How Does The Setup In The Prior Entry Get Created?

Answer:  Over time.  Using ISO standards or other standard setting entity protocols for information management and communication interface.

There are two types money in the current monetary system.  That system will continue its current structure and function unchanged.  However, additional requirements will be overlaid upon it.  These additional requirements will however be transparent to clients of the financial system.

The two types of money are vertical and horizontal money.  Vertical money created by governmental deficit spending.  Horizontal money created by banks loaning money into existence.  These two types of money might be viewed as the back office of the money domain opaque to monetary system users.  (Virtually everyone.  Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain.)

The crux of the setup is that once created money never goes out of existence by settlement of debt. (To be magically reborn again as new debt).  Once created and branded with a unique ID it lives forever.  It has a history and current status of either active ownership or circulation suspension.

All "new" money at some designated system start time spent into the economy by the government or loaned into existence by a bank must come out of the Monetary Authority and all transactions using money of that origin must be interfaced by the Accounting Authority (Aggregate Financial System) with the Monetary Authority.  Interface data elements are unit dollar IPv6 code and associated previous owner and new owner account IPv6 code.

Over a period of time all monetary units will enter the domain of the Monetary Authority.

Setting Up The Sting

Setting up the monetary system only requires that every single digital dollar in the system be identified by a unique IPv6 identifier (even numbered?) The scope of the system includes unit digital dollars that are not circulating as well as those that are in circulation.  That means that a sufficient pool of unique IPv6 identified digital dollars with a value of one dollar each exists in either circulation or suspension for purposes of monetary system control and regulation.

Money in the form of a uniquely identified digital entity at the unit value level of one is therefore the micro level unit of the monetary system.

The key to understanding this concept is that once a unit dollar is created it exists as a unique digital object identity forever either in circulation of suspension status.

Management of all units of money is the macro level responsibility of a Monetary Authority.

All money that is in circulation is defined as all dollars managed by the Monetary Authority that have an associated uniquely IPv6 (odd numbered?) identified owner/user financial entity account.

Managemt of all user financial entity accounts is the macro level responsibility of the Accounting Authority.  There are two types of financial entities that may have financial system user accounts:

1.  All citizens.  (If they want to use the monetary system which by law is the only monetary system that may settle all debts public and private.). De facto a mandatory requirement for all citizens to have a financial account identified by a unique IPv6 identifier (with an identifying alpha character?)

2. All non citizen financial entities.  Entities registered to conduct monetary transactions.  Uniquely identified by an IPv6 identifier and associated detailed financial operation information.

The third macro level authority is the Contracting Authority.  It is this authority that maintains the master debt record of which financial entities have contractual debt relationship with any other financial entity an how much is owed to whom with reference to the contractual document identified by a unique identifier (maybe not IPv6 in this case because contracts expire in one way or the other.)

What Does the Prior Monetary Concept Accomplish?

Good question considering how long it was and the variety of ideas that seemed to fit together...at least in my head.

The purpose of this entry is to think about the the simple benefit of what I propose.  

With the intent to get to the point, the real nitty gritty of it all I launched out into an obtuse verbose direction then gave it up after the first paragraph.  This morning I erased that paragraph.

All my thinking about a new conceptual monetary system to better serve us has been based on a shift from a debt based to a debt free base moving debt to an application of debt free money not the creator of it.

The prior blog entry was a dramatic shift in viewing the problem domain.  No paradigm shift.  Sneak up on it and let the problem skin itself!  That goes back to elegantly skinning the cat.  Induce it to skin itself by causing it to jump out of its own skin.  It avoids a bloody mess.  

What I want is control of the monetary system.  I want it to be self controlling but with powerful tools to monitor and correct its function in process or it form in structure if necessary.

I want accountability built into the monetary system, investigative powerand the means to enforce control over system structural form and function.  I want a level playing field open equally to everyone to obtain and use the points we call money in the best way possible to make resource allocation decisions at the micro and macro level in accordance with our proclaimed intent of self governance.

Truth!  Justice!  The American Way.  

And a damn good cop on the beat to assure what belongs to us continues to remain ours.  It is our money, it belongs to us.  It is the basic tool, besides the vote, to express our freedom of choice.

Our monetary system has been stolen by the banksters.  My prior blog entry claws it back with a simple system changed based on the simplest of all money rules:

Follow the Money!

If a crook was to design the system what would their guiding strategy be?

Launder the money!

My monetary system objective is not to create and apply a new one but to have the old one jump out of its skin and create an elegant structure and function design that enables that to happen.

It only requies two things: Fucus on the most critical point upon which the current monetary system is structured that is the cause of its dysfunction then put a good cop on the beat.

The most critical point of the current monetary system is:

The basic unit of monetary value does not have a unique identifier that distinguishes it from all other units of monetary value.

Solution:  Assign a unique identifier to every single dollar in the monetary system.  Then money can be followed to assure the right thing is done with it.

Their is no honest good cop to follow follow the money.  A feature for the crooks, a failure for us.  So we get robbed.  

Solution:  Make Bill Black the Chief of Monetary Police.  Follow the money with a watchful eye and apprend and punish all those that are guilty of fraud.  Good old school crime fighting and punishment stuff!  Bill wrote the book "The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One".  Doesn't that sound like a guy who knows exactly where the crook's hideout is????  

