This is a great conversation. My two cents - systems will always be vulnerable to the infinite variety of human nature and the effects of individual experience. In my experience, workable communities are organic and above all adaptive; they grow where the seed lands and manage with what they have to hand. Sometimes preconceived and planned communities survive and flourish, like Findhorn, and hopefully like what Chris is working towards. An alternative and/or supportive approach is to be what you want to see - not a charismatic leader, but a quiet server of the common good, taking only what you need and giving back all you can. Gradually, when people see you (and others - one is rarely, surprisingly, alone in this) living a balanced, happy, well-fulfilled life, they are encouraged a bit along the same path. There are upsets and misunderstandings and frustrations, but it’s amazing how these pass, and the basic values survive. But it does take that outlier, unselfishness, to keep the flow going. You’d sometimes think unselfishness has gone the way of the dodo, but it’s actually all over the place. Downright inspiring sometimes. Might as well count on it being there - somewhere, even if you can’t see it.
Edited to add: I doubt we will ever see a “planned system” effective everywhere. The other side of human nature attracts selfishness and greed to power. The trick for the rest of us is to unplug from that self-serving “system” as much as possible, and insulate ourselves and those around us from its effects. So we get pockets of sanity that eventually get to regrow and flourish when the sociopathic systems implode, which they inevitably do.
VT Gothic,
It took you 21 paragraphs to express the complexities involved with bitcoin and how it is utterly opaque, so therefore safer. Really? It is perfect for corruption and illegal acitivity of all kinds, with the added ‘benefit’ of nobody, outside of the nerdiest person will be able to navigate it. Do I want to be my own banker. Are you kidding? The thought fills me with anxiety. I can’t even locate my house keys some days, so forget that.
No government is going to get behind bitcoin. A digital governmental blockchain currency…maybe.
Some kind of currency that augments the dollar but is less goddawfully complicated than what you have proposed, is the way to go for most people. I don’t know what that would be, but it should be able to withstand an ongoing blackout, as well.
Not much new here. Utopian ideas. Lack of understanding of BTC. And lack of interest in the hunker down gold bug militia.In response to "just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in." Your condition, Sir, is profoundly rude. CH Smith is one of the best minds out there. I have been reading him for over a decade and find him to be right on target...always.
Blockchain is intrinsically distributed and so it’s difficult for a government to grab control of every computer with a piece of the ledger. This is especially true is some of the network is outside the reach of any government. I sincerely doubt Switzerland would allow the US government to grab control of every PC with some of a blockchain ledger on its drive. That said, the government can make it illegal to trade or transfer a crypto within its jurisdiction.
I can’t do justice to every comment but thank you to everyone who added to the conversation. I’ll make a few points.
- I’m not against BTC. I am a proponent of it as an inflation hedge (go to archives for 2016 article I posted here on BTC). I propose a labor-backed crypto which is a different origination mechanism than BTC. Yes Ethereum might be the perfect platform, or maybe Decred, or other crypto platforms I’m not familiar with.
- I am fairly confident some existing platform can be modified to originate currency when labor has been performed and verified.
- The concern about energy consumption and BTC is a valid one. Not all crypto platforms operate on the BTC protocol and so they use much less energy.
- I personally have never been part of any organization that depended on a charismatic leader. Long-lasting organizations are based on shared values and a structure that generates oversight and accountability.
- My system is based on a well-established incentive structure: join if you want to contribute useful work and get paid. This is basically the same incentive model as a corporation, but nobody calls a corporation pie-in-the-sky. Why? Because it’s organized around the greed of the owners?
- the problem with local scrips /currencies and labor-hour banks is they aren’t set up to buy goods and services from “the outside world”. A universal crypto with an inclusive market for goods and services from all over solves this problem.
- People tell me nobody will want to sell anything for a crypto (other than the top cryptos). It all depends on scarcity and demand and the transparency of the market. Once global demand dries up due to the Global Depression that’s just starting, all sorts of people will be willing to trade stuff for a free-floating crypto if that’s the currency offered by buyers. Take it or leave it changes the calculation of “value.”
