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Yes, many questions left to be asked and need to be asked. Which is frustrating in the #bitcoin world to see capitalism protected by its few religious followers.

Zsubmariner 1w ago

Yeah, people are at different points down the rabbithole. As nostr:nprofile1qqsd7pkjrm98cxwgn5z5je9jm83stfp9a00rgspukrnev6589v3strcpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqprdmhxue69uhkummnw3ez6vfwde3x7tnpdenkzmnf9e3k7mg4yqp is saying, part of what nostr:nprofile1qqsg86qcm7lve6jkkr64z4mt8lfe57jsu8vpty6r2qpk37sgtnxevjcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqaktkhj was saying in the video too, people end up meaning very different things.

I don't really use the isms much anymore because they're just trigger words. Ideologies are just programs that keeps us fighting and puts a frame around our minds so we don't see the system for what it is.

Fiat is word magic, at its core. And words have become increasingly shallow and meaningless during the fiat age.

I've found that going back to old sources and clear thinking from before these spells were cast has helped me see things from the outside more. Words are thinking tools, and they have effectively been nerfed--they used to have much clearer, deeper meanings.

I think the schools have had big role in taking away the deeper meanings of words. Even civil war letters from regular farm boys in the 1800s are humbling to read now.

Take the word "literacy" itself. (Kind of an interesting example.)

It used to mean deeply knowing history and the source texts of our culture. The Bible, Aristotle, Homer, Seneca... Now it means just the basic ability to read and write.

Now everyone is "literate" but nobody knows what anything really means. That makes us useful but not dangerous to the system and more programmable.

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Discussion

Chad Lupkes 1w ago

I do the same thing, but then I dig down to the etymological roots of the word and question whether even they had the right conceptual framework for what we need. Frequently the answer is no. Clearest example in this case is Capital.

Capital did not begin as an economic term. Its roots lie in the Latin _caput_—head, source, origin. The word shares ancestry with "cattle," and this etymology is revealing.

In agrarian societies, a "head" of cattle represented something more sophisticated than modern accounting captures. The animal was simultaneously:

**Stock**: Physical asset, tangible wealth, something owned

**Velocity**: Transformation engine converting grass into milk, meat, muscle, and more cattle over time

The language carried both components naturally. When someone spoke of their "capital" in cattle, they meant the productive system—both the accumulated animals AND the rate at which those animals generated value through reproduction and yield.

Chad Lupkes 1w ago

Current uses of the word either focus on either stock OR velocity, infrequently both at the same time, and our entire use of the word in language flows back and forth between them. Makes it really difficult to nail down exactly what someone is talking about.

The way I use the word, capital is both stock and velocity.

Stock x Velocity -> Work

Zsubmariner 1w ago

Good example of exactly what I mean. (And that is the Austrian sense of capital or capital structure.)

BlueDuckBTC 1w ago

I truly believe that capitalism has run its coarse and it is unsustainable mainly do to its profit incentive and its centralization. Now, Bitcoin put the final arrow through capitalisms heart.

The solution will be property rights that are compatible with life essentials being freed from profits. Everything else will fall into place.

BlueDuckBTC 1w ago

Sure, I get that but we can agree with what profit means.

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

Profit is the difference between what something costs and what it returns. But today's profits generate tomorrow's costs if the transaction doesn't serve the long term.

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Correct. You can run a successful company where all bills are paid, and labor is paid with little to no profits.

Zsubmariner 6d ago

I think you may be using the word profit where many of us would use the term "rent seeking". The old term is "usury". All human beings seek benefit. The question is donlmination and exploitation.

Entrepreneurs and competition are not evil, and are timeless and fundamental to human nature too. Entrepreneurs seeking margin bring tremendous good to the world. Deflationary money causes prices to fall to the cost of production and forces them to constantly innovate. The wealth created is naturally distributed to everyone by deflation.

