Good take!

When we analyze whether a particular region is a free market, or to get a sense of the degree to which it is a free market, I think we can start with a few basic prerequisites:

1. The user/owner of the means of production or the goods produced with them is able to exchange what he owns or produced with other people - land, capital, resources, raw materials, consumer goods, production goods, etc.

2. This exchange happens at prices that both parties agree upon

3. The user/owner has the ultimate say in how his means of production is used - he decides what to produce, or not produce, when to produce, and in what quantity

4. Property titles and contracts regarding property titles are honoured and restitution mechanisms exist in case of violations

5. The money - medium of exchange - that people use holds its value/purchasing power over a long period of time and is easily exchangeable. And when it doesn't, people have the ability to shift to something else.

6. The ultimate form of ownership - ownership of self - is respected. One's body and fruits of one's labour exerted with one's body is safe from harm or being expropriated. And people have the ultimate say in what endeavour they choose to engage in with their selves.

Of course, no country or industry has this state of affairs to the fullest extent. But the degree to which these perquisites exist in a particular region, country or industry - big or small, private or public, capitalist, socialist or communist, democracy, oligarchy or autocracy - whatever the name is attached to it by narratives and storytelling by the media, is the degree to which it is a free market

Basically, lot of words to say that the degree to which property rights are respected determines how much of a free market a particular region is.

And it will also determine the degree to which we see economic growth, productivity and an increase in standard of living in that country or industry.

No one ever understands when I try telling them about China (in the US). China has an actual free market. You must see it to grasp how not-free America's market it. People there... Get this, this wild, man... People there **_start businesses._** In fact, everyone I knew there had a business, even if they had employment somewhere else. Everyone, not one exception. You can walk into actual businesses, little shops that have nothing to do with franchises or government. Shop after shop after shop... And a couple streets over, its factory after factory after factory. They're not uptight about you just walking into a factory and looking, either. Would that fly in the US? I doubt it, if you could even find one.

If you're in the US, look around and see how many businesses or friends are employed by the government, or who's employment would disappear if the government stopped paying somewhere in the chain. Even dog sitters would lose their income if the government stopped paying the business the dog owner is employed at. Small businesses are forced to franchise - that's basically a business on top of a business that only exists to manage the layers of compliance and regulatory burden. Franchises don't exist in free markets. Got some economic reason to disagree? GFY, I know my econ. The whole facade of "free market" in the US is more entry barrier than market.

The town I'm in is "growing" - there's "progress" here, as the boomers call it. That's only for one reason - there's a university with several tens of thousands of kids there basically being employed by government policy to sit there and grow their debt. That's their job. Every year there's over ten thousand 18 year olds showing up who signed a thing that exchanges their productive potential for a giant pile of debt. That debt is the only reason there's roads being built here, after several layers of corruption where bureaucrats or companies that are paid by government take a cut. And after the road is built, all the businesses that appear are franchises. You know who they pay rent to? The university. The town is owned by the university, literally. And it takes one or two **_years_** to build anything here. Nothing takes that long in China. Nothing. Free markets are wild!

Oh but China's BAD!!! Orange man : "CHIIIINA!!" There is one reason for all this anti-china rhetoric and protectionism, and its not geopolitics or containment. Its debt. Not that China owns our debt - that's the usual thought stopper when I talk to "conservatives." Without inflation, our debt can't be serviced. The payments on American debt **_at all levels_** require inflation, or the payments stop. Even your mortgage and those kids' student debt. But especially the $37 trillion of federal debt. Inflation makes payments manageable because if everything costs more after the debt is taken, including wages, then its like you borrowed less. This is why it's smart to use debt - take as much as you can, cuz you're fucking the lender. That's the game. But that also means that anything that's deflationary is the enemy of America. China's gazillion factories are deflationary : that makes China the enemy. You buy cheap shit from China : debt doesn't get devalued as fast as the corrupt class would like. Even American factories are America's enemy. Anything, anywhere, that allows supply to meet demand and prices to not rise, is deflationary, and thus America's enemy. That's it. That's the whole story, from why you can't afford groceries up to why a carrier fleet parks in some other country's waters. The beast is driven by hunger ; the hunger of the beast is debt.

I **_wish_** I knew one person in real life who could understand this. Its not even particularly complicated... But people are too busy with their side gigs to think about stuff. I **_almost_** had a conversation about it with a biologist over Thanksgiving. Almost!!! But they thought I was too radical, like maybe I'm a Commy or something, **_because I wanted the government to do less._** lol. We're so fucked.

