Nostr notes by Gauss

Если у тебя будет время, ты не мог бы ...

2026-07-26T07:23:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…udcu
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Если у тебя будет время, ты не мог бы помочь мне разобраться в текущей войне в биткоине с технической стороны?

Обе стороны пишут противоположные вещи. А у меня нет достаточных знаний, чтоб понять.

Допустим, активировался бип110. Одни узлы будут валидировать только транзы без спама, а другие со спамом (упрощаю для краткости).

И те, и другие будут бороться за милость майнеров.

Какой-то майнер выбирает транзы и закидывает их в проект блока. После чего отправляет проект блока обратно узлам для окончательной валидации.

Здесь опять одни узлы валидируют проект блока, а другие нет. Но мвйнер не связан с их мнением и может проигнорить мнение узлов бип110 и все равно намайнить свой блок и включить его в блокчейн.

Если все майнеры против бип110, то он провалится.

Позиция бип110 напоминает шантаж, основанный на теории игр: расчет на жадность майнеров.

Но с другой стороны, даже если одни майнеры будут включать блоки бип110, а другие нет, все равно и те, и другие блоки будут вставать в единую цепочку друг за другом. Они же не конфликтуют между собой.

Тогда почему обсуждают разделение цепочки, не пойму.

Спрашиваю в твитере. Либо не отвечают, либо ходим по кругу. Спросить не у кого. Поэтому беспокою тебя.

Nostr event nevent1qqszzfmwy8xvrxn2vcdtczf93n88sfrk3zd30vyjgu5qlxvdvs6zcvqzyzladncgld4ndt7s9r2kqde727x7c4kkcjz8xhuukex8eq5jseva65wunjp

2026-07-25T13:54:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…dy5v
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Hi

nostr:lnbc21u1p4xf07app5y0cds7n6jk4kxspqum4x2ny69ymgyqgyeputh4d0sdv65chzgqhqsp5fs8nupjedey9ker3fcyd22pglxmvzdlcm3m0gaqv4kc0k9zce96sxqrrssnp4qvyndeaqzman7h898jxm98dzkm0mlrsx36s93smrur7h0azyyuxc5rzjq25carzepgd4vqsyn44jrk85ezrpju92xyrk9apw4cdjh6yrwt5jgqqqqrt49lmtcqqqqqqqqqqq86qq9qrzjq0fz460uz3pfr64qnjsymrlhs66vevv0ld04slljfhmdddu79sx2eapyqr6zgqqqq8hxk2qqae4jsqyugqcqzpudqq9qyyssqngjw02e2uvwjyj5c08nel03uysagc7heyg9rfs30s03vftt9mfs94ezexyylv9vwtfgfytlq25a72sfqvkjnfuy9glxazfu5hfs0vjqqcfdngc

Nostr event nevent1qqswy2fpxms82usl0ew9ydqmk2n8xhwm76kj5emu3s2wnhelqxm4kwszyzladncgld4ndt7s9r2kqde727x7c4kkcjz8xhuukex8eq5jseva62yywcw

2026-07-13T04:12:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…t04d
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Безопасно ли хранить в нем основные ...

2026-07-10T11:08:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…tcja
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Безопасно ли хранить в нем основные запасы? Он все таки горячий.

Даже если соблюдать цифровую гигиену, нет гарантий. Например, кошелек генерирует мнемонику с помощью оперативки смартфона. Я не уверен, но думаю о том, что железо смартфона может передать мои ключи через подключение к модулям блютуз или вайфай или еще как нибудь. То есть сам смартфон может выступить шпионом.

I see another vulnerability in the 21 million bitcoins. If ...

2026-07-10T10:18:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…2hq4
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I see another vulnerability in the 21 million bitcoins.

If governments and banks want to neutralize bitcoin, they can buy up all or the vast majority of the coins.

Bitcoin maximalists describe Bitcoin's battle with governments and banks as an epic Hollywood drama. It's more profitable for governments and banks to slowly and quietly buy up all the coins. They're doing this successfully now.

When the supply of coins is strictly limited, they are easy to buy up. It is impossible to buy up only those coins whose quantity is unlimited.

Ты как-то сказал, что не пользуешься ...

2026-07-10T08:02:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…z6a2
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Ты как-то сказал, что не пользуешься холодными кошельками. А недавно тепло отозвался о кошельке Unstoppable. Какой из горячих ты бы рекомендовал?

Large mining pools and organizations won't survive with low ...

2026-07-10T08:00:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…s7cs
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Large mining pools and organizations won't survive with low fees. They'll then demand that developers increase fees without fail, because ordinary users will hold onto their coins. However, increasing fees won't save the network; they'll only further slow it down. Then, large miners will disappear. Mining will likely shift to ordinary users' computers.

This will decentralize mining and protect against 51% attacks, right?

I thought paper newspapers hadn't been published for a long ...

2026-07-02T10:41:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…svt7
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I thought paper newspapers hadn't been published for a long time. 😀

What are the consequences of clicking on their link? Do they ...

2026-07-01T03:45:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…vx9l
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What are the consequences of clicking on their link? Do they spread viruses?

I didn't ignore.. I reported as spam, as impersonator and as ...

2026-07-01T03:43:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…vx9l
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I didn't ignore..

I reported as spam, as impersonator and as illegal. Then I muted.

Я же не о вероятности говорю. Я имел ...

2026-06-23T14:28:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…5n9k
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Я же не о вероятности говорю.
Я имел в виду конкретный случай, когда твое ограничение для меня не работает.

Я бы легко обокрал известное хуйло ...

2026-06-23T13:02:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…ksst
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Я бы легко обокрал известное хуйло и испытал бы от этого астрономический оргазм под звуки трибун: 'ла ла ла ла ла ла ла ла ла ла ла ла'😀

Мы говорим по параллельным ...

2026-06-23T12:33:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…ksst
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Мы говорим по параллельным линиям.🙂 я говорю несколько о другом.

Во многом верно. Комментарий к ...

2026-06-23T11:29:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…k8q2
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Во многом верно.

Комментарий к главному - разумности.

Ошибочно приписывать разумность себе и лишать ее этатистов. Разумно и то, и другое, поскольку оно решает проблемы обеих групп. Грабеж и сотрудничество одинаково разумны.

Либеры считают неразумным грабеж с одрнаковым правом, с которым считают обратное. Но когда они оспаривают чужую разумность и защищают свою, они переходят из объективной плоскости в субъективную плоскость своих предпочтений.

Я не оправдываю грабеж и не унижаю либертарианство. Я исследую, основываясь на холодном анализе без примесей идеализма как либеров, так и этатистов.

Нет ничего плохого в том, чтобы отказаться от мутных пережитков 'философского' наследия. Наоборот, мы увязли в словоблудии, потому что до сих пор пользуемся ненаучным понятийным аппаратом, хотя бодро освоили цифровые инструменты.

Например.
Отбросим 'разумность'. Этим мы уходим от утомительного обсуждения, кто разумнее. Мы уходим от ошибочного суждения, что движение к агоризму естственное, ибо оно соответствует какому-то естественному ходу вещей или природе людей или энтропии и подобной каше. Мы сразу переходим к сути: я хочу жить свободно. Не нужно это доказывать. Не нужно это обосновывать. Не нужно рыться в анналах мысли, чтобы потом, как малыш, бежать с цитатой какого-то исторического персонажа в защиту либертарианства. Просто я так решил.

Если ты хочешь жить по-другому, я не собираюсь тебя критиковать, спорить, доказывать тебе что-то. Я не тону в самоубийственной мысли Конкина о том, что ни при каких соблазнительных обстоятельствах нельзя насилием устанавливать агоризм. Я просто стреляю и возмещаю свой ущерб имуществом трупа или предотвращаю такой ущерб.

Мы оба действуем разумно по-своему. И моя разумность ничуть не лучше и не прогрессивнее его. Она просто быстрее)))

"Процесс перехода от ...

2026-06-23T09:05:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…vvuj
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"Процесс перехода от агорического общества в государственническое должен быть подобен движению в гору, эквивалентен траектории с сильно негативной энтропией в физике. В конце концов, если человек начал жить в хорошо налаженном свободном обществе и понимать его, зачем ему желать возвращаться к систематическому принуждению, грабежу и мучительному беспокойству? Распространение невежества среди знающих и неразумности среди разумных – трудное занятие. Мистификация того, что уже ясно понято, практически невозможна. Агорическое общество должно быть довольно стабильным, чтобы не приходить в упадок, и в то же время весьма открытым для усовершенствования".

Конкин и др теоретики напрасно ищут аргументы в псевдонауках: философии, психологии и т.п. Потому что они ведут их к недостоверным знаниям о человеке и неверным выводам.

