A Bitcoin signet, proposed by Karl-Johan Alm, could provide a more predictable and stable Bitcoin testnet for development.
There’s a vicious, global economic war raging and its outcome will be determinative for the destiny of humanity, and necessarily, also for Bitcoin.
That sounds melodramatic, but it’s true.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Warren Buffett, multi-billionaire and fourth richest man in the world, recently stated:
“Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won. It’s been a rout.”
The economic warfare is positively vicious. “Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. “ And 80 live on less than $10 per day. Indeed, in the aggregate, the 67 wealthiest people in the world, of whom Warren Buffett is number three, are as wealthy as the world’s poorest 3.5 billion. This is the stark, socioeconomic context of Warren Buffett’s braying that: “…there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won.”
Of course, Warren Buffett’s “class” is the multi-billionaire class and the number of multi-billionaires on the Forbes’ billionaire list has increased dramatically in recent years. There are now 1,645 of them worldwide with an individual, average worth of $4.7 billion. In just one year there were 219 more multibillionaires, and their aggregate wealth increased from $5.4 trillion last year to $6.4 trillion this year. The US supplies 492 of them, more than any other country. Those worth less than $1.3 billion did not even make this year’s list.
Last year’s list included just one Rockefeller and two Rothschilds. Such mega-wealthy families as the Bushes, the Windsors, and the rest of the European royal houses, who together control unknown and probably unknowable trillions of dollars of assets, are conspicuously absent from the list.
What does Warren Buffett mean when he says that class warfare has been waged through the tax code and that his multi-billionaire class has won?
Permit me to explain.
At a macro-level, so-called “money” is created by central banks, right out of thin air. They manufacture money by the train car load. They just print it up in vast quantities and lend it out at interest. For example, the dominant central bank on the planet (at present) is the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank which issues the Federal Reserve Note, popularly known as the American dollar.
On all of the Federal Reserve Notes, whatever the denomination, are printed the words:
“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”
In other words, the so-called US dollar is essentially a debt instrument, issued at interest by the US Federal Reserve and created out of thin air by the unknown trillions. If you are using it, you are paying off debts. If you are paying US dollars to someone it means you are in their debt. If you owed them nothing you would not have to pay them.
The US dollar is a piece of paper, or stream of electrons in a digital database, issued at interest, and has no intrinsic value. It is essentially a ledger entry, or a marker or chit. A gold mine has intrinsic value. Productive agricultural land has intrinsic value. And so forth. By comparison, the US Federal Reserve Note is just a little scrap of paper, or an ephemeral stream of electrons in a digital database. Nothing more.
So how does that relate to Warren Buffett’s statement about class warfare being waged through the tax code?
Why not start at the very beginning, with the Federal Code of the United States government, which goes so far as to stipulate that, by law:
Federal reserve banks, including the capital stock and surplus therein and the income derived therefrom shall be exempt from Federal, State, and local taxation, except taxes upon real estate.
There it is in black and white, codified in the law. The wealthiest private bank in the history of humanity, which is actually a private banking cartel, creates trillions of dollars of so-called “money” right out of thin air and then loans out said “money” by the multi-trillions of dollars and pays no tax on that money, or on the surplus from it, or on the astronomical income it derives from it (the interest).
Remember the Golden Rule – “Those who have the gold make the rules.” The vast regulatory and taxing bureaucracy engendered by this astronomical lending enterprise forces almost everyone downstream of the loan origination to submit to some form of taxation in order to repay the trillions of dollars lent out at interest. The taxing and regulatory machinery is intricate and labyrinthine, though the Federal Reserve Bank itself (which is a consortium of immensely powerful and wealthy private banks) is exempt by law from the very burden that is imposed by law on everyone else who is not a member of the super-wealthy, mega-banking clique.
So who gets that money? Where do those trillions of dollars go?
Money, Money, Who’s Got The Money?
US congressman Alan Grayson wanted to know the answer, so he posed the question to the US Federal Reserve Bank’s Inspector General, Elizabeth Coleman, in a Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations congressional hearing, on 5 May 2009. More than four million people have watched a Youtube video of the exchange between Congressman Grayson and Inspector General Coleman for a reason. To wit: in response to the Congressman’s direct queries about the disposition of two trillion dollars in the Federal Reserve’s portfolio and literally nine trillion dollars of off-balance sheet transactions by the Federal Reserve, Inspector General Coleman pleaded ignorance. She said she did not know anything about it.
Hey, two trillion dollars, nine trillion dollars, before you know it, you’re talking real money, and the Inspector General claimed to know nothing about it, though it’s her job to know.
In a separate hearing, Grayson also quizzed former US Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, about who received more than half a trillion dollars of loans from the Federal Reserve and could elicit no more from Bernanke than that the money was loaned to the European Central Bank, which then loaned it out to other banking institutions.
In other words, at the highest levels of the US banking establishment literally trillions of dollars are in play and the Inspector General of the US Federal Reserve says she knows nothing about it. Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, was little better in his direct testimony before a US congressional hearing.
It’s no surprise then, that the Atlantic writes that “the finance industry has effectively captured (the USA) government…in a quiet coup,” and then advises that the only way out of the increasingly severe financial crisis in which the US finds itself is to: “…break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.”
How To Break The Financial Oligarchy That Is Blocking Essential Reform
This is where Bitcoin enters the picture. The way to break the obstructionist financial oligarchy is not to beat the oligarchs at their own game, which is well to nigh impossible, seeing as they have written the laws and regulations to favor themselves, first, foremost and always; rather the way to break the financial oligarchy is to design an altogether different game, with different and open rules in which everyone in the whole world can play, and do an end run around the financial oligarchy.
In their own way, this is what Bitcoin, and a growing coterie of similar cryptocurrencies and altcoins are doing. A parallel, potentially all inclusive, global, decentralized financial network is rapidly growing, here, there and everywhere, all over the world.
Of course, like an obstreperous child trying to grab a fistful of Jello, the old line financial oligarchy is trying to clamp down on Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency and altcoin movement. But as in the case of the brat grabbing a fistful of Jello, Bitcoin squirts right through their greedy, larcenous fingers. And now that the idea and practice of cryptocurrency has escaped to the wild and gone native, even if Bitcoin were to be brought to heel, there is nothing to stop another cryptocurrency or altcoin, or scores or hundreds of them, from arising to take its place.
Two Sides In The Economic War
There are, thus, two sides in this economic war, and extremely little, if any wiggle room between them. We truly have come to a fork in the road, and the planetary financial system must cast its lot either with:
- The filthy rich, autocratic .001 who fancy themselves the overlords of humanity and the Earth, and the massive, global web of regulatory and taxing bureaucracies that facilitate and enable their stranglehold of national and international finance;
- Or with the great masses of unimaginably suffering humanity.
That is to say, is Bitcoin for the liberation of the human race from the plunder, exploitation, repression and oppression of the filthy rich, autocratic .001? Or at the end of the day is Bitcoin just a more clever, techie, geeky way to ensnare people even more firmly into the suffocating grip of the bureaucratic regulatory and tax traps laid by the filthy rich banking cartels, and to establish global, totalitarian, digitized, economic slavery?
That is the question.