I agree with your first paragraph.
Net migration would be a far more useful metric in a borderless world. Borderless would mean no political barriers, no financial-migration barriers, no language barriers, and no cultural barriers…a largely impossible (and possibly undesirable) task. But the political and financial limitations to migration are quite possibly within reach in a world with open money/open communication in place
Switzerland has one of the lowest GDP’s of any of the industrialized countries. It also sits atop Yale’s Environmental Performance Index and has some of the happiest people in the world.
GDP measures mythical growth and financial services with the same weight that it lends real production. It is an inadequate measure of non-market production like government services.
It’s time to use a better measure of an economy’s vitality:
Sustainable National Income
Genuine Progress Indicator
Adjusted Net Savings
Human Development Index
Happiness Index
People don’t turn on the news to find out what’s new in the world. They turn on the news to find out how their chosen peer group expects them to order new ideas into collections of accepted beliefs and disbeliefs.
And this whole video is excellent, but I would start at 16:30 to get at your question:
I am tempted to answer this, but I could not do justice to the complexities on such a medium. My first recommendation is to read the following.
Killing the Host. Michael Hudson
For anyone seriously interested in considering the confounding issues that invade a logical climate discussion, here are a few recommendations.
Climate-Challenged Society. John Druzes. Oxford 2013
United Nations Environment Program. 2013 Update
Communicating Climate Change. Suzanne Moser. Oxford 2007
Greenhouse Economics. William Nordhaus. The Economist. July 1990
Economic Models of Global Warming. William Nordhaus. Cambridge/MIT. 2000
Contesting the science of climate change is a line of defense for people who think they have a lot to lose if society takes climate change seriously.
Many Bitcoiners think they have something to lose. They don’t. Discussions about the implications of carbon transfer from mineral sinks to atmospheric gasses will lead to the use of more renewable sources for mining… more economic mining… a greater hash rate… and a more bulletproof network. Mining will always move to more economical energy options… which will end up being more carbon-neutral options. Miners know that, but they push back on policies that encourage this movement. This is an appreciation of the nature of Bitcoin mixed with a self-serving hope that Bitcoin’s incentive structure will somehow act differently.
People love to group ideas based on political consensus. It enables them to develop a world view using the appeal-to-majority rhetorical trick. It’s an easy way to construct one’s ethos, but it relies on unrelated tenets to draw a conclusion that cannot logically be drawn from them. It also groups people into two opposing factions.
If anti-fiat … then anti-all government … then anti-vaccine … then anti climate worry … then anti …
One does not derive from another, so a grouping of likes or dislikes is fallacious.
Unrelated ideas need to be considered independently and using the information provided to us by the smartest people in the field. The people who decline to consider the existence or the implications of short-term elevations in CO2 and CH4 either have something to sell, or they have been sold on a mythical relationship between that message and other beliefs.
By mass, the composition of the universe is 27% dark matter, 68% dark energy, and only 5% ordinary matter.
A.Zee- Quantum Field Theory, 2023
I think a Bitcoiner thinks it’s intriguing to see how much cheaper everything is getting for them…as the dollar loses value
The great downside of privatization of public lands is that it makes it illegal for one not to participate…not to hold land and pay taxes.
Homeless people are always on the move. Why? Because they can’t sleep in doorways…or loiter…or stand here or there. If they’re moving they’re trespassing. If they’re still, they’re loitering. If they lay down, they’re breaking other laws. In a society without public space, it is illegal to exist, unless you participate in the market. It should never be a crime to exist and not to buy land.
Go to Utah—it’s full of people out on the lands who just wish to live. To live like humans are intended…without the constraints of government or property taxes. But on the east coast or the west coast? The homeless are criminalized. And they’re criminalized because the nature of our economy says that those who do not pay have no value. It’s not that they don’t work that leads to their criminalization…it’s that they do not spend
Yes.
Monetization of real estate is due to three prevalent banking policies:
1. 90% of loans are made on real estate. Only a minority of loans are made for business purposes or for productive practice. This is a new development, and is not only a disservice to prospective entrepreneurs, but it shifts the target of speculative money from potentially productive businesses onto real estate. A guy with some time and money becomes limited to borrowing on a “second property” rather than on a business to provide a service for society.
2. Because loans are limited to real estate, the volume of borrowed money is funneled into the limited supply of buildings and houses. This would be fine if every person did not need a house. The necessary real estate, houses, becomes more concentrated in fewer hands, and the housing market grows beyond reach of many people.
3. The financial and insurance industries aggressively lobby to reduce the tax burden on real assets. This serves to make more money available to pay internet to the banks. Unfortunately it also makes less available for public services, and the tax burden gets shifted from those who own to those who do not own.
4. The banks have successfully inflated home prices to improve their lending scenario from one where they used to pull in 5 years of interest, to one where they have indebted buyers for 30+ years, and where they pocket more than the value of the house for the service of the loan. Soon, 40 year loans will the the loans of choice, and you will pay for “your” house three times.
5. If banks would make loans for productive purposes/businesses, not only would it be a boon to the community’s productivity, but it would remove the requirement of pumping investment into real estate alone, and would allow broader markets for investment with that capital. A second or third house, then, would be less interesting for those looking to invest, because there would be other excellent options. Real asset inflation would fall and houses would become more affordable for people who need them.
6. Bitcoin contributes to this solution in two ways: 1. It provides an alternative sink for investment and storage of value. In this way, it is already working. When I look at a building I would have purchased ten years ago, I think of how much easier it is to maintain Bitcoin. This is demonetization of real estate. 2. As money shifts from an inflationary energy to a deflationary one, people will be less inclined to use it for consumption, and less inclined to trade it for an alternative asset that depends on greater loans and looser monetary policy for returns.
Imagine all humans being able to buy a home for a reasonable amount of their life’s labor. They cannot right now…because banking policy monetizes real estate and entices speculators to push up value using borrowed money. That works as long as money gets cheaper and cheaper.
The best place to find an Easter egg is to look under a blue chicken with ears.
The best place to develop a worldly, just, and virtuous ethos, is to look at people who have achieved such an outlook.
It doesn’t sound like you are describing a trouble, but a responsibility.
It is right to consider the sustainability of all of one’s actions.
Give me the opinion of the smartest man in the room on a particular topic. If it falls outside of my understanding of the world, then I must alter my world view, and not attack the information.
If 1000 scientists tell you a thing, and that thing has been lumped together with a bunch of other things that some party sees as objectionable, and you walk the line and grow a hate on that thing because it seems antithetical to the community philosophy of your chosen ilk, you are choosing a commitment to tribe and ignorance over information and discourse with exports.
Bitcoiners read the wrong books. If “Bitcoin” is in the title, it’s selling tribalism. The most important Bitcoin books were written long ago, by the greatest advocates for equality, opportunity, justice, and liberty. Bitcoin’s ideas are not new, but it’s purpose can easily be transformed into a selfish one.