The Threat is Real. Can the DOJ Defend DOGE?
Yesterday I was told that Wired had doxxed the DOGE team. Six team members the Elon relied on heavily were named in this article, that was quickly deleted - but not before being archived. Death threats are squirting out of every nook and cranny leftists have left, as they are purged from the US government and allegedly dragged kicking and screaming from their orifices...er, offices.
Video source - Yellow Flash 2They're real mad. Fighting mad. Redittors want to turn the Elon and the Donald into pink mist.
IMG source - Elon's own Twatter - Reddit rates a rat
So while Redditors plot to turn DOGE into pink mist the team has been uncovering some eyebrow-raising expenditures and financial facts. For instance the US Treasury hasn't turned down a payment request in 22 years. It has paid 100% of the items it was requested to by all branches of the USG. Those requests happened to include some plastic coffee cups used by the IRS that cost $1280 each, according to The Older Millenial reports on Rumble (<2 minutes).
So, there's a horde of angry DEI hires scheming to murder the Elon and the erstwhile DOGE team that is not only purging their beskirted ranks from the folds, but is actually going to make them pay for all their cinnamon bomb lattes themselves. It gets worse.
US Attorney Edward R. Martin points out in a letter to the Elon that they caught a dangerous economist working at the Fed for the CCP. Who knew? Who coulda thunk that the Fed had been infiltrated by Commies that were sabotaging all the financial moves Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen were making that should have been fixing everything that has been going wrong in the economy for years now.
Well, Biden didn't pardon himself, did he? All those that were pardoned should have lots of knowledge of pardonable crimes to discuss under oath, too. Now that they're pardoned for crimes they obviously must have committed to have accepted a pardon for, they can't plead the 5th against incriminating themselves, because they can't incriminate themselves for crimes they've been pardoned for. They've got no excuse not to testify copiously about the crimes they committed, and plenty of others they know about.
Hunter must be eager to testify. Hell, he was publishing incriminating pictures years ago, before it was even cool!
Far be it for me to tell Ed how to do his fucking job, but getting the pardoned on the stand and deposed as quickly as possible strikes me AS HIS FUCKING JOB! Wouldn't you like to know what crimes James Biden was pardoned for? Or Jill? If they refuse to testify, they'd be committing a felony of misprision of a felony - at least misapprising us of that one they've been pardoned for. While they may (or may not) be able to be prosecuted for such crimes as they've been blanket pardoned for, if they start singing might no one want to prosecute them anyway. That's how snitching works, I hear, or at least that's the theory I'm told. If they don't testify to those crimes they've been pardoned for, they're guilty of a new felony, committed after Joseph Biden no longer claims to be the President of the United States and has the authority to pardon them. They can be convicted of all new felonies if they don't testify to the crimes they and their co-conspirators committed. And lots of co-conspirators weren't graced with a pardon, and are fully chargeable.
If Eddy's so gangbusters on making sure the financial crimes the USG was undertaking are properly exposed and prosecuted, he should be all over Hunter the 'Eager Beaver' Biden, eh? He should be visiting Vittoria at Wired for endangering federal agents. The DOJ doesn't need the Elon's permission to get crackalacking on those things, and if he's half as eager as Hunter is to reveal those crimes we should be inundated with all manner of salacious material in the coming weeks.
Depose the pardoned. They can't plead the 5th, and if they give good snitch then the DOJ can't even seek to overturn the sleazy, unlawful blanket pardons, because they've already relied on them by giving testimony to the DOJ on the basis that they would not be charged, prosecuted, and penalized for those crimes. So, they can go to prison for misprision of a felony for not testifying, or they can cement their pardons by fully regaling us with tales of their criminal conspiratorial adventures, and we can catch all their buddies.
Volodomyr Zelensky just gave an interview where he stated that the Ukraine didn't get any more than $75B of the ~$200B the US donated to the Ukraine. Well, DOGE should be aiming to find out where that money was disbursed to, and US Attorney Ed Martin should be all over subpoenaing the pardoned suspects in laundering that money, whether they did so before or after Zelensky got enough of it to buy that mansion in Miami for ~$40M a couple years ago. Seems there's bigger money in sending kids to die in trenches than there is in racing rally cars. Valueplan should be taking notes. Mining Hive's paltry DHF is rookie numbers. They should have been hitting up Treasury for some real dough.
Say it with me: #DeposethePardoned!
Edit: I just saw this, but this is why Fraudci was pardoned back to 2014. Because that's when EcoHealth Alliance was getting money from Fraudci at NIAID to do the bat virus stuff in Wuhan China. Here's the receipt. Not 2019. 2014. This has been in the works for a decade, and Fraudci was Perpimus Maximus.
IMG source - Elon's own Twatter Shows payments from NIAID to WIV or bat virus research in 2014
lol wtf this is all so very weird
It's surreal.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/top-treasury-official-announces-resignation-comes-same-time/
The Elon discovers that Treasury was ordered to pay every request, even when to known terrorists, top official resigns rather than answer subpoenas. Fortunately, that won't stop criminal charges, perhaps even of treason, and Biden didn't pardon him in advance.
Thanks!
McGregor mentions further down in the video that the green T-shirt receives 11 million dollars a month into his account. And he himself, if I have understood correctly, has transferred millions back to people from the US Senate, whom he mentioned by name. McGregor offered to send Davis the material. Which would then be names that the Trump people might well be interested in for further criminal charges.
I also heard today that USAID employs over 10,000 people plus the outside firms and consultants who all get a piece of the pie. I couldn't help feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude when some of them were expelled from their offices and no longer allowed to use their computers.
What isn't as widely known is that USAID and NED (National Endowment for Democracy) are both understood by those that should know to be CIA cutouts primarily used to coup and destabilize foreign polities, as NED did to the Ukraine in 2014. 10k head plus consultants is a lot of people wreaking havoc in the world, I hope we can do with a lot less of going forward.
It is now circulating on social media - the CIA aspect and their regime changing efforts in Ukraine through both, USAID and NED. I knew already in principle that the deep state is responsible for color revolutions and such things but not the names.
Indeed. They banged their heads on closed systems like Russia and China, tough. Or, as much as a system with living beings can be called "closed", I better should say.
I think the dark side will be pleased with all the brand new AI translating possibilities to overcome the language barriers for people who refuse to speak English and are therefore immune against the bangers.
Language translation is the lone use I make of AI. I don't generate pics, and I don't correct my spelling, grammar, or phrasing using AI to do it. I use translators daily, however, to grasp the meaning of posts in German, Russian, Chinese, Kazakh, and to reply in those languages as best I can. I don't consider that dark at all, but letting the sweet disinfectant of sunlight be brought upon all that speech by all those peoples that might otherwise fester in obscurity. Not that I am the sun, but that exposure to ideas native speakers of different languages have that might otherwise never be contrasted with that from other cultures.
I agree.
That is though not what I meant.
In order to categorize an AI's answers and know whether it is giving you a right or wrong answer, you need to understand something about the subject matter you are asking it about. It's similar with language. To really understand a foreign language, translation alone is not enough for very complex topics. Bringing your own existing knowledge and experience to the table can be extremely important and tip the scales.
You've probably heard the expression “lost in translation”. I often find that although my English is good, there are nuances and translation hurdles that are difficult to overcome. But I only see this when I am already advanced. I then help the AI generated translation to be more precise in its translation, since I use AI translators myself.
Our language, for example, has a common Latin origin and is much closer to us in its differences than Arabic or Hebrew or Chinese, because our language roots have more in common.
If I read a book translated from Arabic into German, I will never find out about the translation hurdles and possible errors because I don't have the opportunity to check them.
But of course, as you say, AI overcomes a barrier that was there before.
With "dark side" I meant things like navigation devices in traffic. It's a truly helpful and practical device. While, when I never use my own sense of orientation, I will become dependent on it and may never learn to navigate with my own eyes.
I agree also with you. I do not use navigation devices but fumble along desperately reading street signs using directions laboriously recited in conversations with service providers whose services I seek.
I am also gaining familiarity with German, Italian, Spanish and other PIE languages through my use of translation services, because I inevitably see words translated and it is impossible to avoid gaining some advance in understanding by that experience.
You are a moron.
Widely known and understood, isn't proof. But yeah, let's have a coup by one of the most dangerous departments in government, more dangerous than the CIA or FBI could have ever been, DARPA, who have developed these yet unseen weapons the likes the world has ever seen before, as Trump puts it, that makes him feel guaranteed enough he holds the most dangerous weapons on earth ever produced to walk around threatening the entire global community to get down on their knees to his every command. DARPA, also would be the producers of biological weapons, and the gatekeepers to such. Elon and Thiel, are both privileged entities to the exclusive group within DARPA that hold top security clearance that not even a president has. But yeah, let's play with the real bad boys instead.
What?
There wasn't a single thing surreal in the entire article. No proof at all was stated to align with Musk accusation they were to pay out to know terrorist or fraudsters, that's how gullible you are to take something as a truth that has yet to be proven as a truth. People aren't leaving out of fear of subpoenas, they are leaving because they want no part of illegal access into highly classified information, and personal data of every American being exposed to hackers. You must be more easily amused than I thought you would be. This whole thing reeks of coercion, threats and intimidation tactics to overthrown our government, once it's done and said for, you'll be lucky to get someone on the phone at any entity that you can understand words spoken by them, that's how naivete you are being.
