Don’t sweat it. A logical argument wrapped in feeling is still useful. It’s the illogical arguments sold with passion that should offend us.

That’s true. No one will give up the power they have over you. Apple has no interest in ceding a potential 30% cut for peer-to-peer transactions because we consider it unjust.

Eviscerating monopolies and the neutered legal structure that enables them is the only way. There was a time when society headed Adam Smith’s warnings about monopolies, and used its public resources to prevent them. Neoclassical economics successfully convinced the people that deregulation and “free market” morality would free mankind. Now we can do nothing unless Google, Amazon, WalMart, Time Warner, Monsanto, and Apple get their cut.

Government expenses increase dramatically, but it isn’t buying a greater quality of life for the average American. It spends in arenas that support the finance, insurance, corporate, and real estate sectors, and it sells the public on the need for austerity measures because of the massive public debts. Austerity is about cutting public services, creating resentment for the now inept services, and then using this resentment to justify the privatization of them. Pervasive resentment toward entitlement programs is a good example of how many people accept social services to be burdensome while accepting the a priori existence of larger war budget, which serves only to export inflation and repatriate resources and foreign labor for the American elite.

We succumb to a loss of public services in many ways.

Underfunding of public schools and the resulting shift to the need to privately educate our children.

Massive increases in university costs to the student, and the resulting loan servitude that didn’t use to exist

Reduction in health care available to the poor, and the non-existence of healthcare outside of the private sector for most of us

Diminishing availability of trial-by-jury to 98% of people who are convicted of felonies who must settle for our-of-court deals with the judicial system

Growing loss of public support for utility companies

Loss of support for public lands and common areas

Decline in funding for family services, women’s services, psychiatric services, homeless services across the board

The pervasive dialogue ever circulating about US National Debt exists in part to prepare the public consciousness for the never-ending war against social services. Austerity measures serve the rentier class and the corporations by shifting value from the public sector into the pockets of the few. The common sense thus becomes that public debt is bad, and that private debt is acceptable. And so Americans welcome the loss of the public-service aspects of government, and a neutered central power remains only as a managerial engine for corporate profiteering

That’s a compelling article. The unspoken, is that coding will be another industry that shifts from the capabilities of every-day laborers into the hands of larger and larger conglomerates who control the learning platforms that do all of this coding.

The capacity for a man to find his own prosperity in work is shifting away, and the fruits of his labor are increasingly swallowed up by the rentier class who siphon off their rents and leave the man to a life of wage slavery.

It’s a good day to support Whonix. Take charge of your privacy.

3LspZMk4p7ECc4Ugd6DKwSTgqyxn41KG3B

(Don’t trust—verify!

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Donate)

In Plato’s cave, men were chained and spent their lives interpreting the shadows on the wall… mere representations of the moving figures behind them. Unable to turn and face the truth, they lived by myth and prejudice. Only when their shackles loosened and they were free to turn about and examine the world hidden behind them were they liberated from their cognitive bondage.

Bitcoin is loosening chains and liberating people from an imposter existence of debt servitude, the exploitative use of capital, and oppressive governments.

😂

Cool! I would like to sponsor a Zap Fundraiser for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

If anybody has a favorite book on a topic, or even a favorite book, chances are that they haven’t read enough books.

The answer to that question should always be “it depends.”

It seems that the most liked/zapped posts are world-view-affirming posts. We like to hear things that confirm what we “know.”

The wise nostriches are more inclined to present unpleasant data, and to receive unwelcome critiques

I approve any squirrel-positive photos

The Bitcoin Standard is a poorly written first exposure to Bitcoin. If somebody is a careful reader with a background in economics, language, and anthropology, they are unlikely to take the choppy argument seriously, if they finish it at all.

It’s too bad that people hang their hat on that book. If we want to teach Bitcoin, we need to start with quality tests that describe the problem that Bitcoin solves.

Everybody is focused on a submersible with 5 people on board…so much so that we turn all the cameras and all the public aid to it. I suppose we like the extravagance of paying 250k for an extreme experience. It’s sexy.

But then 700 people just drowned in the Mediterranean because they were trying to flee hopeless lives with their families. When your life is miserable, you do what you can for your family, even if it means trusting a rickety boat and setting sail across a sea.

Boarders are designed to eliminate the movement of populations… to keep the poor out, or to keep the underrepresented poor workers in. It’s a decision by the rich to protect capital at the expense of people. The belief in the virtues of a borderless currency and in a borderless communication protocol, must be extended to all aspects of civilization. If borders are detrimental to human rights and to the prosperity of the species, then borders should be overcome.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-irony-of-world-refugee-day-celebrating-then-blaming-the-victims/285087/

“Over 23,000 refugees have drowned or gone missing while trying to reach European shores between 2014 and 2022. “

Spending millions of public money in pursuit of a submersible owned by a private company that skirted safety precautions and regulation in pursuits of faster profits.

“Privatization of profit and socialization of risk. That’s called capitalism.”

-Noam Chomsky

*oversight*

We are Bitcoiners because the banks had the power to neuter the government’s over site mechanisms and deregulate themselves.

To cheer “deregulate everything for a free market” is to extol the very dangers that got us here.

To allow capital to run free without any sort of oversight leads to public safety disasters: Triangle Shirtwaist fires, Norfolk Southern spills, and … submersibles with inadequate safety communications systems. Companies will always skirt safety decisions in pursuit of profits, and “deregulation of everything” is a mythical virtue that only serves the billionaire class.

“In a 2019 press release, OceanGate explained why it hadn't 'classed' the Titan vessel.

"Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation," the statement said.””

Ha. The former