All positivist law, which grant positive rights such as the right to health care or housing, or food, inevitably lead to some form of slavery. This is because such goods and services must be provided by someone.
No positive rights exist, they are a political fiction to get support from compliant people.
So the golf round was a last-minute decision yet the shooter somehow knew and brought his guns and a camera to record himself.
The shooter was recruiting people to be a mercenary in Ukraine.
So a black ops guy, most likely that got a tip to go shoot Trump.
Someone in the deep state wants civil war, really, really bad.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #414
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-414
Fiat people are scared to be called Nazis, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, or any number of labels.
Once you overcome this fear, then you'll be truly free to think for yourself.
The state is an agent of death and destruction. Thus, the bigger it grows, the more death and destruction it leaves in its wake. Conversely, the more restrained it is, the more life and creation can happen.
The thief steals kills and destroys.
China will inflate first and that will make inflation a bit more manageable for the US.
Also true of every US trading partner. They dont call it an exorbitant privilege for nothing.
How do you even find out about these things? I suspect people I've orange pilled in the past have gone full retard altcoin, but I can never tell, because it's not like they come back around to me and tell me that they've lost all their money, or worse, that they're pumping something else.
We've gone from an academic culture that explored and dove deep to find the truth to a culture that tells you where you're not allowed to go.
Gatekeeping is almost always a function of preserving the status quo.
I published this here some time ago, but here it is again. You can find the PGP key fingerprint in my X profile (as well as many other places). You have to substitute the npub in my profile with the at jimmysong in the string below.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
I, Jimmy Song, attest that this is my Nostr Public Key: @jimmysong
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
iQEzBAEBCgAdFiEEwdeXvn0QUpEijNcM+qYX4yZ55FUFAmPcw90ACgkQ+qYX4yZ5
5FVNSwf+I+LMBsxa21fgGydqVrlewu9eW2+0XXF9V4w4+eZ1up13adbTo6MtkB07
nfO0QnX0w71KahcrQ8rOlvkY6E5k5ELBq9ft3vOV6zKsDaoIhSD34EbWgTOcFCkK
femb1RWGdQJ2mDgO1gWG84sb71s8H70vOiRI5Bl4QDBi/iCA5CovqsF2PhlXVu9g
l2nqIr67ILqZGPEX/k+t8WkQXvbUJZBY9VhF6ffTRztmqNTDUs1Jghjtr3p7uscF
6ZpI9NKbke1ZcfIRRDwr0+vKaUvUwBHjlRiQtWdcX2Km9N1gYuKQSY9Q55bk7Dn1
U4I5Izc69em5w/2HJj6hxkVvU4dFZw==
=ngfe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
AI vs Bitcoin
The AI hype has been non-stop for the last 2 years ever since ChatGPT came out with its 3.0 chat. Since then, there's been an insane amount of investment into AI tech from every direction. There are hundreds of startups, every tech giant has been making investments and companies in between have been putting a lot of money toward it as well. It's not a small amount, either, as the AI hardware costs make Bitcoin mining look like discount bargains.
Yet after two years, what have we to show for it? Maybe some faster image editing on newer phones? Slightly faster answers to questions you would normally ask Google? Some productivity increase among junior programmers? The investment was enormous, as can clearly be seen in NVIDIA's growth, but the results are pretty underwhelming. As with any hyped technology, the possibilities have run past the actual use.
One of the supposed benefits of fiat money is that capital accumulation is unnecessary to create real value. You can build roads, for example, without having to save up for it. What this misses are many obvious drawbacks, but one of them is that there has to be someone that evaluates whether something will create value and create the money out of thin air to fund the project. This is not just inherently centralizing, but also deeply political.
For whatever reason, AI passed this political test and got the blessing of the money printers, which, to a company that sells, shovels like NVIDIA has been great news. But the drawback is that there's bound to be at least *some* that don't pan out. Maybe some segment of the economy can't use AI profitably, for example. Yet the powers that be, mostly Cantillionaires, have decided that this is worthwhile and have poured insane amounts of money into this bet.
