Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Eurozone and the End of Democracy

The difference between freedom and slavery is not the difference between being in chains or running around wherever you want. The difference is whether or not you get a say in the matter, it is about voting. Spain needs a bailout as will Italy and Ireland and Greece again. Germany and France have agreed to help; but, there is a price tag. The price tag is that the debts of all nations will be faced together and backed by Germany. In exchange nations would lose their right to make their own budgets, those would be decided in Brussels by other countries.

Germany is using the economic crisis in order to become the head of Europe. What they could not do through warfare they have achieved through peaceful means and much better intent; however, as one former German Prime Minister pointed out, it could mean the end to all of them. At a minimum, it means the end of true democracy for many Europeans. Imagine if the United States had to ask the United Nations if our budget was acceptable? The economic troubles in Europe are being used to force all of Europe to become a single nation politically, economically and socially without letting the people decide and vote on it themselves.

This is what the world will look like when all of the currencies fail, there will be a call for greater decision making by the United Nations (or the International Monetary Fund) over how much debt countries can have and what they will be limited to if they are bailed out (given even more debt).

The Guardian - Germany weighs up federal Europe plan to end debt crisis

How About a Little Quickie?

Came across an article from Mobile News - "A New Plan To Make Stolen Phones Useless?" The FCC is worried that someone might steal your cell phone and wants to help you protect it. Sounds like garbage to me. They never wanted to protect me from having my laptop stolen or my radio or my television, why should they care if someone steals my phone? Rather then just reading the article and thinking "Great, my phone will be safer" ask yourself why the FCC should care.

The article says that the problem is that if someone steals your phone, they can replace the sim card and continue using the phone. The proposed solution is to give every phone a unique identification so that they could not use the phone with a new sim card. Oh and the government is going to create a database of every phone that has been stolen. Sounds like a lot of expense and trouble for something that isn't a problem. Right now if your phone is stolen you can have service terminated immediately and you don't get charged.

What this really means is that when your phone is used for something, if you haven't reported it stolen, you won't be able to claim that someone stole your phone. Now why is this important, simple, your phone will be your cash, we have already talked about that. Now, lets say you want to buy some drugs and transfer money to a drug dealer, if he gets caught you won't be able to say that it wasn't you who paid him, you will have to say it was you or who you let borrow your phone. No black market use of electronic cash.

I think most of us would be okay with that; but, it also means that individual phones could be denied service. Maybe they prohibit hate speech and prevent you from using a phone. No, it will start with prohibiting child molesters from using phones except for "safe" numbers. We will all be happy with that, the real tyranny will come later.