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Originally posted as Part IV of a four-part introductory series on Bitcoin on June 19, 2013 in the American Daily Herald. See the Bitcoin blog for all four articles.

Prologue

I am reminded of Sisyphus, King of Ephyra (later, Corinth), who was referred to by Homer as the craftiest of men. He committed terrible crimes against mere mortals and ‘worse’ still, and with great cunning, he offended Zeus and cheated Death. For his crimes he was eternally condemned to thrusting a heavy boulder up a hill, only having it come rolling back down as he got near the top. Had his earthly actions against his fellow men not violated the non-aggression principle, I could have probably warmed up to him as some sort of tragic hero, doing all he can to live life as he wanted it, while beating the gods at their own game. But given his crimes as a ruler over men, it does seem appropriate that his punishment is an ever-repeating cycle of arduous labor, engendering within him hope of a brighter future, yet concluding with dashed dreams and a return to square one. After all, to this day, rulers are notorious for repeating past mistakes while expecting different outcomes (a condition humorously defined by Einstein as insanity).

National currencies

Argentineans have had a troubled relationship with their money over the last half century. The Argentine Peso has been revalued numerous times, with 13 zeroes having been dropped (a devaluation factor of 10 trillion) since 1969. Last month the ‘blue dollar’ (the black market price of US dollars) hit 10 peso, whereas the official exchange rate was half that, at around 5 peso, causing speculations of further devaluations. Devaluating the Argentine Peso is a Sisyphean task if there ever was one. Tragic, to be sure, but would have been comic too if so many real people weren’t hurt so badly by this inevitably repetitive chain of events.

The Argentineans are trying to get dollars because these are more stable than the peso. Had they been free to hold any currency they wished, the peso would have gone down the proverbial toilet as ever more people protected their assets by divesting away from the troubled currency. Instead, the populace is forced to hold only the peso, thus the tragedy continues, hitting hardest the honest and naïve, who cannot or do not want to go down the black market route. If government wanted the best interest of their people, they would let them hold the dollar. In the name of patriotism, having a national currency is clearly more important than the welfare of the people.

While not as bad, in the U.S. some don’t think the dollar has great prospects. A preferable alternative would be gold or something else that maintains its value. The truism still holds that if government, here, wanted what’s best for us, they would let us hold gold without the penalty of a 28 percent tax, or they would let us transfer our wealth to Bitcoin without targeting exchanges and denying what would otherwise be a purely voluntary free-market transaction. The fact that the peso in Argentina, the dollar in the U.S. and all legal tenders in their respective countries have to be protected by the full might and force of the law illustrates clearly that national currencies are relatively worthless and that, given the choice, many people would not be holding them.

Then why are legal tender laws and ‘forced’ national currencies so commonplace in this enlightened age? What is it that makes them so irresistible to the legislators who dictate what is right and wrong for us (not them) to do? If an unavoidable consequence of the ongoing monetary printing press is constant inflation and potential revaluation of the currency, what is it about printing your own money (and preventing others from doing the same) that is so desirable to the political elite? To ask that question is to answer it. Everyone, if they could get away with it, would want to counterfeit money or add a few zeros to their bank account balance. However, creating money from thin air is fraudulent and immoral regardless of who does it. The outcomes of private individuals counterfeiting money include buying a new car or a new house. The implications of government being able to print its own money are far worse. These include funding wars, enriching the politically well-connected and creating policies which favor one class of citizens at the expense of another class (both of which, by the way, represented by the very same government), for example: consumers vs producers; importers vs exporters; home owners vs renters; and the list goes on.

The only alternative that is both morally superior and economically sound, ensuring no person or group of people can defraud one group and enrich another, is having either one or a competing set of commodity monies (virtual or physical commodities) whose creation and dissemination are dictated by the forces of a voluntary and free market. The number of competing currencies will also be dictated by the free market, much as how the number of shoe manufacturers, software developers and security services are not centrally planned.

The alternatives for national currencies

It goes without saying that gold and silver would be the first in line to become functioning money the world over if national currencies are no longer protected by law. These are the epitome of sound money and they are not tied to any single nation. But can Bitcoin play a role as one of a competing set of sound, international currencies?

I do believe Bitcoin has what it takes, as I’ve written previously. Despite it being virtual, Bitcoin can acquire value. Value, after all, is an attribute given to a scarce good by individual actors in the marketplace. Anything subject to finite supply and demand will acquire some value. Hence scarcity is key, rather than tangibility. Bitcoin meets all of the requirements for a medium of exchange and potentially money in the future (depending on its adoption). Furthermore, while it did not arise as a commodity with alternate uses – as gold did – Bitcoin is a different and new breed of money, and it can still fulfill the role it seeks. More generally, an economy of commodity money would naturally tend towards deflation. While not solely a Bitcoin phenomenon, it is favorable for the value for each money unit to continually rise, in contrast to the inflationary environment around us. Bitcoin’s divisibility ensures that no matter how high the value goes, Bitcoin is still perfectly usable. Objections have been raised about its volatility since money must be stable. This is true, but we must appreciate that its current volatility is simply a symptom of the pre-adoption stage. Any newly discovered commodity will have a period of extended volatility as people try to contend with its potential on one hand and the uncertainty on the other. As Bitcoin becomes better known, more readily accepted by the common man and as uncertainties subside, the volatility will decrease to levels of your average foreign currency. I contend that this is no insurmountable challenge for Bitcoin since it is a built-in payment system as well as the money itself. While people may refrain from holding it long-term or price their goods solely in Bitcoin, people can convert in and out of the currency and use the Bitcoin payment system while denominating their goods in stable currencies.

Whether in small drops at a time or in large torrents all at once, Bitcoin is being adopted by people who have realized its advantages. Some with the need for international money transfer appreciate the cheap and almost instantaneous global transmittal; those with privacy concerns flock to it for its virtual anonymity; and then there are the ones who are tired with the banking system’s fees or afraid of its potential bank runs who realize they no longer need a bank to store their money.

