I wasn't making a joke about introducing new squirrelly terms. I'm saying the point of inflation is specifically to prevent deflation, de-leverage and proper free market natural business cycles.

monetary expansion is an active attack on deflation + a propaganda campaign that deflation is bad.

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The word "inflation" was co-opted. It once meant, increase in monetary supply.

Now it's a data sey cherry-picked to hide the fact that governments keep taxes low, but rob you blind. Inflation is a crypto-tax, crypto as in "secret."

They can print more stablecoins, but they can't print #bitcoin.

Yeah. They teach that, too. My professors actually taught the business cycle before anything else, although they didn't credit any Austrians for it. They basically justified inflation by way of "systemic risk" - debt becoming unpayable because dollars are scarce, or more valuable than they were ehen the debt was incurred, is a systemic risk. They're not wrong. We should stop straw manning them (the bitcoin influencers) and be clear about how we intend to fix the system - by first making debt unpayable, and then making it illegal. That's the only way it can go. If you want a free market, which is a requirement for a free society, then debt must be "controlled." Eliminated, really.

Personally, I aim to be in a position to ensure the right people are arrested and jailed. Selling debt is a crime, whether the law currently agrees or not.

Hard disagree. If two parties decide their time preferences and capital differ enough between them that it is mutually beneficial to enter into a debt agreement, that's up to them. Definitely not the purview of some self-appointed arbiter they never asked for.

Count me out of your State.

How do you propose having debt without it becoming predatory? Are you okay with credit cards charging 25% interest, and people just making the choice to accept the terms? My beef with that rationale is that there aren't other options. There's no informed consent or rational choice making when other options don't exist. And then there's political corruption - these debt peddlers get laws changed to favor their business. That's how we got in this debt mess to begin with.

I'm not proposing a state. I'm proposing justice. You don't need a state for that.

Yes, I am okay with the first thing you mentioned.

And if your beef is with informed consent and rational choice, then pour your energies into education and the invention of new choices to solve your problem - rather than leaning further into violence and coercion and the creation of more and more laws that get abused.

In your words, there seem to be two paths to solving your conundrum ahead of you. Choose the one that doesn't re-create the problems we already have and are so close to leaving behind.

I have chosen education. I am a teacher.

I've stopped compromising with evil. That's where I'm coming from. That, and an actual education in economics. That's my degree. Debt is the root problem. Education depends on motivation. I'm the only teacher I've ever met who thinks kids shouldn't be compelled to be in school. If they're motivated, they'll show up. Its the same with adults, except that we have a whole financial system built on top of them making bad decisions and them being effectively enslaved. If my attitude is, "oh you should've paid attention when we tried teaching you, so FU your enslavement is fine because you chose it" then I would be making a compromise with evil, as well as failing as a teacher. We should give evil no quarter, no path to come back, if we manage to push it back.

We've tried laws that limit usury. For over a thousand years, all debt was illegal in Europe. Then in the Netherlands, usury was redefined to 6%. They made the first central bank, which they used to invade England and install a protestant monarch, who gave the usurers a new country to loan to. Then literally all the American states capped usury at 6%, and still do, but two states repealed that (Utah and Delaware), which is why all the credit cards are from there. We also got the "commerce clause" for constitutional law, which takes economic sovereignty from the states and mysteriously gives all power to whatever the worst policy is anywhere in the union.

My point is, we've been reasonable, acted like adults, compromised and kept faith in the intelligence of people... And still got to where we are. Corruption happened. How do we fix it? Not just roll back the laws and install better safeguards - how do we have the tempting candy, the debt, without it corrupting us again?

What do you mean by "evil"? It seems to be doing a lot of work here and is also very ill-defined - a bad combination for this discussion.

Yeah, I'm not fuzzy brained about defining it, but most people are, so they aren't capable of having a discussion about it. Evil is destruction, specifically of human beings, and the growth of nihilism that results and feeds back into destruction of more human beings. In that way, it takes on a life of its own. Its a real thing, although nothing supernatural is necessarily a part of it. Its a broad category, but not fuzzy. No woo woo needed. If compromise with it, you facilitate it.

Who defines what it means to be "destroyed", you or the "destroyed" person? What happens to your definition of evil when the "destroyed" (in your view) person actually **wants** that result and seeks it? Who are you to say they've been tricked and are acting against their own interest?

I'm not saying that _you_ can't hold a definition of destruction, but I am saying that it isn't an objective measurement - it is subjective. Thus, criminalizing someone's choice based on your value system is - in my view - coercive and immoral.

