I do believe that governments will always have a role to play in society. I would be happy to have a trusted institution meditate these types of issues.

The problem I have is due to the level of corruption currently in our highest levels of government I do not have trust in the federal government institution. Further, I don't see them trying to "meditate" anything, they are simply deciding what their citizens should and should not be allowed to see.

Ehhh drop the moron part and put confused or misguided. I’m in! The echo chamber is sophisticated.

I hear you. But if you don't want your kids to be spied on don't let them use the technology you think is facilitating this invasion of privacy. Id rather decide for myself and my family rather than outsource that responsibility to the government who can use this as a precedent to start censoring content I do think is beneficial for me and my family.

This is essentially the same thought I have come to on this - though I haven’t done my research yet on whether this represents an important change here in who identifies what as “bad”

I have literally no problem with the US government forcing divestment of TikTok by ByteDance. None. I don't see how they can "ban" it without running afoul of the First Amendment -- and should they try to engage in direct censorship of the platform through something like mandatory filtering by ISPs, I'll be right there with you all.

But if you think forcing a Chinese company, serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, that wants to spy on our kids, and manipulate their worldview, with the goal of destabilizing our institutions is "all's fair love and war", due to some highfalutin libertarian principle, than you're actually a moron.

Good article Mike! Do you see Bitcoin acting as a natural constraint for over lending or over printing of future fiat currencies? It seems to me that there could still be value in fiat currencies being used to facilitate transactions and creating liquidity, but Bitcoin being an outlet as a more reliable store of value would act as a natural constraint on this getting out of control as people would stop using the fiat currency if the lending and printing wasn’t reconciled to some extent to actual productivity gains

"In fact, empirical evidence shows that markets have not naturally gravitated towards fixed-supply commodity money but have instead shown a preference for flexible, state-issued fiat currencies."

We didn't have much of a choice until recently. Your empirical evidence is only evidence that the state has been successful at violently suppressing competition. Bitcoin has proven resilient and so we now have empirical evidence to the contrary, to the tune of $70K/BTC at the moment.

You're right that "aggregate market preferences might still gravitate towards state-issued fiat in politically stable context".

I don't think any Bitcoin maxi has denied that the nation state has been a very powerful, albeit relatively recent phenomenon in human history that represents the current equilibrium. And to a great extent its power is derived from its ability to issue fiat.

This is not the point anyone argues with.

What maxis say is that this equilibrium was a local maximum which is destabilized by the rise of truly decentralized money. Bitcoin, over time, “reduces the capacity of the world’s nation states to determine who becomes a Sovereign Individual […] and liberates the holders of wealth from expropriation through inflation.” (from The Sovereign Individual).

It will thereby introduce a new operating system for the world, which transcends the current nation state model.

My cynicism doesn’t really fall into those categories. I very much know what difference democracy and dictatorship makes and I also don’t think we’re resigned to a terrible future outcome. It’s more about the present state of affairs and most of the present voters and most of the present leadership.

Even if Trump loses, Trump is gonna get like 40% of the vote. In a sane world, he wouldn’t be the nominee and he wouldn’t get more than 5% of the vote if he did. I think not being honest about that reality is just naive. And I think not being cynical about it is just unrealistic.

I’m extremely cynical about our current state of affairs which is why I’ve made a lot of big accurate predictions these last few years. But I also don’t confuse the most noisy people online for what the plurality (& likely, a majority) think and believe. But I do understand that they make for accurate representation of meaningful minorities and therefore can cause predictably bad outcomes.

I think it’s not just romantic views of human nature. Many I’ve noticed seem excessively confident in their ability to rely entirely on themselves for subsistence and/or underestimate how bleak that can be.