People are voting with their cash and showing that Bitcoin can indeed fill the need. There are those who use it as a store of value/potential speculation and there are those who use it to spend. The hoarders increase its value and the spenders increase its popularity. Eventual equilibrium, as always, is reached between spending and saving where the supply and demand curves for Bitcoin meet…that is, assuming a free market.

Free markets can make or break a currency

Legal tender laws, taxes on precious metals and regulation of firms dealing in Bitcoin all manipulate the supply and demand curves of money and of non-monetized goods. However, they won’t eliminate the demand of the forbidden fruit altogether. One needs only note the prevalence of speakeasies during the Prohibition era to understand that it is not in the human nature to simply abide by arbitrary legislation. It is quite evident that fewer people in Argentina want the peso, hence the market for a ‘blue dollar’. In much the same way, in various circles, fewer people in the US want dollars. Fortunately our alternatives (such as Bitcoin, gold and silver) are not yet illegal, which makes me a proponent with a clear conscience.

On the face of it, when commodity prices rise, they are simply more valuable. But when prices rise for Bitcoin, gold and silver (which are commodities with a history or express purpose of being money) this shows they are more desirable than peso, dollar and pound. Small fluctuations mean nothing, but large movements like those seen over the course of a month for Bitcoin and over the course of 5 years for gold makes you think whether these commodities are becoming ‘monetized’.

Fiat money (e.g. national currencies) hangs on the faith people have of it. If the faith goes, the value of the fiat money will plummet like a rock. When a currency experiences this sudden and aggressive drop, it is defined as hyper-inflation. This can simply be thought of as ‘hyper demonetization’ of the currency in favor of a replacement commodity money that gets monetized or replaced by barter conditions. Any fiat money could be subject to this, given the right environment. As long as the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency, circumstances must become drastically worse for gold or Bitcoin to unseat it but the potential is always there. All it takes is enough people to lose trust. Take, for instance, the official national debt. At $16.7 trillion, this is a sum that can never be repaid (let alone if you include Social Security liabilities and other ‘off-the-books’ debt totaling an estimated $222 trillion), no matter how much you tax or how little you spend. To illustrate with an extreme scenario, by taxing 100 percent of the U.S gross national income and eliminating spending altogether, the U.S. is still left with a $1.5 trillion debt! To pay its debt the government is putting one credit card’s bill on another credit card. Needless to say, the thread by which fiat money is hanging is thin and flimsy. It won’t take much to snap.

As noted, individual people are realizing there is something amiss and are moving to gold, silver or Bitcoin. The Chinese government (saddled with more than $1.2 trillion in U.S. bills, notes and bonds) is showing it wants out too, while being conscious not to cause panic and hurt itself. The heavily censored nation aired a documentary last month on its state-run TV informing its populace about Bitcoin (!) and it allows (possibly even encourages) the purchase of gold and silver from local Chinese banks. Clearly the largest holder of U.S. debt is trying to divest away from the dollar. Central banks are buying gold like there’s no tomorrow. Clearly the ‘banks of the banks’ know that even paper money must be backed by real money.

Sure enough, Bitcoin is the big unknown and it is fraught with legislative risk. And, yes, gold and silver prices have seen better days. Hardly anyone alive today knows what it is like to live in a world of sound money. But as Hamlet asks, “[what] makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of”? In the long run, even Sisyphus would give up on any attempts to maintain a paper money. Whether or not one holds real assets to preserve material wealth, the first stage to anything is educating oneself to the options out there and to the reality at hand. The greatest amount of wealth is that which is contained in one’s mind. The emergence of Bitcoin, for its part, has got a lot of people thinking, and that alone has made all those involved more wealthy.

Originally posted as Part III of a four-part introductory series on Bitcoin on May 21, 2013 in the American Daily Herald. See the Bitcoin blog for all four articles.

With gold prices back in the $1,300-$1,400/oz range it is sometimes difficult explaining to non-gold bugs why owning physical gold is still a good long term strategy. Some define buying gold as ‘an investment’, and others as ‘a hedge against inflation’. I tend to look at it as an insurance policy against hyper-inflation or just simply as sound honest money. However, when describing a strategy of accumulating money (in gold form) in some far-away vault, only to be used in some end-of-the-world scenario, it goes without saying that an image of a miserly old man replaces my likeness in the eyes of my conversation partner. Few people stuff dollar bills in their mattress any more, but hoarding of gold and silver when these were de-facto money was not unusual. Commodity money, which tends to increase in purchasing power over time, is predisposed to this ‘problem’. When you ‘love money’ so much that you hold on to too much of it or for too long a time, then you are hoarding.

Can ‘hoarding’ be defined?

Robert LeFevre once joked that while he was courting his soon-to-be-wife, he was impressed when she told him how much she loved money. Yet after they were married, it turned out that she really didn’t love money. In fact, she would try to find any excuse to get rid of it… in her shopping sprees, of course! Apparently money is no different than other goods and services; you trade one for the other. You trade the lesser valued good for the more valued good. When you make a purchase, you make a choice. You value your money less than the good you are buying. Similarly, when you refrain from purchasing an item, the indication is that your money is of more value than the foregone good. This is the basic premise in anticipation of a transaction, that both sides benefit – otherwise the transaction would not take place.

Hoarding money, be it paper, an electronic account balance, gold or bitcoins is therefore just the same as buying an excessive amount of books, stockpiling on your favorite pasta sauce jars when they’re on sale or refraining from throwing out your old National Geographic magazines. You never know when you might need them. You just prefer what you are hoarding to the alternatives out there. A larger stash of money means you prefer saving the money you have now for a later monetary exchange. That monetary exchange can be a purchase, paying your employee’s wages or giving your granddaughter a gift. But the amount someone saves/hoards is a reflection of their preferences and their understanding of reality with its inevitable uncertainties (and uncertainty is in no short supply these days). The negative term ‘hoarding’ is used, as Rothbard noted, when you are keeping more cash than someone else thinks is appropriate for you to keep. How very objective.

