Bitcoin Forum

There was a time in America when Kennedy and Nixon had a debate, and it was not about who was doing the Conservative thing and who was doing the Liberal thing. It was about who was doing the RIGHT thing.

In the Kennedy Nixon debate they BOTH talked about Hydroelectric infrastructure (renewable energy) that would bring jobs to Americans. Nixon did have a conservative argument in that he said "I spend less money and still bring nice infrastructure" while Kennedy said he wanted America to become more innovative and robust than ever.

They BOTH cared about the welfare of the people. They BOTH knew that America was only as strong as its weakest link. But at some point, Americans decided that if someone was poor, it was THEIR fault.

LBJ made a speech about "The War on Poverty" and nothing has really happened since. Obama even mentioned it on the anniversary of the speech and people were stunned. Not even a single clap from what I could hear.
No one seems to even understand what a war on poverty would look like, so they just brush it under the rug and act as if their is some individual flaw of each failed person that made them that way.

When BOTH parties cared about infrastructure and jobs, America was booming, winning basically. Not creating terrorists and debt around the world. But now we have fallen in to a hole.

Oil has us chasing our tail, and innovation has been stifled. McCain says "Russia is just a gas station masquerading as a country" and I am afraid that our leaders idolize that idea unknowingly.

Well, McCain is beyond past his prime and likely fucked in the head as he's always cheerleading for using America's military abroad. He's the same guy that was all for arming Syrian rebels who in turn either gave them to the terrorists of ISIS or were taken from them, either way terrible idea. The point is all about creating destabilization and then being able to offer the solution of using Amerca's power to get involved and make something right. It's the tried and true method of neocons but their way of thinking is tiring on the right and most republicans agree w/ Rand Paul's position on the current foreign policy (see my Rand Paul thread for details).

But more to the point, there's a political ruling class also known as the establishment and their bought and paid for mission is to spend money on special interest garbage which typically results in less residual liberty for the people. However, there is a renaissance republican movement also known as the liberty republicans like Paul, Amash, Massie to name a few plus more being elected every election. As the old guard fades away over time and the new blood takes over, the real republican party of the Sen. Taft years will emerge again and show the way forward to better times. This will take plenty of doing as the entrenched interests aren't going to just turn coat and run. Either way, Bitcoin will either help us bypass the system or help repair it.

Sound deflationary currency would be a great first shot in a "war on poverty." Politicians talk about it when it is convenient to do so. They then use handouts to create a dependent class and turn their opponents into straw men to scare the dependent class into a voting block.

The biggest concern I see is the continued devaluation of the US currency - whether it be through bailouts (giving money to companies doing risky practices), or running up national debt: http://www.usdebtclock.org/  That issue has to be addressed ASAP.

After that, I see oil and energy sources being the second highest priority.

To echo the sentiments of the latest posters, yeah, the massive special interest spending leads to debt monetization because the interests couldn't all get what they want if the tab had to be paid up front. Obviously, this leads to currency manipulation and devaluation which takes a while to catch up to the people if the inflation is exported overseas since lots of countries use the USD as the reserve currency especially for purchasing oil.

Bolded above, just a note.  It doesn't HAVE to be addressed ASAP.  Quite the contrary.  And realize that any calls to "address it ASAP" that you hear coming from the District of Criminals will be oriented toward taking more of your an my money.  Either from our retirement plans, or shaving it off our bank accounts, capital or juggling the currency.

After all, solutions that don't allow for embedded corruption can't be allowed.

There is a lot of ruin in a nation.  America's decline has been a steady once since its post World War II peak.  I think you'll be hard pressed to pin point a single turning point.  Maybe 1972, end of Bretton Woods monetary system, withdrawal from Vietnam, and Watergate?  Hard to say but it is fun to think about.

It will be a lot easier to do this once it is clear that the US really is in the shitter.  She may not be done just yet.

I am of the opinion that many facts presented to support the assumption that the US is going down, actually support a contrary position, that the largest part of the world is rising up.  Thus we may interpret things as "bad" that are obviously "good".