Bill Black is a hero!

Give the crooks the old style "One Two". Set up the trap then slam the door.  That is the elegant skin a cat way to get 'em.  Rather than the bloody method of knocking down the door, going in with guns blazing and taking out the bad guys with collateral good guy casualties.  Otherwise known as hostages.  We are all hostages to the banks.  That is why To Big To Fail is their winning strategy.

My strategy is to create a key critical point in the present monetary system, without significantly changing it in any Revolutional way like going debt free  and then applying the smallest amount of force at that point to dynamically shift the entire system and free it from its captors and return what is ours to us.

Debt Free Money--Unbundled from Debt

Everything I have written in this blog about my conceptual monetary system has been based on its foundation as a debt free positive money system.  A system where debt is a contractual entity, simply one of the things that positive debt free money can buy.  Debt is not a creator of money but an application of money.

Examining that idea a fresh look at the relationship of money to debt gives an alternative monetary architecture that might be an easier horse pill for the established banking system to swallow.  

This alternative retains the fundamental structure of my proposed digital dollar system.

Here is a brief summary about the system I have proposed and explained in various entries to this blog:

Every single digital dollar is serialized (IPv6 code) with a unique serial number and is denominated with the value of one dollar.  It exists in a cloud. Server at Fort Knox , just for fun.  The monetary system is administered by a  Monetary Authority.

Each single unique digital dollar always knows it's current owner as well as every previous owner in a block chain since its creation.  Once created it lives forever.  It knows it's owner by each unique owner account number (another block of IPv6 identifiers)  Owner accounts are administered by an Account Authority.  It does accounting.  It assigns and maintains a Financial Entity ID sytem.  Every citizen is a de facto financial entity.  All other entities are registered by the Account Authority to use the monetary system.

Money is static.  It does not move.  The account owning an instance of money (one serialized dollar) is variable.  

The Account Authority processes monetary transactions among user accounts in aggregate value of each unique transaction.  Each transaction has a block chain history.  The Account Authority passes user account transaction information to the Monetary Authority which applies total transaction amounts to changes in ownership of each unique single digital dollar.

The total dollar value of money in the Monetary System always equals, to the dollar, the total value of all money owned in the Account Authority system.

Whew!  Always re-explaining the system then getting on to saying something about it.  So this is what is different this time.

The crux of the matter is to take away the power of the banking system to create money out of nothing by loaning it into existence then extinguishing it to nothing as the loan is repaid.  (But gimme the interest and fees, thank you very much.)

A system that does this does not have to be a debt free system.  Debt is a creature of the finance world and that in my system is in the domain of the Accounting Authority.  It exists there because the Account Authority not only accounts for real time current ownership of dollars in the Monetary System of each and every account entity in the Account Authority system but it also has this responsibility:  To maintain a Contractual Debt accounting system defining who owes what to whom and what contractor relates to.  Maybe a sub-function of the Accointing Authority.  Maybe the domain of an independent Contractual Debt Authority.

Here is the hybrid system that provides for debt accounting but unbundles money creation from debt and makes debt a function of what money does like everything else that money does, not the creator of money from nothing.  It is the sugar that makes the medicine necessary to cure the debt based banking system bring it to account by strictly limiting it to the Accounting domain.

The Banking System becomes reborn as the Accounting Authority System.  In its reincarnation it continues in its prior fo and function except it no longer creates money from nothing to live for the period of a contractual loan and be extinguished to nothing as it is repaid.  

This is the new conceptual hybrid:

The money a bank loans, currently called

Horizontal money in MMT is drawn from money held by the Monetary Authority (digital serialized unit dollars each with a value of one from an IPv6 block reserved for that purpose).  It is placed into circulation by a contractual loan.  

How the payback of the loan to return the same uniquely identified unit dollar to the block of dollars reserved for loan creation in the Monetary Authority system is handled is nothing less than brilliant!  (Probably has a something for nothing fatal flaw in it but I like it).  All I have to do is have a stroke of genius to make that magic trick happen.

By default, all dollars in the Monetary Authority system that are not horizontal dollars from the block reserved for Accountimg Authority loans are vertical dollars spent into the Accounting Authority system by the government.  They exist forever in circulation unless the government chooses to withdraw them from circulation and hold them in suspension to control the money supply. 

Vertical or horizontal money in the accounts of financial entities all spends the same as far as the account entity is concerned.  When that account entity makes a payment on a loan however, this is what happens transparent to the payer:

The total on hand balance in an financial entity account will relate to unit dollars in the Monetary Authority system that will happen to be both vertical and horizontal dollars.  When contractual debt repayment is flagged then horizontal dollars identified by their IPv6 block number are chosen first from the payer's account to return to the loan purpose block.  (The equivalent of placing in suspension for future use as done in the situation of taxes applied to vertical money.  (Yes, I will get to the analogous problem of choosing dollars in the situation of tax payment.  Figuring this one will help figure that one!)

The remainder of dollars in a financial entity account to complete repayment on a loan are vertical dollars that do not go out of circulation (unless by tax).  Pay attention to the trick here.

All unit dollars in the Monetary Authority system (vertical and horizontal) have a block chain history that makes them independent of time line circulation interruption caused by suspension as a function of debt repayment or taxation.

