[-] yeahiknow3 27 points 1 week ago

Never have I seen such blatant evidence that the news media is completely made up controlled opposition bullshit.

[-] yeahiknow3 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That’s not how money works. Fiat currency is just IOU’s, literally, which are discharged when the promissory note returns to its originator (in the case of dollars, the US treasury). Check out Debt the First 5000 Years for an anthropological look at the origins of money.

Whereas I would prefer to live in a moneyless (i.e., debtless) post-scarcity anarchist society, which is how small tribes and communities were organized for tens of thousands of years before the rise of nations, fiat currencies are used to maintain the modern (unimaginably huge) marketplace, whose ostensible purpose is to allocate scarce resources.

  1. Personal debt is risky. If I issue an IOU, I might die before I can fulfill that promise. Governments are more permanent, which removes the speculative aspect of currency (at least for most purposes, though Forex trading is a thing).
  2. A central bank can balance inflation and employment numbers to ameliorate the natural volatility of the market (with good regulation lol).
  3. Fiat currency can be synchronized with economic productivity, avoiding the deflationary pressure that is anathema to any currency.

Dollars represent faith in the power of the US government to extract taxes from its population. Crypto represents nothing. It stands for nothing. “Coins” come and go, and if you’re the last one standing in the zero-sum game of musical chairs, you lose your savings. For that to happen with dollars, the US government would have to implode, which is unlikely.

Crypto is, quite possibly, the purest form of speculative trading (gambling) we have ever concocted. The only reason I don’t think it should be illegal is that I have no interest in saving people from their own cupidity and greed.

[-] yeahiknow3 32 points 1 month ago

Texas politicians and anti-abortion death cultists murdered this poor woman.

[-] yeahiknow3 29 points 1 month ago

Religion is a monstrous evil. Especially the Abrahamic cults.

[-] yeahiknow3 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] yeahiknow3 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Anytime people blame the US government, as if it’s some abstract independently motivated entity, they need to remember that half the American citizenry wants things to be much much worse. They want a climate apocalypse, billionaire feudalism, religious nationalism, reproductive slavery, etc.

I find these posts blaming “Biden” for Israel or “Congress” for climate change utterly moronic. Dude, your parents and grandparents elected these people. They elected them in primaries for half a century straight, And they will do it again and again until there’s no living creature left on this husk of a planet. But sure, it’s some government representative that’s the problem.

[-] yeahiknow3 28 points 2 months ago

Thinking ahead has never been the purview of the rich.

[-] yeahiknow3 33 points 3 months ago

Next they’ll make encrypting your own files illegal. Absolutely preposterous. Do better police work!

[-] yeahiknow3 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The analogy works if you lease or rent.

Rent a car, commit a crime, boom — rental company is on the hook apparently. Moronic.

[-] yeahiknow3 31 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Most people don’t care about what’s true, something that took me forever to realize. Encountering humanity under the assumption that everyone cares about the truth (or any aspect of empirical and normative reality) is bound to be suuuper confusing until you figure things out. People are literally animals (we forget that), and animals are just trying to survive. Some of them are cute or loving. Not all of them are particularly “good,” and even fewer are willing to sacrifice creature comforts in pursuit of some abstract virtues. That’s why Trump gets any votes.

[-] yeahiknow3 28 points 6 months ago

As opposed to Trump, who famously balanced the budget.

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yeahiknow3

joined 10 months ago