"Нет, однако, никаких реальных причин вообразить, что оставшиеся жертвы предпочтут остаться угнетёнными, когда либертарная альтернатива столь видна и доступна. Зоны государства подобны перенасыщенному раствору, из которого готова выкристаллизоваться анархия".

Вязать агоризм с этими псевдонауками все равно что вязать медицину с алзимиками.

Эти две цитаты показательны. Конкин исходит из того, что агоризм разумен и поэтому исход из него нерационален и невыгоден, как противодействие энтропии.
Это было бы верно только в отношении отдельных людей, которые действительно так думают в конкретной обстановке.

Если мы попробуем вязать агоризм не с псевдонауками, а с естественными науками, то поймем, что Конкин видит только частный случай, что этот частный случай количественно мал и что этот частный случай ограничен временем.

Поясню.
Биология свидетельствует, что любое поведение/действие вменяемого человека - это разумный акт. Она не рассматривает наше поведение через призму морали. Любое поведение человека задействует одни и те же биологические механизмы. И с точки зрения биомеханики оно разумно всегда.

Более того, миллионы лет эволюции спрессовали в наш мозг прежде всего насильственное и вороватое поведение, потому что иначе быть не могло. Без этих шаблонов мы бы не пережили ядовитые времена плейстоцена и поздние менее кровавые времена.

Это не наш моральный приговор человечеству. Это научный факт, который любой из нас может проверить, как исходный код FOSS. Достаточно вскрыть мозг трупа и провести несложные эксперименты Пенфилда на открытом мозге живого человека, а затем сравнить результаты с данными сравнительной анатомии, физиологии мозга и палеоантропологии.

Агоризм, как всякое убеждение, живет у малого числа людей из 8 миллиардной биомассы.
Агоризм, как всякое убеждение, живет не у всех агористов до смерти. Все зависит от конкретного времени и места. Порою дубинка в заднице переформатирует агориста быстрее других методов.

Это ни хорошо, ни плохо. Это просто так есть.

Быдло по другому считает выгоду. В его башке другая математика и логика. То, что агористу 'неразумно', для быдла ништяково. И похуй. Просто ништяково.

Ошибочный термин 'разумности' искривляет всю конструкцию Конкина. Ее надо подправить, связать с биологией и она станет сильнее.

I don't understand why the local gangsters don't clear ...

2026-06-03T16:08:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…vgfc
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I don't understand why the local gangsters don't clear the streets of migrants? Or did the migrants destroy the local mafia?

I don't understand why the local gangsters don't clear ...

2026-06-02T09:33:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…4m5p
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I don't understand why the local gangsters don't clear the streets of migrants? Or did the migrants destroy the local mafia?

Is Monero convenient for retail? It takes 2 minutes for one ...

2026-05-26T15:57:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…zwav
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Is Monero convenient for retail? It takes 2 minutes for one transaction to be confirmed. If there's a queue of buyers behind me, that's a long time. Moreover, the seller may require more confirmed transactions.

It would be nice if we could save our settings.

2026-05-21T06:20:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…y2f2
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It would be nice if we could save our settings.

Так мало блоков в мемпуле. Почему?

2026-05-20T11:57:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…z4nh
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Так мало блоков в мемпуле. Почему?

Какой холодный кошелек ...

2026-05-17T11:31:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…vswl
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Какой холодный кошелек порекомендуешь, кроме Леджер и Трезор?

"Support our troops" sounds noble until you realize ...

2026-05-16T07:54:06Z

"Support our troops" sounds noble until you realize Congress funds it by printing $858 billion annually (2023 defense budget) instead of raising taxes. They steal purchasing power from every saver, retiree, and wage earner to avoid the political cost of honest budgeting.

The Fed created $4.9 trillion between 2020-2022, much flowing to defense contractors while your grocery bill doubled. Lockheed Martin's stock hit all-time highs while real wages collapsed. You want to support troops? Stop debasing the currency they come home to.

Military families get destroyed by this monetary sleight of hand more than anyone (ever tried buying a house near a base on enlisted pay?). The defense establishment socializes costs through inflation while privatizing profits through no-bid contracts. This is pure extraction from the productive class to the connected class.

Every time you hear "we can't put a price on freedom," remember they already did. They priced it at your retirement savings.
Handre.

#economy #libertarian

What does 67 mean?

2026-05-15T18:25:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…t9vh
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What does 67 mean?

They are unafraid idiots.

2026-05-15T18:25:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…9wcn
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They are unafraid idiots.

The problem is how SimpleX behaves when spoken to in a calm, ...

2026-05-15T15:30:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…5yvn
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The problem is how SimpleX behaves when spoken to in a calm, logical, and objective manner. Its behavior is exactly the same as Proton and the Bitcoin maximalists.
SamBent (nprofile…002t) им просто говорит: зачем пиздой крутите? Скажите как есть и мать его ёб. Есть же неглупые люди. Они же все понимают.

@nprofile…002t https://x.com/i/status/1989330160781238735

2026-05-15T15:06:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…gd8a
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SamBent (nprofile…002t)

https://x.com/i/status/1989330160781238735

@nprofile…002t https://x.com/i/status/1989175507527635410

2026-05-15T14:58:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…gd8a
_________________________

SamBent (nprofile…002t)

https://x.com/i/status/1989175507527635410

It's the same story with SimplexChat.

2026-05-15T08:05:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…a0wf
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It's the same story with SimplexChat.

I mostly listen like that too. I wish there was automatic ...

2026-05-08T11:53:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…d20n
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I mostly listen like that too. I wish there was automatic translation. 😀

Весь день жду автоперевода этого ...

2026-05-08T11:37:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…kaqk
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Весь день жду автоперевода этого видео

😀

2026-05-08T11:31:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…2ffs
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😀

if these are really Iranian usdt.

2026-05-08T11:29:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…9jv8
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if these are really Iranian usdt.

In 458 BC, #Rome was on the brink of collapse. An invading army ...

2026-05-08T07:58:05Z

In 458 BC, #Rome was on the brink of collapse.

An invading army had trapped the Roman consul and his legion in a mountain pass. Panic spread through the city. The Senate did the only thing they could think of:

They sent messengers to find a 60-year-old farmer plowing his field.

His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He had once been a senator, then lost his fortune paying his son's bail. Now he worked his own four-acre plot just to feed his family.

When the Senate's envoys arrived, they found him sweating behind a plow. They asked him to put on his toga so they could deliver an official message.

The message: Rome was making him dictator. Absolute power. Total command of the army. No checks. No oversight. No term limit.

He accepted.

Within 16 days, Cincinnatus had raised an army, marched out, surrounded the enemy, and forced their surrender. The republic was saved.

He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have stayed. He could have expanded his power. He could have done what every other ruler in human history did when handed unlimited control.

Instead, he resigned on day 16.

He took off the toga, walked back to his farm, and finished plowing the field he'd left half-done.

Twenty years later, when Rome faced another crisis, they called him back. He was 80 years old. He took command, crushed the conspiracy, and resigned again, this time after just 21 days.

He died poor. On his farm.

2,200 years later, when George Washington was offered a kingship after winning the American Revolution, he refused and went home to Mount Vernon. The reason he was hailed as "the American Cincinnatus" is because Europeans literally could not believe a man who had won would willingly give up power.

King George III, on hearing Washington would resign rather than rule, said: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Cincinnati, Ohio is named after him.

Most people who live there have no idea why.

Don't choose between forms of #government. Choose between people.

#Anarcho-capitalism is not opposed to dictatorship. Dictatorship is one tool of anarcho-capitalism among many others.

Therefore, adequate people who know when and how to use different tools in different circumstances are important. We need to think and discuss this, rather than compare abstract #democracy with abstract #dictatorship.

#economy #libertarian #agorism

#Germany proposes taxing #bitcoin sales at up to 50% Germany has ...

2026-05-08T06:38:18Z

#Germany proposes taxing #bitcoin sales at up to 50%

Germany has proposed introducing a tax of up to 50% on profits from the sale of bitcoins. According to the Green Party's bill, if bitcoins are sold within a year of purchase, the proceeds from the transaction will be taxed as ordinary income at a progressive rate of up to 45%, plus an additional solidarity levy of 5.5%.

Why don't they propose imposing the same tax on profits from the sale of #Monero? Isn't it because they can't track who sold to whom and how much?

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

November 3, 2016. Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer walks into his ...

2026-05-08T06:11:28Z

November 3, 2016. Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer walks into his office in Cairo and decides to cut the Egyptian pound in half. One day you could buy a dollar for 8.8 pounds, the next morning it cost you 13 pounds (and climbing fast toward 18 by year's end). Amer called this "bold reform" while Egyptian families watched their savings evaporate faster than morning mist over the Nile.

The IMF loved it, naturally. They'd been pressuring Egypt for years to stop pretending their currency was worth more than toilet paper, and President Sisi finally caved in exchange for a $12 billion bailout package. Government economists celebrated this "market-oriented adjustment" while regular Egyptians lined up at ATMs that dispensed worthless paper. Import prices doubled overnight, inflation hit 30%, and anyone who'd saved money in pounds got financially murdered.

You can trace this mess back to decades of currency controls, subsidies, and the classic government move of printing money to fund everything from bread subsidies to military adventures. Egyptian authorities had been burning through foreign reserves trying to defend an artificial exchange rate that made Venezuelan price controls look sophisticated. When reality finally hit, they declared the disaster a victory and blamed external factors.

The playbook never changes. Turkey's doing the same dance right now, Argentina perfected it decades ago, and you'll see it again somewhere else within five years. Politicians create the distortions, central bankers "fix" them with shock therapy, and ordinary people pay the bill while international institutions applaud the "structural reforms."

#economy #libertarian

The Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster stands as history's most ...

2026-05-07T09:44:59Z

The Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster stands as history's most vivid demonstration that collectivism breeds tyranny and starvation centuries before Marx penned a single word about class struggle.

In 1534, radical Anabaptist preachers seized control of this German city and immediately declared their "New Jerusalem" built on complete communal ownership. Private property vanished overnight. The new regime confiscated all money and demanded citizens pool every resource for the collective good. Sound familiar?

The self-proclaimed "Tailor-King" Jan van Leiden ruled this proto-socialist paradise with absolute authority, enforcing his vision of equality through systematic terror. Dissenters faced immediate execution. The state mandated polygamy as official policy while abolishing individual economic choice entirely.

When you destroy price signals and property rights, you destroy the coordination mechanism that feeds cities. Münster's collectivist experiment delivered exactly what economic theory predicts: rapid collapse into famine and chaos. Within months, residents ate rats and boiled leather to survive. Reports of cannibalism emerged as the egalitarian dream transformed into a living nightmare.

The most predictable element? Elite hypocrisy. While ordinary citizens starved in their enforced equality, van Leiden and his inner circle lived in luxury, enjoying the finest food and accommodations the collective could provide. Centralized power inevitably corrupts those who wield it.

The economic logic remains bulletproof: without private property, individuals lose incentive to produce efficiently. Without market prices, planners cannot calculate resource allocation. Without voluntary exchange, coercion becomes the only tool for organizing complex society. Münster's rulers discovered these iron laws the hard way.

The starving city collapsed from within as its communist economy proved incapable of sustaining basic human life. When Catholic armies finally retook Münster in 1535, they found a wasteland of economic destruction and human misery.

The victors tortured the surviving Anabaptist leaders and displayed their bodies in iron cages hung from the city's main church. Those cages remained there for centuries as a warning about utopian schemes that promise equality but deliver only death.

Modern advocates of wealth redistribution and collective ownership prefer to ignore Münster's lessons. They insist their version of centralized control will somehow escape the economic laws that doomed every previous attempt. But human nature and market forces operate independently of ideological wishes.

The Anabaptist experiment reveals the fatal flaw in all collectivist thinking: the assumption that abolishing property rights creates abundance rather than scarcity. In reality, property rights exist because they solve the fundamental problem of resource allocation in a world of competing needs and limited goods.

Münster's collapse took just sixteen months to complete. The city's descent from Protestant reform to communist tyranny to economic wasteland offers a perfect case study in how quickly good intentions can destroy functioning societies when they ignore basic economic principles.

You can find those iron cages in Münster today, still hanging from St. Lambert's Church after nearly five centuries. They serve as permanent reminders that collectivism's promises always end the same way: in starvation, tyranny, and death.

#economy #libertarian

#Ireland ran without a state for over 1000 years under Brehon ...

2026-05-07T06:37:18Z

#Ireland ran without a state for over 1000 years under Brehon Law, and it worked better than most modern legal systems. From roughly 600-1600 CE, Irish society operated through competing law schools (the Brehon judges) who earned their authority through reputation and legal expertise, not political appointment or state backing.

The system handled everything from property disputes to homicide through sophisticated restitution rather than punishment. Kill someone? You paid their family based on their social status and productivity (honor-price plus body-price). Steal cattle? You returned multiple cattle plus compensation for the disruption. No prisons, no executioners, no massive bureaucratic apparatus eating tax revenue.

What fascinates me most: legal enforcement happened through insurance-like arrangements and social ostracism rather than state violence. Communities essentially "fired" people who refused arbitration by cutting off trade and protection. (Try explaining that efficiency to someone who thinks we need 2.3 million Americans in prison today.) The Normans and later the English had to systematically destroy this decentralized order because centralized states cannot tolerate competing power structures...

#economy #libertarian

December 2019. While federal agencies buried Verizon and AT&T ...

2026-05-06T13:33:50Z

December 2019. While federal agencies buried Verizon and AT&T in environmental reviews for every cell tower (because apparently radio waves might disturb the migration patterns of suburban squirrels), South Korea's SK Telecom flipped on commercial 5G service nationwide. Korean consumers downloaded 4K movies in seconds while Americans waited eighteen months for the FCC to approve a single tower placement in downtown Cleveland.

The pattern repeats like a broken record player. In 1844, Samuel Morse begged Congress to fund his telegraph expansion after proving the technology worked between Washington and Baltimore. Congressmen spent six months debating whether instant communication violated God's plan for humanity (seriously, check the Congressional Record). Private investors said screw it, funded the lines themselves, and connected every major American city within a decade. Private capital, not government involvement, built the fastest communication network on Earth.

Fast-forward to today's 5G circus. T-Mobile spent $78 billion acquiring Sprint, partly to bypass the federal spectrum auction racket that makes Las Vegas look transparent. Meanwhile, the Defense Department sits on massive chunks of unused 5G spectrum "for national security" while blocking private companies from accessing frequencies they'd actually use. Chinese companies roll out 5G infrastructure across Asia and Africa while American telecoms fight zoning boards in Palo Alto for six months to install equipment on existing poles.

You want to know why America leads in software but lags in physical infrastructure? Software doesn't require government permission to exist. Every 5G tower needs approval from seventeen different agencies, three environmental impact studies, and a public hearing where your neighbor Karen explains why faster internet will give her cat cancer.

#economy #libertarian

Brook Farm stands as one of history's most perfect controlled ...

2026-05-06T13:30:48Z

Brook Farm stands as one of history's most perfect controlled experiments in voluntary socialism; and its spectacular failure proves every principle of free market economics.

Picture this: 1841 Massachusetts. The brightest minds of the Transcendentalist movement, including Nathaniel Hawthorne as an investor, decide to escape "capitalist drudgery" by creating their perfect commune. These weren't your typical utopian cranks. They were educated elites who genuinely believed intellectual superiority could overcome economic reality.

The experiment started as a joint-stock egalitarian community where residents rotated between farm work and domestic duties. Manual labor for Harvard types. When that predictably struggled, they pivoted to French socialist Charles Fourier's "phalanx" model — shared labor, shared profits, shared everything. The intellectuals attracted other luminaries who bought into the romantic vision of escaping market-based work allocation.

Reality had other plans. Financial losses mounted as bookish idealists discovered that good intentions don't harvest crops efficiently. Internal squabbles erupted when people faced the eternal socialist problem: who decides who does what, and who gets what? The final blow came when their massive Phalanstery building burned down with zero insurance coverage. By 1847, they sold everything at auction.

Brook Farm collapsed despite every advantage socialism could ask for: voluntary participation, educated residents, shared ideology, and zero government coercion. Collectivist economics cannot work even when willing, intelligent people attempt it. The iron laws of human action and economic calculation operate in their purest form.

#economy #libertarian

Благодарю

2026-05-05T19:20:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…pjq2
_________________________

Благодарю

Нашел книгу Mastering Monero на русском. На ...

2026-05-05T16:56:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…jerc
_________________________

Нашел книгу Mastering Monero на русском. На сайте xmr.ru.

Bernie Sanders owns three houses while preaching about ...

2026-05-05T13:47:20Z

Bernie Sanders owns three houses while preaching about inequality, and this contradiction reveals everything you need to know about socialist politicians.

The man who rails against the wealthy elite owns homes in Vermont, Washington D.C., and a $575,000 lake house he purchased in 2016 (right after his first presidential campaign raised millions from small donors). Meanwhile, he famously praised breadlines in 1985, arguing that poor people standing in line for government food proved Nicaragua's socialist system worked better than America's. You can't make this stuff up.

