2020: The Year Everything Changed

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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81

I think his arguments are much more credible than yours.  And what he says about a labor backed system makes eminent sense.  Wealth should belong to those who create it, not those who manipulate it or manipulate those who create it.

One of your oft repeated statements is that so and so (among whom I’ve been included from time to time) doesn’t know anything about cryptos.  That may well be true.  I didn’t know much about cryptos and still don’t but I’m learning.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading, studying, and thinking on the issue and have much more to do.  But the more I learn, the more concerns I have.  Knowledge about BTC, for example, hasn’t allayed my concerns.  It has instead caused the number of concerns I have to increase.  I keep looking at the naked emperor and wondering, what does everyone else see that I’m missing. 

The performance of BTC has been outstanding and, believe me, I would love to participate in those gains.  And I fully believe even bigger gains are forthcoming if human nature is any indication (and, after all, it is human nature that drives markets more than anything else).  But I can’t get around the fact that when I look at all the different pathways to participate, none of them meet my criteria for safety.  There are just too many things that can go wrong in too many different ways.  Also, I’m just flabbergasted that someone like Saylor would dump that high a percentage of his money into it.  Of course, he’s a tech wiz while I’m a tech idiot but still, it strikes me as an incredibly huge gamble.  I guess I’m just too conservative and too tied to the tangible.  

Besides, BTC and crypto, there are many other things I don’t know a lot about.  I don’t know a lot about Russian roulette, climbing into a tiger cage with bloody steaks tied to my body, jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, etc.  But I do know enough about them all such that the dangers of participating in those activities have convinced me that I am not yet ready to attempt any of them without some better form of “insurance”.

Other things that make me uncomfortable include all the online drum beating for BTC.  It reminds me of being at a convention of time share salesmen all saying this is the wave of the future.  And it is … for them.  Also, the exponential climb at this stage is usually a good indication of at least a significant pull back in the near future.  You know, reversion to mean an all that  Then again, there is no accounting for the madness of crowds.

Being pre-occupied with researching measures to save my life (which is much more important to me right now than investment returns or sound money or any of that), I’ve only just gotten around to ordering the book you’ve repeatedly recommended so we’ll see if it can change my mind.  It certainly is a fascinating phenomena to observe.  My sense continues to be that the MOs (Malignant Overlords) are just letting this thing run as an experiment before they step in and take control.  Time will tell.

Happy New Year to you.

82

Rice
It has been a while but rice used to be money here. It was THE number 1 energy source then and also supported life. Could be easily counted and stored, and used reliably in sustainable communities like the sort we should be building instead of wasting time on social media. Best of all it wonderfully encouraged and rewarded real efforts to create real wealth, contrary to the free shit for nothing strategies that most people here are spending time on.
Biggest drawback: not easy to instantly send long distances or carry large amounts with you safely. But we are blessed with computers, commodity exchanges and cryptos to implement rice and other commodities which can eliminate those problems.
But there is no free shit for nothing in an accurate, fair monetary system such as a commodity (food and/or energy) based crypto. So, the scabs who sit around dreaming how to steal other people’s work product without making wealth themselves will continue rip off games with shit coins and muddy the crypto waters for the wealth creators.
But I imagine that the wealth creators will eventually achieve a great commodity backed crypto that will run circles around crypto in its ability to facilitate economic development and prosperity. It will benefit the wealth creators and it will be THEIR currency valued by their work, perhaps not yours. Commodity backed cryptos are also strictly limited, not by extreme energy wasting mining of bitcoin, but instead by how hard people work to create the commodity or labor (that is the point of the real bills doctrine that everyone refuses to discuss here).
Here is a thought experiment: why dont the bitcoin “investors” live in their own world by themselves exclusively with bitcoin and stop interfering with the wealth creators. The wealth creators live separately and use a commodity backed crypto to share their lives with each other. The creators dont need the investors (using the real bills doctrine) and dont have to give them free stuff. What happens?
Anyone interested in discussing how “the real bills doctrine” can be used to build out a labor/commodities backed crypto?

