Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys." Gangsta gardener.

In Dec 2012 a European bitcoin exchange said it had been granted "payments service provider status" by French government officials. (Meaning French government considered the exchange to be like Paypal.) If other companies that trade in BTC seek to be legitimized by governments, it could undermine one of the basic things that defines BTC -- that it works best outside the "white market" sector.

Interesting private arbitration on the internet. Arbitrators include Stephan Kinsella and Jacob Huebert. This is a preview of how private justice could work in a free world.

How to Repurpose Old Mattresses and Plastic Bottles to make Gardens inexpensively. Excellent example of how ordinary people can minimize waste and improve local food production inexpensively and without aid from government.

The underground market seeks to encourage food entrepreneurship by helping young vendors avoid roughly $1,000 a year in fees -- including those for health permits and liability insurance -- required by legitimate farmers markets. Here, where the food rave -- call it a crave -- was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become "members" (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected.

I'm astounded that this article appeared in Time (or at least on their website). They rationally propose the fact that college might not be for everyone, as well as talk about the underground economy:

"Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias."