Monday, May 31, 2021

Breaking the Spell

What seemed unthinkable a few years back is now starting to look increasingly likely. The military is about to intervene directly in US politics. The generals are increasingly impatient with the administration, and the way it's handling the plague, the election fraud allegations, and the constitution. A coup d'état seems imminent. However, it will not look like a coup. The generals are unlikely to take political office. They will limit themselves to the arrest of political opponents while they let the supreme court take care of things, minus one or two arrested judges.

The excuse for the coup will be allegations of corruption and treason, and the individuals charged will be prosecuted and punished according to the law. The public will therefore perceive it as a criminal investigation rather than a purge.

All of this will happen once the generals know for certain that the individuals they plan to arrest are in fact going to be convicted. It's essential to them that the law is on their side. Otherwise, they themselves will end up prosecuted for treason.

The crimes investigated will be related to the plague and the election, as well as financial ties to China and other foreign entities. The conclusion will be that the lockdowns were illegal, that the plague was planned and orchestrated in part by Americans, and that the election was stolen. However, they are unlikely to declare Trump president. They don't want people to get the impression that this is Trump's coup. They will instead recommend a new election with proper and unbiased oversight.

Done correctly, this will have the effect of breaking the spell that so many have fallen under. Suddenly, the plague is no longer a valid reason to torture children, Joe Biden is no longer a hero of the working class. BLM and Antifa is not fighting for justice. Rather, it's all one big cesspool of corruption.

The ideal conditions for the coup is one in which the majority of people will react with genuine relief to a sudden flurry of arrests, and that time is drawing near. People are fed up with the propaganda. Pretty much everyone is exasperated with the non-stop fear mongering and the blatant disregard of our liberties.

Camp x-ray detainees.jpg
Guantanamo Bay detention camp

By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link

Sunday, May 30, 2021

My Second E-Mail to Mr Cork

I've finally written a reply to the e-mail I received from Mr Cork in response to my first e-mail where I asked for information regarding the cork business. I left it until today to write because he himself waited about a week before writing to me, and I needed the time to fully process the information I received and figure out the right way to reply.

The man is undoubtedly very busy, so I was determined to write something concise and to the point. However, I wasn't sure about the exact tone before I started writing. What I ended up with was a frank and sincere e-mail with information about my background, my current situation, my investment strategy, my current holdings and my preferences. Everything written as short, concise and non-intrusive as possible. At no point do I suggest any similarities between him and myself. However, I do mention a few things that I know he'll recognize as similar to his own situation. I mention my family's company, and I mention the fact that I've divided my estate among my four children. These are circumstances and issues I know Mr Cork must be familiar with, although at a much larger scale.

The idea behind my decision to be frank with Mr Cork on these issues is that he'll find it interesting. The reason people of his calibre take such an interest in other people's lives is in part due to the fact that they themselves have similar issues that they must solve, and they find it interesting to see how people deal with these in their lives. The difference between him and others is mostly a matter of scale. But some things like family life and children are not even different in scale. In the end, the only thing vastly bigger about Mr Cork than most other people is the size of his fortune. For the rest, he's no different from others.

The way to get Mr Cork's attention is therefore to present him with a frank account of ourselves, including any peculiarities related to family, estate management and business interests. If this is presented without any intrusive hints, the man will find us interesting, and there will be a lasting memory of us in his mind. He may even contact us to alert us to business opportunities should he see a match between the needs of his business contacts and our stated desires.

In my case, I've provided Mr Cork with enough information to have him alert me to opportunities. Should the situation arise where some of his forest owners have to sell their forest due to a shortage of cash, Mr Cork knows I'm liquid and waiting for the right opportunity. Furthermore, a situation like that would be one in which Mr Cork will have to see one partnership replaced by another. He'll naturally prefer someone he likes, so I may even get his help in negotiating a good deal.

I included a question related to historic land prices in my e-mail, and Mr Cork may find this worth his while. However, I don't expect him to answer, and I don't need him to answer. I'm happy with what I managed to convey to him in my e-mail, and I don't need yet another opportunity to provide him with more information. Any further communication with him will be a bonus, and an opportunity to get a little higher in his list of contacts. Apart from that, I'm fine with the situation as it is. I'm sure I made it into his list, and that's quite an achievement in itself.

Alcornoques en Grazalema.jpg
Cork oak forest

By Berrocal1950 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Death Cross in the Bitcoin Chart

The 50 day moving average has fallen below the 200 day moving average in the Bitcoin chart. Last time this so called death cross happened after a major peak was in February 2018. What followed was 14 months of anguish before the price again started to move up. The 50 day moving average got back above the 200 day moving average in April 2019, a so called golden cross. After another year of sideways motion, we entered the strong up move that started in April 2020 and ended early this year, as seen in this 4 year chart.

Sceptical to Bitcoin, I thought the death cross of 2018 was the end of it. Not in my wildest fantasies did I imagine it to go to $60,000 in 2021 after first hitting $3,000 in 2019. However, if we see the same relative moves this time, we'll see Bitcoin go to $9,000 in a year from now, only to hit $180,000 in 2025.

But things never repeat in this predictable fashion. This time around, I think we really have seen the end of Bitcoin. While we're likely to see a substantial bounce off of the nine to ten thousand level, it would be truly astonishing to see Bitcoin ever again above $60,000. There simply isn't the required enthusiasm for Bitcoin to make this happen. Other tokens are stealing Bitcoin's thunder. Bitcoin is already dated. By 2025, it will be old and seen as hopelessly outdated.

Cryptocurrency Mining Farm.jpg
Cryptocurrency mining farm

By Marco Krohn - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Fragility, Flux and Collapse

My wife and I went on a road trip yesterday to pick up two knitting machines that she had bought on the web. Her idea is to fix them and sell them at a profit. With some success in the fixing-up-knitting-machines business, I figure she's going to do all right.

She likes the down to earth solidity of machines and other things that she can either hold in her hand or walk around. But she's not convinced by things that don't generate any cash flow. She's not a fan of gold. She doesn't see the point. The fact that it has done well over the past five years has done nothing to change her mind. She prefers land, and is enthusiastic about my encounter with Mr Cork. Was it up to her, she'd buy a patch of forest right away. But the decision is not hers to make. It's mine, and I'm confident we'll do better by waiting a few years. However, we agree on the general state of the world, and the precarious situation we're in at the moment. We know our history, and we know that any society that relies heavily on data is a fragile society.

Data can be lost and forgotten. Hence, any asset that is registered primarily as data can be lost. The fact that many people store their wealth purely as data, without a paper receipts, is evidence of fragility. The fact that these same people are largely oblivious to history is similarly worrying. They have no idea how precarious things are, and how quickly things can change.

