Our dear Mr. Tim Harford is out here reviving Benjamin Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. Two decades later, it still has things to tell us:
The thesis:
Friedman’s basic thesis was that robust, broad-based growth would encourage tolerance, social mobility, fairness and a commitment to democratic values.
Harford brings up two aspects.
- Discrimination etc (somewhat?) goes away, since there's plenty to go around and nobody is obviously losing out:
Friedman noted that a thriving economy might have a number of welcome side-effects, consequences which we might call moral progress. For example, if jobs were plentiful and workers were scarce, discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or religion “most often gives way to the sheer need to get the work done”.
- Comparing ourselves with others or our past selves become unimportant when prospects are good:
the key to unlocking the virtues he admired was not jobs but an increase in broad-based material living standards, which is measured — or at least proxied — by GDP per person. He argued that we naturally judge how things are going by making comparisons, and two types of comparison are readily available. The first is to compare ourselves with others. The second is to compare our current situation with our own past experiences. If living standards were briskly increasing, then we would notice that we were comfortably richer than we had been a decade ago.
"If living standards were stagnating or falling, then we would stop making contended comparisons with our former selves, and our envious gazes would turn to the lives of others.""If living standards were stagnating or falling, then we would stop making contended comparisons with our former selves, and our envious gazes would turn to the lives of others."
Almost whatever grievance you have in life, it fades away with economic growth. It is the thing that matters, a point I've taken from Tyler Cowen and Russ Roberts over the years: absolutely every trouble drowns under the long-run compounding effects of (modern) economic growth.
Then Harford shows the horrors of growth in America and the UK.
Over the quarter-century beginning in 1950, real GDP per person grew almost 80 per cent. Over the following quarter-century, 1975-1999, real growth per person was again just under 80 per cent. But from 2000-2024, total real growth per person halved, to just under 40 per cent.
Britain's recent history is even worse:
between the peak of 2007 and the last full year before the referendum, 2015, the UK’s real economic output per person grew by a grand total of 1 per cent. Since 2016 the average is still well short of 1 per cent a year. For context, in the 1990s, real per capita growth was more like 1 per cent every six months.
Harford cites some new academic results that correlate growth with a) trust in government and b) support for redistributive efforts.
If robust, broad-based growth makes us better people, morally as well as materially, "Should we be surprised that an economic slowdown has given us the opposite?"
A Thought Experiment
Imagine you were an OG and had stacked a few coins when they were cheap as shit.
You had spend decades opposing what you saw as the undermining of your civilisation by bankers and corporate lobbyists who had advanced an ideology that proposed there is no community, only the individual, and that as such government has no place or validity- that markets alone should determine all things in human society.
These amoral neoliberal hypocrits ignored the historical reality that business only succeeds when supported by a strong legal system and a government that can enforce the law within its jurisdiction and project power externally to support import and export trading in goods and commodities.
But these neoliberal parasites did not give a fuck about history or culture.
If they needed cheap labour they imported it, or exported their factories to countries where labour was cheap.
They bought and owned most of the politicians with money created out of debt which debased the savings of all citizens.
They built an empire of debt and slavery to increase their wealth at the expense of most citizens.
Pivotal to their empire was fiat money.
Just as their greed and treachery reached epic heights a spanner was thrown in the works- Bitcoin was created.
It was possible now for anyone to hold capital and transfer value directly P2P without any need for the bankers.
So, humanity was offered a chance to regain its integrity and reclaim all commerce and exchange of value from the parasites who had seized a monopoly over all trade and commerce.
But this was a narrow hope- one that assumed enough people would make the effort to free themselves.
Bitcoin was not and is not a free ride to liberty- it is only a road, a narrow and difficult path to salvation.
And so some did see the need and Bitcoin grew.
It was attacked and mocked and jeered, but its proposal was sound and enough people of conscience did support it so it grew.
But the opposition was and is strong and determined- it was made 'difficult' to use as a MoE payments protocol in most 'liberal democracies' and was outright banned in most autocracies.
It was allowed much more as a speculative commodity which enabled large corporate players and bankers to gain an ever increasing share of issuance either directly or by proxy.
And it was tracked and traced- KYC became increasingly universal.
The hope of freeing money from the state and its bankers was never guaranteed and looked increasingly slim.
There was a need to have places where the P2P payments protocol could be used by anyone and show its potential...but few merchants dared accept it and face complex tax implications and FUD smear.
