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There are minor party candidates, including a Constitution Party candidate, a Libertarian Party candidate, and Ralph Nader who has been a Green Party candidate, two of whom are among the best of men. But these men aren't willing to subject themselves to the limitations of the two major parties, and, by running as third party candidates have effectively withdrawn themselves from contention for the race for president, if not from circulation entirely.

Voting has other deficits. It is certainly immoral, in that voting is the delegation of force. Politicians invariably tax someone, draft or coerce others, and impose laws or decrees that function as initiatory force. Voting is certainly a poor way of taking choices, since the majority is rarely well informed and even more rarely correct about any matter.

Of course, voting would be more common if it were at all clear that the votes were being counted. Most of the 100 million or more Americans who are qualified to vote and chose not to vote in the year 2000 did so because they didn't think their vote made a difference. Many of them didn't think their vote would even be counted.

And for good reason. Machine politics control most major cities and many rural counties. It is a widely accepted fact that the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy would not have been possible if the dead had not voted in Chicago and South Texas, overwhelmingly Democratic as it would happen. We've met a man who voted six times in the 1960 election in Chicago, who is proud that he did his part for the party. William F. Buckley once commented on his television show "Firing Line" that he had an uncle who was a sheriff in South Texas who was such a good Democrat that he voted for LBJ for the Senate in 1948 and 1954, in spite of the fact that he had died in 1947.

Vote fraud was a major motivation in the 1993-1995 Atlantis Project. Both Eric Klien and Chuck Geshlider were aware of the vote fraud perpetrated against Tamara Clark who probably won the election for the state legislature from Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas), but was almost certainly cheated of election. Among other irregularities, the culinary union hall brought forth bundles of absentee ballots, each bundle having 100 ballots all marked exactly alike, Klien noted. Boxes of evidence of vote fraud were presented to the state senate committee tasked with overseeing fair elections. The chairman of that committee chose to adjourn the session without considering the evidence because the committee members were very tired.

In the 1998 election in Texas, no less a source than the Texas Republican Party identified some 206 instances of vote fraud and abuse. To our knowledge, not a single one of these instances has been positively resolved. So "don't vote, it only encourages them."

A system which is evidently operated on the basis of vote fraud, which bears no important resemblance to the republic of limited powers described in the constitution, and which routinely embarrasses, brutalizes, steals from, and kills its people cannot be expected to gain the loyalty of the best nor the brightest. Rather, the property Aristophanes identified 2400 years ago is still very much in operation. The best have withdrawn from circulation, or been forced into hiding or retirement, because the worst are not willing to accept limitations on their power.

Of course, since the productive and competent are under no obligation to provide leadership or opportunity to anyone else, there is no great loss here. The decadent and corrupt go on running major countries and will do so until a crisis beyond their meager talents to correct.

In the absence of such a crisis, one or more may be manufactured. These artificial crises will be portrayed as evidence that yet more power must be centralized, yet more control must be exerted, and yet more freedom must be denied. The system will continue to become more and more rigid until it fails. Fortunately, that day is not far off.

As with the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of the American Empire will be celebrated in many places. Its fall will bring about a flowering of arts, science, technology, and commerce that will dwarf everything that has come before. In five centuries, people will lie about this great period of prosperity and perhaps call it a Dark Age. Those of us fortunate to live through it will know it for something far greater.

"Bad money drives out good money."
- Sir Thomas Gresham, c. 1588

"It would be more correct to say that the money which the government's decree has undervalued disappears from the market and the money which the decree has overvalued remains."
- Ludwig von Mises Human Action:
A Treatise on Economics, 1949

Something excellent has happened. The government no longer decrees the value of gold or silver. While various attempts to intervene in the free market still occur, as discussed in previous issues of this report, the fact is that the market is pricing gold and silver. The attempts to keep the price of silver and the price of gold at fixed exchange rates to the dollar was essentially finished before Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. The fact of market pricing was admitted in that final act of debasement. Since 1976, Americans have once again been free to own gold, eliminating the last vestiges of a failed economic policy.

If the price of gold and silver is not artificially under valued by governmental decree, then gold and silver remain available as money in direct competition to artificially overvalued fiat dollars. This fact, combined with the fact we discussed last week, that you are under no obligation to accept fiat dollars, provides the necessary economic underpinnng for the free market money economic system that is now arising.

