A Holistic Approach is Better
[Note from the editorial staff: In the interests of fairness, we're running this opinion piece that raises many questions about our publication. We had to cut it down quite a bit for size and direct relevance to the hacker community. We also eliminated those parts that were aimed at specific individuals, as we don't feel injecting personalities helps to further the conversation. We welcome any and all responses.]
I've been a reader of 2600 for almost 30 years and the purpose of this writing is to demonstrate how this hacker community, like most of the world, has lost its way the last few years, and is in a constant state of activity, vigilance, and action... all pointed in the wrong directions. In other words, we're missing the whole forest because we're focusing on just a few trees. It is out of a tremendous respect for this fine publication that I write this.
This magazine has always valued freedom of speech, even when being criticized in its own pages. It is with the utmost reverence for that freedom that I write this. I really didn't want to write a political article, but I know the magazine will always publish political content unless it decides to get back to its roots. So I may as well contribute to the political discussion with my own spin on it. Basically, if you want to get political and inspire change, take a holistic approach. Focus on the source of the problem, not the problem.
Fix the Cause, Not the Symptom
Before I present several big picture topics, I should lay some groundwork. I've been a hacker for about 25 years, have several businesses, traveled to dozens of countries around the world, and have boots on the ground combat experience. I am a former financial advisor. I have studied economics for almost 15 years, make real investments (not speculations), and believe in real free markets (not what we have now). I have no political affiliation, and am sadly and utterly disgusted with the direction of the country and the world. The only way I vote is with my money, and my feet. I consider myself a patriot in the spirit of our founding fathers, not the false definition of patriotism today which seems to mean continuing to support bigger and bigger government. By definition, you can probably label me a domestic terrorist.
I'll be expressing my own opinions in this writing, but do not care to debate with anyone in these pages, especially in any response letters we'll see six months later. If you want to debate, spare the other readers and reach out to me directly. It could be constructive and fun. But unless you've put the 10,000 hours of work in and have some life experience, like owning and running a business, escaping a dictatorship, losing a million dollars, you're only ranting. Besides, if I change your mind with one article, your convictions weren't that strong to begin with. That said, I know there will probably be a few ignorant comments thrown my way if this gets published.
It's been said that one mark of intelligence is to hold two opposing views in your mind at the same time. Said another way, don't take a strong stance on something until you can argue against it. That's right... against it. This means if you feel strongly about, say, a vegan diet, you should be able to argue against a vegan diet as effectively as you argue against a carnivore diet. This ensures you objectively viewed the information and made the most informed choice you can make. If you still can't decide, then don't hold strong convictions. The most dangerous people in this world are those who hold the strongest convictions with no desire to hear another view. So proceed with an open mind and temporarily suspend your convictions.
What I do want is to encourage you to challenge yourself, debate with your closest friends and family, and take action to research the following topics as extensively as I have. I've spent thousands of hours over years forming my own strong opinions, and will do my best to present things in a way I wish they were presented to me. I'll also be leaving plenty of references for actionable advice to learn the concepts I'm writing about - things I wish were taught in school or were taught to me by people I thought I looked up to. I'm not trying to change the world... but I might change the person who changes the world.
I don't expect hackers to become economists or financial experts. What I hope for is highly intelligent, thinking hackers to restrain strong convictions until they've really explored something down to the nitty gritty. You wouldn't run software until you've verified the checksum. Use the same thought process on the OS of your mind, and don't allow any software to run without verifying the motive of the person or entity who created the software they're trying to install in your mind.
I will reference big picture items I'm surprised have not been explored more thoroughly in past issues of the magazine. I believe the energy of the brilliant hacker community is pointed in the wrong directions. I find that hackers are highly intelligent, but also highly emotional, especially when it comes to trending topics like social injustice. I think this focuses on individual problems and not the causes of those problems. I think the biggest problems we have in America - and the world - are big government, dishonest money, a movement towards total control, and erosion of individual freedom in favor of collectivism. These problems come from brainwashing tactics the (((mainstream media))) practices, and an ignorance of American history and economics. Americans have gotten dumber and more impressionable with a shorter attention span.
My basis is that social issues, politics, and war are intimately connected to economics. I feel that unless you have a foundation on basic economics (not what is taught today), you are developing strong convictions without all the information.
So if anyone wants to jump from topic to topic every few years about the latest trendy, hash tagged "injustice," you should ask yourself what is causing it. Like posting about social injustice in America on a phone that was created from materials mined by slaves in one country and assembled by slaves in another country.