History is full of examples of societies partially or completely collapsing. Some of these events are well known and understood, and others are complete mysteries. The entire South American continent is one big paradox as far as history is concerned. Something similar to the late bronze age collapse in the East Mediterranean appears to have happened there. But there's not a single record anywhere with any hint as to what may have caused the collapse. All that we have are abandoned towns and villages, and a clear and rapid decay in building technology.

At the other extreme, we have historic records that details things that were supposedly unknown at the time. Portuguese seafarers had maps of South America and the Antarctic, so detailed that they knew exactly where to go. The Portuguese king used these maps in his negotiations with the Spanish king regarding the division of the world into two separate domains. But who drew these maps in the first place? Nobody knows.

There are also better known events, such as the burning of the library of Alexandria, or the collapse of the Roman empire. History is full of such events where data and information is wiped out, lost and forgotten, and my wife and I have an eerie feeling that something similar is about to happen. There's too much reliance on data and technology. All it takes for this to be wiped out is a major solar flare or some similar event, man made or otherwise. Suddenly, nobody knows who owns what. A whole lot of critical information related to production and logistics will similarly be lost.

Anyone with nothing but an electronic ledger entry to prove their ownership of an asset will be in trouble. If there's no paper document anywhere to prove we own a microscopic share of a large company, we'll have a hard time retrieving our savings. Even with a paper document, there might be a need to prove the authenticity of our ownership in court. The chaos would be complete, and most people would end up owning nothing.

History tells us that no complex society lasts for ever, and that a dark age can descend on the world surprisingly fast. There are all sorts of triggers for this to happen, ranging from the sun and the climate to politics and war. We also know that a dark age isn't necessarily all that dark, it's merely less dependent on data and written records. Things are organized privately rather than publically.

Central in such a society is the use of arbitrators to resolve disputes. What counts is not so much a written record of ownership as possession and good witness accounts. What's in our physical possession will not be taken from us unless someone can convince the arbitrators that it was stolen. My wife is therefore unlikely to loose possession of her knitting machines. We're also unlikely to lose possession of our apartment or metals. However, land possession can be disputed, and it's therefore important to have evidence, and preferably a reliable witness or two to prove our possession so that no-one can confiscate it.

Should the world descend into a dark age, politics will change completely. Nation states will cease to exist. Party politics will disappear. Instead, there will be private kings in the form of influential land owners and industrialists who act as ultimate arbitrators in disputes internal to their domain, and as one of several arbitrators in disputes that cross domains.

This means that Mr Cork would no longer be merely a rich land owner. He would be king of his domain and the chief arbitrator in cases related to land disputes. While this is of next to no value at the moment, it may become important if things sour. If we buy land through Mr Cork's brokerage, we won't just get a piece of paper with an official stamp. We'll get a potential king as a witness.

Rome- Ruins of the Forum, Looking towards the Capitol.jpg
Rome

Friday, May 28, 2021

Next Year's Bio-Weapon

There's a worrying aspect to the Wuhan lab theory that has been largely ignored. Namely the possibility that there were sinister motives behind the leak, and that mass-vaccination was the intended goal. The objective may have been to first mark the enemy with a vaccine, and then release a subsequent virus that targets the vaccinated.

This is not as far fetched as it may sound. The lab was doing military grade research, and this type of thinking is common among military men. The idea is to first trap the enemy by making them unwittingly expose themselves to an attack, and then follow this up with a decisive blow.

If this is the motive behind the push to get us vaccinated before next year's flu season, we're up against some truly dark forces. However, we don't have to be paranoid in order to be concerned. Even if no sinister motive was behind the plague of 2019, the fact remains that there are weapon grade bio-labs where researchers look for ways to target and destroy enemies. To think that they will ignore the obvious opportunity implicit in vaccines as targeting agents would be naïve.

With millions of people currently vaccinated in some way against the plague, we can be sure that someone somewhere is looking into ways to turn this against us. There will also be people working to promote one type of vaccine over another, because some vaccines are more easily tricked into attacking the host. However, this should not lead us to believe that there's a vaccine out there that's impossible to target. All vaccines leave a mark and a predictable response that can be targeted. The only difference is the degree and ease to which these responses can be turned against us.

This is why we should only vaccine ourselves against dangerous diseases, and the plague of 2019 was not such a disease. No amount of propaganda can cover up for the fact that no-one knows more than a couple of healthy young people struck down by the plague, and no-one knows more than a handful of people who know someone healthy and young that got seriously ill.

This proves conclusively that the plague was a dud, because the average person knows somewhere between 200 and 300 people well enough to call them acquaintances, friends or family. That means that we have first hand knowledge of two to three hundred people, and second hand knowledge of between 40,000 and 90,000 people. That's a significant sample, and to believe that this sample is somehow different from the rest of the population is silly. We can therefore conclude, based on our own first and second hand information, that the plague was not as advertised on TV. Someone has been serving us lies, and the question we should ask ourselves before we get ourselves vaccinated is why these lies were pushed as hard as they were.

Head shot of Xi Jinping in 2019. He is wearing a black suit jacket, white shirt and a blue necktie.
Xi Jinping

By Palácio do Planalto - https://www.flickr.com/photos/palaciodoplanalto/47945730807/, CC BY 2.0, Link

Thursday, May 27, 2021

My Wife's Dilemma

My wife surprised me yesterday by announcing that she's going to take the vaccine. She won't make a fuss. Once she's called upon, she'll go and get her shot. I told her I'm not going to take it, no matter what.

"I know," she replied. "But I am."
"Okay."

I had no other answer, and I still refuse to go into any argument on these kind of topics. There isn't any point in arguing. No-one is swayed by it. Then I reminded myself that most people suffer no side-effects from the vaccine. Yet I couldn't help listing in my mind all the attractive single ladies I know. I concluded that I'm probably all right no matter what.

I'm not sure what my wife made of my refusal to sway her away from her declared intention, but she brought the topic up again this morning with some additional information. She's fed up with mask-wearing, and if taking the vaccine is what's required to get rid of it, then she'll take it.

Again, I refused to go into any arguments. However, I suggested she'd push the decision as far into next year's flu season as possible. This year's flu season is over, so there won't be many cases, and it will be impossible to say whether the vaccine makes things better or worse. I think there's a good chance it will make matters worse, and there's no point in risking this possibility before we have more cases we can relate to.

I think this struck a nerve with my wife. She didn't object to my speculations. We're dealing with a largely untested vaccine, and there's hardly any serious investigation into side effects. We have to do the numbers ourselves based on what little data we can find, and those numbers will be hard to get through the summer with the flu season over.