There is no constraint on the limit of dollars held in suspension either vertical or horizontal for reintroduction for use.  Therefore debts paid back with vertical dollars (after all horizontal dollars in a user financial entity account have been applied or vertical dollars in the case of taxes) can be swapped between suspension status tax/debt categories at the monetary authority level to create the necessary exchange buffer.

This is all transparent to the account holder.  So is the existence of dollars and how they are processed beyond the account level.  Visible and probably more understandable at the micro and macro level to anyone who wants to know how it works.

China International Payments System

CIPS

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0M50BV20150309?irpc=932

Lost in a world where a bank is a financial business entity making money on money is the simple fact that the institution was also nothing more than a clearing house for payments.  

Good for China to restructure the clearing house protocols that have been manipulated to extract money from a simple a relatively cheap function through well protected complex and self serving processes. That however is a business model of the banking system.

This is a logical fundamental step for China to take toward domination of the world monetary system.  

I wish China well in this endeavor.

https://www.sc.com/en/resources/global-en/pdf/Research/CIPS_game_changer_needs_careful_planning.pdf

The Intelligence of Things

This blog entry will start out as a placeholder for an thought before it escapes my mind.

The inherent intelligence of things in the natural world must be formalized in a language of expression to endow the same intelligence to the same thing to enable its existence in a virtual world.

Is the following a valid observation on which to build structures in a virtual world modeling a natural real world existence?

Natural and virtual things are the product of structured information.  Structured information is equal intelligence in either world.  In the virtual world however the abstraction of information from its physical binding in the real world object thing enable it to be managed without physical constraints

Abstract cognition is the foundation of human intelligence?

The foundation of machine intelligence?  Meaning artificial intelligence possessed by a physical thing creating abstract structures in a virtual world ?

A piece of wood knows it's own intelligence.  It used to have much greater intelligence when it was part of a tree.  As a distinct independent piece of wood it retains fundamental information intelligence.  Weight, weight bearing properties, size, ability to burn or depose, etc.  

Wood given greater intelligence knows how to be a chair.  A smarter chair knows how to recline.  There is intelligence educated into it.  It can have far greater intelligence when structured intelligence is built into it.   It's Value as a chair is a self aware intelligence absrtaction that is made possible by abstracting its virtual properties from its physical properties.  

Does that thought here anywhere?  I

Seems to be a rather simple step ahead as I sit at this picnic table and each of us express our virtual intelligence in a real world.

Which has the greater intelligence?  Me or the picnic table?  Don't know until I have had another cup of coffee.  

The original conceptual abstraction of a chair emerged as if from nowhere in the mind of someone tired of sitting on a rock.  It implemented itself to a form and function as a wooden product of the mind's intelligence in the real world because it had utility.

A tree could have grown itself into the form of a chair if it had utility to the tree. The utility to attract an occupant that would provide some benefit to the tree.

Smart tree.  It simply thinks at a slower level because it's intelligence is in the domain where physical properties of a thing cannot be extracted or separated from the logical properties of a thing.   A tree has  intelligence with the controlling factor of tight binding between physical and logical properties of adaptation.  Our intelligence employs a loose binding permitting rapid change of conceptual structures related to the physical world.  In the end however the physical world places a physical constraint on our control of things through the separation of their physical and logical properties.

Who is more intelligent?  Me or a tree?

Ultimately, which derives the greater utility through its metod of intelligence?

The one that adapts best to change in its own environment over time.  Failure to change existing physical/logical attributes that are dysfunctional leads to extinction.

http://www.glenpearson.ca/2015/03/devouring-social-capital/

Who is Going to Build J. D. Alt's Architectural Vision!

J. D. Alt drew the architectural plan for a new monetary system.  Who will build it?

Sir Tim Bernres-Lee laid down a plan for the World Wide Web structured on a simple foundation building block of the Internet Protocol to identify unique conceptual identities and connecting IP addresses with http.  Who built on that?

Christianity was created by a guy, or Guy if you prefer that gave a unique identity to each individual entity and a basic protocol to connect them.  Who built on that?

In each case it was early adopters of a system architecturally designed to elegantly expand in range and depth.  The ones that saw the beauty in the relational truth associating the things in the system through functional interaction.

Sir Tim had an easier task.  He created a new system that had no established predecessor but established conceptual component modular concepts.  With a predecessor system it was not so easy.  Likewise the banking system with its vested interests in serving itself well, even  better than its users.  Serving itself by using its users?  A moral hazard?

J. D. Alt suggests that hmm... I have to go back to what he suggested here at New Economic Perspectives:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/02/the-millennials-money-pt-1.html#more-9136

Millennial a pick up the plan and take it to fruition.  An interesting idea.  I would have otherwise thought that it would happen relatively quickly like a Google or a Facebook.  Things happen quicker as the Information Age progresses.  On the other hand J. D. might be right.  Speed of change is somewhat constrained by the speed of generational change more along the model of Civil Rights or religious fundamentalist thinking where the system of belief has to die progressively with the people that hold them.  Some beliefs take longer to die inspite of their fallacy.

One comment on J. D's post called the generational change theory basically unsupported junk science.  Maybe unsupported but I think an idea that may have merit.

Side note:  Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a Unitarian Universalist.

I could have guessed it.