I believe that if people were left alone by government, and engaged in commerce with honest money, it wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be much better than it is now. My ideals are personal freedom, liberty, valuing the individual mind and body, and not infringing on anyone else. Watching interviews with Milton Friedman will elaborate on these details.
2600 Forgot What Orwell Tried to Teach Us
I'd first like to address the editorial entitled The Rule of Law in 39:3. Firstly, the political writings of 2600 in the last few years are just out of control, and many readers have sent letters about it. I've always felt a hacker magazine should present information about technology and hacking, and leave the politics out of it. This magazine has recently leaned towards a politically correct, woke, mainstream narrative type of musings. I know hacking and politics overlap. But if I want to mix politics and hacking, I'd go on YouTube and watch an Anonymous video.
The printed pages of this magazine used to be really good for us for us g33ks to explore technology without all the political nonsense. You've taken the Internet trolls and given them printed pages. I don't need a hacker magazine telling me not to come to a meeting unless I'm vaccinated. How about leaving that conversation between doctors and patients? With all the COVID-19 drama, this magazine lined right up with the mainstream narrative. If you wanted to stay out of all that and keep with the hacker spirit of independent thinking and decision making, you could have printed "Hey everyone, the 2600 meeting page moved online only. Decide and think among yourselves. We'll resume printing that page when we're ready." Instead, it was, "O.K., everyone, the government and media say this, so we will print that in our magazine too and promote it too." Without going on a tangent, I'm not anti vaccination. I'm anti government mandate because the government is not my doctor. I'll leave it at that.
The editorial says "Every time we've spoken out on some issue, raised awareness of an injustice, or questioned assumptions, we've never given up on the system itself, even when that system was proving to be corrupt or broken." It's broken. The federal government is too big, which is what the Founding Fathers warned us about. The individual states and individual people are losing sovereignty with every crisis they create and put on TV. I know you have to keep selling magazines, so you have to keep up on the "latest" trending topics, but why not address the causes of these issues like the psychopaths in the World Economic Forum, the enslavement of the world through the fiat dollar, or the brainwashing of children.
Of course, you are free to have your own opinions, but what I'm confused about is why are you spreading your personal political views on the readers of your magazine? We don't pay for political opinions, we pay for great hacking content. The last few years, I can't read 10 to 20 percent of the magazine because of the editorials and political ranting letters, when I used to read every word. Remember, 2600 is based in New York. Manhattan, and a lot of Long Island, have become more and more in support of bigger government. Mind you, New York is fairly big and the rest of the state hates how one very populated city controls policy for an entire state and, in many ways, an entire country. Decentralization anyone? It's a safe assumption that the political views of 2600 (mostly) align with the political views of New York City, otherwise the magazine would have moved operations to some other part of the world long ago, financial considerations aside.
Why have Ukraine flags on your website? I've been to war. I think most people who have been to war can agree there is a better way to solve things than violence. War is hell, but posting emojis and flying flags to "support" a country many Americans can't find on a map isn't the best use of our energy when we have a ton of problems of our own. I oppose war because I learned very clearly, and immediately, what war is really about. The only result for Americans is going to be the same as previous wars: less individual freedom, higher taxes, inflation, devalued currency. The federal government will have a new source of income at the expense of the prosperity of the citizens of every country involved. And what will that new source of income do? Fund more (((wars))), of course. If you want a great resource on how empires decline, read Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio.
If we're intelligent thinkers, we'll study to understand the reasons for Russia doing what they did, even if we personally don't agree with it. We'll have come to this opinion not by viewing (censored) Yandex searches, but by exploring history through the independent media, not the (((mainstream))) narrative. I've known Russian and Ukrainian people, and don't want anyone to die. But, just like you learned in grade school, why is America the world's police?
Why don't you protest the military industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower warned us about? Why not protest the fact that we have about 700 military bases? That's not national defense, that's offense. I can go on, but you have two radio shows where you can discuss politics. Why put it in the magazine too? Maybe start a political podcast and keep the magazine for unbiased hacker information that hackers of all countries can read.
Why keep writing editorials about fighting something you'll never change or win? You wrote yourself, the system is broken. I can agree with that. Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in 1984. In that book, George Orwell teaches us about an evil, all-controlling government. By writing so adamantly about a few government topics, and taking a side on this or that trendy cause, you're missing the bigger picture. You're missing the forest for a few trees. Economically, if the federal government dismantled itself to the bare essentials (national defense, not offense), those people and resources will move to the private sector, allowing more innovation without the burden of the cost of big government. Studies and history have proven that increased surveillance and loss of freedom have not stopped terrorists, as shown in Boston, Paris, and all the beheading videos on the Dark Web.
