The Maga crowd cheering on tariffs and insisting that they make America strong and will force their opponents to capitulate sound exactly like the Brexiters did five years ago.
They are certain that their country imposing sanctions upon itself can only hurt the foreign countries and could in no way ever make their own country smaller, poorer, and it's people more impoverished.
How could that be? After all punching yourself in the face is a show of strength! We are strong! đ
They fantasize about Canada capitulating (to do what?) in the same way as the Brexiters fantasized about the German Car Industry forcing the EU to capitulate.
These things come in trends, tit for tat, soon all the countries will be punching themselves in the face to show strength. Then they'll start punching each other.
Britain once again leading the world! This time at autoimmolation.
#tariffs #brexit #uspol #ukpol
What if your government is in fact just trying to distract you while they loot the state and consolidate power and control?
*Ten million people, obviously. I accidentally a word.
A bit surprising that Trump would want 30 million extra liberal-leaning voters ready and likely to vote against him, but in the ridiculous ludicrous unlikely hypothetical where Canada joined the US surely it'd be about three or four states, not just one. Average state size is less than a ten people. Quebec would demand independent statehood at least.
All in all though, California leaving the union is more likely than Canada joining it.
Quitting your job is a very holy act, well done.
Nobody will win this battle, even Bitcoin's price will suffer. World trade will suffer. Americans and Canadians and Mexicans and Chinese will suffer. America started the fight by punching themselves in the face, and then Canada and Mexico follow suit. All wars are dumb but this is a very very dumb war.
Twitter doesn't have any users, it only has a boss with political power. That's what they're buying access to, not the bots and troll that lurk on that nazi troll website.
So you'd rather program yourself and society and the kids to believe false things that aren't true, in order to prevent awareness of systematic injustice?
Good luck!
I'll stick with the maxim, that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
Sounds like you want the Church Of England. Anglican ministers are mostly fairly atheist. After all, it was started just to get a king a divorce. đ
Though my observation is that "Christians" mostly seem to be bigots who don't practice anything like what Jesus preached, especially those who follow GOP Jesus. I think the world would be better off without it, especially if we can get rid of all the other religions too since they are all made up.
Nor did OpenAI, who pirated the entire web.
Rachel Reeves is delivering her speech from Siemens rather than to the commons, I guess because Business is the most important thing now?
She's explaining how she'll make the economy grow.
She thinks thriving businesses create jobs for workers, rather than the workers creating wealth for the businesses. So that's a bad start.
Apparently as she wonders around the UK she finds our dying high streets optimistic! Because of AI and Deep Mind and Siemens.
All those other politicians before her have lacked courage and not prized growth, she thinks. đ
So she wants:
* Stability
Which means budget responsibility, fiscal rules, no taxing business, and thus no government spending.
There is No Alternative, apparently.
Growth though government spending to build state-owned infrastructure is unmentionable!
* Reform to attract investment
Make is easier for business to borrow and trade and build. But NOT rejoining the common market of course, only a "reset". đ It means improving our relationship with Trump instead. He's all about free trade you see. đ.
They'll cut benefits to create jobs somehow?? And reduce immigration, because extra workers are notoriously bad for growth? đ
Also let companies raid their pension funds more easily. 𤯠They'll change the monopolies and mergers commission so it allows bigger more monopolistic business.
Planning reform, to streamline the process and reform environmental legislation to help business ride roughshod over local objections and build data-centers and nuclear power plants and airports and windfarms even if they're environmentally unsound and bad for bats.
* Get investment from abroad
Because the UK can't print it's own money to invest with I guess.
Expand investment schemes to bribe billionaires with lower taxes and more subsidies.
National wealth fund to give billions to companies to build private charging network, and a private metal refinery to build solar power panels.
Remove marine protections to allow building windfarms even if they kill the fishes.
Launch an "industrial strategy" to give money to billionaires so they will build AI data-centers and life-sciences labs and deliver a privately-owned infrastructure like a crossing at Dover owned by a private company.
New investment rule to allow counting government owned infrastructure as an asset (oh, a good one! đ )
Upgrade some railways especially in the north and so attract private business to build houses at the stations. (eh, okay, maybe some council-owned social housing too would be nice?)
Finally, she's going to allow Heathrow to try and build a new runway, which definitely will not be a boondogle project that runs for years and costs billions because we don't have the workers to build it, and ends up cancelled because it's environmentally unconscionable.
--
So all in all, they are determined that they will seek private growth and billionaire investment in private enterprise and ignore almost all opportunity to grow government-owned infrastructure or enterprise.
Which means they will be nice to Billionaires and crack down on the sick people and the environment and state owned enterprise to achieve it.
Which also means they will fail, because in reality billionaires don't cause growth, they are parasitic upon it. Growth comes from the workers, from a rich middle class proving the demand which the billionaires and businesses then exploit.
Not to mention that growth at the cost of the environment might end up dooming us all.
#ukPol #economics #growth #rachelReeves
Lots of folks spreading warnings: Oh, careful what you type into DeepSeek! It might be spying on you for the communist Chinese government.
But really, if someone is gonna be spying on me, would I rather it was:
* the Chinese communist party who have essentially no affect or influence over my life at all and are based half a world away
or
* western capitalist corporations who try to control everything I see and hear and push adverts in my face and bribe my government and affect my life in ways innumerable and uncountable?
