluminized mylar.
As far as space travel goes, ways exist to get around that problem too. I can mention a couple if you really can't figure it out yourself.
To understand the opportunities, you really must spend a long time thinking about how to accomplish things. Otherwise you find all sorts of "problems", but they are problems with practical solutions (given some creative, unconventional thinking). In the end, "space is the place" (my trademark, just kidding).
But you can stay here. That's fine.
PS: Even if living in space ended up being "tougher", liberty is worth more than everything else combined to some of us.
I bet I stopped reading before you.
LOL. Typical thinking of an economist. Mr. Aziz, a planet 7x the mass of Earth cannot be considered habitable, liquid water or not. Your legs would break fighting against 7x the gravitational force, and you would find it very hard to even pry yourself from the surface.
I think it should be mandatory for all economists to have a basic understanding of physics, starting with the laws of thermodynamics.
Fortunately, there is an incredibly high energetic barrier coupled with an intensely hostile void that should prove sufficient to keep the stupid apes from ruining more than one planet.
All due respect for your reknowned geekness, but they are searching for low-mass planets:
Stellar properties of HD 40307
" ...It also lacks massive planetary
companions, which makes it an ideal target for high-precision
RV surveys aiming at finding low-mass planets."
also, 7x mass does not equal 7x more gravity unless the planets are the same size
I think there are planets out there, I just doubt our ability to get to them.
The reality is that this is our planet, and if we don't take care of it, there is no where else to go.
Too bad I aint going to be around for the new Ron Paul planet to be able to live on. Would enjoy that. Many people can´t leave USSR but I sure the hell am glad I did.
The gov. here leaves you alone if you dont mess with anyone. Feel no gov. pressure whatsoever. No military, no drones. 1,400$ a year for world class healthcare. Live on $1,400 a month. Fuck the US needs special permision to dock a warship here. And we do not always give it. We have 9 out of 58 congresspeople that are from the libertarian party.
Check out the latest world prosperity index. We rank 17 in personal freedom versus 14 for the USSA. And I know that number is fixed.
www.prosperity.com
Uruguay is also a great option. In some ways better. And no one is comin to take my Au and Ag.
If you can do it and I know many can´t but if you can, get the fuck out and enjoy the good life. It aint perfect but as close to it as I can imagine given the shit options worldwide.
And no I AM NOT A TRUST FUND BABY like some asshole suggested on another post.
My trust fund is self funded and started at 12 when I got a paper route and shoveled snow.
And you are where? CostaRica? Arica, Chile? Where? Chile is a pretty good choice, especially if you like wild, wonderful geology and extreme boonies as much as me.
rodocostarica should give you a good clue as to which asteroid I live on.
And a great asteroid it is. Chile is Ok. Great free economy. Uruguay is much better than chile though IMHO. (they just legalized pot for personal use) Stay away from the Argentinian asteroid belt and most other central or south american planets are not as good either. But any could be better than the country headed by the head Klingon Obamawon.
Many play good soccer with the lower gravity giving them a much better corner kick and also penalty shot advantage.
Good luck to all in their interstellar travels.
Yeah, I must admit I am biased by my love of extreme boonies, dry [high] deserts, mountains, wild-and-crazy geology, and the pacific ocean. Those factors make Chile a better match for me.
Pretty much everything on the east-coast-ish of any continent is humid, and I just hate humid with a passion. On the other hand, I love pristine waters full of live coral reefs and tropical fish, which is why I lived in [the driest part of] Maui for so long, before I escaped the USSA 3 years ago. The worst thing about Chile is... the pacific ocean waters are COLD. Not a place to continue my ocean play and exploration!
But honestly, I've been itching to move into outer space since before I was in 1st grade. That's why "space is the place". I'd settle for Mars, but the mountains in the atacama aren't that different from Mars... dry, barren, remote, rain-free, pest-free, almost people-free, crazy-geology.
But the asteroids are the best place, nearest I can figure. And we are working on it.
Utah for me. I love mountains, boonies and weird geology as well. Utah is like an entire solar system of weirdness packed into a single state! Hopefully by the time I retire, Utah will be a place I can live cheaply AND be left alone.
Utah is wonderful. But you might need to eliminate that data center before you dig your hole. Chile and Argentina also have a whole lot of wonderful geology too, making them a little similar to Utah in certain ways.