- It is a source of continual amazement to me that a community based economy and currency is quickly dismissed as an idealistic impossibility but a system in which thousands of people apply for work in an Amazon warehouse for grueling work and low pay, all of which serves one goal, to enrich Jeff Bezos and the super-wealthy who own 90% of all equities, is acceptable? IOW an “impossibly” exploitive system fits human nature to a Tee but cooperation, purposeful work and getting paid for contributing has no grounding in human nature? This illustrates, at least to me, how distorted our culture and society have become: derealized, denormalization, decomplexification and decoherence. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept20/four-Ds9-20.html
There are fairer, more efficient and less exploitive ways to organize human activity that are just as grounded in human nature as greed. We’ve allowed our conception of human nature to be stripped to greed alone, i.e. “shareholder value.” - The status quo is in terminal collapse. Skeptics of this: please check back in 4 years. All sorts of things currently believed to be “impossible” are not just possible, they’re inevitable.
- The idea that only the most evil, corrupt systems endure is simply not grounded in history. Self-interest is a core motivator and systems that enable people to get ahead gain support. Those that don’t decay and collapse. My idea is a self-organizing system designed to enable participants to get ahead will gain the support of participants. This is what “markets” and “free enterprise” were once about.
agitating, for what it’s worth I also like Charles and have read him for a long time. However, I don’t always agree.
My “21 paragraphs” were not to explain bitcoin, but to build a case for my perspective that Charles is reinventing a wheel that is already well-built. And his new wheel won’t do anything the existing wheel doesn’t already do, arguably better. Good lord, you might as well say that when Chris publishes a long post on his choices of methods for gardening he’s demonstrated that gardening is too complicated to get involved with - when what he’s really done is introduce his gardening methods and made his case for the benefits of using them and having a garden in the first place.
The notion that bitcoin is “perfect for corruption and illegal activities of all kinds” is a canard. It’s simply not true. In fact, it’s easier to trace transactions on the blockchain because they are permanent and immutable. (That’s why Walmart is now using blockchain to track every head of lettuce it sells through its entire cycle, from seed to shopping cart.) It’s much easier to engage in corruption and illegal activities with cash than with Bitcoin. Cash leaves no track.
If you think it takes a “nerd” to navigate Bitcoin you haven’t kept up to date. That was true 5 years ago, and my first few transactions involved a lot of fingernail biting on my part. But these days it’s as easy as any other financial transaction you make on your smart phone or desktop. It’s nearly exactly the same experience as opening an account at Fidelity and buying shares of stock. Heck, in some places you can even buy and sell cryptocurrencies at ATM-type machines in malls!
As for blackouts. First, any ordinary run of the mill blackout is not going to affect any electronic records of any kind permanently. But if the US experienced a nationwide blackout your bank account and investment account might be endangered, unless your bank has backups offshore. Ditto, by the way, for your mortgage papers, credit cards and rating, even your medical records. Everything is electronic, now, not just cryptocurrencies. However, my cryptocurrency holdings are secured in a cloud “wallet” that’s hosted on computers spread across the globe. The whole world has to go dark to mess up my records. And, I have my holdings duplicated on a “hard wallet,” which is a hardened thumb drive. I can take that anywhere in the world, plug it into any computer, and access my account. I can also have a debit card that pulls from my crypto wallet to give me money in the currency of whatever country I’m in. And, if the internet goes down, I can call up my Bitcoin via satellite phone. My point: crypto is no more subject to blackouts than any other electronic account or record; in fact, less prone to being inaccessible or lost in such a case.
Finally, you don’t have to be your own banker to be in crypto. There are crypto exchanges that will store your dollars and crypto in an account, just like your local bank holds your dollars now. You can put some of it out to interest if you want, and make 4-1o% interest, depending on what crypto coin it is, with the most interest earned on US dollars. What regular bank pays 10% interest, or even 4%?
And Kraken, a Fidelity-like exchange, just received its banking license this past week. Soon it will have physical branches in every state, and an online bank. They can hold your crypto and cash for you, just like your current bank, and can provide all the other services you’re used to.
Kraken is the first Special Purpose Depository Institution (SPDI) authorized under Wyoming law. What makes it special is that it operates by different rules than your current bank. When you deposit money into your current bank it is legally no longer your money, but an asset of the bank. (I bet you didn’t know that.) As a result, they can do what they want with that money, and if they get in trouble you just might be left holding an empty bag. But a SPDI like Kraken is required, by law, to treat your wealth as your wealth. It is never their asset, they only custody it for you, and provide you services. So if Kraken - or any of the other SPDIs coming online over the next few months - goes bankrupt, you will still get back all of your wealth they are securing for you. None of it can be used to satisfy their creditors - but your regular bank account can be garnished or seized to satisfy creditors of the bank. (That’s a “bail in,” as was done on Cypress in 2013. Bank accounts lost 47% of their deposits in that event.)
