Dystopia insurance

First, to better frame and illustrate what may or may not sound like paranoid conspiracy theories, the slightest hints of which I am strongly repelled against--which is something I realize I might need to correct for, I'll quote this from Scott Alexander at ACX:

In the Soviet Union, the government would say “We had a good harvest this year!” and everyone would notice they had said good rather than glorious, and correctly interpret the statement to mean that everyone would starve and the living would envy the dead.

Really savvy people go through life rarely ever hearing the government or establishment lie to them. Yes, sometimes false words come out of their mouths. But as Dan Quayle put it:

"Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases 'revenue enhancement'. Not so. No one was fooled."

Imagine a government that for five years in a row, predicts good harvests. Or, each year, they deny tax increases, but do admit there will be “revenue enhancements”. Savvy people effortlessly understand what they mean, and prepare for bad harvests and high taxes. Clueless people prepare for good harvests and low taxes, lose everything when harvests are bad and taxes are high, and end up distrusting the government.

Then in the sixth year, the government says there will be a glorious harvest, and neither tax increases nor revenue enhancements. Savvy people breath a sigh of relief and prepare for a good year. Clueless people assume they’re lying a sixth time. But to savvy people, the clueless people seem paranoid. The government has said everything is okay! Why are they still panicking?

I don't think I am particularly skilled interpreting government statements when they aren't something close to the literal truth. But I do remember the government has lied repeatedly, and even when it appeared to be attempting honesty, it still managed to screw that up, repeatedly. Despite all that, I have this gut feeling that tomorrow will generally be the same as today. And 99% of the time, my gut is right. But that 1% can kill you (or 0.01%. But it isn't exactly scientific--some unlikely possibilities are much more likely than other unlikely possibilities. Like a fire burning down your house compared to an asteroid wiping out humanity). 

You can never be prepared for everything, but on the spectrum of preparedness, you can be less prepared or you can be more prepared. I want to be more prepared because I can't figure out if the harvests are going to be good or bad, the taxes low or high. Or if the liberal Western governments are going to respect our rights, our finances, our privacy, our lives for the foreseeable future. "But Mr. blogger, that's crazy talk," you say? Maybe you're right, but my gut is less certain today than yesterday, and that 1% can still kill me.

Just recently, pretty much everyone had their financial tools restricted, at what amounts to a press of a button. I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong, just that it happened:

JUST IN - VISA suspends all operations in #Russia: All cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country and any cards issued outside of Russia will no longer work within the Russian Federation.

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 5, 2022

And if you remember this from the "liberal Western democracy" that is Canada:

As of Sunday [Feb 22], the national police force said in a statement, 219 “financial products” had been frozen, 253 Bitcoin addresses related to protesters and organizers had been given to virtual currency exchange operators, and a bank had frozen 3.8 million Canadian dollars (about $3 million) held by a payment processor.

Lich, who is from Alberta, was the driving force behind a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than 10 million Canadian dollars (about $7.9 million) for the protest. About 1 million dollars (about $784,000) was turned over to her before the crowdfunding site shut down the campaign. Authorities charged Lich on Thursday with counseling to commit mischief, a serious offense under Canadian criminal law.

All of the accounts that have been frozen will remain so for up to 30 days from Feb. 14, the date of the national emergency declaration. But the government could extend or shorten that period.

I really hope there is a very clear, unmistakable line between blocking traffic and protesting the government, because if there isn't, that was a serious totalitarian display from our northern neighbors.

It's only a matter of time before you or someone you love is part of the out-group. And there's an increasing chance their financial tools/assets will be rendered inoperable.

Long time cryptocurrency critic and somewhat famous programmer David Heinemeier Hansson sees the writing on the wall:

Even just a few months ago, I would not have found it credible if you said a three-week peaceful protest in Canada could have lead to martial law, frozen bank accounts, and terrorist-financing laws being used to hunt protest donors. Unbelievable then, undeniable now.

I don't think we have any idea what kind of radicalizing seeds have been planted by Trudeau with these actions. This is one of those world events that you can imagine a documentary of the future opening with: "It all started when...".

But wherever this leads us next, it's clear to me now that I was too hasty to completely dismiss crypto on the basis of all the things wrong with it at the moment.

Hansson then links to a great twitter thread about the freedom to transact. I've embedded the first tweet of it below.

This article by Howard Anglin (former Canadian PM deputy chief of staff) links to that thread and worries about that 1% chance as well:

You can’t purchase many services with cash anymore. When my local coffee shop’s wireless service went down the other day and they couldn’t process digital payments, I offered to pay with cash. They didn’t know what to do. Like many businesses, they simply aren’t set up to handle physical money. And that’s assuming you have large cash reserves to begin with, as you can’t withdraw money from a frozen bank account. ...