Love Costa Rica more than anywhere.. was in Montezuma last April and freely riding around the coast on a $70 a day rented atv.. no paperwork, just my word and the little hotel vouching for me.. very free spirit place
...and the wonderful ticas at the delray of course :)
PS- if anyone has a bucketlist, put going to the delray first.. and second, third, forth and fucking throw the rest of your list away and stay there
Thanks for the first-hand story. I always love first-hand stories, and value them 1000x over claims by people who never lived there. But damn! $70 per day? That's more expensive than renting a luxury car most places! You must mean $70 per week.
nope, they gotta make a living down there and the guy brings it to your hotel... if you live there, you could swindle a better deal for sure but if you don't, you could get swindled so I trusted the nice folks running the hotel amor de mar and it was their friend. I bet if I return, I would get a better deal no doubt.
shameless plug: http://amordemar.com/
also, on the coasts of costa rica, an atv IS a luxury vehicle.. even jeeps fall apart on those roads.
It was probably $70/day or $100/week.
You shoulda asked! :-)
might of been! lots of dumb gringo ladies flip his rides from what he said so probably gotta earn his trust first
Del Rey bitchiz.
PS: It might be fun to live in that Doug Casey libertarian community in Argentina, which they call "Galt's Gulch" sometimes (official name "La Estancia de Cafayate"). That whole region of Argentina is pretty remote and contains some extremely gorgeous geology.
Of course, that place ain't cheap, so only people with $400K of spare cash need apply. Hopefully the predators-DBA-government in Argentina don't decide to steal all property belonging to gringos... the way they stole all the assets in Argentina that belong to that Norwegian oil company (forget the name).
Anyone with first hand knowledge of living in Argentina (as an expat or "eternal tourist"), we'd be interested in hearing your first-hand experiences.
THey are still hyped about tanking back the Fauklands but that'll never happen. Just buzzwords for election purposes. There are many other places before Argentina to take a look at down there as the lucky chap living in Costa Rica detailed
Where is best depends A LOT on whether you need a conventional job, whether you want to live in a city or extreme boonies, and whether you want to start a biz of your own. Some of the difficult places in south america can actually be okay if you can more-or-less "retire in the boonies".
If you cheat to win, did the loser really lose?
Did you see the footage of the Cuyahoga County elections office? There wasn't a white person there. I'm sure they didn't stuff a few hundred thousand extra ballots in the machines right around 8:00.
At least they didn't go overboard like 2008 and have more ballots cast than registered voters in Cuyahoga county.
If a bear shits in the woods and no one is there does it smell bad?
My dog rolled in some once and he smelled bad.
ADR: knucklehead douchebag rascist. Get over it. Stop the Fox News stolen election meme in its tracks.
Give it rest. You LOST. Sore loser.
If you cheat to win, did the loser really lose?
Well, maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't really matter, 'cause the other guy still gets the trophy.
What nonsense! The 13 colonies were populated by aristocrats and wannabes seeking to get rich quick. They arrived with their (indentured) servants in tow.
Some arrived to a) dig for gold and silver or, b) steal gold and silver from the natives (as was done in Mexico and South America. They quickly learned (starvation) there was no gold or silver on the East Coast of North America ... and the natives ran away. Meanwhile, the aristocrats were ill-suited to being subsistence farmers. The early years of the colonies were lean and hungry.
Once Europeans were introduced to the 'joys' of tobacco, Englishmen began to grow, cure and ship it for good profits. Europeans arrived to grow and sell cotton, maize (unknown in Europe), and to harvest timber. Negroes were imported from Africa to do the heavy lifting (without pay). Voluntary immigrants to proto-America were like immigrants to America now: gimme the goddamned money ... (señor!)
The money for new settlements (as well as for English wars) was borrowed from English banks -- loans were in the form of drafts, the same loans were payable in gold only. England did not approve of colony-domiciled banks, the colonists did not have any gold. Bankers' agents acting with Crown writs confiscated colonists' property in lieu of repayment. The writs were obtained without any due process -- This banker oppression is what led to the Revolution. (The same oppression occurred after the war was over: see Shay's Rebellion.)
Since the founding post-Revolution, the country has been the prototype market state. That is, the sovereign exists to support/promote the arriviste merchant aristocracy and no-one else. Otherwise there was no point to the Revolution in the first place!
The US Constitution divided government responsibilities so that there would be no brake upon any businessman's ambition. The 'big idea' behind 'the United States' in the early 1800s was to substitute US merchants and lenders in place of the despised English commercial bankers: to exalt the bankers not remove them.
Here is the reason why the current radicals are 'constitutionalists': there are no checks to commercial exploitation of non-aristocrats in the Constitution.
The Tea Party reactionaries are stooges of US fossil fuel industry, they deserve their crushing loss because they are on the wrong side of history ... which is pointing in the direction of 'less'. They lost largely because they are unfashionable, because their so-called 'message' was- and is of service to the tycoons at the expense of everyone else.