Ultimately, attempts to control the price of gold will fail, for the same reasons they have always failed historically. The price of gold cannot be controlled in the free market through market operations of buying and selling. All that can be produced through market operations is a more rapid alignment of prices to actual supply and demand. Indeed, it is the capitulation of the government to the free market which spells the doom of its manipulation efforts.

We like The Gold Casino. The games are very well developed and include not only standard fare such as video poker and slots, but also multi-player games which take place in real time. This technology is possible thanks to some advanced programming. You can enjoy a low stakes or high stakes game with friends or meet new people. The system allows for chatting while you play, which can add to the enjoyment of a good bluff.

Best of all, the Gold Casino accepts free market money, be it e-gold, GoldMoney, e-Bullion, or Pecunix. Their casino chips are simply grams or centigrams of gold.

Space Frontier

Rutan's team, led by Scaled Composites and including funding from Paul Allen and propulsion from SpaceDev is already the clear leader, having successfully reached space with their system back in June. The team is scheduled to launch on Wednesday 29 September and again on Monday 4 October. The public is invited to both launches and will be broadcast live via Internet.

"The presence of an active and rapidly growing high-tech internet industry in Sealand has changed the character of the Principality; once more, Sealand rings with the sound of voices, boasts regular support ferry services, and is host to a growing and dynamic population."
Sealand Web Site, c. 1999

On 2 September 1967, some centuries after a similar ploy by a guy named Grimaldi in a place called Monaco, former English major Paddy Roy Bates occupied a WW2 anti-aircraft station called "Rough's Tower" and proclaimed the island his own country. Originally seeking the location for the purpose of free market ("pirate") radio broadcasts, Sealand became a home for Prince Roy and his family.

In late 1968, the ownership of the Sealand platform was in contention, and warning shots were fired on approaching British naval vessels. On 25 November 1968, an English court reviewing the case found itself not competent for want of jurisdiction. The Sealand platform was outside the formal 3 mile limit of British territorial waters and was therefore not a part of the United Kingdom.

Since then, a number of adventures have followed. The country formed a constitution in 1975. In August of 1978, the platform was invaded and conquered, briefly, by Dutch employees of a German businessman. Prince Roy subsequently recaptured the platform.

In 1987, following the ratification of the Law of the Sea, Britain extended its territorial waters from three to 12 miles. Prince Roy had already made a similar declaration.

In 1999, the succession was provided for with the appointment of Crown Prince Michael as Prince Regent and sovereign pro tempore. Prince Michael seems determined to carry on the fine tradition of independence which Sealand represents.

More recently, Sealand has joined forces with HavenCo, Limited to offer dedicated co-location facilities. Sealand is now host to several dozen high speed computers with fairly stable Internet connectivity. As a data haven and private jurisdiction, Sealand provides an exciting opportunity for entrepreneurs dedicated to the ultimate in jurisdictional arbitrage.

Longevity

This very idea was first put forward by Robert Ettinger in his book The Prospect of Immortality now available online. Ettinger proposed in 1962 that tissue preserved at the temperature of liquid nitrogen would be effectively in stasis for centuries. His Cryonics Institute began to offer full body cryonic preservation in 1976, although the first instance of a person being deliberately frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures occurred in 1967.

Since then, several companies have come forward to offer the same service. One of the leaders in this regard is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, founded 1972 with 60 patients currently in cryopreservation and several hundred signed up for the service. In addition to full body preservation, Alcor offers to chop your head off with a chainsaw and freeze the brain and upper spinal column, on the theory that any technology advanced enough to revive tissue from liquid nitrogen freezing will allow you to regrow a new body. Or as Alcor enthusiast Keith Henson put it at a North American Science Fiction Convention green room party nearly 20 years ago, "If the house is on fire, you grab the hard drive and CPU and let the monitor and printers go up in flames."

One of the more interesting evaluations of the cryonics concept appears on the web site of Ralph Merkle. Merkle is well-known as the co-inventor of public key cryptography, and is a distinguished professor of computing at Georgia Tech. He points out that the correct scientific answer to the question, "Does cryonics work," is: "The clinical trials are in progress. Come back in a century and we'll give you a reliable answer."

Merkle also gives an excellent case analysis. If cryonics works and you sign up, you live. If you do nothing, you die. If cryonics doesn't work and you sign up, you die, and you lose some life insurance money that was used to fund your cryonic suspension. And if you do nothing, you still die.