Nature is metal 🤘

Trump is oddly friendly with our adversaries. He’s throwing long standing allies and trading partners under the bus and giving Russia, a regional menace and a state that isn’t friendly to the US and hasn’t been for decades, exactly what it wants. You can talk about peace all you want but this is bad for American interests. Whatever Ukrainian blood minerals are in it for us are worth far less than our alliances and global standing. Absolutely piss poor foreign policy on the part of the Trump administration.

It’s fucking good https://song.link/us/i/1776760623

In that case I hope you enjoy your $10 burgers

Donald would sooner shoot RFK in the mouth before he let him take away his Big Macs and Diet Cokes. I foresee a policy conflict. Maybe this calls for a Polymarket.

Threads is so wack. I’ve had my account for two days and I’ve had my account suspended twice. Not even saying hateful shit or anything. Maybe trolling a few MAGA types but whatever. Damn those guys are tightwads.

Also, if you run Umbrel there’s a Tor Snowflake Proxy app in their App Store. Literally one click and you’re running a proxy. Hardly uses any resources. Everyone with an Umbrel should install that app.

https://youtu.be/p46AXCtue9c?si=KtY7xUYb3y0iY7A5

🤝

Btw I’m not dismissing your argument at all. After all, I, too am a bitcoiner, so at the very least I take interest in commodity-backed currency. It’s just hard for me to accept Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalism at face value without a healthy dose of skepticism, since we haven’t really seen those things work in modern history. Still, I’ll read the paper you shared

Nah, inflation does erode un-invested wealth over the years, but it doesn’t evaporate the $30 in a poor person’s pocket faster than they can spend it. Poor people don’t earn enough to accumulate any wealth therefore inflation doesn’t make them poor. The issue is that too many jobs don’t pay living wages or provide adequate benefits.

Yes, inflation does increase the cost of living over time so in that way it’s part of the problem. But imo the real problem is a distorted labor market.

Never said you should trust me, just saying I’m not surprised you cited a controversial fringe economist with little empirical data to support his theories 😉

I think the issue is that not enough people can provide enough for themselves to live. We see this today with the number of people living below the poverty line. The wealth gap is too high and, without government intervention, the jobs that people have access to don’t pay well enough for these people to be able to provide food for their families, let alone medical care, let alone a secure retirement. If free market capitalism was working so well, why are we seeing this?

Figured you would cite Rothbard! I’ll have a look at this. As a guy who majored in this stuff, though, what I’ll say is that there is little evidence that the principles of Austrian economics can work (at least better than the status quo) in a large, late-stage capitalist society like the US, but it is fun to think about how it might look.

Alright but like… on one side, poverty and death, and on the other, inflation and bureaucracy. I know what I’m choosing.

I don’t know what you mean. Can you try to be more specific?

I know it’s going to become insolvent and it will need to be cut. I’m planning my retirement assuming I only get 50% of what I’m entitled to. But there’s a big leap from that to “we should abolish all welfare programs”

It literally did. Laissez faire government, stock market speculation, unregulated financial industry and income inequality and over-production all contributed to the collapse of the economy. That’s why programs like these exist, and it’s why we haven’t seen anything nearly as severe ever since.

Bureaucracy is inherently inefficient. But the alternative to some of these more critical welfare programs is people dying poor, sick and hungry. The trade off is that stark. What gets me about this argument is that those that advocate against these programs seem ok with those consequences because it would prevent abuse by a minority of bad actors (which every society has)

You mean like the America that created the Great Depression?

I think one of the inherent truths about capitalism is that people can’t provide for themselves. That’s why every functioning capitalist society has social welfare programs. Name one that doesn’t.