Prediction for 2024

It looks like my observation a year ago has been confirmed. 2022 was a turning point and the start of a new era. Peak booster, peak Pride, peak Ukraine and peak global warming is behind us, and a new direction in politics and the economy has commenced.

This has not yet been fully realized by the elite. But I suspect that 2024 will be the year that the disaster, in their eyes, becomes apparent. There will be a push back, and this will lead to division and strife. However, they will not succeed. The tide has permanently changed.

The elites of the West are in for a rude awakening. The war in Ukraine will be revealed for the disaster that it is. Most likely, we'll see a collapse of the Ukraine army, with the Russians suddenly free to march on Kiev and other major cities. The Russians will demand far more than they did back in 2022, and the West will have no option but to sign whatever peace deal they are dealt.

The war in Gaza will also come to an end. It will be a victory of sorts for Israel. But the mess they've created will be near impossible to clean up. In the end, they'll have to invite Egypt in to help them sort things out. However, the rest of the world will by then have permanently changed their views on Israel and the West.

Trust in the dollar and Western technology has been eroded, and we'll see inflation and gold take off in a big way as a consequence. Once gold settles above $2,100, we'll see its price quickly move to $3,000. This follows from the fundamentals, and also technical analysis. Gold may well go up a whopping 50% relative to the dollar in 2024.

The stock market, and real-estate prices are not going to do nearly as well as gold. At best, they'll stay flat in nominal terms. At worst, they'll tank dramatically. Those invested in gold may see an opportunity to roll into real-estate or stocks in 2025. But in the meantime, we'll stay with our positions unchanged.

Quarterly performance of gold up until Dec. 2023

PSI20 Performance and Outlook

The PSI20 has appreciated by 11% this year while gold has appreciated by 9%. The difference is so small that nothing has been lost in not investing in the PSI.

Looking at the components of the PSI, it looks that a portfolio made up of these would only have appreciated 4%. I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy between the index and the components, but the difference is probably due to weighting. However, it's clear that my portfolio made up of PSI's components would have underperformed gold.

With the economy looking increasingly grim, there's no need to rush into the PSI. Adding to this sentiment is the fact that every component has a sell rating by the Trading Economics web site.

Here's an overview of what the components are, and how they performed this past year:

• EDP Renovaveis | EDPR - Spain-based company active in the renewable energy sector.
  Market cap = €18.73B (€21.03B)
• EDP | EDP - Portugal-based utility company.
  Market cap = €18.85 (€17.99B)
• Jeronimo Martins | JMT - Portugal-based company engaged in the food retail sector.
  Market cap = €14.52 (€13.45B)
• Galp | GALP - Portugal-based holding company engaged in the oil and gas industry.
  Market cap = €10.22 (€9.34B)
• Navigator | PTI - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the paper manufacturing operations.
  Market cap = €2.55 (€2.76B)
• BCP | BCP - Portugal-based privately owned bank.
  Market cap = €4.12 (€2.24B)
• NOS | NOS - Portugal-based company engaged in the broadcasting and telecommunication industry.
  Market cap = €1.65 (€1.96B)
• Sonae | SON - Portugal-based holding company primarily engaged in the retail trade of food.
  Market cap = €1.75 (€1.84B)
• REN | RENE - Portugal-based holding company involved in the energy sector.
  Market cap = €1.55 (€1.7B)
• Corticeira Amorim | COR - Portugal-based holding company engaged in the cork industry.
  Market cap = €1.21 (€1.18B)
• Semapa | SEM - Portugal-based holding company engaged in three business segments: Paper and Pulp; Cement and Derivatives, and Environment.
  Market cap = €1.07 (€1.13B)
• Altri | ALTR - Portugal-based holding company primarily involved in the production of bleached paper pulp from eucalyptus.
  Market cap = €0.96 (€1.11B)
• CTT | CTT - Portugal-based company principally engaged in the provision of courier services.
  Market cap = €0.49 (€0.47B)
• Mota Engil | EGL - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the construction industry.
  Market cap = €1.18 (€0.33B)
• Ibersol | IBS - Portugal-based company primarily engaged in the operation of restaurants.
  Market cap = €0.28 (€0.24B)
• F Ramada Investimentos | RAM - Portugal-based holding company primarily engaged in the production and sale of steel products and storage systems.
  Market cap = €0.17 (€0.17B)
• Novabase | NBA - Portugal-based company active in the provision of information technology (IT) solutions.
  Market cap = €0.14 (€0.12B)
• Pharol | PHR - formerly Portugal Telecom, SGPS, S.A., is an open company.
  Market cap = €0.03 (€0.05B)

Sovereign

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

Another Step Towards the New World Order

Norway has just passed a new law regarding lockdowns and health passports. From now on, the Norwegian bureaucracy is to take its orders directly from the WHO regarding such matters. The Norwegian government will no longer be involved in the decision making.

This might sound alarming, especially considering how draconian the WHO proved itself to be during the virus scare, and how wrong they were in their decisions. However, this shift of power from the local level to a centralized organization is likely to prove counterproductive for the globalists.

This is because law enforcement must by necessity happen at the local level. But if the orders come from far away, the law enforces will feel less than committed to execute them.

History tells us that extended command lines result in inefficient execution of orders, especially if the people charged with the execution feel that they act under the command of a foreign power. Moving decision making from the local level to a centralized level is therefore likely to produce disobedience at a larger scale.

Mask of the beast

Attrition Warfare against the State

Javier Milei took office as Argentina's president yesterday, and his first act in office was to cut the number of departments by more than half. But this was not enough for libertarian purists. They were quick to point out all the things he didn't do, and the things he has done which seem distinctly un-libertarian.

