“The National Security State is an instrument of class warfare, organized and designed to permit an elite, local and multinational, to operate without any constraint from democratic processes. This allows the bulk of the population to be treated as a mere cost of production.”
The Real Terror Network
Edward Herman
What is progressive taxation?
It concentrates the burden on those whose wealth comes from rents, and minimizes the burden on those who labor.
Rents from assets are the same as Etherium managers siphoning off value just because they own. Bitcoin is a progressive system that does not reward anyone unless they put in work. The US tax system should also be.
In the aftermath of Sept 11, the checks and balances put in place to prevent the appearance of a Hobbesian Sovereign were proven ineffectual. The Leviathan exists, and it feeds on your fear and on your ambivalence toward political participation.
I would have come to Miami if they removed everyone else, and only had Andreas Antonopoulos speaking.
If Miami’s lectures suck, get online and order Sheldon Wolin’s “Democracy Incorporated” and Michael Hudson’s “Killing the Host.”
That money will serve you better than your Miami ticket.
If you’re in Miami today and find yourself cheering when someone says something about price growth, others being poor or dumb, not needing any government or social services, or advocating for the implosion of world order to pump Bitcoin, you’re missing the point.
Cheer instead when someone speaks about improving universal knowledge and adoption of a freeing currency, improving privacy and fungibility, increasing access for oppressed people, improving movement and communication among those people, and revoking governments’ ability to manage dissent through imprisonment and financial enslavement.
When I see a soldier in the airport, I am not inclined to thank them for their service.
I am inclined to apologize for the fact that their lives have been co-opted by the government, their world view has been manipulated to serve its purposes, their lives have been put at great risk to enrich the corporations that benefit from their service abroad, and they are destined to be forgotten by the tax payers and left holding the bag of physical and mental atrocities once they are no longer useful.
Love the soldiers. But love them for being exploited beings just like you.
I notice that the more followers that people on Nostr tend to have, the fewer people they tend to follow.
Thus the more people talk about their chosen topic, the less inclined they are to be open to opinions from others on the platform
Next Monday is my favorite holiday of the year.
Bitcoin Pizza Day on my calendar
Finance capitalism does not promote growth or rising living standards. It is the doctrine of deindustrialization, and of the cannibalism of production.
Most US companies are zombie companies—their production is financial growth rather than material and service creation. The financial industry serves the myth by enabling an ever increasing debt load, by controlling bankruptcy laws, by redefining GDP to include financial services, by labeling stock buybacks and new debt as investment, and by socializing their risks and failures.
“The core of anarchist tradition is that power is always illegitimate, until it proves itself to be legitimate…
…It is the responsibility of those who exercise power to show that somehow it’s legitimate. It’s not the responsibility of anyone else to show that it’s illegitimate. It’s illegitimate by assumption…
Harry Kreisler interview with Noam Chomsky
The wife and I are going to Playa del Carmen next week. Any Bitcoining down there?
I’m planning to take my travel phone, so no Nostr…