There were all sorts of other things I could have brought up. But that wouldn't have been very helpful. My wife's point was her desire to comply with the rules, and that this made her wish for a shortcut. I could have brought up the increasing number of people disregarding the rules. I could have told her to break the rules herself. I could have told her that she could lie about her vaccine status, at least until the vaccine passports come rolling out. I could have told her all sorts of things. But that would be missing the point. She's right about the situation. Anyone wishing to comply with the rules is being pressured into taking the vaccine.

My advice is to resist this pressure as long as possible, but not necessarily for ever. There will come a day when we know enough to make an educated decision on the vaccine. If next year's flu season comes and goes without any alarming side-effects among people we know, it's probably safe to take it. But we're not there yet, so the prudent thing to do is to get as far back in line as possible.

Smallpox vaccine.jpg
Smallpox vaccine

By Photo Credit: James Gathany Content Providers(s): CDC - This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #2674. Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers. Deutsch | English | македонски | slovenščina | +/−, Public Domain, Link

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Land Calculations

I just received a personal reply to the e-mail that I sent to the consul after our May 17 lunch. The e-mail contained details about the man's company, so I was able to find him with a Bing search. From what I could gather, he may well be Mr Cork himself. Compared to him, I'm a very small fish indeed, so it's more than a little flattering to receive a personal reply on my e-mail.

My acquaintance with the consul makes him the third person of his calibre in my circle of friends and family, and I'm again struck by the personal qualities that such people possess. They have a fantastic ability to tone things down and make everybody relaxed in their company. Conversations focus on interests and passions, and there's never any bragging. They want to learn about other people, and you know they are sincere because they will remember you next time you meet, and they will ask about things that were brought up on previous occasions.

Another distinguishing feature is the lack of public information on these people. They keep a low profile in most things. So much so that I wasn't able to find Mr Cork by searching his name alone. I had to add the name of his company to find him. My other two acquaintances are equally hard to find.

All of this appears to be part of an unwritten codex designed to deflect unwanted attention and at the same time attract the likeminded. They want company that is entertaining and informative, and they detest people that immediately want something from them beyond good company and free for all information. I was therefore spot on when I asked for information regarding the cork business in a friendly and sincere manner. My goal is not to make money off of the man, but to make money together with him, all be it on a very much smaller scale than he's operating.

Finally, the e-mail I received is typical of these people. They are busy men and do not waste time on what's merely a business inquiry. His mail reads like a power point presentation. However, every point contains useful information for a novice like me. Combined with what I've already learned about cork oaks from Wikipedia, I can make some general observations and calculations. 

Land for cork trees come in two broad price categories. Land with fully grown trees costs about 7000 euros per hectare, with 1 hectare = 100x100 metres. Land with good conditions but no trees costs about 3500 euros per hectare.

It takes about 25 years for cork trees to reach fully grown size, which means that there's a 100% inflation adjusted return on investment in that period, provided the current price of land is reasonable. However, on asking Mr Cork point blank over lunch about the current price of land, he considered it to be above fair price at the moment. There will be better prices in the not too distant future.

Harvesting happens every nine years, which implies a return of about 10% per year in terms of value, given that the land is bought at fair value. The reasoning here is that the land is appreciating in line with inflation and therefore not a drain on the capital.

Land is opportunity cost in the same way that money is opportunity cost. Purchased below fair value, the land becomes a good investment in itself, in the same way gold becomes a good investment, provided it too is purchased below fair value. Timing is important. There's no point in trading gold for land as long as gold is appreciating faster than land. However, once the trade makes sense, the 10% annual appreciation of cork in the forests can be converted into a corresponding cash flow of 10%.

The 10% cash flow will in turn have to be divided into three, per Cantillon's formula, with one third going to taxes and another third going to labour, leaving us with 3.3% real inflation adjusted return on our investment. Interestingly, this corresponds to a compound interest of 125% over 25 years, meaning that buying land and growing trees from seeds is roughly as profitable as buying fully grown forest.

The long timespans involved in this business means that we have to look at it from a heritage perspective. However, this is not a problem. My investment strategy is focused on mega-cycles anyway, and my investments are not entirely tied to me personally. They're going to be handed over to my son together with my instructions on how to deal with this kind of investments.

Alcornoques en Grazalema.jpg
Cork oak forest

By Berrocal1950 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

The Wuhan Lab Theory

It appears that the beast has once again launched a war against itself, with one faction fighting another. The evidence of this can be found in the latest turn of events surrounding the plague of 2019. What was long considered debunked conspiracy is suddenly gaining support. Heroes and fact checkers are scrambling to change their stories. The corrupt and incompetent are running for cover. However, there's no reason to be optimistic about this turn of events. The fact that the Wuhan bio-weapon theory is gaining support at a time when central bankers desperately need a war is not a good omen.

The recognition that the plague may have been a bio-weapon will not reduce the push for more vaccines, more lockdowns and more control via vaccine passports and the like. It will merely add to this list a push for war against China and its real or imagined allies. We should therefore be careful about how we react to this latest turn of events. The beast needs us to react with anger and fear so that it can have its war. Hence, we must react differently.

First of all, we mustn't forget that the bio-weapon was in fact a dud. It quickly lost its punch. The severe cases reported during the early months of 2020 didn't persist. Instead, we got a fairly regular flu, with the usual complications and the usual victims. The young and the fit were spared. The old and infirm died, and even they died in no greater numbers than during any other severe flu season. We can therefore conclude that bio-weapons don't work very well. They quickly mutate into something less severe, so there's no need to fear these weapons.

The real damage wrought upon the West was not due to the bio-weapon. It was entirely self-inflicted through a panicked and self absorbed response by politicians. With nothing to loose from a heavy handed response, and much to gain in terms of political control, politicians went overboard with lockdowns, mask-mandates, vaccines, and vaccine passports. Our liberties were steamrolled. Non-stop propaganda was spewed, much to the detriment of everybody's mental health. Yet, they want us now to blame China and her allies.

The beast wants us to direct our anger towards an external enemy so that it can further subjected us to its will. The bio-weapon theory fits nicely into this narrative, which makes it the most likely reason why the story is suddenly receiving serious attention. But our real enemy is not in a far away country. Nothing will be gained by a war against China. No matter how plausible the bio-weapon theory may be, our response mustn't be a demand for war.

Unfortunately, most people respond slavishly to propaganda. If the faction of the beast that desires a war with China gains control of the propaganda machine, we'll soon see the bio-weapon story everywhere, and we'll see more and more people demand a firm response of some sort. War will be peddled to the masses as an acceptable response to the dud that was the plague of 2019.

The mask of the beast
The mask of the beast

Monday, May 24, 2021

Missing the Point about Crypto

Bitcoin has received a lot of bad press lately, all of it centred around two points on my list of why Bitcoin isn't money. However, the criticism fails to hit the mark on both counts. The fundamental issues are not addressed. Instead, there's a focus on secondary issues. Bitcoin uses too much energy, according to some, and it's inferior to Ether, according to others. The discussions that have followed have all been about what's too much energy, and why Bitcoin or Ether are the best. No-one seems concerned that we're having these discussions at all.