As an example, if we could time warp back to the 1950s 1960s cold war and ask "how would you like it if you didn't have a threat of nuclear war, if both China and Russia were not hell bent on world dominion, had partially free market economies that we routinely traded with..."

...so forth and so on, people back then would uniformly say that would be a wonderful future.

It's easy to blame our leaders. However, my take on this is that more Americans care about what kind of dumbass thing the Kardashians are doing today than care about what's happening on Wall Street or even at their own town hall which you would think would have more to do with their daily lives. Whenever somebody whines to me about why the guv'ment doesn't do something about such-and-so, I want to smack them upside the head and tell them to go volunteer at a soup kitchen or buy a Bitcoin and donate it to their favorite charity if they really care enough to spend time complaining about it. Because I hate that the U.S. has pretty much screwed its own space program too, but I could be one of the first to go to Mars simply because I had the nerve to apply for this little thing called Mars One, you know?

Cultural issue is hard to solve.

American exceptalism is just a lie.

I came here to snicker at your title  ;D
But went on to read your post as well and yes governments didn't used to be so bi-polar politics made them like that but rational actions based on what is best is how all political systems should be.
It's not a political thing it's what is best for all people in society, saving money or developing new technologies they may disagree but it should be civil.

SAd thing is, we do not ned Middle Eastern, Russian or any import oil at all.

The USA EXPORTS OIL!

It is easier however to simply export brave American service men and women as cannon fodder to protect our "interests" (Read" "OIL INTERESTS") than to break our dependence on foregin oil..

Dueing WWII, which in point of fact ENDED nearly 70 years ago, a substatial portion of the fuel supply of the Germans came from SYNTHETIC OIL.

Now if the Nazis could do it that far back, why can't we now?

WTF is wrong with us?

Thank you for your ingitful and accurate post!

Just a question from USA political history: When did the big parties start actively blocking each other constantly? Have they at some point tried to reach consensus?

We could run millions of cars on methanol, the fourth largest industrial chemical, available for about $1 per gasoline gallon equivalent, within a couple weeks of the decision to do so.

This is not complicated.

Yeah but do your homework on methanol.

It ain't that pretty at all.

The US imports more than exports.

All imported (high level) goods and services are derivatives of oil, metal, labor, real estate and more.

i'm reading a little noam chomsky right now, and i agree with most of his points.. and based on his opinion, america was fucked before even nixon and kennedy.

there definitely is a war on poverty though.. domestically and abroad. it's just about the shift of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite, or "ruling class."

It's human nature that leads to the collapse of civilizations.

The lazy majority demands something for nothing from the ruling class.

The ruling class taxes the productive minority until productivity is stifled, then taxes everyone by printing money until the money is worthless.

When you can't pay the soldiers the government collapses.

When you can't pay the farmers the cities collapse.

Then Atlas shrugs...

America is going down the toilet because people like you are so uneducated you thing the word "liberal" means "leftist".

You don't even know what that word meant for a thousand years before it was Orwellian flipped in the 1950's.

You are sheep who beg for Marxism, so you will be fleeced like sheep from cradle to grave.

You chose it.  Enjoy.

People need incentive to better themselves.

The first generation ruling class usually are the group of people with strong motivation and ambitious type and dubious moral values.

Actually the Kennedy/Nixon debate was about progressive versus conservative, and was classic American Democratic and Republican arguments.

When you suggested Nixon cared about the people I couldn't continue reading.

However bad you think Nixon and Kissinger were, they were doing what they think were right at that time.

I refuse to believe this.

Why is that?

I'll tell you why.

Indoctrination as a so-called "liberal" and lack of knowledge in history.

The organization of society inevitably results in a power structure that gets corrupted against he people.  This is happening as we speak in crypto currency.  The Bitcoin Foundation, DApps Fund, Meetup Leaders, are all banning together to swindle the common man.

At a bitcoin meetup last night I was instructed that "the way new cryptos are released" is with 100% premine and IPO.  This is crap. 

There are organizations of greedy people in crypto who are looking to use their similar interests to exploit people. 

I disagree.  However, suppose we had been running our cars on Chemical XYZ, and someone tried to get us to use "gasoline."  Given today's regulatory and risk averse environment, I bet you couldn't get gasoline introduced.