Americans should fix things at home before we go running around the world spreading our agenda. Instead of fixing a broken system, we have to start over. We should read history and remember the values the country was founded on, which are individual freedom and liberty, not satisfying groups of people at the expense of that individual freedom and liberty.
Teenagers Are Idealists, Adults Are Realists
Younger hackers want to use their bright minds to fight for social justice. When they grow up and take the typical route expected of them from American culture, they lose that passion to take action towards something they believe in. The reason is because American culture is designed to keep people from thinking. The government wants obedient working taxpayers because it owes the (((Federal Reserve ✡))) (a privately owned bank) trillions of dollars.
But if you take the time as an adult to question everything you've ever known, you'll understand how corrupt the system is and simply opt out. I believe opting out is a much more productive and peaceful way to protest against a corrupt system. For those that have read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, you'll remember that all the intelligent men in the country opted out of working for the corrupt government, and the government fell apart. Protest all you want; you still have to go to work and have 20 to 40 percent of your dollars taken out right off the top. Those dollars never go to paying anything except (((interest on top of interest))), not schools, roads, bridges, etc. I don't advocate tax fraud, but am opposed to direct taxes per the Constitution. In fact, direct taxes were illegal, and we had to amend the Constitution to tax the citizens and create the (((Federal Reserve ✡))). This is why Woodrow Wilson is hated by so many people.
You can opt out of this system by legally reducing or eliminating taxes by making investments the government promotes, like technology, energy, and real estate. Not everyone in the government is evil, and some politicians actually want the federal government to shrink in size and encourage citizens to be more entrepreneurial. You can also opt out by storing wealth in BTC or precious metals, instead of a decreasing dollar "invested" in the manipulated stock market.
Teenagers are raised in government run schools and taught to go into debt to pay for a mostly obsolete college education in order to find a politically correct corporate job just to get taxed so much they'll never be able to retire. By the time those young people become adults, they've accumulated debt they'll likely never pay off. Whatever free time they have left is spent being brainwashed by the TV and social media. That enthusiastic teenage hacker has changed into an overweight, impotent workaholic with low testosterone and high anxiety who works in corporate America for a 401(k) that won't buy him anything in retirement, if he can actually afford to retire.
Power and Human Nature
Technology is the meeting place of science and humans. Science is great because it has no ego. It's pure information and truth, waiting to be discovered. Humans, unfortunately have emotions and are not perfect.
Before you take a hard stance on what you think are important social issues, try some real research on the independent media. Use a VPN, Tor, and Yandex because Google will (((censor))) your results.
Mo' Money, Mo' Problems
Remember, government does not create money. The people and free markets chose gold and silver because they were, and arguably still are, the best money. Government makes laws, and (((central banks))) create fiat currency. If you watch Hidden Secrets of Money, you'll see that the gold standard system restricted what government could do. A government can't go to war on a fixed money supply like gold. So it has to convince the citizens to want war and it uses the media for this. Then the government borrows from the (((Fed))), increases our taxes, removes our freedom, and more people die. On a fixed currency supply, government is restrained. On a fiat currency supply, endless currency can be printed to finance wars forever, which is what Dwight Eisenhower warned about. This manifested itself in Richard Nixon decoupling gold from the dollar, essentially defaulting on our debts as a country.
This is one of the prominent arguments for Bitcoin, because it is a fixed supply. If you disagree with what the government does, don't participate in the fiat system, and use alternative money like BTC. Yes, it's volatile, but that volatility shows you how ineffective a fiat system is. It's not that the "price goes up." It's that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar goes down, as it's done for 100 years. Every single fiat currency in history has gone to zero. Every one of them. This is a 100 percent failure rate. If you only think of Bitcoin in terms of dollar price, you are only seeing, pun intended, one side of the coin.
Bitcoin is still really early, but one of the best things it has done is expose the fiat system and our government for what they really are: a system of slavery. Bitcoin has forced people to really study things like economics, technology, and government. Forget the BTC speculators and all the alt-coins; Bitcoin is really the only decentralized cryptocurrency there is.
If you only study money and economics, you'll be able to cut through all the (((fake news))) out there designed to steal your attention. You can then point your energy towards productive behavior like creating goods and services, going into business for yourself and investing. You can opt out of all the woke culture drama and the political scandals and we can make peace with each other by providing value, not supporting government sponsored handouts like "stimulus" checks and the "Inflation Reduction Act."