In actual fact, if a significant amount of money is hoarded and ‘taken away’ from circulation, the result is that there is an increased demand for money, which, in a world absent of price and wage controls, results in falling prices. Said differently, the purchasing power of money increases, meaning one would be able to buy the same amount with fewer money units. No evil has been perpetrated.

The dreaded ‘deflation’

The general decline of prices is described by mainstream economists as deflation. According to the Austrian School, on the other hand, deflation is merely the reduction of the money supply. Whether through significant hoarding, widespread bankruptcies or Federal Reserve actions, a drop in the money supply would cause a drop in prices, all else being equal. The distinction is that falling prices are the effect, not the cause. The effect could have other (often positive) causes, such as increases in productivity – the reason for falling prices in the high-tech world, for instance. In a market unhampered by political forces, as long as the quantity of goods rises relative to the quantity of money, prices will fall and the value of money will rise.

A common misconception is that reduction in prices equates to reduced profits and a general decline in the economy. ‘Revenues are not profits’ is one of the first things young accountants learn. Profits are a product both of revenue and of expenses, the money coming in and the money going out. With an increased purchasing power of money, input costs fall as well. Profits can and are made in a deflationary environment. The dreaded ‘deflationary spiral’ is a situation where a drop in prices leads to reduced demand, leading to more drops in prices as well as layoffs, which further hampers demand, and so the situation exacerbates itself. This scenario may occur when the general environment is an inflationary one, where people generally expect prices to rise as a normal, natural phenomenon. Then, through a deflationary cause, symptomatic of an ailing economy (e.g. widespread bankruptcies, rather than increased productivity), prices temporarily start to drop. Most people will see this as a temporary drop and will therefore postpone purchases. However this scenario cannot be an ongoing condition – eventually people need to start buying. In contrast, where the environment is deflationary (e.g. the high-tech industry), the assumption is not that ‘prices must rise’ and that ‘the drop is temporary’. How long has anyone really put off buying a computer, knowing that if they wait just one more month, they’ll get a better one? Eventually, you live with the fact that prices fall. And should prices drop due to positive causes, such as increased productivity, falling prices would actually engender demand. Increases in demand will ensure the firms’ profitability and the workers’ employability.

Deflation is not as bad as you think…

As we have seen, if the general economic environment is one of falling prices and the increase in money’s purchasing power, people would not continuously put off making purchases. Profits will be readily made as goods will cost less and practically create their own demand. But this is not all. Holding on to your money is like having a savings account or owning bonds. Saving for a nest egg in a deflationary environment does not require a high risk approach. Merely setting aside a part of one’s paycheck each month will yield more than social security ever could.

A further impact is that as people save more, interest rates fall. This drop in interest rates is a scenario that central banks across the globe are trying to replicate by ever more money printing. However, a naturally occurring low interest rate does not harm the holders of money much like the coercive version we see before us. Though deflation is thought to be bad for borrowers, debt would actually be cheap and readily available. If profits are made, debt will also be more easily repaid. True, a bad deflation (one which results from bankruptcies and economic woes) is generally bad for borrowers, since the real value of their debt rises and they have no additional profits and cash-flow to enable its repayment.

During inflation, on the other hand, money loses value. There is no doubt that the opposite scenario of constant inflation would be good for borrowers, regardless of the state of the economy. Is it any surprise that a government indebted to the tune of $16.7 trillion would prefer inflation to deflation? Where money is not a commodity, but is 90% debt (due to banks’ 10% reserve requirement), is there any surprise that anyone in the economics profession but the very fringe would tout inflation over deflation?

…but they still make you think it’s bad

The case for inflation and against hoarding or deflation is normally made more through an appeal to emotive factors than to the intellect. ‘Unspent dollars means reduced sales, drops in profit and massive layoffs. If firms go bankrupt, the raw material, capital goods and factories vanish into thin air’. You wouldn’t want that, would you? We already showed that increased saving on a massive scale and a reduction in the money base relative to the goods on the market, in and of itself, would only affect the purchasing power of the money and would not affect sales or profits. Companies may or may not go bankrupt – it all depends on whether their products satisfy the customers, not on quantity of money ‘in circulation’. Assets of those companies that do go bankrupt will only be bought up by another group of people who will try to utilize them better by building a better or cheaper product. Those parts of the economy that people do not value will get a signal that their value is dropping. These signals are important for the efficient functioning of the economy and for the satisfaction of the population at large. Where this signal is manipulated through injection of money into the economy or unnatural interest rate manipulations, a boom occurs, naturally and inevitably followed by the bust.

Going back to their arguments, that money must therefore be spent, is quite the visceral argument since everyone is an employee and everyone’s livelihood depends on other people spending money on them. It appeals to the desire for people to get something for nothing, or at least to earn money for as little work as possible. But in a free market, where people are not forced to buy a good they do not value, the customer is always right. You do your utmost to ensure you appeal to potential or repeat customers. An entrepreneur and all of her employees must strive for others’ satisfaction in order to make a profit – and many do so, successfully. There are no shortcuts in the lives of truly free market participants; you cannot force someone to fork over their money against their will (the case, of course, being different for government agencies funded through taxation). Yet the lazy slob in us all desires just this and the tool to achieve this is inflation. Through a constant devaluation of money’s purchasing power, people trade their money for real goods and services as fast as they can, thus ensuring dollars are not left unspent. Inflation causes fear-driven spending. ‘Spend now before it’s too late and your money becomes worthless’. A mild form of inflation would have the monetary base rise at the same level as ‘economic growth’, thereby keeping the purchasing power relatively stable, but the practical difficulties and the moral dubiousness of robbing one of their money’s value is still present.