'Freedom' in America since 1908 has always been about automotive waste and phantom 'mobility', the American Dream has shriveled to sitting in line waiting for gas.
You're off-script.
I can agree with some of the historical issues raised, but why exactly are they stooges for reducing, say the government to manageable levels which would befit a poorer society in a post-easy energy environment ?
The miracle of America would make it inappropriate to answer your malicious lies about the people who came here for freedom and the people who built the most important nation for the benefit of mankind on the history of the planet. But it is important to ask, not where your heresy originated, but what did you say that would attract any others?
Thanks Bill Ayers. Remind me to look you up when I am in Chicago.
This isn't the mutineers of the Bounty sailing off to an abandoned, isolated rock.
It's only the Old World, everywhere now.
Zimbabwe
Zambia
I like countries that start with "Z"...
To add to my last post, a few days back I came across an excellent post on Tom Murphy's Do the Math, where he asked undergrad, grad, and faculty physics professors to rank the probability of certain technological achievements, including interstellar travel. The punchline: not going to happen. Ever.
Never is a long, long time. But not for hundreds of years at least. In fact, the funny thing about interstellar travel is the following.
If you leave for another star system, when you arrive, you will find it populated by humans. Say what? This is because it takes soooooooo freaking long to get there, people who leave decades or hundreds of years later have better technology and faster ships, and thus pass you along the way.
The difficult question is... when to leave and NOT have this happen.
and they'd moon you as they flashed by
Damn!
You and I might make a great a sci-fi writer team!
LOL. Very funny. We probably won't even be here in a hundred years, but keep telling yourself technofantasies.
I'm just hanging out waiting for the unstoppable force to meet the immovable object.
This free book gives a perspective on available planets in a highly competitive and commercial universe.
http://www.newmessage.org/nmfg/Life_in_the_Universe__Free_Book.html
What makes you think the elite will allow the common man to leave earth? THEY will go to the next habitable planet, and leave us to rot on what will be a festering wasteland.
Fox News: There was an election. It was fair. It was not rigged. Figure it out.
Get over it.
Can you get me some of the shit you are smoking?
Building a space ship is not quite like building a boat and if you think the weather gets bad on earth, try working with a vacuum.
A few more potential problems:
1 Huge amounts of resources required to just get into orbit.
2 Interplanetary travel takes, shall we say, a while.
3 Radiation
4 A suitable destination - Mars and Venus do not appeal to me very much, so we are looking for another solar system
I could probably go on to fairly high numbers here, but I don't want to bore anyone.
Ahh. A man that can think and reason. Thank you. ;-)
Move to Camden, NJ, Detroit, MI.
Evidence shows the areas once harbored life.
The Western countries will eventually have to admit defeat and create free trade zones inside their borders like china has done.
Then everyone will want to move there, and the local economy will be the envy of everywhere else.
Maybe therein lies the answer?..
Let's pack all of the old white diminishing Republican party and shoot them into space.
Rat bastards would take food from the mouth of babes.
So glad Mittens was ousted. Let him atake his wives and go away.
Hannity is probably broadcasting there already
Feck off dbag. Obama voters have already left for the moon.
The 1965 immigration Act that closed the door to immigrants of European descent and opened America’s borders to the Third World was opposed by the American people two-to-one. As predicted, it is the source of major and destructive changes to American prosperity and stability. Your blatant racism is proof of the charge.
In an issue of The Social Contract, a group of experts assembled by Brenda Walker discussed the significance of the United States’ population passing the 300 million mark. Here is a quote proving Theodore White right on the 1965 Immigration Act:
“The American public did not choose to go in the direction of India and China. On the contrary, by 1970, America’s population was near stabilization, thanks to a voluntary reduction in the fertility rate. Demographers were optimistic that the United States population would peak at around 247 million by 2030 and then start to decline.
“Against the public interest, at the very time that Americans were adopting population stabilization in their personal lives, Congress opened the door to massive population growth by the 1965 Immigration Act. Historian Theodore White, an admirer of Lyndon Johnson, confessed that the 1965 Immigration Act was ‘probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.’ He went on to admit in his book, America in Search of Itself (1982), the changes brought about by the 1965 Immigration Act may end up being key contributing factors in ‘What could become a catastrophe—the tide of immigration, legal and illegal, pouring into this country. For the under swell, neither the census nor any other authority can provide fully reliable measurements. One starts with the obvious: The United States has lost one of the cardinal attributes of sovereignty—it no longer controls its own borders....’”