Can you give an example? I don't want to make a generalized statement when each situation is unique. And I'm not arguing that destruction itself should be illegal, or even that destruction is evil. A certain kind of destruction is evil - the kind that destroys hope, abuses and victimizes, increases nihilism, which feeds back into suffering. Creative destruction isn't that, even though it can involve suffering. And suffering is not pain - its a mindset, whereas pain is not. It can be mitigated through beliefs and self discipline, but also it is objectively increased by predations upon helpless people. A solution isn't to say, "suffering is a mindset, so bear it quietly" ; a solution is to stop the predation.

Need examples to be any more specific.

gambling. drugs (of any severity). consensual prostitution. weird sex parties and antinatalism. etc.

assume the affected person is otherwise physically healthy and financially "unexploited".

IMO gambling is destructive, but it isn't necessarily so destructive that it creates a cycle of destruction. I think doing gambling is fine, but not selling the dopamine hit of gambling. Similar views on drugs. I don't condemn a person for using them, unless they're causing a problem for someone dependent on them. They move a lot easier than casinos, so making them illegal is a different deal than making casinos illegal. If the prostitution is fully consensual, then its no different than the less remarkable addiction to sex - all parties are better off without the addiction, but you do you.

But its never fully consensual. We have the luxury of making up these "what ifs" because it's not in our face. Its all over some countries and its clearly exploitative. What we've done wrong in the past is punishing the women while the pimp goes free. If they want to freely sell a service because they've seen the prices they can get, no problem, supply and demand, then the price falls and its not a great career option anymore. But get the pimps. Exploitation is inexcusable. Make their life hell.

The problem with that "antinatalism," if I get your meaning, is they go for kids. You mean gays, right? I couldn't care less what people do if its consensual, but why do they have to indoctrinate kids? Yes, that's evil. Give them the same treatment as the pimps.

But none of these things come close to the destruction caused by debt with interest.

"The love of money is surely the root of all evil." 2 timothy 6:10 if memory serves. Watch it be wrong... Lol. Love is equivalent with "increase." Symbolic language. The increase of money is the root of all evil. Very efficient wording.

We like to divide the world into good and bad people. The reality is more complex: we are all deeply flawed.

I got that verse wrong, of course. Not an uber-Christian yet... It was 2 timothy 1:6-10. I got it all crammed together in memory.

antinatalism is the belief that humans shouldn't reproduce. usually it's a personal philosophy, not something aggressive.

Ah OK, makes sense. I should've looked it up. Doesn't it seem like that's the agenda, though? It seems too expensive, and there's so much messaging that there's too many people, humans are bad, be gay, get a career, delay...

I am sceptical. But I would really love to go through all the way. Are you also eager to imagine a world without dept? I mean into detail. Going through cases, where dept is used today and then look at how these situations would be solved legally, when dept was illegal.

Since when I see, that really every situation we need to live, can be acchieved without dept, I am willing to support your thought.

Lets start with a very basic need to live north and south from the equator: Housing.

When I need to build a house, accumulated one Bitcoin, but lets say the most minimalistic house I can buy can be built with 3 Bitcoin. I can save around 0.3 Bitcoin per year to invest into Rent or my future house.

What would be the reaction of the markets when everyone can only build to these same conditions. So would mean also many constructors will be without work, offer their work maby to a lower price and so.

Someone is very into economics and can maby point out the most important metrics to look at in this thought experiment?

House prices are wrong. Literally, the sticker price is the wrong price, and its because of debt.

The availability of debt is effectively an increase in the money supply. That alone isn't the problem, but the fact that its unevenly distributed is (I'm not arguing for anything social justice-y). The Cantillon Effect is at play everywhere. Whoever can access debt, can buy the houses and duplexes and all the other stuff. Nothing wrong with that, in itself. Work, save, become credit worthy. But if more money is only available to people with more money, and scarce for everyone else, then assets get bid up. The value premium on stocks rises - PE ratios only go up, in the long run. Houses will always at least keep pace with inflation, but it looks like they will also always have a rising premium. Premium on what? Is it the asset or the money being used?

Then look at the quality of the houses being built. They're paper. You can see it falling apart in the first year of owning a new home. That's because the price of *everything* is wrong. Inflation pulls the floor out from under the producers, who want to be competing via quality rising, but instead must compete via material substitution to keep their costs low, which is because the price of their inputs keeps rising. Manufacturer's inflation is the real inflation, btw - just track that to know what's actually going on.