83

Agreed. “Sassy neo-marxist grifter?” Biden and Harris are very status quo. The very best outcome of this last election is that the Trump base scared the dinosaurs on both sides of the aisle.
Social justice warriors exerting all this “communist” control, is such an illusion, fed by Breitbart, Fox, Newsmax, etc… The current repuglicans and mainstream democrats, are war mongering Thing One and Thing Two.
Trump may have been the necessary grenade thrown into a barrel of oatmeal to shake things up. That being said, right wing populista end up biting the very base that elects them. And that was the real threat, as his mandate would have become abundantly clear in the next four years, had he been elected.
Many of the ideas embodied by Trump’s base, coming from the libertarian right are compatible with ideas that come from the traditional libertarian left. The last thing the entrenched elite want is to highlight the similarities. They work doubly hard to exaggerate the heck out of the differences, as it enhances their power.
Both libertarian right and left have to be emotionally detached and see beyond the propaganda that will keep the pitchfork crowd fighting the torch crowd.
But kudos to his base for sticking up for themselves and making it clear to Washington that change is required or revolution is a certainty.
 
 

84

I tend to agree with Mots about these things, but I bought 0.21 “tulips” today, and also some other coins as well. To be honest, I dislike the idea of cryptocurrency, but there’s lots of things in the world I disagree with but the world keeps on doing its thing and I gotta follow along to some degree. Wouldn’t invest more than I’m willing to lose at this point.
Adding to Mots point, 1 koku of rice (roughly 5 bushels), was enough to feed one person for one year and it became a kind of monetary shorthand in early modern Japan. Farmers who actually produced it were taxed at crazy high rates though, so I’m not sure rice was much better than gold, fiat, bitcoin, whatever. To misquote Shakespeare, the fault may not lie in our monetary system but in ourselves.
I’ve ordered The Bitcoin Standard and will read it, hat tip to Mohammed. As well as two questions:

  1. Doesn’t the continuing need for computing power add a kind of “maintenance” requirement that gold doesn’t have? ie gold is always gold but if people decide to stop mining, then isn’t that a problem for bitcoin?
    2.) Doesn’t the relatively smaller transaction limit for bitcoin (vs. other coins like xrp for example) make bitcoin fine to store value but not really ideal to buy a pack of gum with?
    Asking as an agnostic. I do like the idea of precious metals better than crypto, but being honest I’m not sure crypto is any more or less ethical than PM, fiat, or whatever.
85

First and foremost I hope you are well.
Second of all I am absolutely stunned that you would agree with Mots. lol
There is really not much to unpack in what you wrote, sorry to disappoint you. the fact is both you and Mots do nothing but make assertions based on nothing but your belief systems. One of the main tents of this site as i recall is the need to back up assertions with DATA.
So what little I have to unpack starts with your profession of ignorance about crypto. Now I would ask you what your intention is then to engage on the subject? Then we move on to a “labor backed system” . WOW sounds impressive. It is until you actually unpack it. Labor is energy. If you are speaking of physical labor I am afraid you are eliminating a large part of the population. Actually you would be eliminating the owners of this site who derive income from their intellect. This country embraced slavery from its inception. Slaves were physical energy. Once energy slaves in the form of fossil fuels were harnessed then physical slaves became obsolete.
I guess I have to go over some facts you missed in your rush to disagree with me. Gold is extracted using energy. It has value only as that given to it by people in relation to the cost of that energy and its scarcity. The main use for gold is jewelry. Not much of a necessity. Yes it is tangible (I will return to the value of tangibility later). Many things have been used for money through history. including giant stones that could not be moved.
BTC is produced using energy. it has a value given to it by people based on the cost of that energy+ capital investment and scarcity. It is not tangible which gives it huge advantages over gold. Part of its value is derived from its immutability, its transparency and its portability. I cannot send gold around the world in a matter of minutes with negligible cost. As a currency there is no comparison.
Now on to tangibility which you place great stock in. I will guess you know that 97% of USD are not tangible. I will guess you know that most people rarely touch money anymore. You and many have deep seated religious beliefs which are anything but tangible. I will guess that you experience love and other emotions which are not tangible. You carry on conversations online with people who are not tangible and this is going to get really weird with the proliferation of AI. You I assume believe in the constitution which is nothing more than a group of concepts which hardly anyone knows or pays attention to yet have some kind of value. Not really tangible. Point being you and many others ascribe great value to things which have no tangibility.
You and most here on this site are boomers and as I have pointed out to MR. Collum it is no surprise that boomers have very little understanding of the digital world. The thing you are missing since you asked is the concept of decentralization, You were born into a centralized world. Your actions have been determined by what you describe as malignant overlords. You are functioning in a system not of your creation. It is an illusory system that has been forced fed to you since birth. I really don’t care whether you ever get the BTC ethos or not. The millennials get it and it is their world. They are quite comfortable in a digital world. They understand that the boomers have screwed them out of their future. What are you missing? Freedom
What is keeping you from getting it ? FEAR Every argument I have ever heard against crypto is fear based. Sorry not my bag.
Bring some data next time.
 

