RE: 55 - The Banning of Anonymous Cryptocurrencies

I, too, anticipate hearing what Owasco has to say. But I will note that I have long enjoyed simple fare. I like hearty food. Some veg boiled in milk and butter with some meat. Cornbread with butter and honey. These meals were possible to the poor to make from what they themselves could provide for millennia. Today it seems inconceivable to provide your own veg and meat. We don't have cows! Butter is something that can only come from stores nowadays. Stew comes in cans, and cornbread mix in a bag.

An individual cannot be self-sufficient in these things living in an apartment block. Even living in a rural area isn't enough, because you must have a lot of land for a herd of cattle, and cows must come from herds with bulls, even for a small holder that only has one cow. This is a big problem for me, because I come from dairy people that had herds of cattle back in the day. When the dairy products I have bought off the shelf all my life are no longer provided, I cannot just move back to the farm. The ability to eat as if I lived on a farm, or even amongst farmers, was availed me by their products being on the shelf at the market, and this has enabled me to be lured far from the farm. Now, when the products aren't available on the shelf in the market anymore, I am generations removed from the farm, and there is no route back to the farm where I can get those products. The way is shut.

If we don't make a way, we will soon discover we are dependent on overlords, and instead of veg, meat, and butter, all that is on the shelf is goyslop made of crickets. The corporate owned dairy farms have been transformed into black soldier fly factories. I'm sure none of us, not even the most rabid devotee of the fake climate crisis, wants to crack open a can of crisp, refreshing maggot milk, so we are going to have to do something to head off this coming crisis - because they are telling us that is what is going to happen. Humanity cannot all live as peasants on small farms bordering endless steppes while also having the blessings of civilization and global communications and travel.

That is not true. We can't have those things and that life as long as we are dependent on centralization and the overlords that are dependent on it, in turn. We can actually all live on farms in our commieblocks, grow our own veg, and have our own private aircraft - but we have to actually build commieblocks that way, with fields for cattle to graze on, and have to have the ability ourselves to manufacture quadcopters we can ride in. We have to merit that life, not just clock in and out of our corporate jobs and then drink beer and watch TV or screech at one another on social media. The transformation is inconceivable, the very idea of floors in apartment buildings dedicated to grazing cattle beyond ludicrous, the idea of building your own flying car completely insulting. Not having paychecks from corporations run by these superhumans that know how to run everything is impossible, and this is what we are indoctrinated from birth to believe.

It's not true. While it's true I can't make this transition happen today by myself, I can start it. I have already. I have begun adopting technology that enables me to be a producer of the goods and services I need, and as these tools continue to develop, I need to continue to adopt new iterations that provide more fundamental capabilities. One such tool is a simple breadmaker. I don't need to buy bread off the shelf anymore, I just need to buy bags of bread mix and then put that in my breadmaker (lol). I joke a little bit, but I don't need to have a bakery to make bread, nor do I need the skill bakers develop. I can literally just push buttons because AI has the programming to emulate that skill. The stoves that our mothers that baked bread used didn't have that AI, and the 3D printers our hobbyist neighbors use to make cosplay toys don't have that AI today, but they will. Just as I don't need to have any more skill at baking than is required to dump a bag of mix into the breadmaker and push the button, soon we won't have to have anymore skill at making quadcopters to make them ourselves either.

If we want 3D printers with AI that can run them automagically, we are going to have to fund their development, because our corporate overlords aren't going to pay us to build the gallows on which they will hang. Two centuries ago the most common form of transportation was the Mark I foot. Most people couldn't afford a herd of horses and the land to keep them on, or even an acre with a barn to keep a family horse in. They walked from their hovel or hitched a ride from some commercial entity that did keep horses. If you asked them about everyone having private automagical carriages to ride around in they'd have scoffed, yet less than a century later this became possible in the West, and in the US today it is the default. We can't expect ourselves to see the future from our present circumstances, but we can start to build capacity that is able to make that transition happen. We have to be wary of cargo culting, but if we actually take the steps between where we are and where we want to be we can avoid that.

I have seen a 3 bd. apartment with an aquaponics system using sunny windows and LEDs to grow crops fertilized with 3 2000 gallon tanks of tilapia they kept in the garage. They produced WAY more than they needed for their personal use, because they produced a crop for sale. It is not at all unreasonable to have a system in a normal home to produce all your necessary food today (even though it won't include Bossie providing milk). It is even possible with some thought to make such a system highly aesthetically pleasing, pools and fountains and garden windows decorative, rather than utilitarian and industrial. This is especially true if architects design apartments for this purpose before they are built.

This can literally even include whole floors of pasture for cattle, if we want. It's up to us to aim at the future we want our posterity to inherit from us. If we don't choose something that isn't on the shelf provided by overlords - who are sure as hell choosing the future they want - then we will get the future overlords want and provide for us. We are only as sovereign as we choose to be.

For some years now I have been gradually increasing the number of homes I provide services to. I have constantly sought to attain goodwill rather than money because I don't want to buy off the shelf. I want to change these homes so they fill the shelves. It's taken me a while, but I have just ordered a greenhouse that will be dedicated to aquaponics, I've created a small commons and am working on agreement from landowners to put a picnic table and a firepit there, and also on a chicken coop. With eggs at ~$10/dozen, this is an attractive proposition, and I've been knocking back bramble for years to create the space for it, and that's just the beginning of the transformation I am intent on. Wherever we are, if we strive to be the change we want to see, we will achieve it. Every kind of work we do can be adapted to facilitate these changes. Janitors can implement Roombas. Cooks can implement breadmakers. Wherever you are, whatever you do, you can aim at where you want your grandkids to end up.

That's what to do.