So, you're pro-NED? I did admire his hair...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/david-lebryk-treasury-resigns-musk.html
So, your story is that big 'ol meanie, the Elon, is trying to force St. Lebryk to horribly compromise Americans' PII and he is bravely quitting his job so he won't have to watch the destruction of everything good and decent. The NY Slimes says that Treasury was hemorrhaging $hundreds of Billions every year, which Lebryk was handling from his office as Fiscal Assistant Secretary he has held since 2014, the senior career position in the Treasury Department. DOGE was a campaign promise that got the Donald elected, and is after the source of the bleed in Treasury, and Lebryk couldn't hold DOGE off anymore once Bessent was in office.
Also, you're misstating whom is doing what. The Elon didn't put Lebryk on administrative leave. That would have had to come from Bessent, or Trump hisself. Subpoenas come from courts of law, not from rocket scientists. You are quite concerned that fraudulent claims paid by the US Treasury are going to be detected. Something weighing on your conscience?
Nothing laying on my conscience but compassion for people out here struggling to pay rents way above a thousand a month, and my view of the park not becoming a homeless encampment for the millions of people that will be displaced by a government who crafted the problem to begin with. My biggest problem is that I am as honest as the day is long. I wouldn't even accept a guy at home depot instructing me how to hook up a new washer catch basin in the basement, that if the two dollar something parts he thought would work, didn't, to try these two, he said, "go ahead put them in your pocket and take them along just in case", I steadfastly refused, backing up looking at him like he was nuts. He said, "it's okay, I've been here for seventeen years, you have any problems, have them call me up front." It took me a couple times going back out there to see him, it was because of the angle the pipe was leaning out of the floor drain that was complicating things, and I didn't get the old washer and nut off as easily as he said by letting it soak over night after spraying a ton of WD forty on it. I knew that puppy was going to have to be torched carefully off there after having been on there for as long as I've lived here, thirty plus years. The only thing the WD 40 did was help loosen away rust so I could take a screw driver and hit against the pipe installed down inside the other to push it inwards to break the rust further embedded between the two pipes, then careful heating of the nut to loosen it. I got it off, wrapped it in plastic and put it in my purse. Next time I saw him I went up to him and told him I had something for him. I reached in my purse and told him he could stick it in his pocket, go ahead, it's fine. He got a giggle out of that, and I got a you've got more experience than I thought look out of him. Great guy, recently helped me reconfigure another instance where I had to hook up two pipes that didn't align due to an angle after housing made me take a flex pipe off it. I am as clean as a bell, and am close to having to clean out my filing cabinet of my tax returns for god knows how many years back, I have nothing to hide, they get tossed to make room, not to hide any deceit. I know the same can't be said of you, trying to call the kettle black while yours is scorching red. Shame. shame. Deflection and blame, like always, right.
You come at me with a bunch of anonymous sources willing to speak on sensitive matters they shouldn't be speaking on. Yeah. Right. That's why they have no business getting access to sensitive materials. You know damn well Elon being part of DARPA, if another administration walked into DARPA and laid that game on him, he'd be shaking in his boots. Why don't we take a little looksie into what DARPA's been doing, especially since they are the ones in control of biological weaponry, and, the fact it's probably not a mere coincidence that Trump was playing kissy face with Vivek the Rat, and co-chairing alongside Musk in DOGE before his abrupt departure, and the rat having held the "failed" patent technology to the vaccine LNP used that big pharma sold the rat. Or how about the fact that the rat just happened to be Vance's buddy in college when they ran across Thiel, Thiel, another one involved in DARPA. I mean, really dude, I don't even need anonymous sources to make my connections here, you going to come out rolling with the punches, you are going to have to do a whole lot better job throwing punches at me.
But let's not stop there. How about we investigate USAID being used to finance those oil refineries in Africa Trump put thirty billion into through USAID to build state of the art refineries to convert oil into LNG, and while we are at it, connect the dots back to the Obama admin that granted the money to put in the electrical infrastructure needed, but you won't do that will ya, because it becomes a whole new kill joy they've been working in conjunction with each other all along.
Once we get past that, let's connect some more dots. Like those refineries going to be used to produce the LNG that will be sent up the Red Sea to a whole new port of "prosperity" and rebuilding of Gaza as a major import/export hub, in this new "prosperity" ring of things, planned well in advance through Trump's Abraham so called peace plan that will have prosperity ringing through out his new peaceful paradigm for the region, and how any of the "supposed" CIA operatives were involved in funneling monies into the whole modus operandi of false flags that occurred that eventually led to the total, but convenient destruction of Gaza. While we are at it, let's look at those mandated sanctions against Iran that led to the build up of the supposed billions released, again, conveniently to accuse Iran of financing terror instead of the CIA through USAID financing terror. Trump made it impossible for banks to release any of those billions for transitory aid, but, again, conveniently mandate a date by which that should happen, like just before the time of the false flag Oct 7 would happen. I imagine, we could also look at those weapons the likes the world have never seen before, and what links, if any, could lead to the discover of those top secret DARPA weapons being used to kill the Iranian president, other terrorist leaders, exploding phone technologies, and the ability to keep Syria from advancing toward their enemy invading because, somehow, magically, none of his planes or other military apparatus would start.
So yeah, if we are going to dig into it, let's dig it all up, but that's never going to happen because they are playing a meaner game of golf than the lowly CIA, mediocre, lazy, unproductive fools who chose laziness over hard work and normalcy over excellence. No, they won't expose how they are planning to drive you to want to go fk yourself in your face after they do uncomprehensive-able things to you that you can't possibly comprehend. Just in case your comprehension is failing, that's a direct threat posed toward you by someone who owes no allegiance to the US....but go ahead and keep worrying about the CIA fking around in another country, or that the CIA helped try remove Trump through impeachment, go ahead, be that foolish.
Libel ill becomes you. Worse you could hardly more mischaracterize me. I am 100% disabled, but do not take any payments from SSA. I don't get any stamps. I pack 90# bundles of shingles up ladders and roof houses, fix frozen pipes, and give people floors, for free whenever I can. I don't spend a satoshi of Hive, but work for my neighbors for my supper. You just keep your larcenous practices confined to yourself, where you have experience and reasonable expectations of them coming to fruition.
I cited actual sources, which is more than you do. I cited sources most likely to support your stream of consciousness gibberish about fiendish plots to expose Americans' PII - but what they said was exactly what you claimed wasn't happening, that crooks have their hands in the US Treasury cookie jar that hasn't denied a request for payment in 22 years.
You're floridly insane, completely off your nut, living in a fantasy world and hypersensitive about fraud at Treasury being discovered, so much so you make a post and ramble about hypothetical people that just might have financial need that justifies fraud stealing from hardworking people that pay taxes. So, it's a pretty anxiety ridden subject for you, and that immediately suggests that along with your ethical laxity about stealing from the more hardworking, there's something else that causes you anxiety about Treasury fraud being discovered, and the typical source of such anxiety is fear of getting caught. Asking an obvious question isn't unreasonable at all, and unlike you casting libelous aspersions, without any basis whatsoever besides your own execrable ethical standards, at me, I only asked you, and gently at that, if there was a reason for your anxiety.
I'm all for DOGE having a go at DARPA, BARDA, and all the covert shops. NSA, DIA, Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, State, DHS. Hell, I'll be grievously wounded and terribly disappointed if all of them aren't gone over with a fine tooth comb at least once, and most of the ones I named repeatedly and often, if not permanently. As an American I don't think anyone that works for me should be keeping any secrets from me, and if any Americans can't be trusted with those secrets, well that's why we have a Second Amendment, and America would be better off without them.
Get a grip on your shit. You're flinging it in all directions uncontrollably, and shitting all over me isn't going to fix what's ailing you. Neither of us likes the Elon or the Donald, and blaming me that some people do is about asinine.
