Set yourself outside the law, literally an 'outlaw' and suffer the fate of pirates.
From ValleyWag:
Balaji Srinivasan,
Stanford lecturer and newest addition to the Andreessen Horowitz
venture capital all-star team, does not want to live near you. He believes he and his Silicon Valley vanguard deserve their own place—literally, a separate society. Now, the crazy is crazier: meet the "Inverse Amish."
Srinivasan—who is not some kook on Reddit, but a man with money, a Wired byline, and the means to be taken seriously—is explaining his techie utopia on Twitter. But he wants to calm everyone down: this isn't a plan to secede from the United States, it's just a way to create a completely autonomous zone within the United States, where people like Srinivasan can do whatever they want without the meddling "rules" of the federal government. What's the difference between this and secession? I don't know, ask Quora.[...]
You mention Elysium and the Matrix. I would offer a different analogy: the Inverse Amish.
Just like the Amish live nearby, peacefully, in the past - imagine a society of Inverse Amish that lives nearby, peacefully, in the future. A place where Google Glass wearers are normal, where self-driving cars and delivery drones aren't restricted by law, and where we can experiment with new technologies *without* causing undue disruption to others. Think of this like a Special Innovation Zone similar to the Special Economic Zones that Deng Xiaoping used to allow China to experiment with capitalism in a controlled way.
9) In sum: I believe that regulations exist for a reason. And I believe that new technologies will keep coming up against existing rulesets. I don't believe the solution is either to change the rulesets (which, again, exist for a reason) OR to give up on new technology. I think instead we need a third solution: a way to exit (whether to the cloud for purely digital technologies, or to a Special Innovation Zone or ultimately a startup nation), prove/disprove these new technologies among a self-selected, opt-in group of risk-tolerant early adopters, and report back to the mothership on what works and what doesn't.
10) This concept - a Special Innovation Zone - is a new idea. It is really about humility, not hostility. USG is a big thing, it has a lot of responsibilities, it runs a nation of 300M people, and it can't just change federal laws to permit some crazy tech guys to try (say) self-driving cars without affecting millions of people. A new region - like a Special Innovation Zone - can experiment with this kind of thing without bothering anyone who wishes to live under the previous rulesets.
Again: this is complementary to USG's own efforts. I don't see them as competitive, anymore than a startup competes with IBM's research labs.Take your head out of your hands and let's try to digest.The United States, Srinivasan says, is something that can merely be "exited," like a Palo Alto coffee shop, or a GroupMe chat. In his mind, this has zero ramifications.United States citizenship, and its laws, regulations, and constitution, Srinivasan says, are just a "ruleset" that one might opt out of like a Facebook account.The United States, Srinivasan says, should let a large group of rich, eccentric people take over part of its sovereign territory to be used as a playground for Google Glass and raw, unregulated free market corporate fellatio....MORE
From a very long comment back-and-forth on a May 2008 post at the WSJ's MarketBeat where I was doing my idiot savant ("Who you calling a savant, pal?") thing. But first a bit of gloating (Ted Turner-like colorization done ex-post)
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The banks will ditch the fund business in a second if there is any hint that allowing an outside speculator to evade position limits by swapping, and thus showing up in the COT reports under the ‘large commercial [4 or less]‘ umbrella, would lead to further regulation or even scrutiny of their business.
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Citi broke out their smallish piece as worth $661 MM.
CalPERS may pay a lot of fees but not enough to get GS to risk the golden goose.
Goldman Sachs was pushing their endowment and public employee pension clients to "invest" in commodities by taking advantage of Goldman's categorization as a "commercial" (rather than speculator) and the exemption from position limits that afforded. The scam was to have Goldman make the reportable-but unlimited trade in the commodities market and write swaps with the institutional client. Client long/Goldman short.
The preferred vehicle was usually something based on the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. This was at the same time Goldie was calling for $200 oil.
The GSCI is very heavily weighted toward the petroleum complex.
Duh.
