SovSun #23: Your BBQ Paid for by Citizens w/Guns
Plus Bitcoin Game Theory, Delta Hilarity and Charlie Munger Torches His Legacy
Happy July 4th Weekend! Here’s your annual holiday reminder that America’s founding was a righteous victory over tyranny using necessary force by citizens with guns. Never forget that. Now go fly the flag of an admittedly imperfect nation that is still the greatest country ever created…if we can keep it.
One Major Battle in the War on Freedom
“I’m not there yet, but there’s a significant sentiment in Congress that if you’re participating in an anonymous crypto transaction that you are a de facto participant in a criminal conspiracy.”
—U.S. Representative Bill Foster
The above quote is a bit concerning albeit not surprising.
Freedom empowering technologies and burgeoning surveillance states will inevitably clash.
To the chagrin of some of our current elites (see Munger story below), the United States’ ruling cartel knows it can't just become China with a snap of their fingers. Two hundred plus years of a Constitutional Republic can’t be set aside overnight.
But between 3 decades of ‘woke’ brainwashing at ‘institutions of higher learning’, a decade of woke 24/7 programming in the MSM, on network idiot boxes and streaming services like Netflix, and a heavy reactionary thrust from the Deep State to Trump’s shocking win, the oligarchs are downright giddy about their chances of implementing something darn close to the CCP. With the latest ‘domestic extremist’ rollouts from politicians and Big Technocrats to enshrine one-party absolutist rule, the ultimate vision of an authoritarian state is finally within reach for global elites and our intelligence apparatus.
That's why the massive and fundamental re-location of mining from China to the United States may not be the uniform positive that many in the industry believe. Unless a significant amount of that mining power is further dispersed globally into liberty friendly regions and nation-states, then bitcoiners and freedom fighters are setting themselves up for a China Part Deux concentration of power potentially here in the United States. I know this seems like an absurd thing to say, but the America of my youth is far from the America of the last decade or so and every month these days seems like a new low and deeper descent into an authoritarian and woke Marxist hellscape.
There’s no evidence that China’s mining eviction was orchestrated in conjunction with the US. But it serves both powers who fundamentally disagree with Bitcoin’s premise of monetary freedom and liberty - censorship resistant money not controlled by the state. China will be rolling out their digital yuan, soon, a CBDC or Central Bank Controlled Digital Currency that is the perfect weapon in an authoritarian prison state. Don’t like someone’s attitude? Shut their money off. Speaking critically of the state? Shut their money and internet off. Speaking critically of the state and an ethnic minority? Shut their money, internet and head off.
As long as China and the US were competing for mining dominance, game theory made it tough for either to crack down too hard on the miners securing the bitcoin network. But with all of the mining power relocating to the US, it certainly makes it easier to tether, control and regulate mining in the name of the mythical ‘climate emergency’ or KYC/AML (Know Your Customer & Anti-Money Laundering rules). That’s why it’s urgent for miners to be globally distributed, and for everyone who can to run a full node or join a mining pool.
Depending on how the liberty wars turn out here at home, we'll know whether China and the US are this century's Scylla and Charybdis, or whether saner minds have prevailed.
Delta Gamma Epsilon
Self-serving politicians locked down free citizens (and, ironically, released prisoners), destroyed businesses, marred kids' psyches, and harassed people with mask and testing mandates, all for a coronavirus that in the end was not that novel. And they did it with the connivance of corporate media, which censored and slandered anyone who asked the most basic questions about the virus' origins and treatments.
In a future sane world, people will view the orchestrated panic of the COVID era with the same bemused condescension we might view the supposed War of the Worlds radio invasion scare of 1938, or the bygone use of leeches for seemingly every ailment.
Just a reminder for those who haven’t woken up yet, there will be multiple ‘variants’ they will try to sell and scare you on in the coming months. While it appears that the ‘Delta’ psyop has already flopped, as even painfully neurotic and gullible white women in NY/LA have decided some sun, drink and fun this summer outweighs whatever virtue points their banshee cliques award them for total mask obedience and are heading to the beach to make up for lost time.
Don’t worry filthy statists and lockdown fetishists, I hear the epsilon and gamma strains will be so extra after delta’s disappointing opening box office weekend.
On a tangential note though, the WHO and other 'experts' have said that even those vaccinated should continue to mask up bc of Delta. So let me be the first to say to the people who have paid attention to the CDC, WHO, Dr. Fraudci and other ‘experts’ - put your mask back on and stay home. Since you didn't show an ounce of common sense or data literacy as you masked up, locked down and hid at home for the first 16 months, don't even think about exercising some independent thought now. Take your jab, put your mask back on, and climb back under the covers. Maybe just maybe after the Gamma variant in 2022 (pre-election so we can continue with the eye jaw-dropping fraudulent mail in ballot schemes) you can consider breathing fresh air and venturing outside.