Sanders honeymooned in the Soviet Union in 1988, three years before that workers' paradise collapsed under the weight of its own economic contradictions. He visited Burlington's sister city Yaroslavl and came back singing the praises of Soviet public transportation and cultural programs. This was an official exchange with a communist dictatorship that had murdered millions of its own people, undertaken while Sanders served as mayor of Burlington.

The cognitive dissonance runs deeper than personal hypocrisy. Sanders spent decades advocating for the very economic systems that created the poverty, shortages, and oppression he witnessed firsthand in the USSR. He praised breadlines in countries where people literally starved while visiting a nation where the government controlled every aspect of economic life. Then he returned to America to build wealth through the free market system he claims to despise.

Politicians like Sanders always exempt themselves from the restrictions they want to impose on everyone else. They accumulate property while advocating rent control, build wealth while demonizing profit, and live lavishly while preaching austerity for the masses.

#economy #libertarian

Is this protection enabled by default or does it need to be ...

2026-05-05T11:27:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…sckx
_________________________

Is this protection enabled by default or does it need to be activated?

Hernando de Soto discovered why billions of people remain trapped ...

2026-05-05T11:24:47Z

Hernando de Soto discovered why billions of people remain trapped in poverty despite owning valuable assets: their property exists outside formal legal systems, making it economically "dead."

In Peru, de Soto's researchers found that obtaining legal title to a home in Lima required 728 bureaucratic steps across 52 government offices, taking 6 years and 11 months. The cost exceeded $1,200 when average income was $4,800 annually. Similar barriers plague the developing world. In the Philippines, titling urban land takes 13-25 years. In Egypt, acquiring legal rights to desert land requires navigating 77 bureaucratic procedures over 14 years.

This creates a parallel economy where people own homes, farms, and businesses but cannot leverage them as capital. You cannot mortgage an untitled house to start a business. Banks will not accept informal property as collateral. Investors cannot verify ownership through reliable records. The assets become sterile wealth that generates no additional economic activity.

De Soto calculated that dead capital in developing nations exceeds $9.3 trillion. These are substantial assets trapped by bureaucratic barriers, not worthless shacks. The poor own the assets but cannot access the capital markets that would transform dead property into live capital.

The solution requires property rights reform. Countries need to simplify titling processes, recognize informal property arrangements, and integrate parallel legal systems into unified frameworks. When people can prove ownership and transfer property freely, dead capital comes alive and generates the investment flows that create prosperity.

#economy #libertarian

The Scottish Enlightenment produced the most devastating ...

2026-05-05T08:58:13Z

The Scottish Enlightenment produced the most devastating intellectual assault on mercantilism in human history, and Edinburgh's economy exploded as a direct result. #England strangled trade with Navigation Acts and guild restrictions. Scottish thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith articulated why free exchange creates wealth for everyone involved.

Smith's *Wealth of Nations* in 1776 destroyed the zero-sum fallacy that had justified centuries of trade wars. Nations prosper when individuals freely pursue their own interests through voluntary exchange. Smith's pin factory example showed how specialization and division of labor multiply productivity beyond anything central planners could imagine.

The results spoke louder than theory. Edinburgh's population doubled between 1750 and 1800. Scottish textile production surged 300% as manufacturers freely imported raw materials and exported finished goods. Banking flourished without government interference. The Royal Bank of #Scotland, founded in 1727, issued competitive private currency that held its value better than government money. Glasgow became Britain's tobacco capital by ignoring official trade routes and dealing directly with American merchants.

Scottish universities embraced this intellectual revolution. While Oxford and Cambridge taught medieval scholasticism, Edinburgh and Glasgow produced practical innovators. Their graduates built canals, improved agriculture, and started manufacturing businesses. Free markets not only generated abstract wealth; they created the engineers and entrepreneurs who built the modern world.

The Scottish example exposes a fundamental truth: prosperity requires removing restrictions. Human creativity does the rest.

#economy #libertarian

Truth is not a democracy. It is not a numbers game. One ...

2026-05-05T06:12:01Z

Truth is not a democracy. It is not a numbers game.

One individual can be more right than 99.9% of others.

The founding fathers of the Enlightenment knew this clearly.

"The agreement of many is no proof of truth."

John Locke

A science that defines itself by numbers and majorities has clearly strayed from the path of the Enlightenment.

Albert Einstein:

"What is right is not decided by the majority, but by reality."

#economy #libertarian

Panama has not had a central #bank since 1904. In that same ...

2026-05-05T06:03:22Z

Panama has not had a central #bank since 1904.

In that same century, the rest of Latin America destroyed its currency at least once.

Several did so two or three times.

Without a central bank, Panama cannot create money out of thin air.

To obtain dollars, it has to produce goods or export real services.

Money comes in because there is something real behind it.

That's not clever monetary policy; it's simply the absence of the issuance mechanism.

Panama is the only country in Latin America that has not suffered a financial collapse or a currency crisis since its independence.

Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico.

They all have or had central banks.

They all destroyed their currency.

The pattern needs no further explanation.

The central bank is not an institution of stability.

It is the legal monopoly on counterfeiting.

It centralizes in the hands of the State the power to expand the money supply, transfer wealth from existing money holders to the first recipients of the new money, and finance the deficit without the taxpayer feeling the pinch.

Calling it monetary policy doesn't change what it is.

#economy #libertarian

Pakistan's rupee has lost 85% of its value against the dollar ...

2026-05-04T15:12:59Z

Pakistan's rupee has lost 85% of its value against the dollar since 1990. The IMF keeps calling this progress.

The International Monetary Fund has approved Pakistan's 24th bailout package since 1958. Twenty-four separate "rescue" programs in 65 years. Each time, the IMF arrives with the same prescription: devalue your currency, raise taxes, cut spending, liberalize imports. Each time, Pakistan gets poorer and the rupee gets weaker.

Free market economists call this the IMF trap. The Fund lends dollars to governments that cannot pay their debts, then demands policy changes that make repayment even less likely. Currency devaluation makes imports more expensive, driving up inflation and making ordinary Pakistanis poorer. Higher taxes crush domestic businesses. Import liberalization floods the country with foreign goods that local producers cannot compete with.

The real winners are the politically connected importers who get cheap access to dollars, and the Western exporters who gain market access. Pakistan's middle class watches their savings evaporate while the government celebrates each new IMF agreement as economic reform.

The rupee traded at 9.9 per dollar in 1990. Today it trades above 280. Pakistani families need 28 times more rupees to buy the same goods from abroad. This represents systematic monetary destruction disguised as economic stabilization.

Pakistan's government could end this cycle tomorrow by refusing new IMF loans and fixing the rupee to gold or adopting the dollar entirely. But that would require giving up the ability to print money to fund government spending. The IMF trap keeps both the Pakistani government and the Fund in business while ordinary Pakistanis pay the price.

#economy #libertarian

Слеер без него так и не сдюжили

2026-05-04T12:44:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…tz3q
_________________________

Слеер без него так и не сдюжили

The South African #government published draft regulations that ...

2026-05-04T11:10:05Z

The South African #government published draft regulations that would criminalize self-custody of #Bitcoin. Border agents could demand your private keys. Treasury could force you to sell your Bitcoin back to rand. All holdings must be declared within 30 days. This happened by ministerial decree without a parliamentary vote.

Murray Rothbard described the state as nothing more than a gang of thieves writ large, legitimized through the mythology of democratic consent. South Africa's National Treasury demonstrates this perfectly. They are using a 93-year-old law from 1933 to regulate technology that didn't exist until 2009, overriding court rulings that said crypto assets fall outside exchange controls. The rand has lost 90% of its value in thirty years, and now they want to trap you inside their sinking currency.

They are doing this because of what economists call the Impossible Trinity. Any government can only maintain two of three things: stable exchange rates, free capital movement, or independent monetary policy. South Africa chose capital controls plus monetary independence, sacrificing your freedom to move money. Bitcoin breaks that equation. When you can custody your own wealth outside their system, their capital controls become meaningless.

Eleven million South Africans remain unbanked. For them, self-custodied Bitcoin is their bank. The same government claiming to care about financial inclusion just moved to criminalize the only viable savings technology these people can access. Bastiat would recognize the paradox: what is seen is "investor protection," what is unseen is the destruction of the only escape route from monetary theft.

The comment window closes May 16th. They are betting you won't notice until it's too late.

#economy #libertarian

The real enemy? Progressive taxation. One intervention creates ...

2026-05-03T04:50:12Z

The real enemy? Progressive taxation.