They weren't hypothetical people. Every example I've given I've come to learn from people doing such. If not from outright knowing individuals engaging in these practices who were known to me personally, to having owned a hair salon for ten years having people telling me of their situations, or having heard the people telling me of their relatives situations. Giving examples was easier than saying from each instance of how I come to know of the situations, like one of my ex-boyfriends from years ago had a sister who was slow, mentally off a bit, and met a man one of the same, came to live together, both living off SSI because they were incapable of performing the functions of a job. Really Ralph, your claim of working for supper, under a dictatorial tyrannical regime, both a Thiel and Musk dream, working for your supper will be one and the same considered, a derived benefit that must be claimed. You got something of value in exchange for your work. It currently even is considered as such, as I tried to explain the different examples, if someone living with someone who collects SSI and that person is not reporting that they are living with someone else, they get the full SSI. Now, if the person does make note they are living with someone but paying a said amount of rent and contributions toward bills and groceries, depending upon what those expenses amount to, it may or may not affect their SSI income, on the other hand if that person notes that they are living with another person while collecting SSI but are not being charged anything for living with them, their SSI is reduced by what they call a derived value contributed to them. You, in at todays standards compared to tax laws, not SSI, have to furnish the value of those dinners to the IRS, it's called bartering, and as long as that bartering is below $600 a year, your okay, once it goes over $600 a year, you are required to report it. I know. As a landlord if I pay someone under $600 a year to do work for me, I can deduct that on my taxes without having to furnish the IRS with their name and social security number, once I pay that same individual over $600, I have to furnish the IRS their name and social security number. If I barter that work into 365 chicken dinners, and 200 breakfast, I am way over the $600 mark just by adding a value of $5 each onto the chicken dinners. I would have to get your name and social security number and report it. Now, if I was way under that amount but you made half that six hundred off my dinners and half that off any number of dinners, you would have to report it because it's on you to report any earning in a year over $600. You know Ralph, it's usually the ones accusing others of what it is they are doing themselves. Not that I am saying I agree with how they sat things up, it's just I am not going to jail over chicken dinners. Now that would be considered totally asinine, and I'd probably never live it down once my face was splashed across every website in the country trying to do a chicken run around the tax codes. I can just see the headlines now on a slow news day as each website grabs onto that bit of un-news-unworthiness.
Far as your other claims, the Gateway Pundit, like they are a reliable source of news when it's all one sided. Actually, if this conversation happened over there, you could just tell the mods I wasn't being a team player and have me banned. I know that also, because that's exactly what happened to me over there proving things they were saying concerning Trump weren't exactly being played out as written, there was other points they weren't acknowledging or totally ignoring. Some guy over there used a expletives at me, and I bested his comment back without using any foul language, he got mad and reported my comment. I emailed them and asked them why he was allowed to use language like that but I get banned, they said I was banned for not being a team player. So they run the narratives fed to them. What a lot of this "deleting" funding by Musk concerning ESG, DEI, and other assorted woke-nest, is actually the billionaires who got the funding through the government to run this scam up against people, now they've won, they are pulling out the funding. There's no need to fund it anymore, as Alex Jones has even admitted, they've done beaten you, I am sure I've shared that bit of betrayal to you, fully acknowledged we've all been played, if not let me know, I'll share with you, it's so mockingly impressive, I can't share that "I've told you so" enough. But go ahead and keep dreaming they're benefitting anyone from all these deletions when in fact they are burying evidence. Playing everyone like the dogs they really think we all are. Don't think this is going to come out as being the commander of your own personal little village like you think, you'll be on hunger overload unable to feed them all, eventually hunger will overcome those sexual fantasies and bragging rights you so desire, and all those women will become more worried about feeding their kids instead of if they get chosen for another night with you.
That isn't how these matters are arranged. I do provide work and materials for free out of goodwill as often as I can, and I accept the goodwill and kindness of others, not at all reciprocally, which is the necessary test of a transaction. Helping a friend in need isn't transactional, and having a friend to dinner isn't either.
That isn't what I do, and a mischaracterization of what happens. No barter process is undertaken. I help people when I can. When I am in need I ask for help I need from people I expect can help and are kind enough to me to provide it. There is never a quid pro quo, negotiation of tit for tat, or any transactional process.
A biased source can be 100% reliable when they only report news that is factually correct and serves their bias. Bias is only problematic when it supersedes factual reporting, which you don't even allege.
Well, of course. They're biased. You're a contrarian and anathema to them. What do you expect? They don't have an obligation to listen to reason - only to report facts they prefer to present. That in no way compromises your right to speak freely somewhere besides their platform, which they don't owe you. Neither does their bias in any way compromise their integrity just because it's not the bias you have.
No. They run the narratives they prefer, on their site. They aren't funded by any part of the US government, which is the only entity precluded by the Constitution from censoring you, and that because you are the sovereign it serves, and not the other way round, which is not the case regarding private parties the Constitution is no regulation or restriction of whatsoever.
I don't even disagree. I've long pointed out that the consequence of rank degeneracy prescribed to society is blowback, and this cannot be unknown to fiendishly intelligent oligarchs, so is certainly their goal. That blowback is being directed into a global technocratic totalitarian tyranny, which is a phrase I have specifically used dozens of times over the years I've been predicting this particular backlash.
However, I will point something else out.
Is false. They have succeeded at their plan, and many people will not have seen it coming, and will not bet on the right horse, but I am not many people. I am not surprised nor discomfited by this, as I have long predicted it. I also predict that the laws of physics, being immune to being blackmailed, bribed, or browbeaten into submission, will mandate what technological advance will occur, and nothing billionaires, or even trillionaires, can do can prevent it. Decentralization of the means of production is the cutting edge of tech advance in every field of industry today without exception. From agriculture to transport, from power production to manufacturing, table top, garage, and backyard means of production that individuals are able to own and operate are where increases in productivity are arising today. More, AI that can and will automate these individual means of production are similarly advancing in productivity, as Deepseek being released into the wild as open source demonstrates.
What I have always said and continue to assert is that people that merit their survival and prosperity through this democidal catastrophe will adopt the decentralized means of production suitable to their circumstances, help their neighbors to do the same, and will not be relegated to eating the bugs the overlords seek to reduce us to, will not be deprived of transportation or any of the blessings of civilization they themselves make or trade amongst peers for. By this means the desperate overlords that see independent free people producing wealth for themselves that cannot be parasitized, and eliminates the flow of wealth and power to overlords, will fail to subjugate people of merit, and will ultimately fail to remain overlords solely possessing the wealth of the world, but will be relegated to that state they most despise: mere peers dependent on their own merit for their prosperity and unable to project force to conquer and control free people.
IOW, I am winning, not beaten at all.
Sadly, as I point out, that's but conceit, and not factually correct at all. Humility, as I regularly point out, is the basis for science, and for wisdom, and conceit is it's opposite, the source of hubris, and self-deception. You haven't told me so, but have neglected to hear me say these things over and over, which you can verify by a perusal of my back catalog.
You can say it to others, but you got me fucked up.
You're just deranged and projecting all over me whatever biases you labor under. Keep that drivel to yourself. It's not only actionable libel, it's pretty fucking offensive.
The government has a derived value policy, it's as simple as that. SSI recipients are surprised when they find out that someone who was helping them out to survive, that help was considered worth value, thus their benefits were cut because of the derived value. You can twist it anyway you want, but derived value is exactly what it means.
Again, wrong. If I had had thousands of dollars just laying around, I could have sued them and won. Why? Because of their open policy statement that they are a censorship free platform and that all opinions are respected as long as you follow the their policy rules of behavior. He (the guy who got me banned) didn't follow the rules of their policy. I was following the rules of their policy and I got banned. You can't advertise as being something of which you are not. They are saying you are welcome here if you follow a set of rules, and if following those rules and banning you when you haven't violated the rules, is false entrapment, or advertising. I more than likely couldn't have claimed any financial harms by what they chose to do, but there was harm to my reputation and I likely could have been compensated for that as it inhibited my ability to function on other platforms using Disqus that I wasn't a known user of as my comments went into pending approval, I in essence went from being a trusted user of the Disqus platform to one who couldn't be trusted. For larger platforms, publications, it could take a day or more to get approval, therefore restricted from engaging freely on platforms. Reputational harms is a real thing, and people can sue for it.
This environment that Trump, and his billionaire cronies, has created, is like no other I've experienced over the last ten years or more that I have been blogging. Now, in this next instance, you example would be right. People whom I've blogged alongside of for years turning on you once you no longer align with them politically. People whom you helped fight the battle with, coming up from behind as their reinforcement blindsiding the other side with known facts of truth, that was perfectly okay. Once you decide not to align with them, they stab you in the back over and over again, and ultimately take away your right to post your opinions. The fact I'd been there from the start, the very early start, like three, four people that would include myself, showing up after having watch two individuals birth the site, one who didn't like me having not aligned to his political candidate of choice, the other a staunch defender of my right not to be censored, comes out and straight out lies he has no control over the decision to remove my posting rights. So yeah, in this instance, you are right, there's nothing more left to do than to move on because you simply can't engage with being censored. I could still comment but my right to post my editorial opinion was suspended. Well, your right to decide to let me continue making comments, is now suspended. It works both ways. There's nothing that says I have posting rights to my editorial opinions, but for him to come out and say there was nothing he could do after him having my back for years, from the very essence of the birth of the site, that's just disgusting and isn't worthy of any of my opinions or comments. It wasn't even that I wasn't withstanding an onslaught of ugly, degrading comments myself as he spent defending my rights, buried in angry emails, it was watching the total disintegration of the site revolved into an ugly disrespect for how they started treating those not aligned to themselves and many people leaving as a result over the last four years, I'd had already been contemplating leaving earlier this year but decided his faith in protecting my rights had more value than anything disintegrating anybody else had to provide, that's increasingly becoming rare to find, so I stayed. But really, does it shock me he decided to stab me in the back, not at all, not in this political climate. I've been doing this long enough I can find other places to increase my time spent, and find new avenues to go down if I like.
Although I am 100% disabled, I don't take any, despite I have been awarded it. I cut my benefits 100%.