On November 20, 2008 we posted "It’s official, Goldman capitulates on oil":
...MOREOil is below $49/Bbl, $48.70 down $4.00 last I saw.From FT Alphaville:Goldman’s latest commodities note is out, and this is all you need to know:
Closing our oil trading recommendationsTranslation: We were wrong and we’re sorry. Ouch.
Although we have emphasized in the past few weeks that continued weak oil demand exacerbated by constrained credit conditions will contribute to soften near-term fundamentals keeping WTI prices, timespreads and gasoline cracks under pressure, we have left our oil trading recommendations open, expecting that high volatility would provide a better exit point to our trades. The volatility in the past few weeks has mostly been to the downside and the pressure on the oil complex has increased. In the near term, we do not expect significant upside potential and as a consequence we are closing all of our oil trading recommendations.
From Barron's:
Goldman Backs Off Its Oil ‘Super Spike’ Theory
TURNS OUT, $200 CRUDE WAS TOO AGGRESSIVE A CALL...
Back to the part of the comments related to Srinivasan's meddling "rules" of the federal government.
8:28 am June 3, 2008Climateer wrote :
...MORE than gentle reader probably has time for.
So yeah, suckle on the government teat and then do your Utopian seccession and then learn some Realpolitik.
Some of our previous posts:
Happy Holidays: Startup CEO Complains SF Is Full of Human Trash
Technology: So Where's the #&@*$% Innovation?
Happy Holidays: Startup CEO Complains SF Is Full of Human Trash
Technology: So Where's the #&@*$% Innovation?
Why only go back to Ricardo or Smith? 14th century Classical econ. says what’s yours that I can take by force of arms is mine.
Now that’s classical, baby.
Human society develops rules of conduct to facilitate the greater good.
The intellectual field was called “Political Economy” for a reason.
Reading your half-baked interpretation I am reminded of the great mot juste for some on the hard left:
“Chomsky is the intellectual for people who aren’t as smart as they think they are”.
I see they same lack of intellectual chops in your argumentum.
Toodles
Austrian school?
Keynes?
Adam Smith?
Friedman?
Ricardo?
No past economic theory is going to help us predict what the future holds now that international banks and corporations rule the world.
My personal prediction is that it is not going to be pretty…….
The use of force verbiage is short-hand for the evolution of economic thought in just the last 700 years. The economics of the 14th century was the econ of the Condottieri.
Force of arms trumped all.
In response societies developed rules of conduct, laws, to codify what constitutes acceptable (and unacceptable) commercial behavior.
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Over and over again you will find proponents of “Laissez-faire” are the first to appeal to the power of the state to enforce their property rights.
So the question isn’t whether one believes in state intervention, it is to what extent and how duplicitous they are in their public pronouncements.
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Voltaire nailed the concept with “Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées” (Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts)
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In the instant case, the commodity markets, there are so many shennaigans going on right now that even Enron would blush.
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The recent failure of spot cotton prices to converge with the futures on settlement day is just one example of the dysfunction of the markets.
The CBOT’s turning a blind eye to the same phenomena in winter wheat is proof positive that participants will preach “Free-markets” as long as it suits their purposes.
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Pension funds evading speculative position limits by entering into swaps agreements with commercials is another example of gaming the rules.
This one has the further anti-market effect of transforming a spec position into a “hedge’ in the COT reports, reducing transparency and conferring an anti-market advantage on those who know the true state of affairs.
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Speaking of Enron, their behavior in the California electricity market was, simply, a fraud on the market.
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The action of oil prices will give us an indication of where the truth lies. When functioning, the price discovery mechanism is admirable for its signaling ability. When manipulated, it is a fraud on society.
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The real fun will come with the introduction of artificial markets in carbon.
I’m hearing the same B.S. about “market-based solutions”.
If the prognosticators are right, we are looking at $2 to 4 Trillion in activity with 15% slippage (bid /ask spreads, commissions, fees, bribes etc.)
I’ve got to go run a business now but feel free to respond it you have anything else to share.