And then you come across an experiment- a social media platform using sats as a V4V means of both moderation and economic viability.
Stacker News!
This platform could operate and show how sats can be used everyday.
The many transactions required would support the growth of the LN and demonstrate it in use in a positive and useful way.
The state of course threatened to prosecute on the premise of money transmission- so the platform was forced to require users to attach wallets.
This was not easy and created an entry barrier and the compromise of allowing new users and those not capable of attaching a wallet to use a substitute inhouse token called a Cowboy Credit...nominally of equal value to one sat but only valid within the platform.
Most users attached wallets but some refused to and yet they were often some of the most vocal about Bitcoin adoption- claiming to be 'living on The Bitcoin Standard'.
In reality they were deliberately and knowing degrading the sats denominated nature of the entire platform.
What is their motivation?
It seems unfathomable.
It seems like blatant hypocrisy.
They appears just as corrupt and full of shit as the bankers.
What to do?
Perhaps, you decide to mete some wrath upon these hypocrit parasites.
Life is short and freedom an ever receding horizon.
But you can always try.
What is Stacker News?
It is a social media platform intentionally created to enable a P2P V4V BTC denominated community.
Originally Stacker News (SN) custodyed sats on behalf of participants but the threat of government regulatory prosecution on the pretext of money transmitter forced a move away from the custody of sats by the platform to the platform enabling participants to send sats via their wallets.
To achieve this participants need to attach wallets to both send and receive sats.
Where participants do not or cannot attach LN wallets transactions will often default to Cowboy Credits.
This change was a compromise forced by the threat of government prosecution.
The difficulty of attaching both sending and receiving wallets is moderate- it takes some effort and newbie or non tech people may struggle with it, but most competent Bitcoiners can succeed in attaching wallets and thus enabling sats denominated P2P transactions.
But a number of Stackers have chosen not to attach wallets- in particular sending wallets which enable you to send sats into the SN community.
Very few have attached just a sending wallet- many have attach just a receiving wallet.
Those who only attach a receiving wallet can receive sats from others but cannot send sats into the community. They may feel that as content providers they have no need or obligation to send sats into and within the SN community. I disagree.
Where these receive but not send (horse but no gun) Stackers proclaim to be Bitcoiners but refuse to enable a sending wallet they are demonstrably hypocrits. They claim they want to build and grow the BTC LN MoE network but they cannot be bothered contributing toward that growth by attaching a sending wallet and demonstrating they are not just talking, but are also walking and supporting a sats denominated platform.
If we do not use the LN wherever and whenever we can it will not grow and develop.
Some claim it is too hard to attach wallets- its too hard on their self custody nodes or wallets- this just highlights how much work the LN still needs before it is capable of anything approaching 100% reliable MoE capability.
But the best way to grow and strengthen the LN is it use it – despite its remaining flaws and glitches.
When wallets are supported by people using them they receives transaction fees and can develop liquidity and systems further.
When LN wallets are not used the LN decays- it does not have the usage and fees income to grow.
So when self proclaimed advocates for BTC and LN refuse to attach wallets (especially sending wallets) I see hypocrit.
I will continue to see hypocrit until and unless someone can explain why I should not.
Calling me a Nazi, trolling and making fun of me crudely seeking to avoid the issues I raise will not stop me from asking why are you claiming to be a Bitcoiner but refusing to attach wallets and use the LN here where we can help it grow.
Now some are deliberately concealing their wallet status, as if this is about a right to privacy.
Concealing your wallet status means nobody else can verify whether or not you are serious about using BTC LN, or whether you are just an all talk no walk hypocrit.
Do not trust- verify.
What about this fundamental principle do they not understand?
And then they talk about 'content' being more important than whether or not you have attached wallets - in this context the intentional lack of attached wallets undermines your credibility as your actions do not match your words.
Your submitted content may be great, but you as someone claiming to be a serious Bitcoiner are undermining your credibility and the credibility of your content by being a hypocrit.
Your content, is tainted by your verifiable hypocrisy.
SNs needs both good content providers and those who pay for that content if it is succeed.
I am more in the latter group than the former but both are required overall or the model does not work.
So as a net contributor of sats and thus a net consumer of content I object where content providers refuse to engage in the P2P V4V ethos by refusing to attach both sending and receiving wallets and I will both withhold my contribution of sats and sometimes downvote in response.
V4V needs to work reciprocally or it will not work at all.
The content providers need net sats contributors/content consumers who send sats into the platform, or the entire platform fails.