Bitcoin Tech Talk #436
Interesting Stuff
Inside Story of DOGE - If you’ve been astonished at the speed with which Trump 2.0 has attacked the administrative state, this is the article for you. The article is about how the entire approach to government has changed this time around with “follow the money” replacing the old “personnel is policy” paradigm. Instead of putting friends in places and hoping they do the best for the country, they decided on a very different tactic of seeing where the money went and stopping the flow of it. They figured out that the swamp won’t be drained until the spigot of money flowing in was controlled and that seems to be the strategy behind it. The first weeks have been encouraging, but for everything to stick, there has to be a reform of the money itself.
Work Destroying Fertility - The article is in a series about the drawbacks of meritocracy, which isn’t contemplated much as it’s a part of the egalitarian ethos. Yet the author makes an excellent point, when everything is based on merit, the people that work hardest are rewarded, which generally means that there’s much less effort expended on getting married or having children. Indeed, the places where hard work is most valued, like South Korea or Singapore tend to have the lowest fertility. I suspect, though, that this is a secondary effect to the fact that the most profitable careers are jobs, and that family businesses in particular and entrepreneurial endeavors in general which are much more conducive to marriage and children, don’t get as much status. Alas, jobs are a fiat phenomenon, borne out of a deep need to scale.
The Coming Chinese Decline - Despite now being the biggest manufacturer of nearly everything in the world, all is not rosy in China. As the article points out, something like 70% of the savings in China is in real estate, whereas it’s only 29% in the US. Which would be fine if the population were growing and the real estate scarce, but it’s anything but. As the article points out, there are estimates that China has enough homes for 3 billion people, but only has a population of 1.4 billion and declining. There are so many empty apartments that will never be lived in given the demographic trends. This is sadly predictable in a country that very severely restricts where their citizens can put their savings, and should result in an epic real estate collapse, a la Japan.
Eternally Star Wars - Insightful article on the mentality that’s driven the leftist political strategy since WWII. That’s essentially the last time the US won a war that had any uncertainty at all and the cultural result was to look for the same enemy from that time. Star Wars captured the spirit of this by copying the Nazi aesthetic for the Empire. As such, all wars, on the ground and in politics are cast in WWII terms, and the good guys are the “rebels” while the enemy is Nazis. Thus, it’s never good to be like Chamberlain and concede anything and everything has to be fought until the enemy is obliterated. Such commitments are what have made politics so nasty, and why the vitriol was so effective, though becoming less so more recently.
Ordo Amoris - Latin for Order of Loves, which JD Vance recently brought to the forefront of the cultural conversation by asserting that charity to people closer to you is good and right. The opposite of this is something like Effective Altruism, values every life equally and every obligation to them equally, regardless of where they are or how they relate to you. Ordo Amoris is an old concept and a very practical one as equally treating people very far away from you as ones near is pretty much impossible. Again, this is one of the weird consequences of an egalitarian ethic that’s taken hold of the liberal ethos.
What I'm up to
Debt Debate - The debate I had with Mauricio at Plan B San Salvador is up. The argument that I made is that fiat debt is bad for civilization and personal debt is bad for the individual. Debt is bad for civilization because fiat debt is how the money supply expands and the holders of. the currency get no say in the loans that are made which dilute them. Mauricio argued that accelerating the collapse of fiat money was itself a good thing and that individuals should take advantage of the loans available to them.
Programming Blockchain - The last chance to take this class is coming on March 31-April 1 in Austin, TX! You, too, can learn the ins and outs of the Bitcoin protocol. Apply today for the early bird discount.
Palm Beach Atlantic University - I will be speaking at this university on March 27th. Details still to come, but it will be about Bitcoin to mostly young college students.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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