âď¸ đ¤ˇ
I mean I'd rather none of them were allowed or able to spy on me but if someone has to...
The best economics video of the day though is Gary Stephenson again, on Novara Media's "Downstream"
Gary is awesome.
Watched https://youtu.be/xRX7l_2HZEw this morning.
I like Richard, and agree with him quite often. But he has a very fixed idea of what he calls "money", which is a very new one really that's only existed since the 70s. From his definition of "money" there wasn't any money before that. Which is obviously wrong.
He should surely really accept that there are more than one type of money.
This narrow thinking about what money is leads him to the mistakes in that video:
1) "Deflation means every pound has to be be worth less". Not sure if he just misspoke there, but deflation means the value of the pound goes up, not down. In a growing economy with a fixed number of pounds each pound has to be worth more to make sure there's enough money to go around.
2) "When we face a deflationary situation people stop spending" - this may be a true fact, but what our environment and economy urgently needs is degrowth. We need people to stop spending, to stop heating up the world. Also: Inflationary money requires this constant growth but this doesn't mean spending is actually better than saving. saving is good too, and in a deflationary economy we get more saving. Is Richard against savings?
3) He seems to think volatility makes a thing useless as a hedge against inflation. My personal accounts would suggest otherwise. It's hedged against inflation just fine for me. The volatility is a result of the rapid monetization of the asset, over-leverage and speculation. But none of those things have prevented bitcoin going up faster on average than the money supply has inflated.
4) "Bitcoin can't be digital gold", he reckons, "because other cryptocurrencies exist". But this would imply Gold can't be Gold because other metals exist. It's just wrong. Those other thing's aren't Bitcoin. They do not have the longest chain with the most proof of work. Only Bitcoin has that. Bitcoin is now more limited in supply than gold. His suggestion that there is no limit to bitcoin issuance because other things can be used instead is wrong.
5) "At least gold has some uses", this is where he's wrong about money again. Having some use other than money is a BAD thing for a money. Gold is being taken off the market because people want it for electronics and for jewellery. That's bad for gold being money, and it's even worse for electronics and jewelry because they pay the monetary premium. A money is a better money if it has no other use than money. This doesn't make it worse, it makes it better.
6) "It is just an entry in a ledger, literally meaningless worthless empty. Bitcoin is a myth, it doesn't exist". And yet that is also all true of the pound. An entry in a bank ledger. Meaningless and empty, doesn't really exist. Only pounds of course are being diluted all the time, expanded by government as the economy grows. And when it doesn't. Growing less valuable every day.
No money creates value. It's a measure. A meter ruler doesn't create space, only measures it.
All money is a giant ponzi scheme, including pounds and dollars and bitcoin. And dollars/pounds may be worse because Tories can just print up billions of them to give to their mates in corrupt procurement deals.
Got my Strike account / app up and running. Seems pretty cool.
Transferred some sats from my lightning node in a lightning payment to the bitcoin balance of the Strike app. Went though as quickly and easily. Can also receive on-chain with an address it offers.
Gives me a "lightning address", which would allow me to link this account to Nostr for zaps/tipping over there, or for anyone to send me lightning sats now through it's system. I'll probably stick to using my own node though.
The GBP account is fine, topped up with a sort-code/account-number from my bank, I can configure whether that gets automatically converted to bitcoin or not. Bank transfer took way longer than Lightning. Coz it's Sunday I guess? Or coz it's first payment there? About 40 minutes for that to appear.
Tabs at the bottom to switch between BTC/GBP balances, looks like I can only withdraw into my own account here (or send to some foreign banks, not including UK or USA or EU 𤨠). So can't be using Strike to pay my electricity bill, say. Until Octopus accept Lightning payments I guess, or "bill pay" feature gets added outside the USA.
It's stated GBP price for Bitcoin is about 0.5% below Coinbase's quoted last-sale price right now. Plus charged me 64p in fees (Though it says they are not paid in reoccurring transactions).
Got a little price-graph at the bottom. BTC is up 988688.75% in the default "all time" graph. đ
You could have your wages paid in and automatically converted to Bitcoin, either immediately or with a daily or weekly order. Live your live paying with Lighting or some other bank's credit card, then pay your credit card bill monthly from the app. Live the 100% bitcoin standard life if you wanted.
All custodial though, so if the balances get beyond hot-wallet amounts I can send out to a bitcoin wallet either over lightning or on-chain.
Excellent stuff. Thanks nostr:npub1cn4t4cd78nm900qc2hhqte5aa8c9njm6qkfzw95tszufwcwtcnsq7g3vle
I tell you what will really drive US government efficiency: A really slow redundant inefficient database!
I tell you what will really protect important government data: making it all public on a really slow redundant database!
What?
How do you even?
> Musk exploring blockchain use in US government efficiency effort
I can see a case for making government finance public, or for having a sign-off for every transaction, but there's no reason at all to do that with any kind of blockchain.
Madness from the so-called government-efficiency department.
#musk #uspol #blockchain
I mean I haven't disabled the bridge either, so it's possible someone is following my fedi account through a bridge but if they do I don't know about it.
I've never bridged from Fedi to Nostr, always been separate accounts.
Hummm, was hoping I could configure it more directly than through Alby but if it's gonna require a proxy of some sort anyway.
Hopefully that means that now not only am I able to zap, I'm also zappable?
Probably won't ever say anything interesting enough to find out.