Sir Tim says:

"I believe that much of the philosophy of life associated with many religions is much more sound than the dogma which comes along with it. So I do respect them."^[57]

Why do I write any of this stuff?

Tilting at windmills amuses me.  

Keeps my free range mind active?

J. D. Alt

J. D. Alt publishes comments on monetary matters at New Economic Pespectives.  This is his latest.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/02/the-millennials-money-pt-1.html#more-9136

I have commented previously on how much I appreciate his structured thinking. He is an architect who is skilled at creating structural concepts that turn into real world structures that support functional requirement use.  Not only basic forms but creative structures with inherent aestetics.  Elegance and beauty in simplicity and style.

He takes the same architectural approach to monetary systems.  Each time he publishes something new I see progression toward completion of the final design product.  His latest indicated how close he is to publishing the final design in book form.  A narrative that is no less than a traditional set of a broad scope architectural structure plan.

The design, engineering, building model is fundamental.  Easy to see the product in the real world every time we walk through a doorway to enter a building thatsy be centuries old or the threshold of a new home.  They all started out as ideas and dreams emerging into the human mind as if out of nowhere.  That is where.  That is where everything we create, be it as empheral as religion, language or as solid as a car comes from.  Somebody individually thought it or far enough back in time thought its conceptual building blocks

Into existence.  J. D. Alt is doing that with the design of a better, more elegant and structurally sound monetary system structure.  It's a beautiful thing to behold and comments on what he publishes reveal that many can see the truth of his design.

I enjoy what J. D. publishes as much as reading Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth".  It is about creating things that spring from nowhere into the human mind into things of form and function to serve us.  In the case of the monetary system that J. D. Is creating it is a far better model and future structure than the our current edifice built on a faulty foundation that is the temple that serves the banksters who designed it so well to serve their schemes and dreams.  They hold the keys to that monstrosity that will one day collapse because that is what structurally unsound things do.

Structural failure is as much destroyer of faulty structures that are primarily conceptual as real structures that can't stand the functional load placed upon it due to age, lack of maintenance or progress that makes it unsuitable for current use.  The rubble often served as a foundation for some new design, new structure that is a better design.

Reporting What is Written on the Wall

The following site looks at tracking, aggregating and the profit involved in targeted web site user interface with the World Wide Web.  It is pervasive, extensive, involves big bucks and relates to personal privacy issues that those targeted mostly totally unaware of.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these-companies-are-collecting-your-data

Commercial exploitation for profit motive of personal information gained from a variety of information sources in addition to the WWW is the doppelgänger of NSA personal information gathering for security motives.  Means and methods research and development by the NSA have broad application and spin off to private industry.  First adopters in private enterprise are probably those that had contracts with the NSA/National Security agencies.  Certainly a bigger and faster revolving door than old school traditional warfare/hardware defense industrial complex.

Maybe the difference between information aggregation models differentiates government and commercial info gathering and aggregation.

NSA is centralized.  The private enterprise twin is decentralized but rapidly becoming networked through sharing aggregations of data.  In the end they both arrive at the same end poor.  Every individual or tracked entity has a unique identifier to which all related information can be accumulated and associated.

That model is exactly the one that I have chosen to associate all digital uniquely identified digital dollars (say ten trillion) in a novel debt free monetary system to entities (any entity spending/receiving dollars in financial medium of exchange).  

Buying/selling is just another form of communication involving an information payload and communication system that is the fundamental core of our Information Age.  

Our intelligence created the Information Age and it is as old as when abstract concepts related to the real world were painted on cave walls or communicated in codified grunt packets.  We only do it faster and to greater degrees of abstraction that make it look like a new ball game.  

There remains the basic source of abstraction:  Things and Actions.  Things related to themselves or other things by a relationship implementing action.

Things are called nouns, actions are called verbs.  That is the first abstraction of our real world.  Used to be simple, now it is so abstracted the Forrest is hard to see for the trees.  One is simply the aggregate of all its instances.  We always knew that every person was unique in all eternity.  Now that uniqueness can be biometricly identified absolutely in a new world order of information where every person or chosen conceptual entity is approaching a real time conceptual identity to which everything but our secret thoughts can be attributed and known for profit or security.

Where does that go?  Maybe the end point is where the thought police (in charge of knowing what we want to buy/sell or harm intended to the buy/sell power structure) will be able to read our most secret thoughts. 

That is science fiction stuff.  Perhaps we will be saved by reading their most secret thoughts and the truth will finally set us free.  We knew it all the time.

Is this a plot outline for my novel to become a movie?

Becoming a thing on the Internet of Things

A step closer to a person becoming a thing by virtue of biometric ID associated to a personal device on the Internet of things.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistanis-face-a-deadline-surrender-fingerprints-or-give-up-cellphone/2015/02/23/de995a88-b932-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

P3 - Public and Private Partnership

I am from the government and I am here to help you.  Reagan instilled mass fear with that phase.  Loathing too.  Nothing like the double whammy of fear and hate.  Combined they are a very powerful tool to attain certain objectives.

I am from private enterprise and I am here to help you.  Maybe even more chilling.

We are the government and private enterprise working together we are here to help you.  Cooperate with us because my government partner says it is the law and if you do not then my partner also does law enforcement and collections.  I tell my partner what laws to write for our joint business.