Your charade at auditing my books is as frail as your grip on sanity. Derived value is limited to quid pro quo. Invitations to dinner, to backyard BBQ's, will not meet that standard, your bloviations notwithstanding. People begging change on the street can make a lot of money at it. More than me. Pity the IRS Agent that drags one into an audit.
Sure. Been there, done that, still lost my house despite applying my mortgage payments for a mortgage I had signed to a mortgage I had never even seen is blatantly illegal. Every ambulance chaser in smelling distance will tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to plunk down a retainer, and then put their kids through college doing battle with Brobdingnagian foes that can throw paper at the courts until you die.
If you initiate a lawsuit while you're paying a mortgage, BTW, the lender can call your note due and immediately payable, because you not only might not win, but might lose a huge judgment against you. Your target can countersue.
You have to have a reputation that's worth a plugged nickel first. Anonymous comments on some Discus blog don't count. There have been all manner of dire threats and vicious abuses posted on this blockchain, and not one suit has come of any of it, to my knowledge, despite millions of dollars being in some of the accounts.
Keep a rational tongue in your cheek. Or even a floridly insane tongue in your cheek, but by Ned's hair quit taking yourself so seriously. I do appreciate you letting up on the libel. Thanks for that grace.
You can never lose an argument. You think I sit around thinking this stuff up but I don't. A person took in a friend after they became disabled. The friend filed for disability. He ended up getting SSI, they deducted $314.00 from his monthly SSI payment of nine hundred some dollars. They said he derived value from her providing him a place and taking care of him. Feeding someone derives value. At least to the government. But keep calling me a liar.
I said if I had thousands laying around, as in enough that I wouldn't have anything better to do with it other than fling it into a chance something might or might not come of it. It wouldn't so much matter that my word means nothing out on a blog platform as it would to help bolster my complaint that they misrepresent themselves to the public, openly, blatantly, of which they cannot do. I don't have thousands laying around with nothing better to do with it, so it's just worthless conjecture for you to assume I'd lose my house over it. I don't have a mortgage either. I have an equity loan but nothing big enough to sweat about as I have good enough credit to switch that over to an unsecured loan if I had to.
You receiving something of value in exchange for something of value, is derived value according to the government. Your argument is like the guy who insist he didn't commit the crime but is guilty as hell. I don't make the rules, nor do I apply them, or agree with them, but, overall, the bigger shock will come when they digitalize everything on an open chain and proceed to ask that person peddling for money on a street corner how it is he spends more money than he gets.
Good point. That's because I'm never wrong.
I didn't. I pointed out I'd lost mine, and explained how.
It depends who he is. If he's the right beggar, they'll never ask.
I think Catherine Austin Fitts said it best the other night in a video. "You can't go off and barter when they have Space X and Starlink going off above your head and they're targeting your head with electronic weapons. That takes real imagination. Elon Musk who seems to be so popular right now, wants to put a mesh network in the back of your head and hook you up to a satellite. Why is anyone in American wanting to listen to someone who want to do that."
She's more intelligent than I could even assume to be, yet she's not to far off from where several months ago, when Musk was seeking to purchase twitter, someone wrote similarly what he was really after. That was to get into the algorithms behind twitter that kept people who post on twitter identifies hidden. His goal, it was said, was to put enough satellites up where he could track any tweet from anywhere in the world within five minutes. Something the experts said was statistically impossible to accomplish. Catherine's at the point Musk will just give you a good old zap to the head no matter what corner your sitting on taking up money from passerby's. You don't get those forms filled out, he'll just zap you from the earth. Now if I'd said that, you'd be ripping two ways to Sunday on me. I've was just figuring he'd send you a reminder tweet.
Though it's obvious that someone like Catherine, who has never really cared much about what she tells on the government(s), shows how much the world has become afraid of Trump, when speaking on the missing trillions, at the end of the video, she said something along the lines of let's just hope Trump can get it figured out. That is so laughable, a man who was living off the borrowed dime off his assets, his family now, after only four years of holding office, multi billionaires in hard cash. You know she isn't really that gullible.
No I wouldn't. I'm right there with you, in fact. Otherwise I'd be ripping on your right now.
Yes. But hope springs eternal. Humanity cannot help but hope for whatever can enable them to persist through whatever challenge we face. ~64k Starlink satellites surveilling us, tanks rolling into our village, sabertooths leaping from cover, whatever we face we envision means of surmounting it. This is a key capacity that has resulted in our survival, because we're not always wrong.
Politics has some risk at a certain level. When I was very active in politics in Hawaii I would get death threats or threats of violence weekly, even got swatted once.
Elon is disrupting the flow of billions of dollars that get managed via USAID. Little known secret apparently is that many of the NGOs or Non-Profits that get federal dollars serve as patronage tools, IE someone writes large checks to certain PACs, and their children or friends get jobs at theses entities.
This morning I started casually cross referencing IRS form 990s with FEC contributions and immediately was able to pick out some interesting correspondences in one non profit.
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Such research by independent parties is how humanity advances it's felicity by decreasing the ability of nefarious actors to deceive us by such institutional obfuscation.
I hope you attain to publishable conclusions from that research I look forward to benefiting from.
Thanks!
"institutional obfuscation" is almost always a side effect of someone trying to hide the money.
I'm going to develop this next week, it's not a small task to sift through it. It should ruffle some feathers though at the very least.
There are approximately two dozen entities under the Lutheran Services of the Carolinas banner. LSA Management INC. appears to be the organization used to pay the leaders. This appears to be essentially a very large business structured as a nonprofit.
Exactly so. Either that, or the bodies.
I thought this might be the right place to forward that video. It's one of the best I have so far seen on the channel.
Colonel MacGregor is an experienced analyst and his judgment generally sound and highly respected. I appreciate very much the additional depth you have brought here, where my outrage quickened my fingers on the keyboard, and too soon hit enter.
Thanks!
Edit: overall I should think the West has strategically handed much to Russia by inundating it's people with even worse propaganda than has Russia, as by speaking truthfully and not poking that bear the West would be in much better straits. It is such failures of principle - or proofs of malice - that most causes me dismay at the execrable leadership that billionaires foist off on the West, and none worse than in Germany, sadly, IMHO. Not even the kleptocrats that gain seats in Congress nor mismanage federal agencies in America have been so unbelievably suicidal as to shut off our sources of power as have the Greens of Germany, as I understand it.
It is a phenomenon I find incomprehensible, since we Germans in particular should have learned much more from our Nazi era. This shows once again how little this period has really been dealt with and how much people have left untold by exercising violence on themselves. The sheer superficiality with which my generation has been educated about German history ( today even worse than back then) and the incredible guilt complex that we have instilled in ourselves prevents any intelligence in this respect. It is even a criminal offense in this country to use the swastika in any form, I believe. So because we can be made to feel guilty very quickly and the collective guilt complex is apparently incredibly deep-seated, the Greens were able to pull off their suicide mission.
I can't explain it any other way, because any stupidity from above can only be successful if it is supported from below. .. But, one more thing: we here in Germany, and I believe in the whole of Europe, lack the excellent constitution that you have in the States and which protects your free speech much better (although the means of censorship are huge and have been used - but what comes to light and is torn to shreds on a grand scale in your country does not happen here in that way).
For example, I have never ever in my life heard a character like McGregor speaking in my country. Never.
I don't doubt you regarding the Constitution, but note that America isn't ruled by a document, but men have trespassed and enforced it's provisions. Lysander Spooner advanced the view that the Constitution had failed to secure the rights of Americans, even prior to the Civil War, and it is hard to fault his analysis, because immediately after that war the US became a corporation, and by and large, gradually and all at once, the provisions of the Constitution have increasingly been ignored, transgressed, and overturned.
In truth that freedom humanity enjoyed before that is literally inconceivable, unknown to us today, even in America. The words expressed don't have the same meanings today, the experience potential isn't at all the same. The transcontinental railroad enabled the buffalo hunters to eradicate their abundant herds, the Carolina Parakeet became extinct, as did the Passenger Pigeon. That abundance underlay freedom, something that is incomprehensible to us to day, who cannot walk up to a tree fluttering with an infestation of tasty pigeons, and knock our dinner out of the tree with a stick.
The world has changed, and that has changed the freedom humanity could even understand.
We may still spout off more here, but MacGregor was born after this change in the world, and he and I both lack that fuller sense of freedom that once existed.
You are talking about a freedom before civilization in its modern form? While the pre-modern folks must have experience a for us unknown sense of freedom, they nevertheless were not free in another sense.
For the human race absolute freedom never was the case. Every circumstance you find yourself in, comes with certain limitations and restrictions, without exception, is what I think.
Technology altered our human world big time. In the face of such tech the requirements for our species to get along with each other adapted to the good and bad.
To have a document regulating the very principles was something, your grounding fathers were convinced, was needed. In order to know that the constitution was trespassed, you need to know its original words.
Just imagine for a while, such constitution would never have been written. Would you think that it would have lasted until today? And since you can go back to the source and read it, you can try to understand it on your own.
Mentality and expressions before modernity were given to the next generations orally but that habit shrank very much in comparison.
