If I ran for office today, this would be my political platform:
1. Abolish the government's currency monopoly
2. Remove the capital gains tax
3. Cut taxes and public spending 10% per year, every year, in infinity
The future is decentralized, and going forward I want to spend more time here on Nostr, try tp provide value and develop this promising community.
My previous book, Fraudcoin, started as a pamphlet, and in a few weeks or months I am going to post a new pamphlet here on Nostr.
This is a preliminary outline:
Working title:
REBUILD
Index:
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Once we were free
Part 2: The road to serfdom
Part 3: Libertus
Conclusion
Afterword
I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I will enjoy writing it.
Long #Bitcoin is short gaslighting
I despise social engineering.
Feel free to quote me on that.
CBDC is covered
Good question that I cannot answer
Few know the history about what happened when Hardråde took power. I'm diving deeper into it in my next book https://undoqo.com/pages/arrow-of-truth
Interesting ideas. It will be interesting to see research on the types who were early into Bitcoin. I feel it might have more to do with being capable of understanding the problem, and being a type who asks questions. This requires a certain degree of persistance. These are also qualities that Satoshi had. Once you understand the problem Bitcoin tries to solve, it becomes difficult to shove away Bitcoin as a concept. I think that's more relevant than rebellious genes, culture, environment. It also explains why there are so many spart people in the space (much smarter than I am). Yes, to sum up, I think people who were early attracted to Bitcoin in general were types who often asked questions, and had the intelligence and persistence to solve them. Then it might have been somewhat of an coincidence if they had been exposed to the question of what's wrong with our monetary system.
Thank you. I have always thought of myself as someone who has to make up his own mind, and set his own values. I think it mainly is in my bloodline. It might be that certain events or things we read and understand trigger genetically encoded values and traditions, such as sovereignty, freedom, respect for nature, hunting and gathering. The problem is that we get a ton of other information, typically on how the state solves our material needs, and our needs for safety. This information probably makes it more difficult to wake up the genes.
And you?
A FOUR-LEGGED KING NAMED SAUR
and why a Trønder shouldn't bow for anyone
The smiling redhead you see at the picture below is a man who has tiny bit more rebellious genes in his body than the average Norwegian.
And now he will tell you a story that helps you understand why he takes such pride in this fact.
My late father researched our family tree several hundreds year back in time. All of my ancestors lived in Trøndelag, a beautiful region in the middle part of Norway.
Trøndelag didn't really become a part of a unified Norwegian kingdom before late in the Viking Age. Until about 1050 AD the Trønders was more or less self governd. The political system was to some extent an anarchy based on a deeply rooted respect for private property, combined with disrespect for men who wanted to rule others.
This didn't mean that the Trønders were without leaders or laws. Their famous Frostating law ("ting" means "court") was based on legal and cultural traditions that had developed over hundreds or possibly thousands of years.
The leaders were numerous farmers and landowners from all parts of the region. They also had earls who were entitled to receive some taxes, likely in exchange for an obligation to organize safekeeping and military defence against intruders.
The most fundamental part of the Frostating law was its so-called "resistance provisions", a system of self defence regulations that weren't part of any other Nordic laws.
These rules stated that nobody, neither the King nor any man, could take something from a Trønder without the prior consent of the Frostating, which was controlled by the farmers and landowners.
The law said that, if a king laid claim on someones property, for instance by introducing taxes, without the consent of the Frostating, the Trønders should cut a war arrow, that should be sent around to all corners of Trøndelag.
The arrow carried a message, which said that everybody were obliged to try to kill the king, and if they didn't succeed in doing this, they had to chase him out of the country.
Those who didn't pass the arrow to their neighbor, or who refrained from hunting down the king, would be punished with fines.
An interesting aspect of the Frostating law was that the punishment for someone who took another man's property therefore were much more significant for the king than for anyone else. This is in practice the very opposite principle of our modern day's legal system, in which the laws are designed to protect the politival leaders against the citizens.
There's in my mind no doubt that
- the highly decentralized political power,
- a completely decentralized defence system that required everyone to understand both the right to self defense and the moral obligation to help your fellow man, and
- laws that were severely stacked against powerhungry men
were key factors when it came to securing the Trønders' sovereignty and freedom.
This didn't, of course, deter each and every bloodthirsty king from paying a visit to Trøndelag.
According to the Royal Sagas, one of those who fell for the temptation was King Øystein of Oppland, an area south of Trøndelag. He lived in the 8th to 9th century and had earned the less-than-flattering nickname "Hardråde", which meant "hard ruler".
After Øystein defeated the Trønders in a battle which we don't know when happened, he installed his son as King of Trøndelag. This probably wasn't the wisest decision that he had ever made, because shortly afterwards the son was killed by his unruly subjects.
When Øystein got wind of what had happened he became furious, gathered his army and attacked the Trønders once more.
Again he won the fight, but this time he decided to try and make a fool out of the Trønders. He told them that they could choose a new king, and gave them two choices - his slave Thore Faxe or a dog named Saur.
