Marijuana Parity Pricing
FNORD
Agricultural producers, under economic attack for generations in the United States, need to receive parity pricing for their produce in order to begin another round of the economic cycle without debt. Forcing agricultural producers into debt at the beginning of the economic cycle impoverishes everyone except the financial services industry parasites who profit at everyone else’s expense.
Marijuana, cannabis, hemp or whatever you call it may well be the last agricultural crop grown in the United States that is capable of providing enough income to be worthwhile growing. Profitable agriculture only appears possible outside of a legal system created to benefit a pathological elite, by definition an activity pursued only by outlaws.
This fact alone proves the lie to the political theater misrepresenting open markets and free trade. The only open markets and free trade possible today operates outside of the licensing, regulation and taxation of our pathocracy.
The free and independent culture surrounding marijuana agriculture, even as harassed and persecuted as it is, may be one of the last widespread autonomous agricultural activities available to Americans. Today parity pricing only exists outside of the law.
While many now seek to end the illogical criminalization of this most useful of all plants it seems few wish to look with open eyes at the likely outcome of their success. The price all will pay to end the justified fear of taking a few tokes will be the end of all profitable agriculture.
The growing plea for outrageous taxation levels on every step of bringing marijuana to a legalized market will end the financial incentive to grow it. We are witnessing widespread voluntary servitude for the illusionary benefit of reduced persecution.
Notice I said “reduced persecution” and not the end of persecution. Perhaps people have grown so used to their enslavement within the panopticon that they have grown numb to how modern society has become penal and coercive in nature.
Few seem to realize that licensing, regulation and taxation requires the increased intrusion of an increasingly militant and corrupt government in personal private affairs. The idea that the decriminalization of marijuana will somehow stop the police from “crawling up your ass” is far from realistic.
As it stands, only the complete collapse of our pathocracy will allow the fair pricing of agricultural products. Perhaps then people will learn to manage money as a common resource and public utility rather than the private monopoly money is today.
With decriminalization, marijuana cultivation will eventually come under the control of government subsidized agribusiness as all other commercial crops already have. The one commercial crop still supporting many rural communities will cease to be profitable.
This all comes from confusing the symptoms of unjust persecution with the cause of unjust persecution. The entire population of marijuana decriminalization activists have been tricked into petitioning their oppressors for more oppression.
The oppressors desired this outcome and manipulated events so that people will come to them of their own free will begging for more laws, more regulations, more licensing requirements and more taxes. The people they have tricked now look only to the small areas their attention has been directed to and are not aware of the greater game at play.
By terrorizing marijuana enthusiasts with militarized domestic law enforcement, those who created, empowered and armed marijuana eradication teams in the first place now weigh the various options for profit and control the marijuana enthusiasts themselves propose. Once a common cause among most who opposed our pathocracy, marijuana decriminalization has become a niche issue apart from greater issues of social injustice.
Why not advocate the return to parity for all agriculture products? This would only return our entire economy to profitability and limit the power of the central banks.
Why accept any measure of government control over what we choose to put in our bodies at all? This would only free communities of people from the onerous violent intrusion of domestic armed forces.
How can anyone believe that with decriminalization of marijuana under the hand of oppression nothing else will change? Transferring the wealth of original production from an underground economy to our pathocracy will only strengthen those who have oppressed and terrorized us while weakening those who resisted them.
We will not have more freedom. We will have less freedom.
The rich will become richer and the poor will become poorer as the door closes upon the last opportunity to sell an agricultural product at parity. After all of this I can only hope that at least you will still be able to get high from smoking it.
But do not count on it.
What do you think?
Resilience Economics
FNORD
Useful Resilience Economics needs more than theoretical responses to scenario sketches. Thought experiments will not be enough to get you moving towards a more secure economic status today.
The current economic collapse appears unique within the history of economic collapses because we have lost our inherent safety net that traditionally cushioned downturns. The very same so-called “Masters of The Universe” who drove the current economy into the wall have already cannibalized our ability to weather failure gracefully especially in the United States and Europe.
The decades of economic attacks upon family farms leave us vulnerable to a very hard landing in which millions will suffer death through the deprivation of essential food and shelter. During the Great Depression of the 1930s many of the urban homeless and unemployed factory workers found sanctuary on the family farm.
We may now only look back with fond nostalgia at how we lived a couple of generations ago. In hindsight the wisdom of Raw Material Economics proves itself.
As long as we have adequate food and shelter the micro-production of goods and intellectual content can provide for the rest of us. Gone are the days of relying upon those “too big to fail” for our well-being.
The current crop of academically educated economists only argue about how to best preserve the current financial system with all of its structural inequities and invitations for fraud. They are not prepared to consider an egalitarian diverse decentralized distributed economics that possesses intrinsic resilience.
Unfortunately, current administration policies continue the practice of punishing family farmers for the benefit of the financial services industry. Unless you have income from off the farm, you will have to wait until the current economic collapse deepens before re-establishing family farms becomes feasible.
Until then, it promises to be a very bumpy ride and expect to see a great deal of volatility in all markets. Still you have options over the short term and while they exist now would be a good time to explore them.
First, if you now depend upon those “too big to fail” for your income, including all branches of government, the dominant banks and the multinational corporations, now is the time to act on an exit plan. While some employers may be able to restructure their businesses to offer a measure of economic security to employees, these smaller companies will be targeted by government taxmen eager to take away profits and hostile takeovers by predatory corporations.
Second, traditional passive income from investments will become increasingly unreliable and ultimately insufficient as the current economic collapse deepens. You must find a way to become productive while maintaining control over your pricing to be able to respond to deflation, inflation, stagflation and whatever other curve balls the banksters throw.
Of course, a total collapse or even near total collapse will have us all scrambling for food and shelter while those who have stockpiled and continue to hoard will be faced with increasing physical security demands. Police and the armed forces will be the last elements of the status quo to collapse and they will be looking for stockpiled food themselves.
The issue remains of determining what to do between now and a very possible then. Without a doubt having an independent income based upon your own productive capacity will likely become necessary.
While climate change, resource depletion and unsupportable population levels will certainly complicate the issue, realistically there seems very little you or I can do about that. At least if you maintain the capability to produce at parity, that is the sale of your production not only supports your existence but also allows you enough profit to begin another round of production without debt while saving enough to survive unexpected events, then you may have a future.
Maintaining mobility ability is a bonus that could literally become lifesaving. For example, areas of the Oregon coast that once appeared desirable because of the local abundance of seafood are now adjacent to growing oceanic dead zones devoid of any sea life at all.
Expect volatility in all aspects of life. With all of this in mind, an online business seems to be a good bet to me.
If running an online business seems to be beyond your capacity then you owe it to yourself to honestly investigate it because all sorts of people have learned how to run an online business. Now would be a good time to start.
Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting
FNORD
There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).
If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.
I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.
Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.
Most Bloggers Are Reporters
The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).
There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.
Don’t Replicate Your Teacher
If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.
The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.
Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.
How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.
If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.
Report on Your Process, Not Others
The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.
It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.
Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.
You Are Already An Expert
Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.
Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.
Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.
Reporting Is A Stepping Stone
If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.
Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.
Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
FREE Yaro Starak Video
10 Blog Traffic Tips
FNORD
In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
FREE Yaro Starak Video