When a business model entity becomes sufficiently established to be identified by the short hand of letters it is entrenched. Who on the street knows what P3 is?  PPP in my town is Pole, Paddle, Pedal.

Some terms are for back office use only, not for public consumption.  That is why there is a PR department in the front office to change the face with lipstick if necessary.  Say the right thing to consumers to promote profit.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to make big money in the Information Age application of technology is P3?  I  certainly am beginning to believe that.  When government entities have deparents of public/private cooperation partnerships staffed by government employees and top level managers tasked to seek out P3 opportunities the door to the hen houseis open. 

When the top level government official running the P3 .gov department is also a vice chairman of a K street firm lobbying on behalf of a P3 sector of interest re the fox is in the hen house!he

Of course, the fox is there to help you!  Don't mind it's partner that opened the door, it is just its stooge.

While there is legitimate benefit in P3 there is also significant opportunity to invade the public domain and control it for profit and political power.

Jim Whitty is the manager of the ODOT Office of Innovative Partnerships and Innovative Funding.

http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/contributors/james-whitty.php

Jim Whitty was also vice chairman of mbufa.org for 4 years until the spring of 2014.  He is succeded in the position by Norma Ortega of Caltrans.

http://mbufa.org/images/MBUFA-Spring-2014.pdf

http://mbufa.org

Norma Ortega:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/bios/ortega.htm

According to this site her's is a voluntary position.

http://tollroadsnews.com/news/norma-ortega-is-new-vice-chair-of-mileage-based-user-fee-alliance-board

Very cozy partnership with no money changing hands of course but on the other hand are there benefits that money does not buy?

Like banking....is P3 a good thing or a bad thing?  Depends on where you stand and where you stand is where you sit.

Is OreGo Paying SANEF for its Commercial Services?

If the answer to the subject line question is yes then SANEF is making out like a bandit handed a bag full of money.

The value of information obtained by SANEF in the operation of this system for sale to data mining entities will probably be far greater than anything ODOT pays for servicing the usage scheme!

Maybe SANEF should be paying ODOT!

I can see the future SANEF pitch to ODOT:  Would you like to super size our services.  Automatic pay as you go parking charge?  High speed lane use charge?  Congestion city charge?  

Partnership with McDonalds:  The car road use device as a device to charge for burgers at the drive up window. The car itself becomes a mobile wallet!

Mbufa Milage Based User Fee Alliance

Mbufa is a K street lobby entity.  Its membership list is here;

http://mbufa.org/member.html

SNEF, a French toll road operator is a member and the partner of ODOT in the OreGo plan with a commercial volunteer sign up site here:

https://www.sanef-oregon.com

Note: at this time there is no link to a privacy statement at the site but this is the privacy statement at its UK operations site:

Quote follows;

11. Privacy

The Subscriber is informed that upon registration for Subscription and during the term of the Subscription Agreement, personal data will be collected by sanef. This data will be used for the performance of the Agreement, the management of the relation between sanef and the Subscriber and the transmission of business offers by sanef

The data may be collected by sanef and/or the Toll Charger Companies. Save as expressly refused by the Subscriber, personal data collected may be communicated by sanef to its partners.

Pursuant to law of 6 January 1978, the Subscriber is allowed to obtain access to their personal data collected on this website and can request correction and / or deletion by sending in email to privacy@saneftolling.co.uk.

In registering for the Subscription Agreement, the Subscriber expressly agrees that anonymous data collected in relation with its Subscription can be transferred and communicated by sanef to partners or third parties.

Pay As You Go On The Road To Serfdom

Excellent by Michael Hudson

http://www.occupy.com/article/road-serfdom-part-ii

Pay to a rentier as you go on the toll road  to serfdom made possible by your unique identification as a Thing requiring/consuming resources owned by  rentier and controlled through ownership of physical and conceptual Things on the Internet of Things.

OreGo - Trojan Horse in the Internet of Things

Oregon live.com reports on the Oregon milage charge program at this link:

http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2015/02/oregon_mileage_tax_orego_websi.html

"1. You can sign up to be a road-tax guinea pig, er, volunteer starting July 1, 2015. Initially, the program will be limited to vehicles under 10,000 pounds. It will allow only 1,500 vehicles that get 17 miles per gallon or less and 1,500 in the 17-to-22-mpg range."

5,000 is the total volunteer program.  This is 3,000.  Obviously there is more but what that may be is not stated.  

The proposed usage charge is 1.5 cents per mile flat rate for everyone.  The Oregon state gas tax is 30 cents per gallon.

17 miles x 1.5 = 25.5 cents.

Duh!  No brainer here.  I would think there would be a lot of enthusiastic volunteers in the under 17 mpg category.

Break even is 20 mpg.

The problem is that there is insufficient state revenue from the gas tax to support the state road needs.  While OreGo payoff to the state is claimed to be a reduction in state gas tax collection admin cost just how much is that cost?  How many state employees would otherwise not be required and their cost savings applied to shovel ready road programs?

22 percent of ODOT's budget comes from state gas tax revenue which is 1.106 billion dollars in a two year budget. Info at this link giving other sources of revenue:

http://www.oregon.gov/odot/comm/docs/budgetbooklet_11-13.pdf

Without any further analysis I conclude at this point that OreGo is a Trojan Horse with a hidden agenda inside.  What is that  hidden agenda? 