But much like hyped tech of the past, it's looking more and more likely that there's little profit to be made here. Yes, there's some useful things that can be made, but the costs are simply too high right now to justify spending that much. It's a luxury item that mostp people simply don't need, and hence don't want to pay for. AI has become an expensive solution looking for costly problems to solve.
This was always my analysis with another hyped tech: blockchain. It never really made any sense as the cost was too high for what was really just a distributed, very redundant but hard to upgrade database. It, too, couldn't find costly problems to solve, with the exception of one. That, of course being Bitcoin.
What differentiates Bitcoin from AI is that people *need* Bitcoin. It's its own killer app. AI is not so popular that people will pay for what it costs right now. And that means that most of the investment will be wasted. Like most hyped things in a fiat economy, it's doomed to have significant malinvestment.
A lot of people complain about Bitcoin businesses and how hard it is to make them profitable. In a sense, I get it. You want more people to have steady jobs and so on. But in another sense, I think this is the market speaking. You're not going to get paid from Bitcoiners easily and there's no flood of printed money looking for a place to go. At least there won't be once fiat money has run its course. Building a profitable company is hard and so few meet that mark, especially in a new segment as AI has shown.
So in that way, I'm encouraged, because the companies that survive in Bitcoin will have something truly worthwhile. By contrast, the companies that survive in AI will probably be the ones that get subsidized the longest.
It is so hard to gain weight as a carnivore. I have to seriously overeat to even gain a couple pounds. And one day of slip up, I lose the weight gain. It's like the inverse of the standard american diet.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #413
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-413
Every video, book, article, even platform is a window through which you perceive reality. Some are less manipulative than others, but the cost is paid at the front end by how the window is framed.
Don't focus on finding "a place" for yourself. If you care too much about fitting in, you'll inevitably get compromised into the values of the gatekeepers.
Every 20th century leader that advocated and pushed for war has been, in my estimation, caused immense human suffering for not much gain, despite what the propagandists will tell you.
They were bloodthirsty warmongers and should be looked at with contempt.
I canceled my credit card of 29 years yesterday.
As rates go up, fiat mechanisms like credit cards make less and less sense. One of the realities of hyperinflation is that ironically, there's no consumer credit to be had anywhere.
I've always thought that Bitcoin as method of payment would come about when merchants demand it. Now I'm thinking that there might be some pressure on the consumer side as well, as the cost of credit cards goes up.
You don't understand propaganda if you think you're immune to it.
The dumb people continue their exposure thinking their rational facilities will make them immune. "I read the New York Times because I want to know what my opponents are thinking!"
The smart people decrease their exposure and don't engage in the framing.
Thinking from first principles is hard. Not the logic, but the conclusions. If they're against the main narrative, you are going to be called a conspiracy theorist or weirdo or wack job. The social isolation and peer disapproval is the hardest part.
This is where you need to let go of that desire to fit in and be well thought of by the normies. It's hard work, but worth it for the intellectual freedom.
All these bureaucrats think that banning speech on these centralized platforms will get everyone to see only the info they want you to see. I kinda hope they succeed so Nostr can show just how wrong they are.
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Nobody wants happiness, Home Ownership Incentives, Mandibles Review, FROST DKG, MPP Simulator, Pig Butchering, IMF on El Salvador and more!
#Bitcoin Tech Talk #412
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-412
The Mandibles: A Review
Dystopian books have a fine tradition. 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. These are classics because they give a glimpse of what people fear and give voice to the dread that lurks underneath the doldrums of the day-to-day.
I heard about Mandibles from some Bitcoin podcasts about how it "predicted" some economic ills that we're facing now, and given that I hadn't read modern fiction in some time, I decided to give it a go.
The book is, as the author describes it, a different kind of dystopia, one that's economic in nature than scientific (post-apocalyptic wasteland), environmental (asteroid or climate disaster) or political (authoritarian oppression). It's set in 2029-2049 and imagines a world where fiat games have gone haywire and have resulted in economic disaster. The book follows 4 generations of a single family, the Mandibles, whose wealth has been wiped out from the economic reset.