I too, have my doubts about Milei, but it's not helpful to constantly focus on the negative aspects of a story. The fact is that he has done a lot of good already. He has promoted anarchist thinking, and he has demonstrated with action that the state can be reduced if the will is there to do so. That's more achieved by one man than all the grumpy purists put together.

The situation is reminiscent of how things were at the height of the virus hysteria, when I recommended for the first time a strategy of attrition. The idea is to resist with meekness when the enemy pushes forward, and to take full advantage of any retreat.

What we have in Argentina is an example of enemy retreat, and it doesn't matter that it may be only a partial retreat. Milei has created an opening in the lines of our enemies, and we should be quick to fill the space created for us by his actions. The same appears to be happening in a lot of other areas as well. We have almost completely defeated the virus hysteria, we have a climate crisis story unravelling, and Pride is in decline.

The old order has a long way to go before it's completely defeated, but the unravelling is happening at an astonishing rate. There're a lot of things happening. Much of it very much to our advantage.

Bridge across the Douro river

Taking Ownership of the Anarchist Brand

In a previous post, I suggested that we should embrace the right wing label put on libertarians such as Javier Milei. The reason for this is that it will clear up some confusion regarding the political axis. With Milei clearly a small state proponent, the left becomes equally clearly a big state thing. Nazis, were big state proponents, so they end up next to Lenin, and not to the right of conservatives where they are currently positions by political pundits.

This in turn, makes it clear that all anarchists are located to the right on the political axis, because anarchists are by definition believers in a stateless society. No-one can be both left wing and anarchist at the same time. Anarcho-Communism becomes an oxymoron.

Some may object to this analysis and claim that some non-capitalist anarchy is possible, and that may well be so. But such an arrangement will necessarily have to be stateless in order to call itself anarchy, and that means that there can be no centralized monopoly on force anywhere. There can be no rulers. If the system implies that some group of people has monopoly power on force, it's not anarchy it's a state.

In the absence of a state, Anarcho-Capitalism becomes the default, because it's the only system that replaces all centralized institutions with private entities, operating in a free market, and with no one actor wielding monopoly power on the use of force.

The only real anarchism is Anarcho-Capitalism in its various flavours, such as Voluntarims and Private Law Society. In other words, we can refer to ourselves simply as anarchists. The anarchist brand is ours.

The political axis

Will We See Gold at $ 2,100 per Ounce Before Year End?

Gold has had a good fourth quarter, with a move from $ 1,820 to $ 2,070 so far. But will we break above $ 2,100 before the end of the year? Only time will tell, but there are good reasons to be optimistic.

Central banks are continuing their gold purchases in order to avoid the US dollar. Geopolitical instability makes it important to go away from the US dollar as a reserve currency, especially if there's a chance that the US will become the adversary in a future conflict.

On a technical note, we've seen the highest monthly close ever in November, and the highest weekly close ever on Friday. Gold even traded above its highest price ever for a while in the Friday session. All of this may bring out enough buyers to prevent the gold price from reacting down from current levels, as has happened three times before in the past two years.

Once gold breaks above $ 2,100, we're likely to see $ 3,000 within two years. If it doesn't, we'll have some more time to accumulate gold at current prices.

Quarterly performance of gold since 1997

Nature, aka God

I've come to the conclusion that nature must have a will of sorts, and I think that it's this will that is referred to as God by religious people. The reasoning behind this is simple:

The majority of us believe that we are more than mere automatic machines. We have a will, and we use this to change and direct outcomes in the world around us. But if we study physics, we find no will anywhere. Everything is a mix of mechanics and uncertainty, none of which constitutes will. The free will that we've been endowed with must therefore come from somewhere outside of physics. Nature cannot be mere mechanics. It must also contain a will.

This is not mere semantics, because it comes with some interesting consequences that I allude to in my political thinking. On the one hand we have that which is man made, and on the other hand we have that which is natural. However, only that which is natural can be fully trusted, and this is the central theme in both Christian doctrine and Anarchism.

A consequence of this is that we must trust natures own money, namely gold and silver, over man made money such as fiat and crypto. We must trust our natural immune system over vaccines. We must trust natural ingredients over processed foods. All man made institutions and doctrines should be viewed with suspicion. Family and friends, and neighbours and community, are natural. Tax collectors and bureaucrats are not.

Man made institutions may at times seem immensely powerful. But history has shown us that they are not indestructible. Not a single one has ever stood the test of time. Only God's own creations remain with us.

However, some people frown at the idea of God, so when I want to refer to my view of things, I use the expression Nature, aka God. A purist may say that God and Nature are not in fact synonymous because God created Nature. Nature as we experience it is God and His creation working together. But this type of pedantry isn't something I'm going to get hung up in. I'll stick with Nature, aka God, whenever I want to refer to the will of the universe that no-one can stand against.

Creation of Adam

By Michelangelo - See below., Public Domain, Link

The Slow Death of Privacy

I had to go to Lisbon the other day in order to renew my "freedom to travel license", aka passport.

I took the train to go there, and much to my surprise, the conductor didn't ask me for my ticket. All he needed was my identification papers. The logic being that tickets are bought online with name attached. The ticket is therefore not needed. All the conductor needs to know is the name of the person in front of him.

That makes some kind of sense, I guess. However, the conductor proved himself uninterested in my ticket. When I showed it to him before identifying myself, he dismissed it as irrelevant. His only interest was in my ID. In other words, my ID was my ticket. The ticket was nothing but a receipt.

So, this is what they have planned for us. Not only are we required to show ID when traveling internationally, we have to show ID when traveling domestically as well. When they hook our IDs up to their social credit and carbon emission matrix, compliance with the system becomes a requirement for travel.

The social contract

The Most Popular President Ever

It may come as a surprise to some that Biden is the most popular US president ever in terms of ballots cast. The man is a legend. A political giant, no less, with a whopping 81 million ballots in the 2020 election. Trump came in with 77 million ballots in the same election, which makes him the second most popular president.