The problem with Bitcoin isn't that it's using too much energy, but that it requires energy at all. Money, once produced, should have no cost directly associated with it, because money is a storage vehicle. No-one should worry about storage cost on their money unless they have so much of it that it requires professional assistance.

The fact that Bitcoin requires electricity and high tech equipment in order to remain in existence is a big red flag, especially because these costs are carried by Bitcoin miners, rather than Bitcoin owners. The owners have no direct control over the network and the machines on which their tokens reside. They are entirely dependent on third party actors to stay in the game.

The issue is not about too much energy. It's not primarily an environmental issue. It's a fundamental issue related to energy use and technology, and the fact that no-one can ever hold a Bitcoin in their hand. Bitcoin will for ever be dependent on external factors related to energy and technology.

Similarly for the Bitcoin vs. Ether debate. It's irrelevant which one is the better token. The fact that we have this debate at all is the red flag. People are debating "money" on the basis of technology. This merely proves the point that technology cannot be money. Technology has a relatively short life span. There are always improvements made, making old technology obsolete and useless.

Real money can be stored for thousands of years and still retain purchasing power. Technology comes and goes in the span of decades. All crypto, regardless of technology, are useless as long term stores of purchasing power. It's therefore a meaningless distraction to debate the relative merits of one crypto-currency over another.

Cryptocurrency Mining Farm.jpg
Cryptocurrency mining farm

By Marco Krohn - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Next Year's Flu Season

My wife had an interesting conversation with one of her lady friends the other day. It went something like this:

"Have you taken the vaccine?" her lady friend asked.
"I'm not that old," my wife replied. "They haven't called me yet. But what do you think?"
"I don't know, but my husband is a virologist."
"And what does he think?"
"This whole thing will be all but forgotten by next year. That's what he thinks."
"That's interesting..."

Nothing more was said on the topic. No value statement was expressed. Yet, the message was clear.

On hearing about this, I pointed out that being a virologist hardly matters these days.

"He's not a politician, so what does he know?" I asked rhetorically.
"But it's rather telling, don't you think? We hear these things from different sources. Then it's up to us to make the connections."
"It's weird. They don't even hide it anymore. Yet people keep trusting the narrative."

Then I told my wife about this latest news from the US. Vaccinated and unvaccinated people are not subject to the same tests. No effort is made to collect any real data. Nobody higher up in the hierarchy of experts have the slightest interest in reality. It's all about narrative, and that narrative appears to have been scripted and decided upon long before the plague struck back in 2020.

It's now clear that we'll have a strong push towards a segregated society where the vaccinated will be treated very differently from the unvaccinated. The vaccinated will enjoy all sorts of shortcuts through the system, while the unvaccinated will have to pass one hurdle after another.

People will line up to get their shots to avoid the hassle of rigorous screening and control. But there will also be a growing awareness of the sinister forces behind this. However, things will remain confused and muddled in most people's minds through the summer. It won't be before next year's flu season that the official narrative will start to unravel in earnest. The reason for this is that this year's flu season is over. There's a natural reduction in cases that spin doctors can incorporate into their narrative as proof of the vaccine's efficiency. Credit will also be given to mask rules, and the frequent and intense testing of the unvaccinated. Segregation will be hailed as a great success.

By the time we enter next year's flu season, we'll have vaccinated people enjoying a great deal of freedom, and unvaccinated people treated as a pariah class. However, this will result in a number of inconvenient episodes that will be increasingly difficult to hide.

First off, the relaxed testing of vaccinated people will make the plague spread faster among them than it does among the unvaccinated. Vaccinated people will be let into their segregated areas even if they have a fever. That will not happen to the unvaccinated who will be refused entrance if at all feverish. Segregated sports events and the like will result in case surges among the vaccinated, with no corresponding surges among unvaccinated. However, these surges will not be reported. They will not be recognized as plague cases. The plague will therefore spread unchecked through the vaccinated part of society.

The difference in testing will lead to under-reporting of cases among the vaccinated, and a corresponding over-reporting of cases among the unvaccinated. The severity of these cases will be similarly miscommunicated. However, objective and unbiased observation will reveal the difference between reported facts and actual cases. The reported facts will increasingly deviate from observed reality. But this will only cause those in charge to double down on their narrative.

People will be encouraged to get their booster shot. Those who still refuse to be vaccinated will be even more inconvenienced while the vaccinated will be given a free pass, and there will be close to no official deaths among them. No matter how ill the vaccinated get, it won't be due to the plague, nor the vaccine. What few cases they admit to will be blamed on new variants of the virus that will have to be treated with new and improved vaccines

Everyone will be asked to line up for the new vaccines to combat the new variants. Those still not vaccinated will be demonized and blamed for the unchecked ravages ripping through the vaccinated community. But the deception will by then be so obvious that only those firmly in the grip of propaganda will believe it. There will be places that don't enforce any of the rules, and people will know that they are doing just fine. However, this awareness will not be widespread before the end of next year's flu season, which leaves us with a problem. How do we get through these coming months with a minimum of pain and inconvenience?

As a general strategy, the best course is one of caution. With so much deception and misinformation, now is not the time to get the vaccine. It may still be true that the vaccine is better than no vaccine at all. But why risk it when, according to my wife's virologist acquaintance, the plague is about to disappear on its own anyway?

There's also no need to be entirely truthful about our vaccine status. There's no point in bringing it up, and when others bring it up, we can enthusiastically proclaim our imminent vaccination. If we sense that we're in the company of pro-vaccine people, we agree with every aspect of the official narrative. That kills the conversation topic, and we can move on to other and more interesting things to talk about.

Furthermore, I will stay home his summer, and I'm telling my children to do the same. The inconvenience of being an unvaccinated traveller makes it a better option to explore the local scenery than to go abroad. This is not the time to experiment with our life and liberty. It's far better to wait a year to see how things evolve. If the propagandists are still in control, we may have to live another year with the inconveniences tossed upon us. But this cannot last for ever.

Camp x-ray detainees.jpg
Guantanamo Bay detention camp

By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Doing the Numbers

It's astonishing how many people trust political institutions while simultaneously detesting politicians as low life liars. Why on Earth is anyone trusting government numbers? Isn't it obvious that any institution headed by liars will be corrupted into producing numbers that fit the liars' narrative?

When it comes to the plague, it's been a farce all along. Going through the numbers, and keeping track of the narrative, I was able to determine that it was at best an inconsistent tale related to a relatively benign decease, and I was able to figure this out back in April 2020. Similarly, I've been able to figure out that the vaccine is much less effective than advertised, so I wasn't exactly surprised to learn that the official figures have been manipulated all along. The numbers related to the plague and the vaccine are whatever the politicians want them to be. They cannot be trusted any more than the politicians themselves.