The lack of a sense of freedom cannot be experienced when it cannot be understood, I guess. All of us may carry something in us, we may call a common inheritance or memory. There is joy to it as much as there is a sense of loss. We nevertheless can be tricked by it.
This is true to date, because of the necessity of centralization to technological advance from the Stone age to the present Space age. During that technological transition all technology has been so crude that manual labor has been necessary to production. The Space age is when that changes. In Space age technological advance, without exception the decentralization of means of production is the mechanism that increases productivity, that advances technology. This is true across all fields of endeavor, across every industry.
The above quote then is becoming untrue, because it is wealth that has underlain power, and centralization centralized wealth and power, while decentralization decentralizes wealth and power, which restores agency to free persons that oligarchs lose by losing the parasitic sources of wealth and power decentralization cuts their access to. Technology will progress. Economic productivity will continue to be desirable. We depend on it.
But economic productivity is not necessarily centralized. It isn't necessary to work for wages as collective labor producing widgets in a factory owned by some oligarch that parasitizes that production. Decentralization creates the ability of a producer to themselves be the entirety of the labor and themselves to own the means of production, severing that flow of their productivity to oligarchs and restricting to themselves the fruits of their productivity. They retain 100% of the wealth they produce. They create no profits, and no taxes, because they own the means of production they produce with, and they do not buy or sell their products to earn income.
This restores freedom by destroying power over sovereign persons. While terrestrial landscapes are the possessions of polities and persons that preclude freedom on almost all lands today, this is the Space age. One of the fastest expanding industries is providing launch services, and manufacturing of launch and spacecraft burgeons almost incomparably. Terran I was only launched in March 2023, and was the first 3D printed spacecraft. Every spacecraft since has been increasingly 3D printed, and 3D printing technology continues to plummet in price and increase in features and productivity available to ever smaller pools of labor. As we have seen in other fields, the ultimate labor pool is one when decentralization is the direction in which technology advances, and while it seems ludicrous today to think of an individual manufacturing their own spacecraft, that is the inevitable future of continued decentralization and automation of the means of production.
At some point, the freedom of sovereigns becomes literally illimitable when personal spacecraft and the ability to own automated means of production mature, because it is impossible to field armies and conquer and control a diaspora in space. So, while history only provides examples of freedom being reduced by increasing centralization, and that has been correlated to civilization, that is because the advance of technology has been serial and proceeds directionally from the Stone age to the Space age, and as the Space age develops and matures, that is the change it brings. That change has not been potential to crude industry heretofore. It is the improvement in productivity that is adventing and developing today. While it is only beginning, it's maturation is inevitable as long as technology advances and productivity increases.
Freedom shrank as the world became private property, and oligarchs attained that property because they parasitized the populations. Freedom will grow when new property becomes available because new means of production become available that will include access to the illimitable resources off Earth. The ability to be free remains a critical aspect of humanity despite the impossibility to actually be free on an increasingly locked down planet. When tech advances it always increases productivity, and this creates irreversible changes in development. We cannot retain our productivity and return to pre-enclosure pastoral landscapes. We cannot increase productivity and avoid attaining to un-enclosable property off Earth. We cannot fail to increase productivity absent a collapse and global catastrophe - and that is the 'great reset' oligarchs seek to impose because it is obvious to them they lose their power when decentralization matures by ending parasitization of production.
Our survival is their eradication as overlords, and they would rather rule over tombs and ashes than become mere peers dependent on their merit for their supper. They are a pathological group, attaining power in centralized hierarchies because of their psychopathic traits that suit inhuman institutional hierarchies. Human society isn't dependent on such institutions. Rather institutions are dependent on society, and on society that does not advance technologically beyond the industrial age to the space age. The laws of physics make no boundary to tech advance however, and institutions are incompetent to reform the laws of physics. The displeasure of oligarchs, as consequential as it is today, is increasingly becoming trifling, and will eventually be inconsequential. Our posterity will probably wonder why we ever put up with any of it, and that incomprehension is the goal I seek to advance with my life. I want people to one day be so free that they will not even understand how we were ever enslaved. I remain convinced I am winning the war with slavers, one crypto token, one 3D printer, one aquaponics system at a time. I remain watchful, seeking ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory that I must avoid, but I observe that I am only a mote surfing the mandate of the laws of physics, and it is their expression that ultimately will prevail.
:D HaHa, my not so favorite subject of debate. LoL
As we've already established, you won't be able to fascinate me on this subject, I'm afraid. But I nevertheless let myself into it. But not for too long.
You're way ahead of my imagination here and I see the devil in the details early on, or rather I think I really don't understand you here or don't quite grasp what you're expressing.
Perhaps you have certain images in mind, scenes from this spaceage world that I am unable to form in my mind's eye.
And although I agree with your analysis of causes, I don't see how the individual can regain their sovereignty in this high quality. So you're talking about a world beyond currency, right? But how do you get there? In what units do you think? In what time frames? If you are talking about ownership and that everything necessary for life can be produced by ourselves here on earth, we are still dependent as cooperative units (of whatever size) on certain products or raw materials that come from somewhere else? Since both climatic and other geological conditions always cause a certain shortage?
Such overall decentralization seems to be impossible to me ...
I do not see the mentality required for this and must pessimistically interject that the necessary mental strength is often not sufficiently strong in us modern humans, if it was not born out of necessity, which nevertheless must not be so great that it degenerates into depression and fatalism.
Who are those who are living examples of best practice at present, if they even exist? Do you have real life examples where people already work self sustainably in a decentralized way of that quality?
Another point that could be the reason for my block is the idea of living in space. I don't associate it with a favourable attitude to life at all. Space, if it is what I imagine it to be, is a thoroughly hostile environment with no breathable air and no protective planetary atmosphere, with radioactive radiation from the nearest sun, etc.
Life on a spaceship that would offer a quality of life even remotely similar to that on a huge planet would have to be gigantic, and yet it would not be able to conceal the fact that the essentials are missing: roaming animals, landscapes, mountains, lakes, forests, all the incredible life that surrounds us. I don't have to leave the house every day or go for a walk right next to a body of water to feel deep inside that it all exists.
....
I'm not sure I share all of your premises that serve as the basis for your idea of a (distant?) future.
How can ‘freedom grow when new property becomes available because new means of production become available that include access to the immeasurable resources of the earth’ when access and extraction (mining, refining etc.) of such resources are simultaneously in the hands of the more powerful?
A 3D printer can suddenly be as expensive as an entire house if those who influence prices want it that way, no? To use an exaggeration. And the materials that such a printer would need for its very different purposes would not really be freely available either. That seems too simple to me. But maybe I miss some things here.
Why would we want an increase in productivity? Why not keep productivity in balance? Because the oligarchs or the haters of human life don't want it?
I see contradictions. If we look at the battle here between those who support the cult of death and those who don't, then from my point of view, swarming into space would also be something they don't want. Or do you see some mental trick here that makes them blind to it? . ..... It goes over my head.
First, I want to say I really appreciate you making the effort to point out these objections or questions, because I really had no idea we had such divergent understandings. Some things seem to have been poorly expressed by me, and has prevented my meaning from being understood. I am really surprised by the divergence between our understanding of tech advance, and am encouraged by this, because I know we are both reasonable people that, were we to honestly make the (substantial) effort it would take to thoroughly discuss each of these areas of divergence we'd be able to agree on much.
But, I do understand these issues aren't within your range of interests, and this is revealed by that divergence in our understanding. I am not particularly interested in a variety of subjects, and while I can nod politely and make attentive sounds during a lengthy discussion of them, I do understand just how interminable such a discussion can feel like it is.
So I won't do that to you. None of this is anything you have to consider. You have a full and rewarding life and I don't need to disturb any of it to enjoy discussing things with you and learning from your perspective. But realize that Earth is a large aquaponics system in space. We live in space right now.
I'll just touch on a couple things so you won't have to keep considering me completely irrational on the subject. First, I don't mention a time frame, and there's a lot of different time frames, from decades to centuries. When Mercedes was constructing his horseless carriage in the late 19th Century, he may have waxed prosaic on a future in which such carriages were common - and even those familiar with the device he was constructing would have been extremely dubious such impractical devices, as his early experiments surely were, would ever be popular at all.
That's about where we're at with table top manufacturing, maybe a little bit further, since there are hobbyists and enthusiasts in the space, but not much further than that. The home manufacturing industry has certainly not approached the comparative point in it's development as automobiles reached when Henry Ford standardized precision parts and invented interchangable part manufacturing, assembly lines, and the like. For a non-hobbyist to have a vision of a Model T in every barn before then just from having seen some of the bespoke prototype automobiles that were available would be comparable to you grasping that everything that could be needed by a household could be manufactured by the household, and this would become the rule, rather than the exception.
It's not something you have a level of interest to gain an understanding of how useful it could be, just as people that rode horse drawn buggies before Ford produced any Model T's would have no idea they could ever be as useful as Ford (and paved roads) made them. Had someone before Ford described the Autobahn of the 1970s as the certain result of automobiles, it would have caused them to think, as you probably do of me, the dreamer was quite irrational. I will here note that as roads are to automobiles, automation is to home manufacturing. We eventually won't need to run this machinery because AI will. This is the only real utility I think AI actually has, because I don't think it will ever become capable of consciousness.