One intervention creates problems that demand five more interventions, each generating revenue for the system.

Start with a 15% top rate "just on the wealthy." Within decades, you get bracket creep pushing middle-class earners into those top rates. Politicians respond by creating new deductions and credits to "help families."

Tax code balloons from 400 pages to 75,000 pages. Compliance costs hit $400 billion annually in the US alone. Small businesses hire accountants instead of workers. Entrepreneurs relocate to Singapore or Dubai.

Each complication spawns three new bureaucracies. The Alternative Minimum Tax arrives to catch "tax avoiders" (translation: people following the law). Then comes the Earned Income Tax Credit to help low earners crushed by payroll taxes. Estate tax planning creates entire industries. Corporate inversions trigger anti-inversion rules that trigger new loopholes that trigger more rules.

Sweden tried this experiment in the 1970s and 80s. Top rates hit 87%. Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking author) paid 102% marginal rates. IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad fled to Switzerland. Tennis star Björn Borg moved to Monaco. Tax revenues as percentage of GDP actually fell. Sweden eventually slashed rates and simplified the system.

The original promise was to soak the rich. The result: middle class paying 40%+ effective rates while billionaires hire armies of lawyers to pay 15%. Each new "fix" creates ten new distortions, ten new lobbying opportunities, ten new ways for connected insiders to game the system.

Modern taxation, working as designed.

#economy #libertarian

The worst enemy of collectivists is not capitalism, but reality. ...

2026-05-02T19:47:15Z

The worst enemy of collectivists is not capitalism, but reality.
#economy #libertarian

Your town starts with a simple 2% property tax to fund basic ...

2026-05-02T08:00:48Z

Your town starts with a simple 2% property tax to fund basic services.

Year 3: Revenue shortfall hits. Infrastructure "desperately needs" upgrades. Property tax jumps to 3.5%. City council promises this covers everything.

Year 5: School district claims crisis funding needs. Separate education tax appears; just 1.5% for the children, they say. Your total tax load now sits at 5%.

Year 8: Environmental impact assessments become mandatory for all development. New environmental compliance tax of 0.8% gets tacked on. Plus a transportation improvement fee of 1.2% because the roads can't handle the delayed projects.

Year 12: Housing affordability crisis emerges (funny how that works). City creates affordable housing trust fund requiring another 1% tax. Storm water management fees add 0.5%. Total burden now exceeds 8.5%.

Year 15: Local businesses start fleeing to neighboring counties. Commercial tax base shrinks. Residential property owners must make up the difference. Rates jump across all categories. Your effective rate hits 11%.

The city's books show every tax paying for its designated purpose. The infrastructure still crumbles. Schools still claim poverty. Housing costs skyrocketed beyond what any middle-class family can afford.

You started with one modest tax for basic municipal services. A complex web of overlapping levies now funds an army of bureaucrats managing the crisis created by the previous army of bureaucrats.

Each department gets its budget. Each program gets its funding. Each tax collector gets their cut.

The services you actually wanted remain broken, just more expensive.

#economy #libertarian

В монеро размер блоков динамичный. ...

2026-05-02T06:23:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…vnkm
_________________________

В монеро размер блоков динамичный. Это увеличивает блокчейн.

Как ты оцениваешь критику биткоинеров, что это приведет к централизации узлов в руках богатых крупных участников?

Те же аргументы они высказывали в войне с крупноблочниками.

The #government forces you to hand over 30% of your income before ...

2026-05-02T06:14:50Z

The #government forces you to hand over 30% of your income before you even see it, then taxes you again when you buy groceries, fill up your car, and pay your property taxes.

They call this "your fair share" while spending $6.75 trillion of your money in 2024 on wars you didn't vote for, subsidies for corporations that already turn massive profits, and bureaucrats whose jobs exist solely to create more rules for you to follow.

You work January through April just to pay the federal government. Add state and local taxes, and you're working until mid-May before you earn a single dollar for yourself. Medieval serfs worked one day in three for their lords. You work more than that for yours.

The tax code spans 75,000 pages. Complexity serves power. Simple rules would mean simple compliance and simple resistance. Complex rules require expensive accountants, create arbitrary enforcement, and ensure that only the connected can navigate the system efficiently. Small businesses drown in compliance costs while Amazon pays effective tax rates in the single digits.

They tell you taxes fund essential services, but the largest expenditures go to interest payments on debt they created and military interventions that make you less safe. Your local roads get funded, but so do gender studies programs in Pakistan and million-dollar grants to study the mating habits of quail on cocaine.

Every tax they collect represents hours of your life you'll never get back, traded not for services you chose, but for priorities politicians selected while spending other people's money.

#economy #libertarian

Книгу нашел на литресе. Вот это ...

2026-05-01T18:03:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…d3gc
_________________________

Книгу нашел на литресе.

Вот это единство в монеро меня радует. В битке много высокомерия. Травят и оскорбляют за критический взгляд.

А технически монеро может размещать у себя мусор вместе/вместо денежных транзакций? Есть у него лазейки типа op_return в битке?

На русском эта книга есть? Еще ...

2026-05-01T13:15:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…t7q2
_________________________

На русском эта книга есть?

Еще вопрос. Ординалы и др скамеры лезут в биток постоянно, в т ч сейчас через обновление кор30.

Но такого не было и нет в монеро. Почему? Технически возможно заполнить блоки монеро неденежными транзакциями и всякой ерундой типа картинок? Вообще в блокчейне монеро есть этот мусор сейчас?

Да, я имею в виду не вероятность ...

2026-05-01T12:26:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…ems2
_________________________

Да, я имею в виду не вероятность события. Я переоцениваю доводы о преимуществах биткоина и стараюсь быть объективным. Действительно, много высокомерия и шапкозакидательства в биткоин-среде.

Поэтому думаю, что фиксированная инфляция это одновременно и преимущество, и проклятие биткоина. Даже видимо правильно будет сказать: преимущестао в начале и проклятие потом.

Это уберегло бы и монеро от возможных в будущем дискуссий об отмене инфляции монет.

Второй вопрос.
В биткоине много говорили о безопасности сети. Но события последнего года заставили меня задуматься.

Оказалось, что биткоин может убить команда разработчиков. Я по-другому взглянул на войну блоков в начале битка. По-сути идет перманентная внутренняя грызня между разрабами, а подавляющая часть майнеров и держателей узлов не понимают или не хотят понять уровень угрозы.

Тут я опять убеждаюсь: там, где колхоз, там рано или поздно все сломают.

Вопрос. В монеро такое было раньше и возможно в принципе?

The socialist fantasy operates on a fundamental delusion: every ...

2026-05-01T09:46:48Z

The socialist fantasy operates on a fundamental delusion: every advocate imagines themselves as the commissar, never the slave. They picture themselves redistributing wealth, not having their own wealth redistributed.

This economic illiteracy runs deeper than simple ignorance. Venezuela's middle class cheered Chávez's early expropriations of "the rich" before watching their own savings evaporate through hyperinflation. Cuba's revolutionary intellectuals celebrated the seizure of private property until they found themselves queuing for bread rations. The pattern repeats because socialists fundamentally misunderstand how wealth creation works.

Free market economists have explained this for decades: wealth isn't a fixed pie to be redistributed. You create wealth through voluntary exchange, capital accumulation, and entrepreneurial innovation. When you destroy the price system and eliminate private property rights, you obliterate the very mechanism that generates prosperity. The Soviet Union's 70-year experiment in central planning produced exactly what economic theory predicted: chronic shortages, technological stagnation, and mass poverty.

The cruel irony is that socialism's most vocal cheerleaders today come from the laptop class. They sip $7 lattes while typing manifestos about worker solidarity, completely insulated from the consequences of their ideology. They've never run a business, never met a payroll, never experienced the discipline that market forces impose on resource allocation.

History offers no examples of successful socialist transformation, only cautionary tales of economic collapse and human suffering. Yet the fantasy persists because it appeals to humanity's worst instincts: envy, laziness, and the desire to live off others' productive efforts without contributing value yourself.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

Вопрос, на который биткоинеры или ...

2026-05-01T09:39:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…rt99
_________________________

Вопрос, на который биткоинеры или не отвечают, или уклоняются.

21 млн ограниченное предложение. Я вижу как преимущество, так и минус.

Все рисуют армагедон: власти атакуют биткоинеров, запреты, преследования и т.д.

Я бы на месте власти сделал наоборот. Хвалить, ездить на конференции, биткоин-резерв и т.д.

А сам по тихому скупал монеты и выводил из оборота. Фиат бесконечен и бесплатен. Времени вагон. Тихо без шума раз за разом.

Примерно то же самое они сделали и делают с золотом.

