The Secret Strategy to Gettting More Yield Out of Your Dividend Stocks.

Is this a secret stock kung fu trick that only masters can learn? Not quite... It is actually quite simple. After the ex dividend date, and assuming this is a yearly or bi yearly dividend, just sell covered call options on the stock. Let's say we sell options on MMTRS (Mills Music Trust). We can sell short term option contracts on these, and we will get paid a premium for allowing the investor to have the right to buy Mills at the current price. If the contract expires and mills does not go up, then we get to keep the premium. If it goes up, then we will have to sell it to him or her. It may or may not be much, but when you want to get the most out of investment income, it sure adds up.

Living on Less Abroad?

In the book Why We Want You to Be Rich, Robert Kiyosaki said that in order for individuals to keep up with the rising costs of living, they would either have to earn more, spend less, downsize their living, invest, or all of the above. Putting aside his basic premise of staying in the US and struggling (which is what he was getting at by downsizing), I put a different twist on this. Instead of worrying about the bills coming due soon, why not consider moving abroad? Perhaps living down in South America would be your particular cup of tea. It would be perfect for the PT lifestyle. You could be a citizen of Paraguay (low taxes + visa free entry into many Euro countries), party in Brazil, live in Argentina, and have assets in Uruguay. But the point is that while Mr. Kiyosaki is right that we will all probably need to downsize, instead of downsize, why not economize and move places where you cost of living goes down, and you quality of life goes up? For cost comparisons of various places, check out numbeo.com .

The Coming Uproar Over Physicables

If the debate over gun control is any indication of the coming fight over IP, then these will surely be interesting times. Although the government forced Defense Distributed to take down it's download of it's now popular gun, it is still alive and well in the torrentverse. If this is what will happen when 3D printers catch off, it will certainly get interesting. Consider this: as it is, people are complaining about the Chinese taking jobs, when in actuality, it is technology, and not the Chinese, that are taking jobs. The United States is not the only one suffering. Over the past ten years, China has lost 45 million jobs to automation, jobs that are never coming back. Enter 3D printing. Now think about this: if we don't need to mass produce items, and don't need a large work force to contend with, what will this do to the economy? Will we see a renaissance of the family craft work as seen prior to the Industrial Revolution? Will we see increasing regulation on 3D printers? How will workers react when 3D printers allow for small runs of things at lower prices? And think of the IP uproar corporations will raise when we can get Nike shoes for only $20, $30 dollars, instead of $70 or more. Prices will drop to almost at cost level, while at the same time unique items will still fetch a high price.

And perhaps corporations, mercantilism,  and ultimately IP will be defeated. As for implications to Agorism, instead of having inferior and simple goods, as is the case of farmer's markets, marketplaces in the same vein as farmer's markets could open up and electronic, as well as other goods, could be sold, in a similar good are sold in Asia in bazaars, and since manufacturing and self employment would surge, individuals could be self employed, and get away with the agorist lifestyle more than they can. This, along with the already collapsing revenue from the corporations and individual tax returns, will cut off funding for Leviathan, as well as the special privileges it bestows.

Revisiting Agorism: Learning from Silk Road

After the whole Silk Road collapse, I started reviewing what I thought of Agorism. I really love the concept, and I think it is a good idea (along with Panarchism and Perpetual Travel), and should be part of the tool belt of liberty. But the question remains: what went wrong? Well, for one thing, the security of Mr. Ulbricht was not airtight. Second, he should have considered a second citizenship in a country such as Brazil, although there could have been a potential to be handed over, due to the War on Drugs. However, with a few minor exceptions as noted above and in articles about the fiasco, he planned pretty well. It was not so much him that was the problem, but the problem of centralization. Agorism, at least in the original spirit, was meant to be decentralized, and meant for small business people to trade underground, not to create one or two major companies on the alternate web, and once they pull out they are screwed. Perhaps what is needed is a specific software that specifically handles merchants, and is similar encryptically to Tor, but is more focused on ecommerce and trading. Perhaps if the emphasis is placed more on creating a bartering like network in a decentralized manner like Bittorrent, but with the encryption capabilities of i2p, perhaps the decentralization would overwhelm the system. Instead of centralized systems like Freedom Hosting and The Silk Road, perhaps decentralization, which is the mantra of all libertarian movements, should reign supreme.

PGP

While you may or may not have heard of Pretty Good Protection (PGP), it is good to look into this if you are serious about security. PGP is a security protocol that you can use to encrypt texts through such things as email and PMs. All that is needed to start using PGP is a client (there are open source clients) and a PGP key, generated by your PGP client. Then when you want to send a message, you send you PGP key to a friend, and he sends you his, and you can communicate securely. There is more to it than that, but if you are interested, you can simply Google some tutorials on the matter. As for clients this one is pretty good.

Sark: The Fiscal Libertarian Dream

While some of you may have heard of the Channel Islands, and are more familiar with it's lax gambling laws and generally lower taxes (20%), there is one little island within them that is overlooked, that being the small Island of Sark. Unlike the other Channel Islands (like Guernsey), Sark has no income, corporate, capital gains, or other taxes. There is only one tax, and that is the property tax. Only property owners can be elected to public office, and in order to be a citizen, all you need is to rent or own land on the island.

Unfortunately, the island is rather small, and only has six hundred inhabitants, and thus it may take a while to get citizenship. But compared to other citizenship plans, this one does not take years to complete once you own property. The island is ruled by a king, who has made a pledge to never impose a tax on his subject. The only downsides to this island is that it is not as developed, and cars are not allowed on the island.  For more information on Sark see this Wikipedia article on Sark.