86

Read the book, then get back to me.I am no longer engaging in those sorts of discussions . Well if someone wishes to deposit some BTC in my acct. I will.
BTW You agree with Mots out of agreement with his ignorance

87

You are the one being triggered here.
You make a statement that I am anti Christian. Based on what?
I happen to be a Christian ,Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, Muslim, Jew , believer in the Great Spirit and the Aborigine Dreamtime to name a few.
I don’t enter your frame of reference. I do not share your belief system so to me I am speaking English and you are speaking Martian. We have no common ground to engage on the subject of evil which is a purely subjective human construct.

88

Mohammed
You missed my main point by ignoring the role of a real bills doctrine or the like to limit valuation without massive resource consumption. Still no discussion or even acknowledgement of this concept.
I prefer to live in a world where billions of watt hours are expended to create real wealth that we enjoy, and which limits the currency, rather than a world where billions of watt hours are consumed/diverted instead into completely mindless computer time merely to limit and verify bitcoin. and, your argument “but its renewable solar” doesnt make sense to me. what a waste of energy. There are many low energy alternatives. Your old bitcoin science is kind of long in the tooth isnt it?
I dont think you are listening. Anyway I dont have more time for bloviating.

89

Enjoy your real bill utopia

90

I agree with Mots partly out of my quaint sensibilities (and yes probably some of my own ignorance too) but even more because he shows a humility and care for others even when he disagrees with them.
I mostly disagree with DaveFairtex ('s politics), but I think he’s a pretty logical thinker so I usually read his posts carefully and sometimes change my own beliefs based on his arguments. Since he goes to the trouble of writing the PM report, I think he’s earned the right to rant some if he wants.
But sometimes I see the “I’m right, so I can be rude” model (never in Mots or DF to be clear), and maybe that person is actually right, but “I’m right, but I’ll still be considerate to people I disagree with” would probably work better yes?

91

Making chaos, subverting virtue=evil?
Evil may best be described as a system out of balance, where chaos overtakes virtue. But the opposite is true as well. A system that is too stable, is at risk of stagnation, lack of unbridled creativity and not enough risk taking and people following moral dictates that may have superficial appeal but are at base, empty.
Psychopaths become inter-species predators when their thrill seeking isn’t channeled productively. And contrary to popular belief, a pure psychopath is a rare creature. The traits are arrayed on a spectrum.
A truly evil person enjoys the pain of others. Not just the typical schadenfreude the average person feels when an adversary disappears down an open manhole cover. The truly evil enjoy the pain of people who they consider their friends or have a neutral relationship with.
Those narrowly focused on the evil of others need to lift the hood of their psyches to observe what fuel their own engine is running on.

92

Davidhenry
Just for the record, I agree completely with your paragraph above:
“ I bought 0.21 “tulips” today, and also some other coins as well. To be honest, I dislike the idea of cryptocurrency, but there’s lots of things in the world I disagree with but the world keeps on doing its thing and I gotta follow along to some degree. Wouldn’t invest more than I’m willing to lose at this point.”
I also bought a couple types of cryptos recently because I want the freedom to use alternative payments and I have to deal with this world.
I am searching for the truth and often change my mind. Perhaps the appearance of politeness arises from that.
I am looking for a group that pursues labor/commodity backing of cryptos useful in small communities. I expect that an erethrum based crypto has been built that already does this and wonder if anyone has such knowledge. Perhaps such animal is the solution to the problems explored in Charles Hugh Smith’s latest book.
I want to repeat my earlier comment:
"The same media forces that control the narrative about hydroxycloroquine and ivermectin and cause intelligent thoughtful people to denounce these chemical substances as worthless (or even poisonous) for use against a virus also drive the narrative about valuation of a crypto that is also unmoored from reality. What will those media forces do to bitcoin when they want you to put your money and trust into their new fedcoin next year? "
My prediction for 2021:
Fedcoin or related digital or crypto-digital will roll out. The media will suddenly have stories about people who lost bitcoin because they did not leave it on an exchange and lost their wallet. The ads will teach that you should buy a fedcoin that registers your crypto or digital currency with a govt that loves you. You wont have to itemize or report this on your income tax form, unlike existing cryptos, because they already have it. People will be smiling and laughing in the commercials.
2021 should be an exciting year.