In comparison to these two titans of American politics, Obama is but a midget. He scored a mere 71 million ballots back in 2008, his most popular year.

Popular votes for US presidents since 1900

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

Tearing Down the Nazi Wall

Javier Milei's victory in Argentina has the potential to blast open the so called Overton Window which has for decades limited political discourse by the fact that Nazis were branded as right wing after the Second World War.

This can be illustrated by presenting the following diagram of the typical left-right political axis.

Overton Window in politics

By placing Nazis to the right of conservatives, the political left managed to silence almost all political discussions taking place to the right of conservatives. No-one wants to be associated with Nazis, and if Nazis are right wing, then Libertarians must be extreme right wing, and Ancaps must be ultra extreme right wing. That doesn't sound good.

One way to avoid this problem has been to claim that Libertarians and Ancaps are not on this axis at all. But that only serves to further exclude them. It's much better in my mind to stick with the simple left-right axis, and simply remove the Nazi label.

Left-right axis in politics

To bolster this position, we add a graph of how much state involvement there is in the economy. This keeps the Nazis label from coming back into our chart because the Nazis were big believers in state involvement in the economy. If anyone insists on us putting the label back in, we'll point out that from an economic viewpoint, Nazis properly belong in between Communists and Social Democrats.

Having gotten rid of the Nazi label, we can put various politicians into our chart.

Political positions

Importantly, we don't put Hitler into this chart because that would reintroduce the Nazi label. Instead, we put Putin where most people would've put Hitler. No-one will object to this because most people equate Putin with Hitler, and those who object to the Putin=Hitler label see Putin as someone positioned somewhere between Conservatives and Libertarians.

With the Nazi wall now torn down, and with no mention of Nazis or Hitler, we suddenly have a much wider Overton Window. The centre in politics is no longer Social Democrats. It's located to the right of Conservatives. Libertarians are no longer extreme right wing. They are right leaning. It's the Ancaps that are right wing.

By doing this, we no longer need to talk about extremes in politics. We have wings instead. Communists are left wing. Ancaps are right wing. Everyone else is located left or right of a Conservative-Libertarian centre.

The Anger Stage has Begun

A cousin of mine, who was pro-vaccines to the point of being abrasive and pushy, just admitted to his sister, in a Facebook comment, that he was now both fully awake and very angry.

This comes only a few months after my brother in law told me in private that he was angry at the fact that he had a debilitating stroke about a year ago, shortly after his second booster.

Then, there's a survey I read about in Zerohedge where a whopping 40% of respondents said they would consider joining a class action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry if such a case was made.

In the US, we're seeing the lowest child vaccination rate on record. 7% of children over there are not being vaccinated.

We've had a complete outsider win the presidential race in Argentina. He's a self-proclaimed Anarcho-Capitalist, no less. Holland may soon get a populist conservative as their new prime minister.

This all points to a sea-change in public opinion. We are no longer in the denial stage. We've entered the anger stage, and if it lasts as long as the denial stage, we can look forward to two interesting years ahead.

Headache

By Phee - Pixabay, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Another Step Towards Liberty

I first wrote about Javier Milei back in August when he surprised everyone by winning the first round of Argentina's presidential race. I wrote back then that I didn't hold much hope for him winning the race, but I have been proven wrong. He won by a good margin, and he's now Argentina's new president.

This is astonishing because he's a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. That's as libertarian as it gets.

An interesting thing that has happened as a consequence of this is that journalists who have been quick to label libertarians as right wing in the past have suddenly become more nuanced. They realize that libertarians aren't similar to Nazis, and have started to admit this indirectly by refraining from using that label. They are instead calling him ultra-libertarian, or simply anarcho-capitalist.

Most journalists don't like libertarians, so they probably hope that Milei will make a big mess of things so that the labels 'libertarian' and 'anarcho-capitalist' will be remembered as failed philosophies. But I think the libertarian cat is now out of the bag, and I don't think it can be put back into it. The philosophy is no longer a fringe idea from a distant past. It has returned, and it's likely to become the main driver of the new era that we've just entered.

This doesn't mean that I believe Milei will have great success in his endeavour to restore Argentina's former glory. I'm not even sure he's as libertarian as he claims to be. But none of that matters. What matters is that it's now clear to everyone that there is an alternative route forward that's neither socialist nor conservative, and that route is where we're now headed.

Liberty

Mr Rogers' Sweater

Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood was a popular kids program that ran from 1968 to 2001. The opening scene was often one in which Mr Rogers comes into his house wearing a jacket. He takes his jacket off, and then he puts on a sweater.

Many have found this an odd thing to do, and I would have found it odd too had I never moved to Portugal. But here in Porto I frequently do exactly what Mr Rogers does in these opening scenes. The reason for this is that we keep our apartment relatively cool all year round. During fall, we don't mind putting on a sweater. It's a refreshing change from a long and warm summer.

Temperatures in our apartment are often no different from outside. However, it feels strange to go out wearing a sweater instead of a jacket, so we don a jacket when we go out of the house. But since the temperature outside is little different from inside, a jacket on top of our sweater is too much. The solution to this is to take off our sweaters before putting on our jackets. When we return from our errands, we put our sweaters back on.

Mr Rogers' behaviour tells me that he lived in a relatively warm climate, and that he liked to keep his house cool for this reason. As far as the climate goes, he would have felt right at home in Portugal.

Feeling comfortable in my sweater

Climate Change is Whatever the Weather is Right Now

I'm not sure if the drought that was declared a year and a half ago has been officially declared dead and buried, but the talking heads on TV are not mentioning it any more.

Even Algarve has received plenty of rain over the last few weeks, enough to fill their reservoirs. The talk is now of floods rather than drought. But it's still all due to climate change, which goes to show that climate change is whatever the weather happens to be right now.

