On the day of our first fundraiser, truist decides to keep our account frozen past the initial review period bc we had the audacity of cashing a check from one of our sponsors!

Looks like we're Bitcoin only tn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We are hosting another vendor market happening April 27th - all vendors must accept btc! 🚀

Vendors can be anything from services to handmade soaps, shirts, candles, anything you want! Contact us today if you'd like to join! #bitcoin #plebchain #grownostr #localbusiness

#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=1080x1080&blurhash=UeN%5BmWyLNgs%25A0w%5BR.WE%7D%3F%24%5DSjxV%5EIXOs%2Cog&x=450ea5997eb2b3dd0d32548b5126881cd8dd8d5419824c4297708ea8b188b379

Maybe on rings, but on a bar/symmetrically its more like 1000 pullups

1 muscle up = 10 pull ups

Wyoming Bitcoin Meetup this past weekend was full of steaks and education on coin control

Slowly building the state into the citadel it is meant to be

Stay sovereign, find local bitcoiners

⚡️🤝

On Providing Value

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How can we tell if transactions "provide value"?

The assumption from an Austrian economics standpoint is that any voluntary transaction is value-providing because each party believes the trade will satisfy some subjective need or want. So for example, OnlyFans is a value-providing transaction because both parties do what they do willingly and do so in the belief that they will get value.

Yet practically speaking, there's something weird about this. There are lots of voluntary transactions that don't provide value, perhaps significantly subtract value. Gambling, for example or other addictions (drugs, porn, etc) where one party is making a lot of money from the addicted person does not seem value-adding at all. How do we account for this? Is there some hidden fraud in these transactions? Or can we add some other principle by which we can tell if a transaction is value-providing?

The first thing to notice about these transactions is that they have high time preference behavior around them. There's at least one party that's being especially impulsive. A lot of mobile games, for example, rely on addictive, impulsive behavior to make money and they have more of the sucker-swindler relationship. The dynamic shares much more with rent-seeking or fraud than, say, someone paying for an Uber ride.

Yet the libertarian norm is considering anything voluntary to be value-adding. But is trading of fentanyl by an addict and dealer really a value-providing transaction? Common sense says no, yet subjectively, both parties wanted to do the transaction, so what's the problem? Is subjective evaluation of the benefits of trade enough to determine whether it's value-adding?

This is not an idle question. The British got a lot of resources from China by getting them addicted to opium. That would seem at some level nasty and unfair, that people were in some way tricked.

In other words, there has to be some expansion of the definition of fraud to align our definition of providing value to practical experience. Does selling drugs to an addict provide value? Subjective value says if it's done voluntarily it is. Can fraud be defined precisely enough that we can align our intuition that such trades don't provide value? This is the gap through which much evil is justified. We seek here to close that gap.

What's the character of these problematic trades? First, the person buying doesn't have self-control. There's little personal responsibility and the trade is made under some personal distress. Clearly, such buyers don't have low enough time preference and we could leave it at that, but it's unsatisfactory because these people are hurting themselves. Many such actions like that are clearly detrimental and value-subtracting. Suicide is clearly detrimental, for example, and is essentially a transaction with yourself.

And this is where we get a little more intuition about what's value-adding. The obviously bad transactions are done by people committing violence to themselves.

Please don't misunderstand where I'm going with this. I'm not using some concept of violence against ourselves as the justification for government tyranny, by saying that they are protecting you from yourself. I'm only saying that we should acknowledge that some people do commit violence to themselves and that this is not a good thing or a value-adding thing.

Should we be preventing people from committing violence to themselves? That's a much harder question, because doing so may infringe on their human rights. But you can condemn the people selling this stuff as if it's something good. They are committing fraud in how they present their goods and/or services.

Indeed, that's what's been happening. The people with the profit motive are getting angry, because they don't like other people interfering with their sales with moral condemnation which is really bad publicity. But this is the normal consequence of bad behavior. You get condemnation by third parties. That doesn't mean third parties should now suddenly be trusted, but we need more information in the market, not less.

Now, some behavior that is condemned by one group may not be considered bad by another. This is where we get some subjectiveness to morality. And this is where we also get a lot of righteous indignation. But there is another dimension, particularly of violence to yourself that need explaining. Not everything voluntary provides value.

Roundabouts vs traffic lights has nothing to do with socialism vs capitalism. It's about traffic flow, not Das Capital.

Who's going to build the roads?

You will.

Private roads are often better made and maintained than government made roads.

And we will use roundabouts not stupid red lights.

I'm not a Monero fan.

I don't have anything against those that love it, I just don't shitcoin anymore.

But I'm VERY glad to have an influx of Monero users on Nostr:

Privacy and freedom-loving individuals need to stick together and overcome differences.

the hilarious thing is I think it is a wise monetary decision. that's the funny thing

I day dream about a GameStop type of movement where everyone is like fuck this system lets all live on sats and bankrupt the banks until they stop debasing us. however, even if nobody follows me, I still win because bitcoin is hard money whether people want to admit it or not. my life still gets 50%-100% cheaper every year

I understand it might not be a wise monetary decision, but I don't care. I came to bitcoin to see the banks die, I will work as hard as possible and spend every Satoshi I have to see this happen. The time to fight the banks is now: death to fiat, death to the Fed.

yes, something that will allow me to pay my bills using sats would be fantastic, then I can truly go on a bitcoin standard

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