The fact that weaponizing the financial system against nonviolent protestors and their distant supporters was the government’s tool of first resort should worry anyone who understands the role of civil disobedience in democracy.

So here is the first tweet of 6529's Freedom to Transact thread (there are 56 tweets in total):

1/ There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact

Being meaning to write this for 6 months, but the Canadian response to the trucker protests is illustrating this so vividly, that today is the day.

— 6529 (@punk6529) February 17, 2022

Maybe I am being paranoid, maybe the world merely overreacted a bit, maybe I don't have the whole picture (so why not tell us, or at least give us a bigger picture? Is transparency bad now? More reason I have grown skeptical of both the media and government). 

Given recent events, I feel the need to painstakingly prepare for the 1% chance me or someone I love is going to need dystopian insurance. Something like cryptocurrency (and hardware wallets), something like Protonmail, something like encrypted devices on VPNs. Where does it end, at what point does preparing for dystopia become irrational, or worse, harmful? I don't know, but it's hopefully one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it deals. I guess I will stop when the feeling of being unprepared is roughly balanced by the feeling of being a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Miscellaneous updates

I will no longer refer to partisans and activists of the left in North America as liberals (I stopped using that ill-fitting label years ago) and progressives ("progress" lol). They are neither. They are more of the same predictable, anti-individual freedom, authoritarian left that started when Lenin took power. As the labels "socialist" and "Marxist" change definitions depending on who you ask and don't really capture all the non-economic leftist characteristics currently in abundance, I will unfortunately resort to using the broad, but fitting term, leftist.

Last summer I remember Australia going full tyranny with the Covid mandates. Canada is now  making Australia look like the little leagues. Before the trucker protest, I could not imagine a well-established liberal Western democracy enact emergency powers, threaten, arrest, and seize bank accounts of people for having "unacceptable views." And those views are totally understandable and quite reasonable for people who actually have to live with the rules the elites created, and have been for 2 years. Now that it is illegal, I feel the urge to donate.

They are building the border wall. They, as in the Dominican Republic. I only mention this because I am interested to see the both the reaction and the results. Do physical barriers impede physical movement? The experts the TV told me to trust disagree with each other! But we'll find out soon enough! 

Inflation is hitting me pretty hard, and I just got a big raise. I was trying to save up for a car, but those prices went way up and I think I'll try to wait it out. I have been wanting to buy a house for over a decade, but since I don't want to buy a piece of trash fixer-upper in a bad neighborhood, everything in the area was prohibitively expensive. Now that I have nearly tripled my income, new houses (including many 35 year-old houses) are still prohibitively expensive. I live in Utah, not California. And now the weekly grocery bill is getting out of hand. I very rarely eat out, I save as much as I can, and I thought I was being more or less frugal. But I'm going to have to find new ways of frugality while maintaining my sanity. I have the strong but vague sense the country is going to shit, while acknowledging the fact that every aging man has said that at one point; I know I may be wrong--but I really want to and want to know how to hedge against the shit-country scenario (cryptocurrency is still experiencing growing pains, faces significant government pushback, and is not yet up to the task, sadly). 

Am I being part of the problem? Not sure, but my small real-estate investments are one of the few paying good dividends. If you can't beat them, join them? A guy has to look out for his own; I can't fix the world by myself. Less so if I am poor. What am I gonna do?

It's been shown to be the case before and it will again: with high confidence, I predict leaks in the coming years showing big tech has cooperated with government to silence, censor, deplatform, and/or freeze financial tools/assets of those with "unacceptable views." That this kind of cooperation was without the backing of law.

China foolishly bans ALL cryptocurrency transactions

From Bloomberg:

Crypto-related transactions will be considered illicit financial activity, including services provided by off-shore exchanges, the People’s Bank of China said on its website. It added that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Tether, are not fiat currency and cannot be circulated.

Bitcoin slumped in the wake of the announcement, falling 8% to about $41,000 as of 9 a.m. in New York.

Chinese officials are going further to stamp out crypto trading for its ties to fraud, money laundering and excessive energy usage. China already has rules that bar banks from offering crypto-related services. To get around such rules, traders have moved to over-the-counter platforms and offshore exchanges.

I'm no longer afraid of China, at least not for the long term. They're so arrogant they believe they can control and shape the future of finance and exchange by banning cryptocurrency. Dear China, that ship has sailed long ago. Have fun playing catch-up forever.

Keep chasing that elusive leprechaun with promises of total control and power at the expense of your future, China. There will always be leprechauns to chase, as people will never stop finding ways to subvert authority.

With the uncertainty about China largely out of the way, perhaps the cryptocurrency scene can finally start growing into its own (in any case, now's a good time to buy). It's time to leave the CCP in the dustbin of history.

