With that post you illustrate the value of the messenger. I hope you get my drift. Thanks, I guess...

One martini is not enough
Two martinis is too much
Three martinis is not enough

No, there's nothing to amend, both are the words of men. I'm asking you, what's the deal? Am I supposed to characterize the words by the character of the person who writes them?

This is not some random thing. The authoritarians are scared of the internet, and they have to sell the *war*. The work of the propagandist is never done.

You can always take the info at face value, or not. Who cares who says it? You simply do what is technically correct, and the problem sorts itself out. Now the problem with money is the people who take it have too much influence on policy. In a week and a half the Americans will have the great opportunity of cleaning their house of ALL the old rubbish, or just sweep it under the rug one more time. Then we will see what happens to net neutrality, amongst other things.. Unfortunately, I expect to see yet another vote for business as usual, and this "controversy" will just be another circle jerk since the voters have let big money decide how it's done.

:-) You're welcome

It's not a "confiscation", it's a recovery of stolen goods acquired by fraud. And the power to regulate the value says it's all okay. They can just print new money and render the old worthless. This is one of those little things a government is authorized to do by default. And the fact that the law is there in black and white, on the supreme document of the land, makes it all the easier.

I did too read ~2/3 of the Communist Manifesto, and thought it pure propaganda.

Everything is propaganda, just like your bible. It doesn't have to be true or anything, you just have to believe... That is all the man asks. And I also noticed that the manifesto does little more than disparage *desires of the flesh* from a slightly different angle, the moral(?) is the same. So, like, what's the deal?

Communism is still capitalism, deals have to be made, contracts have to be signed, and the hangman still has to be paid. It is merely an alternate form of empire building, without the bread and circuses that make Vegas style capitalism so exciting.

Read the other third. It has a happy ending, like so many of the other childrens fairy tales that you yourself believe.

And get nailed by a fake cert? How does this sidestep the trust issue?

We have great abundance. Automation will only increase it. We are very prosperous and can easily afford to pay everybody displaced by a robot a welfare check since the produced product will be suitably less expensive. Human effort is the only thing that needs to be compensated. In an automated world everything can and should be free.

Yeah, it feeds the prison system and conditions the kids to accept and dole out this kind of treatment. Critical thinking is that last thing they want. Google can do all our critical thinking for us. It already conveniently filters our searches for us. Our "educational" system preaches conformity. It that regard it is doing exceptionally.

Metadata, baby! Once they geolocate you they will presume much about your skin color, age, etc.

A guy from the Gold Coast will see different prices than a guy on the South Side.

Article 1 Section 8 clause 5:

The Congress shall have Power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof...

Spells it out pretty clearly, don't you think?. Is there anything else I can assist you with while I'm here?

Are you this dumb in real life, or just on the internet?

The government has the power and the right to do as it wishes with its currency, but they have turned that power over to a bunch of counterfeiters in the name of "privatization", which means floating it on the commodities markets. The "gold standard" now is the petro-dollar. That is the global currency of today. No matter, it is trivial for them to divert the bits over to people developing a vaccine, they know exactly where to take them from. But... the power of derivatives prevails, and we all know who pays. For this issue, like all the other manufactured crises of the new (and old) millennium, there are plenty of scandals to go around, and most, if not all of them point to finance.