Greta Thunberg

Eco-anxiety - By Anders Hellberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Leaked Documents

Classified documents have a tendency to be leaked at very opportune moments, and the latest leak from Israel is a fine example of this. According to it, there's a plan to push Gaza's entire population of 2.3 million people into Egypt.

This may at first seem like a damning report from Israel. But the rumour that has now been spread will in fact be in Israel's favour, because it will make their actual solution look reasonable in comparison.

My guess is that a solution for Gaza has already been agreed upon, and all that remains is to sell this to the public. The fact that foreigners are allowed to exit Gaza through Egypt indicate that this is so. Israel and Egypt are either in the final stages of negotiations, or they have already settled on a solution.

Most likely, Gaza will be given to Egypt on the condition that the strip is demilitarized.

Liberty

Interest Rates as Drivers of Change

It looks increasingly likely that 2022 will go down in history as the year when the progressive era came to an end. We've seen peak Pride, peak save the planet, peak virus hysteria, peak trust in experts. From now on, all of this will be rolled back.

It also looks like 2022 was the year the bond bull market came to an end. Interest rates, which have fallen steadily since 1981 are once again headed upwards.

This is no coincidence. Rather, the two phenomena are closely related. Low interest rates are a sign of trust in the system. Low interest rates are also necessary in order to finance expert driven social experiments. Sustainable energy, lockdowns and global vaccination campaigns all required cheap credit.

Once trust in the system unravel, interest rates move up and expert driven projects become impossible to sustain. This exposes the impotence of experts which in turn leads to even higher interest rates.

Bond markets move in mega cycles that last for decades, and this new bear market is likely to be no different. Interest rates will continue to rise until a new system has been erected. The progressive era must be fully flushed out, and a new system must be embraced by a majority of people. Only then will interest rates once again go lower.

Cityscape

Economic Calculations in Times of War

It takes a lot of  money to wage a war, so much in fact that taxation alone is rarely enough to fund them. That's why almost all wars are financed through monetary inflation. Instead of taxing us directly, we're taxed by inflation. The purchasing power of our money is taken away through an expansion of the money supply. The extra money is used to finance the war at our expense.

Monetary inflation is especially effective when it's done as a sudden shift from sound money, because people don't immediately realize what's going on. This gives the state an advantage in that it can acquire resources at advantageous prices. It's only later that the population at large catches onto the scam. This causes a delay between the money printing and the price inflation caused by money printing.

World War I is an example of a war financed through inflation, where the states involved went from sound money to inflated money. The transition happened around 1913, but it wasn't before 1920 that we started to see run away price inflation, and hyperinflation hit Germany in 1923, almost a decade after the war started, and half a decade after the war had ended.

This meant that the warring states could make economic calculations based on pre-war prices throughout the war. No special attention needed to be given to the effect of monetary inflation because that effect only hit after the war was over. However, had price inflation already been a problem at the start of the war, economic planning would have been a lot harder.

Now that the world is once again at a war footing, we're already on inflation money, and price inflation is already a thing. This means that any further expansion of the money supply is likely to cause higher prices almost immediately. The resources required by the state in order to wage war will become very expensive. They may even become unavailable.

As it turns out, western states do not in fact possess the resources required to wage and win wars. The West is already low on ammunition, and the factories required to replace them aren't nearly as productive as they need to be. A lot of resources will be required to put this right. The West must build factories, man the factories with skilled labour, and feed the factories with raw materials. But none of this is available. This is because the real savings of the West are insufficient to wage a war.

Real saving are the things of value that back up the financial system. Factories are real savings. So are farms, mines, warehouses, ships and trucks. Money is merely a way to represent this. But this representation is only valid if the money is sound. If the money is inflated into existence, the added wealth is only apparent. Real savings don't change because someone prints a lot of new dollar bills.

It appears then that the western elite has made a blunder. They have assumed that inflated money can get them just as much resources as sound money would, and that they are in a position to wage and win wars everywhere due to their ability to print limitless money. But they have failed to incorporate real savings into their calculations, and this is only now starting to dawn on the people in charge of the war machinery.

Mark Esper with Jens Stoltenberg

By U.S. Secretary of Defense - 200212-D-AP390-6107, CC BY 2.0, Link

Noam Chomsky's Error

Noam Chomsky's gigantic error during the virus scare is a bit of a puzzle. How could a man who've spent a lifetime describing and identifying ways in which the elite manipulate us into fallacious thinking fall for the most blatant example of what he had been warning against? At the very moment Chomsky needed his clear thinking the most, he failed to apply it. Instead, he came out very much on the wrong side of history.

The key to this mystery can be found in studying his philosophy more carefully, because it reveals that he's a progressive. He believes in experts, and he believes that more government rather than less government is the solution to most problems in the world. Chomsky is a man of the progressive era, and his ideas are decidedly progressive in nature.

This means that Chomsky values expert opinion above liberty, and he values big government over individual liberty. Faced with experts that assured him that we were facing an existential threat, he promptly went along with their advice. Seeing himself as an expert in his own field, he gladly parroted advice from other experts. In the great council of experts that he imagined himself a part of, he came out in support of what other experts were talking about.

This is where another weakness in Chomsky's thinking became evident. The man holds in high regard the language of experts, and he's positively disdainful of people who don't use sophisticated language. He's also disdainful of anyone holding opinions about subjects that are outside their particular field of expertise. If you're no expert on what you're talking about, you should shut up and simply take orders.

The progressive idea is that experts should rule, and it follows from this that only people who are experts on topics under discussion can hold meaningful opinions. But this negates much of  Chomsky's own thinking which has to do with the way the elite manipulates us into erroneous thinking, because experts are themselves part of the elite.