So the point of this “21 paragraphs” is 4-fold: to show you how your information is out of date, to indicate how secure cryptocurrencies really are, to illustrate the current ease of getting into and out of crypto, and to point to the way crypto is going mainstream, quickly. It’s here to stay.
I do agree that a government is not likely to get behind Bitcoin. The only government that could get behind Bitcoin would have to stop deficit spending. Ha! That ain’t happening soon.
But that doesn’t mean Bitcoin won’t become a money in its own right; it already is becoming an international money. It’s particularly appreciated in countries where inflation or outright government fraud guts the value of the local currency - like Venezuela - there the people want and need an alternative to government currency to protect their wealth, and Bitcoin is one alternative proving highly effective. If you think the US could ruin the dollar, having some Bitcoin as a hedge could be a good strategy.
lol
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment:
If we do have a massive societal and technological collapse, I don’t see how BTC or other crypto/digital currency would be sustainable. There’s a lot of energy and money required to support the BTC infrastructure: massive electrical grid run on cheap fossil fuels; PC/semiconductor industry to build PCs, tablets, phones, routers, switches, and servers; fast internet; etc. Heck, if fossil fuel prices skyrocket, wouldn’t that significantly raise the operational cost of mining coins?
Compare that to silver or gold. The energy cost for 1 oz coins are completely done when the coin is finished minting and delivered.
If fossil fuel costs skyrocket, the value of every existing gold and silver coin would go up tremendously because the marginal energy cost to make another coin would be tremendous. The cost to mine the next BTC would also go up, but the energy cost to transact in BTC would go up significantly, wouldn’t it? It seems like the transactional cost for gold and silver would be much better in that case.
I will make an assumption here that # 7 refers to my comment.
I like your writing and have not read your book so my comment may have been somewhat unfair. The podcast was pretty weak on details. It was lacking focus. I have found that to be the case here many times not just with you. Chris as many other interviewers use the interview as a platform for his own “track”. The best interviewers ask pertinent questions then get out of the way except for follow up questions.
You make the assertion that “the status quo is in terminal collapse” That may or may not be true. Frankly I don’t even know what that means. I have been reading here for around 13 years and the “terminal collapse” has been promoted ad infinitum. It aint happened yet. Will it happen (whatever it is) yeah, just like Rome it took 400 years.
Like a broken clock that is right twice a day, eventually doomsday predictions will be right eventually.
Can communities be organized better? Theoretically, yes.
45 years ago we probably would have rolled a nice fat one and fantasized about such communities. (I was actually in one) The fact is this country is littered with the ruins of not only those attempts from the 60’s and 70’s but historically those ruins are all over the world.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/11-failed-utopias-you-can-visit
As for crypto, VT laid out the concept so no need to go there except in your comment you mention that electric consumption is an issue. This is a very nuanced issue which leads to all kinds of misinformation. I suggest you read into it further before jumping in on it. Much of the energy used to mine BTC comes from “clean energy” (that is another nuanced discussion for another day)
https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-renewable-china
https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-the-gap
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2020/02/28/why-is-this-peter-thiel-backed-startup-mining-bitcoin-in-west-texas/#37e8081f5174
The key to any hope of alternative communities that might succeed , is getting out of the current monetary regime. As VT has explained that wheel has been invented and is rolling. What it needs is for uninformed critics to get informed and realize that it is “our” money. Then widespread adoption will happen and your vision of community will have a shot.
So Charles while my comment may have seemed offhand I can assure you there is data and experience to back it up.
I suggest in the future if you are going to promote your work, that you take care that it is presented better than it was in this podcast.
Good luck
If man can make it, man can break it. Have you ever seen a lock that can’t be defeated, a code that can’t be broken, a ship that is unsinkable, a human system that can’t be corrupted, a technology that can’t be superseded, etc? If history teaches us anything, it’s that human hubris almost always goes down in flames. Plus, complex things have more ways they can break and are more likely to break than simple things. Forgive me for being an adherent of the KISS principle.
The status quo is in terminal collapse. Skeptics: please check back in 4 years.Heh. Couldn't we have said this 4 years ago, in 2016? What is so different now? Or even 4 years before that, in 2012? And don't even get me talking about 4 years before that, in 2008! I don't know if my lack of confidence makes me a "skeptic"...I think it just makes me "sane". Evidence for my position: If one was so sure they can confidently predict the time of "terminal collapse"...wouldn't they just short everything and retire in 4 years? But it was a good talk. I always enjoy CHS approach to living. And ao, we think alike on Bitcoin.
