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Today's the day India officially said:
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If Javier Milei's popularity leads to Austrian Economics going mainstream, that'd be epic.
Its influence on Ambedkar is almost never talked about in India.
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Governments can't kill Bitcoin.
But they can definitely prevent an industry or an ecosystem from emerging around it.
They have successfully done that in India.
Here's how:
•Banks were pressured not to work with emerging Bitcoin companies, even after the supreme court in 2020 overturned a half-a-decade (unconstitutional I must add) ban.
•It is almost impossible to procure ASICs in India because of import duties, which means hash rate from the China ban either stayed in China or moved to Kazakhstan or the west. An opportunity to be a leading participant in the coming energy revolution, squandered.
•Liquidity on exchanges dried up as buyers, sellers, market makers and liquidity providers refused to touch orderbooks because of two things:
1% TDS which is a tax levied on every trade and 30% Income tax levied on profits.
•Now, they've blocked off access to international exchanges that had a thriving P2P market because Indian exchanges ratted them out to the Indian Government for being 'non-compliant'. The license raj days of protectionism are back.
•The media piled on, almost like they were the government's mouthpiece, reporting nothing about Bitcoin except petty scams and crimes, which piled on to the social disrepute and legal uncertainty industry participants were already facing.
As a result of all this, an emerging sector in tech has been amputated without being given a chance.
Employment opportunities are next to non-existent for those who want to work in the industry. Those who want to start ventures of their own find it difficult to raise serious capital to operate at a competitive scale. It is not feasible to be in India and work in or start a venture in Bitcoin.
Sometime during late 2024 or early 2025, the hindutva mob is going to come after Bitcoin for being anti-national. It will be considered a national security threat.
Free speech, open internet, individual rights and free markets will be labelled as colonial ideals that go against the Bharatiya consciousness.
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தமிழகத்தின் மறுமலர்ச்சி வருகிறது
காத்திரு தமிழனே!
நம் காலம் வருகிறது
What should the media be doing while the Tamilnadu government and the Union government are fighting over tax devolutions?
1. Repeat what political parties' press releases, white papers, ministers and functionaries say and make everyone more angry and divided ❌
2. Download budget docs from the ministry websites, see what comes in and goes out in the form of tax revenues. Differentiate between direct and indirect taxes. Mention the finance commission and its relevance in this context.
Cite. Link. Fact check. Educate. ✅
The best form of government is one that has adequate horizontal and vertical distribution of power.
Horizontal: Distribution of power between the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary.
Vertical: Distribution of power between the National, State and Local levels.
Each vertical level should have adequate horizontal distribution of power within their mechanisms as well.
I am of a strong conviction that the best that contemporary governments can do is to work towards a society where barriers to internet access is eradicated rather than restricted.
Integrating the internet into the electoral and governance processes can lead to a country where it is feasible to focus on local governance with concrete expectations and outcomes rather than the narrative-driven mess that an emphasis on state and national governance has and will leave continue to leave us in.
Curriculums in schools should have responsible use of the internet as a mandatory part of children's education. And more importantly, a use of social media and other internet-related services is a skill that will prove invaluable to them irrespective of what they end up doing in the future.
India has nearly 830 million internet subscribers according to data from TRAI.
I recognise the gaps in this line of thinking because things like provision of housing, poverty reduction, electrification, access to education, healthcare and drinking water and of course, infrastructure development will be things that rank higher in priority when it comes to budgetary allocations.
But a Government spending absolutely zero money or time on developing the internet infrastructure of the country cannot be acceptable in the world we live in.
nostr:note1xpdq0ec7k5l2ltmvupvx2dkh4xlfqxs2udd5uwvn9srgm8kjqxzsw0hqwv
This is a brilliant article
BJP Govt 2014-2024 in the Parliament:
•Pass really good bills and bring in reforms that has taken and will definitely take the country to the next level
•Sneak in some clauses that will destroy personal freedoms, fundamental rights, privacy and dissent in the name of anti-colonialism, national security and economic development
Worst time in India to be a moderate, centrist or a neutral voter
•Insult and undermine the intelligence of those who don't vote for the party you support
•Get into arguments and avoid contacting friends and family who don't share your political view
•Justify every single legislation that is passed in the assembly/parliament, even the unconstitutional ones that take away people's personal freedoms
•Dismiss all their oligarchic, undemocratic tendencies using justifications fed to you by party propaganda
•Be unable to publicly criticize the party you support because you're afraid the ingroup might reject you
Congratulations, you're an unpaid foot soldier for a political movement that doesn't want you to think for yourself. Doesn't matter if the colour of the towel is orange & green or black & red.
The social internet needs to move on from follower/following relationships
There are various internal conflicts that occur within me when it comes to political positions.
It's between a guy who is proud of being a Tamilan and another who is proud of being an Indian.
There's another dormant part of me that is proud of my communal ancestry, the expression of which has been made inappropriate over the last few decades by the self-respect movement, the dravidian parties, etc.
And the fourth and final part which is also my favourite is the Bitcoiner who thinks all of this is a psyop and that more power and control to local governments is the way forward.
👌
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The answer to this question nicely explains something very important to know about Bitcoin: difference between 'consensus' and 'standardness'
Conversation about the recent issues I've been having with Mutiny:
Thoughts and notes after using GPT 3.5 through ChatGPT, GPT 4 through Bing, Gemini and Palm through Bard for a few months:
Always experienced considerable Gell-Mann Amnesia every time I used them. As in, their responses related to things I know a good deal about were always inaccurate or unsatisfactory, so I found it difficult to find any response they gave credible.
I have an assumption that these models were trained by people who think they are training them with accurate and good data points, but in truth they aren't. Only experts of a particular field have the experience and understanding of what information is credible and what isn't.
Domain authority, number of backlinks and therefore SEO rankings being high do not mean a source is credible. Just because a piece of information made it to wikipedia doesn't mean said info is accurate. Journalists make mistakes and have biases all the time. Just because NYT said that the US is a moody, woke teenager personified doesn't make it true.
I suppose this highlights a fascinating insight into how our very own minds work.
Someone who aims to understand everything ends up understanding nothing at all. That sums up all these models.