Also, I agree that not everyone will have that mentality, as you say, to become able to produce what they need, even after supply lines are cut and there aren't markets anymore. Many people can do many different things, and most can do many things they don't want to do, if they have to do them to live, but not everyone can do everything, and there are certainly many folks that just couldn't make the leap. I don't think everyone will. I do think enough will. You mention currency. There is a post-market economy coming. There will not be any way to buy and sell things, and no money. Eventually space habitats either make what they need, or die of unmet need.
Very few will pioneer in space, because at first it will be far more restrictive than prison. Just like pioneers in any major migration or diaspora, the initial conditions for the first are life threatening, and only some of these attempts are even survived. The first attempt to colonize N. America by England failed, and the fate of the Jamestown colonists is still at question, for example.
However, after a couple decades of effort some successful colonies did arise, and soon had quite livable quarters and towns. Space will be like that too, the early efforts incredibly difficult and survival challenging. There may not soon be hikes in mountains as is possible on Earth, but after some development environments will become quite comfortable and pleasant. While montane, riverine, and lacustrine expanses may be many centuries off, I am confident environments with forests, ponds, and shoals, flocks, and herds of animals, much like parks (although trees will be young, herds small, and ecosystems still being established) within a century of the first pioneers. I am sure that is not how you envision space environments, but I am quite confident that people need such environments, and that's what they will live in: large aquaponics systems.
I think at some point I referred to illimitable resources that are available everywhere else but Earth, and used the expression 'off Earth' that may have been understood as 'of Earth'. My meaning was that there is so much raw material to be developed that no one has claimed, no one owns, and nothing prevents the ambitious from developing but their effort, that there will be a lot of pioneers intent on getting some of them first. Asteroid Psyche is estimated to be worth from $1 - $10 quadrillion.
Someone ambitious wants to develop it and become the first $Quadrillionaire, and they'll be willing to suffer a lot to earn that distinction. Anyway, that's just one asteroid. There's millions of them pretty close to Earth, and billions of them a little further away. That's the magnitude of resources that are available just in the solar system, so much that the wealth that can come from such development isn't comparable to anything that has ever been possible on Earth. Inconceivable wealth.
But that's all I wanted to address. I don't need to convince you of anything - but very much don't want you to think I'm irrational, because I respect your opinion. It seemed to me you had to think me irrational from the gulf in our understanding. I hope I have at least suggested I am not bonkers, if I've not convinced you to go out and buy a laser engraver right away.
To set aside the feasibility of such a space age, I evaluate it from a different perspective. Which is why I see a fundamental flaw in your conception of it. But I am in no way judging you negatively for this, I would like to emphasize that. Since we learned to respect each other, such debates are much easier to have.
Let's assume that it happens as you say. That once humans have overcome the teething troubles and the loss of human life, they will be able to construct such fantastic ships and make them suitable for space. What would that change about the human mentality? Why should the space age change what causes conflict on earthly territory? Hear me out to the end.
As I see it, humans would carry their existing potential for conflict into space. What man is not able to solve here, man will not solve when he has detached himself from here. Where he fights for resources on earth, he will also do so in space.
From my point of view, the infinity of space leads to the misconception that this goes hand in hand with the infinite utilization of celestial bodies. And that prospecting for valuable resources in our solar system would be a joint cooperative act by the passengers. Which maybe means that it would have to be a single ship so as not to jeopardize the fundamental cooperative spirit.
But where you already have a ship with the quality of life you describe, it can be assumed that in the run-up to this gigantic process not only terrestrial matter has already been exploited for this purpose, but also extraterrestrial matter (such as the asteroids you mentioned). All of this actually requires a very determined cooperation of all people, not just a part of humanity, as I see it. Here, I imagine huge problems.
But let's assume that everything succeeds, that any conflict that arises before and during this project is overcome.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that not all people would be destined for happiness and a perfect existence. I don't assume that you yourself dream of it being perfect in all respects.
People, because they are people, would continue to harm and kill each other. Space existence would not free them from expressing their hostile nature (next to their friendly one). Nevertheless, the infinite nature of space would not hide the fact that every space - even the galaxy - will always be subject to limitations. Namely a technical and distance-related one. So what a ship urgently needs may be available in abundance out there and yet whatever happens will happen: That the technical factor - or others - gets in the way.
So you can have detected a planet of gold on your long-range sensor and yet the distance is too great and your ship is not sophisticated enough to reach it in time and that is the limit to absolute freedom that I mentioned at the beginning.
There would be discussions on this ship, some would say it's no use, you have to think of alternatives, others would be angry about it and want to try it at all costs and ultimately you would have this conflict on board, like countless others - people would be harmed and murdered. To think that jumping into the universe would remove the limitations of freedom experienced on earth is a misjudgement in my eyes. It is a beautiful thought, no doubt.
You may think that at least man would not blow up the very mothership he lives in, but I would argue that it would not be only one ship but several (giving the highly advanced tech). Or, you breed disturbed souls that act on self sabotage etc. - man does not escape conflict, otherwise he would be a total other creature.
So, I think that my premise
"Every circumstance you find yourself in, comes with certain limitations and restrictions, without exception..."
still stands. Why shall it not? You need not to eliminate it, because firstly, you can't and secondly, that is life. You win, you lose. You live, you die. If you're lucky, the main part of your life granted you joy. But in every lifetime there comes the situation to face its tough nature.
Nevertheless, I would like to conclude by saying that your dream is certainly also that of other people and that I would not actively oppose it per se, because such projects cannot be prevented by their very nature. There will always be pioneers and visionaries. Along the way, they will inspire many people and make them happy and just as many desperate and unhappy.
I want to pick out one of my sentences and elaborate on it.
I say it is a fact that people on our planet will always have a discrepancy that makes some people rush ahead and others resist. I am transferring today's efforts to equalise the human condition for all to a space age.
My most important argument is this: While on our Earth humans lagged far behind the technological deployment possibilities that others were already applying, the endeavour to make undeveloped societies equal to those already technologically advanced is always subject to a time lag. It becomes even more tricky when the once technologically more developed ones have spread their new way of life and the previously underdeveloped societies have caught up, it can happen that the former are left behind and suddenly find themselves in the same situation as the formerly Third World. And so on.
The great conflict can be observed today: While people from other parts of the world are immigrating to Europe en masse, who have previously lived a fundamentally different culture, and who also come from crisis areas where they have been reduced to survival (war, murder, manslaughter, shortages), they lack the mostly peaceful coexistence of people in the host countries.
They will or do see the locals as weak, as they do not appear to have preserved a genuine culture that is perceived as dominant. Since Europeans have given up on the concept of family and are under the illusion that all people are alike, and they believe that importing foreign cultures would be able to preserve their own, it may well be that these foreigners despise them. If only for the reason that they do not want to be abused as pawns, because it basically characterises the locals as naive racists.
It takes a small proportion of the newcomers to enforce their right to rule and to subjugate the original Europeans. Sooner or later, we will be outnumbered anyway and will die out due to our childlessness. Our geographical proximity to the African continent and the vibrant Islamic culture makes our homeland a new habitat for them. Nevertheless, they will be trapped as well and join us in our crisis. That contains some dangers, to say the least.
While Europe is in all probability heading for long-lasting crises, the East in Russia and Asia has developed out of its former backwardness and poverty. Not only that, they have overtaken the West. In my view, this has mainly happened because the Americans, but even more so the Western Europeans, have been unable to continue to innovate.
These cultures created people who prioritised the cultivation of decadence and promoted incompetence rather than competence. They are at a disadvantage compared to those who have only recently escaped difficult living conditions and have therefore not forgotten both the mentality and determination to make something out of their lives and defend themselves against enemies. Russians, just by the last three years, learned to fight a super modern war. The Russian identity will be positively pushed by that.
What is left of us Germans, for example, is hardly recruitable for both genuine science and a standing army, in my opinion.
I hope though that I am wrong and that crisis may be softened and our foreigners are going to appear more peaceful instead of hostile, and become our allies instead our enemies. But I am afraid that in order to gain respect, we have to change our policies.
A great many intricacies emerge from your considerations that are relevant to the matter. Sadly, I think in trying times subtleties are neglected as obdurate challenges resist clever solutions, and instead are solved with brute force or not at all. History is clear that from time to time trying times come, and they don't go away until the trials thereof are overcome. When facing trials it is easy to falter. Faint hearts full of fear fail, but feet carry us on even when our hearts cannot. The cataclysms of the day are never viewed from a perspective that encompasses the geological history of humanity. Geological catastrophes seem fictional. Pompeii's devastation after Vesuvius erupted is a museum exhibit. The supervolcano Toba, some 75k years ago, laying waste to S. Asia from Africa to Indonesia, burying India under ~6m of ash, is almost inconceivable. The Burkle crater in the Indian Ocean is ~5k years old, and left deposits from tsunamis >1 kilometer high in E. Africa and the Middle East, a doom hardly imaginable to see coming.
