“Abby Martin speaks with Andreas Antonopoulos, founder of Root Eleven and co-host of let’s Talk Bitcoin, discussing how Bitcoin works, and why it’s so important to have a decentralized system of money.”
“Ron Paul, former congressman and current host of TheRonPaulChannel.com, explains why he’s been advocating competing currencies vs. the U.S dollar. Alternative is a good method; the dollar isn’t going to last, he says.”
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000236167
“Because security is an essential ‘good’ for society, it was and is assumed that security must be handled by government through monopoly or collectivization, and not through the free market. But food is also an essential good. Shelter and energy for warmth are essential goods. Are food, housing and energy best provided by the state or by the free market? What would a free-market security service look like? To begin with, it would focus entirely upon the protection of person and property. That is, it would protect the individual’s interest in safety from criminals and invaders rather than the interests of the state in preserving or extending its authority.”
http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/34960/Wendy-McElroy-The-Competitive-Provision-of-Security/
“The deterioration in police conduct, and the militarization of local police forces, quite simply and quite predictably mirrors the rise of the total state itself. When it comes to your local police, there is no shopping around, there is no customer service, and there is no choice. Without market competition, market price signals, and market discipline, government has no ability or incentive to provide what people really want, which is peaceful and effective security for themselves, their families, their homes, and their property. As with everything government purports to provide, the public wants Andy Griffith but ends up with the Terminator.”
https://www.mises.org/daily/6643/Whatever-Happened-to-Peace-Officers
“Her love of America has nothing to do with the jingoism we know all too well. It is a love of individualism, experimentation, risk, entrepreneurship, creativity, reward, and the inspiration that comes with building a new civilization itself. What a hymn to our history she writes! And note the date. This was written in wartime. There were censorship rules at the time, things you could and couldn’t say. What might she have written about war authoritarianism that she did not dare to write? I think we can imagine. In fact, you can read between the lines. She saw America betraying its history, principles, and destiny. And what would she write today?”
http://libertarianstandard.com/2014/01/14/the-freedom-of-rose-wilder-lane/
“In 2010, the Oakland Police Department announced it would stop responding to 44 crimes, including grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft, extortion and vandalism. The service cutbacks were blamed on the layoff of 80 officers, which city officials said were no longer affordable. With police failing to respond to crimes and crime rates rising, the number of Oakland neighborhoods relying on private security has skyrocketed. Bay Alarm, the largest security company in Oakland, has nearly doubled its business in the past year. It services many neighborhoods in Oakland, including Montclair, Redwood Heights and Rockridge.”
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=4846
“Users of the online forum Reddit took advantage of a community page to purchase at least 150 firearms, including semi-automatic rifles, since June, highlighting the potential to exploit a common loophole in federal gun law online. The subreddit page GunsForSale has been an active spot for gun buyers and sellers since 2011, offering over 1,000 listings from more than 400 Reddit users in the last six months, according to an investigation by Mother Jones. Since June, at least 159 transactions have taken place on GunsForSale, according to over 100 Redditors who used the subreddit’s automated tool for verifying sales and assessing sellers, Mother Jones detailed.”
http://rt.com/usa/reddit-gun-sales-licensing-345/
“Whether buying bread, filling a pharmacy prescription, getting a haircut or going to the doctor, some residents of Montreuil, France, are rejecting the euro in favor of ‘La Peche’, a local community currency. In France, local currencies are growing in popularity as trust in state institutions erodes. An elaborate coupon system lets locals pay for services and goods with special local banknotes, which are recycled and kept within the community. France, Europe’s second largest economy, has at least 20 different types of complementary currencies. Worldwide there are over 4,000 community-centered money schemes.”
http://rt.com/business/france-currency-alternative-euro-415/
“In the global arms race known as bitcoin mining, there’s success, and then there’s an excess of success. That’s what a company called CEX.io discovered yesterday when it abruptly stopped accepting new machines into its consortium of bitcoin miners. The consortium — known in bitcoin circles as a pool — was running such a large portion of the worldwide computer network that oversees bitcoin, people were beginning to worry that CEX could corner the market and gain control of the digital currency. The whole idea behind bitcoin is that isn’t controlled by any one central authority. Now that the CEX has pulled back on the throttle, the bitcoin world can rest a little easier.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/ghash/