paulkienitz
paulkienitz's Journalwhy fiat currencies are stable
The sort of people who promote cryptocurrency have a long tradition, which predates bitcoin, of poo-pooing fiat currencies. They say they can't be trusted. In the old days they would have been gold bugs. But now the allure of speculative bubbles, which these pseudo-currencies are designed to constantly produce, have got a lot of these people suckered into thinking that these highly volatile and inherently valueless abstract "coins" are the future of money, and more trustworthy than fiat currencies.
So why do fiat currencies end up being trustworthy and stable, when you can't see what gives them their value?
I think the explanation comes down to incentives. The world has many fiat currencies, and they have a competitive relationship with each other. And the way to win that competition is to be the most robust and stable at storing value. People want to spend their inferior currencies and save their superior ones. The central banks and reserve boards that back the world's major currencies have strong incentives to keep their currencies as stable as they can. Those who succeed have their currencies used around the world, rather than only at home.
The big winner at this competition has been the US dollar. It is used and desired everywhere. And I don't think most people appreciate what a powerful and effective thing that is. The United States used to be the strongest country in the world because it had the best technology and manufacturing. That's no longer true, but it's as dominant as ever, just because it has the best currency. It's so desirable that we run a substantial "trade deficit" which is actually not a deficit at all, but a privilege most countries would dearly love to achieve: the ability to import goods essentially for free by printing money for export.
Every other major currency wants to be as desirable as the dollar. The strength of the dollar is why the EU came up with the Euro, even though it hurt many of their member countries. The Chinese are very much hoping to internationalize the renminbi, and if they do we're gonna notice the effects.
The rewards of having a fiat currency that's sound and stable are immense, and that gives every fiat currency backer all the incentive they need to produce something sounder than any crypto-coin is ever likely to become even in a best-case scenario.
so, what is the whitest possible sport?
In the past, golf and tennis used to be pretty darn white, but nowadays if we want a really white sport, it had better be something involving snow or ice. So the obvious nominees are:
- hockey
- speed skating
- figure skating
- bobsled/luge/skeleton
- downhill skiing
- cross-country skiing
...but in my opinion, the best nominee is the one that combines skis with guns, WINTER BIATHLON. Now that's white.
[woops, forgot curling!]
We know of two alternatives to working 9 to 5 in an economy, and neither attracts me...
One is subsistence farming, which often entails backbreaking labor from before dawn until after dusk. The other is hunter-gatherer living, which takes a lot less hard work, but would only sustain about 1% of our population, meaning the rest of us are sporked.
I'll take the 9 to 5 grind, thanks. Our present economy may produce a lot of inequality, but with democracy that is correctable, and also we're not far from the point where we can start transitioning from being served by poor people to being served by robots.
yep... freedom and rights are for them, but not for you
A lot of people have been puzzled by the paradox of American conservatism, which is where the rhetoric of liberty is loudest but where moves to savagely curtail people's freedoms meet little resistance, as we are seeing right now in Texas. The solution of the paradox comes when you understand that it's not about which principles they want to support, but which people they want to support. Liberty and rights are sacred for Real Americans, but don't apply to minorities, foreigners, gays, feminists, atheists or others not qualified to count as Real Americans. And this constitutes fascism, which is rooted in the desire that one culture should be privileged above other cultures by the power of the state, so that members of the chosen culture have rights which other people do not have.
and "libertarianism" has largely been an intellectual smokescreen to disguise fascism
The core of conservatism in America -- the ethos that keeps the right wing unified across hundreds of issues -- is that "real Americans" are deserving of prosperity and social rewards, whereas all others unlike them should be excluded or punished or repressed. And a lot of self-described libertarians are lying when they claim otherwise about their own agendas.
self-defense against anti-maskers
People who don't like masks or vaccines are also often people who defend such practices as armed self-defense and standing your ground. Maybe they'd get the message if we treated maskless assholes as the dangerous threats they are, and used weapons to make them keep their distance. I suggest a seven foot spear, or at least a pointy stick.
I would say that ideological fanaticism can function as an equivalent of mental illness
even when no medical dysfunction is present.
The right in general and Trump in particular have been demanding of their followers for a long time that they be willing to put dogma above data, to believe their ears rather than their eyes. After decades of inculcation into this mindset, in parallel with similar efforts by evangelical preachers to breed their own kind of purblind fanaticism, we have a large population of people who are willing to act entirely as if they are mentally ill, when they aren't.
Trump transformed the GOP... but not by very much
Before Trump, the Republican party was defined by a philosophy of small government, low taxes, free enterprise, and individual responsibility. After Trump, everyone not willing to accept being blatantly lied to, or to accept overt bigotry, has been driven out. The GOP is now defined by cruelty, graft, corruption, violence, insurgency, white supremacy, rejection of basic public health policy, and gargantuan amounts of gaslighting bullshit in place of any discussion of facts.
Though a rather extreme transformation on paper, it has made astonishingly little difference in practice to who is and is not a member of the Republican party.
Trump went digging beneath the surface of the small-government individual-liberty party to find the subterranean layers of racism, corruption, and fascism. He sure didn't have to dig very far.
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