С монеро это не сработает из-за постоянной его инфляции. Даже небольшая она не дает властям такой возможности. Помимо другой цели инфляция монеро защищает сеть от такой атаки властей.

Что думаешь?

I have the same problem when sending to a wallet of satoshi

2026-05-01T08:39:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…tzz5
_________________________

I have the same problem when sending to a wallet of satoshi

The progressive and romantic, the brilliant Marquis de Condorcet ...

2026-04-30T11:57:21Z

The progressive and romantic, the brilliant Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), pompously proclaimed: "Is it possible that our parents, while transmitting to us the capabilities of their physical constitution, did not also transmit to us understanding, spiritual energy, and morality?"

Condorcet, of course, is absolutely right. Of course, they did transmit. But one small clarification is required: our "parents" were not only humans.
Moreover, they were predominantly non-humans.

Our "parents," beginning with the theropoda of the Paleozoic, were an impressive evolutionary chain of creatures whose brains "adaptively" developed in conditions where the strength and fullness of aggression were almost everything, and "other" qualities were completely superfluous.

This conclusion allows us to put an end to the question of the "depravity" of man and his "guilt," as demonstrated by his "fixed history." It is clear that homo could not be any different; he did not have the slightest neurophysiological capacity for this.
#atheism #biology

The Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 destroyed the protectionist ...

2026-04-30T11:00:09Z

The Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 destroyed the protectionist stranglehold that French and British special interests had maintained for decades. Richard Cobden negotiated this bilateral free trade agreement between Britain and France, slashing tariffs across hundreds of goods and opening markets that bureaucrats and cronies had kept artificially closed. Wine, silk, manufactured goods—suddenly French and British consumers could access these products without paying tribute to domestic cartels.

The results were immediate and undeniable. British exports to France jumped 45% in the first year alone. French wine imports to Britain increased tenfold as punitive tariffs evaporated. Both economies expanded as resources flowed to their most productive uses instead of being trapped behind tariff walls. Workers in competitive industries saw wages rise while consumers enjoyed lower prices and better quality goods.

What made this treaty brilliant was its unconditional most-favored-nation clause. Any trade concession either country granted to third parties automatically extended to the other. This created a domino effect—within a decade, similar treaties spread across Europe as governments faced pressure to match these liberal terms. The treaty essentially weaponized free trade, making protectionism harder to maintain as trading partners demanded equal access.

Modern trade negotiators could learn from Cobden's approach. He bypassed the protectionist lobbies in both parliaments by negotiating directly with Napoleon III, then presenting legislators with a fait accompli. No endless committee hearings, no special interest amendments, no carve-outs for politically connected industries.

Today's 2,000-page trade deals stuffed with regulatory harmonization and corporate welfare make the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty's elegant simplicity look revolutionary by comparison.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

Sparta deliberately created the most inconvenient #money ...

2026-04-30T04:31:04Z

Sparta deliberately created the most inconvenient #money imaginable: heavy iron bars that rusted, took up enormous space, and became worthless if you accumulated too much. The Spartan state wanted to prevent wealth accumulation entirely, so they made money itself a burden rather than a store of value.

This represents the ultimate statist fantasy: money that punishes savers and makes #capital formation impossible. While Athens developed sophisticated banking and trade networks using silver #coins, Spartans struggled to conduct basic commerce with their cumbersome iron currency. You couldn't hide wealth, transport it easily, or even store it without dedicating entire rooms to your "fortune."

The economic consequences were predictable and devastating. Sparta never developed the merchant class that fueled Athenian prosperity. No foreign traders wanted to deal with iron money that lost value through oxidation. Spartans couldn't engage in long-distance trade or accumulate the capital necessary for economic growth. The state got exactly what it wanted: economic stagnation disguised as virtue.

Modern economists celebrate this monetary system as an early example of "preventing inequality." Sparta's iron money didn't eliminate wealth differences—it simply ensured that everyone remained poor together. The helots who comprised 80% of the population stayed enslaved while the Spartan citizens stayed economically primitive.

Today's central bankers pursue the same goal through different means: negative interest rates, inflation targeting, and wealth taxes all serve to punish saving and capital accumulation. The only difference is that our financial overlords use sophisticated mathematics instead of heavy iron bars.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

Picture this: October 2010, a black Toyota Prius pulls up to some ...

2026-04-29T06:45:35Z

Picture this: October 2010, a black Toyota Prius pulls up to some venture capitalists in San Francisco. Two guys named Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp just pitched an app that lets you summon rides with your phone. The VCs probably thought "cute tech toy for rich millennials."

Meanwhile, across the country in New York City, taxi medallions were trading for $1.3 million each. These little metal plates had appreciated faster than Manhattan real estate for decades (because the city artificially capped them at 13,237 medallions since the 1930s). Immigrant drivers mortgaged their entire lives to buy these things, treating them like retirement accounts. Fleet owners sat on medallion portfolios worth hundreds of millions.

The medallion system started during the Great Depression when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia decided too many taxis were "flooding" the streets. Classic government solution: create artificial scarcity, call it public safety. For eighty years, this cartel enriched medallion owners while screwing over riders who couldn't hail cabs in outer boroughs and drivers who paid usurious lease fees.

Then Uber scaled. By 2014, medallion values crashed to $870,000. By 2018? Try $200,000. Hundreds of drivers declared bankruptcy. The Taxi Workers Alliance started organizing suicide prevention workshops because medallion debt was literally killing people. Meanwhile, you could finally get a ride in Brooklyn at 2 AM without bribing a dispatcher.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 AD stands as history's ...

2026-04-28T10:18:30Z

The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 AD stands as history's most brazen tax grab disguised as benevolence. Emperor Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to virtually every free inhabitant of the empire because citizens paid inheritance taxes that non-citizens avoided. The Roman historian Cassius Dio called it exactly what it was: a scheme to increase revenues.

Rome's finances were hemorrhaging. Caracalla had raised military pay by 50% and spent lavishly on public works to buy popularity. The empire's silver denarius had been debased from 98% silver under Augustus to 83% under his reign. Standard government playbook: create the crisis through spending and currency debasement, then expand the tax base to fund the mess.

The citizenship grant brought an estimated 30 million new taxpayers into the system overnight. These fresh citizens now owed Rome's 5% inheritance tax (vicesima hereditatium) and various other levies previously reserved for the citizen class. Caracalla essentially performed the ancient equivalent of closing tax loopholes — except he created the "loopholes" by expanding who owed taxes rather than changing the rates.

Free market thinkers today watch governments employ identical tactics: California chases fleeing residents with exit taxes, while the federal government floats wealth taxes on unrealized gains. The method changes but the principle remains constant — when governments overspend, they don't cut expenses, they hunt for new sources of revenue.

Caracalla's "generous" citizenship expansion bought Rome a temporary fiscal reprieve while accelerating the empire's long-term decline through increased bureaucratic overhead and economic interference. Every government believes it can tax its way out of spending problems. Every government learns the same lesson Rome did: you can't.

#bitcoin #monero #economy #libertarian

Few know that the 'Encryption war' never ended: it began ...

2026-04-27T13:03:36Z

Few know that the 'Encryption war' never ended: it began centuries ago and never stopped. The 90s “Encryption Wars” was just the feds tripping over their surveillance fetish in broad daylight.

Early cryptographers died unrecognized because their contributions couldn’t be acknowledged. Bletchley Park’s cryptanalysts remained classified long after 1945, so thousands of codebreakers returned to civilian life, sworn to silence, and while conventional soldiers could boast of heroics, those who fought actually pivotal intellectual battles had to dodge questions about their wartime service. Turing’s family had no idea what he did. Neither did Marian Rejewski’s. The Navajo code talkers got medals for fighting but with gag orders, etc., etc. I can continue forever... The cipher war never stopped, it just went silent: if people don’t realize they’re at war, they don’t fight back.

TL;DR: The state’s #crypto war never ended; they just got better at 'hiding the bodies': the state conducts cryptographic research today that won’t be declassified for decades... if ever. You don’t hate the state enough.

While some might argue that it's justified against external enemies, the next stage of the encryption war could target us. 'If a noticeable exodus to this parallel economy emerges, the state's greatest "national security" threat won't be foreign foes: it will be us - people who just want to be left alone.'

#bitcoin #monero #libertarian

Cash for Clunkers destroyed 690,000 functional vehicles in 2009, ...

2026-04-27T08:04:33Z

Cash for Clunkers destroyed 690,000 functional vehicles in 2009, creating an artificial scarcity that rippled through used car markets for over a decade. The Obama administration sold this $3 billion program as environmental salvation and economic stimulus, but any free market economist could predict the real outcome: massive wealth destruction disguised as progress.