The fact that Chomsky fails to see how his analysis negates the very premise of his progressive thinking should have been a red flag from the start. I was never very impressed by the man because of his lofty view of himself and his endless belief in experts and big government. However, it wasn't until Chomsky disgraced himself during the virus scare that I realized that all this aloofness and pandering to experts and government was in fact an error that goes contrary to his own analysis.

The only logical conclusion we can draw from Chomsky's societal observations is to embrace liberty. More experts and more government is not the way to go, and the virus scare will for ever remind us of this, because every expert and every government agency got the entire thing wrong every step of the way.

The Emperor's New Clothes

By Vilhelm Pedersen (1820 - 1859) - English Wikipedia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Emperor_Clothes_01.jpg ), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4038625

Desperate Weather Reporting

It's been raining hard in Portugal the last few days. That's how it always is this time of year, but the news channels are trying to make it into some kind of catastrophe. The local CNN franchise has had about equal reporting on the situation in the Middle East and the rain we've been having, as if the two are about equally Earth shattering.

Making this all the more pathetic, CNN sent reporters out into the streets to report on the weather. But there wasn't any flooding of note anywhere to be seen, so the camera man zoomed in on a puddle next to the reporter instead.

Greta Thunberg

Eco-anxiety - By Anders Hellberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Natural Cycles

The political elite likes to think of their subjects as robots. This is evident from how they structure society. Even long after the factory line was a common work destination for many of us, schools still operate according to this formula, bosses require our physical presence at the office, and we're only given a few days off at predetermined times of the year.

None of this is natural. Most of us are typically more inclined to focus on labour during fall and spring than we are during summer and winter. Deep down, we follow an agrarian cycle. Spring is for setting things up for summer. Fall is for getting in the harvest. Winter is for rest and indoor activities, and summer if for being out and about.

One thing I noticed about life in Norway when I lived there was the almost unbearable pain of having to force myself out into the cold and dark of winter in order to go to school and work. Staying chained to a desk during summer was equally painful.

When I ended up unemployed for about a year, all that anguish disappeared, and I just knew I had to find a way out of the system. That was around 2004. By 2011, I made my decision to end my professional career. By 2017, I was fully out of the system. Today, I thank my lucky star for having managed to get out of the system, and I'm determined to help my children achieve the same level of autonomy.

My wife is similarly determined to take control of her life, so it was no surprise to me that she kept our son home from school today. She didn't feel like sending him away in the rain. We're ignoring the system as much as we can. The experts can say what they please. We do things our way, and we're not alone. The progressive era has come to an end. People are tired of having to ask for permission.

Fireside education

By Transferred from en.wikibooks to Commons by Adrignola using CommonsHelper. Originally uploaded to en:Wikipedia in November 2006 (log) by Darentig (talk)., Public Domain, Link

Geopolitics is More Like Poker than Chess

Geopolitics is sometimes compared to Chess. However, this is not a good comparison because Chess involves only two players, everything is visible to both sides, and there's no bluffing. None of this is true for geopolitics.

To make a reasonable game comparison for geopolitics, we must find a game that involves a lot of unknowns, and an arbitrary number of players must be able to play the game. Poker comes to mind. But this too is lacking essential features of geopolitics. For one, the players are making themselves known before the game commences, and the type of cards that are used in the game are also known and understood. No new cards are invented along the way.

However, as a game comparison, I would still call it Poker. It's certainly a better comparison than Chess.

Mark Esper with Jens Stoltenberg

By U.S. Secretary of Defense - 200212-D-AP390-6107, CC BY 2.0, Link

A Possible Role for Egypt

With tensions running high over Gaza, things can easily run out of control. But there are ways out of the impasses. One being a scenario in which Egypt plays a key role.

What is often forgotten is that Hamas is a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood which held power in Egypt for a brief period during the Arab spring some ten years ago, so the current government of Egypt is no friend of Hamas. They too would like the organization wiped out.

But unlike Israel, which can be accused of ethnic cleansing, Egypt cannot be accused of such intent if it moves into Gaza, because Palestinians are fellow Muslims. Many of them came originally from Egypt.

Israel and Egypt are allies as far as Hamas is concerned, and a simple solution to the current situation would be for the two to agree on a new role for the Gaza strip. Israel may be willing to give political control over Gaza to Egypt in return for a guarantee that it will for ever remain a demilitarized zone.

With Egypt in control of Gaza, Hamas will be rounded up and neutralized. Egypt and Israel end up victorious over the terrorist organization, and peace is restored.

Liberty

Like Clockwork

The transition from summer to autumn in northern Portugal follows a remarkably predictable pattern. It's like a switch where the weather goes from sunny and dry to grey and rainy. The transition is usually from one day to another, as was the case this year, and it happens mid October, give or take a few days.

What follows is three months with a lot of rain. This is followed by a gradual decrease in rain until summer comes back in June.

There are of course variations and exceptions to this. Some five years ago, we saw the transition from summer to autumn happen on November 2. That was so late and unusual that it got a lot of attention from experts and laymen alike. Everybody could agree that this was strange.

This year, we had the summer weather end with a heat wave. That too is unusual. But the transition to autumn weather came right on time. It's almost as if the heat wave was thrown into our last summer days as a compensation for an otherwise cool summer.

Sun

By DracoLumina17 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The 5th Empire - Choosing Sides

So, the attack into Israel wasn't some sort of military operation, as initially reported. It was a massacre perpetrated by the lowest low-life scum imaginable. From what we now know, it's easy to denounce Hamas for the terrorist organization that it is. To defend their actions in any way would betray moral deficiency. There simply isn't any way to describe the deliberate targeting of civilians as anything other than pure evil, especially when children and babies are among the victims. You can't say that such actions are somehow understandable in the light of decades of oppression. No matter how oppressed a person is, killing babies isn't a reasonable response.

