In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels call for "Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
They were writing in an age where pretty much all European currencies were on some metallic standard, so they had a hard time imagining a true fiat currency. Marx also operated from a labor theory of value, which meant that he believed value could not be created purely by fiat.
However, Marx and Engels did call for the abolition of money ("abolition of buying and selling") in the Communist Manifesto. Lenin tried to do this directly during the Bolshevik Revolution by issuing a transitional fiat currency (sovznaks) whose value was "guaranteed by the full property of the state". (Just as today, a fiat currency's value is ultimately backed by the GDP of the country that issues it.) However, the wartime Soviet Union had very little property or economy to speak of, so the sovznak hyperinflated so quickly that a gold standard was reintroduced between 1922-1924. But the Soviet ruble was never really redeemable for gold by the general public, making it a fiat currency in all but name.
Chartalism & MMT have become so identified with "the left" today that many would likely be surprised that Marx had this to say about money:
"the issue of paper money must be restricted to the quantity of gold (or silver) which would actually be in circulation, and which is represented symbolically by the paper money… If the paper money exceeds its proper limit, i.e. the amount in gold coins of the same denomination which could have been in circulation, then, quite apart from the danger of becoming universally discredited, it will still represent within the world of commodities only that quantity of gold which is fixed by its immanent laws."
- Capital, Vol. 1
https://shoutout.wix.com/so/4bOn_DJL_?languageTag=en&cid=b2ee29f9-4813-4de1-b275-7af8e15a86c5
Chapters in The Satoshi Papers include:
- Dr. Natalie Smolenski (@NSmolenski), "Towards an Anthropological Theory of Money"
- Dr. Sarah Kreps (@sekreps), "Easy Money, Easy Wars: The Evolution of War Finance and the Emergence of Forever Wars"
- Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester), "Why Business Cycles Are Rooted in Fraud: A Classical Explanation and Definition"
- Dr. Aaron Daniel (@wadaniel), "Bitcoin: Advancing Dispute Resolution beyond the State"
- Leopoldo Bebchuk (Microstrategy), "Bitcoin and the 2023 Argentinian Revolution: Beyond Central Banking?"
- Jack Watt (@SovrynBTC), "Bitcoin and Credit"
Combine world-historical mission, high risk, and top talent, and you get civilization-defining outcomes.
As the world flees to safety in all things, the places that privilege science and entrepreneurship will thrive against all odds.
“Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd’s rampancy.”
- Stefan Zweig, “Montaigne,” 1942
A lot of people (in this Twitter space) genuinely don’t believe it’s possible for America to default; for there to be any crisis of sovereign credit for the U.S.
At some point, the slippery slope becomes a cliff
"RED ALERT: Buried in the House intelligence committee’s Section 702 “reform” bill, which is schedule for a floor vote as soon as tomorrow, is the biggest expansion of surveillance inside the United States since the Patriot Act."
Elizabeth Goitein
“Abandoning politics” is neither desirable nor possible for universities. Here is why:
Young people attending institutions of higher education are curious about the world and coming into adulthood. They are seeking purpose and meaning. They want to understand why things are the way they are and what they can do to make the world a better place. They want to understand how to make trade-off decisions about different things they value.
These are naturally political questions. Students are there to understand what a just society looks like; what a good life could be; and to explore the tension between owning their past and building their own future.
Universities that take strident stands about policing speech, whether that is speech of a specific political point of view or “political” speech as such, do violence against the process of becoming that students are already living. What is needed are not draconian restrictions on speech, but faculty and administrators who do a better job nurturing student curiosity and care. That does mean making the University a “safe space”—but a safe space for disagreement, for conflict, for failure, and for the magic of forging solidarities that would otherwise not emerge.
This requires a real commitment to the principles of free inquiry, free speech, and free association. Such a commitment will no doubt alienate some students, parents, and donors. It may make some politicians and voters angry. So be it. Leaders of institutions of higher education must accept that their mission is first and foremost a mission of care for students, and that means that occasionally other objectives—political palatability, capital campaigns, prestige, and enrollment must be sacrificed. People’s feelings will be hurt. People will feel unsafe. People will be angry—even outraged. The skillful leader, the skillful educator, understands that that is part of the mission of pedagogy. That is the developmental work they signed up for.
Finally, and importantly, University students are not children. They are adults on the verge of entering the adult world. That means they should be treated with respect, not coddled. They should be exposed to difficult information and learn to have difficult conversations—also in respectful ways. It is only when young people are treated as morally autonomous beings, capable of coming to their own conclusions about an often ambiguous and indeterminate reality, that they can truly grow and mature.
All too often, Universities have created a culture of “knowing better” in which faculty and administrators manipulate and dictate to students what they should believe and where the bounds of inquiry are. This culture must be changed in any University that wishes to be more than an expensive ersatz rite of passage.
The solution to conflict on campuses is therefore not to stifle it, but to accept it and to help students navigate it in a mature and autonomous way. This requires faculty and administrators themselves to model maturity and autonomy. And that can only happen bottom-up, over time, as a result of broader culture change in American society.
“For the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not. So the perfectly unjust man must be given the most perfect injustice, and nothing must be taken away; he must be allowed to do the greatest injustices while having provided himself with the greatest reputation for justice. And if, he should trip up in anything, he has the power to set himself aright; if any of his unjust deeds should come to light, he is capable both of speaking persuasively and of using force, to the extent that force is needed, since he is courageous and strong and since he has provided for friends and money.”
