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15 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xIlmari 3 Feb \ on: Given the chance would we do as the Boomers did? econ
You need a whole house to live in.
You don't need a whole Bitcoin for anything.
(Maybe bragging rights.)
It's fine if Bitcoin goes to the moon if it demonetizes everything else because (a) things that you actually need will become more affordable and (b) whatever the next generations earn and save will appreciate (Boomers had to contend with money that loses value so they hoarded other things).
Bitcoin is the essence of property rights - money that you truly own yourself.
Communists are the enemies of private property. They want everything to be taken away and given to those in need. (In reality: given to those in power.)
Thus:
- Leftist politicians don't like Bitcoin because they can't steal it.
- Leftist voters don't like Bitcoin because politicians can't steal it and give them welfare for watching TV all day.
For a merchant who doesn't have any suppliers who accept Bitcoin, it's just an extra overhead without economic benefit: accounting, taxes, operational. He's better off buying Bitcoin on the side as savings.
So at this stage, you will only convince people who'd do it out of principle. Convince them with "Why Bitcoin?"
Once a merchant is introduced to a supplier who accepts Bitcoin, the landscape changes, but you still need to convince them to run a dual-currency operation, which is a big accounting headache.
However, at this point, the more "savvy" of them might realize the potential of hiding some of their cashflow from the government, which is a very enticing prospect. Convince them with "How Bitcoin?"
Also, I think Nostr supports paid relays, so I imagine pay-to-publish is entirely possible and we might need to transition to such relays when spam becomes a problem.
I don't think a "liveness" check is feasible in the long run. Projects that tried to invent a "Human ID" or "proof of humanity" all failed, demonstrating ways in which the system can be worked around or abused.
I don't think the real problem is that content is being created by bots. If you liked it, what difference does it make? The real issue is that it's too easy to take up your limited bandwidth with spam.
And what's the best way to combat spam? Introduce a cost. Proof of Work.
Pay to post should be the norm. It's the reason I ditched Reddit and only use SN. I wish posting and commenting here was more expensive.
E-mail should be extended in a way such that the recipient can request sats to receive the message (eCash is a great solution here with its bearer asset tokens). Other messaging platforms should have this option as well for PMs.
Phone calls? Operators should share the payment for a call with the recipient.
I leave more to your imagination.
Oh, okay. I read the first point as "It's our network, it's our rules. We merely allow/license you use it in a manner that seems fair. Most of the time." An extreme example of "you will own nothing" and the reason why we call fiat a "permissioned system".
And the second one really hinges on whether taxes are considered compulsory or not, I think.
If they are compulsory and the state can take what it thinks is "owed" without a legal process, by a single call to the bank, then yes, you don't own it. And it seems that this is the prevaling interpretation. And the linked story seems to confirm it.
If taxes were voluntary, or at least payable based on a contract, and enforcement required a trial to establish ownership, then that would be a different story.
Look at them yuuuuuge profits! Best profits! Only the greatest profits!
Why would you want to come back to those piddly sub-5% profits!?
On a more serious note, like I said elsewhere (#872224), if you want to start making a dent into the massive public debt (which is not going to magically go away), Treasury needs to start turning a profit. I don't think cutting out a massive source of revenue is conducive to that goal.
(1) the government creates money, so you can't own it;
I agree. Whenever you touch fiat money, you're playing by their rules. And the rules are rigged so absurdly in their favour, it's not even funny. I just hope they don't think ALL money fall under their "jurisdiction", like gold and Bitcoin, because that would be pure delusion.
(2) the government can tax your money, so you don't own it;
Non sequitur. I literally don't see how this conclusion is made. Taxes are voluntary anyway. Or at least should be. By paying taxes you enter a social contract because you believe some money should be pooled together to spend on the betterment of society, and hope to be able to benefit from that. Somewhere along the way this notion got lost, and governments started treating taxes as compulsory.
(3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the "general welfare."
Yes, it does. But how we get from that to abolishing property rights (literally communism) eludes me.
Isn't he saying that using fiat makes you the slave of government?
That's precisely what he's saying, and that's exactly how it is.
$36T of public debt. This number cannot just go away, you need to do something about it. And just about the only things that you can do are:
- Default on it.
- Pay it back.
- Devalue the unit to a point where it doesn't matter.
A formal default with cancellation is not going to happen.
To pay back debt you need to be profitable. This means austerity measures if you still raise funds through taxation. And austerity to pay down debt is doubly unpopular because it's not buying the people anything directly useful, like healthcare.
So you have to ask the question: Can you be more profitable with tariffs than with income tax? What do tariffs do? Dampen imports and stimulate domestic production. So it causes further income from tariffs to reduce but since we got rid of income tax, the Treasury is no longer benefiting from a boosted economy.
So I think not, my guess is the number don't add up and to actually burn down the debt you will need a period of both taxation and tariffs.
And then there's of course the way of inflation. Print enough money and $36T might actually go down in purchasing value, making it easier to pay down. I expect to see that in the mix as well.
People care more about content and readability than whether it was edited or written by an LLM. In that sense, intentional mistakes lower the value of your contributions.
There's a few regular posters here on SN that write their articles using an LLM, or with LLM assistance, and I have receipts to prove it. They get a lot of zaps, from me as well, because the effort still produced a valuable product.
We have maybe 99% of content these days written by bots. They wouldn't do it, unless the consumers were fine with it. And apparently they are.
Did you skip the part where I said "doesn't really feel like AI"? I use LLMs a lot and I've gotten very good at detecting AI text.
But that's a "trust me bro" argument, so I backed it up with a gptzero.me check.
Why? Because it is also very good. I tested it extensively, tried to confuse it with mixed synthetic and human text and it wasn't fooled. I have no reason to think it's not an accurate tool.
You behave like a Luddite. You have decreed all AI to be garbage and refuse to use it even if it would help you. For example to retouch your guides and make them more readable.
Awesome writeup. What I'm taking away from this is, if I don't touch USDT, OFAC will not try to touch me. And I sure as hell ain't touchin' dat shiz with a ten foot pole.
Like, no joke. They tried killing Trump. Twice. And she's supposed to be their direct boss now? Calling Snowden's work "technically crime, yes, but necessary"?
They're either going to isolate her, hide all the black ops and derail any efforts to drain the swamp, or just whack her. (Which would be stupid and too obvious.)