93

Here’s a thought. Going forward, are we going to have a world of more, or less?
More electricity, or less? More gasoline or less?
If we’re heading towards a world of less, then it is likely that things will become more localized, more focused on molecules rather than the intangibles, and that right now we are at or near Peak Bits. Peak Internet. Peak Phone. JHK’s World Made By Hand is coming next.
That would suck for me, since I’ve definitely ridden the tech wave higher. What will I do? I’ll have to find a new racket.
Of course, the reverse is possible. We might be entering a world of more - more energy, more technology, chips in our heads, etc. But that won’t happen if we stick with fossil fuels. Or solar. Or wind. We have to find something new - some sort of “above unity” energy device. Or the always-30-years-away fusion device.
Without some sort of energy deus ex machina, we’ll get a world of less. And in such a world, Proof of Work might well be a luxury that the world of less can’t afford.
With gold, once you mine it, you own the molecules and they will be around forever. It takes no energy to facilitate gold exchange. Or to keep the value of a gold bar alive. A gold bar mined in the days of Egypt are still here with us now. It can be swapped at no energy cost at all.
With bitcoin, that’s not true; to maintain its utility (i.e. to execute a TX), bitcoin needs a constant inflow of energy to do that Proof of Work. No energy input = no TX = no medium of exchange. What’s more, with no energy, you may “have” your bitcoins, but you can’t get at them = practically speaking, no store of value. All the features that MM talks about are correct - worldwide near-instant exchange, money created from energy, etc. But it requires a constant inflow of energy to function.
So if we are entering a world of less, we might not have the energy to spend on a bitcoin-type monetary system.
I probably know more about the bitcoin codebase and how it works than most people here. (Please raise your hand if you’ve written mining code - if you’ve run a mining operation, heck, if you’ve even run a full node - that takes minimal skill. Just a big disk drive and a network. I’ve done all that.)
So I can check the “understands bitcoin” box probably better than most.
In a world of less, I’m not sure bitcoin would survive. Gold sure will though. So will everything that uses molecules as a store of value. Rice. Whatever. That’s because, once mined, molecules are almost cost-free to transact. They will do fine in a world of less.
Me, I’m betting on above-unity energy. I think something will happen. But if it doesn’t, I think bitcoin ends up dying from the better-things-to-spend-our-energy-budget-on syndrome. And I have to find that new racket.
There’s a middle scenario too. There might be a delay between now, and the above-unity energy device. Those same weasels who are keeping cheap medicines from us that work in the middle of a pandemic are - I’m guessing - doing the same thing with energy.
I mean - if they can pretend vitamin D isn’t important, and that ivermectin doesn’t work, they can do the same thing with a whole lot of other things that don’t fit into their agenda. Fossil fuels are centralized power. They are an axis of control. It allows the US navy to control the sea lanes, and by extension, the world.
It would be bad to lose that axis of control, yes?
Timeframe could be a decade out. That’s still lots of time for bitcoin to shoot the moon. Bitcoin at a billion dollars per coin. Why not? But if we are talking about a rip-van-winkle trade, if we are entering a world of less, a requirement for a substantial and constant energy input for a Proof of Work to validate transactions every 10 minutes in a world-spanning transactional public database is probably not what I’d pick as either my store of value, or my medium of exchange.

94

When I used the term labor, I was not referring to just physical labor but any kind of work effort creating a service or good of exchangeable value that can be termed wealth.  I think you probably knew that but just in case you didn’t, now you do.

In terms of tangible, whoa my friend!  I think you know the difference between tangible vs. paper asset classes as opposed to other things in the universe tangible versus intangible  Way too many strawmen being thrown out here and, again, I think you are well aware of that but just in case you weren’t, now you are.  

In so far as data, I think you also realize that’s a reductionist request.  I could respond with, “Where is your data?”. But you and I both know that the universe is not defined by data alone.  There are simple facts, observations, and common sense that are data free but may be even more valuable than data laden information.

But of course an argument for or against something financial would be fear based.  Fear and greed are what drive markets.  Your choice to buy BTC, for example, is based on fear.  Wanting sound money and decentralization is based on a fear of unsound money and centralization.  If you have no fear, you are quite unusual.  This is nothing personal but the only people who don’t have fear are either ignorant or psychopathic.  That’s not an ad hominem.  That’s a recognized psychological science fact.