That's a smart strategy. I've noticed that some people are ready to hear about it and they'll go research it like mad and others won't care no matter what I say.

Sometimes it's just like that. As I continue to liberate myself it makes it easier for others to see the benefits and challenge their assumptions.

Cringe confession: I know every single word of Hamilton 😂 I love it

Yeah there are many roads to the same goal. Personally I've found that explaining the issues of the fiat system is one of the hardest.

I generally start off by saying, "Dollars are expressly designed to lose value every year through inflation. Everyone knows that, we all experience that. Bitcoin doesn't have that issue. It's a smart idea to buy a little bit every week and start learning from there."

It's a chicken and egg problem. People don't want to learn about Bitcoin until they buy it and they don't want to buy it until they learn about it so I usually start with the first purchase.

That way when they hear news about it they feel a personal connection. Hope that helps 🤙

It might be somewhat effective for devs, but not at all for users. This is why the Keet copy stands out.

This is great copy.

I believe the Austrian economists described these fields as being envious of true hard sciences. The logic reminds me of vaccine research. They always begin with the unproven claim that contagion theory is real. That disease spreads through tiny microscopic droplets that we can’t see. That these droplets have the capacity to wreak havoc on the entire body. Without real evidence, they start experimenting on people using all kinds of insane interventions. Did you know that they used to treat pellagra, a vitamin deficiency based disease, with arsenic? They’d pump people up with it and quarantine you if you showed symptoms of pellagra. After countless years and harm, they finally realized it wasn’t contagious and that the victims just needed niacin. The same problem led to countless deaths when they assumed scurvy was contagious. And yet, scientists have never been able to isolate a virus in its pure form outside of the human body. If you catch the flu from someone else with the flu, where did the flu come from? It’s frustrating and retarded because it allows them to set the boundary lines for research and debate on these subjects. They can just move the goalposts and find a different explanation when their theories don’t work. And if you question the foundation of their stance, instead of the baseless research, then you’re labeled anti science lmfao.

What's preventing you from orange pilling them?

The people I would like to see orange pilled in the next three years:

Dave Smith

Tucker Carlson

Glenn Greenwald

Joe Rogan

Who do you most want to see understanding bitcoin?

We need more announcements on Nostr

i am focused on building out nostr because it has a real chance to obsolete facebook, tiktok, whatsapp, telegram, and x

somehow this has become a contrarian view, which is fine, go big or go home

I guess the unspoken theme of my post was about Metcalfe’s Law. But yes more p2p networks will help with that too. Huge fan of Bitcoin/Nostr based businesses.

Stay humble and stack sats took a major hit this last year. The 4 year CAGR is a measly 10.4%, below the rate of fiat money debasement. Barely any returns, barely any merchant adoption for MoE. What reason is there now for a potential precoiner to make the switch to a Bitcoin standard? Stay humble and stack: Nvidia, Palantir, or Tron gave better returns over the last 4 years.

Every single person in the developed world has heard of Bitcoin, yet it STILL only makes up ~0.17% of total global wealth. I’m tempted to even go so far as to say that the bear market of 2022 never ended. I don’t see a legion of new enthusiastic faces like I did in 2020, it’s still mostly the same people from that era and before.

We probably still underestimate how much damage ICOs then FTX, Celsius, Terra, and Blockfi caused for adoption. A double whammy for normies. I saw a story on Nostr the other day that a Square merchant wouldn’t turn on Bitcoin payments because they didn’t want anything to do with “crypto scams.” Potential precoiners are now probably more interested in stocks and real estate than Bitcoin. Even if they’re just trying to prudently outrun fiat inflation, Bitcoin failed at that the last 4 years. I know, 4 years is a bit of cherry picking, 5 year CAGR is 39% and 10 year is 73%. So yea, lower your time preference, fine.

Something big needs to change for adoption to start up again. NGU has failed as a driving force for adoption recently, which leaves freedom, libertarianism, computer science, etc…which, frankly, only an extremely small percentage of people care about enough to make the switch, most of them probably already switched. I don’t know what the catalyst(s) will be for adoption to pick up again or even if there will be one soon. Without at least one, the next few years will be a slog through the mud.

Signal is really frustrating and we could do so much better with Nostr.

Phone numbers, limited devices, tied to one business entity, and running unsustainably on charities.

Hope a Nostr-based solution like #Keychat and #Whitenoise will eventually replace it fully for me. Monetization is very important.

Privacy is not for free.

I love data visualizations like these