The key to figuring these things out on our own is simply to pay attention to the documented cases and ignore the official numbers. It doesn't require any special insight apart from the fact that news must not be confused with truth. News is largely narrative and spin, which we must disregard. Only actual events can be trusted. A sports team sick with the plague despite being vaccinated tells us the truth. An official statistic tells us nothing.

If there really is a plague raging in the world, every one of us should know at least ten people dead from it, and most of them should be young and fit individuals with no preconditions. The fact that the only person I know who've allegedly died from the plague was my wife's aunt Augusta is telling us more than any statistic. Augusta was a morbidly obese woman with multiple health problems. She wasn't exactly a picture of health. Yet she's considered a tragic death, if we are to believe official data.

Furthermore, I know more people who've gotten sick from the vaccine than I know people who've gotten seriously ill from the plague. When we combine this fact with the fact that our leaders are looking us straight in our eyes while lying through their teeth, we can only conclude that we're living in dangerous times. Trusting these people and their official numbers can get us killed, because they have crossed the Faustian hurdle. There's no limit to their depravity.

portrait photograph of a 55-year-old Johnson
Boris Johnson

By Ben Shread / Cabinet Office, OGL 3, Link

My Autistic Friend

This year's celebratory lunch on May 17 was eventful for several reasons beyond the business aspect mentioned earlier. Everybody were in an upbeat mood. There was a sense of enthusiasm that I associate with the word love. People weren't holding back. No-one tried to make themselves seem important. We were having fun, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that left satisfied, with a warm feeling towards everybody, and the sense of security that comes with the knowledge that there are at least some people out there who'd care enough to give me a helping hand if something unforeseen should happen.

But one of us was not like everybody else. The notorious opinion machine was there, and he was as full of himself as I had feared. However, he was quick to reveal the reason for his uber-eccentric ways. The very first thing he told me as we met was that he was autistic, and that this was a handicap that had earned him a fixed income from the Norwegian state in the way of a pension. Then he asked me what sort of pension I was on, and I was lost for words. For some reason, I found it difficult to tell him the truth, that I'm living off of capital income, also from Norway.

The man had a strange theatrical way of talking, and the subject matter was always centred around his person. He asked me what political party I thought he was a member of, and I earned his praise for guessing correctly. The man was a caricature of the typical member of that party, so it wasn't hard to guess.

Next up was an obscure story about some connection between him and the last king of Egypt. The man droned on about how he was in a way the rightful heir to the throne of Egypt. But it was just as well that he wasn't the king at the moment. The price on his head would be enormous, and he didn't like the idea of living in constant fear of assassination.

The man simply never stopped talking. One thing after another came up, always about him and his party, and his friends. If anyone started a different conversation, he broke in with a personal angle to whatever was discussed.

At one point, he mentioned his status as a single man, and he told us that he hoped to remain single, God willing! One of the ladies replied that she thought him likely to succeed in his ambition. My Christian friend, also single, wasn't so sure. It depends on the girl, he opined. Then he smiled cheekily to one of the single ladies at the table.

None of this registered with our autistic friend. We could say the most outrageous things and kid around with all sorts of subtle hints and dual meanings, and it would fly by him. His presence became something of an entertaining sideshow to what everybody else were talking about. He would drone on and on. But we soon realized that we didn't have to give him more than half an ear, and we could respond with pretty much anything to keep him believing we cared about any of it. However, we're now stuck with a bit of a problem.

How do we get together in the future without having this guy either isolated or ignored? The man thinks he has found a great bunch of friends here in Porto. He's an all right person. But he's autistic. He's also painfully narrow minded. It's impossible to say anything even slightly controversial without him reacting with some personal opinion. So how do we include him in future gatherings without having him spoil everything?

Celebrating May 17
Celebrating May 17

Friday, May 21, 2021

The Miserable Life and Early Death of a Censor

My great-grandfather William became one of Norway's most successful publishers ever. However, he didn't get there on his own. The money to get started came from his wife Constance who took an active role in many major business decisions, and the key to William and Constance's success lay in their ability to attract talented people.

William and Constance were honest to the bone and ran a tight ship. There was no tolerance for any horsing around with the authors by their staff. Ideas were judged on their merits of consistency and cohesion rather than content. There was no limit to what could be discussed. Furthermore, female authors were never belittled or harassed. Authors like Sigrid Undset and Olav Duun flocked to the publishers, very much taken in by the high moral standing of the couple.

After Constance died, William partnered with his son Mads. The idea was to keep the company open minded and tolerant, also into the future. However, an unexpected hurdle was tossed into their plans when Norway became occupied by the Nazis in April 1940. Suddenly, a whole range of ideas were subject to censorship. William and Mads were forced by law to employ censors who's job it was to read through ready to publish manuscripts and weed out anything deemed illegal or inappropriate.

Much to William and Mads' surprise, people lined up for this kind of jobs. Many were attracted to the Nazi ideology, and the belief that historic wrongs must be rectified in the present by force. Ordinary people had been stabbed in their backs by the evil axis of Americans, Englishmen and Jews. This was recognized by a large portion of Europe's population, and the fight against liberty and capitalism was finally at hand. However, an astonishing portion of the swell in pro-Nazi sentiment was merely due to a widespread belief in the imminent victory of the Nazis over the English. People were willing to sell their soul for the prospect of a cushy job in the new normal that was to be a Nazi dominated Europe.

Such eagerness to submit to intolerance and small mindedness was astonishing to behold. The two publishers who had thought of their country as a land of liberty and rugged individualism were befuddled. Spineless people were everywhere. There was no lack of people willing to scrutinize every book for illegal thoughts, and a man named Svein was as pure a specimen of this lot as any. Handpicked by the Gestapo to be chief censor at the publishing house, he entered his office as if he owned the place. However, his life quickly turned sour.

William and Mads cut down on the number of books published. So much so that Svein was the only censor in the house, and since no-one liked him, he was shunned during lunch hours. Wherever he sat down, people would get up and leave. However, he had the tide of victory on his side. The news was full of stories about the great victories by the Nazis. He could take comfort in the fact that William and Mads would soon have to publish something more substantial than light literature. Svein was lonely in the present, but he would practically own the place a few years down the road. His prospects for the future were bright, or so he liked to think.

Unfortunately for Svein, censors were employed at the radio station and newspapers as well as publishing houses. The news he was getting was but the filtered and sugar coated stories of other censors. Isolated from those who got their news through illegal channels, he had no idea how bad things were. In his world of filtered news, Stalingrad was but a conspiracy theory, and D-day was but a failed attempt by the allies to land soldiers on the beaches of Normandy.