At a guess it's the usual suspects;  Politics and money.  The political agenda of privatizing the public domain structure and function and the money to be made by private entities as a result.  This has potential for general public expense increase and private entity gain. 

Tax collection at the pump in the existing form of state tax of 30 cents per gallon is currently a functional responsibility of private enterprise that remits collection to the state.  A responsibility burden and associated expense that would be lifted from gasoline dispensers.  Note that there is also a federal tax of about 18 cents that is also collected at the pump bit remitted to the states based on a federal formula that could potentially be incorporated into any state usage fee collection program.

Qui Bono here?

Is this an outsourcing of tax collection to a pay as you go free private enterprise entity that takes its cut in the collection as a revenue sharing scheme?

Revenue sharing is certainly not the primary profit opportunity appeal to private enterprise here.  There is a gold mine of information to be derived for processing and sharing as the automobile and its associated driver  become a uniquely identified. Thing on the Internet of Things.

Look at the bigger picture.  Road usage fee is a foot in the door of a much broader agenda.  

Pay as you go fee systems are rapidly becoming the business model as the Internet of things expands in range and depth to attribute or allocate cost/revenue to uniquely identified things such as automobiles on the Internet of things.

This is not simply a state tax revenue issue.  It is a broad social issue of the Information Age.  An issue that will not get the attention it deserves because if it did the those that would benefit mostfin terms of making money would make less.    Therefore the "tell" that reveals the big here agenda is how much PR is involved as opposed to in depth analysis of what the program is all about and how many special interests are involved at the K street level.

A main feature of the plan is milage recording and reporting with a dongle attached to the car computer.  There is a ton of money to be made in associated areas.  Progressive Insurance is already doing this as I have noted in previous blog entries.

The Internet of Things will be a pay as you go world.  A cost accountants wet dream.  Enter what used to be a public park?  Pay as you go by a perimeter entry sensing device.

Why should I pay for some kids education when I chose not to have any?  Just because my parents paid taxes to support public education?  There is a creep factor in the destruction of the general welfare and the common good far beyond the flow of money to the 1%.

The Internet of Things has the potential of making a person a Thing Product not a Thing Customer.

Monitoring the Imternet of Things:

http://www.capgemini-consulting.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/iot_monetization_0.pdf

And

http://www.capgemini-consulting.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/iot_monetization_0.pdf

And

http://www.capgemini-consulting.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/iot_monetization_0.pdf

Road Use Charge Program-Oregon

Update:  12 May 2018:  More than 3 years since the original posting of this blog entry:
I was wondering about the stage of development related to the OReGo idea :  This looks like the latest info.  The name has changed and it is now a regional study.  This is a bid solicitation:
http://oregonprocurementsearch.com/details/3032

Following on to the last two posts this is where the rubber meets the road and where the invasion of privacy makes money.

It is truly a monument to the advancement of the technology of the Internet of Things and slick marketing in a  public/private effort to get people to enthusiastically become a Thing in the Internet of things.

http://m.ktvz.com/news/ODOT-picks-name-rolls-out-road-use-charge-program/31344342

"Freedom. Adventure. Responsibility. Oregonians expressed these values most often when asked to describe what Oregon’s Road Usage Charge Program should represent. By popular preference, the road usage charge program is now named “OReGO” and has a new logo to match, ODOT officials said Wednesday."

What did I just say about the great American Dream of the open road in my prior blog entry?  There it goes into history.

"Presented with 12 options, the OReGO name and logo shown was chosen by 80 percent of participants. Comments included: “It says ‘Go with Oregon’ or ‘Oregon here we go’;” “It is a fun name…I visualize a dog with its head out the window…and going out and exploring Oregon…it has that kind of fun, forward thinking;” “Gives me an idea what the program is for;” “Over time …everybody would know exactly what this is.”

Chilling!  The dog will of course have a biometric collar on it connected to the Internet of things.  The driver will simply be wearing a biometric iWatch.

Unbelievable but it will happen. There is money to be made in this "public/private" partnership.  The public side being the enforcement agency to implement statewide law.  

Oregon is the first state to do this.  What happened to the unofficial state motto of "live and let live".

Who exactly is the private entity in this relationship??? 

OreGo website: OreGo.org

Partners in this public/private enterprise:  

Sanef:  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SANEF 

Raytheon and IMS Insurance are associated with Sanef, a French company,

Azuga: http://www.azuga.com  GPS tracking via the car's OBDll device.

Verizon:  obviously the communications provider.

The Oregon Senate Bill that set this up:

http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/RUFPP/docs/SB_810_Enrolled_Road_User_Charges_%282013%29.pdf

This is the Road User Fee Task Force:

http://www.oregon.gov/odot/hwy/rufpp/pages/ruftf.aspx

Tammy Baney is the OTC Commissioner.

http://www.oregon.gov/newsroom/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?newsid=596

This is really a toll road system in disguise to privatize revenue in a revenue sharing plan with government from the use of public roads.  It is in fact the privatization of public domain assets for the extraction of profit.  

"The fee — 1.5 cents a mile — will roll out July 1, 2015 through 5,000 volunteer participants. ODOT and the volunteers will see how it works, and then the Oregon legislature will decide when it will be expanded to the rest of the state’s drivers."

