This is only tangential to this discussion, but consider for a moment that it makes zero sense for the price of a home to appreciate over time, assuming all other factors affecting the area remain relatively constant (this is not outlandish to consider, especially in smaller and mid-sized cities). The roof, plumbing, electrical, etc. are all older and approaching the inevitable repair dates. Would you rather a house the day it's built or 20 years later? It's a consequence of fiat bullshit.

Eventually, this will no longer be possible to even the most disinterested person. But you are correct in your implication that most will ignore as long as possible. Wonder what effect this will have in forming another mass psychosis that puts the lockdown period to shame?

All of the numbers used in this hypothetical analysis are pointless. The unemployment rate is a flawed statistic omitting those "not looking for a job" and real estate is in a worse bubble than it was in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The talking heads all said that things were fine then as well, and we all know how that turned out.

You can also be sure that in the event that "five large hedge funds implode, and the banks stand to lose $70-85 Billion", the government will be more than willing to provide them bailout money.

So according to this logic, we should just dump money into the economy to drum up demand until we've reached employment to the last man. Stimmy checks, anyone?

Yeah, this article's consideration is for the "bitcoin as an investment" class. It also looks like a sales pitch to convince people to continue investing in the inflated equities market.

"For example, we can compare Bitcoin’s price to a fund that just tracks the performance of the overall stock market, like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF. When you adjust for inflation, that fund was worth a little over 1.5% less on Tuesday than it was three years ago. That means if you bought $10,000 of Bitcoin at its peak, your money would be worth about $9,050 today. If you bought $10,000 of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF at the same time, it would be worth $9,850. Inflation hits old-school investments the same way it hits Bitcoin, but this time around, you would have been better off investing in the regular old stock market."

What a joke!

LOL. Same as twitter and all the rest.

The ETF has established a new floor. I've seen that amount of BTC purchased daily is about 3.5 times that newly produced daily, which will be doubled at the halving (7x). The has set in motion a supply crunch that has potential to grow even further if active fund managers for things like pensions pour into the ETF if other equities experience trouble to keep their jobs. Ironically, I'm not sure that most of the new money entering even understands the purpose of BTC or if it evens matters.

Clear trend that people in the west are discouraged about the future, and they should probably should be for all the reasons most are well acquainted with by now.

Overall, I think this becomes a question of time preference. Over the short-term, it is easier to become discouraged. Over the long haul, innovation will continue to find a way (as much as governments try to beat it down) to continue improving the living conditions of the world's population as long as people are willing to do the work.

Bitcoin > Gold >>>>>>>>>> Fiat

The Dangerous History Podcast - CJ Kilmer

I'd recommend checking out the Mises Institute online as a good starting point. Someone else has mentioned "Economics in One Lesson" by Hazlitt, and I think they'll mail you that one for free. You can also get fundamental treatises like "Man, Economy, and State" by Rothbard and "Human Action" by Mises for like $25. Anyways, once you've finished these wherever you get them from, you probably will have a solid enough grasp of Austrian Economics (the only one based on logic and reason rather than econometrics) to know where you want to study next.

If you're looking for the standardized government schools to actually give a damn about children's abilities here, I think the point is being missed. The school system exists primarily to foster obedience and fear of authority to produce compliant citizens and obedient workers, respectively.

Family court routines ignores legal contracts also, and that's been going on since long before the Covid. Regarding the transfer of bitcoin to heirs specifically, I'm hoping someone will eventually develop some open source software that could handle that type of problem (maybe in a smart contract form pendind having death certificates, or something else, as input(s)?). There's not a chance in hell I'd think anyone should feel comfortable just giving their seed phrase to their attorney.

Stuck at the pre-pandemic level for now. They spent like hell the last 4 years. $27 is pretty impressive considering the size of the snake's tail by that point.

It's all good thanks to modern monetary theory. Just keep full employment and the calculation simply becomes the square root of fuck everything else.

I was thinking mostly of the western lands, but I'm sure foreign entities would love to have land in DC. I also think auction would be hoping for too much transparency, as I have zero doubt that political favoritism would be heavily involved.

Big question is who they would sell the federal lands to. Either way, I'm not sure I'd want to live adjacent to those lands anytime soon.

That last point is really interesting. I suppose the main difference is that the hard money country would have to rely on taxation revenue (increasing taxes if the war required more funding) rather than currency devaluation to fund its war. Still theft, but at least one is visible while the other is not immediately so. And if the war is actually in the interests of the citizens of that hard money country, it shouldn't be that difficult to sell the tax increase to the bulk of the citizens relatively speaking at least, shouldn't it?