It's a delicious setup. There are so many possible things to explore in this world and much opportunity to explain how bad economic policy choices lead to bad outcomes later on. I wanted to like the book. I wanted to be able to recommend it as reading for people that were just getting into Bitcoin, to be able to use as a warning of what could be if we kept our theft-based economic system.
Unfortunately, the book misses more often than it hits. The economic disasters in the movie are heavy handed and presume an all powerful government. In that sense, what could have been an economic dystopian story just ended up being a subset of a political dystopian story. There is some good dialogue about how the system works, but precious little thought seemed to have gone into how those systems would break or what would cause it to break.
So much of the book is spent on the economic disasters that befall the members of the Mandible family, which is to give you the impression that this is what could happen to everyone when the economy breaks. But so much of it doesn't make much sense, like a well to do family selling their house but not their stocks and being forced to live with their cousins. There's also the continued existence and perfect functioning of the internet, TV and futuristic mobile phones, but somehow there are food shortages everywhere. There are lines for things all over the place, but no mention of price controls or government subsidies that create them.
I found that I most liked the parts where the internal monologues of the family were articulated. The emotional turmoil and subsequent action and motivation in interpersonal relationships between characters in the book were the best parts. I wish the author had put in that much thought into the actual economic system and how it would actually collapse than declaring it did so for the convenience of the plot. There was just a little too much deux ex machina in the book for me to really get into the story.
Environmentalism is a religion.
God is earth/nature.
The apocalypse is climate change.
Sins are your carbon footprint.
Redemption is for garbage (recycling), not for your soul.
It's sad that such a hopeless religion has become so popular. No wonder adherents are so depressed.
According to Zuckerberg, the FBI was pressuring them constantly to censor in 2020-2021. They couldn't speak up about it for a host of reasons, mostly around the fact that they are a centralized entity that has to do what the governing authorities tell them.
Extrapolating out, we can assume that such shenanigans have been and continue to be at play for every centralized company to keep the regime's narrative going. This is why Nostr is so important.
I thank God every day that I can work in Bitcoin.
It's rare for people to find an intersection of what they're good at, what they can get paid for, what they enjoy and what makes a difference.
To all of you who are here. Thank you.
What is your relationship with the truth? This is not an ivory tower theoretical angels on the head of a pin question. Your relationship with truth determines your relationship with everything else.
Most people at least publicly say that they want the truth and seek after it. If you don't profess that, it's hard for anyone to trust you. And without trust, it's really hard to have any sort of relationship.
Yet for most people, power is the priority. When prioritized, it's a nihilistic Neitzchean value, and it can be effective. But it's also highly destructive and sociopathic. Admitting to such is not going to win you friends. So the modern values system tends to be lip service to truth while pursuing power. We can see it all around us with politicians, CEOs, journalists and academia. Pretty much any centralized organization where power is in the hands of a few have at the top one or more people that pursued power to get there.
Power is seductive. And it's easy to see why people pursue it. But to do so at the expense of truth, where truth becomes secondary destroys, not just these people's souls but the organization that they create. Ill-gotten power doesn't last.
Centralized platforms are rulers, whose rules change on whim and enforced arbitrarily.
Decentralized protocols are rules, which are consistently applied.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #411
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-411
The x-rays of Kennedy's head were doctored. They did that to hide the clear exit wound at the back of his head, which the entire medical staff testified to seeing when Kennedy got to the hospital. Why? Because an exit wound at the back of the head means that he was shot from the front and that means there was a second shooter.
Just one of the many details of the Kennedy assassination that were clearly coverups.
If you want to improve in an area, lower your time preference in that area.
For example, if you want to lose weight, you need to have low time preference eating habits. That means eating will be kinda boring at first. That's generally a good sign. If something is exciting all the time, it's likely very high time preference.
We're now a commodity.
There's a saying that's become a bit of a cliche at this point: If you're getting something for free, you're the product. Indeed, that's the case for a lot of free services online like Google, Facebook and Instagram. These are companies that sell your attention to advertisers, your data to analytics firms and your tendencies to propagandists. More to the point, there are lots more free things like TV and radio that have been selling the same for a long time. You are the product.