As it was, it was introduced because of maximum hydrogen bonds, max energy, high fuel density, etc. and it is the standard.   Methanol has certain disadvantages, but these are easily handled and at minimal cost.   There are millions of cars running it in China.  There was a large study IIRC in New York using several thousand vehicles in the mid 1980s on methanol.

The big thing about methanol is that it's an easy way to take natural gas and move it around in a liquid form, instead of complex high pressure piping and tankage.  Other fuels may also be derived from natural gas with a few more process steps such as dimethyl ether, an acceptable substitute for diesel fuel.  Obviously, methanol (CH3OH) is the simplest and easiest liquid fuel that can be produced from natural gas, largely methane (CH4).

Greenies would find methanol acceptable, but only if it came from "renewables."  And that's nonsense, because as the fourth largest produced industrial chemical, we can buy bargeloads today at a very low competitive street price.

And not one single vehicle presently on the road could run on methanol without extensive and expensive modification.

Next!

YES, that would be true with a modification.  "Not one single vehicle presently on the road WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE MILLIONS PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED could run on methanol without TRIVIALLY SIMPLE changes.  LOL....

We're not talking subsidies to farmers to produce corn for ethanol here.  We're not talking subsidies to people to turn corn into ethanol.  And we're not talking complicated hybrid or electrical vehicles.

We're talking simply taking methanol from Point A, where it is for sale, to Point B, where it goes into cars.

Here's one guy's experiences with methanol.

I ran the car on 100 percent methanol. This required replacing the fuel-pump seal made of Viton, which is not methanol compatible, with one made of Buna-N, which is. The new part cost 41 cents, retail. In order to take proper advantage of methanol’s very high octane rating (about 109), I advanced the timing appropriately. This dramatically improved the motor efficiency and allowed the ordinarily sedate sedan to perform with a significantly more sporty spirit. As measured on the dyno, horsepower increased 10 percent. With these modifications complete, I took my Cobalt out for a road test. The result: 24.6 miles per gallon.

When I first made the bet, many commentators thought that I would aim for high-efficiency performance with high-octane fuel by increasing the compression ratio of the engine (which is how race-car drivers using methanol have done it for the past half-century). However, with modern cars using electronic fuel injection, this is unnecessary. Instead, the necessary changes to the engine can be made simply by adjusting the Engine Control Unit software. Thus, except for switching the fuel-pump seal as noted above, no physical changes to the car were required.

Other critics commented that while I might be able to achieve good fuel economy, the idea was impractical because the emissions would not be acceptable. In response, I had the car tested for emissions with 100 percent methanol (M100), 60 percent methanol (M60), and ordinary gasoline (i.e., E10, which contains about 10 percent ethanol), and for comparison, did mileage tests for these alternatives as well. The results of all these tests are shown in the table below.

http://www.fuelfreedom.org/blog/can-methanol-really-replace-gasoline-and-is-it-really-cheaper/

Rats.  I thought it was really complicated.  Like I'd have to buy a $150 methanol conversion kit from Ebay or something.

Horseshit.

It ain't that simple.

Not much of a car guy, are you?

What about all the carbuerated cars still out there with dozens of seals which are NOT methanol risistant?

What about the older TBI cars with non-resistant seals and gaskets?

What about those?

Just scrap'em all?

What about the fact that the use of methanol as a motor fuel demands the use of higher compression rations for maximum efficiency?

We rebuild all those old engines?

Why not promote the use of vehicles which run on low-sulfur diesel, for which there is already and existing infrastructure?

oh wait

That would make too much sense.

Never mind.

Political parties have always been problematic.  The US founders were very wary of them.  In modern US political history the blocking of Robert Bork  as Reagan's nominee to the SCOTUS stands out as the start of political parties blocking the other for grandstanding purposes.  I doubt that's right, but it was a big deal at the time.  It seems to have gone downhill since then.

Also I agree with the earlier post that we may be seeing more of a rise of the rest of the world than a decline of the US.  So in relative terms US looks down but still strong.