When someone uses property as leverage to exploit others, that's wrong. We agree on that. But banning all profit or collective ownership would impoverish us in a tragedy of the commons. Property is natural and good.

You would ban all sex because some people misues it to hurt others, right? It is procreative and good, even though it can be misued.

I noticed that you are still pretty focused on capitalism ending, etc.

Ideologies don't exist. They are just figments of propaganda. They don't run the world and we don't fix the world by having the right one run it. That's all a psyop we've been sold. Usury, as a runaway process, is running the world. Or running away with it, you might say.

Bitcoin kills that process and we can just go back to being healthy.

Ideologies are just a distraction.

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

We can't let our anger and frustration distract us from coordination. Focus on signal, not noise.

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

I would need a breakdown in definition between profit and rent seeking.

Zsubmariner 6d ago

Profit is just margin. The difference between what you pay for something and what you sell it for. If I travel to a far off land to buy spices, bring them back and sell them to you for a price that is worth more to you than the money you trade, both of us win. The margin is what you were willing to pay for someone to go get those spices for you.

If my neighbor can find a way to make the trip more efficient, he can give you a better price.

We compete and prices fall to the marginal cost of production. The world gets more efficient and thus we are all better off. Everyone's money is a little more useful and so we all get richer.

Rent seeking is I have a thing you need, or I can get the government to force you somehow, so I use my leverage over you to extract the maximum I can take from you. Often that will be more than you have, by a bond ("loan") so I take your freedom and then I can sell my claim on you future work and set up enforcement, regulation, etc.

One is a freely negotiated exchange of value, the other one is extortion.

We live in a world where these waters have been intentionally muddied. They have pretended that rent-seeking is fair play, called it "profit". Some people have reacted, understandably, by saying "well profit is evil then." But it's not. Profit is good. Usury is evil. There is a reason why that word is old and strange to us.

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Profit is not margin. Profit is what’s above cost and labor.

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

Why do you consider labor to be separate from cost

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Labor is a part of cost, all labor included. Most people complain if I don’t include labor because they believe with no profit the “owners” make zero money. Which is educated and self employed people like ourselves know these things but not everyone does.

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

Then why use them separately when you attempt to define Profit above? You said that Profit is what's above cost and labor. If cost includes labor, why mention it separately?

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Like I stated, most people don’t understand that cost includes all labor.

Zsubmariner 6d ago

If your goal is to reify something called capitalism and blame it. Go ahead, but it doesn't mean anything. That's just ideological programming. If you want to engage in real terms, but ideological checkers is boring and will never solve anything or get you closer to the truth.

Arguing over maps while ignoring the territory is pointless.

Is there a point you'd like to address that you can express in non-ideological terms?

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

We use profit as a component to calculate margin. But they are closely related accounting terms.

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Margin and profit are not needed to run a successful business. Profit or margin as a goal is unsustainable.

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

If you have something I need to live, is it a negotiation on price? Who has leverage? Sounds like a paywall for something you know I need. Surely you can agree with that?

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

So if we have something that you need to live, we should give it to you without a price, ignoring the cost?

BlueDuckBTC 6d ago

Absolutely not, it would operate just like co ops operate now. My power company is a co op.

Chad Lupkes 6d ago

I love cooperatives. But just because they don't focus on earning additional profits that they can provide to shareholders doesn't mean they don't try to lower their costs and manage their business operations in the exact same way as any other type of business entity.

BlueDuckBTC 5d ago

Unfortunately we disagree there and there is mountains of historical evidence to back up that “for profit” leads to exploitation.

Chad Lupkes 5d ago

I think we're just talking past each other now. I'm talking about cooperatives, you might be talking about for profit companies, I can't even tell anymore.

The best way to prevent any change is to keep using the old language of debt based systems.

Moving on.

BlueDuckBTC 1w ago

I agree with most of this but this is where my frustration begins. Adam Smith actually spells out what capitalism is and warns what it CAN and probably will become. Yet, it’s like he is forgotten and the excuses start.