However, there's mounting evidence that the Israeli state knew of the attack before it happened. It's also easy to see how the attack was convenient for a number of actors. It's no secret that Israeli military would like to see the Gaza settlement substantially reduced, and pushed farther away from the Israeli border. Many Israeli would like to see a pre-emptive strike against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. They would also like to see any supporters of their opponents silenced.

A number of strategic goals have already been achieved by Israel, and hard-line politicians are seeing mounting support both at home in Israel and abroad. Many are falling for the false alternative of having to choose to support either Hamas or Israel. But the truth is that we don't have to choose any of the two. We can choose to be on the side of the civilians who wish nothing more than to be left alone.

This is the beauty of the anarchist perspective. We see all state actors as evil, including wannabe state actors with their rebel flags and causes.

Explaining my position

Israel's 9/11 moment

Politicians and talking heads have been quick to call Hamas' latest attack on Israel a 9/11 moment. Implied in this is that Israel will be greatly transformed by the event. Liberties will be lost, wars will be fought, and the elite will grab even more power than they already have. There will also be all sorts of conspiracy theories. Is it really plausible that an attack of such a magnitude could go completely under the radar of the CIA and Mossad?

We'll be asked to choose sides, and the sides are pre-selected as Israel vs. Hamas. Never are we to suggest that there may be ordinary people on one side and a psychopathic elite on the other side. We are not to question the official narrative. However, I got a feeling that this trick, which has worked so well in the past, is no longer as effective as it used to be. It's just too obvious that the attack is of great benefit to all the worst people imaginable.

Mossad will get more funding. Israel's army can act with more force than has been tolerated in the past. War hawks in Israel and the US may finally have their war with Iran. The war in Ukraine can be quietly forgotten as our attention is drawn to a different hot spot.

The mask of the beast

Contagious Optimism

I've just read an article in ZeroHedge outlining the various draconian measures we can expect to see from the globalist elite as they push ahead with their great reset. The article contains eleven assumptions related to this presumed plan, all of them likely true in my view. However, what struck me as interesting wasn't the article itself, but the comments. While everybody agreed with the premises laid out in the article, hardly anyone agreed with the overall gloom and doom. Just about everyone was an optimist.

All sorts of things were pointed out. One being the way internet has worked to our advantage. The network effect has kicked in. Censorship backfired. Truth prevailed, and more and more people are waking up to the reality of it all: An unsavoury group of misfits is trying to install a dystopian world order with themselves as our rulers.

There's also a general agreement that 2022 was a turning point. That's when we had peak booster hysteria, peak Pride, peak global warming, peak anti-Russia, etcetera. The reset that the elite has spent decades working on is falling apart. But their reaction so far has been to double down in their efforts, which at this point will only fuel the current awakening.

Liberty

Tit for Tat Strategy Confirmed

So, it appears that Russia has in fact chosen a tit for tat strategy against Ukraine this year, as I predicted back in May. Russia has achieved its military goals and is therefore in no rush to continue expanding westwards. However, any aggression from the Ukrainian side has been met with immediate and swift responses that add up to more harm than whatever Ukrainian forces manage to inflict on the Russians.

We have seen this pan out several times this summer. Whenever there's a strike inside Russia, there's retaliation in the form of heavy bombardments. This, it appears, has also extended into territories gained by the Ukrainians during their summer offensive. Whenever Ukraine has managed to eek out some territorial gain along the front line, the Russians have responded by grabbing a little more from the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainian summer offensive has in this way ended up with a small net loss of territory.

Vladimir Putin

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link

Reactionary Dreams

There is this notion among many liberty minded people that life was better in the past. This is often expressed through romantic notions of simplicity, self sufficiency and community. However, if anyone were to try living like the post card notion of the past, they would quickly find that it doesn't work.

This is not to say that things aren't in fact deteriorating. Many were better off a generation or two ago. But the reason for our decline in life quality isn't because of new technology.

The problem we're facing is that the benefits of new technology have been offset by a corresponding burden put upon us by the current system. For every advancement, we're hit by a corresponding burden that diverts resources away from us and into the hands of a small group of well connected people.

This small group of individuals would like nothing more than to see liberty minded people turn off their internet and move into cottages in the country. It would signal defeat on our side, and it would allow these people to continue their pilfering.

On the other hand, the elite would hate to see an honest investigation into what's happening. They don't want us to stop and think for ourselves. Above all, they would hate to see people come up with solutions to their continuous pilfering of everything that makes life good and meaningful.

What we need is not some reactionary withdrawal from society, but a proactive move in which we safeguard what we value. Our first action should therefore be to come up with an honest vision of how we would like to live.

I live in Porto, and I like it a lot. I value the cafés. I love going for walks around town. I enjoy reading things on the internet. I've learned a lot thanks to this. I've written a little thesis on physics, and I've come to understand politics and economy a lot better. I'd hate to see the internet gone.

I like to sit down for meals with my family, and I love my balcony with flowers and the compost bin that produces earth from kitchen refuse. It would be nice to have a cottage of my own out in the country, but we can't afford it at the moment, and I don't have the energy for it either. The balcony is the cheap and reliable alternative.

An honest vision is not merely a dream. It's a realistic and attainable goal, and in my case, I'm pretty much living it. There are very few things I would like to see different, so I've managed to go from wishing to live like I do today, to actually living it. My vision from the past is my current reality.

It should be noted that my goal was realized by cutting down on needless consumption, and by a systematic effort to avoid taxation. Selling my house in Norway was a painful but necessary part of this. Focusing on making my wife's modest apartment in Porto as comfortable as possible was another important step. Avoiding banks by getting out of debt and into gold rather than cash savings was a good move too.

Modest living frees up time for things I value highly by reducing the need to spend time earning money. Modest living reduces fixed costs, it reduces taxation, and it reduces the need for bank loans. Taken together, there're a lot of savings just there. Additionally, I moved from high cost Norway to low cost Portugal. Not only do we have a better climate here in Porto, but it's a lot cheaper as well.