As far as millennials being comfortable in a digital world, that is largely correct.  Perhaps too comfortable.  I know too many millennials who can’t read a map to navigate cross country or a highway system, can’t do simple arithmetic computations without digital assistance, can’t research without the assistance of a search engine, etc.  In fact, I think many of them are floundering because of their overreliance on things digital.  They may understand software but an understanding of hardware is not their strong point.  How many even know how a smart phone works, from an electronics point of view, for example?  And let me know when you find an app on your phone that will fix your clogged up plumbing, your leaky roof, or your blown head gasket.

By the way, the ability to send things around the world instantly relies on either undersea cables or satellites, both of which are specifically targeted in case of war.  What do you do then?  Bury your electrons in your backyard, lol?  Relying on a centrally sourced infrastructure for your decentralized world is frought with potential misfortune and seems rather hypocritical.

In case you think I’m relying upon gold, I’m not.  It’s just one option of a whole array of them.  But if it comes down to chosing between BTC and gold, I’ll take 5,000 years of history over an exceedingly complex experiment that has a shockingly large number of potential failure points. 

BTC has its strong points, to be sure, but the paucity of discussion of its weaknesses, deficiencies, and vulnerabilities is what concerns me.  No system is foolproof and incorruptible and no monetary system, in particular, will solve all our problems.  For every solution it provides, it also creates problems, some recognizeable now, some which will only become recognizeable in time.  To think otherwise is folly.

FWIW, I think Mot’s prediction for 2021 (which might be in 2021 or perhaps a year or two later) will turn out to be prescient.      

95

If you haven’t, go read it.  If you have and don’t think she’s a neo-Marxist, I’d like to know what your definition of a neo-Marxist would be.  

96

Thanks Chris for posting the info on adverse events (3% of vaccine recipients) in the US vaccination campaign as at Dec 18, 2020
Here are 3 of the 8 slides in that presentation:
I looked up more info on the CDC website - a Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers mentioned to encourage vaccine recipients to use V-safe. (page 8 of 30)
https://www.fda.gov/media/144413/download
I clicked on the link and here is a description of that tracking tool:
‘‘V-safe is a smartphone-based tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide personalized health check-ins after you receive a COVID-19 vaccination. Through v-safe, you can quickly tell CDC if you have any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Depending on your answers, someone from CDC may call to check on you and get more information. And v-safe will remind you to get your second COVID-19 vaccine dose if you need one.
Your participation in CDC’s v–safe makes a difference — it helps keep COVID-19 vaccines safe.’’
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/vsafe.html
PS I personally will try to get some ivermectin as use that as prophylaxis - but it is so hard to get some here in Canada.
I don’t plan on getting the vaccine.

97

What a brilliant interview. Thank you Chris and Dave. Serious stuff made memorable because of the irrepressible larrikin humour of Dave. A little poignant towards the end when Dave admitted there was not much fun in it anymore. The only thing that will save us is humour so please keep it up. Chris is so right - the best way for anyone to get through whatever is coming is to start collapsing (in the sense of reducing needs) now and building a supporting community of like-minded people.
Happy New Year.

98

I mine Food…Not Bits. Totally agree with your premise Dave.“If we’re heading towards a world of less, then it is likely that things will become more localized, more focused on molecules rather than the intangibles.”
If I was a chart guy I would plot the cost of “Mining (growing) food” over 100 years relative to some metric like “average income”. My guess is that food production and cost represented a huge value in the past and not so much today. But…how do you define food. I’d say that cocopuffs are basically poison and not to be conflated with organic oat cereal.
My point is that growing healthy food is really hard. It requires lots of work for a very small monetary return. When people are hungry (coming soon to your neighborhood) food prices and values will increase and electronic digit values will decrease.

99

His novels address many topics in this thread, some paragraphs could be interchanged and no one would notice!

100

Oliveoilguy wrote,

When people are hungry (coming soon to your neighborhood) food prices and values will increase and electronic digit values will decrease.
Or, alternatively, because the dollar will not be worth toilet paper, food may be priced in satoshis. ;-) That aside, I wholly agree that competency in food production should be high on every PPer's To Do list. Learning to grow organic, nutrient-dense food is not to be put off; mistakes are better made when survival is not dependent upon it. Bitcoin, or gold and silver, or playing the stock market, are all entertaining and good to do while they can be done - because energy might always be around, allowing us to store value and grow value vs. the dying dollar - but mastering food production (and preservation) is foundational. Core. First principle. When we grow our food we don't need any kind of money to keep eating.