Lifeboat Foundation

Just like the game of Monopoly, which was created to illustrate the operation of laissez faire capitalism, there is always one big winner at the end of the game.

“Wealth concentration drives a vicious, downward cycle, throttling the very engine of wealth creation itself.”

“Because: people with lots of money don’t spend it. They just sit on it, like Smaug in his cave. The more money you have, the less of it you spend every year. If you have $10,000, you might spend it this year. If you have $10 million, you’re not gonna. If you have $1,000, you’re at least somewhat likely to spend it this month.”

Continue reading “Insanely Concentrated Wealth Is Strangling Our Prosperity” »

The new digital payment app, called Tez, allows people in India to use a phone to pay for goods in physical stores and online, or make payments to other bank accounts. It’s different to the (already incredibly popular) Indian service PayTM in the respect that it links a phone directly with a bank account, rather than having the user regularly top up a wallet with money.

The Financial Times reports ($) that, unlike many other mobile payment systems which rely on NFC to make payments, Google offers users the ability to make use of a technology called AudioQR to transfer money. The approach allows any two phones with mics and speakers to communicate with each other using ultrasound, above the range of human hearing, to arrange a transaction. That will be particularly useful in a country where not everyone has a high-spec device.

According to TechCrunch, Google has also trademarked the name Tez in other Asian countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines. That suggests that, in the longer term, it has bigger ambitions for the service.

Continue reading “Google’s New Mobile Payment System Sends Money via Sound” »

Bitcoin was hit by a double whammy this week. On Tuesday, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan declared that Bitcoin is a fraud that will “blow up”. Then, just this morning, a Bitcoin exchange in China announced that it would shut its doors in response to verbal pressure from regulators and an uncertain regulatory environment.

Don’t ya just love it when bad news breaks on Bitcoin? I sure do! It creates a buying opportunity. After all, just look at what happened after the last five bouts of bad news: _{[updated Oct 2017—Click to reverse colors & enlarge]}

Continue reading “Bad News is Good News for Bitcoin Investors” »

BOSTON (AP) — IBM is planning to spend $240 million over the next decade to create an artificial intelligence research lab at MIT.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday announced the formation of the new MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. It will support joint research by IBM and MIT scientists.

Its mission will include advancing the hardware, software and algorithms used for artificial intelligence. It also will tackle some of the economic and ethical implications of intelligent machines and look at its commercial application for industries ranging from health care to cybersecurity.

Continue reading “IBM and MIT partner on artificial intelligence research” »

On August 1 2017, the value of a Bitcoin was at $2,750 US dollars. Today, just over one month later, it is poised to leap past $5,000 per unit. With this gain, many people are asking if Bitcoin has any genuine, inherent value. Is it a pyramid scheme? —Or is it simply a house of cards ready to collapse when the wind picks up?

In a past article, I explained that Bitcoin fundamentals ought to place its value in the vicinity of $10,000.* (At the time, it was less than $450, and had even fallen to $220 in the following year).

For many consumers viewing the rising interest in Bitcoin from the stands, there is great mystery surrounding the underlying value. What, if anything, stands behind it? This is a question with a clear and concise answer. In fact, it has a very definitive and believable answer—but it is easiest to understand with just a little bit of historical perspective.

At one time, G7 fiat currencies were backed by a reserve of physical Gold or the pooling or cross-ownership of other currencies that are backed by gold. That ended in 1971 when the Bretton Woods agreement was dissolved by president Richard Nixon in Ithaca NY.

Continue reading “Spell it Out: What, exactly, backs Bitcoin?” »

It’s de rigeur for the many of the richest of the rich to tout the benefits of giving cash handouts to all American citizens, in part as a way to end poverty. The idea, called universal basic income (UBI), is for every individual to be paid a regular sum of money regardless of employment status.

One of the tech elite who has an interest in universal basic income is self-made multimillionaire and Y Combinator President Sam Altman. “Eliminating poverty is such a moral imperative and something that I believe in so strongly,” Altman tells CNBC Make It.

“There’s so much research about how bad poverty is. There’s so much research about the emotional and physical toll that it takes on people.

Continue reading “Top Silicon Valley tech exec on cash handouts: Let’s eliminate poverty for all Americans” »

The BRICS Finance Committee is discussing a joint virtual currency for the five nation bloc of developing economies, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) chief Kirill Dmitriev.

Here’s a people-friendly/business-friendly plan to replace Labor Day with Basic Income Day in America. Your half million dollars is waiting and yours! http://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-with-federal-lan…2017-7 #FederalLandDividend

Futurist and 2018 libertarian candidate for California governor Zoltan Istvan outlines his plan to give everyone a government kickback from untapped land.

Article out by Ron Bailey at Reason Magazine that discusses #transhumanism and #libertarianism:

Kai Weiss, a researcher at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria, swiftly denounced the piece. “Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution,” he wrote.

Clearly there is some disagreement.

Continue reading “Transhumanism and Libertarianism Are Entirely Compatible” »