Even more tangential note: Did the CCP perform gain of function experiments on the coronavirus that escaped the Wuhan lab to make it less lethal and contagious to Asians? I know it's an unpopular bit of science, but there are actual and distinct biological differences between not only the two genders that exist, but also between the races. So wouldn’t it make sense that the Chinese experimented in this fashion? Is that why China’s fatality numbers (even adjusting for the obvious underreporting and lies) were lower than the West (even accounting for the obvious politically motivated inflating of numbers and lies)?
It's quite possible. It's also a possibility that their death totals were relatively modest and that they already had a vaccine/antidote ready to go, since they were the ones who created this strain. Again, Occam's Razor.
Separately, on the CCP tip, it's worth reviewing what we are facing here. Both as a history lesson, and as a wake-up call to stop this slow descent into authoritarian madness we're experiencing at home.
Knowing history doesn’t mean we won’t make the same mistakes. But deliberate ignorance of it certainly makes those mistakes more likely. The below is worth a read.
**CCP at 100 Years: A Century of Killing and Deceit.
How to Destroy A Lifetime Legacy in One Interview
The scariest part is Charlie Munger is one of the most rational, pro-markets, pro-capitalism and meritocratic voices out there. I've featured his mental models in my prior newsletters and he’s a significant part of the How to Think Module in my 6 Week Accelerator Class.
The one caveat is that when you hit a certain age, your filter is nonexistent and you say whatever is on your mind. Plenty of people his age have no coherent thoughts left to articulate due to dementia (cough cough you know who). However, if free market capitalist Munger is thinking like this out loud, then you know the Gates-Fauci-Biden- Georgia Guidestones crowd are literally thinking what's the most efficient way to turn 90% of the world’s population into batteries or harvestable slave labor until they lose utility and then dispose of them (in an environmentally friendly manner of course).
Either way, when billionaires start openly pining for China’s brand of authoritarianism (responsible for the deaths of tens of millions), you know the timeline for a storming of the Bastille or Boston Massacre type event is accelerating.
Prominent Economist Warns Inflation Not Transitory, Could Be ‘Shock’ to Financial System
In a recent op-ed in the Financial Times, Mohamed El-Erian, who is one of the most widely followed economists, said central banks and markets need to “widen their perspective” on inflation to avoid significant damage to the economic and financial system.
All true, but as I expressed last week, the boxed in Fed will be better off continuing their policy of slowly starving the rapidly disappearing middle class and poor rather than risking a deflationary debt collapse. Without a technological 'miracle' (which is not that far fetched considering the mountain of exponential technologies coming online and converging in the near future) or re-embrace of free markets and rational thought, we’ve got two really bad options due to past policies and even the lesser of two evils is going to leave an awfully big mark. It may not be a Kobayashi Maru scenario, but I have little faith that the financial and political leadership who dug this deep hole in the first place will be the ones to get us out of it, especially in a country so deeply divided.
Nevertheless, let's celebrate. Your BBQ will cost $0.16 less this year! (as long as you don't drive anywhere at $5 a gallon, try to buy or rent a house up double digits, pay for medical care, feel free to embrace it. Feels good right?!?
Sixteen cents!
The fact that the Biden Administration thought this was worthy of not only a press release and significant mention at a White House press briefing, but a paid promotional campaign all over social media should be instructive. These people despise us, or just think we’re a bunch of frickin’ idiots (probably both, and sadly many of you have proven them right in your lifestyle and voting choices).
Either way, hopefully “Hot Dogs $0.16 less!” is the centerpiece of Biden’s CGI-based re-election campaign.
What I’m Reading…
**Marc Andreesen on technology and the major changes in the business world that Covid enabled.
**Facebook rolls out their Digital Stasi program to get neighbors to snitch on each other and further suppress people & information.
**Paul Graham on the correlation between success, hard work and talent.
**The Most Precious Resource We Have is Agency.
**The amount of processing capacity required by the Metaverse will be insatiable.
**Point Blank - Critical Race Theory is Just Anti-White Racism.
Podcasts I’m Listening To….
Naval’s latest on the beginning of Infinity.
Here’s the link and the transcript.
What I’m Watching…
Bitcoin Mining With Stranded Energy (10min). A rare, insightful and bullish video from Bloomberg on environmentally friendly miners.
Erik Voorhees on Why Governments Can’t Stop Bitcoin and Other Topics
Twitter Octagon
Parting Words
“Our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it." The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.”
-Dr. Richard Beeman, Professor of History University of Pennsylvania
That’s it this week. Make sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an issue.
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Happy July 4th weekend, and I’ll see you next week!