drobbs

• drobbs 28 Jun 2021 8:48 UTC

  −1 points

  on: Op­ti­mism about So­cial Technology

  It’s great to be optimistic, but its hard to look at the state of the neglected parts of the country and not be completely shocked and appalled at the state of reality for millions of other people living in the same country. I recommend a drive along the Ohio River sometime, the state of things there share a lot more with post-Soviet collapse in Russia. The anger is justified, there a few generations of neglect and loss of hope /​ purpose among the locals. Its no surprise opioids have devastated these areas. Its not just there either, its many parts of the country, many inner cities are also totally devastated and there has to be massive investments in education but even then, we’ve let several generations already lapse and that has to be dealt with head on. No amount of technology is going to quickly alleviate the justified populism coming from the decay and transgressions many millions of Americans have been living under for past several decades. The elites & the American oligarchs seem intent on continuing to virtue signal and sell fear. The politics of division, particularly from the media elite, has to end before Americans will turn optimistic.
  
  It may not happen either, if the American Empire is crashing the same way Rome did, well, we may be sometime in or after the Crisis of the 3rd Century now and there is a decent chance there is a long drawn out dark ages era of feudal order, just like in Medieval Europe, for the next couple generations. Florida already seems like its becoming a version of the Eastern Roman Empire, attracting a lot of big money & fully embracing Bitcoin. Perhaps this also leads to the rise of American City-States at some stage after things normalize.

• drobbs 28 Jun 2021 8:27 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: dachamian’s comment on: Covid vac­cine safety: how cor­rect are these alle­ga­tions?

  The problem is, Bret is one of the few non-conspiracy adjacent vanguards fighting against the established “science”. Because of his prior experiences being driven off campus by mob politics, he’s become “anti-fragile” so to speak, willing to fight because he has found success by being true to his set of values & principles, which is admirable. But, the burden should not fall on him, we should have a system that welcomes open debate. To me, this is obvious. Truth wins through proving something to be true, not through conjecture, mass manipulation, and isolating anyone with a hint of skepticism. The dangers are obvious, America is in ruins from this rapacious empire, we have a seriously destructive society. It’s impossible to not blame media for the state of the country (who are heavily influenced by various governmental & business actors).

  That’s what is so angering to me about this entire situation, never in the history of the world has there ever been a propaganda machine quite like the United States, its the most powerful element to the American empire. Its been able to hold the veneer of political credibility through “democracy & openness”, when its really a lightly managed democracy, whose leadership class will use fear & deception to rule. Its not a “right-left” thing either, there is no doubt a class of oligarchs who move between the two parties seamlessly (ahem, Bloomberg). They are all entirely open about their desire to control humanity with vaccine passports, digital currency run by the IMF out of Switzerland, and an entirely new surveillance economy in the West to compete against China’s surveillance economy.

  I’ve slowly become totally distrustful of any established narrative, because the longer you live, the more obvious it becomes just how powerful the propaganda machine in America is. They have managed to lie the country into endless wars, lied the country into a mass surveillance program with the Patriot Act, allowed the Financial Crisis to play out where millions lost their homes & nothing happened to those at fault, to now the complete nonsense ever since Covid broke out. Its just impossible to believe the state of the country represents anything remotely close to truth or reality. Now, the way people put up signs in their laws saying “In this house we believe in science”, its just feels like something out of a totalitarian society. Somehow they’ve turned this blind faith in “the science” because the media says so, into a full blown religion among a certain upper class of society. It’s just so creepy & makes me believe people like Bret are probably far closer to the truth than Fauci & his cronies are.

• drobbs 27 Jun 2021 10:38 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: GeneSmith’s comment on: Peo­ple Will Listen

  You can collateralize Bitcoin, and that is really where Bitcoin’s future lies, its collateral to recapitalize the financial system. The dynamics of QE operate like an auto-immune disease, its making collateral harder to come by, debt instruments become MORE expensive, because the Fed is effectively bidding up the price. However, this creates a new paradigm where all assets are higher in value than where they should be, if we’re operating in a normal interest rate environment (by normal, one that doesn’t have massive Central Bank interference to effectively fix the market rates). This is why we have such a monopolized economy as well, it makes borrowing costs cheaper for those with the best ability to access credit. Thus, all assets become too expensive. This leads to extreme inequality because few people under 40 can afford to have normal things people want, and leads to this extractive economy we operate in. This also becomes impossible to reverse too because the Fed raising the interest rate leads to a market crash (as they found out in 2018, nearly collapsing the entire stock market).

  You need a way to unwind this dynamic because like an auto-immune disease, you’re attacking healthy cells (small businesses, who can’t access credit, or get priced out of competing against would-be monopolists, as well as zombie corporations who just exist in perpetuity rolling over their debt, 20% of US corporations on the stock market are now zombified).
  
  So, Bitcoin operates within the monetary reality of the world today, whereas so many other cryptos are trying to design something new, innovative or fantastical, none of them are obviously better for this absolute contorted situation we find ourselves in. It can become the new version of collateral, so that the Fed can release the pressure valve of perpetual QE, and allow them to unwind without mass bankruptcy of the US economy. However, this is another conundrum, because Bitcoin’s deflationary attributes also make for a more appealing settlement layer than what its actually competing against, which is the Fed. This is ultimately what many technologists misunderstand, Bitcoin is more like a first order layer of money, to clear transactions at the highest level. It’s more comparable to Fedwire or other various Federal Reserve settlement layers.