Europe is collapsing. This is partly because of taxes and regulation far beyond the Laffer limit (the entrepreneurial elite is fleeing Britain en-masse) and partly because energy is expensive. Your standard of living is, to a good approximation, the amount of energy put to good use for each person. When you see standard of living statistics that differ significantly from this ranking, they are usually obviously fraudulent, though climate extremes require more energy usage for a given standard of living …
Category: economics
Basel III, BRICSpay, Gold, and Bitcoin in International trade.
As a result of various abusive misuses by US government of the international role of the US$ fiat nations are separating themselves, and are casting around for other ways to do business with each other. First the Brics, and now Europe has put in place with new Basel have put in place banking regulations that encourage banks to hold physical gold as an international monetary asset. Brics has abandoned plans for a blockchain based medium of exchange, and all governments …
War and rational choice
It looks like the Ukraine war is going to be fought to its ultimate conclusion. All Ukrainian men who have not managed to escape the regime will die (the regime being composed of men who do not actually think of themselves as Ukrainians) It is never rational to fight a war all the way to its ultimate end. War is a test of will and capability. If both sides knew the other’s will and capability, and both sides were rational, …
Tech decline
Where is my flying car, bro? Well, back before world war II, there were flying cars, in that affluent middle class people who owned enough land, usually rural middle class people, often had their own personal airport, and a private plane that could take off from a very short and very rough runway — which was typically a gravel track that got graded from time to time. The British airforce in world war one and two recruited its pilots from …
The Great Debasement Trade
The state cannot tax beyond the Laffer Limit forever, and it cannot run enormous deficits forever. We have more urgent fish to fry than the deficit — nothing is going to be fixed until the deep state is behind bars and there are tanks in Harvard, and I suppose our enemies feel even less urgency about the deficit, more important to them to kill all “fascists”. Indeed right now they are confronting Trump on the principle that we should be …
State of Bitcoin scaling
For a long time Bitcoin transaction fees were high and unpredictable, as Bitcoin runs into its scaling limit of seven transactions per second. This has caused grave damage to the lightning network and to daos. During this time more and more people have moved to layer two solutions, such as Liquid, Lightning, and Liquid Lightning, with the result that the number of transactions has finally fallen back to below the scaling limit. From time to time, not often, but often …
Government Healthcare and the deficit
Healthcare in the US is extraordinarily, ludicrously, bad. It is also absurdly, extraordinarily, ludicrously expensive, both for any individual who is not part of an official victim group, and for the government. The government deficit is about two trillion dollars, and is unsustainable. Economic collapse and hyperinflation looms. The cost of healthcare to the government is about equal to the deficit. Comparing US (corrupt civil service and judiciary) health care spending with Singapore (honest civil service and judiciary) health care …
Calling the dip
The bell is ringing. Last time around, I called the 2022 dip slightly too soon when bitcoin was at twenty thousand, then called it again, more firmly and with greater confidence, when it was at sixteen thousand, which was dead on accurate. The current dip is sixty thousand or so. I may have called it a little too late, bitcoin was recently at fifty eight thousand, and is now at sixty two thousand, though I think it likely to briefly …
Bidenomics
According to official statistics, everything is coming up roses. Inflation is way down, unemployment is way down, GDP is way up, and we are doing so much better than under the horrible horrible Trump economy. Looking out the window of the plane from ten thousand feet as it comes in to the airport, you can see that not everything is coming up roses. The Democrats noticed that not everyone seems impressed by the wonderful economic performance of the Biden regime …
Enormous move in bitcoin coming up
The good news is that in the not very distant future, everyone who matters is going to be using Bitcoin. The bad news is that if they will be using something resembling currently available software, they will still be net peons, not netizens. Probably no dramatic price changes next week. Or next month. Maybe not next year. But we are on a big move up that will likely continue going up and up for a very long time. The dollar …