With the heart rending pain brought to me by recent life events, I have been forced to look at a number of my “narratives” (stories that I believe to be true) and question them. Two stories figure prominently:
1. The imminence of a stock market correction. 2. The inevitability of social collapse and a future of a wild, dangerous, lawless world with inadequate access to food and water. (This is a particularly scary story retold and embellished on prepper blogs and many collapse novels.)These stories, believed, created major rifts between me and family causing harm at several levels. For me, they were driven by anxiety/insecurity, and fed that insecurity. I have been believing in stock market correction every year for 8-10 years and have kept money out of the "doomed markets." Unfortunately, every year (so far) the stock market has risen causing me to miss out on the gains, and to be viewed as ungrounded in reality by my more traditionally minded family. And, my traditional family turned out to be right. When the prediction of correction is wrong repeatedly, we need to conclude that there are other forces or processes at work that we have not understood or factored in. This narrative did not prove to be accurate. ---- The second story, the inevitable collapse of society and the dangerous world coming in the future, also has taken a great toll on my sense of well-being and ability to live in the moment in peace. It fed my pre-existing insecurity and fearfulness, keeping them inflamed. Relationships were damaged. I have had difficulty being present and "just hanging out." --- In therapy with a couple of gifted psychologists, I've found a few things about myself. The first is that I have a longstanding pervasive sense of insecurity, danger and anxiety. One of the defining symptoms of anxiety is a belief in a catastrophic future. Being intelligent, I use my intellect to try to protect myself from this vision of a frightening future. I study, read. learn, strategize and buy survival supplies. I develop a narrative. The narrative tells me what I must do to protect myself. All of this is in an attempt to control this pervasive longstanding sense of fear. Unfortunately, there are not enough survival supplies on earth to control this fearfulness and the core feeling state remains unimproved by these efforts. And, it puts me on another planet from my family and friends who do not share this narrative. --- Changing strategies A couple of spiritual practices look at questioning our narratives--the stories that we hold in our mind that we believe to be true. The goal is NOT to debate whether the narrative is true or to gather more "facts," but to loosen the grip the narrative has on us. To be less certain, less emotionally captured. Several approaches seem to be helping me in this. The first is to simply see the insecure/fearful feelings as feelings without running a cognitive operation to "manage" them. Awareness envelops and sees the feelings, holding them, and they are reduced in power. Sometimes by being held, they actually melt, but not always. Melting is wonderful, but the goal is to be present with what is. And often it is insecurity. Byron Katie recommends questioning our believed stories. "Is this true?" "Am I absolutely sure it is true?" "When I believe this story, what effect does it have on me?" Of becoming less certain of their rightness. Adyashanti is another spiritual teacher pointing to the background field of presence/awareness as our true identity, and the many narratives that we hold and believe, as the illusion that keeps us from living in this deeper level.
“Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life’s biggest questions, but actually the opposite is true. The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers. For it is your conscious and unconscious assumptions and beliefs that distort your perception..."Another one (paraphrasing as I can't find the quote):
"If you want to learn what is true, go elsewhere. But if you would like to un-learn all that you believe to be true, then sit and we will begin." "....In the end, just emptiness remains."
Sand_Puppy…I cannot agree more. I’ve also held outlying views and proven myself wrong over time. It’s hard to live on the edge, and not have support in your immediate circle of friends and family. I appreciate all you do for this community. We are definitely an “edge” community and a certain degree of discomfort is par for the course.
What I miss in this discussion (both in the conversation between Chris and Charles and the following comments on it) is where debt comes in. The only thing that was discussed was the person who took care of the livestock of Chris. What was not mentioned was that Chris was in debt with this person!
People trade goods and services. The simple way is direct barter. A little more complex is indirect barter where people who know eachother and trust eachother, exchange gifts and help eachother without any pay. We trust that some day we will level the score when I am in need.
If this trust is less, we will write it down somewhere. If the trust is lesser than that, the one who provided the goods or services would want something in return to represent the trust. Money is just a way to postpone the second part of the barter / trade. The less trust, the more need for a substitute for that trust.
That is why money ALWAYS is debt and ALWAYS represents trust, in any form. Euro, dollar, gold, seashells, bitcoin, whatever.