An appeal to the intellect and common sense

Money, as a transmitter of value through space and time, must be ‘hoard-able’. It has to be durable so that one can hold on to it without its value dwindling. Holding on to depreciating money is like storing your candles all lit – not the best long-term solution. As I tell my non-gold bug friends, holding on to money in the form of gold is a good long-term strategy. It cannot be printed at will, its production is subject to free market forces of profit and loss, and its purchasing power increases over time. Who would not want money that increases in value? If you are uncertain of the future, the market or the economy, hoard away. One must put aside the red herrings incorporated into the inflationists’ arguments which lead to conclusions that: deflation is evil, saving is bad, debt is good, spending is necessary, etc. Savers, who forego current pleasures and build up future capital, are the backbone of a strong economy. As Doug Casey said, “You don’t become wealthy by spending and consuming, you become wealthy by producing and saving”. As my parents repeated to me time and again, “You cannot spend what you do not have”. And as common sense dictates, “You cannot borrow what someone else hasn’t saved”. Sound money is worth its weight in gold. Resist the arguments put forward on behalf of entities that are massively indebted – there is no evil in hoarding.

coveroriginalhankImmortal Life has complied an edited volume of essays, arguments, and debates about Immortalism titled Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death from many esteemed ImmortalLife.info Authors (a good number of whom are also Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board members as well), such as Martine Rothblatt (Ph.D, MBA, J.D.), Marios Kyriazis (MD, MS.c, MI.Biol, C.Biol.), Maria Konovalenko (M.Sc.), Mike Perry (Ph.D), Dick Pelletier, Khannea Suntzu, David Kekich (Founder & CEO of MaxLife Foundation), Hank Pellissier (Founder of Immortal Life), Eric Schulke & Franco Cortese (the previous Managing Directors of Immortal Life), Gennady Stolyarov II, Jason Xu (Director of Longevity Party China and Longevity Party Taiwan), Teresa Belcher, Joern Pallensen and more. The anthology was edited by Immortal Life Founder & Senior Editor, Hank Pellissier.

This one-of-a-kind collection features ten debates that originated at ImmortalLife.info, plus 36 articles, essays and diatribes by many of IL’s contributors, on topics from nutrition to mind-filing, from teleomeres to “Deathism”, from libertarian life-extending suggestions to religion’s role in RLE to immortalism as a human rights issue.

The book is illustrated with famous paintings on the subject of aging and death, by artists such as Goya, Picasso, Cezanne, Dali, and numerous others.

The book was designed by Wendy Stolyarov; edited by Hank Pellissier; published by the Center for Transhumanity. This edited volume is the first in a series of quarterly anthologies planned by Immortal Life

Find it on Amazon HERE and on Smashwords HERE

This Immortal Life Anthology includes essays, articles, rants and debates by and between some of the leading voices in Immortalism, Radical Life-Extension, Superlongevity and Anti-Aging Medicine.

A (Partial) List of the Debaters & Essay Contributors:

Martine Rothblatt Ph.D, MBA, J.D. — inventor of satellite radio, founder of Sirius XM and founder of the Terasem Movement, which promotes technological immortality. Dr. Rothblatt is the author of books on gender freedom (Apartheid of Sex, 1995), genomics (Unzipped Genes, 1997) and xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine, 2003).

Marios Kyriazis MD, MSc, MIBiol, CBiol. founded the British Longevity Society, was the first to address the free-radical theory of aging in a formal mainstream UK medical journal, has authored dozens of books on life-extension and has discussed indefinite longevity in 700 articles, lectures and media appearances globally.

Maria Konovalenko is a molecular biophysicist and the program coordinator for the Science for Life Extension Foundation. She earned her M.Sc. degree in Molecular Biological Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. She is a co-founder of the International Longevity Alliance.

Jason Xu is the director of Longevity Party China and Longevity Party Taiwan, and he was an intern at SENS.

Mike Perry, PhD. has worked for Alcor since 1989 as Care Services Manager. He has authored or contributed to the automated cooldown and perfusion modeling programs. He is a regular contributor to Alcor newsletters. He has been a member of Alcor since 1984.

David A. Kekich, Founder, President & C.E.O Maximum Life Extension Foundation, works to raise funds for life-extension research. He serves as a Board Member of the American Aging Association, Life Extension Buyers’ Club and Alcor Life Extension Foundation Patient Care Trust Fund. He authored Smart, Strong and Sexy at 100?, a how-to book for extreme life extension.

Eric Schulke is the founder of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE). He was a Director, Teams Coordinator and ran Marketing & Outreach at the Immortality Institute, now known as Longecity, for 4 years. He is the Co-Managing Director of Immortal Life.

Hank Pellissier is the Founder & Senior Editor of ImmortaLife.info. Previously, he was the founder/director of Transhumanity.net. Before that, he was Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology (ieet.org). He’s written over 120 futurist articles for IEET, Hplusmagazine.com, Transhumanity.net, ImmortalLife.info and the World Future Society.

Franco Cortese is on the Advisory Board for Lifeboat Foundation on their Scientific Advisory Board (Life-Extension Sub-Board) and their Futurism Board. He is the Co-Managing Director alongside of Immortal Life and a Staff Editor for Transhumanity. He has written over 40 futurist articles and essays for H+ Magazine, The Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, Immortal Life, Transhumanity and The Rational Argumentator.

Gennady Stolyarov II is a Staff Editor for Transhumanity, Contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre, Rebirth of Reason, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator.

Brandon King is Co-Director of the United States Longevity Party.

Khannea Suntzu is a transhumanist and virtual activist, and has been covered in articles in Le Monde, CGW and Forbes.

Teresa Belcher is an author, blogger, Buddhist, consultant for anti-aging, life extension, healthy life style and happiness, and owner of Anti-Aging Insights.

Dick Pelletier is a weekly columnist who writes about future science and technologies for numerous publications.

