What is the Middle Class?

The middle class by classical definition on wikipedia is “about 25 percent of British society, reported high economic capital, high status of mean social contacts, and both high highbrow and high emerging cultural capital.” however you classify a person by this measure they nearly all have something in common.

Comfortable
What is comfortable, whilst we can look up a dictionary definition of comfortable as well, lets assume that one of the defining factors in modern life is not having to worry about money too much on a day to day basis.

Middle class begets more middle class with the 6% of the elite thats pretty much a solid majority which control the country. That’s leaving out who is actually in power politically, but it’s actually the group of people that who shape the way society functions.

Control
This group has always been in control in one way another through the years even when the country was under a feudal rule. Anything that disturbs this section of society’s distribution of wealth causes concern. Until something threatens this group’s existence or standard of living it doesn’t pay attention to it.

Selfish
Does this group perpetuate the selfish gene? It certainly becomes an interesting mind experiment if we apply the theory to the “group”. I personally cannot see any reason why it shouldn’t.

Inclusive
We came from a society that only allowed certain segments to vote but over time the vote became inclusive. Now in the 2015 UK General Election, can we honestly say that we would want this to be so? Just over 50 years ago since World War II, half a lifetime, we have a political force that ten years ago would have been labelled “racist, fascist, bigots“. Who are these people? Well whilst the group is inclusive to both sides of the political spectrum it contains a percentage that are part of my definition of the comfortable middle class.

Money
What is money? Well I’d would hazard a guess that most people don’t give the monetary system any more thought to that question than say where there Peacocks £2.99 t-shirt is manufactured or what the hourly rate of pay in relation to the UK minimum wage is there. What I can explain in a few sentences is after the financial crash of 2008 occurred, the “central banks” that help governments control the economy started to print money in a slightly different way to the Weimar republic of Germany between 1919-1923. Instead of printing money with paper, the central banks post-2008 generated it with computers.

Debtonomics (New economic term – Economics based on Debt, rather than Capital)
Now in pre-Hitler Germany printing money led to inflation, this led to goods costing more tomorrow than they do today. Too much money in the system, so people needed more wage money to stand still to survive what needs to be bought tomorrow.

Post-2008 computer generated money by mainly the US has caused an unprecedented boom in the stock market. This is the future value that pension companies place in companies they buy into. They want to obtain the highest return on their investment for their stakeholders. The stakeholders are the widows and pensioners who are no longer largely in the tax system paying “work force”.

So much money has been created out thin air, that companies are seeking to add value to their companies not by manufacturing new widgets that society needs nor providing services which are better than their competitors but just acquiring companies that do make things or have a better service product.

The new money printing called “Quantitative Easing”, regards of how it creates money maybe actually causing deflation, many “experts” believe this to be true. Personally with the frequent changes in measuring CPI and the dumping of the RPI in 2013 which lie to believe is hard to choose.

The long-term consequences of global QE are likely to permanently impair living standards for generations to come while creating a false illusion of reviving prosperity.

was said by Guggenheim’s Chairman of Investments and Global Chief Investment Officer, Scott Minerd. 26th March 2015. We are happy that increasingly more “serious people” come to the same conclusion which we posited first a 6 years ago wrote Zerohedge. “The cost of QE is greater than the income lost to savers and investors.”

Summary of QE
We know who QE is screwing and we know who QE is benefitting. Therefore do we need to understand the global economics – nope.

Fit for power? (UK)
We have politicians who want our vote, whose economic advisers are woefully unqualified by anybodies standpoint to navigate the post-2008 economic post-consumer society.

We have a society that may limit our path to inflationary growth because tomorrows manufactured goods will always be cheaper tomorrow and from a country point of view we will allow whole national infrastructure industries to be wiped out by economic rules created in a Keynesian pre-2008 world.

Do supermarket suppliers receive a fair market price for their products?
What will happen to the quality of the arable land in Europe under the stewardship of the European Union?

Middle Class, Working Class – do I care?
I don’t care because these labels aren’t helping anybody in any shape of form.

The monetary system is changing
Bitcoin will be patched in preparation for the lightning network – see Blockstream hires Rusty Russell

The new class system will comprise of those who:

  • Really understand money – (as the way money used to be, like gold)
  • Those that can create added value with digital money and digit assets
  • Those that use it

Dislocation
Such is the dy/dx of change with respect to the understanding of money and wealth transposing on society that any references to class, cease to have any meaning.

2015 May top Bitcoin sites and ‘happenings

Shocard
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/05/shocard-is-a-digital-identity-card-on-the-blockchain/

21E6
http://www.cryptocurrencybuzz.com/21-inc-confirms-plans-for-mass-bitcoin-miner-distribution/
https://soundcloud.com/elux-1/21-inc-embedded-engineer-on-whaleclub-teamspeak

Streamium.io
http://mx.thirdvisit.co.uk/2015/05/25/streaming-recorded-video-via-streamium-io/

lightlist.io

ZeroNet
Slideshow about ZeroNet cryptography, site updates, multi-user sites

Bitcoin Lightning Network
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2xcq4x/instant_bitcoin_transactions_proposal_lightning/
http://www.coindesk.com/could-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-solve-blockchain-scalability/

Streaming recorded video via streamium.io

I cannot get webcamstudio to work Ubuntu 14.whatever 64bit standard LTS

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webcamstudio/webcamstudio-dailybuilds
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install webcamstudio

sudo chmod 666 /dev/video* if you are on ubuntu, did you install webcamstudio.dkms package also?
sudo apt-get install webcamstudio.dkms
Once installed you have to restart the system or type from terminal:
sudo modprobe webcamstudio