Australia is lost

I think this is the point of no return. It's now considered legal for the Australian government to delete, or even change their subjects' data. They could, theoretically, turn that rebellious tweet or facebook post into one making you look like a pedophile. The moment a citizen becomes problematic for the government, is the moment "serious" crimes are alleged, invented, or interpreted in creative ways:

A new law gives Australian police unprecedented powers for online surveillance, data interception and altering data. These powers, outlined in the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill, raise concerns over potential misuse, privacy and security.

The bill updates the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. In essence, it allows law-enforcement agencies or authorities (such as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission) to modify, add, copy or delete data when investigating serious online crimes.

Via Instapundit.

All the more reason to further develop and promote blockchain tech and DeFi cryptocurrency, further develop a highly trusted real-life network. And stockpile certain commodities. 

Stick your finger in the air. You know more of this is on the way.

Thursday blend: the shitshow continues

Happy Thursday.

I'll start out with the satire this time.

Republican Politicians Vow To Get Real Mad And Stuff Following Afghanistan Crisis [note to the Bee staff: this isn't satire] 

 

Brian Williams Tearfully Recounts Clinging To Outside Of Airplane To Escape Kabul

 

Psaki: 'A Record 331 Million Americans Have Not Been Abandoned In Afghanistan'

 

---

The Afghanistan failure

Psaki refuses to discuss leaked Biden call with Ghani that shows he knew Afghan army was collapsing

Politifact-style fact check: Pants on fire! Biden knew the Afghan army would probably collapse, but he could not have possibly known how fast it would've collapsed.

In other words, the leaked phone call pretty clearly demonstrates Biden knew the Afghan army was in poor shape, but requested Ghani to lie about that if necessary. The evidence increasingly points to a royal fuckup of epic proportions, largely thanks to our increasingly worthless political, military, and intelligence "elite."

 

Biden Administration Erased Afghan Weapons Reports From Federal Websites:

According to an admission obtained from the State Department, Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.

The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles.

Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly 1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers.

The justification for all this scrubbing? Possible "security risk." The article then deftly points out one of the administration's recent genius 4-D chess moves:

It’s worth noting that the Biden administration already put these partners at risk when officials provided lists of Afghan nationals to the Taliban in a misguided attempt to clear them for evacuation. 

Nobody has been fired for any of this yet.

 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says "we all have pain and anger" after 20-year war in Afghanistan.

"We all have pain and anger when we see what has unfolded over the last 20 years and the last 20 days, that creates pain and anger," Milley said. "I'm a professional soldier, I'm going to contain my pain and anger and execute my mission."

YOU'RE STILL TALKING, WHY ARE YOU NOT FIRED? Your mission should be to shut the fuck up and retire, preferably in Antarctica. 20 goddamn years and the Taliban are still in control, the country is ripe for brewing terrorism. Get the fuck out already.

That reminds me of a video I watched recently--sometimes the Youtube algorithm is helpful. Generals need to be fired. Frequently:

 

 ---

SpaceX says Amazon is trying to delay Starlink because it can't compete

 ---

Wealth inequality may not be as bad as we are told. Lately, few things seem to be as bad as we are told, except when the government is in charge--then it's worse.

 

---

In other news, cryptocurrency is continuing to rise (I wish I could buy much more):

 

 

Thursday blend: everything's fine edition

Happy Thursday. According to all the smart people in the U.S., everything is fine (other than systemic 'isms, and anyone to the right of AOC)!

Kevin Drum on the three point five TRILLION dollar reconciliation bill:  

Deficit spending stimulates an economy in recession, but the reconciliation bill is supposed to be fully paid for. If that's really the case, then it will have no significant effect on the economy one way or the other. It's just a collection of new programs...

A trillion in taxes here, a trillion there, easy peasy, no problemo, totally paid for. That's definitely not a giant pill to swallow.

Maybe because it's not really fully paid for. Not if you count debt. And who counts debt? 

As flagged by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the reconciliation instructions for the spending bill allow for up to $1.75 trillion in borrowing.

“It is not possible to draft and score all of the expected policies prior to consideration of the budget resolution,” a Democratic memo explains. “Given that we will not have budgetary certainty for all of the expected policies prior to locking in the reconciliation instruction to the Finance Committee, the Budget Resolution will not require a specific level of revenue, outlay, or deficit amount in its reconciliation instruction.”

I guess when the Democrats say something, we have to update our textbooks, notify all the fact-checkers, and re-educate all the stubborn people, because it's as true as gravity. 

---

What misinformation today will be true tomorrow? Something plaguing social media is their deplatforming and censorship of people and information, which turn out to be true a short time later (meaning the approved media outlets finally said the same thing). Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? Remember the mask reversals? Remember the other mask reversals?

YouTube suspends Rand Paul's account for COVID-19 mask misinformation

---

USAToday is really scared of Republicans, gerrymandering (as if it's solely a Republican phenomenon), and the new census data.