Where things go wrong now is that some parties are allowed to create (an infinite amount of) debt without ever deliver the second part of the barter.
They can do that by the institutions we have created like banks, gouvernments and central banks. But also because of the entities we call “corporations”, where the debts are for the personless corporations and the benefits are for the persons who run it. Make people personally responsible again for the debts they created and you will see a change already.
They act like a dirty profiteer that is never willing to help but always relies on somebody else. These profiteers will be one day spit out by the society they live in.
AO, Redneck: Bottom line and worst case, I agree with you - if we end up living in a Redneck’s “world lit only by fire,” cryptocurrencies are not gonna be of much help. So I don’t only invest in cryto. My main investment is in infrastructure and hand tools, and in learning how to do all that needs doing to keep this “ark” afloat by hand; and in the personal health and fitness I need to do all of that work, even as I age. Then I have pm, too.
I categorize build-out in terms of “100 year solutions” and “30 year solutions.” The 100-year are those that can sustain life in the total collapse scenario. The 30-year are preparations and tools that can be layered on top of the baseline and used for as long as they can be kept operational or replaced. They make life and work easier. Digital money is 30-year. So is the US dollar.
There is, of course, a lot of space between today’s “life uninterrupted” and some potential “lit only by fire.” I doubt the future is at either end, but I can survive at both ends. Rather, I expect we’ll devolve to some intermediate state, reorganize, and re-emerge at a lower level of consumption, perhaps also of tech (though not vastly lower), re-adapted to whatever changes in environment are coming, quite possibly with an interim pruning of our human population, and get back to relatively stable and humane life. I’m just trying to equip so my descendants can survive the “100 years” in-between now and then.
Without doubt precious metals have a role to play as stores of value and as recognized trade coin. I also think Charles’ scenario of linked intentional communities engaging in voluntary trade of goods could emerge, along with a slew of independent local producers and consumers who would want to network too.
For me what’s been at issue in this particular conversation has been whether Charles is proposing a truly new kind of electronic coin for the arising digital-money age - an age which is most assuredly coming, whether any of us like the idea or not. (There’s already talk of providing digitized wallets for every American next year to facilitate helicoptering digital stimulus or base income into bank accounts.) Based on this interview, I think he’s not. I think he’s only changing the basis value proposition.
Charles thinks that putting demonstrable labor at the root of generating new coinage puts human and humane considerations at the heart of his proposed new economic model. I think his apparent proposed structure is fraught with potential for abuse. And I think those same values can be at the heart of existing protocols. In all cases - his proposed new coin or my hypothetical Ethereum-based contract system, or even Bitcoin - what finally keeps the economy human and humane is going to be what lurks in the hearts of wo/men. We are remarkably good at corrupting everything.
Whether its Charles’ proposed labor-linked coin or something already extant - of which Bitcoin is simply the 800-lb gorilla in the crypto room - I share with Charles the conviction that it’s a darned good opportunity, right now, and an equally good idea, to work at establishing one or more alternatives to State-controlled digital money. I’m also not keen on such alternatives being corporate-run or organized and managed by some self-appointed cabal, however “good” they promise to be - that all leads to the same kind of censorship we’re seeing emerge on the dominant social media and search engine sites.
One of my criticism’s of Charles’ proposal is that it is not a leaderless system. He assumes some kind of authority, and hopes to make it democratic, and responsive to those who use it. For me, that’s trusting too much to human nature, which proves over and over again that when it comes to self-interested action, very nearly every one of us turns out to have a weakness.
That’s why, given the options available, I vote for the one coin that can’t be owned by any individual, cabal, corporation, special interest, or government. For a non-captured option, Bitcoin is not only the clear leader on the leader board, it’s the only choice. Other coins can (and will) be used as overlays, but Bitcoin can and should be (and will be) the base layer, the “digital gold” that every other digital coin pegs to; that is Bitcoin’s nature as designed, its virtue.
That’s really all my part in this discussion has been concerned about: Since we have to choose, because digitized money is coming, choose the most inherently robust and freedom-preserving coin. Don’t think you can avoid choosing - for some power will then choose for you - and don’t propose or adopt a new coin that imitates in slightly different form the weaknesses of all of the existing alternate digital coins, each of which are valuable in their own way, but all of which are inferior alternatives to the freedom-preserving strengths and market robustness of Bitcoin.
My opinion, of course.
Sand puppy,
It takes lots of courage to face what you just describe. Respect.
