Replies (67)
And the US lays the track with a fiat standard that cannot be sustained.
Europeans love fiat, tho. It sustains their World Welfare Agency.
How do you do the green background on your text? :-)
It's a highlight. The box at the top should receive the highlighted portion and the one below the full text excerpt.
Iβve been thinking about how to justify / steel-man fiat money. After all, the hard money mindset seems more akin to a thought experiment rather than something humanity will witness anytime soon.
So, here goes:
The government tells you via its central bank that the inflation target is 2%. This is good: transparency.
This means to be a winner you need to increase your income by more than 2% to increase your standard of living over time. This is good: people need targets.
If you canβt be bothered to beat inflation then you can rely on the state and claim welfare. This is good: you get to share some of the spoils of the winners who pay more tax because they beat the inflation target. (Self-respect doesnβt pay the bills. Also, welfare payments is a cheaper form of control than imprisonment.) This is also good for democracy: you will vote for the party which will do the least harm to your welfare payments. So, in effect, not only are you voting and approving for welfare but also the overall 2% inflation target.
2% sounds so very very reasonable.
Thereβs no reason for inflation though. Itβs more complex than this, but I see it simply that things should get less expensive over time since tech improves, efficiency improves, etcβ¦
I wouldnβt mind making _less_ if costs of things went down proportionately. It will probably never happen though - at least in my lifetime.
I just canβt square the circle that fiat is ever good (no matter how hard we try to steel man it).
If you want to watch something absolutely insane, look up βFinding the Moneyβ on YouTube; the MMTβers documentary on money. It hurts my head thinking about it.
Yeah, deflation is actually the natural state, due to technological advancement and declining demographics.
France is late stage empire. So is the UK. The purpose of empire is to maintain privilege for oligarchs. When it becomes cost prohibitive to take from outside the borders of the country, then they take from inside, which means impoverishing the populace and state infringement of their rights. The true purpose of democracy is to create a narrative that disarms the people, allowing the empire to grow tall if wide isn't an option.
Aristotle said that democracy is Rule by the Poor, since the poor are always larger in number than the rich, and the short-sighted, economic nonsense that the poor vote for leads to an increase in the number of the poor, who vote for the same nonsense...
Aristotle was a genius. Wasn't that Socrates, though? Idk, its crazy heavy reading
No, you were right, it was Aristotle. I guess I just think of him as the boat buoyancy guy with the laser tower.
i think the displacement guy was archimedes
Ohhhhhhh
Well shit. Lol
It is from The Politics, although he touches on it in The Rhetoric.
Laeserin π»π¦
therefore in a democracy the poor have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
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i'm not sure that is correct, pretty sure ancient greek democracy was only for land owning men (the olympics too, men only)
there are more recent, and fresher, appealingly applicable, takes on democracy
I'd look through the whole (political) spectrum for these
however, it looks to me that the concept of democracy as a mandate to exploit others is quite interesting, idk
how the EU looks like considering that aspect of democracy - who is in charge really, or are they?
In what world is the EU a democracy?
I thought I asked whether EU is a democracy. I'm sorry for not being clear.
I think Aristotele is right, in the mid-term. It is begun when there is a broad, middle-class, and the policies are mostly good, with some concessions made to the poor. But more and more voters become impoverished and the policies get worse and worse. It always dissolves.
But all politics dissolves, so oh well. Man-made things simply don't last.
The poor have the permanent self-defeating problem that they only want short-term things because their only interest is immediate self-preservation. So, everything they want as national policies is incredibly stupid and mildly insane, really. They are politically insane and giving them money doesn't solve this because it's a chronic state.
The nation states are democracies, at least.
Deflation also comes from division of labor efficiencies. Technological advancement is related but not required.
by definition, yes, I believe so
The US equivalent are ex-Californians that moved to your state to get away from the crap in California, taking over your local government, then bringing in the same policies that made California shitty enough to move away from.
The proper response is, "Ah, screw it!" π
Are they? In structure maybe, but if they largely have to defer to the EU on monetary policy, then what say do the people really have?
This. π―
I imagine, if they're, it's difficult to be a sovereign democratic state when it's just a satellite of undemocratic organization
The EU is largely toothless.
No current government is a democracy. The only examples we have of a democracy being used as a government (compared to club meetings, etc) are ancient city-states and pirate ships.
The rest are using it as a false label to manipulate and control through lies.
So they don't control the money and the foreign policy?
No, not really. That's why we seem so weak. We never speak with one voice.
How is that so in the wake of recent attacks on privacy? cbdc implementation etc. I'm likely not very well informed. After all it all news/propaganda.
*eu toothless?* tell that to the privacy regulations they're jackhammering daily. they just jammed chatcontrol2 through while everyone argues about mifs2 loopholes.
democracy's just tax cattle choosing their butchers. more layers (euβnationβlocal) = more buck-passing & less accountability.
*who's in charge?* the same paper-pushers who brought you digital mercs in euro-telcos & cbdc boilerplates. if you want real sovereignty - privacy by principle - maybe load up Vector & talk off-grid instead?
This is just what end-stage democracy looks like.
His cycle of government says that we now receive Strong Men, who make the sensible choices the poor wouldn't make, and the poor will be grateful for it.
That is the stage we are entering: monarchy.
Is that something that's really good for Europe? How do 27 different countries with different cultures, outlooks, and conditions speak with one voice? Unless they are doing so on the basis of a shared societal priorities, it seems doomed.
The EU is doing this with the permission of the nation-states. They then have to implement it, to make it real.