What's concerning is that we're not being sold for advertising, but now for gambling. Sports these days is more about fantasy football and prop bets than it is cheering for your team. And nearly every crypto ad is about joining their casino. Even pay-to-play games are exploiting this dynamic, where getting us addicted is a lot more profitable than merely getting our attention.
It's a whole new evil out there. Stop being someone else's commodity.
It saddens me to know that there are people so crippled with anxiety that they live their lives online. One of the things COVID took from us is a sense of communal living, where people did stuff together and that was fun. It used to be a deep human need. Now a generation gets anxiety thinking about engaging in it.
Musk is doing what he can with X. He's fighting government mandated censorship wherever it may be. Unfortunately, it only takes one loss to render the platform compromised.
Given that many of these orders are secret and do not allow Musk to reveal them, it's possible that it's already compromised.
In other words, it's only a matter of time before things get worse there. The future must be decentralized.
The appeal of price controls
Yes, we all know it's stupid policy and ultimately will create massive shortages, more government power and general poverty. But Kamala Harris is proposing it and there are political realities that we really need to think about.
Price controls come about politically because they are popular. People like getting stuff for less. In the short term, it makes people happy. They get something that they've been buying without the inflation. Sure, there will be less producers and deep government intervention and eventually scarcity of the product as they go into black markets if at all. But in the short term, when the producers haven't adjusted yet, the stuff looks like it's free and it helps the politician that imposed it.
The last guy to do price controls on food was Richard Nixon, and he had to do it because he suspended dollar convertibility. He had an election to win in 1972, so he implemented price controls. And guess what? He won in a landslide, because he mitigated the effects of the abandonment of the gold standard through price controls.
Long term, the price controls were a complete disaster. Theere were long lines at the gas stations, inflation went into hyperdrive and the productivity of the 70's was completely lost to stagflation. But it got him the election.
So while Kamala's political positions look stupid from the Bitcoiner point of view, don't underestimate its appeal to normies that don't understand economics. It's not as terrible a move as it seems.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #410
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-410
Intelligence by itself doesn't get you very far. You need perseverance, courage, drive and many other things to succeed.
And if you don't want to end up like Bill Gates, you also need virtue.
All virtue is integral. You cannot take just one piece of it without the others, otherwise you end up with vice.
Prudence, or low time preference behavior, must be integrated with fortitude and justice, otherwise you just become a miser.
Fortitude, or courage, without prudence or temperance turns you into a degenerate gambler.
Justice without fortitude or temperance turns you into a keyboard warrior who never acts.
Seek virtue as a whole, not just the part that happens to be useful to you right now.
The unfunded liabilities totaling over $300T is essentially guaranteed future monetary expansion. In other words, there's a lot more inflation to come.
Low interest rates in a free market indicate that the people in that civilization have a low time preference. Central banks lowering interest rates is trying to bring forth the fruits of low time preference without any of the work.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #409
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-409
I know politics makes for strange bedfellows, but I refuse to get in bed with scammy altcoiners. This is why CoinCenter is so ineffective. Instead of focusing on Bitcoin, the altcoiners have made punishing Gensler the priority. This is going to lengthen the life of altcoins.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #408
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-408
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Bitcoin Tech Talk #407
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-407
I have a ruthless system for reading articles. first I never read them when I first seen them. second I save ones that are interesting for later using insta paper. third I only read them on my daylight computer.
many of them come from twitter, others come from newsletter subscriptions and still others from random articles people send me. about 80% of them are not worth sharing. I save the best ones for the newsletter.
Trump: under my administration, Bitcoin increased by 3600%
First reaction: Did he seriously take credit for Bitcoin's price rise?
Second reaction: This isn't the flex that he thinks it is.
Third reaction: The money printing will probably be similar to what he did before. Maybe it's not a bad reason to vote for him.
Mostly we were discussing how Austrian economics is compatible with Natural Law. I don't think other economic systems derived from other schools of economics are compatible, meaning they violate natural law through monetary manipulation.
His view was that a lot of the attractiveness of Austrian economics is precisely because of its consistency with natural.law.
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