I think I need to backtrack a tad and say the world I imagine is without interest, not debt. My bad, I did conflate them. You can have zero interest debt. For how to organize it and match time preferences, I point to Islamic finance, which would be exactly the same as Christian finance, if Christians hadn't let Calvin preach a bunch of bullshit, which was all a camouflage for inserting interest rates into our society. That's a guy that's burning right now. Back to Islamic finance! They use equity to replace interest. Not a perfect solution, but I think bitcoin is the upgrade they need to really make it work. I recommend just googling it - I'm not saying its perfect, and my caveats would make explaining it onerous, even if I could do it justice. The end result is the most telling - prices of things *denominated in hours worked* are lower in the middle east. That's the goal.... That's what econ is supposed to be about - maximizing free time, not productivity.

Okay anyways, hope I gave you some ideas.

Thanks a lot for your great explanations. I would also mean, that the civilisation, that accumulates the highest number of free time is the most wealthy one.

Assuming they do not get it through the extortion of people in other countries. More like putting the work in the hands of machines to be able to maximize freetime.

So when I understand right: When lending is lawful and intrestrates are not, this means there is no compensation for the risk, when someone can not pay back.

So it is then more an economy, where I lend money because I like the project that can be built with it or I like the person, which is executing the project. So more enforcing networks of trust.

Maybe. Like I said, caveats... There are still profitable banks in the middle east. They effectively earn interest, but they get it up front in the form of ownership of the house or whatever. Loaning at zero interest to family is much more common there, but they also have much more clearly defined hierarchies in families. Could you copy/paste the finance without also the social structures? I doubt it. Do they even manage to control inflation? Egypt certainly doesn't... But I'd also argue that Islamic finance is an idea that's not really implemented anywhere, though some places are closer (Saudi, probably Iran but idk).

IMO one of the problems is the incompatibility of modern statehood with capitalism (lovingly using the term, I'm a big fan). It seems to be too difficult to appease the oligarchs of a country, which is necessary to maintain power, without going into debt, or it can't be maintained indefinitely. The exigencies of power will always win over the little people who get sacrificed.

Aaaand that's why I think we need to go back to a political organization prior to the treaty of Westphalia - the Holy Roman Empire (which was Germany ++). I'd prefer no state at all, but if I can't have that, then I want a state comprised of tiny states, each with full sovereignty over their own territory, no compromises. The emperor was mostly a powerless puffbag. The little states (actually they were mostly counties, but that was equivalent back then) sometimes warred with each other, then made agreements at a higher level. There was every kind of government structure imaginable - republics, counties, princedoms, bishoprics, trade leagues, guilds... And people freely moved around and weren't restricted with passports and visas and all that BS. Again, I prefer no state. And again, if that becomes a compromise with evil, I'm out.

Got off track... Feeling that sunk cost thing now... Coffee.

Haha

I feel the holy empire you describe was a lot of tyranny. Only at a very local level. And I do not think, that a lot of small tyranny states are any better than one big one.

I really like the direct democratic system with a multy-people executive government, where all major parties are represented and decisions need to be made in form of compromises.

And whenever the peoplemare strongly against any move of the parlament, we can directly overpower it by direct voting. I feel this is a fairly balanced system that could probably work for other places too.

I really like Liechtenstein. The earth is big enough to accommodate a quarter of a million Lichtensteins. I just don't want it to be the only thing. Democracies have a tendency to fall into tyranny and are too warlike, IMO. Power structures explicitly built on compromise trend towards giving advantage to special groups, and the game of life becomes all about getting into the right special group.

Monarchies, on the other hand, get accused of tyranny more often than they deserve it. A monarch is the owner of the land. I dispute any democracy's right to dispossess a land owner, for any reason.

Both can coexist. But I think we should recognize that democracies are, by far, the most warlike and tyrannical. They should be limited in size to the distance a man can walk in one day.

Can it be that you make a hypothesis based on two democratic countries that are regularly involved with wars? The US, which has all military power within the hands of the President alone. And Israel, which has been under several destructive attacks from its neighbours.

Or you got other examples of democratic countries that inniciated a war to give evidence to your point?

I give a List of offensive wars auf authoritarian countries to dismantel your point:

Deutsches Kaiserreich WW 1 1914-1918

Faschistisches Nazireich WW 2 1939-1945

Chinese communist party against Peoples republic of China 1945-49

Southcorean war 1945-now

Afghanistan 1948-1949

Iraque 1949

Myanmar Burmese conflict

Russia to attack on chechnia 94-96

Yugoslavian wars

All kartel wars

I place communism under the category of democracy. I'm not saying communism has never been tried - rather, the tyranny of it is the epitome of the will of the people, aka democracy.