- Glaucon, in Plato’s “Republic”
The state, which includes the banks, is trying to reframe privacy (good) as “going dark” (bad/sus).
Don’t let them. Push back and push forward.
Northern Gaza has now incurred greater destruction than Dresden did after years of Allied bombing during WWII. Southern Gaza is quickly catching up as the Israeli bombardment follows Netanyahu’s directive to “thin” the population of Gaza “to a minimum” by pushing the Gazan population into neighboring Arab countries and into the sea (ostensibly, to force them to seek refuge in Europe).
More civilians have died during the last two months in Gaza than during years of conflict in Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen. Children accounted for around 6%-10% of deaths in those conflicts. In Gaza, 40-50% of deaths are children. The UN, Doctors Without Borders, and other aid organizations report that there are no safe places for civilians in Gaza. Every place is a target.
The civilian death and casualty toll is horrific. One out of every 150 people has been killed. The Lancet, a respected medical journal, has independently verified the Gaza Ministry of Health data and found that the recorded death rate for UN relief workers is actually *higher* than that of the civilian population. This is likely due to the sheer number of bodies buried under rubble that have not yet been counted. People are also routinely dying from treatable injuries and lack of access to food and clean water. Diseases are spreading. Medical care has collapsed.
More UN workers have been killed in this conflict than in any other, ever. It is also the most deadly conflict for journalists in the last 30 years. Media outlets and the homes of journalists are being explicitly targeted for destruction.
American military equipment is being used to eviscerate the population of Gaza. But we are not “at war.”
There is absolutely no excuse or justification for this ethnic cleansing. Every aspect of this conflict could have been prevented with a political solution to the conflict: a one-state democracy with equal rights for all. All this required was a few principled leaders with political courage and will. Instead, we are witnessing a campaign of indiscriminate slaughter while our political leaders engage in cowardly equivocation, denial, show trials, and performative “resolutions” to legislate for the American people what they should think.
Sources:
ft.com/content/7b407c…
aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/1…
theintercept.com/2023/12/03/net…
reliefweb.int/report/occupie…
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
brookings.edu/articles/gaza-…
time.com/6342821/israel…
time.com/6330906/israel…
Any time someone with immense power gets publicly outraged about something it’s pretty safe to assume that they have done or are actively doing that thing
Property rights are under continuous challenge in the U.S.
This is how the rule of law slips away.
Militaries are and will continue to be the earliest adopters of AI. That includes nation-state militaries, paramilitaries, private military corporations, private security firms, and police (which are increasingly militarized all over the world).
AI military technologies are not more or less moral than human actors would be. What they do is *accelerate* the pace of destruction, as this quote from a former Gospel operative illustrates (article linked below):
“We prepare the targets automatically and work according to a checklist,” a source who previously worked in the target division told +972/Local Call. “It really is like a factory. We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.”
Whatever the political leadership of militaries using this technology say publicly about its “greater precision” and its “minimization of civilian casualties” is a palatable lie that provides political cover for its actual aims. Those aims are revealed by the incentives that operatives on the ground function from: strike as many targets as possible in as little time as possible. If an operative doesn’t hit their implicit or explicit “death quota,” no doubt more “effective” operatives will be found.
The thing that is most likely to rein in the pace at which AI-enhanced weapons are used in warfare would be a robust multilateral treaty. But we don’t live in that world. The leaders of governments around the world are not inclined to do the arduous and unpopular work of forging diplomatic coalitions with, and constraining their power against, “enemy states.” As a result, the pace of AI development and utilization in warfare will continue to hockey-stick.
This is the cost of poor leadership and a lack of political vision: vast destruction, coming soon to a conflict near you.
TPB64 with NSmolenski drops tomorrow:
When I was in Elementary School, a U.S.-led NATO war in Yugoslavia took place. I became aware of the depth of anti-American sentiment in many parts of the world.
I told a few of my classmates, “I think America needs make more friends in the world, because we won’t be the most powerful country forever.”
One of my classmates responded absent-mindedly, “No, we’re always going to be on top.” And then went on to do something else.
I had the sinking feeling that I may have to live through an era when most of the Americans around me realize for the first time what it means to no longer be able to dictate terms to everyone—in a world where they’ve made enemies they don’t even know about.
In the world that is to come (in the near future), there will be #CBDCs, stablecoins, and #Bitcoin .
Each will be used for different purposes.
People will be keenly aware that there is control money and liberty money--& which is which. They will store their wealth accordingly.
(People will likely only hold and transact as much CBDC ("captive money") as is legally mandated. The threshold is super low anyway (max ~$2,500) to avoid cannibalizing bank deposits. For stablecoins and digital fiat, the on and off-ramps to BTC will likely be a continuous battle.)
(In addition to base-chain privacy improvements, BTC will mostly be used as part of a larger protocol stack (i.e. BTC/LN, BTC/ARK, etc.), much like TCP/IP is today. Final settlement to the base chain will only be one part of a layered transaction ecosystem.)
One problem with using political institutions to solve complex, global problems like climate change is that a significant % of the global population simply will not trust whatever organizations are setting the rules.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2023/10/21/climate-change/climate-loss-damage-talks/