Who would you be if you did all the things you should be doing?

I wish you love

I wish you happiness

I guess I wish

You all the best

GM

Election Day in Germany.

Happy Sunday !

Gm ☕️ Be l33t and say it back 🫂

Sometimes the hardest times are the times you cherish the most later. Because that's when you find out the most about yourself, good and bad.

The appeal of price controls

Yes, we all know it's stupid policy and ultimately will create massive shortages, more government power and general poverty. But Kamala Harris is proposing it and there are political realities that we really need to think about.

Price controls come about politically because they are popular. People like getting stuff for less. In the short term, it makes people happy. They get something that they've been buying without the inflation. Sure, there will be less producers and deep government intervention and eventually scarcity of the product as they go into black markets if at all. But in the short term, when the producers haven't adjusted yet, the stuff looks like it's free and it helps the politician that imposed it.

The last guy to do price controls on food was Richard Nixon, and he had to do it because he suspended dollar convertibility. He had an election to win in 1972, so he implemented price controls. And guess what? He won in a landslide, because he mitigated the effects of the abandonment of the gold standard through price controls.

Long term, the price controls were a complete disaster. Theere were long lines at the gas stations, inflation went into hyperdrive and the productivity of the 70's was completely lost to stagflation. But it got him the election.

So while Kamala's political positions look stupid from the Bitcoiner point of view, don't underestimate its appeal to normies that don't understand economics. It's not as terrible a move as it seems.

Nostr serves as the credible backup plan for when governments seize or ban X.

Crypto is a cesspool filled with affinity scammers and frauds fronting as visionaries.

Banff!

Camel meatballs.

#foodstr

Financial privacy isn’t always about the government or corporations. Sometimes it’s simply about peers. Here’s an anecdote.

In Egypt, people born into lower socioeconomic statuses often don’t have a lot of flexibility for their life path. It’s often largely set by family and tradition, especially for women. And so, it’s kind of the luck of the draw how constructive their family is.

In certain social circles, a girl is generally considered the responsibility of her father. If she dates, has sex, doesn’t wear hijab, etc, then it is considered to reflect badly on him.

Once she marries, responsibility over her is transferred to her husband. He will usually control the main income, he will often control the family finances even if she does have an income, and he will often control most major decisions. And divorce is structured in favor of men here. Initiating a divorce as a woman comes with more limitations and consequences.

Many fathers push their daughters to marry pretty early so that they can relieve themselves of responsibility for her, even if she’s not thrilled about the prospective husband. She can be pressured socially, economically, and sometimes even physically. And at that socioeconomic level, she likely isn’t fluent in other languages, likely has not been exposed to outside ideas very much, is likely surrounded by people who would take her father’s side against her, and so the direction and pressure from her family is mainly how she contextualizes her role in the world.

So in many cases, someone goes from a girl with little power to a wife with little power at a young age, and with limited economic, social, or legal recourse if it ends up not being a good path. A decent percentage of fathers and husbands are abusive, unfortunately. In theory there are safeguards against this, but in practice it’s easy to fall through the cracks.

I know a family that owns an apartment building in Cairo, and they employ a husband and wife as live-in assistants to oversee the property and their family, like a casual butler and maid basically. He cleans, runs errands, and provides security, while she cleans and cooks. The husband and wife come from a low socioeconomic background, and have both been working for the family for 15 years, and are heavily trusted. They make like $4k/year USD equivalent combined, plus receive free basic shelter and a used car.

The husband and wife do not have bank accounts, so they just save in physical Egyptian cash that quickly devalues. Inflation in Egypt hurts people like them the most. With their extended family, they also own a unit for themselves in an apartment building in a poor neighborhood. It’s an unfinished raw brick building that they don’t live in. Their extended family all contribute to the shared building structure and underlying small land lot, and they own their unit within the structure and can choose to invest in finishing it with electricity and plumbing and flooring and furniture to live in, or just leave it as an empty brick hull. Many remain unfinished like that indefinitely throughout Cairo; it’s basically treated as illiquid savings and optionality.

Anyway, one day when the wife was getting a raise from the family that employs her, she asked that her raise be kept private from her husband. She wanted to have autonomy over that portion; their combined income is otherwise mainly under his control. Her husband is by all accounts a nice guy, but that is the common way of doing things in their socioeconomic circle. A private raise would let her keep a tiny bit of pocket cash in her own control. One of the things she wanted to do with some of her own money was send a tiny bit each month to a family member that needed help. So the family agreed to keep her raise private.

As her pocket cash eventually grew a bit, the next challenge arose: how to keep it safe and secret while living in a 250 square foot living area with her husband and daughter. She went back to her employer and asked if she could keep her private savings with them as an informal bank. They agreed to do that for her as well.

As is the case for many people like her, even though she doesn’t have a bank account, she does have a smartphone. Over time, certain types of mobile wallets and their widespread adoption could improve her ability to save privately and in less debase-able ways, and that don’t rely on the particular helpfulness of her employer. And if not her, then maybe her daughter one day.

A shoutout to all the devs working on such wallets and their ease of use; there are certainly plenty of people in the world who could benefit from them!