Read more at: http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/oregon-to-charge-drivers-by-the-mile/

This at this link:

http://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/interest-grows-mileage-based-user-fees-fund-transportation

"“On the commercial side though, we intend for the account managers to start a business,” said Whitty. “They will be able to recruit and choose volunteers. They will be able to use any type of mileage reporting technology that meets the standards of the department and they can change it over time. … They’ll be able to sell value-added services. … They will be able to bundle those services in a single billing and combine their account management practices with other value-added services. They will be able to sell mileage data if they can get approval for the sale and they can retain it beyond 30 days with consent of the road usage charge payer. … The commercial side is where we want to put all of our effort. We want that to be very successful.”

Look at this closely; "Value added services" that is where the money is.  That is where to exploit the government granted monopoly to operate this program.

Whitty is the ODOT point person for this program:

"

Whitty: Senate Bill 810 demonstrates that the legislature is willing to go forward on this topic. They want one final demonstration with 5,000 volunteers, and when that works, they’ll be willing to go forward with mandatory mileage charges where people are obligated to pay."W - See more at: http://reason.org/news/show/1013709.html#.dpuf

Note well the words mandatory and obliged.

Based on a program used by 5,000 volunteers we are effectively giving them the vote with ODOT approval on mandatory program legislation.  They would pay 1.5 cents per mile in lieu of gas tax of 30 cents per gallon??  Is that how it would work?  That hardly figures.  Must be more to it.

This is a revealing site:

http://reason.org/news/show/1013709.html#.dpuf

"Mr. Whitty currently oversees development of a permanently operational road use charging program which will deploy cutting-edge approaches to road use charging under an open technology platform with motorist choice and implementation through public private partnerships as central features.

Mr. Whitty is a co-founder of the Western Road Usage Charge Consortium consisting of states engaging in road usage charge information transfer and joint research on the topic of mileage charging. Mr. Whitty is a co-founder and vice chairman of the Mileage Based User Fee Alliance, an entity with a mission of educating policymakers on road use charging and headquartered in Washington DC.

Mr. Whitty brings a private sector perspective to his role in transportation policy. His prior experience includes 10 years working with transportation finance and environmental public policies for Associated Oregon Industries, the Portland Chamber of Commerce and six years in private law practice. He obtained his bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctorate from the University of Oregon."

Note:  Reason Foundation supports libertarian principles!  

Whitty is vice chairman of the Milage Based User Fee Alliance:

http://mbufa.org/alliance.html

Is he entirely impartial to the private enterprise interest in privatizing government functions?

From this site:

http://mbufa.org/alliance.html

"ODOT’s Jim Whitty, the architect of the program, has been on a whirlwind tour, responding to requests from states for more information about what they’re doing in Oregon and how they’re pulling it off. Last week he came to Washington, DC, to speak with members of Congress, key Senate committee aides, White House staff — and this reporter. I got answers to these 10 questions I had about the new plan."

This smacks of a government official selling a plan sponsored by a special interest group.  Conflict of interest here?  Is his vice chair a paid position?

This is what Whitty said about GPS tracking;

"

How did Oregon get past privacy concerns?They bagged the idea of requiring any kind of GPS tracker. “You can’t mandate GPS and get this done,” Whitty said. “You’ve got to give people options that don’t involve GPS.” Though a GPS tracker isn’t really more of a violation of privacy than your cell phone or E-ZPass, the issue has been an obstacle to rational discussion about the pros and cons of a VMT system. In Oregon’s first pilot VMT program, they gave out trackers, but people didn’t like having government surveillance devices in their cars. For the second pilot, this past winter, people could pick their own device from the marketplace, and they found that more comfortable. Plus, there’s an option to just report mileage from the odometer."

In other words don't worry if the GPS is reporting to private enterprise instead of the government.

"Why would anyone choose to participate in the program? That’s a question Whitty couldn’t really answer yet. People whose vehicles currently get less than 17 miles per gallon will have an incentive to sign up, since the VMT fee will probably be less than the gas tax rebate they’ll be getting. But the program will only accept 1,500 people with such low mileage out of 5,000 volunteers."

Note that this is a referendum with 5000 voters.  1500 will surely be very enthusiastic.  The rest would probably swing the vote at least?

Jack Basso chairman MBUFA congratulated Whitty for his efforts here:

		Finally, I would like to thank Jim Whitty (Oregon DOT) for his key contribution in helping launch MBUFA and for his valuable service for the past four years as Vice Chair of MBUFA's Board of Directors. At the same time, I want to thank and
		congratulate Caltrans Acting Chief Deputy Director Norma Ortega as she succeeds Jim as Vice Chair.

Must be busy handling both a government job and doing so much for a private entity related to and having interest in their government job.

Note the Executive Director's comments about Whitty at this site and also she welcomes SANEF as a member.

Cozy?

Invasion of Privacy Motivation

IThe primary motivation for the invasion of privacy enabled by modern information systems has been governmental and private enterprise Security.

Government funding of tech advance my of security systems and methods have trickled out to civilian enterprise like the previous generation space program, the motivation and payoff in the invasion of personal privacy is now at this point in time shifting to money.  In my opinion.  

Money in exploiting privacy.  Money in protecting privacy.  

It is a self licking ice cream cone that generates money far beyond the old school way of robbing a bank by owning one.  