Auto Install v4l2loopback

First from a terminal, drop to a root shell

sudo su
If you havent installed kernel modules before with module-assistant run the following from a terminal

apt-get install module-assistant
m-a prepare
m-a update
Finally – download and install v4l2loopback

m-a a-i v4l2loopback
exit

Cracked it! (You’ve got to get the “Output” to look like my screenshot below)

  1. Tick V4lsloopback
  2. Tick Skycam
  3. Root prompt comes up
  4. (WS Audio Device?)
  5. WSVideo Device (0X0001)(1)

WebCamStudio Feeding VirtualCam settings 2015-05-25 12:59:46

Now run FireFox, Chrome doesn’t want to pick up the Virtual Webcam under Chrome on Ubuntu 64bit

WebCamStudio Feeding VirtualCam settings2 2015-05-25 12:59:46

Now spot the shitter – FireFox choose camera see the Virtual Device as WSVideoDevice(0x0000), this afternoon it had to be “Dummy Virtual Device(0x0000)” – which Virtual WebCam you nominate seems to be random compared to what you think WebCamStudio will be outputting…

Please don’t ask me about sound – I’ll assume it comes through. IE I couldn’t be bothered to test it, but thought these notes so far might help people out.

E&OE PLEASE twit me with any amends and tips @markcross

### CUT ###

Old school method which I got working after I initially gave up with webcamstudio

http://askubuntu.com/questions/54032/compiling-avld-on-11-04/54055#54055

Missing H.264 decoder
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

http://askubuntu.com/questions/139239/fake-a-webcam-using-a-video-loopback-device
gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location=xxxxxx.mp4 ! decodebin ! v4l2sink device=/dev/video1

 

Find this article useful, here is my bitcoin address if it saved you going MAD or have a go with the changetip icons

bitcoin:    1FnkZ6EZBSSVuo7Y2JDNBBNuS5MahmWpPe

1FnkZ6EZBSSVuo7Y2JDNBBNuS5MahmWpPe

 

Other credits
http://superuser.com/questions/411897/using-desktop-as-fake-webcam-on-linux
https://launchpad.net/~webcamstudio/+archive/ubuntu/webcamstudio-dailybuilds
http://askubuntu.com/questions/54032/compiling-avld-on-11-04/54055#54055

The solution is not tax

2008 banking crisis bailout shite cost approximately £1.2 trillion

That government bit of entertainment gave every working person a £40,000 mortgage. And they say it’s hard to get a mortgage at the moment? Bollocks. If you want to extend the government balance sheet Mr & Mrs Tax Payer can apply any time – 100% available and 0% down!

How are YOU making your repayments out there?

Perspective WWI cost £22.3 trillion in today’s money and in 2014 the UK government paid the last £2 billion on the Chamberlain War Bonds.

Now the UK over that time had profound prosperity and periods of full employment, unemployment in my mind only became linked with Tebbitism. “GET ON your bike”- valid in the post war boom years but not relevant when he used it. Government around that time onwards were sold on the pointlessness of funding education in a service lead economy. The only manufacturing business worthy of state subsidy was the arms industry employing a lot of middle class well educated engineers, scientists and a lot of well paid blue collar workers.

The debt actually IS NOT the problem, its the ability to pay it back, majority employment on tax credits doesn’t pay the nations debt back, it will ONLY make the working class who pay taxes EXTREMELY poor.

Moan Chomsky – “As long as the general population is passive…

Someone on facebook posted a Moan Chomsky quote and I just went off on one this morning…

It’s not that the general population is passive or apathetic on purpose, even if they did see the world for the way it is. Then they would still behave the same. It’s called human greed.

If you were to explain to someone living in the UK: how credit export guarantees are used to kill people in third world counties we’ve never seen – with tax payers money. Arming Genocide in Rwanda.

How many people the military industrial complex employs on every industrial estate up and down the country? The UK is the FOURTH largest manufacturer of WEAPONS. The City of London is without doubt the money laundering capital of world bar none, drugs, arms deals, tax avoidance…

They would find it awful.

Show them “The 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse” documentary – link at the bottom.

Then explain that for the country to stop this behaviour, they’d have a lower standard of living.

Yes, that less money to spend, higher prices for everything, fewer holidays, fewer car upgrades. Less money to spend on their family. Less welfare state, lower pensions.

Humans breed more successfully than rats.
If we reduced are birthrate in the 1st world, that would significantly reduce global warming over a 20 year period.
Each person in the UK contributes 20 tonnes of CO2 per annum.
80% of landfill is disposable nappies.
Now the children of today have two+ children – you can see how this continues.
And for every person born into a Western society we buy more cheap shit from abroad manufactured without any pollution control. Our purchases make their economies boom, thery have yet more children BECAUSE of our consumerism of having yet more children. Third world starts getting more successful, next they see TV, want meat. ONE kilogram of beef takes 5000 litres to produce.

Meanwhile back at home we have no way of looking after old people in any dignified manner.
Or the means to support our NHS or education.

17% of all boys aged 16-19 years old are illiterate. Thus rendering 25-30% workforce unemployable. They ain’t NEVER EVER going to be tax payers people. WAKE UP YOU FUCKWITS.

Now at home – all YOU really care about is your family.

Noam Chomsky you can’t wake these people up if you Monty Python style put 20,000 volts up ’em.

It’s not that they are stupid or asleep. Liberalism gave them these choices.

“Crony capitalism” created the system we live in the UK

REAL – FREE MARKET CAPITALISM would put prices on the EARTH RESOURCES