The vast majority of humans will give up liberties in exchange for security if they’re afraid. History shows us this time and time again. Bitcoin isn’t going to change this. There’s going to be no spiritual awakening on this. We are hard wired — literally in our DNA — to have a tendency to close ranks with our tribe when the tribe is threatened. It’s bedrock human nature shit.
This is why maintaining stability is so fucking important. People embracing collapse and chaos as an opportunity for some libertarian or anarchist awakening are in la-la land.
Oh, I think we could be in WWIII before the end of the decade at this point. My prediction is up to about 50% likely now.
If China invades Taiwan, I promise you, we’re at war. Japan will be drawn in immediately, and the likelihood that the US will be drawn in — and likely have its bases in Okinawa attacked — is basically 100%. Then the US is just at war.
All of the libertarians and peaceniks arguing we should stay out of it, will be blown away like dry leaves on a windy Fall day.
The only thing worth thinking about at this point, is how to dissuade China from taking that step.
People need to wake up from their fairy tales. Bitcoin can make the world a better place. But the idea it’s going to stop these forces from rolling over us and killing us all, is so beyond naive, I don’t know what else to do, but start using more expletives. 🤷♂️
That threat is nothing to do with fiat. Nothing.
There’s this thread in thinking within the bitcoin community that the discipline that a commodity money will impose, will lead to incentives that turn us away from the worst excesses of state power. I think it’s a deeply misguided belief.
It is a belief that is built around normative foundations of the universality of individual property rights and a general consensus for the capitalist mode of production. Which, people assume, is largely inviolable at this point.
I think this is serious reasoning error. People are not even aware of their normative biases here.
How will the government fund the war effort if it’s drowning in debt? Easy. It’s called the Defense Production Act. It will seize the supply chains and factories and bring them under public control, and directly produce weapons, tanks, and planes. There won’t be any negotiation with the private sector over costs and payment.
The problem is, a lot of people think this will lead to public outrage and pushback. Except it won’t. A public, terrified of external enemies, will happily go along with it. And the capitalist class that screams about it, will be branded as traitors.
THIS ISN’T HARD!
The doom loop is so stupid. Not that there’s not things to be deeply worried about in the world — including inflation and the fiscal crisis we are likely to have. But the way some people are embracing the chaos they believe is coming as some kind of cleansing, and opportunity to build a new world, like we’re somehow likely to even survive a complete destabilization of the world order is fucking nuts.
That chart doesn't mean what you think it means. This is a diffusion index. It is a relative weighting index. Not an absolute measurement.
If you’re right and systemic collapse is inevitable, then we are headed into a dark age of humanity or extinction. The modern Leviathan of the current global order is not something you just let spiral, and hope that bitcoin acts as a safety net which arrests the fall. Money just isn’t going to matter that much, when the power competition starts on a global scale, and the Long Peace comes to its end.
The idea that the “bad money” being used to fuel the armies and weapons will blunt the ability of states to prosecute World War III is pretty much, to me, one of the most naive hopes that I see in these conversations. It requires a real failure of imagination and ignores the real ways in which our tribal instincts cause us to close ranks around external threats. In World War II, the American public and most of its allies, were able to sustain extreme economic hardship, while maintaining support for war, for instance. Rationing. Soup lines. High inflation. Germany’s currency had literally completely collapsed nearly 10 years earlier, and Hitler still managed to nearly take over the world within a decade of that event.
If people really think we need to write-off the current “system” and prepare for “what’s next”, and abandon the principle of stability and trying to hold the center, then I actually think humanity is likely careening towards extinction. I don’t say that lightly.
Show me your data.
US real GDP is positive. And wage growth has actually, in 2023, referred to its long-term mean. 
We are not currently in sub-inflationary wage growth. Wage growth has been outpacing price growth for some time now in the United States.
This is all horrible. Inflation has been painful for the entire world these past few years. But that’s not the same thing as a recession. A recession means the economic activity is decreasing overall, which usually means lower employment levels. We are seeing the opposite of this. So we are not in a recession.
We are neither in any economic recession or depression. The fact people keep saying this makes me think we need to turn the whole Internet off.
The level of geopolitical destabilization we are seeing is alarming. The potential for other fires to start around the world, as certain powers and interests feel this could be their opportunity to expand regional influence, is rising quickly.
If you can't repatriate your money, then it's a pretty shitty alternative to the dollar!
I'm just enjoying the fact that the reasons why I said these currency swap agreements with India and Brazil and others, that people, especially in the bitcoin community saw as the death-knell for the dollar, would fail, are coming true in hilarious rake-to-the-face ways.
Currency swap agreements are cool and all. But closed capital accounts kind of abrogate the possibility of deep liquidity and deep markets.
But people are who emotionally-invested in the collapse of the dollar don't want to hear this. They want to hear doom narratives that make them feel like they have an exclusive lens on the future.
Last year, America declinists: "Look! The dollar is finished! India is buying Russian oil in rubles and has signed a currency swap agreement!"
Today, Russian capital controls: "Hold my beer!"
If you find my prose to be too prolix for you, I apologize. If you'd like to say something substantive or constructive, I'm happy to engage. But otherwise, I'll just step away from this thread.