One can argue that money is the root of all evil. I think you can look at that two ways. First, we don't have money, we have currency, specifically fiat currency. Second, fiat currency is evil. So if the fiat currency is evil, then it makes men do evil things.
Surveillance and Privacy
We all love technology. One interesting thing about technology is that it's become weaponized. When Edward Snowden revealed the surveillance programs the U.S. used against everyone, it really got people thinking. What's frustrating to me is years later, the average person knows they are being surveilled, and simply doesn't care. "That's the world we live in."
I believe privacy is a right we are born with, not a privilege granted to us by a government or some other entity. But not only are governments the ones who are tracking us through our devices, big companies are as well... and are sharing all that data with other companies and governments. My point is, with every advancement in technology, people are adopting it in a dopamine fueled reaction to convenience and better quality of life. As technology gets better, it collects more and more personal and physical data about you. That data gets compiled and profiles are created and sold to data companies like Cambridge Analytica. This is the ammunition governments use to influence your decisions, thoughts, and behavior. This agenda is pushed through the mainstream media and social media networks who cooperate with government. This makes people vote, get emotional, buy products, etc.
Unless you properly secure your phone with something like GrapheneOS and use Linux at home instead of Mac or Windows, you are literally a lab rat being watched and experimented on. I think the EFF article in every issue is phenomenal and I wish more hackers would get behind privacy rights, personal freedom, and liberty rather than gender identity, pronoun clarification, race relations, and expensive social programs. The reason I say that is because personal freedom and liberty value the individual, rather than groups of people. Comedian George Carlin valued the individual above all else, and despised groups of people because groups want to control your language and that's how you control thought.
People celebrate the rate at which space travel is improving and how fast AI is learning. My question to the hacker community is where do you think all this is going? Are we creating the tools of our own destruction like in Terminator 2? I love the thought of AI, and the idea of having robots as slaves in my home doing my dirty work is great... as long as that software is open-source and not proprietary. It's why I don't have an Alexa. Soon your electric car will gather as much data about you as your Fitbit so your auto insurance company can know more about your lifestyle. The Fed can do the same by watching all your purchases through their Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and negate purchases or erase your currency at their discretion.
Although you occasionally have a company in front of Congress explaining their evil behavior, the result of this charade is a monetary slap on the wrist. Just like Apple uses slave labor in China to make those awesome computers and Amazon uses slave labor in America to pack their boxes, it doesn't mean anything and justice was not served. My suggestion is opt out. Simply vote with your wallet and don't purchase anything that tracks your data and sells it. Use open-source, build your own computers, and educate people on the injustice of data collection to influence thought and behavior.
Value the Individual Above All Else
If you stuck with me this far, you'll hopefully get a clear understanding that the most effective way we can inspire action and change is to direct our energy in the right places. Point your attention to the causes of problems, not the individual problems themselves. The biggest problems being the behemoth of American federal government, the monopoly of the dollar, and the erosion of individual freedom and liberty. Don't point your attention towards groups of people. The sovereign individual is the ideal that should be most cherished. Government works because of the consent of the governed, not the coercion of the governed.
If you value the individual and hold to the principle of never infringing on anyone else's natural rights, you are not an evil person. Ayn Rand valued the mind, reason, and reaching your full potential as an individual. The hacker community is brilliant and passionate, but focuses on trendy issues that get fed to them by the (((mainstream media))). Stop doing this! It is only distracting you from what is really going on, which is the erosion of the individual as a sovereign entity. Groups of people gain political power at the expense of other groups of people, which is unjust. All the while the ever expanding American government continues to tax us, devalue the currency and our labor, control more of the Earth, and allow you to do less and less each year in the name of "fairness" and "equality" and "inclusion."
If you educate yourself on economics, real money, and read the independent media and the Constitution, you will clearly see the trend the world is going in and be able to protect yourself and your mind. I feel the big picture topics I've presented here outweigh most of the trending topics discussed today both on importance and scale. These issues affect everyone in a negative way no matter your gender, skin color, or residence. If we point our energy towards the real causes of these problems, power can be transferred back to the people where it belongs, and taken away from the rulers where it currently is.
Finally, I'd like to address the term conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is an agreement to conspire. To conspire is to plot or act in harmony. A theory is a hypothetical set of facts or principles that explain things. So when one person calls another person a conspiracy theorist, they are saying there is a hypothetical secret plot going on by a group of people acting in harmony. The "theory" part of this goes away when you can prove things to be true with concrete evidence, such as collected data, dead bodies, devalued dollars, and censorship.
Conspiracy theory then becomes conspiracy fact.