Look at the Phil Williams website, he has a possibly free book written for you, Against the Grain.
VT-
It makes sense to wargame the various scenarios, assign estimates of likeliness, and assess various approaches’ impact in each case. Then allocate investments accordingly. That should provide a good overall investment against the most likely outcomes, as well as being prepared in case the most anticipated outcome turns out to not develop, or develops after a very lengthy delay. And the time scale also needs to be hedged.
BTC, cash, gold have different pros and cons which will need to be assessed in each scenario.
I agree with those commentators who are bitcoin skeptics primarily because of that, and any other crypto reliance on electricity to be of use. As Gail notes below, and Dimitri Orlov has also commented in his books, that as things decline ongoing maintenance of the electrical grid will become problematic. There is no question in my mind that periodic power outages will increasingly become the norm. Given that, I have no use for a monetary asset that cannot be accessed or used in such circumstances.
"... If the many strange approaches I outlined in Section A are used to add even more debt to keep the system afloat, eventually some part of the system is going to “break.” For example, banks will stop issuing letters of credit with respect to purchases made by buyers that don’t seem sufficiently creditworthy. Banks may stop trusting other banks, especially if the banks do not really seem to be solvent. At some point, the international financial system seems likely to start “coming apart.” Eventually, the US dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency. My guess is that a new two currency system will develop. Governments will issue a lot of currency for local use. It will not be useful for buying goods from other countries. Much of it will be used for buying locally produced food and other locally produced goods. Very little international trade will be done. Any international trade that will be done will occur between trusted partners, at agreed upon exchange rates. Perhaps a special currency will be used for this purpose. In this new world, individual countries will be very much on their own. With very little fossil fuel, countries will tend to lose electricity availability very quickly. Transmission lines will go unrepaired. It will become impossible to fix existing wind turbines. Road repair will become impossible. Electric cars will likely be as unusable as gasoline powered ones."...
sand puppy eloquently and poignantly illuminated some of the greatest failings of the “doomer philosophy”.
There are 2 and only 2 motivating factors: Fear and Love. It takes a great deal of inner work to discover our own motivation. Most are not capable of such work. I applaud SP for doing the heavy lifting.
Personally I have been reading this site for around 13 years. Much of that time I have absented myself. Frankly it just got too fucking depressing. It is a giant negative feedback loop. The paradigm expressed here is one of millions of possibilities. Blind adherence to that paradigm (being a member of the “tribe”) comes at a cost, as SP has stated. One can take a post from however far back you wish to go, about the Fed (which appear with regularity) and insert it today almost seamlessly.
The group consciousness revolves around the premise that the next 20 years are going to be different than the last 20. Well that is true for every 20 year period. The actions one takes are based on that premise. The underlying assumption is that "things " will get worse so hunker down, protect wealth, get guns, buy gold, (will get to the dilemma in a moment) stock a pantry and grow a garden. Some of these are good and prudent things to do anytime. The question is what is the motivator? Is it fear or love? As SP stated he missed out on the largest bull run in history because of fear. You can control people very easily through fear.
The central theme here is the three E’s. For quite a while the focus has been on only 2 of them. The environment has gotten short shrift except for the climate. Most here are PM acolytes. Most here are opposed to crypto currency. Some of the reasons include the large amount of electricity required to mine it. I posted above how the majority of the electricity comes from renewable sources. While the gold bugs will harp on that they will completely ignore the environmental damage caused by gold mining. If anyone ever gets to Telluride you will see that a large portion (maybe half) of that valley is composed of mine tailings. Water is polluted, land is polluted and air is polluted by mining. Yet that fact goes by ignored here.
What SP has brought to the discussion is the fact that there is a spiritual component to life. That spiritual component is largely absent here. It just may be that spirituality might be a more valuable item to deal with the next 20 years than gold or guns. As an example there is emphasis here that guns are necessary to “defend” our homestead. A completely different paradigm that comes from a spiritual place is if someone comes to rob your garden it is because they are hungry you bring them in and feed them. The Buddha stated quite clearly that life is suffering and there is a way out of suffering. It did not include guns and gold.
If you have a paradigm which is bringing you happiness and fulfillment then keep going. If on the other hand if like SP the cost of adhering to that paradigm is making you unhappy then change the paradigm. Tell yourself a different story. Choose love.
I have four rules
1- Show up
2- Pay attention
3- Do the best you can
4- Leave the results to god