Joern Pallensen has written articles for Transhumanity and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

CONTENTS:

Editor’s Introduction

DEBATES

1. In The Future, With Immortality, Will There Still Be Children?

2. Will Religions promising “Heaven” just Vanish, when Immortality on Earth is attained?

3. In the Future when Humans are Immortal — what will happen to Marriage?

4. Will Immortality Change Prison Sentences? Will Execution and Life-Behind-Bars be… Too Sadistic?

5. Will Government Funding End Death, or will it be Attained by Private Investment?

6. Will “Meatbag” Bodies ever be Immortal? Is “Cyborgization” the only Logical Path?

7. When Immortality is Attained, will People be More — or Less — Interested in Sex?

8. Should Foes of Immortality be Ridiculed as “Deathists” and “Suicidalists”?

9. What’s the Best Strategy to Achieve Indefinite Life Extension?

ESSAYS

1. Maria Konovalenko:

I am an “Aging Fighter” Because Life is the Main Human Right, Demand, and Desire

2. Mike Perry:

Deconstructing Deathism — Answering Objections to Immortality

3. David A. Kekich:

How Old Are You Now?

4. David A. Kekich:

Live Long… and the World Prospers

5. David A. Kekich:

107,000,000,000 — what does this number signify?

6. Franco Cortese:

Religion vs. Radical Longevity: Belief in Heaven is the Biggest Barrier to Eternal Life?!

7. Dick Pelletier:

Stem Cells and Bioprinters Take Aim at Heart Disease, Cancer, Aging

8. Dick Pelletier:

Nanotech to Eliminate Disease, Old Age; Even Poverty

9. Dick Pelletier:

Indefinite Lifespan Possible in 20 Years, Expert Predicts

10. Dick Pelletier:

End of Aging: Life in a World where People no longer Grow Old and Die

11. Eric Schulke:

We Owe Pursuit of Indefinite Life Extension to Our Ancestors

12. Eric Schulke:

Radical Life Extension and the Spirit at the core of a Human Rights Movement

13. Eric Schulke:

MILE: Guide to the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension

14. Gennady Stolyarov II:

The Real War and Why Inter-Human Wars Are a Distraction

15. Gennady Stolyarov II:

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences — turning the tide for life extension

16. Gennady Stolyarov II:

Six Libertarian Reforms to Accelerate Life Extension

17. Hank Pellissier:

Wake Up, Deathists! — You DO Want to LIVE for 10,000 Years!

18. Hank Pellissier:

Top 12 Towns for a Healthy Long Life

19. Hank Pellissier:

This list of 30 Billionaires — Which One Will End Aging and Death?

20. Hank Pellissier:

People Who Don’t Want to Live Forever are Just “Suicidal”

21. Hank Pellissier:

Eluding the Grim Reaper with 23andMe.com

22. Hank Pellissier:

Sixty Years Old — is my future short and messy, or long and glorious?

23. Jason Xu:

The Unstoppable Longevity Virus

24. Joern Pallensen:

Vegetarians Live Longer, Happier Lives

25. Franco Cortese:

Killing Deathist Cliches: Death to “Death-Gives-Meaning-to-Life”

26. Marios Kyriazis:

Environmental Enrichment — Practical Steps Towards Indefinite Lifespans

27. Khannea Suntzu:

Living Forever — the Biggest Fear in the most Audacious Hope

28. Martine Rothblatt:

What is Techno-Immortality?

29. Teresa Belcher:

Top Ten Anti-Aging Supplements

30. Teresa Belcher:

Keep Your Brain Young! — tips on maintaining healthy cognitive function

31. Teresa Belcher:

Anti-Aging Exercise, Diet, and Lifestyle Tips

32. Teresa Belcher:

How Engineered Stem Cells May Enable Youthful Immortality

33. Teresa Belcher:

Nanomedicine — an Introductory Explanation

34. Rich Lee:

“If Eternal Life is a Medical Possibility, I Will Have It Because I Am A Tech Pirate”

35. Franco Cortese:

Morality ==> Immortality

36. Franco Cortese:

Longer Life or Limitless Life?

This essay was originally published by the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies

One of the most common anti-Transhumanist tropes one finds recurring throughout Transhumanist rhetoric is our supposedly rampant hubris. Hubris is an ancient Greek concept meaning excess of pride that carries connotations of reckless vanity and heedless self-absorbment, often to the point of carelessly endangering the welfare of others in the process. It paints us in a selfish and dangerous light, as though we were striving for the technological betterment of ourselves alone and the improvement of the human condition solely as it pertains to ourselves, so as to be enhanced relative to the majority of humanity.

In no way is this correct or even salient. I, and the majority of Transhumanists, Techno-Progressives and emerging-tech-enthusiasts I would claim, work toward promoting beneficial outcomes and deliberating the repercussions and most desirable embodiments of radically-transformative technologies for the betterment of all mankind first and foremost, and only secondly for ourselves if at all.

The ired irony of this situation is that the very group who most often hails the charge of Hubris against the Transhumanist community is, according to the logic of hubris, more hubristic than those they rail their charge against. Bio-Luddites, and more generally Neo-Luddites, can be clearly seen to be more self-absorbed and recklessly-selfish than the Transhumanists they are so quick to raise qualms against.

The logic of this conclusion is simple: Transhumanists seek merely to better determine the controlling circumstances and determining conditions of our own selves, whereas Neo-Luddites seek to determine such circumstances and conditions (even if using a negative definition, i.e., the absence of something) not only for everyone besides themselves alive at the moment, but even for the unquantable multitudes of minds and lives still fetal in the future.

We do not seek to radically transform Humanity against their will; indeed, this is so off the mark as to be antithetical to the true Transhumanist impetus — for we seek to liberate their wills, not leash or lash them. We seek to offer every human alive the possibility of transforming themselves more effectively according to their own subjective projected objectives; of actualizing and realizing themselves; ultimately of determining themselves for themselves. We seek to offer every member of Humanity the choice to better choose and the option for more optimal options: the self not as final-subject but as project-at-last.