This blog entry is a follow on to the previous one simply exploring one of the many ditections it was going in.

Interesting application of biometric technology to cars associating the driver to the vehicle;

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535201/the-face-detection-algorithm-set-to-revolutionize-image-search/

It is called "strong identity management"

A Thing Person strongly associated with a Thimg Car together strongly associated to time and place and anything else that would make money for anyone that could design sytems for profit exploiting the Internet of Things.

The automobile is simply another but bigger device that a person can be intimately and deeply associated with.  Bigger than that is their home or job.

"

"Dr. Kim comments on this increased range of application, saying, “Iris recognition was highly utilized by military forces and government institutions but to make it into the B2C markets such as mobile devices, wearables and automobile, IriTech’s ‘outdoor capturing technology’ will become a requisite.”

Car to Car Communications

Things and the Internet of Things.  The relationships of Things to Things is rapidly changing as a function of the ability of a Thing to communicate directly with another Thing.

I use the word Thing with a capital "T".  Grammatically that may be (T)otaly correct.  How so?  "Thing" is becoming a proper noun.  Study the linguistics of a proper noun.  A deep study here: 

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535201/the-face-detection-algorithm-set-to-revolutionize-image-search/

Forgive me for not hyper-linking.  The blogger app does not seem to have that functionality.

Basically, a proper noun is a specific person, place or thing.  In object oriented language it is defined as an instance of a class, a unique instance with a specific identity.  Like a one dollar bill with a serial number giving it a unique identity among the class of all dollar bills.

This is going to be a good post when I get to the point, which may take awhile because I am on vacation in Austalia and it is raining.

Perhaps in New Age linguistics and grammer things with a specific unique identity by virtue of a unique communication ID will be referred to in text form by its class name with a capital letter hyper - link capital letter going to its specific unique identifier on the Internet of Things for anyone wanting to know exactly what specific unique thing is being addressed.

In the future car to car communication requires that every car have a identifier address.  This will take the place of a license plate attached to a car, which is easily removable.  Perhaps it will be a VIN number.  Because there will be a business interest in the car and the owner/driver it will certainly be a unique identifier of the car and probably linked to the owning entity as well as the unique identity of the car driver at any given time as well as the spatial location of the car in real time or any given time in a history record.  Progressive Insurance is currently a leader in this direction with a device that attaches to a vehicle computer system.

Here is my prediction and where this blog entry is going (among various other directions at the same time, each with its own unique conceptual identifier existing only in my own head):

Some specific date in the future cars will no longer have license plates on them.  They, their owners and drivers as well as insurance companies, state of registry and all other related information will be associated with the vehicle's unique identity on the Internet of things.

Because a vehicle life span is longer than the time period necessary to introduce this car to car ID for all vehicles a dongle will be retrofit to all older vehicles having the computer diagnostic system that has been a standard feature since about the year 2000 or so.  The dongle will broadcast ID and GPS constantly in real time.

In this future system there will be a security level structure applied with various levels of controlled access on a need to know basis. This structure will be a challenge regarding privacy issues and who needs to know.

The great American icon of the freedom of the open road will be a memory existing in the future only in period piece movies that romanticize what driving a car used to be just like we romanticize the Old West now.

"Old West" being a proper noun because we all have a specially unique concept attached to that term identifying a mythological period of time just like the future will describe this period of time as the "Old Privacy".

The times they are a-changing.

Local News - catching bad guys

Guy walks into the local chevron a robs it with a threatening hand in his hoodie.  Probably not too smart.  Probably had a cell phone in his pocket pinging the local tower every few seconds.  Some detective work might identify him with a cell phone dump by police but not worth the effort to them. A 

murder involved then maybe and attribute the source to an informant (parallel construction).

Much better:  A femtocell in the store recording the imsi of every cell phone in the short range vicinity with a time stamp.  Entry is de facto permission to record the Imsi info like a security camera.  Big opportunity for cell phone providers or independents to get into the business.  

Maybe Is already being done?  Simple, cheap.  

Surveillance society should have some degree of return for invasion of privacy that we can't do anything about anyhow.

Cell pot is a concept that could do this?

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535201/the-face-detection-algorithm-set-to-revolutionize-image-search/

Face Recognition - Deep Detection

Artificial Intelligence face recognition is a fascinating thing.  An algorithm can detect a specific face like we can.  Probably even better?  Probably and with  an increasingly greater degree of accuracy as well as decreasing time.    

This link comments on the state of the art development.  http://www.technologyreview.com/view/535201/the-face-detection-algorithm-set-to-revolutionize-image-search/

Face is only a single data point, combined with others such as walking style or clothing, or cell phone IMSI. ID becomes relatively absolute.

Beyond the technical state of the art it would be interesting to create a metric of how frequently and to what extent degree of accuracy we are identified by biometric and location data.  The ultimate metric being real time, all the time with absolute accuracy.  For the sake of metric measurement of absolute accuracy the only metric I can unfortunately think of is the same probability of a drone kill on a person of interest?  Hardly even that current degree of accuracy in current application.  Prison execution?  At least the person to be executed is positively identified is not the cause for action.

If the all info all the time metric for personal ID was established as a 24 hour clock then how close to midnight would we be today.  On just the NSA clock how close would we be?? Bb