People survived these things. People will survive this century in Europe too. Besides geological history, people have geopolitical history. In truth geopolitical catastrophes can be even more devastating than natural disasters, because they can target people deliberately, while chance chooses the victims of volcanoes and meteorites. Samarkand and the Amu and Syr Darya basins have still not recovered their populations from prior to the Mongol invasion in the 13th Century (although this information is unvetted, perhaps hyperbolic or dated, as my research into irrigation on the Amu Darya claims irrigation utilization of over half the river flow presently). Because they resisted conquest, the Kwarezmians were genocided, their fertile soil salted, and centuries of development of irrigation works destroyed.
People came back, the salt washed away in scant rains, but the irrigation works were (claimed) never fully restored, and the productivity of the land never again supported as many people as it had when originally irrigated.
On Earth we are so common that human life is squandered. This will be completely turned on it's head in space, with the scarcity of good company the one thing AI cannot deliver, much less in such abundance any would squander it. Humanity adapts to it's conditions, and the close and unavoidable association we experience today devalues our good company, while such scarcity as interstellar distances between us will create will increase the value of good company incalculably. Appropriately valuing the scarcest thing in the universe, good company, will become an evolutionary hurdle that will eliminate them incapable of it rapidly because society is necessary to a social animal and the extremity of it's scarcity will increase the importance of being good company to survival beyond reckoning.
The abundance of resources and automating their development will create circumstances of inconceivable wealth of material goods to us that will be utterly unremarkable to them availed of it. The separation of people by relativistic distances will create practically absolute freedom and security. I fully concede these predictions are centuries in the future, but, in the event these technologies develop, will be the certain consequence. The technological advances necessary are all in process presently, and if we take the survival of the human species as a given, I do not see any reasonable basis for assuming they won't mature to the requisite state.
We are left to assess the several hurdles that must be surmounted to attain to fully automated production, and at will space travel (which I will argue is a product that will be one of those fully automated, in due time). AI obviously exists and the most advanced AI that has been produced to date, Deepseek, has just been released into the wild as open source code. Clearly that tech advance is underway. As to table top, or individually owned and operable means of production, in every field of industry, I also assert have advented, if yet in primitive prototypical form. Since these technological advances are, according to my research, ongoing and are incapable of being prevented from maturing because they are the mandate of the laws of physics, then the state of humanity I predict is only a matter of time and engineering - unless I have grossly misunderstood some factor that puts the kibosh on some critical advance.
I know this discussion is boring to you, so don't expect you to spend effort or time to develop such criticisms, but would not be disappointed if you did. I have written pages of text, and serially condensed to about 10% of it's original extent, so I have diligently done my best to be as brief as possible out of respect for your preferences.
Edit: bah! I neglected to address why humanity would be isolated by space travel and individual ownership of automated means of production, which I edited out some pages of explanation in a brutal quest for brevity. Your description of communal efforts isn't the result of decentralization, but of centralized production.
When humanity is availed automated means of production to individuals, crews will not work together, because that introduces that competition and confrontation wholly avoidable by individually laying claim and developing a resource. Because the means of production are owned by individuals and wholly automated, no laborers, no crew, no corporate structure is necessary, nor would the fractionalization of the wealth produced be very tolerable if accompanied by vicious competition, as we see close quarters produces. Vastly more sites to be developed exist than there ever will be individuals to develop them, so individual, or at most, familial colonies will be developed, rather than communities fraught with potential violence, betrayal, and brutal competition.
I like to begin to say that the two of us will not be on the same page on this matter. Which I do not mind. Since I find you are an astonishing character, one, with which disagreement can be freely expressed without ending in the result of disliking and dismissing each other. I rarely meet people like you. So thank you for that openness of yours.
I hope, that I will be able to sufficiently lay out my train of thought in response to your response.
The immense gift of earthly conditions, i.e. the existing atmosphere, breathable air, flora and fauna, are all geological processes that the planet does all by itself and need no human hand in this great and whole for regulation, since regulation of climate and weather arises through the history of the earth and through ever ongoing events such as ebb and flow - the existence of huge oceans and their currents - mountains and their influences on valleys, natural fires etc. etc. without our intervention.
The very fact that we as humans do not need to do all this enables us to attend to those matters that are applied on a small scale to convert wild land into arable land, to divert water and use it for our purposes, to extract gas and oil from the earth's interior and much more. These earthly resources are the result of millions of years of geological evolution and cannot be produced artificially. These processes are cyclical processes; all living things and matter on this earth are subordinate to such a cyclical existence. To artificially create such a geo-biosphere would require us to constantly and exclusively deal with the regulation of the sphere.
While events that arise on this gigantic planet regulate death and live - under which human beings, just like all other animals and creatures are subordinate to - they will not do so in a closed system of a spaceship. Since a spaceship is not an ancient old geo-biological - in comparison to earth, being in space at the right time in the right galaxy for such perfect conditions - but a technological body and you cannot and will not have the same conditions, not even close.
By not even close, I mean that even small errors in the regulation of an artificial sphere that is trying to regulate organic life can lead to gigantic failures. As humans, we may have a good understanding of the impressive processes on our planet, but the devil is always hidden in the details.
What happens apart from our actions alone, where we neither observe nor intervene, this ‘man is there’ and ‘he is not there’, i.e. events that unfold untouched by us, provides the balance of the terrestrial in my eyes. In a spaceship, no matter the size, you'd have to regulate it 100 percent. Whereas now we need not doing any of the regulation. We just live gifted with a planet, that regulates itself 100 percent.
Earths regulation of all of its inhabitants and matter results, like you said, in volcanic eruptions and tsunamis and earth quakes, and these very events are one part of its ever changing nature. While it is for us humans catastrophic in the short run, it isn't for the planet, since drastic events are part of the great system and a requirement for the build up of raw materials and the growths of such resources, buried underneath its soils. Humans survive the semi huge catastrophes, if only in tiny numbers (like you mentioned), while they will die when mega impacts will occur. Who will mind that?
I have no problem with such an event since my mind will not live to suffer from it. No ones will.
In my view, all of this is a philosophical consideration. Whether we humans believe that we are rather exposed to misery on our earth, that the ‘narrowness’ of which you speak is not something that we could regulate ourselves or from which we should try to escape, since narrowness or vastness is a phenomenon, a psychological phenomenon that expresses itself in the eternal suffering of the self and human nature and absolutely wants to see this suffering disappear through action. The ‘departure to the promised land’ and ‘better worlds’.
Incidentally, this is an imperialist idea that I do not share, although something of it always resonates in every human being.
The idea that the lack - and not the self-evidence of human good company - makes it a valued asset again is, I think, also born from the idea of being able to control such things. The creation of an artificial lack, which then automatically leads to the cancellation of becoming or being tired of each other.
I think this is a misconception, because being tired of each other needs not have to do with the narrowness and abundance of human conspecifics - as I think - but can, for example, have to do with one's own age and the years that have passed. Young people are not usually tormented by the fact that they get tired of each other's company, although they may have little love for an ageing group that outnumbers them.
Confinement is not a given on our planet per se; those who dislike living in confined spaces (big cities) have options to change this. Even if it's just retreating into your four walls as the simplest of all alternatives. If they don't, they must and will endure it. But there are folks who have chosen living apart from big cities. So they may not perceive such ghastly unwanted company in the same sense.
In general, this confinement - where it exists - will also disappear of its own accord; we have long since initiated the trend towards a low birth rate.
I maintain that the perception of confinement and freedom depend entirely on the mentality and may have nothing to do with the actual conditions, but with the will respective unwillingness to adapt to realities.
So I take the freedom to turn your assumption around and claim that although you have constructed a gigantic space-ship, man, aware of the metallic outer walls of this ship, feels just as confined as on the much larger earth, the far more 'perfect' spaceship. On which one man feels that the earths regulating itself is a very heavy burden, while another man feels at ease towards it and appreciates the fact of not having to be burdened by it. You can feel trapped and become hostile towards other people even though they might be your one and only company.
There, lies the difference between acceptance of creation (apart from mans will) and the will of construction (including that very will). The ever lasting conflict between human beings.
One mind suffers great sadness in the face of his mortality and also bemoans the total disappearance of the human species itself, while another mind finds itself at ease with it and accepts both, his own death as well as that of all human beings as the natural cycle of life itself. With no need to escape it.
For the one death is an ego affront, for the other it is liberation. Since death is not seen as "the end" but something other but incomprehensible and un-explainable. Nothing to fear and to escape from. But to give oneself into.
This does by all means not express that such a believer would not fight teeth and claw for his life when directly threatened, I shall add. Or that such person will not want to live when facing illness. It's an acceptance in general but not in particular.
I also appreciate the same qualities in you you appreciate in me, which is our good fortune. Your excellent and well considered response is a kindness to me.
First, it is absolutely true that we are blessed to be on Earth and to have arisen in this paradise. But, the assessment that it cannot be reproduced, at least on limited scales, isn't factually correct. It isn't possible to do these things without appropriate tools, and you nor I have appropriate tools to do these things today. What I am predicting is that tools to do these things arise as tech advances.