Kaiser era Germany didn't start ww1 - the Serbians did. Geemany had a treaty obligation to their ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they fulfilled their obligation to their ally when it was attacked. The Austrian Empire was less "empire-y" than it sounds - it was a loose and relatively decentralized state that was mostly just a compromise among monarchs, each with far more autonomy that the so-called "states" in the supposedly freest country on earth now. The Black Hand killed the wrong guy, since the monarchy was trying to reform in favor of cultural autonomy. There's very good reason to believe they were an intelligence operation run by Great Britain, but I'm rusty on details, so I recommend delving into it yourself. At the end of the war, both Germany and Austria tried multiple times to make peace and the "allies" refused. That makes us the aggressors, regardless of how it started.

If you look at Renaissance era Europe, you see a bunch of small republics, mostly in north Italy and the Baltic coastline. The vast majority of wars in that era were between these small republics. Professional soldiering began in north Italy, where they were called "condottiere." Swiss soldiers were involved in all wars in Europe up until recently, and they've been a pioneer in democracy.

More monarchical places were much less interested in wars, or the wars were more about a king restoring the rights in the vassal arrangement. France's appenages were vassals bound by family ties and were notably less violent than the republics to their east. The eastern edge of the holy roman empire had fewer republics and generally settled their disputes at the electoral level of the HRE - princes from Bohemia, Austria, and Brandenburg were usually elected. The republics were ineligible for election because they lacked anyone electable, and as a result they had more to gain by using war to settle disputes.

After the French revolution, France became warlike. Before, it had the power to win wars but rarely engaged in them. Napoleon was a dictator, no doubt, but that's only after winning over the support of the populace, so there's an argument to be made that he was quite Democratic. England's wars grew in frequency and intensity after England gained a Parliament. The corruption between debt paper and Parliament caused England to militarily conquer a quarter of the planet's land. In the US, our democratic ideals did nothing to protect the native Americans from us. In fact, you can see that European monarchs generally abided by the treaties they made with the native Americans, whereas the more democratic America did not.

Back to communism, remember that the core of their system was the "Soviet" or local council. That's what Soviet means - council. They believed they were building democracy. We can look at history and pontificate about it nor being democratic, but that's not what they believed when they were doing it. Communism has no appeal outside the range of democratic ideals.

If you look at economy, what we see is the democratic use of credit to devalue the currency for any and all causes. Monarchies tended to stick to metals for currency. Credit money is effectively enslavement because it steals from savings, which is stored up work. I think its remarkable how quickly the US pivoted from chattel slavery to credit slavery. Its as if democracy literally can't work without slavery.

Why would that be? I say, because democracy is a power sharing arrangement. Sharing power means compromising with the powerful. Oligarchs will never stop pursuing their self interest. Democracy gives a mandate to an elected person to broker power - if they fail to do so, they have a failed state. They **_must_** give benefits to the oligarchs, in which I include all protected classes.

The nature of power is that it is conserved, in much the same way as the conservation of momentum or energy. If one person holds power, a proportional amount must be lost by others. In your city, theres a certain number of people with power, and you can fit it on one page, one name per line. Everyone else is merely competing to enter or remain in a special class. If you get your name on that hypothetical list, it is only at the expense of someone falling off the list. The only thing clever about a democracy is that it hides this reality from the average person. That's beneficial to the powerful people. But because power is shared, your position on the list is precarious. One way to accrue power without violating the Conservation of Power within your frame, is to take it from someone outside your frame. That's why democracies become a conspiracy to make war. It's not an intentional conspiracy (probably) but that's how the incentives align. Because power is conserved. Whatever you feel about power, it itself has its own behavior.

largely in major agreement with most of this note

I think according to this article you are right, that democracies can act to war as well:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09735984211042095?journalCode=jnra

But I would like to point out, that Democracy is rather a group of government forms, than a monolythic one. As soon as the 4 essential powers; Executive, Legislative and Judicative, being the fourth a fee press to report on the actions of the other three.

Then there has to be elected representatives in parlament.

So Democracy is still a wide spectrum on how deep the people can actively participate in the state. To give the positive example of Switzerland. Here people can directly vote for a new paragrapf in the constitution. And every level of law can be legally denied by voting too. To my knowledge no other country has this kind of democracy, where people have any direct influence on law creation. What is crutial in my eyes, since many socalled democracies give the people only indirect access to lawmaking. Is like when free software would only allow to choose the developer, but you would have to use their code independently of their implementation. And would have no right to tamper and self compile code.

