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bitcoin_anon

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Indeed. Was Beepboop arguing that inflation is the mechanism that funds our shared existence?

Why do you think cryptocurrency at its philosophical core enables wealth hoarding? If I don’t pay my property taxes, I lose my house, regardless of how much cryptocurrency I own.

Why can’t we have a separation of money and state where the state receives its due through taxes and is unable to inflate the money supply?

Take a Cold Bath 1 year ago

there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.

Prostitution and rape are not perfect substitutes for consensual sex. The risks are much greater, so on the margin, there are men who are not willing to partake in these, and instead choose to better themselves when faced with a lack of partners.

Take a Cold Bath 1 year ago

There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around.

I would add the caveat that things have not been completely worked out yet. I agree that religious customs around sex served a practical purpose.

However, easier access to sexual pleasure seems to have unintended consequences. Traditionally, a woman and her family should be damn sure that a particular man is worthy of female costs of pregnancy. So there was more pressure exerted on men to be worthy of sex. Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men.

The average US citizen used to understand the importance of money, how it’s defined, etc. There were entire elections over it (see Andrew Jackson).

Now we’re told it’s too complicated to understand, leave it to the experts in Washington. If we put restraints on their ability to create money bad things will happen.

Separate money and state!

1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? [1]

Why do you choose 1970 as a baseline? Federal spending is absolutely out of control when compared to, say 1913, as a baseline.

“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

- Thomas Jefferson

Nobody cares 2 years ago

My hot take on this is that it is due to a lack of energy. I liked the phrase “a will to have nice things.”

We all want the nice things. However, they require conscientiousness. People who are run down and lack energy struggle with conscientiousness.

So why are we all rundown and lacking the energy required to have nice things? There are many reasons, some controversial.

One that is not so controversial is the industrialization of food. As the quality of food that our mothers consume has degraded, so have their offspring. I believe in TCM this concept is called maternal jing, or the essential life essence that you receive from your mother. Healthy moms breed a healthy populace. This is a problem generations in the making that keeps getting worse.

One that is more controversial is the impact of banking. Money is the life blood of society, and we’ve given bankers the right to siphon off our blood as they see fit. Generations of wealth transfer from the working class to bankers has left the populace anemic.

Japan has it better because they have maintained a more traditional way of life.

Indeed. There are cultures that are presently above the replacement rate curve, e.g. the Amish. As our culture depopulates itself, these more successful cultures will become more prominent.

It wasn’t widely distributed over the internet until Bitcoin. Bitcoin solved the problem of irreversible payments over a communications channel without an intermediary.

I disagree. I’m fine with millions of recreational users supporting smugglers so that a single patient can get the medicine they need. It was the black market the safeguarded this plant for generations until we came to our senses again.