The fact that these processes are the products of the physical laws of the universe informs replicating the conditions for life elsewhere. Many of them, such as plate tectonics, tsunamis, and etc, aren't necessary in an artificially reproduced environment, although the cycling of minerals through ecosystems they effect do need to be attended to, such processes can be managed. [Edit: with appropriate sensors and mechanisms, the management of these processes can be automated with AI that is presently available on the market, simply needing adaptation to the specific purpose]
Certain of these processes, such as cycling of CO2, water, O2, and etc, are able to be entrained within biospheres, such that they can be aspects of the artificial environment with appropriate planning. Appropriate ratios of plants to animals, temperatures and pressures, amount of insolation, and etc, generally enable understanding of these processes to inform construction of biospheres and population of them with living things to enable those processes to maintain nominal living conditions to be sustained indefinitely, while some occasional addition or extraction of certain chemicals or species may be required from time to time.
It is known that most of the celestial bodies in the solar system have regions in which the required temperature ranges, pressures, and gravity, or centrifugal accelerations that nominally simulate gravity, are extant, or by creating enclosed spaces, such conditions can be attained with tolerable investments in construction and maintenance. Inside several moons of the gas giants lie oceans of liquid water. While insolation from the sun is insufficient to heat the water to liquid state, the tidal forces exerted on the mass that result from it's orbit do provide sufficient heat. While life requires light to power photosynthesis, we have learned how to create light artificially, and can introduce light to such a region in such a moon to enable photosynthesis to sustain plants. While the chemistry of such environments can be both inadequate in some respects, while toxically overloaded in others, we have expertise in chemistry that enables altering the environment in a closed space that filters inputs to exclude toxic species, and can add those lacking.
It is not yet proved that we can create enclosed environments on a spaceship or asteroid exposed to vacuum that can self perpetuate, but it is proved we can create aquaponics systems on Earth that allow limited nutrient, water, and artificial lighting to sustain habitat for specific desired species to provide food. By virtue of the nature of ecologies, doing so also purifies water and produces breathable air. The Biosphere experiments that have been undertaken were attempts to demonstrate that this was a manageable process, and largely succeeded.
I am not doubtful that this can be successfully done, at all. The technology to enclose a nominal space is not in question. The technology to provide suitable light is not in question. The ability to maintain temperatures and pressures within appropriate ranges is not in question. The ability to provide suitable soil substrate, water, and atmosphere varies from specific site to site, and informs site selection. It would be more difficult and expensive to do on certain celestial bodies than others, but absent certain limitations life and our construction technology has regarding high temperatures, pressures, spin, gravity, and etc., most of the celestial bodies present sites that appropriate construction of enclosures would enable populating with ecosystems that could largely self-sustain with little maintenance and managing of chemical balances thereafter.
We don't need to simulate volcanoes, plate tectonics, or hurricanes to enable life to persist. Insofar as those natural events circulate nutrients or reform habitat, we can do those things another way that is nominal for living things.
Also, the metaphysical reasons, philosophies, and psychology of people aren't particularly relevant beyond some basic assumptions. Economic wealth is desirable, and money is not wealth, but a service that can be useful to commerce, but is certainly not at all necessary to wealth creation. Many people try to define wealth, more or less successfully, as quality of life experienced by the wealthy. A loving family with plentiful resources to enable them to live happily is basically what wealth is. On Earth, social intercourse is a given. Hermits may be able to live in certain wilderness areas without having frequent interactions with other people, but this is not a desirable state of existence for most people.
Off Earth, such society will definitely not be a given, and any social interactions desirable will have to be planned and able to be sustained by the constructed environment in which life is possible. Because of economic constraints, many such habitats will be limited in ability to sustain groups of people, and because of social issues, many such will be deliberately limited in the size of the groups that can be so sustained, and it is likely that due to both considerations, there will be some that are intended to sustain only one or a handful of people.
This is a dramatic departure from the natural conditions on Earth, where people often fight to the death because interactions with other people can be fatal and are difficult to prevent. With artificial habitations dispersed across space, this social interaction problem is not reproduced, and the beneficial social interactions that humanity needs become very difficult to provide.
I am confident that people will survive, that some global technocratic totalitarian tyranny will be incapable of completely preventing independent development, and that some people will manage to succeed long enough to sustain their economic independence to survive any such tyranny, as they have rarely been sustained for long in history. The more brutal the tyranny, the less time they persist, generally speaking.
Whether it happens in the next ten years, or not until a century has passed, sooner or later people will launch spacecraft with the intention of developing celestial resources into biospheres. Regardless of philosophical or psychological considerations either you or I pose, there will be people intensely focused on doing so. The urge to establish colonies, to develop available resources, to escape government, and more generally concatenate into explorers, pioneers, and conquistadors in every human culture historically alluded to, and the fact humans spread across the Earth very long ago shows this also happened prehistorically.
Technological advance will continue to make spacecraft less and less expensive and difficult to manufacture, and eventually making nominal spacecraft, even covertly, will be possible to a single individual. It is today quite possible to a small group of wealthy people, or employees of a wealthy person, and several space manufacturing companies today show this is true. One of the biggest constraints on such craft is the fuel necessary to chemical rockets, and there are already several technologies, such as nuclear power, that dramatically reduce the amount of fuel volume necessary to launch off Earth (despite pollution of nuclear fueled launches, some psychopath may well be willing to do it), and novel technologies continue to threaten to arise that dramatically may change the situation.
It is very difficult to imagine a successful covert operation to launch a private spacecraft today with conventional supercooled liquid fuels, nuclear fuels, or some rail gun type of launcher. In the event something like HAUC that has been recently published, that situation changes radically and promotes extraterrestrial colonies.
It's just a matter of time and engineering IMHO.
Edit:
Space travel takes time. Many journeys contemplated take a lot of time and expense. Hibernation is a real thing many mammals closely related to humans undertake that limits their experience of the passage of time, and dramatically reduces their nutrient exchange needs in that state. I am also confident that hibernation will be able to be used to enable space travel to not require gigantic ships, but much smaller ships containing 'seeds' of life to be sent with people in a state of hibernation that precludes their suffering long duration of confinement within very small spaces.
As with almost everything else discussed herein, automation is a critical aspect of enabling hibernation to be successful in such operations, enabling people to remain unconscious until nominal environments have been constructed and attain a suitable level of operations to sustain tolerable conditions for people.
Let me finish by saying that you know I'm not really invested in this product of human imagination. Therefore, I am not a buyer and although you had a good sales pitch where you have an answer to all my questions and skepticism, that effort on me is in vain.
My counter-arguments may be though a welcome opportunity to have dispelled them to your satisfaction and to inspire you personally rather than slow you down, just as a business idea from my company once prepared us better for buyer skepticism for future sales appointments.
I am sure that people will continue to pursue the idea of traveling to space and that the skeptics in particular will help them to argue articulated problem scenarios out of the way.
It sometimes seems more like a cosmic joke to me that humanity, which you trust to overcome all problems, should not use the same intelligence and good will for a livable existence on its own planet rather than outgrow it.
The cynic replies: “Fuck the earth”, the adventurer says “Off to new shores!”, while both confirm the preserver in his view that they don't care at all what they so willingly leave behind. And although both are completely dependent on what the earth gives them in the form of treasures to get them started, they seem to me like those who quickly run across a bridge whose collapse they have helped to cause and happily shout “First!”. No offense to you personally.
So it's the attitude that - I'm deliberately exaggerating - gives the impression that one is happy to throw something one's used in the bin for something new. As long as the space enthusiasts give the skeptics the impression that both things cannot go side by side - keeping the old intact and starting the new - they will be viewed more like immature and selfish teenagers, as well as from the other side as know it alls and backwards.
You might think that those who wanted to stay at home would then have this earthly home to themselves and would be happy to see the nest-busters finally gone. In this respect, they would have the big living room to themselves.
‘Travellers should not be stopped’ is just as true as not urging those who stay at home to come along. So the leavers must only be allowed to go as far as they do not completely exploit those who stay behind and do not treat the earthly treasure like a disposable good.
In any relationship where the involved wish to part, they would be well advised to go their separate ways in such a spirit that they wish each other every success and do not make the other's living conditions miserable. In other words, to separate in mutual agreement, respecting the different world views, instead of being hostile to each other from now on.
Which then reveals the paradox: If human beings were capable of something like this, of wishing each other well and leaving each other as much as they need for their existence, the question arises: why separate in the first place if you're basically capable of staying together? LoL
Is it even possible to divorce out of love?
The traveller himself will grow old and he may want to have the reassuring feeling of being able to return to his roots at some time. Even if it is impossible in reality, people are wired in such a way that the mere idea that there is a home waiting for them can be comforting. In the same sense, people, who actually never travelled the Earth itself, have the reassuring impression that they could, if they wanted.
I thank you very much on my part to have given me your listening ear to articulate my own thoughts in this respect and having them laid out.
You never fail to engage me, to reveal segues and corners around which I never peeked.
I will say this. The meek will inherit the Earth. The rest of the universe is for the bold.
:) Well said.
@valued-customer, I paid out 0.601 HIVE and 0.190 HBD to reward 12 comments in this discussion thread.