I share your sentiments entirely. However, it's important to remember that this is a global issue. I travel a lot, and it is my distinct impression that a rapidly increasing number of people (many of them young and educated) around the world are becoming increasingly aware of the problems with the established systems, in some cases openly protesting and in others merely refusing to participate. Think Argentina, India, North Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia, Iran, Thailand, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal. The global social climate has never been better to try out new solutions... solutions that remove centralized control of communications, finance and political power. We are getting to the point where there are viable offerings and where state-level actors are throwing their lot in with development: look at Putin's response to Mastercard/Visa on ATM networks, India's response to US+Israeli segregation of Iran (their major oil supplier) from SWIFT, or China's quiet and unrelenting expansion of their own alternative financial networks across the world (especially Asia) as they push for the RMB as a regional reserve currency.
The fact of the matter is, the US's present position is an untenable anachronism.
Open source everything is about the five billion poor coming together to reclaim their collective wealth and mobilise it to transform their lives. There is zero chance of the revolution being put down. Public agency is emergent, and the ability of the public to literally put any bank or corporation out of business overnight is looming. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. We're there. All we lack is a major precipitant – our Tunisian fruit seller. When it happens the revolution will be deep and lasting. - Robert David Steele, ex-Marine, ex-CIA, Open Source Intelligence expert in The Guardian, 2014-06-19
The fact of the matter is, the US's present position is an untenable anachronism.
Open source everything is about the five billion poor coming together to reclaim their collective wealth and mobilise it to transform their lives. There is zero chance of the revolution being put down. Public agency is emergent, and the ability of the public to literally put any bank or corporation out of business overnight is looming. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. We're there. All we lack is a major precipitant – our Tunisian fruit seller. When it happens the revolution will be deep and lasting. - Robert David Steele, ex-Marine, ex-CIA, Open Source Intelligence expert in The Guardian, 2014-06-19