So I want to state, that there are no democratic threat actors, that allow voting on active wars and their budgets.

And a personal question: Do you beliefe, you will always need someone to create the rules for you or you think to be able to live in a way, society can exist peacefully? You think you need someone to allow you getting into action or you want to decide for your own?

Good thoughts here. I don't believe anyone should tell another person how to live. I can make my own choices. You can make yours.

Liechtenstein is slightly more direct in its democracy than Switzerland. That's why I mentioned it - Switzerland too, though I should've gone more into it.

In the idealized version of democracy, I have no complaint. If it worked as well as it looks on paper, no problem. I just don't see it playing out. Liechtenstein seems good, though.

Thanks for mentioning Liechtenstein. Have never informed myself, how Liechtenstein is governed.

I am with you when it comes to the application of an ideal democratic system it is har to implement. Hard since all people who hold a lot of power today will loose it, when it is renovated towards ideal Democracy. So no question always when a country does this people with power will invest a lot of propaganda and advertisment in every form to create an idea of unorganized chaos, that could come with democratisation.

Only that in practice many very democratic groups work very well. When looking on Projects like Debian or Arch or even big companies like Google, which are successful and give their employees a lot of freedom in their manner to work.

And since I was listening to a podcas about Niklas Luhmanns Systemtheorie https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemtheorie_(Luhmann)

I am quiet sure that ell types of authoritarian systems are to some part a ponzi system. And this part grows until it comes to a forced collapse.

This since every system has its reason to exist fore and another part that is invested to keep the system in place (defend it). Every person that gets to a lot of power gets the opportunity to use some of it for his or her personal wealth, which is a kind of extortion of those who pay for it. This part of extortion can grow untilthere are more people lifing from extortion or corruption than those who create. And authoritarian regimes are chronically lacking selfcorrection, since critics are silenced most of the times until there is only yes man.

Yep. All true.

But I also think that the core of power is education. Every person that is well educated in a language has some basic mathematical and logical skills already has that bases of power inbetween his ears.

Disagree. That's potential, not power. Perhaps that's akin to mechanical power. Being able to do things is useful and could be leveraged into power, but power in the human context is more like the ability toake exceptions to rules. Most math professors can't do that.

So to say in a communist way. Those who are more equal are the powerful?

Can be one expression of power. I think being able to do stuff is power too. Liberties on is actively acting in are powers I would say. Like to meet with others discuss, plan something and do it.

Generic speaking I would frame power to align reality to my needs. And even the most known "powerful" people like Putin, Trump and Xi are not powerful in every way. FOr example they often do not have the power to go partying without bodyguards or having a picknick in whatever Park spontanously. Or going somewhere unrecognized without masking up.

They make up for it with Epstein parties and Pizza Gate parties.

Haha but to mee this does not seem the same level of freedom. Sad souls in their sad parties.

Seems like a bad way to spend a life

I now read a bit about Liechtenstein. "Liechtenstein is slightly more direct in its democracy than Switzerland." is probably not correct.

Comparison:

In Liechtenstein the people can propose laws and enact laws. But the monarch gets to say if they are accepted or not.

In Switzerland people can enforce an optional referendum to challenge any law that passed the parliament. Also there are popular initiatives to write a new law into constitution. In both of them noone is above the people. So the only difference seems to me, that Liechtenstein has a Monarch with a veto, where Switzerland has the people with a veto.

In general Switzerland is a strongly federated state. So everything a county can handle is managed by it. When not they can pass sovereignity a level up to the canton. Same for the canton and only a very small part is then to organize by the national state.

the cool thing about Liechtenstein is that communities can opt out of the state.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-we-can-learn-liechtenstein

Its possible that my source for that was biased - most of what I know about both states is from Prince Hans' book, "The State in the Third Millennium." Highly recommend, although I think the middle of the book is a slog to get through.

So maby much more in the way opensource projects work today. When enough people are in support of a project, they are maby able to pay someone to work on it without requesting intrests. But the intrest is then the new infrastructure that is built.

Maby it is also enough for a working society, when lyers and conmen are hold accountable for stealing money without the intention to give something back. So I can be putten to prison, when I fundraise money to help the hungry to only buy myself a new car for example.

Yeah that's a great example. And I think it incentivizes integrity for both parties. The investor gets some ownership, which means they're personally invested in the project. Someone loaning money only wants a return, and will do whatever is necessary to get that return. Different behaviors.

I heard birds aren't real.