Manufactured insecurity and the issue of control

So no further than yesterday, I was chatting with the tech lead of Eulora (who is an expat herself, living here in Buenos Aires) :

chetty Posted in expat forum:

Yikes or yawn? Just got a letter from the U.S. Embassy warning about the taxi scams, express kidnappings, muggings, moto chorro crimes,entraderos etc occurring in Argentina.....not that this isn't true, but lumping all these things together kinda makes someone think they happen with the same frequency...can't help but wonder if this warning isn't a bit of a political tit for tat after Queen K's anti US tirades....is this a "citizen service"or more politics? Why now?

mircea_popescu Right-o.

No further than also yesterday, slightly earlier, I was in a local shop. Three girlies there behind the counter. Nobody else there, so we get to chattingⁱ. They want to know if I'm traveling, I tell them what I tell everyone : no, I live here now. Because I do. I fucking love this place, I've never loved a place before, I'm moving here, I'm getting citizenship, I'm probably going to die here. Done and done.

They giggle, "o look, everyone here is trying to get out, you're moving in". Apparently its shared, held truth that Argentina sucks and they should try to get out. The youth of the country has agreed. Why do you want to move out, I wish to know. I could see some answers to this question, some very good answers, such as "This fucktarded queen bee Cristina and the populist idiots who've been in charge for more than half a centuryⁱⁱ have made it so we can either die now or die poor, tertium non datur."

That's pretty much true, by the way. They're never going to make any serious money here, they'll make out and make a decent living and good food and nice kids and everything you want, but they'll never make any serious money. Just not possible, not here. And you know, for some people this is a valid objection, I could see a teenaged girlie going "screw all this nice food and good living crap, what I want is a diamond encrusted dildo and a huge mortgage balloon that 'is paying for itself' while I pile on more debt as that's what money is!1" Maybe one in ten thousand or so. Incredibly improbable that I'd be looking at three of them in a set (not to mention I can pick that woman out in a crowd, and none of them girlies is it). And besides, do you know what they answer ?

"Well the insecurity here."

I kid you not. It goes beyond ridiculous, these people living in easily the most secure place I've ever seen in my entire life, ever, are complaining about "the insecurity". What insecurity ? The insecurity they perceive, through reading the Clarin Miente, La Nacion Miente and the rest of the local Mientesⁱⁱⁱ. They want to go to Chicago because Buenos Aires is insecure in their view. Reminds me of Bogart going to Casablanca for the waters, "I've been misinformed".

And you know what ? Three girlies in a shop in Buenos Aires aren't the only ones being misinformed. Not quite the only ones.

Early Bitcoin Adopter Calls for Multi-Sig Solutions After 750 BTC Theft

Treasure pointed to an article on Medium.com, which quoted Gavin Andresen’s comments in his State of Bitcoin Address in Amsterdam last May.

In the article, CEO and co-founder of multi-sig wallet provider BitGo Will O’Brien wrote that despite Andresen’s call over 99% of all bitcoins are still stored in single-signature addresses. Multi-sig addresses, he wrote are “the only viable solution for securing bitcoins”.

A derp working for the USG is trying to push the USG-friendly notion that you have to change the safe and secure protocol as it is, in favour of something that has been engineered to be insecure by his handlers. Because "insecurity". And because you're too new to know a few things.

A few things like for instance the fact that leotreasure is enough of an old adopter to have had a MPEx account, and to have made BTC trading there, and then to have liquidated his account, and then to have promptly lost all his BTC. Because that's how it fucking goes, people come to MPEx, do some trading, make a little profit. Some make a lot. The smart ones stick around, the dumb ones leave because "better opportunity". And then, with maybe three exceptions in three years, proceed to lose their wad. Amusingly enough, none of them then goes back to "You know what ? Fuck me for having been as stupid as to leave MPEx, really."

And it's not something new, this. My forum PR used to slap people all over with this exact thing, back when I could still be bothered with forum PR. The list of BTC users is quite clearly cut, there's the MPEx users on one hand, and then there's the "we've lost our Bitcoin" users on the other hand. These are the sets.

Now consider that the owner of MPEx doesn't use multisig, doesn't think much of Gavin and is shorting Mr. O'Brien. Which means Mr. O'Brien will die, incidentally. And then consider that the chief way government agents pick your pockets is through manufacturing insecurity, for which they then sell you "solutions" created specifically to perpetuate the insecurity in question. It's a vicious circle.

It's a vicious circle Bitcoin is here to end. Which means that merely buying some Bitcoin isn't going to do anything to you : the moment you buy back into the government-sponsored crap you're basically buying out of your Bitcoin. It's not animated, this coin, it's not your girlfriend. It can't save you, it's just a tool.

Use it as it is, will you ? When your own, private, personal hour of reckoning comes, like it comes for all living things doing something worth the mention, use it as it is.

Don't use it like your enemy wants you to use it.

1. You have no idea nor could you ever imagine how dedicated to chatting the people here are. You can stop a stranger in the street and spend the next half hour engaged in conversation just like that, on the spot. It's not even rare. They ask each other "how's it going" and expect an actual answer whether they met before or not. It's nothing any English speaker has ever seen or could really imagine. [↩]
2. In 1952, Peron held a speech explaining how going into the state capitol he stumbled on gold bars that apparently, in his heated imagination, were so overabundant in Argentina that they were getting stored in the hallways of the Elite HQ, and suggesting all those resources are wasted sitting there, and would be do much better "invested" in "the people". That was the absolute last time Argentina ever had any sort of notable wealth.

   It went from being a major player on the world scene in the 1920s, a sort of today's Russia, to being the sort of nothing of any consequence it is today. An empty space at the margins of the world, mostly of interest to real estate scammers trying to place Eldorado somewhere. Apparently "investing" ie, giving away money, to "the people", ie the scum of the earth, is not a particularly wise policy. But they've done it, the economy collapsed, and it's been collapsing ever since. But hey, at least the people are nice, and chatty-like. [↩]

3. It's how you say newspaper in Spanish. [↩]