Neo-Luddites, on the other hand, wish to deny the whole of humanity that choice. They actively seek the determent, relinquishment or prohibition of technological self-transformation, and believe in the heat of their idiot-certainty that they have either the intelligence or the right to force their own preference upon everyone else, present and future. Such lumbering, oafish paternalism patronizes the very essence of Man, whose only right is to write his own and whose only will is to will his own – or at least to vow that he will will his own one fateful yet fate-free day.

We seek solely to choose ourselves, and to give everyone alive and yet-to-live the same opportunity: of choice. Neo-Luddites seek not only to choose for themselves but to force this choice upon everyone else as well.

If any of the original Luddites were alive today, perhaps they would loom large to denounce the contemporary caricature of their own movement and rail their tightly-spooled rage against the modern Neo-Luddites that use Ludd’s name in so reckless a threadbare fashion. At the heart of it they were trying to free their working-class fellowship. There would not have been any predominant connotations of extending the distinguishing features of the Luddite revolt into the entire future, no hint of the possibility that they would set a precedent which would effectively forestall or encumber the continuing advancement of technology at the cost of the continuing betterment of humanity.

Who were they to intimate that continuing technological and methodological growth and progress would continually liberate humanity in fits and bounds of expanding freedom to open up the parameters of their possible actions — would free choice from chance and make the general conditions of being continually better and better? If this sentiment were predominant during 1811–1817, perhaps they would have lain their hammers down. They were seeking the liberation of their people after all; if they knew that their own actions might spawn a future movement seeking to dampen and deter the continual technological liberation of Mankind, perhaps they would have remarked that such future Neo-Luddites missed their point completely.

Perhaps the salient heart of their efforts was not the relinquishment of technology but rather the liberation of their fellow man. Perhaps they would have remarked that while in this particular case technological relinquishment coincided with the liberation of their fellow man, that this shouldn’t be heralded as a hard rule. Perhaps they would have been ashamed of the way in which their name was to be used as the nametag and figurehead for the contemporary fight against liberty and Man’s autonomy. Perhaps Ludd is spinning like a loom in his grave right now.

Does the original Luddites’ enthusiasm for choice and the liberation of his fellow man supersede his revolt against technology? I think it does. The historical continuum of which Transhumanism is but the contemporary leading-tip encompasses not only the technological betterment of self and society but the non-technological as well. Historical Utopian ventures and visions are valid antecedents of the Transhumanist impetus just as Techno-Utopian historical antecedents are. While the emphasis on technology predominant in Transhumanist rhetoric isn’t exactly misplaced (simply because technology is our best means of affecting and changing self and society, whorl and world, and thus our best means of improving it according to subjective projected objectives as well) it isn’t a necessary precondition, and its predominance does not preclude the inclusion of non-technological attempts to improve the human condition as well.

The dichotomy between knowledge and device, between technology and methodology, doesn’t have a stable ontological ground in the first place. What is technology but embodied methodology, and methodology but internalized technology? Language is just as unnatural as quantum computers in geological scales of time. To make technology a necessary prerequisite is to miss the end for the means and the mark for a lark. The point is that we are trying to consciously improve the state of self, society and world; technology has simply superseded methodology as the most optimal means of accomplishing that, and now constitutes our best means of effecting our affectation.

The original Luddite movement was less against advancing technology and more about the particular repercussions that specific advancements in technology (i.e. semi-automated looms) had on their lives and circumstances. To claim that Neo-Luddism has any real continuity-of-impetus with the original Luddite movement that occurred throughout 1811–1817 may actually be antithetical to the real motivation underlying the original Luddite movement – namely the liberation of the working class. Indeed, Neo-Luddism itself, as a movement, may be antithetical to the real impetus of the initial Luddite movement both for the fact that they are trying to impose their ideological beliefs upon others (i.e. prohibition is necessarily exclusive, whereas availability of the option to use a given technology is non-exclusive and forces a decision on no one) and because they are trying to prohibit the best mediator of Man’s ever-increasing self-liberation – namely technological growth.

Support for these claims can be found in the secondary literature. For instance, in Luddites and Luddism Kevin Binfield sees the Luddite movement as an expression of worker-class discontent during the Napoleonic Wars than having rather than as an expression of antipathy toward technology in general or toward advancing technology as general trend (Binfield, 2004).

And in terms of base-premises, it is not as though Luddites are categorically against technology in general; rather they are simply against either a specific technology, a specific embodiment of a general class of technology, or a specific degree of technological sophistication. After all, most every Luddite alive wears clothes, takes antibiotics, and uses telephones. Legendary Ludd himself still wanted the return of his manual looms, a technology, when he struck his first blow. I know many Transhumanists and Technoprogressives who still label themselves as such despite being weary of the increasing trend of automation.

This was the Luddites’ own concern: that automation would displace manual work in their industry and thereby severely limit their possible choices and freedoms, such as having enough discretionary income to purchase necessities. If their government were handing out guaranteed basic income garnered from taxes to corporations based on the degree with which they replace previously-manual labor with automated labor, I’m sure they would have happily lain their hammers down and laughed all the way home. Even the Amish only prohibit specific levels of technological sophistication, rather than all of technology in general.

In other words no one is against technology in general, only particular technological embodiments, particular classes of technology or particular gradations of technological sophistication. If you’d like to contest me on this, try communicating your rebuttal without using the advanced technology of cerebral semiotics (i.e. language).

References.

Binfield, K. (2004). Luddites and Luddism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

The following article was originally published by Immortal Life

When asked what the biggest bottleneck for Radical or Indefinite Longevity is, most thinkers say funding. Some say the biggest bottleneck is breakthroughs and others say it’s our way of approaching the problem (i.e. that we’re seeking healthy life extension whereas we should be seeking more comprehensive methods of indefinite life-extension), but the majority seem to feel that what is really needed is adequate funding to plug away at developing and experimentally-verifying the various, sometimes mutually-exclusive technologies and methodologies that have already been proposed. I claim that Radical Longevity’s biggest bottleneck is not funding, but advocacy.