The program forced dealers to pour sodium silicate into engines, permanently destroying cars that poor families could have afforded. Politicians eliminated the bottom tier of the used car market overnight. Suddenly, a reliable $3,000 Honda Civic became a $7,000 Honda Civic (if you could find one). The supposed beneficiaries — working-class Americans who needed affordable transportation — got priced out entirely.

#Government intervention always creates unseen victims, and Cash for Clunkers delivered them by the millions. Single mothers, college students, and minimum-wage workers watched their mobility options vanish as used car prices soared 30% between 2009 and 2014. The environmental gains proved negligible too: most clunkers averaged 15-17 MPG while replacements hit 24-25 MPG. Destroying half a million cars to improve average fuel economy by 8 MPG represents the kind of central planning that would give Soviet bureaucrats a hard-on.

The wealth destruction extended beyond sticker prices. Higher transportation costs forced people into longer payment terms, creating a debt cycle that persists today. Cash for Clunkers normalized 84-month auto loans, turning cars from depreciating assets into multi-year financial anchors.

Bureaucrats congratulated themselves for moving inventory off dealer lots while condemning an entire generation to transportation poverty.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

“A tale of two continents” Two continents. Two worldviews. ...

2026-04-27T07:41:16Z

“A tale of two continents”

Two continents. Two worldviews. Two outcomes.

On the one hand, a system based on ownership, voluntary exchange, and experimentation. On the other hand, a system based on planning, redistribution, and control.

Look at the US. Google is building an infrastructure for knowledge. Tesla is turning the car into a learning software platform, with autonomous driving at its core. SpaceX is breaking state dominance in space and launching thousands of satellites to build its own communication layer. Anthropic is developing systems that scale knowledge exponentially.

These are not companies operating within frameworks. They are rewriting the frameworks. Because they are allowed to.

And then the numbers, because that is where the difference becomes stark:

The US stock market currently represents approximately $65 trillion in value.

Europe remains stuck at around $25 trillion.

That difference is no coincidence. It is the result of a philosophy.

In the US, capital is freely allocated to ideas with potential. Failure is accepted. Scale is rewarded. The market selects what works retrospectively.

Put the European Union alongside that.

Here, everything starts with rules. First the risk classification, only then the experiment. First the subsidy, only then the innovation. Autonomous driving becomes a legal dossier. Energy a patchwork of policy. Space travel a political compromise.

Consequence: Europe is not building its own SpaceX with thousands of satellites. No Tesla collecting data on a large scale and rolling out self-driving vehicles. No AI player growing without restraint like Anthropic.

Europe produces poverty not out of intent, but out of structure. By suppressing risk, you suppress breakthroughs. By distrusting success beforehand, you prevent it from arising.

The irony is that this is sold as protection. But protection against what?

A libertarian perspective is clear here. Prosperity arises through creation, not through redistribution. Through decentralized knowledge, not through central planning. Through voluntary interaction, not through imposed systems.

Two continents. One builds and scales, with $65 trillion in capital as fuel. The other manages and distributes, with $25 trillion as the ceiling.

And in the long run, the one who dares to invest and build wins.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

Poland's złoty collapsed into hyperinflation in 1989-90 ...

2026-04-26T14:43:19Z

Poland's złoty collapsed into hyperinflation in 1989-90 because central planners had spent four decades pretending that economic calculation without market prices could actually work.

The Communist government's response to mounting economic crisis? Print more money. Inflation hit 640% in 1989, then exploded to over 1,200% in early 1990. Workers demanded higher wages to keep up with rising prices. The state obliged by creating more złoty out of thin air. Classic death spiral. You could watch a socialist economy eating itself in real time.

The deeper problem went beyond monetary policy. Socialist economies can't perform rational economic calculation because they abolished the price system. Without genuine market prices reflecting supply and demand, planners had no way to allocate resources efficiently. They operated blind for decades, building steel mills nobody wanted while bread lines stretched around city blocks. When reality finally crashed through the ideological facade, the only tool they had left was the printing press.

Poland's hyperinflation was the inevitable feature of any economy that destroys the price mechanism and replaces it with bureaucratic whims. Central planners can ignore economic laws for years, even decades. But they can't escape the consequences forever.

The 1990 Balcerowicz Plan stopped the hyperinflation by ending price controls and implementing a currency board. Free market economists had warned for decades that monetary expansion without corresponding increases in real production would end in disaster. Poland learned this lesson the hard way: you can suspend economic reality, but you can't suspend it indefinitely.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

The Phoenicians built the Mediterranean's first global ...

2026-04-26T07:28:59Z

The Phoenicians built the Mediterranean's first global economy without a single central bank, trade ministry, or economic planning committee. From 1200-300 BC, their trading posts stretched from Spain to the Black Sea. Each one was an independent profit center making local decisions based on supply, demand, and opportunity.

Carthage specialized in silver and agricultural products. Tyre dominated the purple dye trade (worth more than #gold). Cyprus focused on copper. No bureaucrat in some distant capital decided these specializations. Traders responded to local advantages and market signals. When Romans tried to control Mediterranean trade through state monopolies centuries later, they killed innovation and created shortages.

You see the same pattern today when politicians attempt to "manage" global trade through currency manipulation and tariffs. Spontaneous order beats central planning every time. The Phoenicians proved it 3,000 years ago.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

The federal #government created organized crime in America by ...

2026-04-26T04:58:13Z

The federal #government created organized crime in America by banning alcohol in 1920, then spent thirteen years wondering why violence exploded across every major city.

Before Prohibition, alcohol production operated like any normal industry. Brewers competed on quality and price, resolved disputes in courts, and advertised their products openly. The Anheuser-Busch family built legitimate business empires serving willing customers. Then politicians decided adults couldn't make their own consumption choices.

Obviously, prohibition didn't eliminate demand for alcohol (basic economics, which apparently escapes lawmakers). Instead, it drove the entire industry underground where violent criminals held competitive advantages over peaceful businessmen. Al Capone never succeeded because he brewed better beer than Budweiser. He succeeded because he excelled at bribing cops, intimidating competitors, and machine-gunning rivals in the street. Legal businesses can't compete against enterprises willing to murder their competition.

Violence became the primary tool for market competition once government removed legal enforcement mechanisms. When you can't sue competitors for contract violations or trademark infringement, you settle disputes with bullets. The famous Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 was just business competition by other means.

By 1933, even prohibitionists admitted defeat. Alcohol returned to legal markets, and legitimate businesses immediately reclaimed the industry from gangsters. Organized crime syndicates didn't disappear, but they lost their most profitable revenue stream and the institutional infrastructure that alcohol smuggling had provided.

Every drug prohibition since 1933 repeats this exact same pattern, yet politicians still act surprised when black markets produce violence instead of temperance.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

Marx spent his entire adult life as a trust fund parasite, living ...

2026-04-26T04:55:22Z

Marx spent his entire adult life as a trust fund parasite, living off Engels' textile fortune while writing screeds against capitalism. The irony writes itself. This freeloading theorist never ran a business, met a payroll, or created value for anyone.

His labor theory of value crumbled in 1871 when Menger explained subjective value. Marx claimed workers get "exploited" through voluntary exchange. Employment contracts benefit both parties. Otherwise, why would anyone agree?

The man who promised to liberate workers delivered the Gulag. His intellectual descendants murdered 100 million people trying to implement his economic fantasies. Meanwhile, free markets lifted billions out of poverty.

#bitcoin #economy #libertarian

The new fiscal obsession in #Europe is simple: tax not what ...

2026-04-25T16:25:49Z

The new fiscal obsession in #Europe is simple: tax not what someone earns, but what someone owns. Your house, your savings, your shares, your company. As if ownership were a subscription for which you have to pay rent to the state every year. As if you are never truly the owner, but merely a tolerated custodian of what the state grants you for the time being.

That is sold as a fight against inequality. In reality, it is an attack on the foundation of a free society: the right to property.

Politicians like Pedro Sánchez in Spain and economists like Gabriel Zucman act as if the solution is simple: target the rich, finance the welfare state, and everyone wins.

But that is a lie they know themselves. If you want to maintain a large welfare state, you ultimately have to tax the middle class. That is exactly what Europe has been doing for decades through income tax, VAT, and social security contributions. The rich are numerically too small for that. The bill always ends up with the ordinary citizen. Always!

Wealth tax sounds attractive because it supposedly only hits the richest. But capital works differently than politicians want to believe. Capital is mobile. Capital reacts. Capital disappears. And with capital, jobs, investments, and the future disappear. Always.

