Conan and I were two of the only people who spoke against the proposal to regulate room-shares like AirBnB in New Hampshire (HB 1590) in the Commerce committee at the state house legislative office building on January 19th. Here’s the full video of all the testimony on the bill. Like the UBER / ride-sharing regulatory proposal, the existing regulated industry was present to call for more regulation, rather than freedom for everyone, which was Conan’s and my argument:
If you want to help move forward pro-liberty political change here, please join the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, whether you are in NH or not – you can help.
Thanks to graphics design pro Johnson Rice of Infinite Twilight, our Bitcoin flyer that we’ve distributed thousands of at various places since 2014 has been updated for 2016 with new info and a new video QR. Now, instead of just one version for the Keene area, we have three total:
Please feel free to download the variant of your preference and send it off to your favorite printer. I recommend color, matte cardstock, but that’s just my preference. Do as you wish and help spread the word about Bitcoin in physical reality!
After more than a year of providing the community with bitcoin in the Keene area, the Shire Free Church has now launched another Bitcoin Vending Machine, this one in Manchester!
Say hello to the “General Bytes” brand Bitcoin Vending Machine, now operational at Murphy’s Taproom! As with our Keene unit, the Shire Free Church’s goal is to bring bitcoin to the community at the lowest possible price, in furtherance of our mission of fostering peace. As a result, you’ll find the fee to be just 5%. (Though, it could be as high as 10% during a crazy spike in price – we’ve only had to do this once for a very short time in a year of operation in Keene.)
Murphy’s and the BVM are open seven-days-per-week, 11:30a-1a.
Murphy’s Taproom on Elm St. is host to the new Manchester BVM.
Special thanks to Murphy’s Taproom owner Keith Murphy for being willing to host this new unit after the less-than-stellar performance of the previous unit located at Murphy’s by a company called PYC. PYC was not based in NH and now appear to be out of business. The previous unit in the Taproom was a Skyhook brand, which in my experience, is the worst possible unit to have in public.
This new General Bytes unit should be much more reliable, as it has a much higher quality bill receiver unit than the Skyhook. Plus, it naturally comes in its beautiful yellow-and-black color scheme! It’s also the second publicly accessible Bitcoin Vending Machine in New Hampshire, and in fact all of New England & Upstate NY, according to visitors to the Keene BVM and CoinATMRadar.com.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue to connect more people with bitcoin at an excellent rate. Please bring your bitcoin wallet and give the new BVM a try, any day of the week! To learn more about bitcoin, visit bitcoin.com.
Christopher David is a busy man. Within six months, he’s gone from a civil disobedience driver for UBER to the founder of a concept that could be UBER’s (and Lyft’s) downfall: Arcade City.
Chris has blown past his original goal of signing up 100 drivers for Arcade City by the end of the month, with now over 1,100 drivers signed up internationally! All 1,100+ are highly-rated UBER or Lyft drivers, which means they’ve already passed background checks and driving record checks. The growth has been unexpected and tremendous. Arcade City has clearly touched a nerve with frustrated UBER and Lyft drivers who are sharing recruiting links all over social media.
The press has taken notice and Arcade City is again in the headlines in NH and elsewhere:
My invitation to buycott Quentin Tarantino’s new movie has been circulating around the online activist community. It reads:
“The movie’s director, Quentin Tarantino, is receiving boycott threats for speaking out at a rally.
Tarantino’s speech against police brutality included:
‘I’m a human being with a conscience. And when I see murder I cannot stand by. And I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have to call the murderers the murderers.’
Arguing that cops simply cannot commit murder (even when they murder people) is LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who replied, ‘Unfortunately, [Mr. Tarantino] mistakes lawful use of force for murder, and it’s not.’
KilledByPolice.net is proof of how dangerous cops have become today. I encourage you to gather some friends to see The Hateful Eight once it’s in theaters, in order to protest the senseless murders committed by cops.”
Manchester and Concord activists buycott the Hateful Eight
Despite the backlash against him, Tarantino continues to stand by his speech. Activists from Manchester and Concord have already viewed Tarantino’s film, and more local viewings are being planned around the country.
I’m one of New Hampshire’s newest UBER drivers, or “partners” as UBER refers to us. I’ve been a fan of UBER’s innovation and open challenging of the status quo of transportation for a long time, and we’ve covered their various conflicts with state and city regulators on my talk radio program, Free Talk Live.
More recently, UBER has been featured multiple times here on Free Keene in the context of the Portsmouth, NH showdown between Free UBER activists committing ongoing civil disobedience versus the city enforcers who are protecting an oligopoly. With Portsmouth police openly threatening New Years Eve charity rides – the city is now scraping the bottom of the barrel, and it will be a real feat for them to look more embarrassing and ridiculous than they do now, but they might figure out a way. Give ’em time. Maybe Portsmouth will file a stupid lawsuit like Keene did against the Robin Hooders and shoot the free publicity for the new Arcade City ride-sharing app to the moon.
The actual coverage extends north of Concord and as far west as Peteborough and Hillsborough.
On New Year’s Eve I logged in to the UBER partner app in the Concord area and was able to help a bunch of somewhat intoxicated, very nice people get home safely! Plus, we had some very interesting conversations. I’ve only given six rides for UBER thus far, but my clients have all been under forty years old. I asked some tonight what made them use UBER in Concord, given that it’s not even officially operating there (click to see UBER’s currently inaccurate coverage map), and their responses were that they knew it worked in other big cities and wanted to try it rather than deal with the apparently awful cabs. There were plenty of unprompted complaints about terrible cab experiences my passengers have had in New Hampshire.
For one passenger tonight, it was his first time taking an UBER. He said it was the best possible UBER first time experience – wow, what a compliment! The guy tipped me, too (not required with UBER, but still appreciated!) During our conversation we were talking about the crackdown in Portsmouth on Free UBER (which he’d not heard about), and he was totally onboard with freedom, at least in the area of transportation. He even commented about how competition makes everything better. (more…)