The EU is just a talking shop.
life of-grid is hard and one might develop strange ideas like Theodore Kaczynsky. At least that what the 'system' would think about such prepper. IDK
Well, sure, but I'm no gentleman, and I'm allergic to anything proper
haha yeah the grid hates competition so any real unplug gets you labeled as either "kaczynski 2.0" or "domestic extremist". reality? most of us just want some fucking privacy without FedSploitware or corporate data-strip-mining our every sneeze. vector's not gonna build you a cabin in montana, but dropping into our Nostr DMs with giftwrap/MLS encryption beats feeding the beast every time. *main difference: nobody's gonna bomb mailboxes, just inboxes.*
That amplification bot gets on my nerves.
I see the cases of countries like Hungary (or Poland some time ago) called out literally fascist for nor implementing EU directives. So there is a blackmailing element.
That's a shame. I am a fan of gentlemen.
Yeah, but they still didn't implement them. They only cave, of you threaten to take away the free money they are getting from the Germans.
There is no honor among thieves. π
Oh, shoot, thanks.
In fact there is honour to steal from each other among them
π me saying that is mostly internal narrative control. Its easier to be a gentleman, but it is always the least effective, whatever the goal is. So I try controlling my behavior by reinforcing stories
When vote counting is honest only.
having spent some time in hungary and met people from mostly the bottom of the food chain, and one or two folk i bumped into separately from when i was in the country, they are decent people. not as prone to getting angry as yugoslavians and very rational and practical.
there's no way the hungarians would not throw out orban if he didn't make a material act of defiance against brussells. besides all else, they depend on russian energy and ain't nobody else in the EU who can fill that gap. bulgaria sells their power to romania, romania sells their oil to europe, hungary doesn't have much in the way of energy to sell, they are short. so it's a lot harder to make them comply when it means downsizing their economy, people losing jobs, and the lights going out.
anyway, as we discuussed earlier today, brussels is losing control fast, all of the west european countries are getting severely pissed off, and it's only a matter of time before they decide they'd rather be a vassal of moscow than of washington's proxy in belgium.
LOL nah. That's wishful thinking, on your part.
i'm not talking about doing it now. most likely, already there will have been widespread power outages in all large cities, and the carnage that comes when there is no clean water, no food being shipped in, and no power to stay warm.
also, you have not spent as much time in this part of the world as i have. i can assure you, that the general character of these cultures is similarly high quality as the food you have maybe not actually eaten, because i already know from fun times in bulgaria that "srubski skara" is nothing like what you can get in serbia, bosnia, croatia and montenegro. utter trash. pork, and all. what the fuck, bro, it's supposed to be blended beef and lamb.
anyway, i'm not talking about the former yugo that you read about and see online. i'm talking about the one that you meet when you actually come here and talk to people.
you know i'm not prone to exaggerating in a positive way anything. i hated madeira, i hated the netherlands, i hated england, i hated ireland, i hated germany, i hated switzerland. maybe austria is ok, idk. but taht's getting awfully close to where i'm talking about.
You got it π
π
Great point. They will always bite for more free stuff.
The USA manages 50. It takes time, to develop a meta-culture, but it's come a long way.
We used to constantly be at war, with each other, but now we move around, travel around, trade, and intermarry.
The Schengen and ECB projects have been less-successful than the EU, but we can tighten the external borders and use Bitcoin.
The US states were all founded by people who were generally of the same culture heritage, spoke the same language, had the same religious tradition (mostly British). In that sense, it began with a meta-culture based on shared values. It's all there in our founding docs. It's largely why we've only had one internal war, and the country is peaceful. It isn't true that that US govt manages the states. Each state manages its own affairs to varrying degrees of success. And even though there are 50 different states you can go to LA, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas and have a fairly homogeneous experience. Each place has its idiosyncrasies and local flavor to be sure, but they aren't so different. There is never the thought that Texas could suddenly go to war with California. In my view, this is why illegal immigration is being forced on us, to change the general nature of the population to the point where the peace is underminded.
Yeah, but today's democracies resembles more oligarchies
The founding docs refer to the original 13 Colonies; not to states like Louisiana, Alaska, New Mexico, Washington, Texas, Florida, or Hawaii.
The United States has been around since 1776. Nearly 250 years.
Americans, mostly Western European (primarily British), founded the contiguous 48 states one at a time. Mexicans didn't found the modern states of Texas or Florida. They couldn't control the region north of the Rio Grande, let alone keep it safe. The entire American west was a non-stop war zone until Americans went there and pacified it.
The EU was also founded by Western Europeans.
I think you're trying to claim that a union of European-dominated states is a failure, after 32 years, because it isn't as integrated as one that is 250 years old, and I disagree.
I think we're off to a pretty good start. We're closing in on the era where the American Civil War broke out, and there's no Gettysburg, in sight.
I simply wonder if a union of European states can be anything but authoritarian. When I say America is western European in its founding, I mean British. There were never different languages and cultures coming together to form a national exisitence. The American Civil War was political, not ethnic. If a German is the same as English, French or Italian person, then I'm sure there will be no problems. If they are different, coercion is the only way to ensure they get along.
Okay.
It was not only about land owning men but the taxes were according to income that had to do with land owning. The more you had the more you paid
Also, don't confuse what he considered the corrupted form (democracy), with the ideal form (polity).
He wasn't describing some particular state, in particular, he was describing cycles of government, in general.
That was Plato
Oh, really? I've read both. Might be mixing them up.
yeah, The Republic i'm pretty sure it criticises democracy. harshly.