The people of Trøndelag merrily elected Saur, and suddenly my ancestors had a four-legged king as their ruler.
Based on what we know about the Trønders' appreciation of their freedom and their deeply rooted traditions as a sovereign people, the following is my interpretation of the events described in the sagas:
Instead of allowing King Øystein the sweet taste of having taught the Trønders a lesson, they decided to make a complete mockery out of his plot.
First, they pretended that they used some kind of witchcraft to give Saur three men's intelligence. They then claimed that he could say two words, and bark a third.
Secondly, they let Saur have a splended farm named Saurshaug (Saur's hill, today Sakshaug, which is 30 km away from where I live). They gave him a high throne, and let him rule over his land from the top of a hill, as was customary for kings at the time.
Thirdly, they gave Saur a collar of gold and a leash of silver.
The dog king's hird (a professional royal guard) served and protected him. If it rained, they would carry him on his shoulders. A real king couldn't be seen with muddy paws as he travelled around and inspected the kingdom and his underlings.
After a while the hirdsmen probably grew tired of all the work that they had to do to create this formidable farce. And when a pack of wolves one day came to Saurshaug, they egged the dog to go out and protect his royal herd.
Saur went after the wolves, who of course ripped him to pieces.
My ancestors probably wanted to send Øystein and all other kings the following message of defiance:
F**** us once and we will kill your son.
F**** us twice and we will ruin your legacy.
They probably wanted Øystein to forever be remembered as the King who bitterly realized that the Trønders could be beaten, but that they never would be ruled by anyone.
Having this story probably strengthened the value of the Frostating law as a weapon against tyrants and plunderers. If the knowledge about the unique resistance regulations in Trøndelag had been well known outside the borders of Trøndelag before King Øystein attacked them, the history about King Saur probably helped bringing word of their code to all corners of the world.
It makes me proud to know our legacy as sovereign Trønders. We were the people who kept our freedom longer than anyone else in the fight against bloodthirsty kings who wanted to rule every Norwegian.
Furthermore, it also makes me realize that I can only show my respect to my ancestors by promising them that I'm not going to bow for anyone.
I am, after all, a trueblood Trønder.
CBDC is lipstick on the fiat money pig
Who would like to attend a Bitcoin meetup in Trondheim, preferrably daytime on a Saturday, in September or October?
Gaslighting has become the dominant currency in an increasingly politicized world. The politicians' problem is that it hyperinflates at the moment. Therefore the effect of the gaslighting decreases, while the level of noise it creates makes the signal of truth shine brighter.
The belief system can be many things, this is just from the top of my head:
Natural rights or right to dominate others.
The non-agression principle, religion and whether population growth is good or not.
Do we have global manmade warming, if so how to deal with it.
US hegemony vs national sovereignty. Right to self defence.
Property rights or communism. Individuallism or altruism. Veganism or carnivore.
Respect for public goods such as the high seas and the Bitcoin network.
What and how to teach children, and who should teach them.
Respect for language, logical thinking, laws of physics, or "everything is subjective"/deconstructionism.
I'll try to add some thoughts to a previous statement, when I wrote that our belief system is the foundation, layer zero, of civilization, while money is its cornerstone, layer one.
The viewpoint I use here is anthropologist in its nature. I choose to use this as a starting point, since understanding money as a concept IMO should be based on a much broader analysis than for instance engineering or economics.
The reason why I think money is so important for civilization is because money makes it possible
- to transfer economic value quickly and over long distance
- to preserve economic value over long periods of time
- to give more options to participants in the game called "the generous tit for tat"
- to have voluntary exchange with strangers because it takes trust out of the equation.
- to quantify and calculate costs and interest
- to make exponentially better use of our individual and differing talents on the basis of specialization
- to make exponentially better use of those traits that separates us from other species, and most notably our appreciation of time preference
- to incentivize peaceful cooperation and disincentivize coercion, violence and war
- to capitalize on and unleash the value of private property
- to give gifts to those who need them, without having to identify what they need most
- to punish criminals in a humane way that focuses on compensating the victim
- to let people build on their exchange in trade to alson include exchange of values, knowledge and culture
In fact, I'm not able to wrap my mind around how a society can build something like a city without some form of efficient money.
Am I missing something in my list above?
Did this post trigger any ideas?
Feel free to let us know your thoughts, they are important to us.
It's not so much about what they teach us as it is about what they don't teach us:
The inflation policy requires that people don't learn about money, interest, time prefence, private property and free trade in school.
Likewise, molding a large share of the population into socialists requires that people don't learn about money, interest, time prefence, private property and free trade in school.
The human specie separates itself from all other species due to its
- understanding of and inclination to playing infinite games
- superior ability to copy behavior and knowledge
- deep appreciation (implicit and sometimes explicit) of the concept of time preference
- capacity for imagining things
- ability to use abstractions
- self introspection
- communicating by the use of words
Anything else I should have mentioned?