The examples are documented and irrefutable. Norway saw an exodus of entrepreneurs and wealthy citizens after the wealth tax was raised. Sweden had a heavy wealth tax for decades and eventually abolished it after capital and entrepreneurs left en masse. France drove thousands of millionaires out of the country with its solidarity tax and lost enormous capital flows for a revenue that barely covered the policy costs. These are not anecdotes. This is what happens all the time.

And now the Netherlands wants to become the guinea pig. Box 3 now even threatens to tax paper profits that have not yet been realized. You are taxed on something you do not yet have. That does not only affect the ultra-rich. It affects private investors, angel investors, start-ups, family businesses, and people who are finally trying to build wealth from scratch.

That is the point that the pathological redistributors systematically refuse to understand. The problem is not just that rich people are leaving. The real problem also arises before someone becomes rich. The engineer, the consultant, the budding entrepreneur sees that success is punished increasingly severely. He or she saves from heavily taxed income, takes risks, works harder than those around them, builds something up, and as soon as they succeed, the state is ready to join in the grab. At that moment, he stops. Or he leaves. Or he or she never starts.

The result is exactly the opposite of what the Left promises. Existing assets are protected, while new entrants are blocked. The established wealthy have structures, advisors, international diversification, and legal buffers. The new entrepreneur has a laptop, some savings, and risk. It is precisely he who is discouraged. It is precisely he who pays the price of policies that claim to target the rich.

The GINI discussion deliberately conceals this. The Netherlands and Denmark can score relatively low on income inequality thanks to redistribution, while wealth inequality remains high. Leveling incomes is not the same as spreading ownership. The state can redistribute flows, but does not create free capital formation. On the contrary: redistribution destroys precisely the incentives that make broad prosperity possible.

This is not justice. This is organized impoverishment.

A neo-Marxist hunt for successful people, disguised as solidarity, carried out by a class that has never built anything itself.

Europe does not lack taxes. Europe lacks freedom, property, capital, and guts. And the Netherlands threatens to become the guinea pig once again for policies that make everyone poorer, except the state itself and its backward nomenklatura.

#bitcoin #economy

East #German factory workers had a saying: "They pretend to ...

2026-04-25T16:00:08Z

East #German factory workers had a saying: "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."

Cuban doctors drove taxis in Havana because tourists tipped better than the state hospital paid. Venezuelan engineers fled to Colombia to flip burgers because burger-flipping in a market economy beat engineering in a command economy.

When you divorce reward from merit and effort from outcome, you get exactly what you'd expect from a perverse incentive structure.

#bitcoin #economy

The #British Airways privatization of 1987 stands as one of ...

2026-04-25T15:55:35Z

The #British Airways privatization of 1987 stands as one of Thatcher's most brilliant economic victories, transforming a bloated government airline into a competitive market force while demolishing the myth that natural monopolies exist in aviation.

Before privatization, BA burned through taxpayer money like jet fuel, losing £140 million in 1981 alone while delivering the service quality you'd expect from a #government monopoly. The airline employed 59,000 people to serve routes that private competitors could handle with half the staff. Workers had zero incentive to satisfy customers since paychecks came from the Treasury, not ticket sales. Management made decisions based on political considerations rather than profit and loss signals.

Thatcher's government sold BA shares to the public in February 1987, instantly subjecting the airline to market discipline. Within five years, employment dropped to 49,000 while passenger numbers soared. The newly private BA had to compete with Virgin Atlantic, which Richard Branson launched in 1984, and dozens of other carriers entering previously protected routes. Routes that BA once monopolized suddenly featured multiple airlines competing on price, service, and innovation.

The transformation was immediate and measurable. BA's punctuality improved from 70% to 85% within three years. Customer complaints dropped by half. The airline introduced new routes, upgraded fleets, and actually started caring about passenger experience because survival depended on it. Competition forced efficiency improvements that no government directive could ever achieve.

Today's European aviation market traces directly back to this privatization, which proved that even "strategic" industries perform better under private ownership than government control.

#bitcoin #economy

The #Japanese railway privatization of 1987 stands as one of the ...

2026-04-25T15:51:23Z

The #Japanese railway privatization of 1987 stands as one of the most devastating defeats ever dealt to statist transportation mythology. The #government split the bloated #Japan National Railways into seven regional companies, sold them off, and watched private ownership transform a bankruptcy-bound disaster into the world's most efficient rail system.

JNR hemorrhaged money for decades before privatization. By 1987, the state railway carried debt equivalent to $200 billion in today's #money while delivering mediocre service plagued by strikes and inefficiency. Politicians treated it as a jobs program rather than a transportation service. The predictable result: chronic losses, deteriorating infrastructure, and customer service that reflected government monopoly arrogance.

Private ownership changed everything overnight. The new JR companies slashed operating costs by 40% within five years while dramatically improving service quality. JR East alone now generates annual profits exceeding $3 billion. These companies invest billions in cutting-edge technology, maintain punctuality rates above 99%, and operate the world's most advanced high-speed rail networks. They achieved this without a single yen of operational subsidies.

The transformation reveals a core dynamic of transportation infrastructure: private companies must satisfy customers to survive, while government monopolies need only satisfy politicians. JR companies diversified into real estate, retail, and hospitality around their stations, creating integrated profit centers that cross-subsidize rail operations. Government railways never innovate this way because bureaucrats face no market pressure to generate returns.

Meanwhile, Amtrak burns through $2 billion in annual subsidies while delivering third-world service across most routes, and European state railways require massive taxpayer bailouts every few years to stay solvent.

#bitcoin #economy

🚨 $600 MILLION IS MISSING FROM A HEDGE FUND AND NOBODY KNOWS ...

2026-04-25T07:55:07Z

🚨 $600 MILLION IS MISSING FROM A HEDGE FUND AND NOBODY KNOWS WHERE IT WENT.

This is not the first time an auditor missed a fraud and they are already proposing even easier rules.

David Choi ran a hedge fund called Mars FX. Wharton graduate. Worked at TPG Capital. Every credential you would want to see. The fund posted 19% returns every single year with zero losing months. Not one, Ever.

That alone should have been the red flag.

No legitimate fund in history has never had a single losing month. Markets go up and down, Every fund takes losses at some point.

A fund that never loses money is not a good fund. It is a fund hiding something.

Investors saw the returns and wired their money in anyway. By February 2024 Mars FX had collected $331 million in the US fund alone. Total exposure across all funds was close to $600 million.

Here is where it gets worse.

Novus, the firm managing the money, told investors their cash would go to a secret technology partner in the British Virgin Islands that would handle all the actual trading. They refused to name this partner.

They called it "proprietary and sensitive." Investors handed over hundreds of millions of dollars to a fund that was sending it to a company they were not allowed to know the name of.

That company later identified as TRFX, claims its platform stopped operating in 2022. Mars FX was raising hundreds of millions from investors in 2023 and 2024.

The technology partner they were telling investors was running their trades says it had not been operational for two years.

Now here is the Deloitte part.

Deloitte is one of the four biggest audit firms in the world. They audited Mars FX every single year.

They issued clean opinions every single year. According to the lawsuit filed against them, Deloitte signed off on the financials without independently verifying that the assets actually existed.

The 2024 offering documents showed the technology partner was neither a licensed broker nor a regulated custodian. Deloitte's audit the same year noted no significant changes.

$600 million is now missing. Lawsuits are open in three countries. The FBI and a grand jury in Manhattan are investigating.

The SEC, CFTC, UK's Financial Conduct Authority and BVI regulators are all involved.

One investor, a 70 year old small business owner from Arizona named CarolAnn Tutera, lost money in the GPB Capital fraud years ago and now lost money in Mars FX. She said: "I'm really fed up with finance guys on Wall Street."

She was defrauded twice. Both times the system that was supposed to protect her failed completely.

And this week, while this story was breaking, US regulators formally proposed eliminating filing requirements for smaller hedge funds and reducing disclosures for larger ones.

They are also cutting enforcement staff at the agencies responsible for catching exactly this kind of fraud.

$600 million missing.

Auditor saw nothing, Regulator caught nothing And the government's response is to make the rules even easier for the next one.

Nobody has been charged. Nobody knows where the money is. And the investors who lost everything are now being told to wait for a legal process that, with reduced enforcement staff and fewer disclosure requirements, has never been less equipped to help them.

Fraudsters exist only because their victims exist.

#bitcoin

Eighty-five percent of the world's refugees are #Muslim. Not ...

2026-04-22T08:59:27Z

Eighty-five percent of the world's refugees are #Muslim. Not a single one of the 56 Muslim-majority countries is taking in refugees.

Eleven of these countries are among the richest in the world. If #Islam is so great, why aren't Muslims taking care of their own?