By the time it was obvious even to Svein that liberty and free speech was returning to Norway, it was too late to jump ship. Svein was stuck. To have been handpicked by the Gestapo was no longer a badge of honour, and he couldn't hide from this fact because he had bragged about it so often in the past. How was he to survive a resurgence of liberty and free speech?

Svein descended into a deep depression. During the last weeks of the war, Svein was glued to his radio, desperately trying to believe the news stories he was told by his fellow censors. Svein lived in a bizarre world in which an ever-shrinking circle of censors told lies to each other in order to escape the reality of the world, and this persisted until the war was finally over. Defeated and broken, Svein took his hat and left. Sullied by the foul stench of censorship, the man found no employment in what was again a free and tolerant society.

A few years later, Svein was found dead in his mother's basement. Details of his death were never revealed to the public, but one thing was clear. He had taken his own life. What Svein had once imagined to be a glorious and noble pursuit turned out to be a road to a place so dark and miserable that life was not worth living. As such, Svein's life stands as a warning to us all. Censorship is a dangerous pursuit, far more damaging to the censor's integrity and sanity than most can imagine. In the end, nothing beats integrity, firmness of character and an honest stand against tyranny.

Don't be like Svein. Be more like Constance, William and Mads.

Nygaard, William Martin og Constance f, Wiel, 1914.jpg
Constance and William

Av Gustav Borgen – Norsk Folkemuseum: image no. NFB.49970, via digitaltmuseum.no., Offentlig eiendom, Lenke

Trying the Impossible Again

Fed is again trying to cut back on its money printing without causing interest rates to go up. However, this time around, it looks more like an exercise in deception than an honest attempt at the impossible. The money they withdraw from one channel is siphoned right back out through another, as explained in this Zerhohedge article.

A sophisticated set of smoke and mirrors are currently used by the Fed to make it look like they are withdrawing liquidity when they're not. But we don't need to go into any details on this to understand that their aim is an illusion. Besides war, famine, and disease, there isn't any way to withdraw currency without causing interest rates to go up.

The law of supply and demand tells us that any withdrawal of supply will send prices higher, unless demand is equally reduced. In the case of currency, the price is the interest paid. Hence, it's impossible to withdraw liquidity without seeing higher rates of interest, unless some calamity puts a damper on demand. 

This is why the Fed's attempt at liquidity withdrawal back in September 2019 failed, and why the plague that followed was so warmly welcomed by the elite. Had it not been for the Fed's about face on liquidity, with the plague as an excuse, interest rates would have been in the double digits by now. But nothing was fixed in the process, signs of strain reappeared by February this year.

This insight is all we need in order to call the Fed's bluff, and the day is drawing near when the wider market realizes this. When that happens, the Fed must stop their money printing if they are to save the dollar from being viciously sold. Interest rates must go higher or the dollar will crash. Either way, things are about to get ugly.

Seal of the United States Federal Reserve System.svg

By U.S. Government - Extracted from PDF version of the Federal Reserve's Purposes & Functions document (direct PDF URL [1])., Public Domain, Link

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Money as Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is the name given to the fact that any action taken is at the cost of another action that could have be taken, and anything bought is at the expense of some other thing that could have been bought. Opportunity cost is what we could have done, but didn't.

When it comes to assets, money has a special place in that it is the thing that we hold onto in anticipation of opportunity. As long as we hold onto money, we forego all other possible investments. Money must therefore have qualities that minimizes this cost, otherwise people will choose something else as money. Anything that deteriorates or inflates over time will be rejected.

This is why gold is and always will be money. It does not deteriorate, and it inflates by less than one percent per year due to mining. Gold is the rational thing to hold onto in anticipation of opportunity, and the cost of doing this has been negative over the last few decades. There's hardly a thing that has outperformed gold in terms of nominal dollar return. Very few investments have yielded a better nominal return than gold.

This will become all the more apparent once we enter the final stages of the current monetary system. Central banks are going into hyper-drive, debasing their currencies in the process. The opportunity cost of hanging onto dollars or other fiat currencies, relative to gold, will become even more obvious than it already is, and everyone will flock to gold as the ultimate money.

Only when all assets have been fully re-prized relative to gold will the world economy crawl out from the mess created by central banks. In the meantime, we're better off hanging onto gold than trying our luck in real-estate, stocks, bonds, land or commodities. Gold will outperform all, and those owning it will find plenty of bargains and opportunities once the collapse is complete. Only then will it again make sense to forego some gold for other types of assets.

1959 sovereign Elizabeth II obverse.jpg
Sovereign

By Heritage Auctions for image, Mary Gillick for coin - Newman Numismatic Portal, Public Domain, Link

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

The Business Cycle

The business cycle is a phenomenon that has plagued our society ever since the advent of modern banking, and even before then in times of unhinged deficit spending and money debasement. The Romans saw it on multiple occasions. However, not until the advent of fractional reserve banking has the phenomenon become so common that it has become viewed as just another side of capitalism.

The cycle has two sides to it. There's an expansion of economic activity, followed by a contraction. We've been seeing this on multiple occasions this century:

  1. The dot com bubble of 2001
  2. The housing bubble of 2008
  3. The everything bubble of 2020 (yet to complete)
Famous examples from the 20th century are:
  1. The Weimar bubble of 1920
  2. The US bubble of 1929
Farther back in time we have two bubbles in France:
  1. The Mississippi bubble of 1720
  2. The everything bubble of the first republic

Smaller, less dramatic bubbles have come and gone, many of which all but forgotten. However, they all share a common underlying structure:

  1. There is an expansion of the money supply, usually through the issuing of cheap credit.
  2. Financial assets go up in price.
  3. Raw materials and wages go up in price.
  4. Projects have to be stopped or scrapped due to higher than expected costs.
  5. Prices of everything, relative to gold, go down.

Once the money supply has been increased, the above cycle must inevitably follow because an increase in the money supply will always end up sending prices of certain assets, goods or services higher. There is no way of avoiding some sort of crash at the end of the cycle. Either, the currency gets destroyed or the financial bubble gets pricked by a contraction of the money supply. In both cases, gold will serve as a safe haven and appreciate against all assets.

With this in mind, we see that we're currently inside a massive bubble, furiously stoked by cheap credit issued in response to the plague of 2019. There's also tell tale signs of strain. I see housing projects stopped or delayed, probably due to high cost of raw materials and labour. The price of financial assets also appear to have peaked. We're entering the late stage of the bubble, and there's only two ways out of it. Either, there will be a spectacular crash, or the currency will be destroyed. Relative to gold, everything will be cheaper going forward.

This in turn ties up to my investment plan. I will roll out of gold and into land, real-estate and productive assets. With a bit of luck, there will be real bargains for those with gold savings, and I intend to take full advantage of any opportunity that comes my way.