Delta variant is highly transmissible among vaccinated, but the vaccinated tend to fare better. I hope that news about faring better is true and remains true.

There is no border crisis. There is no border crisis.

---

The battle for cryptocurrency control began with the failed cryptocurrency amendment. Both sides have an uphill climb:

The whole promise of DeFi is that it's not inside the system and not centralized. It’s designed to work without brokers or banks and to work without government setting the rules of the road. In other words, it’s designed to be difficult to monitor and regulate. So the fight we saw over the past week feels like little more than a trial run of a much bigger argument over what DeFi regulation should look like. It’s still not obvious that DeFi offers enough advantages to ordinary users to ever really take off. But if it does, the struggle to track, tax and regulate it will make the battle over Bitcoin miners filing 1099s look trivial.

Thursday blend: sundry edition

I am freaking tired today. In related news, it's Thursday.

From the Bee:

Man Surprised To Learn Babylon Bee Has Full Articles To Go With The Headlines

More:

The Babylon Bee Presents: The Leftist's Guide To Defending Critical Race Theory:

Objection: But wait, those last two are facts! Shouldn't we be teaching children facts?                 

Answer: Facts are white supremacy, you racist, fascist, homophobe! 

Remind this loon that facts and objectivity are simply constructs of whiteness. We teach whatever will help us reach the political goals we want; whether it's true or not is unimportant.

Covid stuff:

I honestly don't know enough nor care (even though I know I should) enough to sift through thousands of articles in a likely futile attempt to glean some helpful information about COVID variants. But here's an article written for a 5 year-old, and about as helpful as can be expected:

Lambda

The Lambda variant was first detected in Peru in December 2020 and is now spreading rapidly through South America. A lab study in Japan, which has not yet been peer reviewed, found that the Lambda variant could be more resistant to vaccines than the original strain of COVID and could be highly infectious. Another non-peer reviewed study from NYU researchers found that vaccines generally worked well against this variant.

 

Monopoly money:

How about we don't print another trillion as inflation soars?

A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday faces its biggest test of this week's U.S. Senate debate when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office delivers its judgment on whether the measure fulfills a promise of not adding to Washington's budget deficits. 

Cryptocurrency crackdown would raise tens of billions for infrastructure plan, analysis finds:

A proposal to crack down on cryptocurrency transactions could raise tens of billions of dollars for new infrastructure spending, as lawmakers advance a bipartisan plan.

Increasing reporting requirements on cryptocurrency transactions is expected to raise nearly $28 billion over the course of 10 years, according to an estimate released by The Joint Committee on Taxation on Monday.

The group projected that, collectively, the provisions in the bill would boost revenue by $51 billion over the same time period.

With any luck, this latest attempt at theft-by-government will be a little less retarded (and I will not apologize for using the R-word. Because the infrastructure bill is retarded, especially relating to cryptocurrency, and you need to lighten up):

A trio of senators on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the bipartisan infrastructure bill that would rewrite part of a section, setting up reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions.

Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Pat Toomey and Ron Wyden started working on an amendment after pointing to "unworkable" and "overly broad" language which they say would implement "broker" reporting requirements on people who are not really brokers.

These people, like the bitcoin miners who confirm transactions in the system, would not even be capable of satisfying the requirements in the bill, Toomey, R-Pa., said.

There should be a law, at least with respect to important and expensive bills, that pet project amendments cannot be added in.

😂😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/Fl1FtFKNT4

— Demetri Kofinas (@kofinas) August 4, 2021

At Instapundit: IF YOU LIKE YOUR VITAMIN D, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR VITAMIN D: While they scare you with “variants,” Congress wants to make dietary supplements prescription only.

Meanwhile:

I hope the bear is gone

It's been a rough couple of months in cryptocurrency. I just hope things are turning around as they appear to be [knocks on wood]:

Click to enlarge. From coinmarketcap.com

Crytpocurrency guide

 From the Bee, here is the definitive guide to cryptocurrency:

But what IS cryptocurrency? 

Cryptocurrency is a completely virtual currency that exists only online. You never have to worry about using your wallet because there's no physical money to keep track of. All you have to do is remember one simple 38-character hexadecimal password, answer the bridgekeeper's five three questions, and go on a quest across the galaxy to retrieve all six Infinity Stones to access your account. Easy! There's also stuff about mining and blockchains and stuff but honestly, we still don't understand it.

Are there different types of cryptocurrency?

Yes. Currencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin are probably the most popular, but there are hundreds of different types! Some lesser-known varieties include the following:

• BLMcoin
• EpsteinDidntKillHimselfCoin
• RonPaulCoin
• ChuckECheeseCoin
• Larrycoin -- a coin exclusively for people named Larry.

Obviously satire, but it's close.