This is because the final objective of increased funding for Radical Longevity and Life Extension research can be more effectively and efficiently achieved through public advocacy for Radical Life Extension than it can by direct funding or direct research, per unit of time or effort. Research and development obviously still need to be done, but an increase in researchers needs an increase in funding, and an increase in funding needs an increase in the public perception of RLE’s feasibility and desirability.

There is no definitive timespan that it will take to achieve indefinitely-extended life. How long it takes to achieve Radical Longevity is determined by how hard we work at it and how much effort we put into it. More effort means that it will be achieved sooner. And by and large, an increase in effort can be best achieved by an increase in funding, and an increase in funding can be best achieved by an increase in public advocacy. You will likely accelerate the development of Indefinitely-Extended Life, per unit of time or effort, by advocating the desirability, ethicacy and technical feasibility of longer life than you will by doing direct research, or by working towards the objective of directly contributing funds to RLE projects and research initiatives. Continue reading “Longevity’s Bottleneck May Be Funding, But Funding’s Bottleneck is Advocacy & Activism” | >

Mechanics of Gravity Modification

Posted by Benjamin T. Solomon in defense, education, engineering, general relativity, military, particle physics, philosophy, physics, policy, scientific freedom, spaceTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Rocky Mountain chapter of the American Institute of Astronautics & Aeronautics (AIAA) will be having their 2nd Annual Technical Symposium, October 25 2013. The call for papers ends May 31 2013. I would recommend submitting your papers. This conference gives you the opportunity to put your work together in a cohesive manner, get feedback and keep your copyrights, before you write your final papers for journals you will submitting to. A great way to polish your papers.

Here is the link to the call for papers: http://www.iseti.us/pdf/RMAIAA_Call_For_Abstracts_2013-0507.pdf

Here is the link to the conference: http://www.iseti.us/pdf/RMAIAA_General_Advert_2013-0507.pdf

I’ll be presenting 2 papers. The first is a slightly revised version of the presentation I gave at the APS April 2013 conference here in Denver (http://www.iseti.us/WhitePapers/APS2013/Solomon-APS-April(20…45;15).pdf). The second is titled ‘The Mechanics of Gravity Modification’.

Fabrizio Brocca from Italy wanted to know more about the Ni field shape for a rotating-spinning-disc. Finally, a question from someone who has read my book. This is not easy to explain over email, so I’m presenting the answers to his questions at this conference, as ‘The Mechanics of Gravity Modification’. That way I can reach many more people. Hope you can attend, read the book, and have your questions ready. I’m looking forward to your questions. This is going to be a lively discussion, and we can adjourn off conference.

My intention for using this forum to explain some of my research is straight forward. There will be (if I am correct) more than 100 aerospace companies in attendance, and I am expecting many of them will return to set up engineering programs to reproduce, test and explore gravity modification as a working technology.

Fabrizio Brocca I hope you can make it to Colorado this October, too.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author of the 12-year study An Introduction to Gravity Modification

I have seen the future of Bitcoin, and it is bleak.

The Promise of Bitcoin

If you were to peek into my bedroom at night (please don’t), there’s a good chance you would see my wife sleeping soundly while I stare at the ceiling, running thought experiments about where Bitcoin is going. Like many other people, I have come to the conclusion that distributed currencies like Bitcoin are going to eventually be recognized as the most important technological innovation of the decade, if not the century. It seems clear to me that the rise of distributed currencies presents the biggest (and riskiest) investment opportunity I am likely to see in my lifetime; perhaps in a thousand lifetimes. It is critically important to understand where Bitcoin is going, and I am determined to do so.

Continue reading “Bitcoin’s Dystopian Future” | >

This article first appeared under the title “Techno-Optimists & Pessimists are Brothers in Arms” at Transhumanity.net, where Franco is a contributing editor.

opt4It is all too easy to assume that techno-optimists and techno-pessimists are diametrically opposed. But while they may have different destinations in mind, the road to get there – what they need to do to achieve their respective ends – is a shared one. Techno-optimists, Techno-progressives, Techno-gaians and Techno-utopians express hope and passion for technologies’ liberating and empowering potentials, while techno-pessimists are fearful of their dystopic and dehumanizing potentials. Optimists want to spread awareness of the ways in which technology can improve self and society, while pessimists seek to spread awareness of the ways in which technology can make matters worse. Techno-criticism is the neutral middle, where the unbiased study of culture and technology take place, and so should not be confused with Techno-pessimism.

But they both agree on the underlying premise that technologies can and likely will have profoundly transformative effects on self and society. They agree not only that we have the power to shape the outcomes such technologies can foster, that we have the power to affect and to a large extent determine the ultimate embodiment and repercussions of such technologies, but also that such technologies impel us to make concerted efforts towards determining such repercussions and embodiments! It may not look that way from the inside-out, but they are fighting to realize their vision of Humanity’s brightest future. Until we reach the day when the majority of humanity has extensively acknowledged the expansive power such transformative technologies hold, Techno-optimists & Techno-pessimists, Transhumanists & Luddites, and Revolutionaries & Revivalists alike are on the same side! Both camps are on a campaign to alert planet earth of the titanic transformations rushing foreforth upon its horizon. Both agree on the underlying potential such technologies hold for changing the world and the self – whether encased as Prized Present or in Pandora’s Box – and both are weary for the world to wake up and smell the rising.

opt8And besides, we’re all in it together, no? At least Techno-pessimists are thinking about such issues, and putting forth their appraisals. At least they’ve begun to consider what is at stake. Is a techno-pessimist closer to a Technoprogressive or Transhumanist than one who doesn’t take a stance either way is? Maybe.