This may sound like wishful thinking, but the logic is simple. Let's say we were to buy a forest of cork trees today. The price would reflect a 5% return on investment, according to my friend in the business. However, this is based on the current price of cork, which is likely inflated. When things sour, there may be a year or two with very little demand for cork. It may be close to impossible to sell more than one fifth of the amount currently sold. With prices unchanged, the return on the forest is no longer 5% but 1%. But prices will go down as well. Maybe as much as one fifth, in which the return is a mere 0.2%. Anyone with a 4% loan on their forest will be facing huge losses.

This is how forced selling comes about. Desperate to cover debt, assets are forced into a market with hardly any buyers. The buyers can then demand a return on their investment at maybe 10%, which would mean that the forced seller will have to accept a price that's one tenth of what is today considered fair price. The ones who can afford to wait a few years to see prices go up again can accumulate land at bargain basement prices. When prices subsequently rise to more normal levels, and volumes pick up as well, the 10% return we were getting while in the midst of the depression swells to a mind boggling 50% or more, in real terms. The gold invested during the depth of depression can be recuperated in the space of a few years, and there will be a handsome fixed income for years to come as a bonus.

The wealth transfer that's going to take place during this coming depression will be truly astonishing.

Reflection in a soap bubble edit.jpg
Reflection in a soap bubble

By Brocken Inaglory. The image was edited by user:Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Doing Business in Portugal

Yesterday's May 17 lunch was another great success here in Porto. The company was excellent. Everybody in high spirits.

All sorts of things were talked about and mentioned. Those still obsessing about the plague talked mainly about that, of course. But most of us were not, and we did our best to keep the subject from dominating the conversation. We nodded earnestly, always agreeing with the fearful, and assuring them that we cannot wait getting vaccinated ourselves. With no opposition, the plague-conversation quickly died down.

Far more interesting was the Norwegian consul who joined us, and ended up paying the bill for our lunch. He's a big-shot in the cork business, and I was immediately curious to learn some basics about that business, so I fired off a few questions related to investment opportunities. He told me that now is not the best time to invest in land, but he gave me his business card and promised to send information and pamphlets on my request.

Making this all the more interesting is the fact that my wife and I know a couple who own a small farm in the Portuguese outback. They have cork trees, and are looking to expand. They would love to combine remote working from their farm with tending their forest and having a vegetable plot and possibly some chickens and the like. What they need is some capital to invest in additional forest, and that's where I see a possible role for myself.

A whole bunch of loose ends are suddenly converging into something that may be an investment opportunity. There might be a way to combine the business interest of the consul, with the personal interests of our friends and the capital I have at disposal. What remains to be done is for me to learn more about the business, and for the right opportunity to come along for me to buy forest, preferably in the region where our friends have their farm.

I don't see myself spending a lot of time tending the land. Rather, I'm thinking of the sort of arrangement that Richard Cantillon wrote about in his book. I'll own the land and lease it out to our friends in a fair deal. My wife and I will remain in our apartment in Porto and only visit our forest on special occasions.

Celebrating May 17
Celebrating May 17

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Caught in Google's Dragnet

And just like that, Google decided to hand back the post they deleted. Someone reviewed it and found it acceptable. I've looked through it myself, and it's still a mystery to me why it was deleted in the first place. Interested readers can take a look at the post and judge for themselves. Of all the things I've written, it's hardly my most radical post. However, the events are enlightening in that they reveal the mechanisms currently used by censors.

First thing to note is the lack of any bogus links in my post. All links are either internal to my blog, or referring Wikipedia. From this it's clear that the first e-mail from Google did not address the real issue. Their issue must have been with the content of the post, not the links as stated in their mail.

It seems that my post got caught in a dragnet algorithm employed by the censors. Some combination of words must have triggered the algorithm to reject it as hate-speech, which Google censors are required to do by law. It's not that Google censors are evil. They are merely doing their best to keep Blogger clean from thought crimes.

To their credit, Google censors don't trust their dragnet algorithms one hundred percent. They read flagged posts and release the ones caught by mistake. As long as there's no thought crime committed, they let the authors get their flagged posts back. But there's no telling exactly where the line is drawn. The episode may have had the dual purpose of intimidation. Making sure that bloggers express thoughts well inside the Overton Window is high on the wish list of censors.

Censors are a dreary lot who want everyone to be as political correct as they are themselves. They prefer ideas to be well inside the allowed confines of acceptable thought. That makes life easier for them, and it makes them feel comfortable. They don't like it when people stray too close to the limits of acceptable thought.

Googleplex HQ (cropped).jpg
Googleplex HQ

By The Pancake of Heaven! - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Plague-Ridden Sportsmen

The Yankees is a fully vaccinated baseball team, so the chances of any of their players getting sick by the plague is pretty slim. First of all, we're dealing with strong and fit sportsmen. Then there's the 95% efficiency of the vaccine. That should put the chance of any them getting sick to about 0%. Yet several players are currently ill with the plague. Something isn't adding up. However, the news story I read put a positive spin on the whole thing. The author claimed that the team would have been much sicker if it wasn't for the vaccine. But how do we know how sick they would have gotten without the vaccine? I know of people who got hit by the plague, and their only symptoms were a loss of smell. Does this mean that the affected players are without any symptoms at all, or is the author just making up things?

Making this all the more interesting is the fact that the outbreak among fully vaccinated people that happened in Wisconsin a few weeks back was five times more deadly than normal. The author of that story put a similar positive spin on this, claiming that the vaccine had prevented the number of people affected from becoming very large. The fact that it was deadlier was counter-balanced by the fact that the outbreak was limited. However, now we know from the story about the Yankees that such outbreaks are not limited.

Putting the two stories together, we find the truth. Somebody's just making stuff up as they go. The vaccine is not 95% efficient, and it isn't preventing people from getting seriously ill.

This thing is unfolding like a slow moving horror-show where people are first lured into a den of evil spirits in the false belief that they will find security, only to discover that they've been trapped. The vaccine contained something sinister that they cannot un-inject. There's no way out. The next act in this show will be a complete reversal of positions. As it says in the Bible: The meek shall inherit the world.

The smell of flowers
The smell of flowers

A Deleted Post

An odd thing happened to the post I wrote last night. It got deleted by Google for some obscure reasons that I cannot figure out. They claimed that it contained links to some virus. But the only links I had were to my own stuff and to a picture found on Wikipedia.

Anyway, long story short, the post was about labour conditions during so called dark ages. My point was that private contracts replace public contacts when the state fails. This happened after the late Bronze Age Collapse that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it happened again after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

As evidence, I referred to folk lore and fairy tales that tell of private kingdoms, entrepreneurships and adventure. Rather than dark and dreary, these periods were full of adventure and opportunity, and more in tune with human nature than the current state-centred system.