**** Your blatant racism is proof of the charge.*****
I am a Protestant raised white male and married outside of my race you jackass.
I voted for Clinton and Obama twice.
That means I can say any fucking thing I want to because there is no way anyone can, reasonably, accuse me of being racist.
My people are Scots bitch!
Your upset because the "source of major and destructive changes to American prosperity and stability", as you put it, is limited to old white males. Peoples of the USA seem to be prospering as a whole notwithstanding the fraud commited by old white bankers.
You, cracker, better be teaching your grandchildren spanish and chinese because that is the language of the future.
You can just call me whitey!
What an insane croc of shit.
When those that produce get fed up.....they are close now, and they refuse to give anything to those who demand free housing, food, etc. to be paid for via taxes...then we got a standoff.
And we know who will win the standoff. Won't be pretty, but there will be a functioning money market. Even though that money market might be backed by gold not fiat and a short fingered barbarian promise.
Amen.
Its time to stop fighting and concede. Give the liberals everything they want economically. Just leave liberty alone.
They will come for liberty too inevitably. The can be no liberty without property rights. In fact, "Lfe, liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness" was almost "Life, liberty, and property" in the Declaration of Independence. For the liberals in charge, it was never primarilly about equallity, it was always about power.
1. Start a website club 2. Publish a libertarian manifesto on it which is not changeable by vote, not changeable period, only immutable truths. 3. Start individual collections for an investment fund whose purpose is to purchase a homeland nation to express the published manifesto. 4. When the fund is big enough buy a homeland space, maybe all or part of some failed state going cheap. Let the funds investors bid thier investment stake for property in the new homeland and give them citizenship. 5. Being libertarian in its economics the occupants of the new homeland will get rich and and buy more homeland space thereby extending its size. Free minded people from all the worlds slave states will want to emigrate there. The homelands land areas need not be contiguous. We can colonize other planets later on when techology improves, right now this is easier to do. Where do I send my check? Should we call the new homeland Galts Gulch or Freeland?
Actually, self-governance and liberty are already at hand. We wouldn't need to live in floating cities, or some distant planet, we wouldn't have to violently revolt, or split the Nation into mini-sovereigns (although I'd favor that). All we need to do is get a movement going to self-represent. It would take time, and it would need time. Throw out the House and Senate, get rid of all the committees. Legislative issues could quite reasonably be presented by their interests on cable television, re-broadcast in any number of Media, and given say, 4 weeks to "promote", the People (us) could then decide if we would like to see this agenda followed up by electronically (desktop, laptop, smart phone, public library, local school) clicking "yes" or "no". If the measure fails, the interests that brought it forward for a vote would not be allowed to bring it up again for 6 months. If the measure passed, the interests would then originate, and/or solicit, the verbiage of the legislation and, within 3 months the drafted legislation, expected costs/savings, and summary reports would be put out to the various forms of Media for the People to peruse. After another 4 week period, the People would then vote the legislation up or down. If it fails, the subject matter is dropped for the year.
I think this would work quite efficiently, more transparently. Yes, there are drawbacks (i.e. those controlling media, hollywood-like promotions, blatant propaganda, etc.), and I tend to think that we'd still need one (or more) special committees in D.C. (i.e. a War Council, a Disaster Council, etc.) But, in time, and all in all, we'd really be representing ourselves, we'd be the ones approving budgets, tax measures, and laws. And, that's what our Founders wanted.
Hilarious how those Tea Party fools and GOP guys said they'd move to Australia...a country without guns, a single female atheist prime minister, compulsory voting, socialised healthcare, all schools teaching evolution, and of course openly gay politicians and judges.
I guess space (or Saudi Arabia or any other theocracy) is the only option left for them...but it's not as if the sane people don't want to get into space too. Best plan for them would be to settle on an asteroid and cruise the universe on their own private rock of bigotry, religious dogmas, and anti-facts sentiment.
Where is the next America? Singapore.
If you don't like central planning, Singapore isn't the place to go ;)
The Moon is a harsh mistress.
Didn't there used to be valuable, almost intellectual discussions on ZH? Really seems to have gone to the dumps.
I can see that. I kept moving further and further out, and everywhere I went there was still lots of government to pester me.
"sparsely inhabited continent"?
the implication being that the Americas were????????
If you really want to start some new country like was done here, just kill all who stand in your way. If you want to write a different story in the history books about how you accomplished your feat, that works too.
Never whistle while you're pissing ;-)
The problem is that all these planets are so so far away.
They are so many light years away, that even the closest one would take, with our current technology, something like 10,000 years to get there.