Not that the likes of Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama and other Neo-Luddites, Developmental Critics, or Anarcho-Primitivists are to be heralded or left to lie without rebuttal. Their pessimism still does cause palpable harm, as in the delays in Stem-Cell research caused by G.W. Bush’s “President’s Council on Bioethics” evidenced. Thus we shouldn’t simply smile politely and let them on their merry way… But neither should we automatically jump to out-snuff their wild-fires of panic. We should instead let them whip up their frenzies, but be there waiting in the wings to attest for Icarus’s insight, and to offer Prometheus a light. Let them have their say, because it increases public awareness of the cause, because it clues people in to the fact that there many dangers are possible with these technologies (even if we disagree on the nature and extent of those dangers), but be sure to be there waiting, ready to refute their specific and untenable solutions, and not their call for fear in the first place. We are right to simultenaciously fear and hope for technology’s powerful potential. But considering that both Neo-Luddites and Neohumanists alike agree on the transformative and world-whirling capabilities of such technologies, is it more likely that we can take them in hand and shape the course of their eventual realization by outright relinquishment, or by taking advantage of those very transformative potentialities so as to increase our ability to shape them, in a self-recursive feedback loop fitting for Man, the Homoautofabber?

The very beliefs that Neo-Luddism share with Technoprogressivism and Transhumanism constitute one of the best reasons for arguing that their specific approach – outright relinquishment more often than not, or at least curtailing and slowing of development in certain areas to so large an extent that it shouldn’t even be called Differential Technological Development – is an untenable one. They seek to point out the massively transformative potential of technology, and then use this as an excuse to mitigate their dangers and ameliorate their potential downfalls. We should take their approach, pat them on the back (not too heartily, of course) for their starting point, and then flip the course around. We seek to point out the massively transformative potential of technology, but instead of arguing that the transformative potentialities of such technologies justifies their relinquishment, we should instead argue that those same transformative potentialities actually increase our potential to successfully shape their outcome and mitigate their potentially problematizing aspects!

opt10What are the chances that as soon as it becomes possible to use technology in massively immoral ways, we also gain the ability to shape and determine the parameters of our own moralities — and through the very technologies that created the potential problems in the first place, no less? What are the chances that as soon as technology seems to be building upon itself in an unending upward avalanche of momentous momentum, we also gain — through the use of those very same technologies — the ability to better forecast cascading causes and effects into the postmost outpost and to better track trends into the forward-flitting future? The technologies that hold such transformative potential are neither good nor bad, but morally ambiguous. They have the power to spiral out of control, to be strung as leash or noose around humanity’s neck — but they also have the potential to increase our degree self-determination and our control — or our degree of choice — over the circumstances and capabilities afforded by our environments.

A closed circle can seem like just that, until adding a vertical dimension reveals that it was an upward spiral all along. We’ve turned upon ourselves to find (or perhaps just refine) ourselves at least once before, when meat went meta and matter turned upon itself to make mind. Perhaps this was but echoes through time of that final feedback for forward freedom we stand to face, upright and with eyes sun-undaunted, in a future so near that it might as well be here, where the fat of fate is now kindled anew to light our own spindled fires aspiring ever higher, into parts and selves wholly unknown — and holier for it.

Techno-pessimists, Neo-Luddites, Revivalists and Relinquishists alike are not wholly wrong, just mostly. Rather the backlash against technology’s profoundly transformative potentials represents one small step in the right direction, and one giant leap left-field. So let’s unite in their plight to ignite consideration of the dangerous potentialities of technology in the eyes of humanity, but fight them when they move to stop the motion with a whimpered halt, rather than to continue the discussion with daring determination and impassioned exalt of aug- and of alt-.
FRANCO1111

The APS April Meeting 2013, Vol. 58 #4 will be held Saturday–Tuesday, April 13–16, 2013; Denver, Colorado.

I am very pleased to announce that my abstract was accepted and I will be presenting “Empirical Evidence Suggest A Need For A Different Gravitational Theory” at this prestigious conference.

For those of you who can make it to Denver, April 13–16, and are interested in alternative gravitational theories, lets meet up.

I am especially interested in physicists and engineers who have the funding to test gravity modification technologies, proposed in my book An Introduction to Gravity Modification.

** Note, APS is the publisher of the most prestigious physics journal in the world, Physical Review Letters. If you remember Robert Nemiroff published his ground breaking findings that quantum foam cannot exists, 3 photons and 7-billion year old gamma ray burst in the Physical Review Letters.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author of the 12-year study An Introduction to Gravity Modification

Yesterday, March 25 2013, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution making March 25, Aerospace Day. What a great way to celebrate Colorado’s participation in space endeavors. The state is the second largest employer of space related companies. Thanks to Colorado Space Business Roundtable (CSBR), the Colorado Space Coalition (CSC), the Rocky Mountain AIAA (RMAIAA), and the many sponsors who helped make this possible.

The sponsors are Aurora Chamber of Commerce, Ball Aerospace Technologies, GH Phipps Construction, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Metro State University of Denver, United Launch Alliance, Red Canyon Software, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Webster University, and the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.

Picture of the Colorado Senate just after passing the resolution.

Picture of the Colorado House of Representative congratulating CSBR, CSC & RMAIAA just after having passed the resolution.

If we are to become a space faring civilization it is important to celebrate our efforts in space endeavors. Our Colorado legislature recognized the need and passed the resolution to make March 25 Colorado’s Aerospace Day. I hope all the other states will would join Colorado and make March 25 Aerospace Day, and one day March 25 will be the national Aerospace Day.

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I received some photos from Michael Piccone. Here they are

Picture of the inside Capitol Hill showing some of the attendees visiting with the exhibitors.

Picture of 60+ of us who attended. There were more, and we were the ones who posed for this photo.

Close up of on of our state senators.

Some of the people who planned and made this event and resolution possible. They are from CSBR, CSC, Colorado Legislature, Lockheed, Boeing, Wings Over the Rockies.…

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author of the 12-year study An Introduction to Gravity Modification