The key to good living isn't some unworkable move back in time but the realization that what's valuable is rarely very expensive, and that no-one can be happy and relaxed living financially on the edge. We have to live well within our means, and we need to avoid external meddling in our finances by the state and its associated banks. Finding ways to avoid taxation, inflation and debt is key, because those are the ways the elite use to pilfer us into poverty.

Café de Flore

People - By Arnaud 25 - Own work, Public Domain, Link

A Cool Summer in Porto

This summer has been the coolest I've experienced in the 17 years I've lived in Porto. Temperatures have rarely strayed from around 24 C, and we haven't had a single period of more than three days with temperatures above 30 C. We've also had more cloudy and rainy weather than usual.

Two years ago, I made a similar observation, and I predicted that this weather pattern was going to remain with us for years to come. So far, I've been correct in this. However, I was criticised by local friends for saying that this weather pattern was something new. What has been unusual is the sweltering warm summers I experienced during my first ten years in Porto. Last year was neither cold nor cool. It was in their opinion a normal summer. But I'm sure my friends will agree that this summer was no warmer than the last two summers we've experienced, and that's an interesting point in itself because Porto is located on Iberia, a place foreign news outlets have pointed to as nearly boiling.

If there has been unusually warm summer days in Iberia, they have been poorly reported on here in Porto, and they cannot have been in this part of the peninsula. In fact, Portugal as a whole has had a remarkably good year for wine growers, so the sweltering hot and dry weather must have been confined to Spain.

Greta Thunberg

Eco-anxiety - By Anders Hellberg - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Gold and the Japanese Saver

Keynesian economic theory makes the claim that savers are a burden on society because their money isn't participating in the economy. It's just sitting in bank accounts, doing nothing. The solution to this, according to the same theory, is to make sure the money loses purchasing power over time.

In reality, however, the money of savers doesn't sit dormant in bank accounts. The money is lent out to entrepreneurs who invest in the future. Savers are not a burden on anybody. They're an essential part of a healthy economy, making sure that investments are made for future productivity.

But this logic, however irrefutable, hasn't deterred modern economists from going after savers. Case in point being the Bank of Japan's decade long quest for price inflation. They've been creating mountains of currency, and they've kept interest rates at zero. Yet, Japanese savers have absorbed it all, and there's been virtually no price inflation. Newly created currency has always found its way into various bank accounts. But that has suddenly changed.

The Bank of Japan has finally managed to create price inflation. The Japanese Yen is going down, and it's going down fast. So, savers should by now be rushing out to buy stuff. But that's not happening. At least not in the way intended.

All that's been achieved is a growing unease among Japanese savers. They are as determined as ever to save for the future, so they don't want to spend their money on consumption. Instead, they look around for Yen alternatives, and they find this in gold which has gone up a whopping 20% relative to the Yen so far this year.

When we combine this with the fact that decades of monetary inflation by the bank of Japan has created some hundred billion dollars in bank deposits and many hundred billion dollars more in various cash alternatives, we see that there's the potential for a flood of Japanese currency coming after gold. If Japanese savers all get the idea that they should have at least some physical gold hidden away in a drawer somewhere, the demand might overwhelm the bullion banks, with a price reset as its consequence.

Sovereign

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

Fear and Confusion

One of the positive things that came out of the virus scare was that the mechanisms of evil have been laid bare. Everyone, including relatively young children, have now seen with their own eyes how evil operates. All that's required for them to see it clearly is for us to point it out.

This, I believe, is the right way forward in our battle for liberty.

Whenever someone expresses fear or confusion related to some woke topic, we can remind them of some previous fad that has by now been thoroughly debunked by the person in question.

I have, for instance, an eleven year old boy attending dance school. The woke mob has somehow caught onto this and is now busy trying to convince him that he's gender fluid or something like that. My boy is inundated with pride related stuff on social media.

This has made my son excessively preoccupied with pride values, and also worried that someone will force him into some nasty transition program. The pride agenda is full of down right scary stuff, so I understand my son's concern. But I've calmed his nerves by telling him that we never had him injected with the vaccine, and we're for sure not going to let any creepy pride guy get his way with him. 

I've pointed out that pride is a fad on decline. It will soon disappear. But, should someone at the dance school for some reason insist on some embarrassing gay stuff, we will simply pull him out of it. He can rest assured that his parents will have nothing of it.

A friend of mine has a similar problem with his eleven year old boy. The kid is convinced that we're in some sort of climate emergency. He's also convince that his father knows less about these things than his teacher, so he refuses to listen to his father.

My guess is that my friend was a little too quick to dismiss his son's concern. But it's never too late to adopt a better strategy, so I've suggested he try the same overall strategy as I've used with my son. Start by toning the scaremongering down a notch by saying that the problem is exaggerated. Nothing dramatic is going to happen to our planet over the next few decades. We got plenty of time to adapt if there really is a problem with our climate.

Other things he can do is to point to the ocean in front of his house and the mountains in front of his cabin. Let the boy take in the immensity of it all. Clearly, we're too small to change any of this dramatically in the space of a few years. Even decades or centuries are short timespans relative to the billions of years our planet has existed.

As for the boy's trust in his teacher's insights, my friend can point out that the teacher also thought that masks were a good idea. My friend can do this because his son was initially conned into believing this to be true, only to realize later that his father was right to dismiss the pseudo science. It was my friend who had things right, not his son's teacher.

As parents, it's our duty to protect our children from hysteria and confusion, and we do this by remaining calm and clear. This may not work well right off the bat, but the longer we persist, the more credibility and respect we get.