My prediction was that we will see a similar shift in society as we come to the end of this current crisis. There will be a return to the societal structures of old, with servants, tradesmen, craftsmen and land owners. Private kings and queens will rule over small kingdoms, no larger than a typical municipality. Life will be exciting and full of opportunities.

Whatever Google fond offensive was clearly not the message, as it was full of hope and joy for the future. But what exactly Google found, I will probably never know, because the post has been deleted by them and cannot be reviewed by me. Nor were they very specific as to what exactly I had done wrong.

The mask of the beast
The mask of the beast

Friday, May 14, 2021

Idle Hands During Dark Ages

My wife was wondering out loud this morning: What will all these unemployed people do once things get desperate? My reply was that they will find work as servants in the households of the better off. My wife was unconvinced. She's still thinks the solution to the current imbalance in society is some sort of universal basic income.

I told her it won't work. She told me that there won't be a return of servants to households. People aren't that desperate. My reply was that they will be, and the conversation ended at that. My wife and I have been through this before, and neither of us are convinced by the other's arguments. Time will tell who's right and who's wrong.

My thesis is that we're about to see the fourth and final horseman of the apocalypse. Things are already desperate for some, but it will get worse before it gets better. We'll see people starve and beg for food, and this will not be confined to poor countries. It will be everywhere. Those dependent on state hand-outs will not get their daily bread as promised.

This has happened spectacularly in the past, and will happen again. Both the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the fall of the West Roman Empire were marked by turmoil and death, followed by a prolonged period of relative peace. Without a central government to record things, and without super-rich individuals to build monumental structures, people were left to find their own way in life. What emerged was a social order in which things were kept private. Little was written down, and monumental buildings were rare. There were no cities, only towns and villages.

The lack of historic records from these periods, in combination with unfavourable climate, has made historians conclude that these periods were dark and dreary. However, there's a host of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they were exciting times with personal freedom and opportunities.

Folk lore and fairy tales have their origin in these times. They tell of opportunities and challenges. There are kings, queens, princes and princesses. There are servants, craftsmen and apprentices. All sorts of specialized skills are portrayed, and opportunity abound for those willing to go out in the world and seek employment.

Without a state to provide hand-outs and arrange for public work, people had to find work for themselves, and they generally started off as servants and apprentices for kings and craftsmen.

Kings weren't like modern kings. They didn't rule entire nations. Rather, they were private land owners, with capital and a household large enough to run things and also defend things in case of attacks by bandits and hostile neighbours. There was a king every so many kilometres up any country road. The heroes of old didn't have to go far to find a door to knock on and ask for employment.

The overall structure of this social arrangement was that of a wealthy couple with children, employing a number of servants, and paying for skilled labour in nearby villages. These couples were the kings and queens, and their children were princes and princesses. There were also poor land owners with cottages and small plots of land.

The scale of everything was modest. A kingdom was no larger than a municipality, and there was a great deal of social mobility. Good servants were rewarded. Otherwise, they'd move to another kingdom. Talent was recognized and put to use in learning a trade. There were local competitions and fairs. Aspiring young men could make it big, even if they were from a modest background. Young aspiring women also found their way inside this social network.

Importantly, there were hardly any idle hands. The alternative to being a servant was to be a beggar without a place to live. That's why people accepted lousy working conditions. Better to sleep on the stone floor next to the fireplace than under a bridge in the local village. But as soon as a servant proved his worth, he could demand better. No-one spent their entire life tending the fire and sleeping on the stone floor. It was too easy to find an alternative.

This, rather than the current state-centred arrangement, is the natural order of things, and hence the default structure we can expect after a systemic crisis. But it won't happen before things collapse. People will try almost anything before they give up on their promised daily bread. However, once they find themselves in the new order of things, they will find it far more agreeable than they fear. We're not going to regress much in terms of technology and modern comforts. Things will be much as they are today, only private and scaled down.

Education will be based on apprenticeships and on the job training. Capital will be well distributed. No-one will be much richer than a wealthy land owner. No-one will be poorer than a property-less servant. People will not be under water in debt. Money will be based on gold. Most things will be paid for in cash. Credit will be rare. Banks will be small and either deal in capital investments or serve as agents for electronic transactions. Most noticeable perhaps, will be the return of the in house servant. Middle income families will afford to hire a helping hand. Those better off will have several servants, and those richer still will have a whole little troupe of people working for them if they so choose.

Butler 1922.jpg
Butler

By American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept - Title: Bell telephone magazine Year: 1922 (1920s), CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Thursday, May 13, 2021

How Bitcoin is being Killed

Bitcoin just dropped 20% in less than 24 hours, proving once again that it cannot function as money. As I write this, the price is about $50000, up 8% from its bottom at $46000 a few hours ago, indicating that support was found at the neckline of the developing head and shoulder pattern. It remains to be seen if this support breaks as I've predicted, but the odds for this happening are substantially greater now than a day ago, because Elon Musk has once again chimed in with his views, and they were not good.

Elon announced late last month that he had sold all his Bitcoins. Two weeks later, he warned people against putting too much money into crypto-currencies, and yesterday he announced a reversal of an earlier decision. He and his companies will not accept Bitcoin as payment for any of their products or services. The reason being that Bitcoin consumes energy for its mere existence. Bitcoin is not green enough to be part of Elon's strategy. The market reacted to this latest announcement by chopping 20% off of Bitcoin's price, as we've just seen.

This has several interesting aspects to it. One being that the market is far from efficient. It's a well known fact that Bitcoin isn't green technology. Furthermore, Elon warned us twice before slamming Bitcoin. First he told us he sold his Bitcoin, and then he told us to reduce exposure. Yet, the price didn't drop substantially before Elon came out and told us in plain text that Bitcoin isn't money, and will never be money, as if that's a new insight.

Another thing to note is how Elon appears to speak on behalf of someone else. Why else this shift in sentiment? What we're eying is the Faustian deal struck between Elon and the state. Elon gets to do all sorts of things without punishment as long as he acts in the overall interest of the state, and one of the most important facets of the state is its monopoly power to create money out of thin air.

Crypto-currencies compete with the state in the fiat currency business, and must therefore be crushed. Extreme pain must be inflicted on those who have had the audacity to choose crypto-currencies over state issued currencies, and the best way to do this is to create a pump and dump scam that benefits a small elite at the expense of a large number of unwitting speculators. Elon and his buddies were therefore allowed to pump Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. They were then told to get out of these things.

Being dependent on green subsidies from the state, Elon had no choice but to make his latest announcement. Without this announcement, Elon would be denied his subsidies, and he would be broke. The state whispered and Elon spoke. That's the nature of the beast. That's the Faustian deal that Elon has struck with the state.

Casascius coin.jpg
Brass token currently priced at about $50,000