My friend and I remained calm and clear throughout the virus scare, so we have one big victory we can point back to. With the woke agenda unravelling before us, we'll soon have many more victories to lean back on, and our standing in the eyes of our children will only grow.

Taking in the view

The Power of Optimism

At the height of the vaccine mania that swept the world a year ago, my ten year old son was asked by a class mate if he was vaccinated. When my son replied that he wasn't, and that he had no intention to ever take the vaccine, his friend replied that mandatory vaccination was inevitable, so there was no point in trying to avoid it.

Half a year later, my son told a friend that we had bought a new car. When his friend learned that this car had a conventional petrol engine, he told my son that we should have chosen an electric one because petrol engines will be illegal in a few years from now.

My son reacted to both events with amazement. Why did these people automatically assume that something will happen just because someone says so?

Now, a year later, we know that the experimental vaccines will never be mandated, and we also know that the average electric car has a lifespan of about seven years. Both the vaccine and the purchase of an electric care are decisions many already regret, or something they will soon regret. If they did any of this merely because they thought it inevitable, the regret will become all the stronger.

The lesson here is that we should never do anything just because someone says so. Giving up a fight even before the battle has been pitched is a road to ruin and regret. It's also disgraceful. Norse mythology has it as the greatest of all sins, and a sure ticket to hell.

This doesn't mean that we should eagerly engage in battle. On the contrary, battles should be avoided. But when there is a battle waged against us, our moral duty is to hang in there as long as possible. Giving up is not an option, even against overwhelming force and certain defeat.

This is the moral essence of Ragnarok, the final battle where even the gods are defeated, with many of them killed: It doesn't matter if the outcome is certain, the battle has to be fought to the end. It is our actions during battle that defines the future, and to simply fold and give up is therefore not an option.

This insight dovetails well with a central Christian insight, namely the importance of faith, love and hope, because those are the three factors that combine into what we call optimism, and optimism is the opposite of defeatism. When evil forces are turned against us, we can remain optimistic as long as we have faith in God, aka nature. Additionally, love for our family, friends and possessions will give us strength to fight, and hope for a better future fill give us endurance.

This is not merely some religious rambling, it has been proven to work. Optimists will on average last eight times longer in a struggle than the average defeatist. This has been demonstrated in laboratory tests of various kinds, but simply looking around for examples in the real world will confirm the thesis. The optimists who refused to fold under pressure outlasted the defeatists by months, and even the authorities had to give up in face of our resistance.

A similar study that ties into this has shown that if an optimist wins a battle, the relative number of defeatists in his group will drastically decline. This can easily be verified by noting the sudden disappearance of people talking about the new normal and how our lives must inevitably be changed in order to accommodate for this.

These findings are in turn reasons for optimism. When optimism won against defeatism back in 2022, a new trend was set. Instead of fighting an uphill battle against tyranny, we now have momentum on our side. All we need to do in order to keep this going is to stay strong in our optimism.

If we persist in making optimistic observations, we'll win more battles which will in turn result in more optimism. Key to this is to look for optimistic angles to everything. E. g. when a friend of mine told me that 60% of Norwegians remain fully prepared to take another vaccine shot if told to do so by experts, I pointed out that this means that 40% aren't prepared to do so. That's up from 20% just a year ago.

It's also important to remember that trends take time to pan out. This year is likely to go down in history as the first year of a new era. We have another hundred years to go before this trend comes to its end, and it's silly to think that this trend will be without battles on the way. However, optimism is here to stay, and the more we show our optimism the more likely we are to make a real impact on where things go from here on out.

Odin and Fenris

By Emil Doepler - Doepler, Emil. ca. 1905. Walhall, die Götterwelt der Germanen. Martin Oldenbourg, Berlin. Page 55. Photographed and cropped by User:Haukurth., Public Domain, Link

When time comes for Ragnarok, the great battle between giants and gods, Loki and his children join the battle at the side of the giants.

Cantillon's Effect on Display in Stores

The price of olive oil has gone up a lot lately. That's a big deal in Portugal because olive oil is the primary cooking fat in Portuguese cuisine. When the price of olive oil goes up, everyone is affected.

On the other hand, the price of wine is going down. There are discounts to be had, especially on the finer wines. However, this isn't of much help to most people. Wine is a luxury also in Portugal. That's especially true for those who find it hard to make ends meet. Olive oil, on the other hand, is an essential ingredient that cannot easily be replaced.

Today, when I was in the local super market, the shelves reserved for the most affordable olive oils were bare. Only the more expensive kinds were still available. This might be a one off occurrence. But it might also be a sign of the times, because this is the sort of things that happen when markets get distorted by a credit bubble.

Monetary inflation progresses through the economy like a wave. The typical pattern is that it first affects financial assets, then luxury items, and finally essential goods. This is because the rich and well connected are typically the first to receive the newly printed money. They invest in financial assets. They buy luxury goods. It's only later that ordinary people get hold of the new money, and that's when more mundane things go up in price.

This was first described by Richard Cantillon some 300 years ago, and this pattern is therefore named after him.

Ludwig von Mises further elaborated on this a hundred years ago by pointing out that a credit bubble can only have two outcomes. It either results in a crash in the prices of everything, or it results in the destruction of the currency itself. If we have a crash of prices, this too will affect some things before other things. It will typically pop the early bubbles before the later ones.

This is probably what we're seeing in the super markets. Essential goods are going up at the same time that luxury goods are going down. The disappearance of reasonable priced olive oil is a result of panic buying in the expectation that prices will continue up.

A few months from now, we might see a glut and price collapse in olive oil. That would be the popping of the olive oil bubble. But we may also see central bankers panic in the face of massive losses in financial markets. If they turn the money printing back on, prices of everything will once again go up. Stuck in the middle of this is the average guy, hit by huge fluctuations in prices that he's ill equipped to handle.

Olive oil

By Poyraz 72 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link